[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 79 (Tuesday, June 21, 1994)]
[House]
[Page H]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: June 21, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
 APPOINTMENT OF CONFEREES ON H.R. 4277, SOCIAL SECURITY ADMINISTRATIVE 
                           REFORM ACT OF 1994

  Mr. JACOBS. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to take from the 
Speaker's table the bill (H.R. 4277) to establish the Social Security 
Administration as an independent agency and to make other improvements 
in the Old-Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance Program, with a 
Senate amendment thereto, disagree to the Senate amendment, and agree 
to the conference asked by the Senate.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Clement). Is there objection to the 
request of the gentleman from Indiana?
  There was no objection.


          motion to instruct conferees offered by mr. santorum

  Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. Speaker, I offer a motion.
  The Clerk read as follows:

       Mr. Santorum moves that the managers on the part of the 
     House at the conference on the disagreeing votes of the two 
     Houses on the bill H.R. 4277 be instructed to insist upon 
     section 231 of the House bill.

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. 
Santorum] will be recognized for 30 minutes, and the gentleman from 
Indiana [Mr. Jacobs] will be recognized for 30 minutes.
  The Chair recognizes the gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Santorum].
  Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
  Mr. Speaker, I rise to offer this motion to instruct on a provision 
that is agreed to that was formulated in the committee by the gentleman 
from Texas [Mr. Pickle] and myself as a result of hearings that were 
held in the Oversight Subcommittee.
  Mr. Speaker, I want to commend the work done by the Oversight 
Subcommittee in ferreting out what was another example of how fraud-
ridden the SSI program is and how much work needs to be done to deal 
with, I believe, the most fraud-ridden program in the Federal 
Government.
  Mr. Pickle and the gentleman from New York [Mr. Houghton] held a 
hearing, I believe, in February of this year which exposed a scandal in 
California, or reported the scandal here to Washington, having to do 
with third-party translators, people who were translators for 
individuals who were seeking disability benefits.
  These translators were Vietnamese in this case who were going out on 
the street, recruiting people to come in and claim disabilities when, 
in fact, they were not disabled. They went in and set up a clinic with 
a doctor who was willing to cooperate in this fraud, got certificates 
that these people were, in fact, disabled, six-page reports that were 
done with a 2-minute examination, witnessed by undercover cameras.

  They went to the disability office, and the disability office and the 
officer did not have a translator available from the disability office, 
so they used this recruiter as the translator who promptly answered all 
the questions, and the person receiving the disability or applying had 
no knowledge of even what the discussion was that was taking place.
  This was a terrible situation that was exposed by MediCal and brought 
to this subcommittee, and this legislation is an attempt by the 
subcommittee to quickly respond to this problem.
  I want to commend the chairman of that subcommittee, the gentleman 
from Texas [Mr. Pickle], for doing an outstanding job in doing so, and 
we have attacked a couple of very specific areas in this proposal that 
was inserted in the bill in committee.
  Let me review a couple of what I think the most important ones are: 
No. 1, what we found in this case was, even though this fraud was 
perpetrated and 14 people were indicted by California in this fraud 
case, there were 2,000 people, 2,000 people who started to receive 
benefits in 1993, 39 million dollars' worth of benefits as of February 
when we had this hearing were involved in the fraud, and yet the Social 
Security Administration failed to do one redetermination, failed to do 
one redetermination on any one of these 2,000 people who were involved 
in this fraud case.
  We subsequently, through the work of the subcommittee, convinced 
Social Security that redeterminations should be done when people who 
are put on SSI are suspected to being on there fraudulently. You would 
think that that would be an obvious case, but it, in fact, took the 
work of the subcommittee to get them to do it.
  Now we are going to put in statute that anytime you have a suspicious 
of fraud of someone who gets on the SSI rolls, that we will have an 
immediate redetermination by the Social Security Administration.
  Second, another almost amazing consequence of this investigation: We 
found that MediCal was doing this investigation and had done an 
extensive job and had the names of all the people who were implicated 
in this fraudulent scheme, and when we asked the Social Security 
Administration why they had not been trying to get redeterminations, 
their response was, well, we do not have the names of these people and 
the Social Security numbers and, therefore, we cannot get them. We 
asked the question: ``Well, did you bother to ask for the names?'' And 
the person from MediCal in the back stood up and said, ``No. They never 
bothered to ask.''
  So what we do in this law is require the inspector general, who 
cooperated with MediCal in this case, to turn over the names of the 
people suspected of fraud to the Social Security Administration so the 
Social Security Administration does not have an excuse not to 
investigate people who are conducing fraud.
  But this is the kind, unfortunately, of detail that we have to deal 
with here in the Congress because we have a Social Security 
Administration that is not willing to pursue fraudulent claims as 
vigorously as I think the public demands.
  Again, I want to compliment the gentleman from Texas [Mr. Pickle] and 
the gentleman from New York [Mr. Houghton] for the outstanding work 
done on the Oversight Subcommittee in coming up with this 
investigation.

  Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
  Mr. JACOBS. Mr. Speaker, first of all, we accept the motion to 
instruct. It makes eminently good sense.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes and 33 seconds, to the gentleman from 
Texas [Mr. Pickle].
  (Mr. PICKLE asked and was given permission to revise and extend his 
remarks.)
  Mr. PICKLE. Mr. Speaker, on May 5 of this year, the Oversight 
Subcommittee of Ways and Means, which I chair, issued a bipartisan 
report on reform to address the supplemental security income fraud and 
abuse that has been taking place.
  We held our meeting in conjunction with the Subcommittee on Human 
Resources chaired by the gentleman from Tennessee [Mr. Ford], and we 
passed a resolution that would, we thought, correct. We did find that 
there potentially were many fraud cases and abuse cases going on in 
this area.
  To address the problem, I offered an amendment in behalf of the 
gentleman from Tennessee [Mr. Ford], the gentleman from New York [Mr. 
Houghton], and the gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Santorum], which 
was unanimously adopted by the full committee.
  In order to have us have a clear view of it, let me list three things 
it does. No. 1, it ensures accurate translation of the interviews 
conducted by SSA officials during the SSI application process. We just 
want to be sure the translators are giving us a true, accurate, and 
certifiable translation.
  Second, we established a streamlined procedure enabling the SSA, the 
Social Security Administration, to expeditiously terminate fraudulently 
obtained SSI benefits. I can advise the House the Social Security is 
actually under way now in trying to go back and find those old cases 
and see if they can file suit against those people getting SSI benefits 
fraudulently. So that process is under way.
  And, third, we increased both civil and criminal sanctions available 
to SSA in SSI fraud cases.
  So as the chairman said, I support this amendment that the gentleman 
from Pennsylvania has offered, and I will assure him that I will work 
diligently to see this agreement is kept in the conference agreement.
  Mr. SANTORUM. Madam Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from 
New York [Mr. Houghton], the ranking member of the Subcommittee on 
Oversight.

                              {time}  1600

  Mr. HOUGHTON. Madam Speaker, I thank the chairman, the gentleman from 
Texas [Mr. Pickle], who has done a wonderful job and is a very fair 
chairman, bipartisan chairman, and we need more of that in this day and 
age.
  Madam Speaker, I rise to support the motion. I think it is important. 
There is a particular section I would like to talk about. But the 
reason it is important is because I do not think the Senate has dealt 
sufficiently with the fraud issue. Therefore, in order to have this be 
an important element in the conference, we ought to take this thing up 
and we ought to support the gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Santorum] 
and the gentleman from Texas [Mr. Pickle].
  Madam Speaker, section 231 of the House contains the bipartisan in 
what they have said.
  Madam Speaker, section 231 of the House contains the bipartisan fraud 
amendment. What it does is it requires four things. It requires Social 
Security to obtain information, to move quickly. To focus the limited 
resources on areas it thinks are important and also to use its new 
penalty authority.
  As others have said, this does not come right in over the transom; 
this has been a yearlong investigation. The investigation has uncovered 
a variety of different things. One of the things the gentleman from 
Pennsylvania [Mr. Santorum] mentioned is the horrible use of these 
middlemen, I mean preying upon new citizens coming into this country 
who do not know any better, and then the skimming process takes place. 
It is clearly obvious that this thing is going on all over the place 
and is costing the American taxpayers billions of dollars.
  So we have differences, I am sure, as to how to reform the welfare 
system, but we do not have any difference on this.
  Madam Speaker, I would urge my colleagues and all our colleagues here 
to support the motion to instruct and restore taxpayers' confidence.
  Mr. JACOBS. Madam Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the distinguished and 
handsome gentleman from Tennessee [Mr. Ford].
  Mr. FORD of Tennessee. I thank the gentleman for yielding this time 
to me.
  Madam Speaker, I join with my colleagues in strong support of this 
bipartisan amendment. My good friend and colleague, the gentleman from 
Pennsylvania [Mr. Santorum], I would like to refer to the amendment as 
the Pickle-Ford-Santorum amendment that was offered in the subcommittee 
and added to this particular bill.
  You know, Madam Speaker, it was clear that it was early on that a 
response to this problem that we were faced with, with the SSI program, 
is, I like to say, thanks to both the staff of the Subcommittee on 
Human Resources and the Subcommittee on Oversight, who investigated 
this matter.
  On February 24 there was a joint session of the Oversight 
Subcommittee and the Human Resources Subcommittee that conducted 
hearings. It was the intent of both of those committees, and we did act 
on the amendment and put it into this particular bill.
  Madam Speaker, I join with my colleagues in a bipartisan effort to 
say ``yes'' as a conferee. I see Mr. Santorum is a conferee also. We 
will make sure both sides of the aisle will be protected, Democrats and 
Republicans, to keep this provision in the bill.
  I just wanted the Republican side to know that it was a concerted 
effort, it was not one person's idea. This was a full investigation 
conducted by two subcommittees and a bipartisan effort in the full 
committee to bring this provision about.
  Mr. SANTORUM. Madam Speaker, I have no further requests for time, and 
I yield back the balance of my time.
  Mr. JACOBS. Madam Speaker, I have no further requests for time, I 
yield back the balance of my time, and I move the previous question on 
the motion to instruct conferees.
  The previous question was ordered.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Ms. Danner). The question is on the motion 
to instruct conferees offered by the gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. 
Santorum].
  The motion to instruct was agreed to.
  A motion to reconsider was laid on the table.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Without objection, the Chair appoints the 
following conferees: Messrs. Gibbons, Rostenkowski, Pickle, Jacobs, 
Ford of Tennessee, Archer, Bunning,  and Santorum.
  There was no objection.

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