[Congressional Record Volume 172, Number 57 (Thursday, March 26, 2026)]
[House]
[Pages H2716-H2717]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         RECOGNIZING DAVE BAKER

  (Mr. Comer of Kentucky was recognized to address the House for 5 
minutes.)
  Mr. COMER. Madam Speaker, I rise to recognize my good friend and 
First Congressional District of Kentucky resident, Dave Baker, upon his 
retirement from the University of Kentucky Sports Network after 37 
years.
  Dave ``Buzz'' Baker began his career at WKYT in Lexington as an 
intern and was hired full time upon his graduation from Georgetown 
College in 1982.
  Dave and his lovely wife, Donna, reside in Frankfort and attend 
church with me and my family at Forks of Elkhorn Baptist in Midway, 
Kentucky.
  Dave began working Southeastern Conference events in 1993 and has 
been a constant presence on the SEC Network and other University of 
Kentucky televised events ever since calling men's and women's 
basketball, baseball, softball, and volleyball.
  Buzz Baker is a Kentucky sports legend who has always been and will 
continue to be a force in what we in the Bluegrass State call Big Blue 
Nation.


          Mission of Oversight and Government Reform Committee

  Mr. COMER. Madam Speaker, I rise to give an update on the work that 
the House Oversight Committee has been doing recently. I want to remind 
everyone that our mission on the Oversight and Government Reform 
Committee is to identify waste, fraud, abuse, and mismanagement in the 
Federal Government.

  We have been going State by State and focusing on identifying massive 
fraud in the Federal welfare programs administered by poorly run 
States.
  We began in Minnesota. We worked with nine whistleblowers. These 
whistleblowers were career State employees who came forward, and I hope 
that whistleblowers in other States saw how we treated those 
whistleblowers. We protected the whistleblowers.
  We sat down with the whistleblowers. We interviewed them. We did 
transcribed interviews and took their testimony to produce a report to 
build our case to help with the Department of Justice's ongoing 
investigation in Minnesota on the welfare fraud.
  What we concluded after bringing in people who were State employees 
in Minnesota who had been ringing the bell on fraud there for many 
years, we concluded that both Attorney General Keith Ellison and 
Minnesota Governor Tim Walz knew about the massive amounts of fraud in 
the welfare programs in Minnesota, yet did nothing about it, and in 
some instances, retaliated against the State employees who did the 
right thing and came forward.
  Now we have moved our investigation into California, and we are 
focusing on a massive hospice fraud scheme--hospice of all things. This 
is a program I think every Member of Congress supports. Hospice is who 
we call in our deepest, darkest times of need.
  We have zeroed in on one particular area in California: Los Angeles 
County. A recent audit revealed over $3.5 billion in hospice fraud 
primarily in one county: Los Angeles County.

[[Page H2717]]

  What we found in Los Angeles County is that 18 percent of the total 
bill for the Federal Government for hospice in America went to one 
county. You had thousands of people registered as hospice providers 
billing hospice for hundreds and hundreds of patients that no one can 
find.
  We are going to continue to work with auditors. We hope that 
whistleblowers will come forward in California like they did in 
Minnesota, and we are going to try to identify this and hopefully work 
with authorities in Minnesota who have prosecuted over two dozen people 
already in Minnesota for fraud.
  We are serious on the House Oversight Committee, the Republicans are, 
about doing something about the massive amounts of fraud we are seeing. 
We want to get the backs of the American taxpayer. The hardworking 
taxpayers who work hard every day and send their tax dollars here to 
Washington are frustrated that we are losing so much money to fraud. We 
are going to do something about it.

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