[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 162 (2016), Part 9]
[Senate]
[Pages 12103-12104]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                           WASTEFUL SPENDING

  Mr. COATS. Mr. President, today I return to the floor for talk No. 
49--49 weeks of coming to the floor to talk about what we have 
described as ``waste of the week.'' We originally started this about 50 
weeks ago in this cycle, with some skipping of weeks when we were not 
in session, trying to look at ways to make government more efficient 
and effective and to save taxpayer dollars. We set a goal of reaching 
$100 billion.
  Whether it was the Congressional Budget Office, whether it was the 
inspectors general overseeing expenditures in the various agencies, we 
kept receiving these reports about taxpayer money that is wasted 
through waste, fraud, and abuse. We have talked about everything from 
the ridiculous to the really serious in terms of mismanagement, fraud, 
and waste that has occurred in this Federal Government.
  At a time when we cannot begin to balance our budget, when 
expenditures keep significantly exceeding revenues that are coming in 
no matter how much tax we collect, we find ourselves in a situation 
where we are continuing to borrow and borrow and borrow and borrow into 
the trillions and trillions and trillions of dollars--a truly 
unsustainable rate which will cause great harm to the American people 
at some point, if it hasn't already. Clearly, it is holding down our 
ability to grow. Clearly, it is putting us in a situation where 
expenditures on just paying interest on the money we have to borrow 
continues to increase, depriving us of the opportunity to address some 
essential needs, such as infrastructure and basic science. NIH 
research, the CDC, and others are being squeezed because we simply 
don't have the funds available without continuing to go into debt.
  So this is No. 49. It is one of the more minor ones. Keep tuning in 
because next week we have a big one coming. We could come down here 
almost every day and talk about something, with the backlog of waste, 
fraud, and abuse documented by agencies that are nonpartisan. They are 
not Republican. They are not Democratic. These are agencies that just 
deal with numbers, they just deal with facts, and they report to us, as 
Members of the Senate and the Congress, to make this available to the 
public and to demonstrate that we could run a much better shop here and 
save the taxpayers a lot of money.
  Today I want to highlight abuse of a fund that exists within the 
Department of Health and Human Services. It is called the Nonrecurring 
Expenses Fund, otherwise known as NEF. ``Nonrecurring expense fund'' is 
another fancy description the Federal Government has put out so that 
nobody can understand what it is, but we looked into this and found 
that the Nonrecurring Expenses Fund is a fund that was created to place 
money which wasn't used. There was money appropriated by Congress for 
specific purposes, but they didn't use all of it. Instead of turning it 
back to the Treasury or the taxpayer, they said: Let's create this fund 
that we can put this excess money in that hasn't been used for the 
purpose it was designated. We will put it in a fund, and it will be 
there for use for some other purposes.
  Well, you know how government works: Never return a penny of the 
money that has been allocated to you by the Congress because the next 
time it comes up on an annual basis for your allocation, Congress may 
say: Well, they didn't need all that money, so let's give them less 
money next year.
  Oh, no, we don't want to be in that position, so let's make sure we 
find a way to spend it.
  Anyway, the money is sitting here in this slush fund called the 
Nonrecurring Expenses Fund, and it is supposed to be used for one-time 
expenses that come up on construction or IT projects and they can go to 
the fund and take some money out and use it for specified purposes. 
Well, all that was fine, I guess. I think it should have gone back to 
the Treasury. They did put a 5-year limit on it, and if it is still 
there after 5 years, it is supposed to go back to the Treasury but 
instead goes to this fund.
  Well, along came ObamaCare and all of its promises: Don't worry, it 
is not going to cost you a penny more than what is already being paid. 
If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor. Your premiums won't 
go up.
  All that was promised to us by the President. After every declarative 
thing he said, he added: Period. Not one penny increase, period. Keep 
your doctor, period. Done deal, folks. Trust us.
  Well, of course none of that happened. ObamaCare seems to be 
collapsing under the weight of its own regulations and rules and 
operations. We read every day, almost every week of an exchange 
closing, of premiums skyrocketing. We are in for a very big surprise 
this fall. Some of this has been documented about the numbers coming in 
and the increases in premiums in the various States that are 
staggering. People are dropping out, people can't afford to get in, and 
on and on it goes.
  In any event, under ObamaCare, as we all remember, when they set it 
up, the Web site didn't work and people couldn't make the phone calls, 
so the expenditures have been significantly higher than what we were 
told and what was projected, and we are talking about big money here. 
So the administration thought, well, let's sort of look around, dig 
around, and maybe we will find a fund somewhere where there is some 
excess money we can use to prop up ObamaCare rather than having to go 
back to the Congress.
  Now, this is money appropriated for a specific purpose and not to be 
used or tapped into to pay for some other failing program over here, 
but, of course, that didn't stop the White House from doing that. It 
seems nothing does stop them, including laws passed by the Congress.
  In any event, they determined that, wow, here is a slush fund. Over 
the course of 4 years, it had about $1.3 billion in it. So why don't we 
just take it? It breaches the rules, maybe even the constitutionality 
of the fact that Congress appropriates money for specific purposes and 
puts it in specific places, and the administration doesn't have the 
right to simply go over there and say: Oh, there is a pot of money over 
there. It has been sitting there. Even though the law says it should 
expire after 5 years and it has to go back to the Treasury, we will 
ignore that and take that money, and we will apply it to pay for some 
of the bills on ObamaCare.
  And that is exactly what they did. So $1.3 billion was taken from a 
fund without a congressional vote--an abuse of power undermining 
Congress's constitutional authority over appropriations. So here we are 
adding to our total the $1.3 billion that could have been saved, that 
was appropriated but not used. It could have been used for many things. 
We are talking about trying to find ways to pay for Zika funding. This 
is a serious matter. Zika is having an impact. We have known that. The 
opposition here--the Democrats--have voted three times to prohibit us 
from going forward on that.

[[Page 12104]]

But one of the issues here is the pay-for that we are under. If we are 
going to start a new program or appropriate more money to a program, we 
want to find something else to pay for it. Well, here is the perfect 
way to do it, and the amount of money is more than actually requested. 
Mr. President, $1.3 billion could be easily used as a pay-for for the 
Zika problem. That would get the CDC and get the States out there to 
deal with this very significant and difficult problem. But no, nope; it 
had to go to ObamaCare. It had to sort of once again fill the gap from 
expenditures that have gone all over the place.
  So what we have done is shown that this is money that we could have 
saved the taxpayer or that could have used for a better purpose, and 
under the waste of the week total here, we are now adding this $1.3 
billion, which brings our total to $240 billion--$240,785,726,817. It 
just keeps going up. Here we are sitting on a total of nearly $241 
billion of waste, fraud and abuse.
  As I said, fasten your seatbelts, folks; the next one coming in next 
week is a staggering number of documented waste, fraud and abuse.
  Mr. President, with that, I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. MARKEY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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