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We'll do one more question, then why hit the road. Thank you Mr. Vice President for taking questions. I'm Phil Hirschkorn from News Center Maine. So it turns out that Maine does have a Medicare Fraud Control Unit. You mentioned that a few minutes ago. I'm wondering, you said Maine could be the third worst state after states like California and Minnesota, which have proven tens of millions, maybe hundreds of millions of dollars in fraud and many federal convictions. So far what we've heard about from the federal government in Maine is questionable $45 million in the autism services which you mentioned. We've also heard about $1.7 million in questionable billing by a Somali immigrant run NGO. My question is... It's alright. Now, I appreciate you all standing up for me, but trust me, I've had a lot worse. Hey, we still have innocent and proven guilty in this country. My question is, what else do you got? What else has your task force flagged that we should be concerned about? Because those amounts are a lot, $46 million, $1.7 million, but they don't really compare to California and Minnesota. What else should we expect from your task force? Thank you. Well, let me say a few things. Ladies and gentlemen, we've got biased reporters in all states. It's okay, trust me. I can handle it, but here's what I'd say a few things. Number one, you talk about the scale of the fraud being less in Maine than it is in California. Well, California has a population that's much higher than Maine, so that's not necessarily a fair question. A fair comparison. Number two, we've frankly been at this less long than we have in Maine than in other states, okay? This is something where what we, I would say, you notice a pattern. And you're right, innocent until proven guilty, but what I've noticed is a pattern. That when you see certain types of fraud in certain types of programs, that's the tip of the iceberg. And when I see that autism services fraud in the Medicaid program in the Somali community, but not just that, I see local and state politicians who don't care about policing that fraud, that's the tip of the iceberg. And we're going to find out just how deep that iceberg is, and I suspect, I can't promise, but I suspect we are going to find hundreds of millions of more dollars every single month that we look in the state of Maine, because this is not a state that takes it seriously. And this is the third point and the most important one. I do not actually like having a contentious relationship between the state government and the federal government. We want people to help us find the fraudsters. It goes a lot quicker, it's a lot easier, it requires fewer resources from the federal government, but you find more fraud when you're working with people at the local level. What I find so preposterous about Maine, it's not just that we found tens of millions of dollars of fraud in a relatively small state, it's that we've had no cooperation from the state government. So when I say that the state government, when I say this is the third, maybe the fourth worst state when it comes to fraud, what I mean very simply is that you've got a governor and you've got a seven of bureaucrats that don't care about fraud, and all I'm saying is Donald J. Trump and J.D. Vance, we care about fraud, we care about the people of this state, and we care about your tax dollars going to where it's actually supposed to go.

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The fraud has marked the end of Tim Walts's political career. It should also be the end of Gavin Newsom's because the scale of what has occurred in California is unlike anywhere else. And the governor says, bring it on, well, every time we have had an investigation into fraud in California, the results have been absolutely incredible in terms of both the scale of the fraud and the negligence of Newsom in allowing it. I mentioned the $24 billion in homelessness spending where the auditor found that they lost track of the money and now there have been individuals indicted for committing fraud in connection with those homeless funds, homelessness funds. There was just another audit that came out two weeks ago that found that the number of high risk agencies that have serious risk of waste, fraud, abuse or mismanagement has doubled during Newsom's tenure that we're losing billions still in unemployment fraud and fraud related to SNAP benefits and Medi-Cal determinations and a whole host of other areas. You know, the state auditor found the $32 billion in unemployment fraud back during COVID. So every time this has been looked into, we've just found out the problem is even worse than we thought before. So Newsom better be careful what he wishes for. He certainly has done nothing to control fraud. And everywhere you look here, I think you're going to find things that absolutely shock the conscience. Yeah. And to that point, you're going to need the governor will have to it at some point, whether through him or another official, someone he delegates this to, he's going to have to hand out over potentially hours, recipients names, addresses, social security numbers, dates of births involving subsidized childcare services to prove that there are actually American citizens that are receiving these subsidies. There will have to be some sort of cooperation. How would the governor go about circumventing that? I mean, if you want, if you wanted to not cooperate? Well, I'm sure he'll Stonewall in every way he can, just like he did that with in connection with the investigation into the unemployment fraud that we've already tried to do here. But you know, the reality is that when you look at the mistakes that he's made, not only are these investigations uncovering the scale of the fraud, but just the unbelievable negligence on the part of the Newsom administration. To give you one example, with the unemployment fraud, you had a lot of criminal syndicates, you had state prisoners that were stealing money, and it was no sweat. It was easy for them. The state actually mailed checks to penitentiaries to state prisons, where the fraudsters were easily able to game the system. But the ultimate proof of the fraud we have in California and the scale of it is the fact that Gavin Newsom in the course of five years increased our state budget by $124 billion. That's a 50% increase in five years, and yet everything in California has continued to get worse. We lead the nation in unemployment, in homelessness, in poverty, in illiteracy. The risk goes on, and that's because citizens are simply getting nothing in return for those tax dollars. Don't forget U-Haul use. And U-Haul use, of course. Appreciate that. Congressman Kevin Kiley joining us today of California. Have a great weekend. Thanks, Congressman.

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