- Utah Rep. Blake Moore said a bipartisan fiscal commission is the single thing he’d pass this year if he could.
- Programs Congress never votes on have become breeding grounds for fraud, Moore argued during Thursday’s forum.
- Moore called Donald Trump Jr.’s acceptance of money from a Russian oligarch “one of the most tone-deaf things I’ve ever seen.”
Rep. Blake Moore argued that greater congressional oversight of federal spending could help curb the national debt and government fraud during a Sutherland Institute forum at the University of Utah on Thursday.
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Moore is the vice chair of the House Republican Conference and has made fiscal policy his signature issue in Congress. His central argument during the forum was simple: Congress will never rein in the national debt if it continues to let the vast majority of federal spending run on autopilot without an annual vote.
That includes Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid spending.
“We have $7 trillion worth of spending,” Moore said. “We’ve got to vote on it.”
Putting the national debt to a vote
Of everything on his agenda, Moore said the fiscal commission is the one thing he’d push across the finish line this year if he could. The Fiscal Commission Act was created by the House Budget Committee in January 2024, but was killed by interest groups on both sides of the aisle before ever making it to the floor.
The fiscal commission, if passed, would create a bipartisan panel of lawmakers and experts that would produce a package of recommendations to stabilize the national debt. The package would then get a guaranteed up-or-down vote on the House and Senate floors, which would force Congress to address difficult fiscal decisions and avoid unnecessary amendments and stalling.
“You don’t let it monkey around in leadership circles,” Moore said. “You put together a group of serious lawmakers and some outside experts … they come up with one set of recommendations and you take it right to the floor.”
This fiscal commission would be a stepping stone to passing the Comprehensive Congressional Budget Act, which is an ambitious proposal by Moore to require Congress to vote on the entire budget every year.
“Probably 77% of everything the federal government spends money on doesn’t get voted on each year,” Moore said. “If you don’t vote on something, you’ll never reform the program.”
Included in this 77% are mandatory spending programs such as Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. The remaining portion of the budget is discretionary spending on priorities like defense, energy and transportation, and is voted on annually.
Finding corruption in ‘autopilot’ spending
Moore’s push for a Congress that votes on the entire budget stems from his belief that mandatory spending programs that are never voted on become breeding grounds for fraud.
One of his examples was fraudulent billing for hospice care throughout Nevada and California. Moore called L.A. in particular a “hotbed” where fraudulent companies use real people’s Medicare numbers to enroll them in hospice care without their knowledge. Medicare’s system then processes the claim and pays the company, resulting in billions of dollars going to nefarious providers.
According to Moore, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services recently started sending letters to people whose Medicare numbers were flagged as being on hospice. Of those letters, about 15% came back with people saying they had no idea they were even on hospice.
“Somebody’s Medicare number can be billed five or so times,” Moore said. “That should make all of us really frustrated.”
Moore also listed skin grafting expenditures, which have skyrocketed from $150 million to roughly $23 billion over four years, as a way for fraudulent billers to slip claims through without anyone noticing.
“We need some checks and balances on our massive expenditures,” Moore said. “The only way to do it is to bring it into a more frequent vote so you can have more looks at things.”
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Moore acknowledged that rooting out fraud alone won’t close the $2 trillion deficit, but that it could still save hundreds of billions of dollars if combined with the fiscal commission approach.
Washington’s trust problem
When a student asked what would make it possible for Congress to tackle big issues, Moore pointed to a broken incentive structure.
“Right now, there’s far too much to gain by vitriol and the attention you get for very toxic attitudes on both sides of the aisle,” Moore said, citing media attention, fundraising dollars and political celebrity as obstacles to good governance. “People are terrified of the primaries. You do one little thing and some primary challenger will take it way out of context and just attack, attack, attack.”
Moore contrasted the dynamic with a conversation he had at a recent debt summit in Texas with Leon Panetta, who served as CIA director, secretary of defense and budget director under President Bill Clinton.
“We need people, we need lawmakers that are interested in governing instead of just getting elected,” Moore said, quoting Panetta.
Moore called the national debt the country’s looming political issue that both parties need to address, yet neither wants to touch.
“I think it’s sort of a misnomer that you should be worried about solving our nation’s biggest issue,” Moore said.
Accountability within his own party
Toward the end of Thursday’s forum, Moore fielded questions from the audience. A wide range of topics were discussed, including the conflict in Iran, the Greenland deal and the removal of CNN, MS NOW and Politico from the White House press pool.
On each of these topics, Moore positioned himself as willing to break with his party when warranted.
“One of the things I’m proud of is making a really strong statement against the Greenland conversation that was going on,” Moore said in reference to the provocative remarks about acquiring the island earlier this year. “I feel like my team and I made a really clear statement before anybody else was willing to make anything that clear from the Republican side.”
When asked whether or not he supports Sen. John Curtis’ call for an investigation of Donald Trump Jr. and Hunter Biden, Moore emphasized the difference between evading taxes and accepting a “highly unethical” gift.
“It may be one of the most tone-deaf things I’ve ever seen,” Moore said of Trump Jr.’s acceptance of money from a Russian oligarch. “I absolutely agree to look into anything. It’s just tone deaf, and that’s not the type of stuff we need to be dealing with right now.”
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