Daniel Meuser

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman, Michelle Fischbach, for her leadership here.

Wow, we have heard gaslighting on this floor before, but here, somehow or another, pardons have anything to do with fighting fraud? That is the excuse to not help us fight fraud, which, of course, nothing was done before.

By the way, Mr. Speaker, I don't recall hearing about Hunter Biden and others receiving pardons from their father, and also pardons given to those who weren't even accused of crimes but could be one day. I don't remember any of that being raised.

I rise in support of this rule, which would allow the House to consider two important pieces of legislation that improve the Federal Government's ability to combat taxpayer fraud. You would think that this would be something that would be bipartisan, combating taxpayer fraud, which is in excess of $254 billion that we have uncovered so far.

If we have to do it on our own, we will, Mr. Speaker, because that is what we are about. We are about straightening things out, correcting all the wrongs, particularly the last 4 years. This is a big part of it.

The Task Force to Eliminate Fraud has uncovered, as I said, $245 billion in taxpayer fraud. We have seen it in Los Angeles. I heard this morning in a CMS meeting that the level of hospice fraud that existed was in the multibillions.

By the way, the 900 or so hospices that were shut down, not one of them called to complain that they were being shut down, that they couldn't serve their so-called providers anymore. Guess what. This is under the jurisdiction of Democrat leadership that this is all occurring. Nothing was done on fraud for 4 years during the Biden administration, during the Pelosi reign, during the time when these gentlemen and others had the gavels.

What kind of nonsense is this? We are calling on pardons as a reason not to be going after fraud? By the way, I have constituents having fraud committed on them. We have fraud in Philadelphia. We have fraud in Minneapolis, the learning center. Has anybody come out on the other side and denounced that, Mr. Speaker? This is outrageous.

My Republican colleagues and I have been fighting taxpayer fraud as a top priority. We have introduced legislation to establish an overpayment czar to help State-level fraud prevention. We have supported commonsense reform.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to support this rule.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman, Michelle Fischbach, for her leadership here.

Wow, we have heard gaslighting on this floor before, but here, somehow or another, pardons have anything to do with fighting fraud? That is the excuse to not help us fight fraud, which, of course, nothing was done before.

By the way, Mr. Speaker, I don't recall hearing about Hunter Biden and others receiving pardons from their father, and also pardons given to those who weren't even accused of crimes but could be one day. I don't remember any of that being raised.

I rise in support of this rule, which would allow the House to consider two important pieces of legislation that improve the Federal Government's ability to combat taxpayer fraud. You would think that this would be something that would be bipartisan, combating taxpayer fraud, which is in excess of $254 billion that we have uncovered so far.

If we have to do it on our own, we will, Mr. Speaker, because that is what we are about. We are about straightening things out, correcting all the wrongs, particularly the last 4 years. This is a big part of it.

The Task Force to Eliminate Fraud has uncovered, as I said, $245 billion in taxpayer fraud. We have seen it in Los Angeles. I heard this morning in a CMS meeting that the level of hospice fraud that existed was in the multibillions.

By the way, the 900 or so hospices that were shut down, not one of them called to complain that they were being shut down, that they couldn't serve their so-called providers anymore. Guess what. This is under the jurisdiction of Democrat leadership that this is all occurring. Nothing was done on fraud for 4 years during the Biden administration, during the Pelosi reign, during the time when these gentlemen and others had the gavels.

What kind of nonsense is this? We are calling on pardons as a reason not to be going after fraud? By the way, I have constituents having fraud committed on them. We have fraud in Philadelphia. We have fraud in Minneapolis, the learning center. Has anybody come out on the other side and denounced that, Mr. Speaker? This is outrageous.

My Republican colleagues and I have been fighting taxpayer fraud as a top priority. We have introduced legislation to establish an overpayment czar to help State-level fraud prevention. We have supported commonsense reform.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to support this rule.

Mr. Speaker, I acknowledge and thank the leadership of Congresswoman De La Cruz for seeing this bill through and my colleague, Congressman Nunn, because, as he stated, the level of importance of this is vast.

Mr. Speaker, I strongly support H.R. 2978, the GUARD Act. For well over a year, the Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee, which I chair, has led in-depth investigations into the growing prevalence of fraud and scams.

As part of our work, we conducted many hearings, roundtables, meetings with private industry, law enforcement, and regulators to investigate the problem and find solutions.

In July, we released a comprehensive staff report detailing the growth of financial fraud and scams in the U.S. Shockingly, or not so shockingly, we found that Americans lost well over $16 billion which was reported in these schemes in 2025 alone, and truly the toll was closer to well over $200 billion, as has been mentioned.

Financial fraud picks no favorites. Scams affect everyone from veterans and small businesses to seniors to young people. Everybody is vulnerable.

This report, however, included several recommendations to better address financial fraud and scams, including the passage of this bill, the GUARD Act. The important legislation addresses many of the issues we identified in equipping law enforcement with the tools necessary to combat sophisticated criminals. They are sophisticated.

It also allows law enforcement to use innovative tools to trace and recover stolen funds and improves Federal reporting on fraud trends.

Mr. Speaker, I thank Representative Nunn for his hard work to stop fraud and scams, and I thank Chairman Hill of the Financial Services Committee for his strong leadership as well.

Mr. Speaker, I urge and thank my colleagues on the other side of the aisle for their support.