On Thursday’s broadcast of the Fox Business Network’s “Kudlow,” Rep. Claudia Tenney (R-NY) discussed fraud and said that “a lot of it came from COVID. A lot of it, we’re finding out, all across the country [is] from people who actually didn’t go to work, and they were not doing their jobs. And we’re finding out that they were very lax, especially through ’21 and ’24.”
Guest host David Asman asked, “Dr. Oz said that a lot of this excess spending started with COVID, when hundreds of billions of dollars was just sent out, 50% increase in Medicaid alone. Isn’t the problem just too much money? Don’t we have to just claw back that 50% in extra spending because of COVID?”
Tenney answered, “Well, think about this: Every time New York spends money — I just want to give this as an example — it was a $130 billion budget in 2016. In order to pay for that budget of 268 billion that’s likely going to be proposed this year, taxes have to go up. They’re going to continue to go up, because spending continues to go up. But less people are there. So, yeah, a lot of it came from COVID. A lot of it, we’re finding out, all across the country [is] from people who actually didn’t go to work, and they were not doing their jobs. And we’re finding out that they were very lax, especially through ’21 and ’24.”
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