Tennessee Rep. Diane Black is calling for a return of the
$750 million paid out through the Affordable Care Act to people whose legal immigration status has not been verified.
Black told
Newsmax TV on Monday she also had a bill in the previous Congress that would have demanded "no subsidies without verification."
"We should not be giving these subsidies out even for the 90 days that are provided in the law until we know for sure that they are here in this country legally, because you do not get that money back," Black told John Bachman on "Newsmax Prime."
"This is not a good spending of our … taxpayers' dollars," she said. "They're hard enough to come by, and taxpayers are working hard and we shouldn't be giving those to illegal immigrants."
The
Government Accountability Office issued a report last week saying the Obama administration has had a "passive approach to identifying and preventing fraud" implementing the Affordable Care Act. "With unresolved inconsistencies, CMS [the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services] is at risk of granting eligibility to, and making subsidy payments on behalf of, individuals who are ineligible to enroll in qualified health plans," the report said.
"They're not doing a very good job of making sure that there are people using these subsidies in a fraudulent way," Black told Newsmax. "What I think is happening in the administration is that they want so badly to say they got X number of millions of people."
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On another subject, Black said she would like to talk to GOP presidential front-runner Donald Trump about his support of Planned Parenthood.
"Planned Parenthood is an abortion industry," she said. "They do over 320,000 abortions a year."
The number of abortions performed have remained fairly steady, while other women's health services have actually decreased, she said.
"I don't believe that Planned Parenthood should have another single penny of taxpayer dollars," she said. "I'd like to have that conversation with him to show him what their true mission is."
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