Washington (AP) —The Senate is where former President Donald Trump takes care of health, social welfare, and even immigrant children.
No Republican objected to confirming that long-time civil servant Christie A. Grimm was an HHS inspector. Her department includes approximately 1,600 auditors, law enforcement agencies, and administrative professionals, and is known for withdrawing medical fraud each year. The voice vote took place on Thursday night.
Only two years ago, Trump of the White House after her office released a study highlighting the hospital struggle in the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, including a lack of well-documented tests at the time. I crashed into Grimm from the briefing room.
“That’s wrong,” Trump nevertheless said.
This report was a fact-based product from federal shorts, but Trump hinted that it was a political motivation. The former president had an unstable relationship with inspectors throughout the government, and Grimm at the time was the de facto head of the HHS office, which had no confirmed leader in the Senate. She began her government career in 1999, serving both Republican and Democratic governments.
“Then, please tell me the name of the inspector general,” Trump asked the reporter at the briefing.
When Grim was told to serve the Obama administration, Trump replied: “Thank you for telling me … there is a typical fake news deal.”
The president is a presidential appointed person, but he can extend his term under the presidents of both parties. They are expected to be independent, nonpartisan investigators, shedding light on the flaws in their institutions.
At a hearing at the Senate Finance Committee last fall, 46-year-old Grimm described himself as an “increased career inquiry.”
She added full approval of the mission performed by the Inspector General.
“They help eradicate fraud, waste and abuse and make the program more efficient and effective. It is important to have an inspector general who understands the value of objective and independent surveillance.” She said. “Powerful inspectors create a stronger department and a stronger and more reliable federal government.”
The HHS Inspector’s Office specializes in medical fraud. It has long since replaced defense contract scams as the main attraction of criminals trying to suck up taxpayers’ money.
During the Trump administration, the office also produced a solid report on the consequences of Trump’s “zero tolerance” policy to separate immigrant children from their parents at the US border with Mexico. One such report documented that children separated from their families tended to suffer more emotional trauma than immigrant children who remained with their parents.
In the Obama administration, HHS inspectors analyzed the flawed launch of the government’s HealthCare.gov website on health insurance.
Congress wants Grimm’s office to pay attention to the COVID-19 scam. The scam surged in 2020, when the virus arrived and vaccines and cures were not yet available, to allow the government to spend hundreds of billions of dollars to maintain the medical system.
