Noem: D.C. much worse than she realized

Posted: Thursday, October 20th Filed in: News

The Argus Leader

 

U.S. Rep. Kristi Noem defended a Medicare rate change Monday, said she hopes to help recapture money for the Lewis & Clark water pipeline and said soaking the rich is no way to repair the federal budget.

 

"We could take every single dollar away from millionaires and we still wouldn't balance the budget," Noem said. "That's like saying my car broke down, so I'm going to go wash it."

 

Noem spoke to 135 people at a Downtown Rotary Club lunch at the Holiday Inn City Centre in Sioux Falls.

Noem, a Republican in Congress since January, said what surprises her about Washington, D.C., is that it is "much worse than I thought during the campaign."

 

She said communication between the White House and the House of Representatives is practically nonexistent and that federal regulations stifle local businesses. She said inspectors fined a South Dakota gravel pit owner $17,000 for a bad rivet in an electrical box, instead of issuing a warning.

"There goes one of my part-time employees," the owner told her. Inspectors fined another business $32,000 for a frayed electrical cord, she said.

 

She backs a new rule called the frontier states provision that would raise Medicare reimbursement rates for five states, including South Dakota. The provision would bring South Dakota hospitals more than $20 million a year, starting in 2013, by correcting a system that now pays hospitals and doctors less in rural states. President Obama has recommended deleting the provision as a way to save money.

 

"We're going to fight to keep it," Noem told the audience.

The provision is part of the Affordable Care Act, the health reform bill that Obama pushed and Congress passed in March 2010 before Noem was in office. Noem opposes the reform bill even though it includes the frontier states provision.

 

"That doesn't justify keeping the monstrosity in place. ... I would repeal Obamacare," she said in an interview afterward. Congress could overturn the larger bill and still preserve the Medicare correction, she said.

A group of 15 leaders from Sanford, Avera and other health agencies will fly to Washington this week to argue in favor of keeping the provision.

 

Noem said it is disappointing the political climate now jeopardizes the federal commitment to the Lewis & Clark project.

 

The federal government pledged 80 percent support for the project, said Troy Larson, executive director of the Lewis & Clark Regional Water System. The White House proposes giving it $493,000 in fiscal 2012, he said. In past years it's been as much as $27 million. State and local governments have made their share of payments.

"The federal government is the only one not to follow through," Noem said.

 

Dennis Breske, owner of NAI Sioux Falls, a commercial real estate company, asked Noem about the prospects for the government balancing its budget.

Noem said she supports a balanced budget amendment that will come up for a vote in both houses of Congress before the end of the year.

 

"We really have no choice," Breske said afterward.