Bob Schaffer: “You mentioned earlier, in 3 weeks the U.S. Department of Education is going to announce that they have failed another…”

“You mentioned earlier, in 3 weeks the U.S. Department of Education is going to announce that they have failed another audit, that once again they have done a poor job of accounting for the billions, almost $130 billion that they manage, that they cannot account for it very well, the kind of audit that would result in a private company's stock crashing through the floor. Yet our Department of Education, after coming to Congress and saying we cannot audit our books, then when they did bring us an audit for the subsequent year, 1999, they got an F. Now they are going to bring us another audit that they will fail again. That is a tragic event. It is important to note, though, because what such rampant and wholesale mismanagement of funds really represents is, one, a tremendous amount of sacrifice by the American people who work hard to pay taxes and send them here to Washington, D.C. in hopes that we are going to do something responsible with them. Secondly, it suggests that people in Washington do not take those tax dollars seriously. Third, it suggests that people in Washington do not take the children seriously who are affected by this waste, fraud and abuse in the Department of Education. Finally, what it suggests is that there are billions of dollars that American taxpayers send to Washington, D.C.…”