Bob Schaffer: “it is an unfortunate tragedy that in 1998, the U.S. Department of Education could not audit its books. We are concerned…”

“it is an unfortunate tragedy that in 1998, the U.S. Department of Education could not audit its books. We are concerned now about the inability of the Department to pass an audit of their Department. But in 1998, the books were so poorly managed, the finances were so badly mismanaged, that they could not even audit the books. The documents were not even in an auditable state, let alone letting us get to the point of finding out where the money really went. We have managed to improve things slightly, only so that we know now that the U.S. Department of Education fails those audits when we can actually sit down and add the money up. So our goal is for financial accountability and responsibility. We want to manage the funds that are spent today. If we can get that 40 cents back that today is squandered and wasted and misdirected away from children's classrooms, we do not need the new spending. We can actually increase the amount of money spent on children without increasing one dime, the amount of money budgeted for education, just by cutting out the waste fraud and abuse in the Department of Education.”