Political Quotes

“the gentleman from Michigan, asked us to give one reason why AmeriCorps should be eliminated. I can think of many. Perhaps let us go back to what the President said he was going to give us when he promised us AmeriCorps: a well-run, businesslike program; a national service corporation which will run like a big venture capital outfit, not like a bureaucracy. This year we had oversight hearings. We had oversight hearings because we asked Arthur Andersen, the auditors who took a look at AmeriCorps, to tell us what they found. Over $300 million of taxpayer funding per year. The auditors came back and said this corporation that was going to be the benchmark for the private sector, the corporation lacks strong management controls, the corporation lacks data integrity, the corporation lacks data security, the corporation has failed to segregate accounting duties, the corporation lacks budgetary controls, the corporation could not prepare reliable financial statements. The bottom line: The benchmark of Government service is a program whose books are not auditable. Mr. Chairman, stopping a program like that is not mean-spirited; it is realistic, and it is being good stewards of the taxpayers' dollars.”