Political Quotes

“I think we know how and why we lose 45 to 60 cents when we create a program here in Washington. There have been hundreds since we have been here. They were here when we got here, but there are hundreds of programs. We have to tell a local school district that, hey, we have a program for this to buy computers, a technology program. So we pass a program. The Education Department has to notify these school districts. These school districts then have to apply for the money. So they have to go through the process of filling out these forms. We then have the people within the Department of Education who sort these applications out and say this group over here gets them and, sorry, you do not. So we send a check to this local school district. That local school district then has to track that money. So if it is coming in for technology, they have to segregate that money, they have got to make sure that it is spent on computers and nothing else, technology. They then send the forms back to the Department of Education and say, yes, we spent it on exactly what this program was for. And then the Department of Education knows that they cannot trust those people at the local level, so they send their auditors in to make sure that the way the money was reported spent is actually the way the money was spent. It is kind of interesting, I have talked to some of my school districts who have gone through an audit by the Department of Education. They say it is absolutely brutal.”