Political Quotes

“I mean, when we think about this process and we got involved in this issue, when the Department of Education failed its 1998 audit, which means the auditors came in and said the way that the numbers are reported in their financial statements, we have taken a look at their internal processes and procedures, and there is not a clear indication or there is not a high degree of confidence that the numbers that they are reporting accurately reflect what happened within the Department of Education. They did the same thing for 1999. They put some qualifications on it. The Department of Education made some progress. The interesting thing in the 1999 audit, which bears directly on the Impact Aid that the gentleman just brought up is that, in the 1999 audit statement, which came out earlier in the year 2000, but it was as they were taking a look at how the Department of Education was processing their checks and their payments in 1999, they said in the audit report that there is no integrity in the process; that individuals within the process had too much latitude and too many responsibilities so that perhaps the same person entering the data would have the opportunity to change the data and those types of things. It appears that may be exactly what happened in this case. But it was brought out in the 1999 audit. So what we find is they failed the 1998 audit. They failed their 1999 audit.”