Lee Metcalf: “today the Department of Education cannot produce the required paperwork to allow their financial books to be audited by…”

“today the Department of Education cannot produce the required paperwork to allow their financial books to be audited by the General Accounting Office, the GAO. It is the only department that has not been audited for fiscal year 1998. The Federal Department of Education is responsible for distributing $120 billion a year in education spending. Unfortunately, it does not know where all that money is going. It is unacceptable that the Department of Education cannot account for how billions of dollars intended for institutes are being spent. Yet, rather than looking at these issues, the Department has claimed that, as a result of a less than 1 percent reduction in their budget, they will have to cut funding for education programs because they say there is no waste in their agency. I am convinced that we can find savings and solutions in the Department of Education and make sure that taxpayer dollars are used as they were intended, to help kids learn, not on bureaucratic mix-up or faulty computer systems. But until the Department of Education is willing to work to find out how they spend all our money, we cannot be sure how much waste is occurring or how much we can more effectively spend taxpayer dollars. How does anyone explain how a Federal department is unauditable? The only worst case I have ever heard about than this one is in 1995, 1996 the IRS could not account for about $4 billion. They just could not account for it.”