Joe Cunningham: “I wanted to reiterate what the previous speaker said. I want to point out some areas where there is wasteful government…”

“I wanted to reiterate what the previous speaker said. I want to point out some areas where there is wasteful government and the difference between my colleagues on the other side that believe that government can do things better and on the Republican side and some Democrats feel that the people can do more with their own money. Any time you send dollars to Washington, D.C., about half of it is wasted. In welfare reform, less than 50 cents on the dollar gets back down to welfare. In education, less than 50 cents on the dollar gets down to the classroom because of the bureaucracies. Let me go through to be specific. In the previous Congress, I was chairman of a subcommittee on education, K through 12 education, basically. There was a direct lending program, a government program to where student loans emanated out of the government. The GAO did a study and in their report said that it cost, this was capped at 10 percent, only 10 percent of government loans. It cost a billion dollars annually, billion, not million, to run the program.”