John Thune: “Not only is it an embarrassment obviously to the government, I think it ought to be an embarrassment to the taxpayers.…”

“Not only is it an embarrassment obviously to the government, I think it ought to be an embarrassment to the taxpayers. And ultimately that is what we are talking about here, the taxpayers, the people who are paying the bills here. The people who pay the freight in this country are the people who are hurt the most. I come back to the point that in this particular case we are talking about waste, fraud and abuse as it applies to a couple of school districts in my State of South Dakota, but waste, fraud and abuse means real pain to real students. Unless we can refashion and reshape these agencies of government in a way that makes them responsive to the people that they are there to serve, we will continue, I think, to uncover incidents just like this one. And, again, thankfully, there was a car dealer in Maryland who had the courage to recognize this incident and contact the appropriate authorities. Because, frankly, had it not been for that, who knows. Really, who knows if this ever would have been discovered.”