Larry Combest: “Part of that is in the continuing carryforward account. What we required last year in the authorization was that they…”

“Part of that is in the continuing carryforward account. What we required last year in the authorization was that they lower their carryforward account to no more than 1 month. They could not run programs in a carryforward account, they could not keep those moneys for more than 1 month. But they have to manage that, Mrs. Schroeder. They have to move that. They cannot take that amount of money and all of a sudden just throw it away. We do not want them to do that, and they are managing that now. So what we are requiring that they do is to take that money that was originally authorized and appropriated for certain programs and expend it on those programs and work that carryforward account down. They are in that process now to where they have no more than 1 month's carryforward at any time. We have only become aware, as the gentlewoman mentioned, of the amount of the money just in the past week to 10 days, because they have continually, over this period of time, tried to do a very accurate accounting in which they were going to tell us how much that was there for. And it was not wasted or thrown away or squandered. It is not being spent on programs that are not authorized. It is that they were trying to work that out. But last year, recognizing even at the time we were only talking in the neighborhood of a billion to a billion and a half, we agreed that that was not acceptable and that we were going to bring that under scrutiny.”