Hose out the ant farm
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE DATED JUNE 16, 2000
THE LIBERTARIAN, By Vin Suprynowicz
Hose out the ant farm
The federal Department of Education, which disposes of a budget of more than $32 billion and manages billions more in student loans, has paid grant winners twice and forgiven loans to fraudulent borrowers, federal officials discovered last month. This year, the agency sent duplicate checks to contractors and grantees totaling about $150 million.
For good measure, the investigators also uncovered a $1 million "employee theft ring" dealing in stolen equipment and falsely reported overtime, The Associated Press reports.
And that probe wasn't even a thorough audit by the General Accounting Office -- a sensible step finally proposed by Rep. Pete Hoekstra, R-Mich., and OK'd by the House Tuesday on a lopsided vote of 383-19.
That new probe is likely to focus on student loans; will examine all transactions instead of a small sample; and will check documents for forgeries, rather than "just accepting documentation at face value," says Gloria Jarmon, who handles education matters for the GAO.
Only Democrats opposed the Hoekstra bill, presumably at the behest of DOE officials who said a special probe is not warranted because its internal auditors have already cooperated with the FBI.
"It is our position that the inspector general, whenever there is any question raised of wrongdoing or fraud, has thoroughly and promptly investigated," said Erica Lepping, spokeswoman for Education Secretary Richard Riley.
This despite the fact that independent auditors hired by the department to review the DOE's Fiscal Year '98 records concluded they "could not offer an opinion on the agency's accounting" -- a polite accountant way of saying the books are such a mess no one can make head nor tail of them.
For once, in this case, the Democrats and their incompetent Education secretary are correct. A GAO audit of the Department of Education is not necessary, and is unlikely to do much good.
Why? Because the very process of an audit assumes there is some correct and constitutional way for the DOE to spend that $32 billion a year, when in fact one may search Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution to the point of exhaustion without finding any delegated power for the federal congress to meddle in the schooling of the nation's youth -- clearly a matter for the states or for the people in their private capacity as parents, under the unambiguous terms of the 10th Amendment.
The republic got along just fine -- in fact, the average high school graduate was far better educated than today's -- for nearly two centuries without any federal "Department of Education." George Washington had none; Abe Lincoln had none; even Lyndon Baines Johnson didn't see a need for one.
Yes, education is important. So is sunlight. Do we therefore need a Federal Department of Sunlight?
The Department of Education, created 25 years ago as a patronage hand-out to the teachers unions by a grateful Jimmy Carter, has never educated a single child. It operates no schools. It has never instituted a single innovation to make local education in America cheaper or more effective.
Quite the opposite, in fact -- it has done little but inundate our local school districts in a blizzard of federal paper, requiring them to enlist massive new cadres of overpriced bureaucrats who never set foot in a classroom, who do nothing but shovel up the federal paperwork and mail it back to Washington, either proving their "compliance," or seeking waivers from mandates of "compliance," or simply enclosing checks to pay our fines for "noncompliance."
Oh, happy days.
Ronald Reagan, who at least talked like a constitutionalist, promised repeatedly to "zero out," to eliminate, to close the DOE. The excuse for the GOP's failure to do so in the '80s was always that a Democratic congress controlled the purse strings.
Then, aiming to capture Congress from the Democrats in 1994, the GOP again promised to shut down the DOE -- and won election on the strength of that promise, as well as a similar promise to roll back federal gun control (score to date on the two promises: zero.)
Well, the GOP controls both houses of Congress now, while the White House is occupied by a disgraced and discredited lying lecher.
When does the Republican Party think there will be a better time to pass legislation ordering the immediate closure of the federal Department of Education, with its current functions to be taken up by no one at all; the sum total of its authorizing legislation to be summarily repealed; its offices to be vacated and offered up for sale or lease to private parties no later than Jan. 20 of the year 2001?
Let them do so now, and if Bill Clinton chooses to veto such eminently sensible and constitutionally required legislation, then let President Bush sign it as his first act in office next year.
Why wait another day?
Vin Suprynowicz is assistant editorial page editor of the Las Vegas Review-Journal. His book, "Send in the Waco Killers: Essays on the Freedom Movement, 1993-1998," is available by dialing 1-800-244-2224; or via web site http://www.thespiritof76.com/wacokillers.html.
Vin Suprynowicz, vin@lvrj.com
"The evils of tyranny are rarely seen but by him who resists it." -- John Hay, 1872
"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed -- and thus clamorous to be led to safety -- by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." -- H.L. Mencken
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