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WASHINGTON, DC -- Conservative media commentator Armstrong Williams will pay a $34,000 settlement with the U.S. Justice Department for failing to produce radio and television advertisements that he had been hired to produce by the U.S. Department of Education, according to news reports.
Rep. George Miller (D-CA) said that while the settlement was a step in the right direction, no Bush administration official has yet been held accountable for the decision to hire Williams and other commentators to routinely promote the federal No Child Left Behind Act on television, radio and in newsprint without revealing to audiences that they were being paid by the government to do so. The settlement disclosed last week was unrelated to the administration’s use of covert propaganda in Williams’ contract, which was first revealed in January 2005.
“The Bush Administration’s use of covert propaganda was alarming to Americans across the country, and rightly so, yet not one administration official has been held accountable for it,” said Miller, who has led the fight against the Bush administration’s use of covert propaganda through Williams and others. “Now Armstrong Williams is going to pay back $34,000 to the government for work he failed to deliver. But who’s going to pay the taxpayers for the rest of the quarter million dollars Williams was paid for his propaganda services to the administration? And who is going to be held accountable for having hired Williams in the first place?”
In September 2005, the U.S. General Accountability Office concluded that the Education Department’s contract with Williams violated laws prohibiting covert propaganda. But the settlement revealed over the weekend dealt only with whether or not Williams fulfilled specific parts of his contract; it was unrelated to the issue of propaganda. Miller said that Williams should be required to return the full $240,000 in taxpayer money that he received under the entire contract.
“The Bush administration broke the law and wasted taxpayers’ money by paying Armstrong Williams for covert propaganda. The Department’s actions were deceptive, corrupt, and anti-democratic, yet no one in the Bush administration has ever been held accountable for them,” said Miller, the senior Democrat on the Education and the Workforce Committee. “The Bush administration likes to talk about the need for accountability in our schools, but it doesn’t seem to think there’s any need for accountability in Washington.
“This settlement is a small step in the right direction, but taxpayers should get all of their $240,000 back,” said Miller. “And the Congress should pass legislation to ensure that these kinds of abuses of the public trust are not repeated. The Republican chairman of the Education committee never held one hearing on this issue, despite my repeated requests to do so. We need a new direction because this Congress has served as a rubber stamp for the administration for far too long, and as a result, these kinds of excesses have gone unchecked. The $34,000 settlement between Williams and the government does not settle the matter between the Bush administration and the American people.
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