“Billions of education dollars that could be headed to our nation’s classrooms to buy books and computers to help our children learn are being wasted in Washington, D.C.,” Jones said.  “The Department of Education has mismanaged and lost billions of taxpayer dollars that our local schools could desperately use.  It is time that the Department of Education is held accountable for how it spends our education money.”

 H.R. 4079 would require the General Accounting Office (GAO) to conduct and complete a comprehensive audit of selected accounts at the Department of Education that are determined to be susceptible to waste, fraud, and abuse. The GAO would report its results to Congress within six months of the bill’s passage. 

In recent months, the Department of Education was found to have sent duplicate checks to contractors and grantees totaling nearly $175 million.  While officials have reported that almost all of the money has been recovered, the Department of Education cannot account for how it spent nearly $32 billion in taxpayer funds and billions more in student loans. In addition, the Jacob Javits Scholarship program incorrectly notified some scholarship runners-up that they had qualified for scholarship awards.  This mistake could cost the Department millions of dollars.

Audit reports in Fiscal Years 1998 and 1999 concluded that the Department of Education’s books were in such disarray they could not be audited.  The Department does not expect to pass audits for at least two more years.

 H.R. 4079 passed the House by a vote of 380 – 19.  The legislation has been forwarded to the Senate for its consideration.