News from the
Committee on Education and the Workforce
John Boehner, Chairman

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
December 1, 2003

          WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. House Education & the Workforce Committee Chairman John Boehner (R-OH) and Select Education Subcommittee Pete Hoekstra (R-MI) today praised the U.S. Department of Education for receiving its second consecutive clean financial audit – a feat accomplished just three times in the Department’s 23 year history.

          “Secretary Paige deserves great credit for his leadership in putting the Department of Education’s financial house in order,” said Boehner. “For the second year in a row, the Department of Education has demonstrated strong financial management and achieved a clean financial bill of health. This is an important achievement, signaling a strong commitment to the responsible management of taxpayer dollars.”

          “Secretary Paige has taken proper financial management seriously at the Department of Education, and as a result, he has delivered consecutive clean opinions on the department’s financial statements,” Hoekstra said. “The qualified personnel he has brought in and the aggressive internal reforms they have instituted have resulted in consistent, demonstrable success.”

          In the final three years of the previous administration, the Department of Education failed three consecutive financial audits and an estimated $450 million was lost to waste, fraud, and mismanagement. In 2001, led by Chairman Hoekstra, Republicans in Congress held a number of hearings and pushed forward an agenda encouraging stronger accountability and increased financial oversight to weed out mismanagement and waste.

          Upon taking the helm at the Department of Education, Secretary Paige acted quickly and decisively to outline and implement a financial management plan, tighten control of his department’s financial matters, restrict use of government purchase cards and third-party drafts, and address all of the 661 audit recommendations provided to him.

          “The Department of Education was wrought with significant financial mismanagement problems and abuse when Secretary Paige took over two years ago,” Hoekstra said. “Since then, he and his team have brought the department into respectable standing and are beginning to establish a record of good stewardship of taxpayer dollars.”

          “The U.S. Department of Education has made significant progress in improving financial oversight practices, eliminating waste and helping to ensure that federal education funds are appropriately used to provide a high quality education to the nation’s children,” Boehner noted. “Achieving a clean financial audit is a critical step in curbing financial mismanagement and ensuring taxpayer dollars are being appropriately spent to ensure no child in America is left behind.”