Moving Forward with ESEA Reauthorization and Other Legislative Action Would Address Government Waste, Witness Tells Education Panel
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Consolidating programs through the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act and addressing directly other administrative duplication would save taxpayer dollars, Gene Dodaro, the Comptroller General from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) told the Education and the Workforce Committee today.
“This hearing made it very clear that certain legislative action is necessary to make government more efficient but unfortunately, the report did not give enough specific evaluative information or direction into how to get where we need to go. It is clear that more needs to be done, in a smart and strategic way, to protect taxpayers dollars, but this hearing failed to show a pathway forward,” said U.S. Rep. George Miller (D-CA), the senior Democrat on the committee. “What we need to do is move forward with legislative action, like rewriting ESEA and the Workforce Investment Act (WIA) in a bipartisan way, if we are serious about real change for all Americans.”
GAO also testified that OneStop career centers under WIA have been effective. All 3,000 OneStop career centers would eventually be forced to close, however, under the Republican spending bill, H.R. 1, which effectively zeroes out funding for the WIA programs, resulting in a loss of job training opportunities and employment services for Americans.
Below are Miller’s opening remarks, as prepared, from the hearing:
Good morning and welcome Comptroller General Dodaro.
Witnesses from the Government Accountability Office aren’t new to this committee.
GAO has completed some incredible work on behalf of this committee.
Your undercover investigation two years ago showed us how the Bush administration failed to respond to serious allegations of wage theft and child labor law violations.
This investigation resulted in the hiring of 200 new investigators and ordering the retraining of current investigators.
Your work about residential boot camps and abuse of special need children under the guise of discipline garnered national attention and lead to legislation that passed this Committee and the House with bipartisan support.
Today, I am reintroducing that bill in this Congress. In the year since the bill passed this House, hundreds of kids have been abused and we can prevent those abuses by setting minimum safety standards.
Your food safety investigations identified major gaps within USDA that led to administrative changes to protect the food our students eat in school.
In these prior investigations, GAO reports told us a great deal about what the need is on the ground and where the avenues for action might be.
The report before us today is of a different nature.
There is absolutely a need to identify, reduce and eliminate government waste.
It is clear from reading the testimony and related reports that when it comes to the issues within the jurisdiction of this committee, the relevant agencies recognize the need to address many of the issues identified by GAO over the years.
On the education side, the Department of Education has taken proactive action to better align programs and consolidate where possible.
They’ve established working groups across agencies to better collaborate and have proposed to consolidate programming in a number of areas, including consolidating 38 teacher training programs to 11.
With Secretary Duncan at the helm, the Department has identified areas where consolidations make sense both for the taxpayer and for students, teachers and schools.
But as GAO has noted in the past, Congress must take action to address program alignment which I hope we will have a chance to address through the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act this year.
In regards to job training, GAO found that there are 47 programs that spent $18 billion to provide job training services.
I’d like to hear GAOs views on how many individuals received effective job training, how many individuals have been denied services, and what specific savings and program improvements can be achieved by consolidating administrative structures.
While the report before us today has already been the subject of congressional hearings and discussions, I hope today’s hearing could somehow move us forward.
If Congress is to act to address issues of government waste, there is very specific, detailed information that we need to know about the effectiveness of the programs you reviewed.
If, on the other hand, the information we hear today is limited to what has already been reported, then this hearing that the majority has called is, unfortunately, just more government waste.
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