Panel orders 'fraud audit' of Education Department

The House Committee on Education and the Workforce approved a bill (H.R. 4079) Thursday ordering the General Accounting Office to complete within six months a careful review of certain Education Department accounts for evidence of fraud.

The bill, which passed by voice vote, specifically calls for "a fraud audit of selected accounts at the Department of Education that the Comptroller General determines to be particularly susceptible to waste, fraud and abuse."

Before the vote, Rep. Pete Hoekstra, R-Mich., said the department had failed its last two audits, for fiscal years 1998 and 1999.

"Real fraud is actually taking place," he said. For example, a contract employee stole $300,000 worth of computer equipment; an employee and a co-worker received $600,000 in falsely claimed overtime pay from the department, "aided and abetted by a full-time department employee who oversaw his work"; and the department "has issued over $100 million in duplicate checks to grantees since October 1999," Hoekstra said.

The committee adopted by voice vote a substitute text offered by Hoekstra, which added the specification that the audit focus on accounts thought to be particularly susceptible to waste, fraud and abuse, rather than auditing all the accounts in the department.