[Congressional Record Volume 163, Number 108 (Friday, June 23, 2017)]
[House]
[Pages H5127-H5131]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                        WASTE, FRAUD, AND ABUSE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Dunn). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of January 3, 2017, the gentleman from Oklahoma (Mr. Russell) is 
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
  Mr. RUSSELL. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Wisconsin 
(Mr. Gallagher).


                     Career and Technical Education

  Mr. GALLAGHER. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in strong support of the 
Strengthening Career and Technical Education for the 21st Century Act.
  Not only is this bill critical to giving American workers the skills 
they need to lead in an increasingly competitive world, but also to 
making sure that our

[[Page H5128]]

career and technical education is in stride with the major advancements 
that have been made over the last decade.
  As I travel across northeast Wisconsin, businessowners routinely tell 
me they are hiring, but can't find workers with the knowledge and 
skills necessary to do the jobs they are hiring for.
  Passage of this bill helps close the skills gap and boost economic 
growth by equipping students with the skills they need to fill the in-
demand and high-skilled jobs in our local economies.
  Schools in Wisconsin's Eighth District are prepared to lead the way 
when it comes to closing our country's growing skills gap, and it is 
time that we give them the tools that they desperately need to do 
exactly that.
  I am proud to cosponsor this important piece of bipartisan 
legislation. I urge my colleagues to join me in support of this bill.
  Mr. RUSSELL. Mr. Speaker, Solomon, who was often noted as the wisest 
man in the world, said: ``A soft answer turns away wrath, but grievous 
words stir up anger.''
  If you were to ask the average American citizen would they like their 
elected officials to come to Washington and to work together, they 
would all say: Of course. They should. That is what we elect them for.
  Yet, often in our history, we see emotions override the mouth and we 
raise our voices, distrust builds, isolation results, we don't get to 
know each other, we don't get to work with one another. As we isolate, 
then a distrust builds, and with distrust, then we don't want to hear 
what either side has to say. Ultimately, when we can no longer exchange 
ideas with a deliberateness, then we fall short.
  Solomon also said in Ecclesiastes: ``Two are better than one, for 
they have a good reward for their labor, for if the one fall, the other 
will lift up,'' and ``A three-fold cord is not quickly broken.''
  As we look at our mottoes and our institutions, we have a phrase: 
``Out of many, one.''
  That phrase is not: Out of one idea, let's create many.
  It is just the opposite.
  One thing that I learned in my time as a soldier in negotiating and 
dealing with people groups that literally could not agree, to the point 
that they were shelling and killing each other and each other's women 
and children in their villages as they burned, that even in situations 
like that, they could find some overlapping circles and some common 
ground in between.
  The events of the past week are a reminder not just to Members of 
Congress, who oftentimes we do know each other, we do work with one 
another, we do serve on committees with one another. We take great 
pride in developing those relationships despite our differences, but we 
have an obligation, because, as a constitutional representative 
republic, we are a reflection of the people that send us here.
  It is important that the lawmakers that the American people send to 
Washington to do that work be those that are willing to accommodate, 
that are willing to assimilate the things that we agree on, because if 
we can't accommodate and we can't assimilate--as I have viewed in war-
torn battlefields in several different places through a career as an 
infantry soldier, if you can no longer accommodate or be willing to 
assimilate certain agreed ideas, then you are left with the third 
choice, which is elimination.
  The United States has never had that as its pretext. We got close 
once in a period from about 1820 to 1860. We have faced tough times 
before and come together. I would hope, Mr. Speaker, that not just our 
body, as we take and deem these responsibilities with a lot of 
conviction, but that the American people would take their 
responsibility to be mindful of the words of Solomon: ``A soft answer 
turns away wrath, but grievous words stir up anger.''
  Our country is bigger than any of us. When we leave it, God willing, 
it will continue on. And the words that are said in this Chamber, 
although recorded, few read. As time passes and as we govern our lives 
and go about our business, we have to remember the very principles that 
brought us together as a nation and that I nearly gave my life for in 
defense.
  So my hope is, as we move in the coming days and weeks, that we will 
work on the things where the circles overlap and we will not negotiate 
the nonnegotiables. If we just focus on those things, we will have more 
than enough work to do to actually get stuff done.

                              {time}  1130

  As a message to the American people: accommodate, listen, dialogue, 
be kind, and be patient. I have seen the worst thing that human beings 
can do to one another in my lifetime. I have watched friends die on a 
battlefield. I have had to take human life. I have seen horrible and 
horrific things that no human being should ever do. But we are not in 
that place. We live in freedom. We live in great enjoyment of 
prosperity where our ideas, our work--the sweat of our brow--can go, 
and we can put it to good use with great liberty. We have to tone it 
down.
  We have to be willing to put others before ourselves and to listen. I 
pledge to do that as a Member, one of 435 here. I hope the American 
people will pledge to be as committed to the United States as we all 
must be if we are to secure the future for our children and 
grandchildren.
  One of the things that we often all agree on is efficiency in 
government--to turn the tone and the topic of the conversation a little 
bit in a different direction. Efficiency in government--nothing makes 
us more sad and disappointed than to see hard-earned tax dollars wasted 
by inefficiency.
  In my home State of Oklahoma, for every million dollars the 
government wastes, we have to have 96 Oklahomans work all year long to 
pay all of their taxes so that we can waste it. I have often 
highlighted these wasteful measures in a series called ``Waste Watch.'' 
We just released ``Waste Watch'' number 7 where we, sadly, highlight 
over $50 billion worth of waste in just one item and a total of $70 
billion worth of waste on a single topic. That is something that we all 
care about and that we all want to pay with our taxes. That is 
education.
  For years, Americans have been paying more and getting less from our 
educational system. Over the past decade, national high school student 
proficiency test scores in math have consistently met the minimum or 
were below. Reading scores for high school students, over the past 20 
years, have been consistently substandard with a continued downward 
trend.
  As test scores remain low, available funding for education is often 
wasted. The solution is not simply to spend more on education without 
correcting the habits where the waste can occur. We need to spend our 
dollars wisely by eliminating educational waste, as well as many other 
forms of waste in government, and push those dollars where they 
actually count--to our teachers and to our classrooms.
  Additionally, we have to change the perception that more money spent 
always equals a better outcome. If that were the case, we would be the 
most efficient government on the planet.
  It is my hope to create motivation to protect taxpayers and assist in 
educating America's children with the resources available. It is not 
enough to point out the problems. That is easy. Anyone can be a cynic 
and a critic. But we must work together to fix them so that we can make 
our Nation stronger. Education is vital to our children and to our 
future.
  What are some of these things that we are talking about? Well, how 
about this one: researchers at the esteemed Harvard University spent $3 
million to study if people were able to smell an unpleasant odor in 
their urine after eating asparagus, also known as asparagus pee, 
according to the research. The research was funded through a research 
grant from the National Institutes of Health with your tax dollars.
  The NIH uses Federal tax dollars to fund its research and received 
$30 billion in 2016. The NIH's mission statement is ``to enhance 
health, extend healthy lives, and reduce the burdens of illness and 
disability.''
  We would all agree with that. It is good to try to fix problems with 
disease, fight the common cold, cure cancer, and cure Alzheimer's, all 
of those things.
  However, the NIH has conducted lifesaving research in the past and 
has been given broad authority in deciding

[[Page H5129]]

how to spend that $30 billion, and now we see waste.
  The NIH funds research grants to universities, and much of the NIH's 
funding is well justified and leads to lifesaving research. Funding a 
study that doesn't even explore the possible health benefits of eating 
asparagus but only if there is an odor after eating it does not fit 
into any mission of the NIH. It is akin to the taxpayers' money being 
flushed down the toilet.
  This particular study was the result of a grant provided by the NIH 
to Harvard's T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Its purpose was to 
discover whether people could smell an asparagus effect. The 
researchers at Harvard received more than $3 million in 2016, to survey 
6,909 people of European-American descent to find if these people's 
urine smelled funny after eating asparagus, and the results were 
published in the British Medical Journal.
  The results concluded that a ``large proportion of individuals of 
European-American descent cannot smell'' any effect. Sixty percent of 
the people surveyed, 58 percent of men and 62 percent of women, stated 
that they could not smell any urinary metabolites produced after 
asparagus consumption. However, Angus Chen, a reporter for the National 
Public Radio, stated in his report on this study that 4,161 people 
``were confused by the question.'' Do you think? We didn't need to 
waste $3 million or have 260 Oklahomans work all year long to see if 
there was some effect in this madness.
  Mr. Speaker, do you want to waste $2 billion? Then give it to the 
Veterans Administration. In 2008, Congress passed the post-9/11 GI Bill 
updating the GI Bill from 1944, creating new benefits for 
servicemembers like myself, such as lengthening the expiration date 
following separation from the Armed Forces or retirement and offering 
living expenses as well as tuition. Another change made the benefits 
paid directly to the school of choice for the veteran--and here is 
where it began to go awry.
  Initially, benefits from the GI Bill were paid directly to the 
servicemember for them to decide how and where to invest in their own 
education. This makes sense. They were responsible enough to defend our 
Republic; they can probably handle the funds--as they had for decades 
before. This change now comes with a litany of problems.

  An audit conducted from 2013 to 2014, by the Office of Inspector 
General, for the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs found that a 13 
percent error rate in payments by the Veterans Benefits Administration 
to the schools of choice for servicemembers had occurred.
  To conduct this audit, the OIG looked into 650 payments for 225 
students to 50 schools. They found $128,000 in improper payments; and 
eight students who withdrew from their classes still received $2,400 in 
stipends, and this money was never recovered for the taxpayer. 
Extrapolating these numbers to the full class of students, the Office 
of Inspector General estimated that, over 5 years, the Veterans 
Benefits Administration would process about $205 million in improper 
payments--and you see it continue to go on and waste $2.2 billion.
  We can do better. We must do better. We must do better by our 
veterans. We must do better so that we do not allow people's insatiable 
appetite for nonexistent government funds to continue to be consumed. 
We are a nation that is $20 trillion in debt.
  How many of you, if you came and I asked you: Hey, could I have $100?
  And you said: sure.
  And I said: okay, but great, it is going to cost you $105 because I 
am going to charge you $5 to take your hundred.
  Wouldn't that be pretty much absurd and in your face? Yet that is 
exactly what we do with a very popular program called the Pell Grant 
Program. The Pell grant was created in the 1970s and has since become 
the basic mechanism for the Federal Government to assist lower income 
families with higher education costs. The legislation mandates that 
students receiving the funds must be admitted and enrolled in an 
institution of higher learning. Fine.
  While the Pell grant provides great opportunity for students who 
might not otherwise be able to attend college--something that we all 
think is good--the waste comes from a stipulation within the law that 
requires the Federal Government to pay a fee to give away their money. 
The $5 payment goes directly to participating schools and is intended 
to help offset the cost of the Pell grant. So we let institutions of 
higher learning charge a fee to accept your money, the taxpayers.
  While it is true that there are administrative costs involved with 
servicing Pell grants, schools should accept these costs as a part of 
doing business as they would if no Pell grant were provided and it was 
just your hard-earned money. If you were supporting one of your 
children in college, those fees would be incorporated within that same 
$1,000.
  For the 2015 and 2016 year, the maximum Pell grant available to an 
undergraduate student was roughly $5,775. Based on the latest reports 
from the U.S. Department of Education for the same year or the year 
prior, the Nation's taxpayers provided $30 billion to 8 million 
students. The average Pell grant received by students was roughly 
$3,800. That all sounds good. While $5 does not seem significant, when 
you put that $5 towards 8 million students, you can see where the 
problem is.
  It is an unnecessary and arbitrary fee that should be disallowed, and 
we need to restore it so that colleges and institutions do not scoop 
something off of the top. But people say: well, we have our 
administrative costs. We have overhead. We have our infrastructure. We 
have all of these things that we have to do.
  Yes, and that is why we have allowed, for decades, the tax-exempt 
endowments so that as the endowments accrue wealth and they grow, they 
use those resources to sustain the infrastructure on the university.
  We are $20 trillion in debt. It would be great if we could not pay 
our bills to go to our next-door neighbor and say: Hey, I am a little 
short on my electric bill, can you help me?
  Or: I need help on my house payment this month. Let me just get it 
from you.
  Our neighbors would not take kindly to that. Yet we are allowing 
these institutions that have the endowed wealth and that have all of 
the ability to do the infrastructure. Yet what happens? They continue 
to waste money with administrative fees that only have increased by 300 
percent since 1976.
  Here is another one for you: How many of you would donate to a 
charity that had a 52 percent administrative overhead? No takers? I 
didn't think so. Yet that is exactly what you do when you have the 
National Science Foundation put forth research grants that were 
designed to help people in their health and fighting disease and many 
other things. The average fee that universities and institutions charge 
back to the Federal Government for these research grants is 52 percent. 
That borders on the immoral.
  A practice in higher education grant making that is not widely known 
or understood by the American public is this practice of charging 
indirect cost as a part of a grant. So, for example, $1 million that is 
coming to a university for research--we are all excited about that, it 
helps our communities--did you know that that university, in turn, will 
scoop, on average, 52 percent off of the top?
  The typical grant has direct costs, and we all understand that. As 
they put forth their budget, they will list it with such things as 
researchers' salaries--fine--travel associated with research--
understood. But beyond that, universities are able to claim, under our 
insane laws, that additional funds in the form of indirect costs are 
needed for infrastructure of the institution, and it is our 
responsibility, as taxpayers, to support that. Never mind that tax-free 
endowments were designed specifically for that purpose and already 
exist that they could use. But they never touch that wealth. They never 
touch that accrued wealth. They never touch that accrued interest.
  The Office of Management and Budget defines indirect costs as 
expenses an organization incurs indirectly--and they get to define what 
that is. What does it translate to? Well, rather than pick on Harvard, 
let's pick on the Big 12, a region I come from. We will start with the 
University of Oklahoma.

                              {time}  1145

  Charging the government for indirect costs is expensive and, 
unfortunately, a

[[Page H5130]]

common practice among institutions of higher learning.
  Here are the indirect costs for the schools in the Big 12. I am sure 
they are not the only ones. This is a nationwide epidemic, to the tune 
of $55 billion. That is billion with a B. Even in Washington, D.C., 
that is real money.
  The University of Oklahoma adds a 55 percent surcharge to its 
research on campus; Oklahoma State University adds 45 percent, and a 54 
percent surcharge for instruction grant projects.
  The University of Texas, 56 percent. We have a winner.
  Texas Tech, 49 percent; Texas Christian, 54 percent; Baylor, 38 
percent. They are a little more economical, but it is still nearly 40 
percent of waste.
  The University of Kansas charges a surcharge of 51.5 percent; Kansas 
State, 52 percent; West Virginia, 50 percent; Iowa State, 52 percent, 
meeting the median average.
  Higher education officials rarely talk about it. When confronted with 
it, they will, with straight faces and degrees of education, argue that 
this waste is absolutely essential for them to continue.
  A recent George Washington University student newspaper article 
revealed a higher education official's thoughts about indirect costs 
when he overtly referred to them as--you have got it--subsidies. He let 
it slip. Maybe Freudian, we don't know.
  The George Washington Hatchet quoted Leo Chalupa, vice president for 
research, that ``research is bringing in money to the university.''
  You think? It is $55 billion worth.
  However, Chalupa is not just referring to the direct dollars used to 
conduct research. We would all agree with needed research, but what we 
don't agree with is this indirect--more than half--plundering of what 
the dollars were designed and intended to do.
  Let's switch to something that we should do to try to incentivize 
people to improve their educational experience. Sound confusing? It 
is--to the tune of $7 billion was wasted.
  Few Americans will argue that the Nation's schools do not need 
improvement. We would all say that they do. When one looks at test 
scores or compares American outcomes with other nations, it is easy to 
see that many of our K-12 schools are languishing.
  One recent report evaluated testing outcomes against other 
industrialized nations, and America's students finished 17th out of 
34--not something to be proud of. This led President Obama to direct 
more money at the issue, like so many previous Presidents before him, 
rather than looking at the underlying systemic concerns.
  It is not the amount of money; it is the habit that is being created. 
While increasing funding can be a component of a solution, it is often 
not the most vital of the components. Without proper policy driving the 
expenditures, the money spent can become one more example of how 
inefficient Federal intervention in anything can be.
  President Obama's Department of Education directed $7 billion to a 
program known as the School Improvement Grants program, to which the 
Department of Energy named the 21st Century Community Learning Centers. 
The funds were directed to States with instructions that the funds 
should be directed to the poorest performing schools.
  It sounds agreeable.
  The measures used to identify the underperforming schools were 
graduation rates and readiness scores in reading and mathematics. Then-
Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said, in 2009: ``We could really 
move the needle, lift the bottom, and change the lives of tens of 
millions of underserved children''--something that all of us would 
agree on.
  The School Improvement Grant program built on the race to the top 
efforts undertaken during the Bush administration, and the Obama 
administration efforts doubled the funds for the program.
  The Department of Education described the purpose of the 21st Century 
Community Learning Centers in the following way: ``This program 
supports the creation of community learning centers that provide 
academic enrichment opportunities during non-school hours for children, 
particularly students who attend high-poverty and low-performing 
schools.''
  Again, all of these sound laudable. However, according to a report 
released by the Department of Energy just a few days before the end of 
President Obama's administration, test scores, graduation rates, and 
college enrollment were no different in schools that had received these 
funds from School Improvement Grants as those that did not--$7 billion 
gone.
  A Washington Post article detailing the report quoted Andy Smarick, a 
fellow at the American Enterprise Institute: ``Think of what all that 
money could have been spent on instead.'' Mr. Smarick is correct: $7 
billion in taxpayer funds were spent without any oversight or careful 
oversight whatsoever.
  Congress must reexamine the role of the Federal Government in 
education because what is being done now does not work--billions upon 
billions of dollars.
  How about if we can't solve it through $7 billion wasted in trying to 
make people feel good about education and then that will improve their 
schools, how about we get them moving so we can fight obesity and cut 
down on diabetes, disease, and other things. That sounds good. Let's 
talk about that.
  In 2010, with the assistance of First Lady Michelle Obama, the Let's 
Move! project began, with the hope of reducing childhood obesity in 
America. This is a real problem in Oklahoma. We have one of the largest 
obesity rates of all the States.
  The program, costing as much as $1 billion per year, focused heavily 
on impressing upon children the need for proper exercise as well as 
bringing healthier food options into schools.
  At first glance, it appears that the Let's Move! program produced 
results. In 2008, U.S. childhood obesity rates nationally were around 
16.2 percent. During the next 3 years, 18 States saw those rates begin 
a modest decline, falling in some States by 5 percent.

  This reduction could be attributed to the effectiveness of the 
program or a cultural change in how people view health choices and how 
they view their eating habits. But it should be noted, regardless, that 
this decline was already begun by the time the Let's Move! program was 
even enacted. Overall, and sadly, in the latest statistics, U.S. 
childhood obesity rates did not decline and, in fact, have risen to 
17.2 percent in the last statistical year.
  There are many, many things that we can continue to go on and talk 
about in waste. Let's end with this one.
  Want people to eat healthy, something that sounds good? How many of 
you would be influenced by people dressing up like Fruit of the Loom, 
in outfits like green beans, grapes, tomatoes, and going to college 
campuses and then just seeing the sight of these people wearing these 
costumes say: You know, I think I need to eat some grapes or 
vegetables?
  That is what this program did. It wasted $14.7 million of your money. 
It is called the Get Fruved project.
  I am not making it up.
  Not only did this program waste $14.7 million; it is still being 
funded by your tax dollars. The U.S. Department of Agriculture awarded 
$4.9 million a year for this initiative, led by students and 
researchers at four American universities, which are the University of 
Tennessee, South Dakota, West Virginia, and the University of Florida.
  The Fruved website reports that its goal is:

       Our students are the best teachers. This is why Fruved has 
     sophomores and juniors at each school peer-monitoring first-
     year students, helping them live a healthier life during 
     their first year of college.

  That includes dressing up in these outfits. That is $14.7 million.
  There are things that the Federal Government has a responsibility for 
and there are things that it does not. Abraham Lincoln said it best in 
a paraphrase where he said: The things that we can do ourselves, the 
government ought not to interfere. The things that we cannot do 
collectively, the government might have a role.
  We know the government may have a role in education, certainly, with 
education funding and helping our facilities and our institutions. 
However, we do not need to waste $70 billion. Imagine what that could 
do.
  We will never change this idea if the American people do not demand 
of us to stop such madness and waste. When people come with straight 
faces and Ph.D.s and argue for dressing up in outfits, we have to push 
back on that and

[[Page H5131]]

say: $20 trillion in debt, a weakened military, roads and bridges that 
are falling down and an infrastructure that needs improvement, 
modernization in our skies for the Federal Aviation Administration.
  There are so many areas that the government truly does have a 
function and role. We will never get to it with asparagus urine studies 
and dressing up as fruits and vegetables.
  Mr. Speaker, my hope is that all of us as Americans can find those 
overlapping circles and fight this absolute absurdity of waste in 
government, be responsible with American tax dollars, and sustain our 
great Republic for the future of our children.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

                          ____________________