Posted on 05/17/2012 8:45:14 PM PDT by Steelfish
Senator Questions $18B For Job Training, As Study Suggest Rampant Waste, Abuse By Doug McKelway May 17, 2012
A study commissioned by Sen. Tom Coburn is casting doubt on whether taxpayers' $18 billion annual investment in federal jobs training programs is paying off.
"The vast majority of money we spend in job training doesn't go to job training, it goes to employ people in those job training federal programs," Coburn told Fox News.
The 2011 Government Accountability Office study he commissioned, which examined programs in fiscal year 2009, found an overlapping and duplicative maze of 47 federal jobs programs run by nine agencies. Some were rife with mismanagement, waste, fraud, abuse and corruption.
The study found: Some job training participants spent their days sitting on a bus. Some were trained for jobs that didn't exist. Others were paid to sit through educational sessions about jobs they already had.
High school students were knowingly exposed to the cancer-causing agent asbestos as part of a job training program. Funds were misspent to pay a contractor for ghost employees and to purchase video games.
Job training administrators spent federal funds on extravagant meals and bonuses for themselves.
In one state, workforce agency employees took more than 100 gambling trips to casinos mostly during work hours.
Coburn’s criticism comes in the heat of a presidential campaign in which President Obama has made funding job training programs a priority. He showcased one program last month at Lorain County Community College in the key swing state of Ohio.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
It goes to pay for the bloated bureaucracy mostly.
Damn, he needed a study to tell him that? The entire system is out of control.
18 billion annual????
Seriously? Geez, where can we make cuts?
This illustrates the magnitude of the problem. 18 billion is literally nothing compared to what the Federal government spends.
You have to cut and cut and cut and cut........ [7000 more cuts] and cut before you you get close to doing what needs to be done.
And there are enough statist republicans in the senate who say ENOUGH after the first cut.
“Some were rife with mismanagement, waste, fraud, abuse and corruption.”
That easily describes 85% of all government in the nation.
You really don’t need a “study” to know that government programs are full of rampant fraud, waste and abuse. That’s written right into the programs.
Absolutely correct. I worked for a state employment agency almost 40 years ago, and even then the Job Corps. programs were a joke. The only jobs they provided were for the people running the program.
You nailed it right there.
Perhaps I did not read the article clearly, but did the Senator say what he was going to do to stop this waste of taxpayer money?
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