In my role, I receive a lot of press releases. And many come from Washington, D.C., in the form of comments from our representatives and senators on legislation/news of the day and other worldly developments.

The obligatory "congratulations on killing Osama bin Laden but the terrorist threat is not over" doesn’t generate a great deal of personal interest. But one I received yesterday from Rep. Todd Rokita (R-5th District) about his role on the House Committee on Education and the Workforce was noteworthy — primarily because of the multitude of federal dollars being wasted.

As the congressman said:

Today the House Committee on Education and the Workforce marked up H.R. 1891, the Setting New Priorities in Education Spending Act, legislation to eliminate 40 ineffective or duplicative programs from the Department of Education. 
 
“The fact that 40 of the 80 authorized programs under the Elementary and Secondary Education law are ineffective or duplicative is evidence that there are hundreds of billions of dollars worth of programs across the federal government that need to justify their continuation or be eliminated,” Rokita said. 
 
Despite the federal takeover of education and the tripling of funding since 1964, academic performance has remained stagnant, graduation rates have not improved, and American students lag far behind students of other nations in math and science.  For decades, Washington’s involvement has done nothing to improve education, but has contributed to our fiscal crisis.  
 
“Given the grave fiscal crisis our country faces, it is time we looked long and hard at the effectiveness of government programs across the board, including in education.  Identifying and eliminating wasteful and duplicative programs is a positive first step on a long road to reducing the out-of-control federal spending that is bankrupting our country,” Rokita said.