Marathon Pundit: Issa's oversight committee to look at GAO report on career colleges

Friday, December 24, 2010

Issa's oversight committee to look at GAO report on career colleges

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA)

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) will be a busy man when the 112th Congress is sworn in--he's the incoming Oversight and Government Reform Committee chairman. His first target? The thuggish GAO report on career colleges I've been covering for the past month.

From Big Government:

A bipartisan group of six Congressional lawmakers asked Wednesday the Government Accountability Office to reexamine its report on the for-profit education industry. The agency sent undercover applicants to some of these schools. The undercover investigators claim to have been misled on costs, job placement and future earnings.

In a letter to GAO comptroller Gene Dodaro, California Rep. Darrell Issa lectured the congressional watchdog on its charge to provide objective, factual and nonideological reports. In this instance, the incoming chairman of the House oversight committee said, "GAO has not met its own high standards."

After releasing in August a sensational report on the alleged abuses within the career college community, GAO acknowledged earlier this month it had heavily revised portions of its findings, changing wrongfully attributed comments and lessening its charges of deception.

Issa wants to know if the GAO has investigated the failings in its initial report and if its office of general counsel had concluded the revised report accurately reflects the analysis contained therein.