Back in 1996, Vice President Gore had a noble idea. It was to wire every American classroom to the World Wide Web. The idea came to fruition when the E-rate program was born. Often called the “Gore tax,” about one-third of the 8% “universal service fee” that's levied on every American long-distance bill has been dedicated to connecting all U.S. schools to the information superhighway.

At a cost of $2.25 billion per year, this program is credited with hooking up more than 90% of the nation's classrooms. Unfortunately, a recently uncovered trail of waste, fraud, and abuse demonstrates that some of the country's biggest technology companies are taking the federal government for a very expensive ride.

As with so many other new federal programs that begin with good intentions, the E-rate program's lack of oversight and poor program guidelines turned it into easy prey for those looking to gorge like a pack of pigs at the federal trough. Internal and external audits of the program have found substantial problems with more than a third of the beneficiaries' management of program funds. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has recently reported 42 criminal investigations in connection with the E-rate program.

An investigation in Puerto Rico uncovered millions of dollars of top-of-the-line tech gear languishing in a warehouse several years after it was purchased. The school district has spent more than $100 million in an effort to connect all public schools on the island to the Internet, but succeeded in hooking up only 9 of their 1,500 schools.

The Atlanta Public School system built a $73 million technology infrastructure that offers “gigabit ethernet” speed and would make many Fortune 500 companies salivate. An Atlanta Journal Constitution investigation discovered invoices for equipment that was not needed, or in some cases never delivered. Atlanta Public Schools are now trying to get E-rate to cover the $14 million annual cost of running their network.

In New York City, an Internet service provider persuaded poor schools to buy unnecessarily expensive equipment and asked them to prepare fake invoices. Schools in Virginia used E-rate money to buy pagers and cell phones.

Once the El Paso school district formed a strategic alliance with I.B.M., they received $62 million from E-rate to set up a fiber-optic network with videoconferencing, and state-of-the-art hardware. Because El Paso's technology staff couldn't handle the coming white elephant, I.B.M. helped them build a $27 million maintenance support center. Unfortunately, when El Paso was denied the $46 million it would take to fund the next budget year, I.B.M. packed up their maintenance center and left town.

The E-rate program is a prime example of what happens when the federal government hands out “free money.” Federal programs that don't require recipients to share a significant percentage of the costs, have limited guidelines on how the money can be spent, and perform little oversight, are almost guaranteed to be taken advantage of. In light of the recent exposure of E-rate's waste, fraud and abuse, Congress is now pressing for more oversight of the program.

Everyone agrees that public schools should have the benefit of access to the information superhighway. However, to nip this waste problem in the bud, Congress should suspend E-rate program until the FCC can guarantee competitive bidding, annual audits and tougher penalties for abuse. The FCC also should create a uniform standard for bringing every school district online instead of leaving thousands of individual school systems prey to the pigs who want to gorge themselves on the federal taxpayers' dime.