James M. Jeffords: “with great reluctance I rise in opposition to the amendment. I do so only because, with the necessities of education, we…”

“with great reluctance I rise in opposition to the amendment. I do so only because, with the necessities of education, we have to establish certain priorities. There is no question but that rebuilding the infrastructure is an important priority. But there are others that at this particular time I think have to take priority. I do appreciate, for instance, in the city of Washington this body, Congress, has a certain obligation to restore the schools. That is about $2 billion that we are going to have to find a way to fund in order to bring this city back to where it ought to be. On the other hand, there is somewhere around $120 billion in infrastructure repairs necessary in this country. How we get that I do not know. I do know that $5 billion would start it, but there are other priorities--and I will tick off a number of those priorities--for which we could use these resources better. First of all, as the body probably knows, I voted in favor of expanding the amount of money that will be available by supporting the Hatch-Kennedy bill. If that money were available, it might tend to change my position. But when I look out there right now, our most immediate needs are trying to get the educational system in order to provide the kind of skilled labor we need in this Nation. That means we have to change the K through 12 programs by professional development in order to give us the math standards we need in order to provide the skilled labor force.”