James M. Jeffords: “first, briefly, I remind those who don't remember that my decision to change parties came about on the basis of…”

“first, briefly, I remind those who don't remember that my decision to change parties came about on the basis of education and education funding, not what we have been discussing recently. At that time, the budget had left the Senate with $500 million to be made available for education--maybe $450 million. But when it came back out of conference it was zero, absolutely zero. It was at that point, in order to impress upon this Nation the importance of education and to show my disagreement with my friends on the other side of the aisle, I decided I would change over such that the Democrats would have control of the budget process and that we would not suffer the horrendous cuts which were proposed in education. I would say right now we are still on that issue. The most critical problem we have in this Nation right now is education. I will discuss that now and try to put some light on the difficulties we are having. Usually in times of war the question of national priorities is summed up with a simple phrase: Guns or butter. But today, I fear that the choices aren't that simple. Perhaps it is time that we retool that phrase and ask ourselves, will it be guns or butter, tax breaks or textbooks?”