Judd Gregg: “This is not an either/or choice. We can vote for the Landrieu-Cochran amendment, and we can vote for this because…”

“This is not an either/or choice. We can vote for the Landrieu-Cochran amendment, and we can vote for this because essentially what this amendment does is take the construction money and move it into the title I targeted formula. What the Landrieu amendment does is restructure the new money for title I and reallocate some of it to the targeted formula, some of it to the equity formula. As a practical matter, the two are not exclusive. You can support both. If you are interested in getting more money into the title I accounts and especially more money into the accounts that benefit low-income kids under the targeted formula, then you should definitely vote for this amendment which takes the money from the school construction accounts. Just to cite a couple examples: California, under present law, gets $1.15 billion; under this proposal, they would get $1.5 billion. So they pick up about $430 million out of this account which would be going into the targeted formula. Florida gets $400 million. Under this proposal, they get $558 million. That is $158 million going to the targeted formula.”