Judd Gregg: “we are going have a series of speakers. I wish to respond quickly to the point of the Senator from Massachusetts on a…”

“we are going have a series of speakers. I wish to respond quickly to the point of the Senator from Massachusetts on a couple of areas. First, the purpose of the deficit reduction bill is to slow the rate of growth of entitlement programs. It is a net bill. In this bill, there are very major initiatives, especially in the area of education, which are new and fully paid for. There is $40 billion in debt reduction, but the actual reductions in the bill exceed that by a considerable amount. The new programmatic activity which is fully paid for in the student area is $9 billion of additional funds for student activity. The Senator from Massachusetts says we should have the best and the brightest have an opportunity to participate and go to good colleges. We agree with that. In fact, we are doing something about it. We are following the proposals of John Adams, a Massachusetts individual of note who helped our country get started and who considered public education and education generally to be the essence of how the American dream is going to be fulfilled. He was totally committed to a meritocracy. We are essentially saying in this bill, by creating this new program called SMART, if you are a low-income student and you are focusing on math and science, we are going to give you a lot of help. If you can perform well in those two areas, you are going to get an opportunity to really succeed in this country. But we are going to give you the support you need to succeed.…”