Judd Gregg: “I don't want to prolong this ad nauseam because it is sort of an internal debate. I know the Senator from New Mexico has…”

“I don't want to prolong this ad nauseam because it is sort of an internal debate. I know the Senator from New Mexico has an amendment he wants to offer. I will make a couple of points in response to the Senator from Nevada, who always eloquently presents the minority's position. The fact is, all the amendments he talked about in the area of education are amendments which we are perfectly willing to get into. We got into them in committee, and we are happy to get into them on the floor. I suspect they would have no problem being found as relevant-- school construction, afterschool programs, safe schools. In fact, we have done a great deal in the area of all of these accounts. On the Safe Schools Program, afterschool programs, we have increased funding dramatically in both those proposals. We have brought forward an ESEA bill in a creative and imaginative way. I think it is being held because there are amendments people want to put on it which they know will cause it to not go any further than this body because the bill has so many imaginative and creative ideas in it which the Federal bureaucracy and the educational bureaucracy do not like because they return power to the States, power to parents, power to children, power to principals.”