Heidi Alexander: “There are a couple of differences. Under the Parliamentarian's ruling, this amendment is not under the block grant bill.…”

“There are a couple of differences. Under the Parliamentarian's ruling, this amendment is not under the block grant bill. No. 2, all the funding for the vouchers that go to mothers who may use the block grants for daycare while they go to work, which is what our bill is about, all comes from the Federal Government. The whole principle of that bill--it is a pretty good Republican bill, in my view--is that there is a lot of flexibility. In fact, we had a pretty good debate about the criminal background checks in our bill. I would have preferred to have given the States more flexibility for the reasons I have stated, but I agreed to what was done. It has 100 percent Federal funding, whereas the Federal Government only funds 10 percent of our schools. The penalties for not taking the Federal orders for what your personnel practices ought to be are much more severe in the bill from the Senator from Pennsylvania. He would cause you to lose 10 percent of your school funding. Under the childcare block grant, you would lose 5 percent of the Federal funding. But the issue remains the same, and it is a good issue. I hear it on our committee. The Senator from Rhode Island is on that committee. He has heard Senator Harkin and me argue about this. You can make a very good argument to say that we provide some money, therefore we ought to write some rules.…”