Asa Hutchinson: “The five amendments that have been proposed add billions and billions of dollars in costs when the first obligation, the…”

“The five amendments that have been proposed add billions and billions of dollars in costs when the first obligation, the commitment the Senator speaks of, has already been made to the educators in IDEA, in providing the full funding for special education across this country. Reclaiming my time, to vote for this cloture is to vote to cut educational bureaucracy. In Arizona, 165 employees--nearly half of the whole workforce of their Department of Education-- oversee only Federal programs accounting for only 6 percent of the funding. I say that is where we can take a step in the right direction in the passage of this bill. We should not be funding new programs. This amendment that Senator Kennedy refers to is a $12.635 billion amendment. That is the kind of amendment that will destroy the possibility of passing this bill into law and ensuring better education for our children. We don't need new spending programs until we have made the commitment that we made to the Nation's Governors in providing a full 40 percent of funding for special education. If there is a complaint from local schools, it is not that we are not starting enough new programs, it is that we are not funding the programs that we already mandated to them. I look forward to debating the amendment for 100,000 new teachers-- $12 billion. Let me just refer to my home State of Arkansas where, between 1955 and 1997, class size dropped from 27.4 students per classroom to 17 students per classroom.”