Asa Hutchinson: “President Clinton in his recent State of the Union Address proposed one more Federal education program, this one to…”

“President Clinton in his recent State of the Union Address proposed one more Federal education program, this one to provide merit-based scholarships to the top 5 percent of high school graduates, but the fact is there are already 47 scholarship and fellowship programs operated by the Federal Government, and this highlights a point made by the gentleman from Pennsylvania at a press conference last week. He pointed out that our committee has discovered over 760 Federal education programs spanning 39 different agencies and departments. Many of these programs were designed to meet exactly the same goals, they overlap, they duplicate, and each has its own application process and its own set of regulations. So why does President Clinton propose one more education program, program 761? Is it to improve the education of our children or merely to make us feel like we are educating our children by spending more money on more programs? What we must do is shift education decisions from Washington bureaucrats to parents and local school boards. We can and we must do better.”