Andy Biggs: “Under the Institute of Education Sciences, they will establish two research networks, the pre-kindergarten through grade…”

“Under the Institute of Education Sciences, they will establish two research networks, the pre-kindergarten through grade 12 recovery research network and the community college recovery research network to study pandemic events. It is a grant that pertains to gender-integrated classrooms to see if boys and girls are better equipped to learn together or separately in the classroom. The fiscal year 2019 enacted level was over $615 million, but 2024 is currently set at over $707 million. That is a $90 million increase in just 5 years. This rate of growth is not sustainable. This program is part of what we could safely call the educational- industrial complex. Over the years, our predecessors created a constituency and expanded on it every year by giving more money. They justify it by putting more mandates and doing more studies that don't mean anything. They come back and do it again and again. Thus, we are well over $33 trillion in national debt. Our structural deficit last year was over $2 trillion. Fiscal year 2024 looks like it is going to be about the same, except we are going to be north of $35 trillion, $36 trillion in national debt. That is crushing. Mr. Chair, I take my colleagues back to the New York Fed and its study. Of every dollar of tuition that increased, 60 percent of that, 60 cents of that, goes to the fact that the Federal Government is meddling in postsecondary education. That is what is happening here. That is the educational-industrial complex.…”