Joe Lieberman: “Mr. President, before I get to laying out the reasons why I am for this measure, I just want to respond to something our…”

“Mr. President, before I get to laying out the reasons why I am for this measure, I just want to respond to something our colleague from California said. The Senator from California kept stressing over and over again this foundation, this nonprofit board that we are setting up to administer these scholarships and talked about the enormous amount of money that it was going to spend--bureaucracy, overhead. In the amendment, which we are putting in to create this program, the noninstructional, the administrative costs are capped to 7.5 percent. It does come to a little bit over a half-million dollars. But take a look at the budget of the District of Columbia Public School System. Noninstructional central administration and overhead, 33 percent. Only two-thirds of the money we give--and we give well over half a billion of public money to the District of Columbia--two-thirds of that gets spent on instruction, one-third on central administration. The amendment Senator Coats and I are putting in caps central administration for this scholarship program at 7.5 percent.”