Dan Miller: “Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of the Michel substitute. It is a streamlined and fiscally responsible way to address…”

“Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of the Michel substitute. It is a streamlined and fiscally responsible way to address the education needs from the Federal Government level. Mr. Boehner and I have offered 8 amendments so far to add some fiscal sanity to this bill, and all 8 were defeated. It is hard to get fiscal responsibility in education because it sounds like you are arguing against motherhood and apple pie. The root cause of so many problems in our country is education, whether it is the teen pregnancy problem or the crime problem or the welfare problem; education is the root cause of the problem. But elementary and secondary education is the primary responsibility of the family, of the local and of the State governments. The Federal Government only gets 5 percent of the money. My problem with the bill that has been introduced, H.R. 6, is twofold: One is the mandate issue and requirements forced on the schools; but more important is the fiscal sanity and additional spending. As I said before, it started out as $10.5 billion and ended up at $12.4 billion. Where does the money come from? We just do not have the money. If we increase the spending here, we have to cut it somewhere else. Are we going to cut title I, are we going to cut chapter 2, and we will go through the same problem when we get to the crime bill and the health bill? These are all things we need to address.”