Nathan Deal: “First of all I want to join with my colleague from Georgia, Mr. Norwood, in his compliments to the gentleman from…”

“First of all I want to join with my colleague from Georgia, Mr. Norwood, in his compliments to the gentleman from Michigan, Mr. Hoekstra, for holding the hearing in Georgia. We do regret the gentleman was unable to be there with us, but we appreciate his scheduling this Special Order. I want to share with my colleagues some of the comments, as my colleague from Georgia began doing a few minutes ago, as we listen to people at every level of the delivery system in our State. Even though we have a lot of progress to be made in Georgia, there are many things we are indeed proud of. One is we have a HOPE scholarship program. And unlike the fact that the President is borrowing and adopting the name of it for his proposal, the uniqueness of ours is that we have a funding source that is separate and distinct from the taxpayers' normal revenue stream. The lottery proceeds from our State fund it and it is a very successful program. Would it not be nice if there could be an alternative funding source to fund the President's proposal? I want to say to the gentleman that both my parents were public school teachers. They were classroom teachers. My wife is presently a 6th grade middle school teacher in our home county. So I have a genetic as well as a spousal bias toward where I think education dollars should flow, and that is to the classroom.”