Paul Coverdell: “I am convinced we have a pretty strong disagreement. The Senator has made that point. But being a persistent individual…”

“I am convinced we have a pretty strong disagreement. The Senator has made that point. But being a persistent individual, let's go back to the point the Senator made about the savings account, which is only one part of this bill. Then he alluded to the amount of money that would not be collected. I signaled to him that it is about $1.2 billion over 5 years. The Senator from Minnesota said he thought that could be put to a better use: We collect the money from the people, bring it here, and put it to another use. My question is this: How many Federal dollars can you think of that we leverage to a 10-to-1 value? My point is this: For that amount of uncollected revenue, we cause 14 million families with 20 million kids--it is about half the population in elementary school--on their own, with their own dollars to augment that, and you end up with $12 billion. If we could do that with every dollar we have, we would not be in a debate about any of these things. We could do any and everything. It is very unique in that we get it back over 10 times. I do not think you can call this a voucher. This is not--and I will stop here and let the Senator respond--a voucher. It is simply if a person is in a private school, they can have a savings account. If they are in a public school, they can have a savings account. It is their money; it is not public money, and it is being used by them to decide how they might best help their child.”