Paul Coverdell: “certainly the amendment of the Senator from Michigan is a thoughtful one. But as has been noted by the Finance chairman…”

“certainly the amendment of the Senator from Michigan is a thoughtful one. But as has been noted by the Finance chairman, it completely makes moot a core principle of the underlying bill, and for that reason I oppose it. I don't dispute the numbers that are demonstrated in his chart, but I would like to elaborate on them. The education savings account essentially takes the education savings account that was celebrated and signed by the President last year, $500 per year to be saved, and it could only be used for higher education. The proposal before us takes that idea in its identical form and expands the $500 to $2,000 and says you can use it in kindergarten through college. So it broadens the capacity of it. These numbers refer to kindergarten through high school only and do not look at the cap in these accounts--that is very difficult to project-- saved for college. That is No. 1. No. 2, what that really means is that the tax relief, which is very modest for those that are in public school, is about $250 million over 5 years, and for those in private school it is about $250 million. There are more families using it in public schools, as is noted on the chart. About 70 percent of what we estimate to be 14 million families will use the savings account, and 70 percent of them will have children in public schools and 30 percent in private.”