Paul Coverdell: “the first point I want to reiterate is, we do have to acknowledge, apart from the amendments, that the points I made a…”

“the first point I want to reiterate is, we do have to acknowledge, apart from the amendments, that the points I made a moment ago are all in the underlying bill: Education savings accounts for 14 million families, 20 million children. And I might point out, those savings accounts will bring--when you use the figures $37 and $7, you are only talking about the interest that is saved because we didn't tax it in a given year. When you talk about the savings accounts, you have to look at the principal, and what happens is, when we create them, Americans do very big things and they go out and save, over a 10-year period, $10 billion. That $10 billion--$5 billion will support students in public schools and $5 billion will support students in private schools, without us having to raise another dime. No taxes have to be raised, no property tax, no income tax. This is families stepping forward with a huge infusion of money. We are building new schools; we are helping employees with continuing education; we are helping millions of students with the costs of higher education. To the amendment that the Senator has addressed, let me just say first, the amendment permitting block grants is totally voluntary; no one is required to do anything. It is a 3-year experiment that says if California wants to keep the system the way it is, fine. If they would like to experiment with the block grant, they might do that.”