Paul Coverdell: “Mr. President, this debate will continue tomorrow. I want to reiterate that the tax savings account helps 14 million…”

“Mr. President, this debate will continue tomorrow. I want to reiterate that the tax savings account helps 14 million families and 20 million children. It provides for employer incentives to educate their employees. One million employees will benefit. It helps students who are in States with prepaid tuition plans because we do not tax them. That will be 1 million students who will benefit from the savings tuition provision. It adopts the proposal of Senator Graham of Florida and Senator Sessions of Alabama on State tuition and on school construction. Go across the face of education insofar as the Finance Committee is concerned. It deals with tax policy. We are not the education committee. We are making the Tax Code friendlier to States, communities, parents, employers, employees, and students to get a better education, 70 percent which will go to families of middle income of $75,000 or less. It is the same means test the President used when he created the HOPE scholarship along with the Congress. The only thing we do is make it four times more powerful than the President's proposal. As I said, I sort of reel from time to time when they try to make it insignificant, but then it becomes a huge debate. They contradict themselves. If this is only worth ``$7 a year'' and is ``insignificant,'' then the President's proposal is only worth $2.25 because it is one-fourth the value of these accounts.”