Rick Allen: “Right now the current level of funding for special education from the Federal Government to the States, through the…”

“Right now the current level of funding for special education from the Federal Government to the States, through the grants to States program, is a bit over 14 percent. It is the highest it has ever been, largely because in the last 3 years we increased that number by about $1 billion a year to get to the $6.3 billion in the current fiscal year. Now, to do full funding, what we mean by full funding is that the Federal Government would fund 40 percent of the costs of special education. We would need an additional $11.4 billion in fiscal year 2001 for a total of $17.7 billion. The reason this is appropriate to be discussing tonight is, we just passed, over our objection, a trillion dollar component of a $1.6 trillion tax cut with no effort, no discussion, and nothing in the President's proposed outline of a budget that would suggest there is going to be anything like full funding of special ed. Here we are at a moment of our history when we could meet that mandate, help out our towns, help out our cities, help out our kids, parents and educators, and we are just passing it by as if this topic were not to be discussed until the tax cut was passed.”