Tom Harkin: “I want to make it clear, do I support the goal of getting up to 40 percent of the national per pupil expenditure up to…”

“I want to make it clear, do I support the goal of getting up to 40 percent of the national per pupil expenditure up to $2,750 per student? I do. But I don't believe we ought to do it at the expense of afterschool programs or out of Head Start or anything else. That is what I dislike about the Gregg amendment. If he wants to come up with more money for IDEA, fine. I will be glad to support him. But to take it away from other kids who have needs, I think, is not the way that we ought to proceed. Quite frankly, I don't know anyone in the disability community who would say, yes, take it away from those kids and give it to ours. They would say, look, fund the disability programs, fund IDEA, but fund afterschool programs, fund breakfast programs, fund Head Start programs, because these are all our kids and they all have needs. We ought to appropriately fund all of education. If this Congress gave the same priority to education as it does for the Pentagon, we wouldn't have to make these types of choices. There would be enough for both. We added $4 billion to the Pentagon's budget over what they asked for. When will we ever see the day when we would add $4 billion over what the Department of Education requested? Those were the basic points I wanted to make. IDEA is not a funding mandate. We need afterschool programs. We need IDEA also. I don't agree with stripping funds from one important program to fund another. That is why I believe Senator Gregg's amendment has deficiencies.”