Tom Harkin: “I listened as best I could to the presentation made by my friend from Wyoming on his amendment. Let's recap a little…”

“I listened as best I could to the presentation made by my friend from Wyoming on his amendment. Let's recap a little bit. As I said yesterday, we have been trying for some time to get money for school construction and repair to help beleaguered schools around the country. We did that last year in an agreement. I ask my friend from Wyoming if he knows this. But in last year's appropriations bill, there was an agreement hammered out on a bipartisan basis and a bicameral basis. It was signed off on the House side. We worked with Congressman Goodling, Congressman Porter, Congressman Obey; on the Senate side, Senator Specter and I, Senator Jeffords, and Senator Kennedy were all involved in the negotiations--and the White House. We came up with a program that provided $1.2 billion this year that would go out to States under broad guidelines to help them meet the needs of their poorest school districts in terms of meeting fire and safety code, renovation for technology, and 25 percent of the money was set aside to meet the needs of disabled students under IDEA. I didn't know this until I just read the Enzi amendment, but the Enzi amendment wipes out that $1.2 billion. This is a list of all the States that are going to get this money 2 months from now of the $1.2 billion that was appropriated for this year. The Enzi amendment is not prospective. It takes the $1.2 billion this year and reneges on what the Senate, the House, and the White House signed off on last year.”