Timothy Roemer: “I rise in very, very strong support of this motion. This bill, worked out in a bipartisan way by the gentleman from Ohio…”

“I rise in very, very strong support of this motion. This bill, worked out in a bipartisan way by the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Regula) and the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Obey), has about $525 million more for education, educating our children in new and innovative ways. I think this is a very strong instruction, a motion that we need to support on the House side. At a time in the Midwest, Mr. Speaker, when our economies are not bringing in as much money, at a time when some of our State budgets are being cut by $800 million, $1 billion, and more, at a time in the Midwest when steel mills are being closed, when tax bases are shrinking, when we have lost 165,000 manufacturing jobs for many in the Midwest, we need this money for new ideas to educate our children in new ways. In Title I we have a 20 percent increase for educating the poorest of the poor children in this bill; for reading and literacy programs, we have new ways of educating and teaching reading to our children. We have, as the chairman mentioned, a new program that ramps up the Troops-to-Teachers program called Transition to Teaching, bringing people from the private sector in engineering, technology, math, and science, from Main Street into our classrooms. This is not throwing money at old ideas, this is new money attached to new ideas. At a bare minimum, this $525 million over the Senate bill is what we should indeed support.”