Todd Tiahrt: “today I want to talk a little bit about what the Republicans have done for education. We have heard a lot about how we…”

“today I want to talk a little bit about what the Republicans have done for education. We have heard a lot about how we were trying to eliminate public education. Nothing could be further from the truth. We want to make strong public schools with local control, local authority. Now if my colleagues compare what the President is proposing with his hundred thousand teachers, we have heard that number before. We heard about the Cops On The Street Program which promised 100,000 police on the streets. Well, according to Attorney General Janet Reno, we never did get 100,000 police to the street. In fact, we only got 18,000 police to the street, and for those 18,000, they were only partially funded. The first year they got 75 percent, the second year they got 50 percent, the third year they got 25 percent, and the fourth year the local governments had to completely fund those 18,000 policemen. Well they only got partially funded. They went ahead and hired the policemen on good faith. Then the amount of funding from the Federal Government got reduced, and the portion of the local funding continued to increase. So what happened in all these local governments that were trying to do the right thing by hiring these police is they ended up raising their taxes. So they got fewer policemen that they were promised and higher taxes than what was anticipated.”