Rae Oliver Davis: “There are so many stories that we can think of, and it comes back to this issue of having context. A very successful…”

“There are so many stories that we can think of, and it comes back to this issue of having context. A very successful entrepreneur who actually started working in a coal mine at the age of 15, who is a very successful industry executive, made a comment to me when I first got elected to Congress that he wished that no person could run a Federal agency or serve in the House or the Senate unless they created one job so that they would know what it was like to deal with the consequences of regulations. We come back and qualify this. The overall intent of the founding of some of these agencies was a very good thing, but let's step away from the EPA for a moment--we'll come back there in just a second--but move over to education. We have some outstanding schools, blue ribbon schools in our region, and their increases in performance are not due to the mandates inside of the No Child Left Behind bill. In fact, I brought the Secretary of Education from the Bush administration, Dr. Margaret Spellings, to Kentucky in 2008. It took almost 9 months to get her there. Because I wanted her to be able to see as an educator--I'm the husband of a teacher and the father of a current school teacher--that the real key to success in education is not a regulatory mandate; it's again coming back to that context on the front lines.”