John Tierney: “Look, I just want to give a little historical perspective to this again. The whole reason that the Federal Government is…”

“Look, I just want to give a little historical perspective to this again. The whole reason that the Federal Government is involved in K-12 education is because States weren't doing the job when it came to addressing disadvantaged students. There was a judicial mandate that said that States had to step up and do that. They, the States, then had a problem with the fact of how much that was going to cost, so the Federal Government stepped forward and said you can have some Federal moneys if you do the job. So we've had that tension between how they'll do the job and how we'll hold them accountable for years. But this notion of saying that the State government will now decide whether or not local communities will accept the grant--and if they don't, we're not going to apply that money to actually educating those children that are disadvantaged, we're going to toss it back into the Treasury--is no other than a way of cutting education funding. We don't need education cuts at this point in time. We need an investment in education. With that, I reserve the balance of my time.”