Steny Hoyer: “we do have to be real when we deal with financial questions, with investment questions, and what America is going to be…”

“we do have to be real when we deal with financial questions, with investment questions, and what America is going to be like in the future. President Clinton talked about a bridge to the future. Every one of my constituents believes that the bridge to the future is education. Almost every American believes that one of the reasons we have opportunity in America is because we have educational access for every American. This year, however, when we passed the Labor-HHS-Education appropriation bill out of the House, we cut education very substantially. Democrats wanted to add education funds at the subcommittee makeup. I offered an amendment to add $2.1 billion so that we would not lose Head Start slots, we would not lose Chapter 1 slots, we would not lose Goals 2000 dollars for investment in education. Today there was an article in the Post written by David Broder, one of Washington's most respected columnists and political observers. It is entitled, ``Empower Qualified Teachers.'' His point is that we are not spending sufficient sums on education. I want to quickly add that I do not believe that money is the only answer or particularly the answer to solving the educational problems that confront our Nation.”