Political Quotes

“the difference between what we are trying to do and how Members characterize vouchers, vouchers are typically viewed as taking the educational pie, the amount of money that we are investing in education and redistributing it so that means that there are some people that are going to get less money; and since there are new people getting money, they are going to be getting more money, so somebody is going to be left out or they are going to go home with a smaller check than they got before. That is not at all what we are doing here. We are saying that there is the money coming into Washington, about 7 percent of all the education dollars come into Washington, and what we are doing is saying that money is going to stay there. We are going to keep increasing that. That money has been going up, but now we are going to create a new educational investment fund that is going to be driven at the local level and not at the Washington level. Basically, this is new money where people are saying I am willing to contribute extra money to education if I can determine where it goes and what it is going to be used for, and if I can build that relationship with my local public or private or local charter school; and if they can come to me and make a compelling case as to how this is going to benefit the community and the children in our community, I will write that check. The states are finding that they are doing it.”