If my colleague will yield, because the other thing that we know is we know what the difference is. In your model, it goes directly from the taxpayer, it can go directly down to the school district. We eliminate all this and we save that…

this is what we are talking about, bringing a massive infusion of new money into education. This is nontax credit money going into education for a very specific purpose. If we do a tax credit, we will see an entire map being red and…

I think we have to be a little careful about calling them failing schools. I think what we have identified is that in those areas and other areas there are kids, for whatever reasons, that are falling through the cracks. It could be a…

What we are finding then in each of these areas is we are finding people who are going out and embracing these kids and trying to give them an answer to make sure that they will enter adulthood well prepared for high-quality, high-paying…

What this is not about is about process. It is not a debate about process. What this is about is making sure that we put our children at the forefront and their education. That is what the whole debate always should be about. It should not…

They are not giving up on their local public schools. They are passionately involved in fixing their local public schools. They are passionate about helping the kids out that are falling through the cracks right now. So there are a number…

as we try to help young people like Joshua, last week I had an opportunity to go through a public charter school in my hometown and explain to some of the parents and some of the teachers and the principal exactly what we were looking at…

Well, basically, in the work my colleague and I have done in the Committee on Education and the Workforce, we have found that when a dollar goes into the Federal Treasury and then goes through the Department of Education and goes through…

if the gentleman will let me have the chart for a minute, I think the interesting thing about this chart is as soon as the step takes place from the individual working, the taxpayer, putting the money into the Treasury Department by paying…

In Michigan, we passed a proposal called Proposal A. What Proposal A did is it led towards equalized funding so that if you are a student in Highland, Michigan, or Detroit, or whatever, you are going to get relatively the same amount of…

I thank my colleague, and when we introduce the concept of a tax credit at the Federal level, that is new money going into education. The typical local school district will only receive 7 percent of their money from Washington. When we…

That is it. That is what we are taking about, a $500 tax credit per individual, $1,000 for joint filers. That thousand dollars does not go through that bureaucracy any more; it goes directly from the taxpayer directly to Johnny's school…

It becomes an investment. Whether they want to invest it in education or whether they want to put it in a savings account, whether they want to go out and buy a personal watercraft, whatever. It becomes personal money that they have the…

$58 million. I think, going along the trend, you might be able to extrapolate that roughly the same if not more money will be flowing into traditional public schools. So that talks about the strength of this idea, $160 million flowing…

I think the gentleman becomes very, very clear when he says government money. I think that came up at the hearing. What exactly is government money? Government money is only that money we have claimed and taken from the American people…

In the State of Arizona, more than half of the money is going to public schools, and it is not following one student who may decide to go to another public school, so it is not even following that. That money is being given by parents to…

Tampa. We were down in Tampa. And we talked to a lot of parents and we talked to a lot of kids. And so we have seen hundreds and we have seen thousands of Joshuas around the country, and not everyone has an Ace scholarship, but what we see…

What we have is the evolution of our public schools, and they were called public because they reflected the community. The public schools evolved into government schools, okay, like the gentleman said, with the local school board now…

We have to make sure we always come back to the point that this is a balanced approach, that this is available for public schools and it is also available for education investment funds. Mr. Speaker, I could talk about my home district…

Absolutely. It becomes a supplemental stream to the money that is already coming through Washington. We have significantly increased funding in K-12 education over the last 4 to 5 years and with the President's new Leave No Child Behind…

I think the other reason that there is a high level of excitement is, and the gentleman and I have gone through this a number of times over the last few years, you said when they watch what happens to their money here in Washington. We…

The reason I made the comment about Pennsylvania was only because Madam Speaker tonight is from the great State of Pennsylvania, and the next time we have this discussion on where we are going with Federal tax credits, perhaps she can join…

the story of Samuel Adams begs the question: Where did Adams find the strength of his character and the source of his conviction? Adams gave the answer a few years later when Hutchinson's successor, Governor Thomas Gage, not having learned…

I think there are two features that make it especially attractive to our local schools. Number one, when we do this in Washington, it clearly is a new stream of money. It is not a diversion of money that would have been coming from…

Whether it is Arizona, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, Florida, there has been a lot of excitement around the concept of tax credits. Number one, this is a focus on the children, making sure that every child in America has the opportunity to get…