Roy Blunt: “we have heard here again this morning that this Congress and the Congress before it has not appropriated money for…”

“we have heard here again this morning that this Congress and the Congress before it has not appropriated money for education when in fact we have appropriated more money every year than the year before. So much of the debate about education in the Congress is about who controls the money and about whether the Federal Government is going to keep its word to local school districts. Any time I am in the Seventh District in Missouri and ask an educator what is their biggest problem with the Federal Government, they always say, ``Special education mandates.'' When we mandated special education, we said we would provide 40 percent of the money. At the beginning of the 104th Congress, we were providing 6 percent. Now we are providing 12 percent. Part of the debate about teachers is whether some of those teachers could be special education teachers and help us get to what we have promised local districts we could do. But, no, that is not good enough. We have to tell local districts exactly what classes those teachers should be in and special education would not be one of them unless we prevail in this debate about education.”