Roy Blunt: “as I go around my district in southwest Missouri and ask school administrators or teachers what is their biggest problem…”

“as I go around my district in southwest Missouri and ask school administrators or teachers what is their biggest problem with the Federal Government, I always get the same answer, IDEA. And so now I ask what is their second biggest problem with the Federal Government, and I get a variety of answers, but there is no question their biggest challenge is in the way IDEA is funded, the way IDEA is administered, the way that the rules and regulations are set up. We cannot do anything today about the administration and the rules and regulations. That needs to be in another, bigger debate later. It needs to happen. But we can do something about the funding. In 1974, when this program was conceptualized and put into law, Congress said they would pay 40 percent of the cost. Twenty years later, we were paying 6 percent of the cost. In the last 4 years, we have been able to double that, to 12 percent, so we are headed in the right direction. But we need to keep our word. This is about the Federal Government, not just conceptualizing some new obligation but paying their share and keeping their commitment to make those programs work.”