Bob Schaffer: “That is the real hardship, I might add, that we see with all of these Federal programs is the paperwork, the red tape…”

“That is the real hardship, I might add, that we see with all of these Federal programs is the paperwork, the red tape, the rules that go along with what amounts to pretty small amount of funds. The gentleman is right that with so many Federal programs, we spend a lot of money in Washington, about $40 billion a year just on the program costs for the U.S. Department of Education, and that is not even mentioning the other $80 billion that is managed through student loans by the U.S. Department. We just need to focus on the $40 billion that we budgeted and allocated towards education, each dollar is sent out from Washington to various States and school districts with all kinds of requirements attached to it, much of which has nothing to do with the quality of education. Some governors frankly do not understand that. This is an easy process for some of them. As the gentleman said, they just get the money from Washington, and they turn around and spend it, and it appears to their constituents that they are accomplishing something with nothing. Again, where the real hardship is realized is at the street level, at the schoolroom level, the classroom level, where these principals, administrators, secretaries, teachers have to deal with these monotonous rules and these monotonous regulations. Only about 6 percent to 7 percent, maybe sometimes 8 percent of a classroom budget is Federal funds. The rest comes from your State or it comes from local property taxes.”