James M. Jeffords: “First of all I commend the chairman of the Budget Committee for a very excellent statement which puts things in…”

“First of all I commend the chairman of the Budget Committee for a very excellent statement which puts things in perspective. I would like to make my colleagues aware that investment in 1947 to meet the education crisis of that time, was about $30 billion in constant dollars today. Back in those days, that was a lot of money and a big percentage of the budget. It raised the percentage of Federal spending in education from about the percentage we are at now to 10 percent. I think it is important to recognize that, because that was the kind of commitment which paid off so much for this Nation in its ability to reconstruct, not only this country, but also to assist with the educational capacity of the rest of the world. It was a big factor in bringing down the Berlin Wall and ending the cold war. Second, we are in a crisis, and I will speak more about that later if we have time. But let me quote from the 1983 At-Risk Report by the Reagan administration. If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war.”