James M. Jeffords: “I'll use a few moments to take a look at last year. What we are talking about right now is where we ended last year as…”

“I'll use a few moments to take a look at last year. What we are talking about right now is where we ended last year as far as passing bills on education. Let us take a look at what we did accomplish during that period of time. This chart lists all of the bills which we passed out of our committee, almost all of them by unanimous or close to unanimous votes. They all became law. They were very important. First of all, we had the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, for which we had tremendous bipartisan agreement, and we took time to do it. It came out and passed practically unanimously by both the House and Senate. That is what happens when we have good, bipartisan working together. The next one was the Emergency Student Loan Consolidation Act of 1997. We had some important problems that came up with respect to student loans, but were able to take care of them. This Act passed with a very substantial vote. Next, was the National Science Foundation Authorization Act, which had not been reauthorized for many years. An important component of the National Science Foundation is education; we sometimes forget that. But a tremendous amount of funding for the important areas of education, in the areas of science, comes through this bill, and that was accomplished. Then we had a real step forward with the Work Force Investment Act of 1998, including the Rehabilitation Act Amendments.”