Byron Dorgan: “My understanding was that title I was not part of his amendment. We were trying last evening and this morning to…”

“My understanding was that title I was not part of his amendment. We were trying last evening and this morning to understand exactly what the language would be. That makes his amendment much, much worse than I had previously thought. It does confirm then what I said earlier, that we have taken a successful approach in which we have tried to provide some compensatory education assistance especially directed at impoverished areas and at poor children, and have done it in a very successful way, and now say but all of that will become a pot of money that we send back, and we will just become tax collectors for local governments or for school districts and say, ``You all pretty much retool this and rethink what you want to do with it along the lines that represent your priorities.'' They have their priorities, and should have their priorities, and their priorities are to govern how they run their schools. And they are free to do that. Again, the discussion earlier was about they are not free somehow. Of course, they are free. State and local schools are run by the State and local school districts. They are free to raise their money, free to impose taxes, free with their State governments to develop curriculums. Of course, they are free to make those decisions. But in areas where we have provided some assistance based on what we perceive to be a national purpose, the amendment says, let us provide the money but no requirement that anyone sign up to this national purpose.”