Charles Rangel: “let me thank the majority floor manager, the gentleman from Iowa [Mr. Nussle], for creating an atmosphere in discussing…”

“let me thank the majority floor manager, the gentleman from Iowa [Mr. Nussle], for creating an atmosphere in discussing this issue, not one against the other, but in all recognizing that what we are talking about is education. This country is going to be just as strong as the level of that superior education that we are going to be able to maintain in order to have, if we are going to maintain our ability to be competitive. We cannot continue the way we are going. We can cannot ignore that we are putting a lot of people in jail that have no access to education. We cannot ignore the fact that we have to improve this public school system. I guess at best that we are saying that as we compete for limited funds, where do you want to give the priority? No matter how much we say that those funds belong to the taxpayer, we have a very complicated system in the bill before us in order to get that money in any way to improve the quality of education. Basically, what we are saying is parents know best. If they have the disposable income, let them save and we will be able to take the interest and do some things that, one way or the other, would be supportive of education. My approach is entirely different. My approach says, where is the problem and how can we fix it?”