David Thomas: “I rise to talk, again, about taxes. The legislation now before the Senate includes education, which we will be debating…”

“I rise to talk, again, about taxes. The legislation now before the Senate includes education, which we will be debating this afternoon and which we will be working on until the tax bill comes from the committee, and taxes--probably two of the most important issues the Senate will address this year. Certainly everyone is most interested in education, and there are a number of broad topics within education that are legitimate to discuss. One of them is the role of the Federal Government in financing education. Most would agree that the basic responsibility for elementary and secondary education lies with local government and State government. Traditionally, the Federal Government has provided about 7 percent of the total financing for education. It is an important contribution but certainly a relatively small one in terms of the total cost. One of the other issues will be that of deciding how much flexibility there will be in terms of expending Federal moneys made available, whether or not, as was the case in the last administration, where the dollars which were allocated to education were generally assigned to the purpose for which they were allocated, either for smaller classrooms or for building improvements, new buildings, in reality, the real decision as to how moneys are used by local districts ought to be what the way local leaders believe they should be.”