Rob Portman: “let me just try to further clarify. I think under the legislation it is fair to say that the Secretary had the…”

“let me just try to further clarify. I think under the legislation it is fair to say that the Secretary had the discretion either to do it at the Federal level or the State level. This change would say that indeed, it should be done at the State level, which I think is consistent generally speaking with the legislation in the sense that we are trying to focus on State and local communities. It also happens to be something important to the chairman, and he gained a waiver. This is something that was raised with me. This is a good provision. The quality assurance is going to enable parents to know whether these schools are using drug-free school money appropriately and forces them to have a needs assessment and forces them to bring parents in and have research-based programming. The question is just whether that will be a requirement at the State level or something at the Federal level. Our legislation frankly left it open originally, and this would say it should be done at the State level.”