Ernest Istook: “If we are for our children and students, we support this amendment. If we are for more bureaucracy and more strings…”

“If we are for our children and students, we support this amendment. If we are for more bureaucracy and more strings attached that take the money out of the classroom, then we are against this amendment. When this block grant program was first created in 1981, 42 programs were put into one, 350 Federal bureaucrats were no longer needed, and for each Federal bureaucrat there are scores and hundreds at the local level that are having to apply for grants, fill out application forms, do compliance reports, do extra audits, and so forth. We are talking about being able to eliminate thousands of bureaucrats who take the money that we want to go into the classroom, and enabling that money to go into the classroom instead. It takes the taxes of nine American families for each bureaucrat in Washington, DC, and there are similar numbers for all the additional bureaucrats that our State and local governments and our schools have to hire to deal with the Washington bureaucrats and the redtape and the paperwork that flows back and forth, and it does not help the kids. Let us support this amendment and help children, not bureaucrats.”