Arlen Specter: “here again, there is little doubt that technology literacy is a very important matter for America. There is no doubt…”

“here again, there is little doubt that technology literacy is a very important matter for America. There is no doubt about that at all. Here again, it is a matter of how our allocations are going to run. We debated the Dodd amendment earlier today about afterschool programs--again, a good program. There is a question about the amount of money and where the priorities are. We debated the Kennedy amendment about teacher recruitment--another good program. We had to turn down amendments yesterday by Senator Wellstone who wanted more money for title I; Senator Bingaman, also more money for title I; Senator Murray asked for an additional $325 million on top of $1.4 billion which was supplied for class size. There is no doubt that so many of these programs are excellent programs. The Senator from Massachusetts in offering this amendment noted the constraints we are operating under with respect to how much money we have in our allocation. We have established priorities. We have greatly increased the education account by some $4.6 billion. That is a tremendous increase, coming to a total of $40.2 billion. In our education account, we have $100 million more than the President asked for. I have already today gone over a long list of items where we have increased funding on education on very important items. It is a matter of making the appropriate allocation and the setting of priorities.”