Political Quotes

“I rise tonight to talk about education. We will hear later tonight from the two presidential candidates a lot about education. We will have two very differing messages. George W. Bush, the Republican candidate, will talk about getting money to the classrooms, getting money to the school districts and requiring accountability, accountability that young people can read, that young people understand math, that young people understand science and English and reach certain levels of excellence. Then we will have the Gore plan that talks about, if you do what we want you to do, we will furnish some money. If you hire teachers, we will help you. If you do new school construction, and I would say also and if you are urban, we may help you. But it certainly will not be to the most of the hundreds of thousands of school districts in this country, only a few privileged few. Now, it is interesting as we listen to this debate that we keep it in perspective. The Federal Government claims that they provide seven percent of the basic education money from K-12, seven percent. Now I am going to give my colleagues the actual figures to Pennsylvania, the fifth largest State in the country, a sophisticated State, 3.3 percent of the money in school districts. Of the 530 school districts in Pennsylvania, 3.3 percent of their budget comes from the Federal Government. So the question I ask is, that is 47 percent of seven percent, so what happens to the 53 percent?”