Joe Cunningham: “Let me give my colleagues, Mr. Speaker, some food for thought on how we can balance the budget and not cut some of the…”

“Let me give my colleagues, Mr. Speaker, some food for thought on how we can balance the budget and not cut some of the valuable programs that we are looking for. Let us take, for example, education. I was the subcommittee chairman, basically K through 12 during the 104th Congress. In some areas, in some school districts, we get as little as 23 cents on a dollar out of Federal education programs. The gentleman from Michigan [Mr. Hoekstra] the other night in a special order was pointing out that there are 760 Federal education programs, all with bureaucracies, all taking money away from getting the dollars down to the classroom. The average is around 50 cents on a dollar for most areas, but in some areas it is as little as 23 cents on a dollar. That is cutting education because the dollars are not going the way the American taxpayers sent it to Washington to improve education, but it is going to support a bureaucracy and large numbers of programs. The President in his budget wants a new $3 billion literacy program. There are 30 current literacy programs in those 760 programs, and only 14 are funded. Title I, for example, is our war against illiteracy. But yet the President wants to come up with a new $3 billion program with new bureaucracies in the Department of Education, and why do we not eliminate the programs that are not working of the 30, focus on the ones that are, and drive the money down to the local areas? That is one way.”