Richard K. Armey: “the gentleman from Virginia [Mr. Moran] brings us the bill from the other side of the body, a bill that is acutely…”

“the gentleman from Virginia [Mr. Moran] brings us the bill from the other side of the body, a bill that is acutely interesting to me in that it does not include the parental choice language for 2,000 school scholarships that I authored. A bitter disappointment to me. The language, exact language, that we have in our bill was offered on the other side by Senator Lieberman and would have been included in this bill, in this substitute, except for the fact that it did not make the cut on a filibuster offered by the distinguished Senator from Massachusetts [Mr. Kennedy]. It did have 58 votes, though, instead of the required 60. It might have had the other two votes if there had not been 22 National Educational Association lobbyists working the halls of Congress on that day. So on a square vote, your substitute would include this parental choice language. I have worked on this for a long time, and I have to tell you something. While so many times I deal with legislation in somewhat of an objective, abstract way, this is personal, this is very, very deeply personal with me. It is not about my party. It is not about your party. It is not about the city of D.C., although I should tell you, this committee has been generous in that it has put in this bill $1 million more for the D.C. education budget than what was asked. And we support every effort to rehabilitate the D.C. schools.…”