Burgess Owens: “I want to talk about leadership again. The theme of leadership now shifts to the United States. It shifts to the…”

“I want to talk about leadership again. The theme of leadership now shifts to the United States. It shifts to the Congress of the United States. Last week on Friday we voted the majority budget into existence. That majority budget completely ignored a major need of this Nation. This Nation needs to reform its education system. At the heart of that reform process is a need for the construction of new schools. In the Republican budget there are no funds allocated for the construction of new schools. In fact, the Republican budget represents an attack on education. They are going to wipe out Title I programs as we know them, and they will proceed to turn the dollars for Title I into vouchers. They are going to completely ignore the major problems. The problems have been clearly delineated by the President, who started with his State of the Union Address delineating the problem of the schools when he said, we need $22 billion for the construction of new schools. That is his program. I wish we had a more direct way to deal with the problem of the schools, and not through a loan program. He offers a $22 billion loan program where States and localities may borrow the money and the Federal Government would pay the interest. So they are interest-free loans. That is better than nothing, of course. It is significantly better than nothing.”