Political Quotes

“I wish to address a couple of the issues raised by my distinguished colleague from Delaware. One of the issues the Senator from Delaware suggested was that this creates a whole new bureaucracy. But with all due respect, it does not create a whole new bureaucracy. States only have to keep a tally on how much bonding authority they have used. That is it. That is not a whole new bureaucracy. Talking about the concern about assessments and making additional assessments, the truth is that most of the States have already made those assessments. So we are not talking about any additional burden. When we talk about the QZAB as not having been used, 94 school districts in 15 States have utilized the QZAB, and that, indeed, is the model upon which these school modernization bonds are featured. We are not talking about an untested bill. With respect to the number of students that we are trying to help under the circumstances, currently we have 52.7 million students in America's schools. In 8 years, that total will climb to 54.3 million students in our schools. We are talking about a significant increase in the number of students at the same time we are trying to decrease the number of students in individual classes. We know the schools are getting older and older, with the average age of the schools in this country today being 42 years old. We have a pressing, urgent problem.…”