T. Gorton: “This Senate voted for just such a program last year. This Senate voted for just such a program this year. This Senate…”

“This Senate voted for just such a program last year. This Senate voted for just such a program this year. This Senate did so, I am convinced, because while the Federal Government, in spite of all of the speeches on the floor of the Senate and of the House of Representatives, comes up with only about 7 or 8 percent of the money that is spent in our schools that are, of course, primarily locally and State-operated, it comes up with 50 or 60 percent of the rules and regulations that must be met by our school districts, by hiring administrators, not teachers, people to fill out forms and read Federal regulations rather than librarians and new equipment for our students. It was our attempt last year, and has been our attempt this year, and I hope and trust will be our policy when we finish an appropriations bill in a few days, that we trust the people in the States and in our communities and in our schools to come up with better judgments about the varying priorities of their students than can President Clinton or a Department of Education bureaucracy here in Washington, DC. The thrust of the point that I have been attempting to make for a couple of years now is just exactly that: Where should this money be spent? Are we the experts here in this body on how each of 14,000 school districts should go about educating its children? Or is the true expertise in those school districts themselves?”