David Obey: “Mr. Chairman, this bill, I think, defines in a major way the differences in priorities between the two political parties…”

“Mr. Chairman, this bill, I think, defines in a major way the differences in priorities between the two political parties in this House. For years we have had a decline in the school-age population in this country. It has been going down for a number of years. But the fact is that we are now experiencing a steady increase in school enrollment in this country, and, in fact, next year there will be more students enrolled in local school districts than at any time in the country's history. We would simply ask the question on this side of the aisle: Why should we be cutting per pupil expenditures for those students at a time when we are experiencing an increase in student enrollment? If we take a look at what is happening to per pupil expenditures and look at it in real dollar terms, we will see that per pupil expenditures at the Federal level are declining from $287 per student to $222 by the end of the sixth year of the Republican budget which just went through this House several months ago, and this bill is the first year's step in that budget process.”