Focus On Education Spending

Floor Speech

Mr. COURTNEY. Mr. Speaker, tonight, as we sit here in this Chamber, all across America there are school superintendents, there are boards of education, there are boards of finance that are grappling with the greatest economic downturn since the Great Depression. And as we know from press reports all over the country, hundreds of thousands of school teachers have been given layoff notices. Forty-four States are now in deficit; $95 billion for 2009 fiscal year, $145 billion for the 2010 fiscal year, as all these local officials, who have the responsibility of making sure that we have school programs that our children can have an opportunity to thrive and grow, are bracing themselves for Governors who inevitably are going to be reducing State support for education.

It is in that context, Mr. Speaker, that as we proceed as a Congress to take up the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act on this Wednesday, that I think it's important to focus for a minute on the education spending which is included in this legislation.

Under this measure, under this recovery act that President Obama and the congressional leadership have voted on last week, over $145 billion will flow out directly to school districts across this country. For example, there will be $13 billion to pay for Title I, a Federally-mandated program which has been underfunded as part of the disgraceful unwillingness of the Federal Government to pay for the No Child Left Behind Act over the last 6 years. And $13 billion of additional funds will go out to pay for special education. Again, a disgraceful nonfunding by the Federal Government since 1975 when Gerald Ford signed the Special Education Act into law, mandating that all these local officials, again, who are trapped tonight, have to come up with the resources to pay for the special education needs of children all across the country.

And $14 billion to pay for school construction. Again, directly to local communities so that they will have the funds to modernize and retrofit schools all across the country and immediately putting to work the construction trades, which is the hardest hit sector in the American economy.

A $79 billion economic stabilization fund, which will flow directly into States through your education cost sharing formulas all across America to make up for the inevitable shortfall which Governors and State legislators are going to be forced to cut back on as they deal with, again, this historic economic downturn.

President Obama understands that we must act with this American Recovery and Reinvestment Act with funding for education; number one, to make sure that hundreds of thousands of teachers are not going to be laid off, along with staff, who, again, we entrust with making sure are children are going to be educated every single day across this country.

He also understands long term that the failure to step in and avoid larger class sizes, which will result in teacher layoffs, is going to ensure that our economy will grow not just in the short term, not just as we get through this economic crisis, but also to make sure that long term that America's competitiveness will be maintained.

We know what is happening across the world today. That there are countries which are beating us in science, in engineering, in math. And if we allow as a Congress to step back and leave local communities on their own, with declining property tax revenues and declining State support for public education across this country, we will damage not only this country in the short term, but we will damage it in terms of our long-term ability to compete and thrive and grow as a Nation.

This past Saturday, I sat down with school superintendents all across the Second Congressional District of eastern Connecticut to talk about the dilemma with which these school superintendents and boards of education find themselves in. Again, all of them are in the process of coming up with contingency plans to lay off staff and teachers across their district.

When I walked through with them the provisions of President Obama's recovery act in terms of the funds that they will get this year if we get this to the President's desk by President's Day, signed into law, the funds will flow by July 1 for this fiscal year, there was skepticism, and I don't blame them. The Federal Government has not funded Special Ed, has not funded No Child Left Behind.

But when I explain to them that this measure has passed the Appropriations Committee, the Ways and Means Committee, the Energy and Commerce Committee as of last week, and we are voting on it this coming Wednesday, after the stunned silence, the room burst into applause because these folks are feeling the pressure of this economic downturn just like people in the private sector are.

But what we need to do as a Nation is, again, to make sure that in terms of trying to deal with this short-term crisis that we are in, that we are not going to do long-term damage to the young people of this country who had no responsibility for the fiscal and economic idiocy of the last 8 years. And that is why it is so important, as a Congress, we must step forward and support the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and make sure that America's public education will endure.

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