Providing for Consideration of Senate Amendment to House Amendment to Senate Amendment to H.R. 1586, Education Jobs and Medicaid Assistance Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. DOGGETT. Listening to the concerns of parents, the hopes of students, and the needs of our local Texas school leaders, today we are responding with essential Federal aid to education, fully paid for by closing international corporate tax loopholes that should never have been there in the first place.

Because we believe in local control of education, we require that the State of Texas specifically forward the new Federal aid to our local school districts, not divert it or spend it on something else. The Texas Association of School Boards, Texas teachers, principals, and school administrators support this legislative approach. Now, those, who have never wanted Texas or any other place in this country to receive a dime of additional Federal aid to education, they complain because we are holding Texas Governor Rick Perry accountable for proper use of these taxpayer dollars. There is absolutely no constitutional limitation on doing right by our Texas schoolchildren. Instead of concocting phony legalistic arguments, Governor Perry and his cohorts here in Congress ought to be joining us in supporting quality public education.

You can be sure that Texas is singled out by this legislation. It was singled out by a Governor who grabbed $3.2 billion of Federal aid to education to bail out a mismanaged State government. That's the only bailout that occurred. It occurred last year in the State of Texas. We didn't send that Federal aid for education to Texas to plug a mismanaged State budget. We sent it to help our schoolchildren.

And so today, in order to avoid history repeating itself, we demand accountability, we demand support for quality public education and local control of education and not more mismanagement and interference from the State of Texas.

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