Conference Report on H.R. 1350, Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act of 2004
Floor Speech
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Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of this conference report to reauthorize the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act.
Let me at the outset thank Chairman BOEHNER, Subcommittee Chairman CASTLE, our ranking member, Mr. MILLER, and our subcommittee ranking member, Ms. WOOLSEY--along with our Senate colleagues, the rest of the conferees and their staff--for all of the hard work and long hours that went into producing this agreement today.
This is not a perfect bill. But it is a significant improvement over the House IDEA bill that I and most of my colleagues on this side of the aisle felt compelled to oppose in April 2003, and I believe it represents the best outcome that could reasonably have been expected in our current legislative environment.
In particular, I am pleased to see that this legislation restores some of the protections afforded to children with disabilities that the House-passed IDEA bill would have taken away. Moreover, I fully support the stepped-up monitoring and enforcement authority granted the Secretary of Education under this bill. And I believe the compromise reached with respect to certifying highly qualified special education teachers is a good one.
However, while the conference report adopts the Senate's 7-year authorization path to full funding, I remain concerned that the FY 2005 Omnibus Appropriations bill we will soon be considering will once again fall short of the $12.3 billion authorized to fund this critical law. This is the 30th year in a row we have failed to meet our IDEA funding obligations--a record I consider to be an enduring disgrace. For that reason, I believe more than ever that we should make IDEA funding mandatory and place it on a near term, certain path to completion.
Toward that end, the very first bill I introduced in the 108th Congress--the Keep Our Promises To America's Children and Teachers (PACT) Act--would have fully funded IDEA as well as the No Child Left Behind law. In the 109th Congress, I intend to make the Keep Our PACT Act the very first bill I introduce again, and I invite all of my colleagues to join with me in that effort.
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