Related Items Full Coverage: White House Releases New Budget

By Molly Peterson
LEGI-SLATE News Service
Monday, Feb. 2, 1998

Releasing President Clinton's fiscal 1999 budget request Monday, administration officials trumpeted an aggressive, $33.9 billion education package that calls for unprecedented spending for elementary and secondary programs, including a controversial school construction initiative and a plan to hire and train 100,000 new public school teachers.

"I think it is clear that this is an extraordinarily ambitious and important agenda from a president who is truly focused on education like few presidents before him," Education Secretary Richard Riley said during a news conference. "I never recalled anybody with this emphasis on education in a balanced budget, and I think that's very meaningful."

But Clinton's budget also set the stage for what promises to be a protracted, partisan showdown over spending priorities during the coming election season.

Congressional Republicans denounced the plan, saying it would put more money into the hands of federal bureaucrats while robbing states and localities of flexible grant money, in part through the elimination of the "Title VI" block grant to states and reductions in the federal impact aid and "Even Start" programs.

In all, GOP leaders charged, Clinton's budget would cut $476 million from programs geared toward local control, while adding $143 million to programs that mainly channel money to the federal bureaucrats instead of classrooms.

"President Clinton seems to think that Congress should act as a national school board," Rep. Frank Riggs, R-Calif., chairman of the House Subcommittee on Early Childhood, Youth and Families, complained in a statement released Monday. "That notion flies in the face of this nation's long-standing tradition of local control of public education."

Clinton's budget would allocate nearly $12.1 billion to elementary and secondary education programs – an increase of more than 17 percent over fiscal 1998 levels.

That figure includes a $1.1 billion, mandatory "first year down payment" for Clinton's new Class Size Reduction Initiative, which aims to reduce first-, second- and third-grade class sizes to a national average of 18 students per class, by helping to recruit and train about 100,000 teachers over the next seven years.

According to Riley, the cost of that plan would be covered by proceeds the federal government would receive from a proposed settlement of a class action lawsuit against the tobacco industry – which would have to be ratified by Congress in order to take effect.

Riley said he and Clinton have recommended paying for the class reduction initiative with tobacco funds, even though those funds are by no means guaranteed because many in Congress oppose the settlement.

"If someone wants to come up with another source of funding, that's up to them," Riley said.

Riley said the teacher recruitment plan would work hand-in-hand with a school modernization initiative, to be administered by the Treasury Department, that would use tax credits to aid in the construction, renovation and repair of more than 5,000 schools nationwide. The tax credits would pay the interest costs on nearly $20 billion in school construction bonds that would be issued to school districts over the next two years.

Clinton's budget also includes $15 million for the continued development and evaluation of the administration's controversial plan for voluntary national tests for fourth-grade reading and eighth-grade math, according to Riley.

Last year's spending bill for the departments of Labor, Health and Human Services and Education [P.L. 105-78] allows the administration to move forward with some test development in fiscal 1998. But House Republicans, who fiercely oppose the testing initiative, are aggressively pushing legislation that would bar the tests from ever being implemented – in fiscal 1999 or any other year – without authorizing legislation from Congress.

The budget request also would earmark $260 million to launch Clinton's proposed "America Reads" program, which, as part of Clinton's stated goal of making sure every student can read by end of third grade, would send thousands of college students into classrooms as volunteer tutors.

Many congressional Republicans oppose Clinton's reading initiative, saying it makes no sense to spend millions of dollars on untrained "volunteers."

The House last year passed a competing GOP bill [H.R. 2614], which, according to House Education and the Workforce Committee Chairman William Goodling, R-Pa., focuses on training accredited teachers to teach reading and uses the most recent "reliable and replicable research" to support reading teachers.

Clinton's budget also would increase "Title I" funds, which aim to improve the basic skills of disadvantaged students, by $392 million, for a total of $7.8 billion in fiscal 1999. All of the added funds would be distributed to high-poverty urban and rural schools, according to Riley.

The budget includes a new proposal that aims to raise student achievement in 50 high-poverty urban and rural school districts to be selected by the Department of Education. The initiative, known as "Education Opportunity Zones," would cost $200 million in fiscal 1999, and $1.5 billion over five years.

Another new proposal included in the budget would allocate more than $600 million to help improve the educational achievement of Hispanic students, who, according to a recent study, tend to drop out of school in disproportionate numbers.

Clinton's budget also aims to make higher education more affordable by channeling $7.6 billion into the Pell Grant program – a $249 million increase over current levels – raising the maximum individual Pell Grant award from $3,000 to $3,100.

The budget also would increase the college Work-Study program by $70 million, and would reduce the costs of student loans by decreasing origination fees from 4 percent to 3 percent.

Administrative offices within the Department of Education also would receive funding boosts under the budget request – a plan that had House Republicans fuming Monday.

The department's internal administration would receive $18 million more than current levels – a 5.3 percent increase – and its Office of Civil Rights would receive $6.5 million, or 10.6 percent, more than the fiscal 1998 allocation.

"The president's priority is to fund bureaucracy rather than fund programs that reach classrooms, teachers and students," Goodling said. "We think his priorities are backward, and we will work to ensure that programs that reach local communities are adequately supported."