[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 29 (Wednesday, March 6, 1996)]
[House]
[Pages H1721-H1722]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




   WE MUST SHIFT EDUCATION DECISIONS FROM WASHINGTON TO LOCAL SCHOOL 
                                 BOARDS

  (Mr. HUTCHINSON asked and was given permission to address the House 
for 1 minute.)
  Mr. HUTCHINSON. Mr. Speaker, President Clinton in his recent State of 
the Union Address proposed one more Federal education program, this one 
to provide merit-based scholarships to the top 5 percent of high school 
graduates, but the fact is there are already 47 scholarship and 
fellowship programs operated by the Federal Government, and this 
highlights a point made by the gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. 
Goodling] at a press conference last week. He pointed out that our 
committee has discovered over 760 Federal education programs spanning 
39 different agencies and departments. Many of these programs were 
designed to meet exactly the same goals, they overlap, they duplicate, 
and each has its own

[[Page H1722]]

application process and its own set of regulations.
  So why does President Clinton propose one more education program, 
program 761? Is it to improve the education of our children or merely 
to make us feel like we are educating our children by spending more 
money on more programs?
  What we must do is shift education decisions from Washington 
bureaucrats to parents and local school boards. We can and we must do 
better.

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