Congress Has No Mandate To Gut Education Funding

Members of Congress keep telling us they were elected with a mandate to “shake things up in Washington.” Maybe so. But the dangerous cuts they are proposing to our education system are creating a veritable earthquake - one whose aftershocks will be felt for generations.

Balancing the federal budget should be a top priority for this Congress. The question is how best to achieve that goal. Balancing the budget on the backs of America’s 50 million schoolchildren is not only mean-spirited but shortsighted.

Over the next seven years, Congress wants to cut $36 billion from the education and training budget. But what does that really mean?

It means taking away basic skills: Congress is proposing to reduce basic skills funding by more than $1 billion in 1996. This will cut off more than 1.1 million children from the extra teaching they need to develop basic reading, writing and math skills. One out of every six children now getting basic skills help will be cut adrift.

It means jeopardizing school safety: At a time when new national surveys show an increase in drug use by students and when an estimated 135,000 children bring guns to school every day, Congress proposes to cut the Safe and Drug-Free Schools Act. The proposed cut for 1996 alone is a whopping 60 percent. This dramatic reduction would deprive more than 39 million students of these services next year.

It means denying our children future opportunities: Congress is attacking students’ opportunities to attend college by proposing cuts in the Pell Grant program - cutting off grants to 360,000 students in 1996 alone. The budget proposals will also boost the cost of a college education for millions of students. Five million students will pay as much as $9,000 more for college loans.

Here in Washington, that translates into 2,006 fewer children in Head Start, 10,800 fewer students receiving help with basic skills, 301 out of 305 school districts losing funds for safe and drug-free schools, and 5,800 college students denied Pell Grants.

In the Spokane School District, that translates into 160 fewer children in Head Start, 864 fewer students receiving help with basic skills, the loss of funds for safe and drugfree schools, and 464 college students denied Pell Grants.

It is inconceivable that our elected officials could be so blind to the effects of chopping the educational budget in such a haphazard manner.

Yes, we must balance the federal budget, but we as a nation also have other long-term goals. Our focus on the economic future is meaningless if we do not also provide today’s younger generations with the skills and knowledge necessary to make that future worthwhile.

Poll after poll shows that education is the No. 1 issue facing our country. Overwhelming numbers of Americans want to see our education budget increased, not gutted. They want more students to go on to postsecondary education and to be healthy and ready to learn when they start school.

When asked how the federal government should spend money on research and development, 90 percent of those asked agreed that improving education so all kids will learn and be productive should be our top goal. Importantly, the respondents in this poll, conducted by Public Opinion Strategies in July 1995, were evenly divided between Republicans and Democrats.

Additionally, 76 percent of Americans oppose reducing federal funding for low-income school districts, 77 percent oppose discontinuing the summer jobs program for youths, and 65 percent oppose eliminating the National Service Corps, which gives young people money for college tuition in return for volunteer service. (Times Mirror Center for the People and the Press, conducted by Princeton Survey Research Associated, August 1995)

Clearly, education funding is one issue on which Congress is heading in the opposite direction from the American public. For a group swept into office because they tapped into the pulse of the electorate, these leaders are way off base.

The sudden destruction of an earthquake is terrifying. But, worse yet, is the devastation it leaves behind. The approaching debacle in education funding will leave rubble in its wake for years to come, driving the United States further behind our competitors and making it nearly impossible to catch up. xxxx