Copyright 1999 The Houston Chronicle Publishing Company
The Houston Chronicle
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January 21, 1999, Thursday 3 STAR EDITION
SECTION: A; Pg. 26
LENGTH:
787 words
HEADLINE: Clinton can't resist tinkering with
education
BYLINE: DAVID S. BRODER; Broder, a Pulitzer
Prize-winning political reporter, writes a nationally syndicated column from
Washington, D.C.
BODY:
SO much was made of the fact
that President Clinton allowed no shadow of the impeachment trial to intrude on
his State of the Union address Tuesday night that few noticed there were really
two Bill Clintons speaking in the House chamber: the president looking to the
next century with a serious, constructive proposal for reforming Social
Security, and the former Arkansas governor who can't resist going back to tinker
with state education policies that were his preoccupation during the 1980s.
Education is a national concern - but a state and local responsibility.
When Clinton was in Little Rock and Education Secretary Richard Riley was
governor of South Carolina, they were in the forefront of the movement to
increase spending on schools and to raise standards of performance for teachers
and students.
The cause which Riley and Clinton and a handful of
Republican governors championed in the 1980s has been taken up with far greater
unanimity in the 1990s, as states have invested much of the proceeds of the long
economic boom in improving their schools.
It is perfectly understandable
that Clinton and Riley want to remain at the center of this movement. And
goodness knows, they have been ingenious in finding ways to try. In the first
term, they came up with Goals 2000, a packet of money states could use to help
finance and measure their own school improvement plans. In the second term, they
have proposed national school standards and tests and federal funds to build or
renovate classrooms and hire new teachers.
This year, their idea is to
use renewal of the biggest federal school program - the Elementary and
Secondary Education Act - as leverage to require states and local
communities to do the things the reform movement now regards as critical:
require new teachers to prove mastery of their subjects; enforce school
discipline; turn around or take over failing schools; and end the practice of
promoting students who have not completed the work of their current grade.
As Bruce Reed, a White House domestic policy architect, noted, "Many of
the states are already doing this." Which raises the question: Why impose a
layer of federal bureaucratic requirements on them? The answer, I suspect, is
that Clinton and Riley want to be involved - not just sitting on the sidelines.
But Rep. Bill Goodling, a Pennsylvania Republican and former teacher who
now heads the House Education and Workforce Committee, raised the same
objections that led him to sink the earlier plan for national standards and
tests. As several Republican governors argued Wednesday morning: The federal
government finances only 8 percent of education. It shouldn't be making those
who do the rest jump through Washington's hoops.
On Social Security, by
contrast, Clinton is dealing with an overriding federal responsibility -
providing a safety net for current and future retirees. Last year, he
orchestrated a serious, civil national dialogue on the burdens his baby-boom
generation will place on this most popular of all government programs. Now he
has followed with what appears to be a balanced, substantial proposal for
extending the life of the Social Security trust fund and improving its returns.
It is, as he acknowledged, the starting point of a negotiating process -
not a frozen design. Those on the extremes of the debate lost no time in finding
fault. Rep. Bill Archer, R-Houston, chairman of the House Ways and Means
Committee, said the prospect of having the government invest a small portion of
Social Security funds in the stock market was obnoxious to him - even if it were
done by an independent agency insulated from political controls.
"Government-controlled investment in markets is contrary to free enterprise," he
declared.
At the other end of the political spectrum, Rep. Dennis
Kucinich of Ohio, spokesman for a couple dozen liberal Democrats, said he
objected to the second part of Clinton's proposal, the creation of new
individual savings accounts, subsidized by the government for low- and
middle-income families, to supplement Social Security from investments that
could - at the individual's option - include stock market mutual funds. "He's
headed in the right direction," Kucinich said, "but I hate to see him take a
detour down Wall Street."
Clinton did not satisfy the hard-liners on
either side. But influential centrists on key committees - such as Democratic
Rep. Ben Cardin of Maryland and Republican Rep. Rob Portman of Ohio, both on
Ways and Means - welcomed the president's proposal.
Republicans who
argue it's more important to cut taxes 10 percent now than to preserve and
improve Social Security have a tough case to make. Maybe even tougher than
impeachment.
TYPE: Editorial Opinion
LOAD-DATE: December 2, 1999 
