Copyright 1999 P.G. Publishing Co.
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Post-Gazette
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January 21, 1999, Thursday, SOONER EDITION
SECTION: EDITORIAL, Pg. A-15, PERSPECTIVES
LENGTH: 783 words
HEADLINE:
TALE OF TWO CLINTONS;
TEACHER IN CHIEF WANTS TO SAVE SOCIAL SECURITY
BYLINE: DAVID S. BRODER
DATELINE: WASHINGTON
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, the Republican 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 and Republican Rep. Rob Portman, 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.
LOAD-DATE: January 22, 1999 
