Copyright 2000 Star Tribune
Star Tribune
(Minneapolis, MN)
March 1, 2000, Wednesday, Metro Edition
SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 4A
LENGTH: 672 words
HEADLINE:
Funding for special ed becomes issue in tax plan;
Democrats and Republicans
continued their education wars, while Ventura and other governors asked Congress
to make good on a 1975 promise that has yet to be funded.
BYLINE: Rob Hotakainen; Staff Writer
DATELINE: Washington, D.C.
BODY:
It was payback time in the Senate Tuesday.
Last year, when Democrats supported President
Clinton in his bid to hire 100,000 teachers, Republicans proposed an amendment
to spend the money on special education instead. It irked Democrats, who found
themselves voting against the interests of disabled children.
On Tuesday, when Republicans pushed a
$1.3 billion tax-relief plan that would allow Americans to set
aside $2,000 a year in education savings accounts, Democrats
shot back. They suggested giving the money to schools to help fulfill a promise
that Congress made in 1975 to pay 40 percent of all special-education costs.
Seeking to preserve their tax breaks, it was the Republicans who voted against
disabled children this time.
As the education
wars were played out on Capitol Hill, Gov. Jesse Ventura and other governors met
with members of Congress to deliver a message: Get serious about the 1975
promise, an unfunded mandate that has cost the states billions of dollars.
It was the same message that Ventura and other
governors, who are in Washington this week for their annual meeting, gave to
President Clinton when they met with him Monday.
"We made that very clear to the president. . . .
Look, it's not sexy. It doesn't leave a legacy, but do what's right," Ventura
told reporters. "Because we'll hire our own teachers, we'll build our own
schools and, if the feds would do that, we'd have that ability."
For his part, Sen. Paul Wellstone, D-Minn., said
he was disappointed that the Senate was engaged in a "zero-sum" game.
"I just hate to see one important claim played
off against another. . . . With a flush economy and with a big surplus, I just
think that we ought to be making a massive investment . . . in education," he
said.
But other Democrats said the Senate will
need to make tough choices on education spending this year.
"We can't do everything," said Sen. Christopher
Dodd., D-Conn., who proposed scrapping the tax relief and steering the money
toward special education. He said that the federal government has never paid
more than 13 percent of the total costs of educating the disabled and that
another $15.7 billion would be required to fulfill the 40
percent promise.
"I don't know of a mayor in my
state that hasn't asked me to do something about this issue for the last 10
years," Dodd said.
But on a procedural vote, the
Senate killed Dodd's amendment, 54 to 44, after Sen. Paul Coverdell, R-Ga.,
accused proponents of trying to destroy the education savings accounts. Sen. Rod
Grams, R-Minn., voted with the majority, while Wellstone voted for the Dodd
measure.
Before the vote, Coverdell said
Democrats ignored the gap in special-education spending for years when they
controlled the Senate; he called it "an incongruity" that they were now so
focused on the issue.
Democratic senators said
many of the nation's governors had lobbied them to boost federal spending on
special education during private meetings Tuesday.
Speaking to reporters, Ventura said he would
like to see Congress "fund the whole doggone thing."
Ventura's plea drew a sympathetic response from
Rep. Gil Gutknecht, R-Minn.
"Before we open up
any new programs, let's at least fund the ones that we have," Gutknecht said
after meeting with Ventura. "For too long, we have shortchanged the states on
special-education funding."
While the Senate is
expected to continue debating the proposed spending accounts, a Senate committee
today will begin tackling a proposed reauthorization of the Elementary
and Secondary Education Act, the main federal law governing K-12
education.
In a conference call with reporters
on Tuesday, Wellstone said it will be "a fierce debate." He
said he intends to offer many amendments, including one that would limit the use
of high-stakes standardized tests.
_
Washington Bureau correspondent Sean Madigan contributed to this report.
LOAD-DATE: March 1, 2000
