Ever fall a little behind on your bills? The vast majority of Americans have been there at one time or another. The vast majority also eventually work themselves out of it, catch up with their obligations, and move on.

What would you call a person that fell behind, owing you a sizable chunk of money, who then came into a small fortune but still refused to pay you back? And while they still owed you, they made plans to buy a new bass boat and a motorhome? You would probably call him Bubba.

The federal government has owed your local school board millions of dollars since 1975, when the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) went into effect. IDEA requires public schools to fully accommodate children with disabilities. That's good, but also very expensive. So IDEA also requires the federal government to pay 40% of the cost of doing so.

The problem is that the federal government has never paid their full portion of the bill, begging off every year because they were short on cash as a result of the perennial budget deficit. To refresh your memory, the federal government had been in the red every since Richard Nixon left office, until the new Congress straightened things out in 1997.

Now we have a budget surplus for the second year in a row. According to the President, we have $79 billion extra this year. So what does the President's new budget call for? $5 billion in new federal education programs, and not one nickel extra to meet the existing obligations to our local schools under IDEA. That leaves local school boards with an unpaid IDEA bill for $15 billion!

In the 10th District, local schools are past due from just 1995 for over $16 million that the federal government is supposed to fund for IDEA. Here's where the federal government currently stands with it's accounts:

School District	$Owed	$Received	$Past Due
Baldwin	1,218,528	237,808	980,700
Burke	597,284	116,566	480,700
Butts	518,559	101,202	417,400
Columbia	2,074,236	404,808	1,669,400
Elbert	727,352	141,950	585,400
Emanuel	924,165	180,360	743,800
Glascock	114,665	22,378	92,300
Greene	609,264	118,904	490,400
Hancock	342,283	66,800	275,500
Jasper	409,028	79,826	329,200
Jefferson	758,157	147,962	610,200
Johnson	342,283	66,800	275,500
Jones	605,841	118,236	487,600
Laurens	1,404,878	274,176	1,130,700
Lincoln	542,519	105,878	436,600
McDuffie	643,492	125,584	517,900
Oglethorpe	545,942	106,546	439,400
Putnam	477,485	93,186	384,300
Richmond	6,027,156	1,176,260	4,850,900
Taliaferro	23,960	4,676	19,300
Warren	369,666	72,144	297,600
Washington	510,002	99,532	410,500
Wilkes	523,693	102,204	421,500
Wilkinson	374,800	73,146	301,700
Total 10th District	$20,685,240	$4,036,932	$16,648,500

If you ever wondered why your property taxes keep climbing, here's a prime reason.

The federal government needs to start keeping its promises, and paying its past due bills. Until we meet our old commitments, we can't declare there to be a surplus. If we promised to provide 40 percent of the funding for IDEA, we need to provide 40 percent. That is why I have sponsored amendments to the Education Appropriations bill to increase funding for IDEA by reducing funding from other less necessary programs.

Nobody in their right mind would disagree that smaller class size through hiring new teachers is a good thing. No decent person would stand in the way of repairing or replacing decrepit old school buildings and facilities.

But the truth of the matter is that if the federal government paid our local school boards their past due bills, our local schools would have three times more funds to do both jobs, without having to rely on Clinton's new programs and regulations. And that brings up what the new programs are really all about - more federal control over local government, at the expense, not the improvement of our children's education. Bubba - pay your past due bills before you buy the bass boat.