Senate OKs Broad GOP Education Overhaul

Openly defying a veto threat, the Senate passed sweeping legislation Thursday that would give parents a new tax break for school expenses and states vast new authority to decide how to spend federal education money. It also would permanently block President Clinton’s plan to offer national math and science tests.

Taken in its entirety, the bill amounts to the broadest effort yet by Republicans to push federal education policy in a new direction: diffusing power further, giving parents a wider range of educational choices and allowing federal resources to flow more freely to private schools. Clinton has promised a veto.

“This education bill is a revolutionary education bill,” said Sen. Pete V. Domenici (R-N.M.). “It is not nibbling around the edges.”

The vote was 56 to 43, with only five Democrats joining 51 Republicans in supporting the bill. Both California senators, Democrats Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer, voted against the measure.

Foes denounced the bill as a repudiation of decades of bipartisan federal policy toward elementary and secondary education. That policy has focused almost exclusively on supporting public schools.

“This is an incredible departure from the public policy we have built for a generation,” said Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.).

The bill, which started out as a GOP proposal to let parents set up special tax-sheltered savings accounts for education expenses, included tuition for private and parochial elementary and secondary schools. Even that limited proposal was heavily criticized by the White House as an empty gesture that would do little but siphon money away from public school aid and into the pockets of private school families that do not need assistance.

As the Senate revised the measure this week, it has been rendered even more unpalatable to Clinton--and even to some of the handful of Democratic supporters of the savings account measure--with the addition of amendments blocking his testing initiative and allowing states to accept federal education aid as block grants. That means few strings would be attached on how the states could spend the money.

Feinstein, for example, initially had supported the savings account bill--indeed, was prepared to vote to override a Clinton veto--but voted against the revised legislation Thursday because of the block grant and testing amendments.

Clinton reiterated his veto threat after the Senate vote. “Instead of working to strengthen public education, the [Senate] bill returns us to the days when Republicans waged a campaign to eliminate the Department of Education. As I have said before, if this bill reaches my desk, I will veto it because it weakens our commitment to making America’s schools the best they can be in the 21st century.”

Earlier this week, the Senate rejected--largely along party lines--Clinton’s own education proposals, including aid for school construction and teacher recruitment.

The partisan tenor of debate suggested that, even though Democrats and Republicans have made education a priority, both sides seem more interested in drawing distinctions between their parties in an election year than in producing a compromise addressing one of the nation’s most pressing concerns.

The House has passed a savings account bill but without the controversial block grant and testing amendments. Traditionally, such differences are worked out in a House-Senate conference committee before the measure can be sent to the White House. However, House GOP leaders are considering a procedural move to hasten a confrontation with Clinton. They may simply have the House pass the Senate version of the education bill--block grants, testing ban and all.

“Let the president veto it. We’ll move on and both parties will use the thing for political purposes,” said one senior House Republican aide.

Some lawmakers--including the handful of Senate Democrats who support the savings account idea--cling to the hope that a compromise can be reached. They envision a bipartisan package that links the savings account measure to such administration education initiatives as aid for school construction and teacher recruitment while dropping the contentious provisions on block grants and testing.

“That’s the way to have the result of all this debate be more than noise and issues to carry into the campaign,” said Sen. Robert Torricelli of New Jersey, a Clinton ally who has been the leading Democratic advocate of savings accounts. He also was among the five Democrats voting for the expanded bill.

At the starting point of the bill’s debate was the proposal, sponsored by Sen. Paul Coverdell (R-Ga.), to let families save up to $2,000 in a special education savings account. Interest could accrue tax-free, so long as withdrawals were used for education expenses, which could include tuition at private and parochial schools. Parents of public school children also could benefit by using their savings for other education expenses, such as tutors, computers or school uniforms. Individual taxpayers earning more than $110,000 a year and joint filers above $160,000 would not qualify.

The proposal’s estimated cost is $1.6 billion over 10 years.

Proponents said that it would encourage middle-income families to save for education costs and give them some help if they want to escape bad public schools. Opponents said that the measure would divert scarce federal resources from public to private education, all for the sake of a tax break that would have relatively little effect on those who benefit.

A more controversial change was tacked on as an amendment Wednesday when the Senate approved, 50 to 49, the block grant proposal by Sen. Slade Gorton (R-Wash.). The amendment would revamp 22 federal education programs, including aid for bilingual education, grants for anti-drug efforts and other aid to elementary and secondary schools that add up to about $10 billion--one-third of the Education Department’s budget.

Gorton’s proposal gives states three options: receive federal money through existing programs, receive an equal sum as a block grant to the state to use virtually as it wishes or have the money channeled directly to local school districts with minimal guidelines on how it could be spent.

Proponents said that the measure would give state and local officials more flexibility to decide how to allocate federal funds to meet the needs of their schools and students.

But opponents said that block grants would undercut programs designed to meet national needs that state and local officials might not choose to pursue on their own.

In another slap at the White House, the Senate on Wednesday adopted an amendment by Sen. John Ashcroft (R-Mo.) to block Clinton’s proposal to develop voluntary national tests of reading for fourth-graders and math for eighth-graders.

Clinton and Congress fought bitterly over the testing initiative last year and adopted a compromise that called for a one-year delay in funding for the tests and a study of the issue.

Ashcroft’s amendment, approved 52 to 47, would make the ban on funding permanent unless Congress passes legislation expressly authorizing the testing.