Clinton’s Plan for Education to Aid Latinos

In a drive to boost Latinos’ performance in the classroom and reverse an extraordinarily high dropout rate, the Clinton administration will unveil a set of proposals today to strengthen schools that have large numbers of Latino students.

The White House’s Hispanic Education Action Plan will be sent to Capitol Hill as part of a $1.73-trillion budget, scheduled for release today, that would produce a fiscal surplus for the first time since 1969.

The bid to improve graduation rates for Latinos is one of a welter of programs contained in the budget, which calls for about $100 billion in new funds for child care, education and biomedical research.

The education plan for Latinos would devote $618 million in new funds to reading, mathematics, English instruction and other programs tailored especially for disadvantaged Latino students.

The initiative would specifically target some of its resources at migrant communities, including those concentrated in California and a handful of other states.

“America’s future prosperity depends on our ability to provide a sound education to all of our children,” Vice President Al Gore said in a statement Sunday. “The president’s Hispanic education initiative will offer Latino students a better chance to develop their full academic potential so they can contribute the full force of their talent to the success of America in the 21st century.”

Gore is scheduled to formally unveil the program at a ceremony today at the White House.

For weeks, President Clinton has been touting budgetary initiatives at White House events, in his State of the Union speech and during campaign-style visits to the nation’s heartland. Most of the programs that would benefit from budget hikes, such as child care and education, have broad political and popular support. Still, Republican lawmakers warned that all are likely to encounter opposition.

Administration officials said the fiscal 1999 budget blueprint, if adopted by Congress, would bring a projected surplus of $9.5 billion next year. While the initial figure is relatively modest, the White House projects that the accumulated surplus would grow to $219 billion over five years and mushroom to nearly $1 trillion over 10 years.

On Sunday, before the dense budget documents had even landed on the desks of congressional budgeteers, White House officials and Republican lawmakers began squaring off over the proposed plan.

Speaking on “Fox News Sunday,” Senate Budget Committee Chairman Pete V. Domenici (R-N.M.) called the impending debate “a classic battle” about the role of government in the economy.

White House Budget Director Franklin D. Raines defended the package, declaring that “we balanced the budget the old-fashioned way,” by cutting expenditures and raising revenues by boosting the economy.

GOP lawmakers took special aim at taxes, accusing the administration of levying its way to a surplus and launching programs that will create a bigger, more costly and more intrusive federal government.

White House officials acknowledge that the 1999 budget would offset some of the proposed new spending with $25 billion in new or increased taxes. Domenici, however, asserted the budget would hike taxes on businesses and smokers by $100 million next year alone.

“That will mean that taxes will be at the highest level in 50 years. In fact, they’re at the highest level since the Second World War right now,” Domenici said. “We want to cut taxes for the American people. This budget does nothing for working families in America.”

Clinton has spoken frequently about his desire to increase spending on education, with a focus on hiring teachers and combating problems faced by schools in areas of poverty. He is expected to request an increase of $29 billion, or about 14%, in the Department of Education’s budget for 1999.

In recent weeks, the president has focused on Latinos in particular, expressing concern about a dropout rate that exceeds that of other racial and ethnic groups. A study in December by the Education Department found that just 63% of Latino adults had completed high school, compared with 91.5% of whites and 83% of blacks.

At an appearance in South Texas last month, Clinton warned a largely Latino audience that quitting school amounts to “Russian roulette” in today’s global economy.

“We have to convince many of our students . . . especially in Latino communities, that what used to be a good thing to do, to drop out of school and go to work to help your family, can now in fact hurt your family and hurt your future,” the president said.

The Latino initiative would include $393 million in new spending to strengthen basic reading and math skills in a program that serves all disadvantaged students, not just Latinos. It would provide $69 million for programs aimed at helping disadvantaged students prepare for and complete college; $66 million for English instruction, both for teacher training and adult education; $60 million for education of migrants; and $30 million aimed at schools with high dropout rates.

The White House plans to release findings that the dropout rate for Latinos is 2.5 times the rate for blacks and 3.5 times the rate for white, non-Latinos. The situation is “far more serious” than statistics suggest, the report found, because Latinos “are a rapidly growing number of our nation’s students.”

Also headed for Capitol Hill today is the Interior Department’s list of proposed land acquisitions to be made with $328 million approved by Congress for 1998.

Among the 100 projects scattered across 35 states are several major purchases in Southern California, according to an administration official.

They include $4.6 million for the Gherini Ranch in the Channel Islands off Southern California, $3.4 million to protect key habitats for endangered and threatened species in San Diego National Wildlife Refuge from urban sprawl and $2 million to purchase land in the Santa Rosa Mountains.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

The Clinton Budget

Highlights of the budget President Clinton will propose today. The 1999 budget covers the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1. Unless otherwise noted, the figures are five-year totals.

Spending surpluses: Outlays for 1999 will total $1.73 trillion, with a projected surplus of $9.5 billion, the first in 30 years, followed by projected surpluses of $8.5 billion in 2000. $28.2 billion in 2001, $89.7 billion in 2002 and $82.8 billion in 2003.

Child care: Spend $21.3 billion to double the number of children getting child-care subsidies to 2 million, increase child-care tax credits for working families, provide tax credits for businesses supplying child care and boost block grants to states to support child-care programs.

Education: Provide $7.3 billion to help school districts hire 100,000 new teachers to reduce class size in grades 1-3. Tax incentives would be provided to support construction of schools.

Medicare: Expand the government’s massive health care program for the elderly to people younger than 65 by allowing those from 55 to 64 to buy into the program by paying monthly premiums of up to $400.

Poor: Give food stamps to about 800,000 legal immigrants who lost them under the 1996 welfare overhaul, at a cost of $2 billion, and enroll 3 million uninsured, eligible children in Medicaid, the health care program for the poor.

Taxes: Raise an additional $24 billion through elimination of a number of corporate tax breaks enjoyed by commercial banks, multinational companies and real estate investment trusts.