School Spending Plans Signal GOP Reversal

Congressional Republicans--the folks who brought you plans to abolish the Department of Education, slash school aid and provide vouchers to send children to private schools--are singing a very different tune as they try to retool a legislative agenda that has cost them politically.

A top Senate GOP budget writer is proposing a 40% increase in the education budget. House GOP leaders are calling for new federal subsidies for school construction. Hardly a peep has been heard about vouchers. And the first education bill Republicans are bringing up this year--a measure to give states and schools more flexibility in using federal education aid--is one that enjoys broad bipartisan support.

With this shift in emphasis, the GOP is moving to broaden its appeal to voters who say they care more about the education of their children than about any other issue.

“We are trying to say we are committed to improving public schools, and we need to be more forceful in how we say that,” said John Feehery, spokesman for House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.). “People got the impression we are not for public schools.”

But Democrats are not about to make it easy for Republicans to rehabilitate their image. When the bill to loosen controls on federal aid comes before the Senate this week, Democrats plan to underscore the differences between the parties. They will introduce an amendment to authorize more funding for President Clinton’s plan to reduce class size by hiring 100,000 more teachers over a seven-year period.

Clinton pressed further by planning to send a letter to Senate leaders today that urges Congress to authorize $11.4 billion for the program.

Republicans see the Democrats’ moves as an effort to score political points, despite Democrats’ claims that they want to cooperate to produce legislation.

“Let’s see where the monkey-wrench brigade takes us,” said John Czwartacki, spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.). “It’s a real test of sincerity for people who talk of bipartisanship.”

The aid flexibility bill allows states to grant schools waivers from certain regulations on the use of federal funds if they can show that the rules interfere with plans for education reform. The bill extends a pilot program that has been available to 12 states since 1994. Under the pilot program, Texas has granted school districts more latitude in spending teacher training funds, allowing the money to be channeled to schools the state determines need it the most, for example.

The bill enjoys broad bipartisan backing, as well as strong support from the nation’s governors.

That much is simple. But Democrats are spoiling for a fight on the class-size issue. Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) will offer an amendment to authorize the 100,000 teacher initiative for six more years. Congress last year provided about $1 billion to begin the effort. An additional $11 billion is needed to fully implement the program over the next six years.

Under Murray’s amendment, California could get about $158 million in 2000, or enough to hire 4,386 teachers.

Czwartacki said Republicans would rather keep the aid flexibility bill clean of controversy in order to speed its delivery to Clinton, who has said he will sign it. Although many Republicans supported the first installment of the program last year, it was part of a large budget bill. The Murray amendment is opposed even by Sen. James M. Jeffords (R-Vt.), a moderate and longtime advocate of increased education spending.

On another front, Senate Budget Committee Chairman Pete V. Domenici (R-N.M.) has signaled that Republicans may be far more free-spending on education this year. He is circulating a draft budget proposal that calls for increasing the federal education budget by 40% over the next five years.

But Domenici wants the spending hike linked to a major change in the way education aid is allocated. “We’re going to put some real money where our rhetoric has been,” Domenici said. “But we will recommend that the money should be spent in a totally new approach.”

Domenici and other Republicans in Congress increasingly have argued in favor of converting federal aid into block grants to give states more latitude in spending the money.

But Democrats and Clinton vigorously oppose block grants, saying they would make it harder for the federal government to make schools answerable for how they perform.

Still, the effect of Domenici’s proposal may be to shift the focus of debate. It sets the parties at odds over how to spend federal education aid, not over how much to spend.

That had been the focus of conflict when Republicans first came to power in Congress in 1995 and called for abolishing the Department of Education and making deep cuts in federal education spending. Those ideas fell flat.

In the last Congress, the GOP pushed bills to provide vouchers to help pay tuition for children in private schools, including a pilot project in the District of Columbia, and other legislation to provide tax breaks for education expenses and savings--all of which were vetoed or otherwise opposed by Clinton.

In a clear sign of this year’s more conciliatory agenda, the first education bill offered by House GOP leaders includes an aid flexibility provision that mirrors the plan being pushed in the Senate. Also in the bill is a proposal for tax credits for school construction bonds.

Last year, by contrast, many Republicans vigorously opposed Clinton’s school construction proposal as an unwarranted intrusion of the federal government into a function better carried out by state and local officials.

“It’s something Republicans frankly have opposed in the past that they have come around to,” said Jay Diskey, a spokesman for Republicans on the House Education and the Workforce Committee. “A lot of them saw the issue was effectively used against them last fall” in the congressional election campaign, he said.

In fact, the GOP school construction plan was a little-noticed provision of a tax bill last year that passed the House but died in the Senate. This year, the GOP leadership promises a stronger push on behalf of the plan. Ways and Means Chairman Bill Archer (R-Texas) already has announced that it will be part of the tax cut bill he expects to draft later this year.

Clinton’s plan, for which he is lobbying again, calls for tax breaks to subsidize more than $20 billion in bonds to finance school repair and construction, with the subsidies aimed at the least affluent school districts, especially those in big cities such as Los Angeles. Archer’s proposal does not cost as much and it would make the subsidies more broadly available to suburban and rural districts.

Diskey said that school vouchers have fallen from the top of the GOP’s priority list in the face of unforgiving political realities. Clinton vetoed the District of Columbia pilot project in the last Congress, and a broader voucher bill could not even clear the House.

With the Republican majority in the new House reduced to a six-vote margin, Diskey said, “there’s a realization that . . . it would be very difficult” to pursue the voucher issue.

Opportunities still loom for Clinton and Republicans to spar over education. One is expected when Congress has to rewrite and reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, the cornerstone of federal aid to schools. Clinton has proposed new requirements for school districts that receive federal aid, including steps to halt social promotion of students and to require that teachers pass performance exams.

Republicans say they support Clinton’s goals but want to achieve them by less intrusive incentives that give states more latitude in deciding how to comply.

“We can tell the president that we want accountability, quality teaching and a ban on social promotion, our way,” said Rep. William F. Goodling (R-Pa.), chairman of the Education Committee.

“His way is micromanagement from Washington. Our way should be a new series of incentives for the states to build greater accountability systems and higher standards for teachers.”