President Stuffs More Into Education's Maw

The Wall Street Journal

04/19/01

In response to your April 10 editorial "Billions for Failure":

While I cheer your call for schools to have incentives to use their resources effectively and to guard against waste and abuse, I remain alarmed that the Department of Education lacks similar incentives for productivity, and will likely continue to lack them under whatever budget plan is passed by Congress and signed by President Bush.

The Education Department admitted to Congress two weeks ago that $450 million has gone missing in audits over the past three years.  Such shoddy bookkeeping is not new, but part of a Clinton administration-long pattern. Yet the "solution" proposed by the Bush administration is the same as that you decry: more spending on education. The President has proposed annual increases in the department's budget averaging 7.4% over the next five years. In our recent study we found that this is more than the average yearly increase in Education's budget over the past 22 years, even including the profligate spending of President Clinton and the GOP Congress during the past four years.

If that is President Bush's opening bid, it is no wonder congressional Democrat's and RINOs (Republicans In Name Only) are bleating for ever-higher education spending. My own preferred policy would reflect the words of a teacher we recently interviewed. f schools are going to be held accountable," she said, "maybe the Education Department should be to."

Gregory Fossedal

Chairman

Alexis de Tocqueville Institution

Arlington, VA