l****z 发帖数: 29846 | 1 Posted on April 3, 2012 at 4:04pm by Meredith
President Barack Obama’s near-term spending proposal is a budgetary bonanza
. Take for instance his proposal to increase spending for the Department of
Education by $1.78 billion over last year’s spending level, bringing the
total agency funding to a staggering $69.8 billion.
Fun fact: If enacted, this spending level would mean that in one term,
President Obama has spent almost as much on education as President George W.
Bush spent in two terms — this is especially startling considering the
fact that Bush nearly doubled the size of the Department of Ed during his
time in office.
And according to the Heritage Foundation’s Lindsey Burke, the president’s
increased spending proposal is just the tip of the iceberg:
The President’s “blueprint” contains $60 billion in new spending
proposals that are supplemental to his FY 2012 budget and FY 2013 budget
request. The blueprint spending includes $25 billion in federal funding to
“keep educators in the classroom,” $5 billion in federal funding to
provide additional teachers compensation, and $30 billion in federal funding
for school construction.
In his testimony about the budget before the House Education and the
Workforce Committee last Wednesday, Education Secretary Arne Duncan stated
that it is “unconscionable for us to ask a generation of students to pay
the price for adult political dysfunction.”
What is unconscionable is for American taxpayers to keep pouring
billions into more than 150 federal education programs that are failing
children. Increasing spending on the status quo won’t improve outcomes.
Instead, policymakers should free states to spend dollars on the education
priorities that they believe would best meet student needs. |
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