Rather Than Act to Help Gulf Coast Schools, Republican Leaders Ignore Democratic Process to Push Misguided Voucher Plan
Rather Than Act to Help Gulf Coast Schools, Republican Leaders Ignore Democratic Process to Push Misguided Voucher Plan
Friday, October 28, 2005
WASHINGTON, DC -- Republican leaders on the House Education and the Workforce Committee plan to include a controversial school voucher plan as part of a budget reconciliation package they will send to the House Budget Committee - even though a bipartisan majority of the committee rejected the voucher plan.
In response to this decision, Representative George Miller (D-CA), the senior Democrat on the House Education and the Workforce Committee, issued this statement today:
"It is wrong for Republican leaders to ignore the will of the majority of members of the committee so that they can achieve an ill-conceived, and long-held, ideological goal. The Republican legislation to create a voucher program for the Gulf Coast would not deliver help to the schools that need it most, and that is why both Democrats and Republicans voted against it yesterday.
"For two months now, Gulf Coast students and families have waited in vain for assistance from this Congress. Gulf Coast schools need help immediately to recover from the Hurricanes, and Democrats have been ready to work with Republicans to craft a commonsense and bipartisan plan for delivering aid quickly to schools and schoolchildren that need help. Apparently Republican leaders prefer advancing their own ideological agenda over helping schools and schoolchildren in the Gulf Coast, and that's why they acted in such an undemocratic fashion today."
Representative Lynn Woolsey (D-CA), the senior Democrat on the Subcommittee on Education Reform, issued this statement today:
"Once again, we can see that the Republican Majority's response to Hurricanes Katrina and Rita is more about ideology than recovery. The Majority's action is an end-run around the bipartisan vote that defeated its unnecessary, unworkable, and divisive private school voucher proposal."
Four Republicans joined every Democrat on the committee to reject the voucher plan yesterday by a vote of 21 to 26.
http://www.house.gov/apps/list/press/ed31_democrats/rel102805.html