Date: 2011-02-16
Speaker: GEORGE MILLER (democrat)
Chamber: H
State: California

Mr. Chairman. I strongly oppose this amendment. The suggestion has been made by the chairman of my committee that somehow if you vote for this amendment youre increasing the governments commitment to fully fund IDEA. No youre not. Youre simply restoring the cut that the Republican caucus already made a decision about. and that was to cut $558 million. That would be admirable if you restored the cut. But when you decide therefore to restore the cut. youre going to now have to make additional cuts. and those additional cuts will come out of the most difficult. hardpressed failing schools in our country. many with increased populations of children with disabilities. Those will be the schools that we will target. We will target those schools in the poorest neighborhoods with the poorest records where now. for the first time we have a proposal made. carried out by the Governors. by the local school districts to turn those schools around and to provide the quality education that those children are entitled to so they can take advantage of the opportunities that America presents. But now money for those schools is going to be taken away on the theory that somehow you are doing a favor for students with disabilities. Dont do them such a favor. I dont think they would appreciate that you are taking the money from their poorest neighbors. And then. on top of that. you are going to take the funds that we are speaking to. And you have all given the speeches. you have all told people. the most important thing outside of the family is the teacher. Well. this is the funding by which we have prepared teachers to be special education teachers. to be title I teachers. to teach math. to teach science. And now were going to take that money in the name of somehow that this is a restorative amendment that will be good for IDEA. Let us understand something. When we were doing No Child Left Behind. we circulated a petition signed by Republicans and Democrats. We had over 300 people sign that and said lets go for full funding. When we offered that amendment in the conference committee. the Republican Members voted it down. You signed the petition. You just didnt have the courage to stand up and put the funding into play. and you have been screwing around with this program ever since. You have tried to use funding for IDEA to batter some other portion of the education community. Little incremental parts were offered year after year. but it always came out of the hide of the less fortunate. You ought to stop it. You ought to stop it. Poor children need access to highquality education and students with disabilities need access to highquality education. The kind of barbaric attitude that is being carried out here in terms of playing these two populations off against one another is simply outrageous. Its unfair to the students with disabilities because it is being done in their name. and we know how desperate they and their families are for education and for the resources to carry out that education. And in their name. we are stripping the resources from some of the poorest children. and also some of the poorest children with disabilities were stripping the resources for them. That doesnt sound like a winwin. That doesnt sound like a plus for disabilities. I have been at this a long time. I had the honor of writing this legislation with my colleagues back in 1975. 1976. and its an honor and I have defended it my whole life and its changed peoples lives. And the nicest thing that has ever been said to me in public life is when a parent says. But for that law. my child would have never had an education. But for that law. But I dont think they would have thought that we are now trading their childs education for somebody to deny another student an education. Thats not the game that they wanted to play.