Date: 2007-06-27
Speaker: TOM DAVIS (republican)
Chamber: H
State: Virginia

Mr. Chairman. this is a very simple amendment. I think it is a winwin. This amendment will reduce the appropriation to the U.S. Office of Special Counsel by $1 million. but it redirects those funds to a far more deserving entity. District of Columbia students who wish to attend college. the D.C. College Access Act. I was the original author of this legislation in 1999. This legislation essentially allows students in the District of Columbia to attend outofstate universities and pay instate tuitions because the District of Columbia does not have a state university system. Since that time. what had once been a pipe dream for D.C. students. because college was so unaffordable to them. paying for private colleges and outofstate universities. has become a reality and is becoming part of the culture of the District. It has doubled the number of students in the District of Columbia that are now able to go to colleges. It has doubled that number. It is changing the culture. It is changing the aspirations of these students. This amendment. the $1 million that is added here. will allow an additional 200 District of Columbia students to take advantage of this program and go on to higher education. There will be no waiting lists. There will be no backups. They wont have to wait to see if the money is there. It will be there for them. If you want to change the culture of the city. we start with the education system. Mayor Fenty has started with a new system trying to revamp the public school system. But it doesnt do these students any good if they cant. at the same time. go on to higher education. The other thing this has done is it has kept people in the District of Columbia. Instead of having to move to Virginia or Maryland to attend universities. they can now live in the District and afford to send their kids on to college. Aspiring students who come from. in many cases. singleparent or noparent homes. can now work their way through colleges. community colleges and other state universities in the region. and be able to commute back and forth. This has been a winwin situation. Now. we take this money from the Office of the Special Counsel. This office was increased by about $800.000 this year over last years appropriations. We are bringing them basically to the level of appropriation they had last year. .H7321 It is a troubled office. In February. Tom Devine of the Government Accountability Project testified before our committee that the Office of Special Counsel has become a caricature and an object of contempt among the constituencies it supposedly services. It illegally gags its own employees. engages in ugly retaliation against its staff and is engaging in heavyhanded obstruction of justice tactics to intimidate its own employees from testifying in ongoing investigations of its activities. In April. Melanie Sloan. Executive Director of Citizens For Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. or CREW. said. "Having transformed OSC into a virtual black hole for legitimate complaints of retaliation. Bloch is decidedly not the right person to tackle issues of misconduct and illegality." More recently. we witnessed a Special Counsel who istrying to rehabilitate himself. But Beth Daley. the Director of the Project on Government Oversight. was quoted last month as saying. "It is hard to believe the Office of Special Counsel will be able to conduct a thorough investigation into the White House while the Special Counsel is under investigation himself." So I think this office can go back to the basic appropriation it had last year. This money can be better spent invested in the students of the District of Columbia as they aspire for higher education.* Mr. Chairman. I reserve the balance of my time.