Nationalizing Education. This vote was on a measure that would allocate $1.4 billion in the pending Labor/HHS/Education appropriations bill toward President Clinton’s latest socialist fancy: Hiring 100,000 teachers for local school districts from the federal till. The sickening part of the congressional debate was that both parties endorsed the erroneous notion that federal funding of education is both constitutional and a good thing, as if federal funds for education appear miraculously like manna from Heaven without first having been taken from American citizens by confiscatory taxation.
The Senate tabled (killed) the measure, an amendment to S. 1650, on September 29, 1999 by a vote of 54-44 (Roll Call 298). We have assigned pluses to the yeas.