New York Times and Bush Budget

Posted by admin on 02.05.2008 at 9:55 am

The New York Times reports that in Bush’s latest budget:

The White House wants to eliminate spending for more than a dozen education programs, including Even Start, which promotes family literacy; grants to the states for classroom technology; Supplemental Education Opportunity Grants, for needy undergraduates; and a scholarship program named for the chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, Robert C. Byrd, Democrat of West Virginia.

But Margaret Spellings, the secretary of education, said Friday that the president would request $1 billion for the Reading First program, to teach poor children to read by the third grade. Congress cut the program to $393 million this year after federal investigators found conflicts of interest, cronyism and bias in the awarding of grants.

Ms. Spellings said she hoped lawmakers would “see the error of their ways.”

Obviously it’s hard to complain about $1 billion for the Reading First program, so kudos for that, White House (I still find this to be a strange–if effective– apostrophe/synecdoche) but eliminating spending for Even Start and grants for undergrads is a lamentable decision, at best.

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