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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Kenneth E. Phillipps who wrote (523252)	1/13/2004 8:51:24 AM
From: D.Austin	Respond to of 769669

You may be partially right Kenneth,I will defend balance though. And balance is not where we are headed. Politicians believe that deficits don't matter.

To: Kenneth E. Phillipps who wrote (523252)	1/13/2004 8:58:49 AM
From: tonto	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769669

There is no party of fiscal responsibility.

To: Kenneth E. Phillipps who wrote (523252)	1/13/2004 9:08:48 AM
From: JakeStraw	Respond to of 769669

Nice biased generalization Kenneth... Very pathetic how much time you waste spinning your political agenda... Maybe someday you'll wake up and realize you're just wasting your time...

To: Kenneth E. Phillipps who wrote (523252)	1/13/2004 9:15:07 AM
From: JakeStraw	Respond to of 769669

Attacks on Education Law Leave Democrats in a Bind By KATE ZERNIKE Published: January 12, 2004 ever mind that most of the Democratic presidential candidates voted two years ago for a bill that Republicans and Democrats alike hailed as the most significant federal education legislation in four decades. Listening to them recently has made it easy to forget. As President Bush toured the country last week promoting the second anniversary of the No Child Left Behind Act, Senator John Edwards declared, "We need to fix it and we need to change it and we need to fund it." Senator John Kerry derided its heavy focus on test scores. Representative Richard A. Gephardt criticized it for placing too many federal requirements on local schools. Gen. Wesley K. Clark called it "a failure," and Howard Dean, the former governor of Vermont, said the law was "making American education worse, not better." The debate over education in this year's campaign has in many ways resulted in a strange role reversal. Republicans who for years argued that the federal Department of Education should be abolished are championing legislation that imposes a strict testing regimen and penalizes school districts for failure. Democrats, traditionally associated with federal programs and mandates, are arguing for more state and local freedom. "This is simply federal bureaucracy run amok," Dr. Dean said last week. The Democrats have long considered education their issue, and those the legislation aims to help — black and Hispanic families with children in failing urban schools — their constituency. But in a departure from Republican tradition, President Bush used education in 2000 to help define himself as a "compassionate conservative." The education law was one of the first he pushed through Congress, and he worked with Democrats to do so. Though some groups close to Democrats, like teachers' unions, have fundamental problems with the legislation, many Democrats say the party abandons the law at its peril, The centrist Democratic Leadership Council last week warned that backing away from the act was conceding leadership on education to Mr. Bush. "It is wrong to subordinate Democratic principles to a fanatical determination to oppose Bush 100 percent of the time," it said in a statement, "even on those rare occasions when he moves in the right direction, however fecklessly." The candidates have tried to meet this challenge by arguing that the law needs to be changed and financed better, not repealed. But many Democrats say they have fallen short in explaining how to do that. "When you start to hear national Democrats talking as if they are keynote speakers at the Federalist Society, that should be a cause for concern," said Andrew J. Rotherham, director of education policy for the Progressive Policy Institute, referring to a conservative legal group. "It's a tightrope," added Mr. Rotherham, who was a special assistant to the president for domestic policy in the Clinton White House. "But there are plenty of ways to walk it. Just railing against it, being angry, is not only counterproductive in the short term politically, but counterproductive to the values Democrats hold, which is equity for poor and minority kids." Until the last few weeks, the Democratic candidates have criticized the education law mainly on the grounds that the budgets from the Bush administration and the Republican-controlled Congress have not provided as much money as promised in the act. Using Congressional figures, the Kerry, Gephardt, Lieberman and Dean campaigns all say there is close to an $8 billion gap this year between what was promised and what was appropriated. But more recently, the attacks have sharpened to focus on the law's requirements for testing, standards and achievement. The criticism reflects complaints from teachers' unions, but also groups that supported the law. The legislation requires all schools to make adequate yearly progress on standardized tests, with sanctions for those that do not improve. But states can set their own standards for passing the tests. nytimes.com