Cutting federal education funding now, President Clinton said in a recent speech, would be like cutting the defense budget at the height of the Cold War. What he meant was that with the threat of armed conflict and totalitarianism in those days, slashing resources would have both weakened us and shown a lack of resolve. As it turned out, sustaining our defense effort was exactly what worked.
Today, our society depends even more on brainpower than on military might because the competition among nations is mainly economic. And economic strength today -- as well as the prospect for our democracy tomorrow -- requires a strong education system, one that sets high academic standards and provides equal opportunity for all students to succeed. Republicans, Democrats, and the public have been in agreement about this for at least 12 years, and where higher standards have taken hold, we are seeing results.
The new Republican majority in Congress is now breaking that bipartisan compact. In the House this month, members are working on legislation that will determine how much the government can spend for the 1996 fiscal year that begins October 1. These appropriations bills spell out in dollars and cents how the Republicans intend to reshape public priorities as they carry out their plan to balance the budget in an imprudently short seven years. And the 1996 numbers for education are disastrous.
After the election last fall, the Republicans indicated they would approach the budget-balancing task fair-mindedly. But in their budget blueprint, Republican leaders have targeted the 17 percent of the budget that goes to education and other discretionary domestic programs. From that small wedge, they plan to squeeze 42 percent of the $1.2 trillion in spending cuts they're after. Meanwhile, they will increase defense spending and give $245 billion in tax cuts mainly to wealthier individuals and corporations.
The American public agrees on the need to put brakes on federal spending. But polls show that Americans do not want Congress to fund tax cuts for the wealthy by gutting programs that help ordinary citizens make the most of their own lives. In education, this has meant supplementing the meager academic resources that states and school districts provide poor children; making schools safe and drug-free; working to raise academic standards; and putting a college education within reach of millions who could not afford the high cost without financial aid.
The House education bill slashes deeply into these commitments for next year. It cuts the Title I program for the most disadvantaged learners by $1.1 billion, or 17 percent. It zeroes out Goals 2000 (funded at $372 million this year), the bipartisan initiative of the governors that was adopted by both the Bush and Clinton Administrations to help states and school districts raise academic standards. It cuts $250 million (78 percent) from the related professional-development program that will assist teachers to teach to higher standards. And it lops off $266 million, or 60 percent, of the funding for the Safe and Drug-Free Schools program.
These are strategies that work. Moreover, they play an important part -- just as the commitment of resources did during the Cold War -- in sustaining the national effort to raise educational standards and student achievement. Even so, the Republican leadership is intent on eliminating the federal role altogether. Senate moderates fought off a proposal to eliminate the Education Department itself. The appropriations bill -- which takes a chunk out of virtually every department activity -- makes clear that the alternate plan is to bleed federal education programs to death.
If the bloodletting begins on schedule this fall, it won't be Congressional Republicans who immediately feel faint. It will be states and cities, which each year budget hundreds of millions in federal allocations for a wide variety of public purposes, including education. Here's a sampling of what the cuts will mean, according to the Education Department and the Council of Great City Schools. In Goals 2000, Safe and Drug-Free Schools, and Title I aid alone, Alabama will lose $33 million; California, $200 million; Florida, $74 million; Michigan, $73 million; New York, $149 million; Texas, $154 million. All told, the House cuts will cost New York City an estimated $118 million; Los Angeles, $57 million; Chicago, $41 million; Philadelphia, $24 million; and Dade County, Fla., $20 million. And it's not just big cities; virtually every community will be affected. Under pressure from these and other federal cuts, localities will have only two choices, both painful -- shrink services or raise taxes. In either case, it will be ordinary citizens who bear the brunt.
President Clinton, not Presidents Reagan or Bush, cut half a trillion dollars from the deficit in two years -- without causing citizens pain or upending the public interest in education as a vital national enterprise. The President is right again about holding the line on education. And now is the time for millions of Americans who also draw the line to let their representatives know that they won't tolerate mortgaging the nation's future just to balance the federal budget in time for a re-election campaign.