KENNEDY: A HUGE GAP EXISTS BETWEEN WORDS AND DEEDS WHEN IT COMES TO PRESIDENT BUSH’S COMPETITIVENESS AGENDA Senator Kennedy Responds to President Bush’s Speech in New Mexico Today

Washington, D.C.: As President Bush visits Albuquerque, New Mexico to tout his education initiatives, Senator Kennedy, the leading Democrat on the Senate Education, Health and Labor Committee, points to his education track record and questions his credibility. Senator Kennedy gave President Bush the benefit of the doubt and worked with him on No Child Left Behind, only to have the White House break their promise to America’s children by underfunding it by $40 billion. Now, President Bush is pledging to strengthen our global competitiveness --a goal Senator Kennedy very much supports – yet the President’s record shows consistent cuts to job training, research and development, student aid, and math and science training. For example, about 75,000 students in New Mexico’s public K-12 schools live in poverty, yet President Bush’s 2006 budget left behind over 26,000 disadvantaged children, denying them the Title I services they were promised and denying 14,000 children the after-school services they qualify for. Senator Kennedy issued the following statement and below are fact sheets on the President’s record:“When it comes to President Bush’s education initiatives, it isn’t just a day late and a dollar short – its five years late and 50 billion dollars short. He has shortchanged our competitiveness, shortchanged our opportunity and shortchanged our future. Sadly, there is a huge gap between the President’s words and deeds and it is harming our progress. I would give the President’s education proposals a B- on ideas, but an F on follow through, an F on funding and an F on building a foundation for our future. I hope that this year will be different, but the record is not reassuring. Time and again, our efforts to meet the challenges on education have been blocked by the Administration and the Republican leadership. Last year, I offered an amendment to the President’s budget in the Senate that would have added over $5 billion for education. This amendment would have increased the Pell grant to $4500, increased funding for 57,000 math and science teachers in high-poverty schools, and increased funding for job training programs and other education priorities. This passed with bipartisan support, but in Conference, the Administration and the Republican leadership dropped every penny. In the budget reconciliation bill, we again secured bipartisan support in the Senate to provide $6 billion over 5 years for increases in the Pell grant. And again in a backroom deal between the Administration and Republican leadership, that funding was dropped. To make this country more competitive, I agree with the President that we must increase our focus on math and science education, and I welcome his interest. But it takes more than State of the Union rhetoric to meet this challenge, and that’s where he falls short time and again. In his past two budgets, he called for absurd reductions in funding for math and science education programs at the National Science Foundation. Last year he eliminated funding to support technology in the classroom. Unfortunately, his Administration continues to be the Administration of broken promises and nowhere is that truer than in education, where his No Child Left Behind Act has been starved for funds since he signed it into law in 2002. The President’s fifth State of the Union Address was tacked to his fifth year in office: full of emptypromises, a growing credibility gap, and a failure to acknowledge that without restoring honesty in government and ending the culture of corruption, the special interests will prevail over those of the American people.”