Word: bill
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...March 1867, James A. Garfield, then a Congressman from Ohio, introduced a bill in the House of Representatives to create a United States Department of Education--an organ without Cabinet-level status. For the next 110 years and more, proposals to establish such a department have burst upon Congress sporadically. From 1908 to 1951, more than 50 pieces of legislation seeking to establish an education department floated through the Russell, Longworth and Rayburn Congressional office buildings; however, none survived beyond the committee stage. Legislation introduced in the 95th Congress met a similar fate. Meanwhile, education has become an orphan child...
...overwhelming 72-21 margin. In the House, the legislation leaped over its biggest obstacle last month, when it squeaked by the House Government Operations Committee on a 21-20 vote. Parker Cottington, spokesman for Harvard's Office of Government and Community Relations, which has gone on record against the bill, says the vote in the committee "may have been the ballgame. The general mood in Congress seems to be more positive this year," he adds...
Essentially, the legislation would consolidate more than 300 Federal education programs administered by approximately 40 agencies into one unit with Cabinet-level jurisdiction and power. Many of the controversial parts of the bill--portions which advocate Department of Education control over Head Start, child nutrition and American Indian education programs, for example--were eliminated from this year's version. Alfred Sumberg, executive director of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) says the legislation is "not watered down, but realistic in terms of what's possible." Nevertheless, lobbying on the bills has been intense and a great deal of money...
...political payment on a 1976 promise and a down payment on the 1980 election," says Bruce Wood of the House Subcommittee on Education and Labor." The Department of Education represents the spoils of interest group politics." Rep. Shirley Chisholm (D-N.Y.) observes that the National Education Association--the bill's hardest pushing and most important lobby--never endorsed a presidential candidate until Carter promised he would create a Department of Education. Rep. John N. Erlenborn (R-Ill.) is less kind. "H.R. 13778 is a political payoff in every sense of the word," he told his colleagues, adding...
Many people prefer a grander view, however; they see the bill as an indicator of the government's outlook on education. Paul N. Ylvisaker, dean of the Graduate School of Education, says the prevailing attitudes are being shaped by people who no longer have children in school. "The parents of those in school are in the minority," says Ylvisaker, adding that the national feeling towards education is unfavorable. Current government spending problems and reordering of national priorities threaten, as one longtime observer puts it, "to once again leave education out in the cold." The battle over a Cabinet-level Department...