Politics

On The Road Again

By CBSNews.com staff CBSNews.com staff

February 20, 2001 / 10:44 AM EST / CBS

President Bush is on the stump again Wednesday, returning to public schools to plug his education package and rolling out carefully selected families to extol the benefits of his tax-cut proposal.

During a visit to a rural school in Tennessee, he proposed boosting spending on elementary and secondary education by $1.6 billion in the coming year, part of an Education Department budget increase he said will surpass expansions at any other Cabinet-level agency.

Mr. Bush announced his plan during remarks at Townsend Elementary School in Towsend, Tenn., a 40-minute drive from Knoxville. The plan would help to deliver on a campaign promise to increase federal education spending by $47.5 billion over 10 years.

"There is no more important subject than public education. We must get it right to make sure no child is left behind," Mr. Bush said.

The administration didn't say exactly how much money Mr. Bush would seek for the Education Department in the next fiscal year, or by what percentage it would grow. Nor was it clear precisely how the new $1.6 billion would be spent.

The Bush Tax Plan

Here is a list of possible tax savings under Mr. Bush's proposed tax-cut plan.

But by granting education the biggest percentage budget increase of any department, Mr. Bush was demonstrating public schools remain his top priority, his aides said.

The president is pressuring the members of Congress who will take up his centerpiece proposals by taking his case on taxes and schools directly to their constituents.

"This is a plan that's going to require the people to speak up," Mr. Bush said Tuesday in St. Louis, referring to his 10-year, $1.6 trillion tax reduction. "It's the beginning of a series of trips around our great nation where I'm going to make my case, not to the folks in Congress or in Washington, D.C., but to the American people."

On his first trip to promote his domestic agenda, Mr. Bush's path traced a path through the nation's midsection, with visits to Ohio, Missouri, and Tennessee; all states he carried.

Critics have said his tax plan favors the wealthy, and that a voucher provision in his schools proposal would drain money away from struggling public schools.

Mr. Bush took pains to visit heavily black neighborhoods Tuesday i Missouri, casting his proposals as a boon to working-class families.

"I think it makes sense to understand who fills the coffers of the United States, and it's the working people," Mr. Bush said in St. Louis. "And so I'm going to ask Congress to pass a tax-relief package, recognizing that we can meet priorities, but also to help families meet their own priorities."

In Columbus, Ohio, he defended the voucher proposal, saying: "I believe the best program is that which empowers local districts and parents to make different choices, if the children are mired in mediocrity in failure."

The president said he would deliver on a promise to spend $5 billion over five years to promote reading, saying a share of that would go to retraining teachers.

"Sometimes our teacher colleges aren't able to match the hearts of teachers and give them the skills necessary to be effective teachers," he said. "There needs to be a lot of retraining, unfortunately, and until the teacher colleges get it right, in terms of teaching curriculum that works, it seems to me a useful role is for government to provide funds for teacher retraining."