A FEW MONTHS AGO, Republican education policy was in disarray. Proposals from the Clinton administration had put the GOP on the defensive, and the only Republican idea that was gaining any prominence was one many Republicans considered at odds with party principles — the federal funding of 100,000 new teachers.
Suddenly, the tide has turned. Republicans are no longer talking about 100, 000 new teachers, and they’ve blocked nearly everything the White House has thrown at them. More important, they’ve begun to pass conservative, market- oriented bills that are chipping away at the Democrats’ advantage on education. The stakes are high. Sen. Joe Lieberman, one of the few Democrats friendly to conservative-style education reform, says “there’s a possibility of some political losses if we [Democrats] continue to be defensive about the status quo.” Republicans agree. “If we can turn the education issue to our advantage,” says GOP pollster Frank Luntz, “we will own the political landscape for a generation.”
While education was briefly a GOP-dominated issue in the 1980s, Republicans are still recovering from the wounds of 1995, when their entire agenda seemed to consist of abolishing the Department of Education. Today, they recognize that abolition was too much, too soon, and they appreciate the value of less dramatic proposals. “Now we’re doing things that have more support in the hinterlands than in Washington,” says one Republican senator, Rick Santorum.
The effort to improve the party’s education image has been helped by the intransigence of congressional Democrats, who routinely oppose every Republican proposal, no matter how modest. For example, Republican senator Paul Coverdell, a year ago, proposed allowing state and local agencies to use federal funds in behalf of children who have been victimized by crime at their schools and wish to transfer. Amazingly, nearly every Democratic senator — and even a few Republicans — voted against the proposal. And while the idea was later abandoned, the GOP is planning to highlight the vote during the fall campaign.
The Republicans’ incremental approach has helped quiet lingering fears that they are intent on dismantling public education. Their strategy is seen in another Coverdell proposal — this one to allow for IRA-like education- savings accounts. From the moment it gained traction in the Senate last year, the bill was denounced by the National Education Association and its political servant, the Democratic party. The White House so disliked the measure that President Clinton, in a letter to House speaker Newt Gingrich, threatened to veto the balanced-budget agreement if it were included. (Republican leaders agreed to remove the proposal.)
But the intensity of Democratic opposition let the Republicans know they were on to something. So they didn’t let up. The Coverdell bill passed the House late last year (with Gingrich as its main sponsor), then encountered roadblocks in the Senate. Not all Democrats were happy with this obstruction, however. When education secretary Richard Riley met with Senate Democrats in March, some of them — Dianne Feinstein, Joe Biden, and Bob Torricelli — gave him a tongue-lashing for the White House’s refusal to negotiate with Republicans over Coverdell.
GOP persistence paid off. Senate Democrats filibustered the bill for two weeks, but minority leader Tom Daschle eventually agreed to a vote. On April 23, 56 senators supported the bill, and the vote received extensive coverage in the media.
While only five Democrats voted for education-savings accounts, more of them wanted to. Some objected to other provisions of the bill, but many simply caved in to the heavy lobbying of the NEA, the White House, and Daschle. One Democratic staffer says that if the Coverdell proposal had been a “free vote” — one in which the party leadership takes no position — at least half the Democrats in the Senate would have voted yes. Daschle himself had recognized the potential appeal of the bill last year and prepared a scaled-down version of it. But the NEA and the White House were so vehemently opposed, he never bothered to introduce it. Democrats are nervous over their opposition to Coverdell, and right to be: Polls find that some 70 percent of Americans support education-savings accounts.
The debate over the bill did reveal some small schisms among Democrats. Robert Byrd, the venerable West Virginia Democrat, backed the measure, giving a speech in which he questioned the Democratic orthodoxy that more spending will improve education. “The public school system had better shape up,” warned Byrd, “or else public support for it is going to completely erode.” Joe Lieberman also supported the Coverdell bill and concedes that ” Republicans have been a source of some creative new ideas” on education policy.
There is a second part of the GOP education agenda — a proposal by House majority leader Dick Armey to provide 2,000 low-income students in Washington, D.C., with scholarships worth up to $ 3,200 to attend the school of their choice. The bill has already passed the House and Senate, and on May 7, Gingrich and Armey traveled to a black neighborhood in the District to promote the bill. Democrats — including Eleanor Holmes Norton, the capital’s non-voting representative in the House — predictably derided the vouchers as chump change.
But this proposal, like Coverdell’s, is using some Democrats to wonder about their party’s defense of the status quo. Jim Moran delivered an impassioned speech in the House calling on his fellow Democrats to support the bill. And in the Senate, Joe Biden announced that, while he had traditionally opposed vouchers for private schools, he had changed his mind. Moreover, Biden was dismissive of Democratic arguments that vouchers are unconstitutional and would ruin the public schools.
The GOP’s activity is beginning to have an impact. The Republican national Committee’s internal polls show that, though the Democrats held a 21-point advantage over the GOP on education last June, that gap is down to 13 points. “We’ve begun to neutralize education as an offensive weapon for Democrats,” says Steve Law, executive director of the Senate GOP campaign committee. This has some Republicans talking about making education one of their themes in the 1998 campaign — which would have been a pipe dream two years ago.
But Republicans still have a long way to go before they overhaul federal education policy, says Chester Finn, a conservative education guru. And in the meantime, President Clinton is likely to veto the education-savings and D. C.-vouchers legislation, rendering their work for naught.
Yet the pressure against a veto — of the edcucation-savings bill especially — is considerable. Two of Coverdell’s Democratic allies, Bob Torricelli and Bob Graham, have urged Clinton to sign it. They’re scared their democratic colleagues will suffer politically for repeatedly opposing such a popular proposal. And Democrats could find themselves embarrassed once again if Republicans hold votes later this year on overriding Clinton’s probable vetoes.
Republicans, in other words, are finally on the offensive on education. Will they keep it up?
Matthew Rees is a staff writer for THE WEEKLY STANDARD.
