I completely agree with you. You would think that education would be one of our top priorities but the bill “cuts things that are important nationwide to people of all income levels like education and health and put it towards tax issues.” You would think that the folks in Washington want the next generation to be well educated so that they can make just as big a difference as the current lawmakers are.
“We may not realize it being as lucky as we are going to Mt. Spokane but there are schools who can’t afford enough books to provide the students the education they deserve.” Yes we are very lucky to have everything we need. It is sad that other schools across our country don’t. I also agree with the opinion of the teachers you put forward. Who would want to teach well when they don’t have the proper materials? I think we need to take a serious look at what we are putting as top priorities in our society. Giving children a chance to have a bright and promising future should be right up there with defense spending and tax issues. I don’t know why this isn’t a priority in our nations capital but I strongly believe education should be.

I too think that it would be nice to spend more on education and buy books for schools that can not afford it. Of course I think outstanding teachers deserve more pay. I would hate to be a teacher. However, this was a stimulus package, and I fail to see how increasing spending in schools would stimulate the economy like tax issues do. You say that you re happy that the cost of the stimulus package has been cut so much. Why do you think that is? They had to cut the most unneccesary things. I’m not saying that healthcare and education are not important, but increasing spending on either will not boost the economy. Paticularly healthcare. One thing that Tom Harkin did say that I agree with is “Mr. Harkin said he was particularly frustrated by the money being spent on fixing the alternative minimum tax. ‘It’s about 9 percent of the whole bill,’ he said, ‘Why is it in there?’” I guess 9 percent seems a little high, but I still think that cutting education and healthcare was for the best, not becacause Americans don’t need it, but because I don’t think spending on those two things woud stimulate the economy.

I disagree that it’s an exorbitant amount of money, no cost is too great to stimulate our economy. That said, I am not an economist, so I don’t even know if it will fulfill it’s function and actually turn the economic downturn into an upswing. Given how pessimistic and generally doom and gloom the American people are about it, probably not. The economy does rely on our consumer confidence, and it is honestly fairly low right now. However, I do agree that the non-stimulus portions of the package could have done with passage, education funding can never be wasted, and it helps the economy down the line when our schools produce skilled individuals that can enter the workforce. Health care is another thing that really isn’t much of a stimulus to the economy, but it would have been nice to see it passed. One of the interesting things was that again, it came down to the centrists to compromise and work together to get a bill that could be more supported. I find it unsurprising that despite the Obama campaign promises of bipartisanship and such, that Republicans are still being shut out, and the two parties are still trading jabs. It makes you wonder what it would take to get a unanimous vote on anything in either house.

Connection: Governing is compromise. No matter what we say the stimulus package wouldn’t have passed without the compromise and unfortunately they had to sacrifice education spending to appease some republicans and get the necessary votes to get the rest of it through the maze that is policy making in the United States.