The Centrist Solution: How We Made Government Work and Can Make It Work Again by Senator Joseph I Lieberman

Author:Senator Joseph I Lieberman [Lieberman, Senator Joseph I]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Public Policy, Political Ideologies, Biography & Autobiography, Political Parties, Political Science, Political Process, American Government, Conservatism & Liberalism, Political, General
ISBN: 9781635769050
Google: VetIEAAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 56733680
Publisher: Diversion Books
Published: 2021-10-19T00:00:00+00:00

Most often, we would meet in Kennedy’s “Hideaway,” a big room on the top floor of the Senate side of the Capitol with plenty of comfortable chairs, Kennedy family pictures on the walls, and a beautiful view of the National Mall out the window. As a bonus, Kennedy would often be accompanied by his friendly and sometimes noisy Portuguese Water Dog, Splash. When one of us became excited and raised our voice, Splash would bark loudly. Kennedy’s response to this canine violation of Senate decorum was grandly apologetic and clearly delighted.

The president made the first big compromise in the negotiations. Although he had recommended a private-school choice option in his bill, he believed that would probably kill overall educational reform. I had supported private-school choice for low-income children, but I also agreed to put it off for another day. Evan Bayh and I had a compromise in our bill called “public school choice.” It would allow parents to move their children from a public school that was judged to be failing into another better public school. It was eventually accepted by all concerned and was in the final bill.

In the Senate and the House, there were lengthy, complicated debates about how the testing of students would work and what the response would be if the tests did not show that students were making “AYP”—Adequate Yearly Progress. Another contentious issue was whether to aggregate the test results or disaggregate them according to the income, race, or ethnicity of the students. We in the DLC fought hard for disaggregation alongside the Bush administration, because we believed that separate data was necessary if we were going to achieve our main goal of closing education gaps between rich and poor children. The proposed bill also said that every child must have “highly qualified teachers,” and there was naturally much debate about how to define that term and enforce it.

Kennedy continued to focus on more funding for education. In the end, he got much more—from $42.2 billion in fiscal year (FY) 2001 to $55.7 billion in FY 2004. Funding that gave special support to students with disabilities was raised from $6.3 billion in FY 2001 to $10.1 billion in FY 2004. President Bush and we New Democrats were successful in requiring that every public school in America receiving federal funds had to administer standardized tests every year to all students, and if AYP was not achieved, specific remedies, options for parents, and ultimately the closing of failing schools were imposed.

When the bill reached the Senate floor, all of us who supported the bipartisan proposal promised to oppose all amendments, even if we would normally have voted for one of them. This was similar to the promises made on other controversial bipartisan agreements (such as the Clean Air Act of 1990) in which the participants all accepted less than they wanted in order to get something done. If they were free to vote for amendments embracing their “perfect” desires on the Senate floor, the agreement would disintegrate and no good would be done.

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