WASHINGTON, D.C – President Bush’s budget proposal amounts to little more than a shell game played on the American people. The administration moves funds around from one program to another, claiming overall increases, while hacking away at many crucial programs, hoping no one notices.

The President’s budget can’t be good when it shortchanges 45 education programs, including funding for after-school learning initiatives, safe and drug free schools, and community technology programs, among others, and calls for funding for Title I, which supports our most disadvantaged students, at a level far below that authorized by Congress. It is just plain wrong that the President’s budget does so little for America’s neediest students while providing another round of indefensible tax cuts that would benefit America’s wealthiest citizens.

It is particularly unconscionable that the President's budget proposal includes hundreds of millions of dollars for unproven voucher and tax credit schemes but inadequately funds the No Child Left Behind Act, which received strong bipartisan support because of the President’s promised ‘substantial’ and ‘sustained’ funding increases. But President Bush’s still-languishing FY ’03 budget proposal and his current FY ’04 budget proposal leave these promises unfulfilled. It will be nearly impossible for schools to fulfill the requirements or reach the goals of the No Child Left Behind Act without sufficient funding. To truly leave no child behind, we must leave no funding promise behind.

We have been and are prepared to continue working with those who -- no matter what their political stripe -- are committed to supporting our public schools. But voucher programs undermine rather than strengthen our schools and we vigorously part company with President Bush on the voucher and tax credit proposals contained in his budget.

We understand that the many critical demands facing our nation pose budgetary challenges. But the most powerful and wealthiest nation in the history of the world can and must protect its citizens and provide for its children.