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CNN Wolf Blitzer Reports

Conservatives Criticize President Bush's Education Compromise

Aired May 03, 2001 - 20:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
WOLF BLITZER, HOST: Tonight, President Bush has vowed to "leave no child behind." But are his compromises on education reform leaving Republican conservatives behind? We'll have a live report.

He's been a driving force in the Senate for almost four decades and is the leader of a political dynasty. I'll have a rare interview with Senator Edward Kennedy.

He's on trial for fatally shooting his teacher in a Florida school. He was 13 then. He's 14 now. He could go to prison for life.

And the FBI says it's broken up a ring of smugglers. Their human cargo: immigrants, who turned to the sex trade to pay their fees.

Good evening. I'm Wolf Blitzer, reporting tonight from Washington.

Since taking office, President Bush has clearly demonstrated his conservative credentials, whether on tax cuts, abortion rights or a national missile defense system. But when it comes to what he has said is the nation's top domestic priority -- education -- he has moved to the political center. That's now, for the first time, sparking some sharp criticism from some of his strongest supporters among Republican conservatives, and that's our top story.

Joining me now with more is our congressional correspondent Jonathan Karl. Jon, tell us what's going on.

JONATHAN KARL, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, Wolf, as the president works with Democrats on education, he's beginning to face a revolt from conservatives who say that he's letting Democrats hijack his number one domestic priority.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

REP. JOHN SHADEGG (R), ARIZONA: I think the White House has made a call that this needs to be a bipartisan bill. But if the price of making it a bipartisan bill is that it no longer has any Republican priorities in it and has all Democrat priorities in it, then I think the president has to rethink his strategy.

KARL (voice-over): The president has aggressively courted Democrats, including five face-to-face meetings with Senator Ted Kennedy and almost daily meetings between the president's senior education advisers and key Democrats on Capitol Hill.

In the process, the president has won broad support for most of his education agenda. But conservatives say the price of his support has been stripping the education bill of the central principles Mr. Bush campaigned on.

WILLIAM BENNETT, FORMER EDUCATION SECRETARY: What's missing is the sense from the White House that it is going to fight for those principles. What's missing -- well, I mean, school choice is gone.

KARL: Complaint number one is that the White House has, in the view of conservatives, given up on the idea of allowing poor students in failing schools to get federal dollars to attend private school, the idea critics call vouchers.

SHADEGG: It appears today that may be stripped out. That was kind of the heart of the entire bill from the president's perspective.

KARL: Conservatives also say the principle of local control has been compromised away. The president's original proposal called for giving states freedom in how they spend federal educational dollars. Under a compromise worked out with the Democrats, that provision will now be a pilot program, affecting only some school districts in seven states.

SEN. RICK SANTORUM (R), PENNSYLVANIA: And I'm not one, given the composition of the Senate, to suggest that we have to win great victories on all of these things to have a victory. I'm one who believes that we need to make progress in all of this.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

KARL: Complaints about the education bill are shared by a significant minority of congressional Republicans, especially in the House, but the majority of the Republicans up here applaud what the president is doing on education, and give him credit for getting done as much as he can, given the realities of the Senate evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans -- Wolf.

BLITZER: Jon, does this willingness by the president to compromise on education with the Democrats undermine the Democrats' argument that he's such a conservative that he's someone who's unwilling to deal with them?

KARL: Well, that's exactly the point that Republicans are making up here. They're pointing to how the president is acting on this issue as evidence that he's keeping two campaign promises: one, to pursue significant education reform, and two, to change the tone in Washington by reaching out and working with Democrats on such a central issue.

BLITZER: Jonathan Karl on Capitol Hill, thank you very much.

He's been a senator for almost 40 years. Through family tragedies and personal setbacks, he's emerged as what they call a lawmaker's lawmaker. A champion of causes from civil rights to health care, he's a key force behind the current education reform efforts. A short while ago, I spoke with Democratic Senator Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BLITZER (on camera): Senator Kennedy, thanks for joining us. Appreciate it very much.

SEN. EDWARD KENNEDY (D), MASSACHUSETTS: Glad be here.

BLITZER: I know you're in the midst of all the education bill debate right now, managing it on the Senate floor. It's amazing -- a lot of people think it's amazing that you and President Bush have formed this almost odd couple alliance on education. Has his charm offense worked with you?

KENNEDY: Well, I've had my differences with the president on some of the health care issues, patients' bill of rights, prescription drugs, also on environmental issue and the overall budget. But on the areas of education, we've been able to find some important common ground, and with the number of other of our colleagues in the Senate, Republicans and Democrats.

I think we've got a very good bill, which I'm glad to support. It gets us most of the way, but not the whole way. It really -- to give it life, it needs the additional resources. We're only reaching a third of the children that need this kind of help, and I think we can afford to make sure that if we're interested and committed to leaving no child behind, we cannot do it on the cheap, we can't nickel and dime education. It's too important and we ought to provide additional resources necessary to make sure no child is left behind.

BLITZER: Well, you still haven't reached an agreement with the president on funding for the education?

KENNEDY: That's right.

BLITZER: ... for this year. You want a lot more than he does. Some of your Democratic colleagues are saying that they don't want to support it until they know how much money is going to be there?

KENNEDY: But we wanted to -- we cover a third of the children now. We wanted with this change cover another third of the children, and then reach the final third sometime during President Bush's term as president.

That seemed to be a reasonable way to proceed. We are putting additional kinds of responsibility on schools, on local communities, on parents and on the children. And if we're going to do that, we ought to make sure we're going to give them the additional resources to make sure that it is going to work. That's the best way we can.

We've seen in the past, if we just provided resources without accountability that that was not successful. But if we do tough accountability without providing resources, I don't think that will work. We have the opportunity to do both, and we shouldn't lose that opportunity.

And this is particularly against this past week's acceptance of the president's budget of approximately $1.2 trillion. In the vote in the United States Senate, we voted for $250 billion more for education. That commitment, bipartisan, that went to the conference under the Republican leadership in the House an Senate, and clearly with the White House agreement, basically eliminated that commitment, and I regret that, because I think we had the understanding that we'll be able to get additional resources, but we were unable to do so.

I think the one hopeful aspect of this week is the Senate accepted the Hagel-Harkin amendment for special needs children, the IDEA, and that will be a full funding, $181 billion over the next 10 years. And that will give real hope to needy children.

BLITZER: On the education bill, the most controversial issue is the school vouchers issue, something that you oppose the president supports, although it's not going to be in the current education bill. But how do you answer the question that a lot of parents have to face every day? They send their kids to bad public schools, year-in and year-out, these are failing public schools.

They'd like some help in getting their kids into better private schools, or parochial schools. President Bush wants to help them with these scholarships, these vouchers, and you say they must stay in these bad public schools?

KENNEDY: Well, first of all, we say that they can move on to another public school, and we're also going to say that they can get supplementary services from other, even private groups, if they need these services, and they'll be able to do that now, which is enormously important.

It seems to me that we want to try and work as we're providing those kinds of services to the children now, we want to be strengthening the whole school, we don't want to be just leaving a number of other children behind.

And quite frankly, in most of the instances in terms of the vouchers, it isn't really a decision for the parents. The decision is being made by the schools. Because if any of these schools are not meeting other kinds of responsibility or criteria in terms of accountability and on the issues of disability...

BLITZER: Should these schools...

KENNEDY: ... or on the issues of civil rights. And so, it seems to me we shouldn't abandon our public schools in order to save them. We have scarce resources. We ought to use those scarce resource to try and strengthen them, and that's what this bill is about, and why it has broad support.

BLITZER: But in the meantime, a lot of kids are suffering in bad public schools?

KENNEDY: Well, there's lot of schools that don't have standards in the private schools on the issues of civil rights, on the issues of disability. And you're saying that we ought to use taxpayers' money in ways that is going to further discrimination against disabled or against civil rights?

What we ought to do is reform and strengthen the public schools. We ought to provide additional services, so that children that have special needs can go on and receive those additional supplementary services in reading, and tutoring, and after-school programs. And we also ought to permit them to move if they want to in terms of the public school system. Let's bring all the children along together.

BLITZER: You and the president seem to agree on testing, federal standards for the kids after third grade. But a lot of conservatives, a lot of Republicans and some Democrats say these kinds of issues should be left to local school districts, you don't need the heavy hand of Washington interfering in these schools decisions.

KENNEDY: Well, they -- the American children are the most overtested in the world, in any event. And generally speaking, the tests aren't very good. And what we want to try and do is to encourage local communities and states to develop good tests that are testing children on good curriculum with well-trained teachers. That doesn't exist today.

That's what this bill is about: Let's have a good curriculum, good teachers and then -- a -- the kind of test which is not the rote test, the multiple choice test, but is really going to test the ability of the child to understand and to think through different kinds of problems. And that is the key in terms of their success.

So it seems to me if they're going to, one, get the federal resources, we ought to know whether those federal resources are being use to really enhance academic achievement, so there's the accountability, and secondly, we want to make sure that the children themselves are going to benefit from what we know works from other communities. That's what this is all about.

But I agree with you that there are many tests that are out there that -- are -- that teachers are teaching to, and I think are unfortunate, both from the student and from the school's point of view.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BLITZER: Tomorrow night, part two of my interview with Senator Kennedy. We'll talk about tax cuts, health care, and the future of the Kennedy political dynasty.

Meanwhile, the House of Representatives is still in session tonight on the president's budget. A final vote is expected in the coming hours and passage seems certain.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BLITZER (voice-over): The Bush administration is hailing the budget agreement, in large part because it includes the centerpiece of the president's legislative agenda: The first major across-the-board tax cut in two decades.

MITCH DANIELS, DIRECTOR, OFFICE OF MANAGEMENT AND BUDGET: Now, the biggest winners, I think, will be the president's priorities, which are education and national defense, medical research, but there is plenty to go around.

BLITZER: A product of White House negotiation with both Republicans and moderate Democrats, the $1.97 trillion budget for the next fiscal year includes a $1.35 trillion tax cut over 11 years, just short of the $1.61 trillion President Bush had pushed for; a nearly 5 percent increase for some programs, higher than the 4 percent cap Mr. Bush had proposed; $300 billion for Medicare reform and an eventual prescription drug benefit; and $44.5 billion in education funding.

But what's not in the budget is troubling to key Democrats.

REP. RICHARD GEPHARDT (D-MO), MINORITY LEADER: This is an irresponsible, bad budget for the American people. It cuts necessary programs. It puts you back into deficits. It raids Social Security and Medicare. It cuts education. It cuts cops on the beat. It cuts low-income energy assistance.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BLITZER: And CNN has just learned the Senate is expected to vote on the budget next Tuesday.

Meanwhile, President Bush today made a personal appeal for energy conservation. After meeting with his Cabinet, the president ordered the federal government to curb its appetite for electricity, especially in California. Federal buildings in California must dim the lights and adjust thermostats to 78 degrees during Stage 2 alerts. The idea is to reduce power consumption by as much as 10 percent. Mr. Bush's appeal also comes at a time when California officials are warning that warmer summer months will increase the threat of rolling blackouts.

Up next: Forced into the sex trade to pay their way into the United States? The FBI breaks up an alleged human-smuggling ring. And later: A 14-year-old faces possible life in prison, accused of gunning down a teacher in his Florida middle school.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BLITZER: Welcome back. Federal authorities say they've busted a gang of smugglers which allegedly brought thousands of immigrants into the United States, forcing many into prostitution to pay for their passage.

More now from CNN's Charles Feldman in Los Angeles.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CHARLES FELDMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): It was early morning in L.A. when the arrests came down: 11 people busted for running what the FBI calls a well-organized Eurasian crime ring that smuggled Ukrainian nationals into the U.S., some paying up to $7,000.

Among those arrested: the reputed ringleader of the international operation. The FBI says when many of the Ukrainians were unable to pay the smuggling fees, they were forced to work in prostitution.

PATRICK PATTERSON, FBI: Well, we know that a little over 200 were interdicted by Border Patrol and INS, and -- and our conservative estimate is that was probably about 10 percent of the total operation.

FELDMAN: The FBI says Ukrainians who wanted to come to the United States were recruited in Kiev, Ukraine, and then, with Mexican tourist visas in hand, flown to Mexico. From there -- by foot, car and boat -- they were brought initially into Southern California.

This government video purports to show the Coast Guard coming upon one of the boats used to smuggle some of the Ukrainian immigrants.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Stop your engines! Prepare to be boarded!

(END VIDEO CLIP)

FELDMAN: The investigation is ongoing with more arrests possible both in the United States and overseas.

Charles Feldman, CNN, Los Angeles.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BLITZER: Meantime, across the country, the trial continues of a boy accused of killing a teacher last year in his Florida school. Prosecutors today played a videotape of the fatal shooting.

CNN's Mark Potter reports from West Palm Beach.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MARK POTTER, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The composite videotape shown to the jury came from security cameras at Lake Worth Community Middle School. It is a critical part of the prosecution's case against Nathaniel Brazill, who is charged with first-degree murder for shooting and killing teacher Barry Grunow last year.

At first, the tape shows a person prosecutors identify as Nathaniel approaching the school on his bicycle. He enters the school and walks down a hallway toward Barry Grunow's language arts class. The then-13-year-old takes out a small handgun, approaches the classroom and raises the gun with two hands toward the head of a man identified as teacher Grunow, holding that position momentarily.

The person in the doorway falls to the ground as the boy continues to point the handgun at him. Nathaniel then runs down the hall, pointing the gun quickly at another teacher, who ducks back into his classroom. The boy then leaves the school. Earlier in the day, when prosecutors showed the jury close-up pictures of Barry Grunow dead on the floor, Nathaniel Brazill looked the other way. The defense claims the videotape proves nothing about whether Nathaniel intended to kill his teacher.

The defense claims Nathaniel liked Grunow, and that the gun fired accidentally after he aimed it at him to prove he was serious about wanting to see two girls in the classroom.

The prosecution argues the killing was intentional, and occurred because Nathaniel was angry, that Grunow was about to give him a failing grade, and because he had been suspended from school that day for throwing a water balloon.

(on camera): Jurors are also expected to see Nathaniel Brazill's videotaped confession to police. And toward the end of the trial, the 14-year-old is expected to testify under oath. The lead defense attorney says Nathaniel Brazill is his best witness.

Mark Potter, CNN, West Palm Beach, Florida.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BLITZER: Up next, Congress raises questions over responsibility and safety aboard the USS Cole.

And: Why are most Americans still riding their breaks when it comes to buying vehicles online?

Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BLITZER: Welcome back.

Checking our other top stories: more tensions tonight between the U.S. and China. U.S. technicians sent to inspect the Navy surveillance plane, grounded on China's Hainan Island, report the Chinese have refused them access to electricity. And the Pentagon says that's keeping them from determining whether the plane could fly home or needs to be shipped back. China seized the plane when it collided with a Chinese jet fighter April 1.

Pentagon officials were on Capitol Hill today defending their decision not to punish the commander of the USS Cole for last year's deadly bombing attack in Yemen. But Joint Chiefs Chairman General Henry Shelton conceded the "chain of command could have done better" to prevent the attack. Last October, a small boat was detonated alongside the Cole, killing 17.

On the leading edge tonight, Americans are growing more comfortable with online shopping. But when it comes to big-ticket items such as cars, Americans aren't quite ready for the information superhighway.

According to consumer reports, only one in three online car shoppers will actually close the deal. The rest prefer good old- fashioned, and low-tech, face-to-face negotiations.

Up next, I'll open our mailbag. My interview last night with Surgeon General David Satcher on suicide prevention generated an enormous amount of emotional, even heartbreaking reaction. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BLITZER: Welcome back.

Time now to open our mailbag. We received lots of reaction to my interview last night with Surgeon General David Satcher on suicide prevention.

Rob writes from Rhode Island: "My dad committed suicide at the age of 62 about four years ago. We were able to get him into treatment for depression, but the stigma he had with mental health prevented him getting the most from his treatment."

Beverly writes: "One week ago today, we lost a neighbor to suicide, a young father of two with a loving wife. There was no note. He had financial problems, yet he sought help to no avail."

Dianna from Salt Lake City writes: "Removing the stigma that surrounds mental health treatment is an excellent start. Funding is also a very important issue. Mental health care workers are underpaid, underfunded, and short staffed."

Remember, you can e-mail me at wolf@cnn.com. I just might read your comments on the air. And you can read my daily online column and sign up for my daily e-mail previewing our nightly programs by going to our WOLF BLITZER REPORTS Web site, cnn.com/wolf.

Please stay with CNN throughout the night. Rush Limbaugh is Larry King's guest at the top of the hour.

Up next, Greta Van Susteren.

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