White House Statement on the 1989 Federal Education Budget Amendments

The President today sent to the Congress fiscal year 1989 budget amendments totaling $5,969 million for the Department of Education. The regular fiscal year 1989 budget already included this amount as items proposed for later transmittal pending enactment of necessary authorizing legislation. The legislation, the Augustus F. Hawkins-Robert T. Stafford Elementary and Secondary School Improvement Amendments of 1988, was signed into law by the President on April 18, 1988, as Public Law 100-297. At the signing ceremony and again in his transmittal of these amendments, the President has urged Congress to concentrate funding on the ongoing, successful programs of compensatory education and school improvement. He urged funding only these programs, plus a few new initiatives, rather than dissipating the effects of scarce Federal resources by scattering funding among the many other lower priority, narrow-purpose programs.

The President's 1989 budget recognizes the high priority of these education programs by proposing increases in budget authority in excess of the average of 2 percent that applies to the total for domestic discretionary programs in the bipartisan budget agreement. In addition, the transmittal includes a request for $3.4 million for the Education Department's statistics programs to finance activities as required by Public Law 100-297. These proposals also include $1 million in fiscal year 1989 for the National Commission on Migrant Education. This temporary commission would study education problems of the children of migrant workers. The total package of amendments provides no significant increase to the fiscal year 1989 budget and is consistent with the bipartisan budget agreement.