The White House provided new details late Tuesday about a proposed three-year spending freeze aimed at controlling the deficit while protecting key programs that Democrats in Congress view as sacrosanct, including education. Obama will announce what administration officials described as the largest single-year request for federal funding for elementary and secondary schools, making education one of the few areas to grow in an otherwise austere budget.
The president will call for a 6.2 percent increase in education spending over last year, including up to $4 billion as part of an effort to revamp the George W. Bush-era programs that expanded testing to measure student progress, aides to the president said Tuesday. Senior aides said Obama will link the increase in education funding to his calls for school reform. They said his proposals fit into a broader effort by the White House to focus scarce resources on the nation's long-term economic health.
After the speech, Obama plans to take his newly energized populist message on the road in the coming days, pledging to voters in Florida and New Hampshire -- both 2010 battleground states -- that he will fight for them.
Democrats and Obama have yet to agree on how to tackle the year ahead, and a big part of the president's challenge Wednesday will be to begin to clear away the doubt, despair and division that have settled over his party after losing a Senate seat in Massachusetts last week.
Some Democrats are determined to salvage the major bills that consumed 2009, including health-care reform, an overhaul of financial regulations and clean-energy incentives aimed at reducing climate change. But others are ready to shelve anything big and controversial in exchange for smaller, more popular initiatives.
Source : http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/26/AR2010012604146.html
The president will call for a 6.2 percent increase in education spending over last year, including up to $4 billion as part of an effort to revamp the George W. Bush-era programs that expanded testing to measure student progress, aides to the president said Tuesday. Senior aides said Obama will link the increase in education funding to his calls for school reform. They said his proposals fit into a broader effort by the White House to focus scarce resources on the nation's long-term economic health.
After the speech, Obama plans to take his newly energized populist message on the road in the coming days, pledging to voters in Florida and New Hampshire -- both 2010 battleground states -- that he will fight for them.
Democrats and Obama have yet to agree on how to tackle the year ahead, and a big part of the president's challenge Wednesday will be to begin to clear away the doubt, despair and division that have settled over his party after losing a Senate seat in Massachusetts last week.
Some Democrats are determined to salvage the major bills that consumed 2009, including health-care reform, an overhaul of financial regulations and clean-energy incentives aimed at reducing climate change. But others are ready to shelve anything big and controversial in exchange for smaller, more popular initiatives.
Source : http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/26/AR2010012604146.html
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