Rep. Obey is 'Point Man' for U.S. Education Funding

By Joanne M. Haas
In the last 32 years, U.S. Rep. David Obey has carved a Capitol Hill reputation as a tough, direct negotiator and vocal, respected legislator inspired by the late Sen. Robert La Follette’s Progressive beliefs of workers’ rights, educational access and fair taxation.

Never one to mince words, Wisconsin’s longest-serving congressman – representing the 7th District – said he doesn’t pretend to be an expert on quality education. But he does understand the role of government dollars in providing a solid classroom experience.

“I think in the long run, the most important money is money you invest in teacher training and smaller class initiatives,” Obey said. “Federal money ought to go where the research says it will do the most good.”

Key appropriations role
Once the chairman of the House Appropriations Committee when the Democrats were the majority party, Obey now serves as the committee’s ranking Democrat. The committee decides funding on discretionary programs in the federal budget, and the ranking member is typically that party’s leading voice on budget issues.

Obey also serves as the ranking Democrat on the Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services and Education – which funds those federal agencies. And as the ranking Democrat, he also is the ex-officio voting member for the 13 appropriations subcommittees.

“I am the point man when it comes to getting resources of education,” he said. “Sooner or later ... it comes to me.”

An example of this position of power is the $350,000 earmarked for math and science training for teachers through the Wisconsin Academy Staff Development Initiative. Obey, in the last two years, has helped provide about $1.3 million for the initiative, which sponsors seminars for teachers throughout Wisconsin.

And in 2000, Obey was able to get $45 million included in the federal budget for a Small Schools Initiative to assist 500 high schools land grants to assist in either reducing school size or creating smaller learning centers within the schools.

“The kids who do the best are the ones who are the kids in classrooms of a decent size with well-trained teachers. The more you can do to help increase the professional development, the more you can do to help the class,” he said.

However, he added, the greatest variable in all of this is parents who provide a home supportive of their child’s academics.

Grew up in Wausau
Born in 1938, Obey grew up in the Marathon County community where he lives today – Wausau. While Obey was finishing his college degree at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, his father lost his job with the 3-M Company.

“That scared me because I had no idea how much help I would get from home in finishing my education,” Obey said in a biography carried on his congressional Web site. “And that experience burned into me the conviction that access to education ought to be based on how much you are willing to learn and how hard you are willing to work, not on how many dollars your family has in its bank account.”

Obey finished his bachelor’s degree and went on to do graduate work at UW-Madison in Soviet politics under a National Defense Education Act scholarship. He was planning to become a teacher of Russian and Chinese politics. But that changed when he was elected to the Wisconsin Assembly in 1962, where he served until his election to Congress in a 1969 special election. He has been re-elected ever since by the voters of the 7th District, covering portions of the central and northwestern regions.

It all comes down to money
Obey believes talk is cheap unless it’s backed with bucks. This was never more apparent than during the recent months as President Bush’s education package was debated and negotiated.

Obey recalls with some disgust Bush’s publicity coup regarding the administration’s education authorization bill, packed with testing and assessment requirements labeled bold measures to reform the nation’s schools. Dismissing the advertisements as “rhetoric” and “nonsense,” Obey said too many followed the media’s misdirected focus, missing the “most important fight” – on the appropriations bill.

“The administration was getting away with public relations murder,” Obey said in January, days before the official bill signing ceremonies. “They were selling Bush as the education president because of his authorization requests, most of which in the end he didn’t get.”

The irony here, Obey said, is Bush also was proposing to “substantially slash what we had provided for education programs in the last five years.” The president wanted to substantially reduce the federal investment in education – which over the previous five years had grown about 14% a year.

Obey, who also was the House Democrats’ chief negotiator for those last five budgets, added this wasn’t an easy task since it came at a time when the Republicans were trying to abolish the Department of Education.

The bipartisan appropriations package known as the Labor-Health and Human Services-Education Appropriations Bill – unveiled in December to the applause of Bush – provided the Department of Education with an increase of $6.6 billion, or 16%, over what Congress had earmarked the year before. While the number-crunching to determine the specific allocations nationwide are ongoing, that increase in general terms means $32.9 billion for elementary and secondary schools nationwide for 2002-03. In 1996-97, the amount available was $14.6 billion.

Posted February 1, 2002