Budget Panel Receives Spellings With Skepticism

Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings came to Capitol Hill last week to deliver her sales pitch for President Bush’s plans to rearrange—and slightly shrink—the Department of Education’s budget, but she received a fairly skeptical reception from key senators on both sides of the aisle.

“I’m very much concerned about the fact that the budget has a reduction of … almost 1 percent, and that is in the face of the inevitable problem of inflation,” Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., told Ms. Spellings during a March 2 hearing on Mr. Bush’s fiscal 2006 request for education. Mr. Specter chairs the Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education, which held the hearing.

The panel’s top Democrat, Sen. Tom Harkin of Iowa, noted that the request would cut federal education aid for the first...

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