Free Young Guns : A New Generation of Conservative Leaders by Eric Cantor;Paul Ryan;Kevin McCarthy

has become too involved. These days, that role consists mainly of taking money from the states, bringing it toWashington, and encouraging the earmarking and lobbying cultures that apportion education dollars according to muscle, not merit. Democrats can often be seen trying to allocate more and more federal tax dollars to our schools, and their intentions may be noble. Yet, despite the billions upon billions of federal dollars spent, achievement scores for American students are not where they need to be. Despite the fact that parents are constantly being taxed at the federal, state, and local levels, our children seem to be less and less equipped to compete with their foreign counterparts. Why? A big reason is because our dollars are going through lobbyists, middlemen, and bureaucrats before they ever reach our students and our classrooms. Considering America’s more than 70 billion–dollar federal education budget, that’s far too many dollars ending up away from our children.
    So let’s get education dollars out of Washington and back, closer to our communities. My colleague Joe Pitts of Pennsylvania has a “Dollars to the Classroom” bill that would require that 95 cents of every federal education dollar go to the classroom, not the bureaucracy and the special interests. This is a commonsense, twenty-first-century approach to education that would provide immediate benefits to our children. But, I believe we should go further. We can and should do the same with federal spending on transportation, housing, and other needs best left to the states and communities. The more Washington spends, the more bureaucracy and special interests are attracted likeflies to the nation’s capital to demand even more spending, perpetuating the cycle of big government.
    Want to drain the swamp in Washington? Stop the culture of cronyism and keep more of those dollars on the local level.

    On jobs, the economy, energy and education, Republicans have put forward real solutions over the past year and half. But there is no more egregious example of our ideas—as well as the opinions of the American people—being overlooked by the current Washington majority than fixing our health-care system.
    From the passionate town hall meetings of the summer of 2009 to the concerned citizens who converged on the Capitol as the Democratic majority maneuvered and manipulated its plan into law in 2010, Americans have sent signal after signal to Washington that they’re listening and they’re engaged. They’ve been telling Washington that they understand that health-care reform will have a profound effect, not just on themselves, but on generations of Americans not yet born. Our children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren will pay the price for government health care in jobs and wages lost, in higher taxes, and in rationed and diminished quality of care.
    This is the message that America has been sending the powers that be in Washington DC for over a year now. And for over a year, Washington has refused to listen. Instead, Democrats wrote the bill in secret without allowing input from dissenting Democrats or Republicans. They coerced wavering members for their votes with smarmy sweetheart deals like the $300 million “Louisiana Purchase.” They resorted to legislative trickery and arm-twisting when they couldn’t get enough legitimate votes to pass their bill. They forced through a trillion dollar overhaul of one sixth of our economy literally in defiance of the people they represent.
    Overwhelmingly, Americans believe in building upon what works in our health-care system so that they can continue to enjoy the best care in the world. This health-care bill does the opposite. It destroys the system it purports to save.
    Paul, Kevin, and I agree with the need to take action on health care. We do not accept the status quo. That’s why we are committed, not simply to repealing Democratic health-care reform, but replacing it with a system that works