Buck McKeon Lays Down Marker for Education Law Renewal

Last week the Congressional Quarterly reported:

The top House Republican negotiating a renewal of the landmark 2002 education law said legislation won’t be ready until fall and he won’t support it unless it’s backed by a majority of GOP members.

Howard P. “Buck” McKeon of California, the ranking Republican on the House Education and Labor Committee, said the latest draft he viewed July 12 included Democratic proposals that troubled him.

By demanding that the bill win a majority of the minority, McKeon is setting a threshold that could prevent the White House and Democratic-led Congress from achieving bipartisan success on President Bush’s top domestic policy priority in his final months in office.

Education lobbyists had been optimistic that a House markup would come before the August recess, to speed along the reauthorization and finish before the 2008 election season begins to greatly limit action on Capitol Hill.

That now seems unlikely.

“I personally don’t think we will introduce a bill this month,” said McKeon. “We have too much to do.”

The slower pace would put the House more in line with the Senate, which seemed to be lagging behind on the reauthorization for the first half of the year as Democratic Sen. Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts focused on other education priorities and the failed immigration overhaul (S 1639).

A spokesman for Kennedy, chairman of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, said aides intend to draft the Senate bill over the four-week summer break, with a markup likely in September.

Even though the law (PL 107-110), known as No Child Left Behind, expires at the end of September, a one-year extension kicks in if no action is taken; and even if that year passes, Congress can continue core elements of the law by appropriating money for its programs.

But that would be a disappointing way for Bush to leave office — without securing what is now certain to be his core domestic policy achievement. The law, which Bush pushed for during his first year in office, set new standards for teachers and requires states to regularly test students in reading, math and science, with penalties for schools that don’t show “adequate yearly progress.”

Democrats could pass a bill on their own in the House. But to get a bill through the Senate and signed into law will require GOP support...