Foster, local teachers, hail federal money for education jobs

A day after voting for $26 billion to preserve teaching jobs across the country, 14th District Congressman Bill Foster Wednesday toured the district to explain his vote. Foster said the bill made good fiscal sense, but opponents said adding billions more to the total cost of federal bailouts is nonsense.

The Education Jobs and Medicaid Assistance Act has a $26 billion price tag. About $10 billion of that is dedicated to preserving an estimated 161,000 teachers facing layoffs across the country. The National Education Association believes about 5,700 of those jobs are in Illinois, with 212 specifically in the 14th Congressional District.

Foster said saving teaching jobs drove his vote along with the $26 billion cost being funded by the closing of a tax loophole that encourages corporations to ship American jobs overseas and a deep cut to food stamp funding.

Local members of the Illinois Education Association joined Foster in applauding the funding, but said it's not going to solve all of the problems.

"It's a step in the right direction, although it is less than 2 percent of what the (federal stimulus) money was to bail out banks and the too-big-to-fail auto industry," said Tony Malay, a Batavia High School teacher. "I say it's too big to let our children fail by letting them suffer larger class sizes."

Republicans have widely trounced the price tag of all the so-called federal bailouts, including this one, as the only thing that's too big. Foster's Republican opponent, State Sen. Randy Hultgren, said Foster's vote only digs the country deeper into debt.

"The hole just gets deeper and deeper with no discussion of how we get out of that," Hultgren said. "I think that's what people are concerned about - wasteful spending that continues out in Washington, D.C., and lack of accountability about where that money is going. They haven't had a (federal) budget this year. How do you continue to spend and spend with no budget?"

Critics have also labeled the $26 billion as money to bail out irresponsible state budgets, including Illinois' problems funding education. Hultgren said federal money isn't needed to fix Illinois' problems.

"I've consistently voted against budgets here in Illinois because we need to get our own fiscal house in order," Hultgren said. "It's not happening. Our problem is we've got a budget here, but (Democrats) roll it out 15 minutes before we vote on it."

Foster said the money isn't intended to fix state budget problems, just provide some breathing room.

"It's obviously not going to be a solution for Illinois' problems, which were decades in the making," Foster said. "And it's not a substitution for fiscal responsibility."

Foster pointed to the deep cuts to food stamp funding as an example of tough fiscal responsibility.

"It's going to be one of the first of many entitlement cuts that people are facing when we start to deal with the long-term problem of entitlement spending," Foster said.

Doug Marks is running as a write-in candidate against Foster after losing his ballot position as a Libertarian candidate. Marks said using federal money to pay teachers is a mistake because nothing will be improved as a result.

"The U.S. Department of Education is a 100 percent failure," Marks said. "Our education system is based in the public sector, and it needs to be moved back into the private sector. Our kids aren't getting any smarter. Test results prove that. Sure, this money is going to help out some teachers, and maybe Bill Foster gets a few more votes from teachers, but is it going to result in our kids getting better education? Absolutely not."

Dan Kairis, the Green Party candidate in the race, could not be reached for comment.