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   Congressman Dave Weldon, R-Fla. represents District 15 in Florida (Brevard County, Indian River County, & portions of Osceola and Polk Counties). Weldon is a member of the Committee on Science and the Committee on Banking and Financial Services. This interview was conduct the day before election day 1996.

   DANFORTH: According to Project Vote Smart, you were given a zero by the National Education Association, which means that you never voted for a bill which the NEA felt was important. Even the ACLU said you voted with their position 8 percent of the time. Why are you at such odds with the NEA?
   WELDON: The NEA’s agenda is an agenda that is contrary to mine in that they’re constantly trying to get more federal funding for education. I believe the track record of federal involvement in education has been dismal.
   The federal government played no role in education up until about 30 years ago and ever since they began getting involved in education policy, the quality of education, and educational performance nationally has declined dramatically.
   I don’t believe in putting more money into something that has been demonstrated not to work. SAT scores have declined by about 80 points nationally since the federal government has gotten into the education arena.
   DANFORTH: What would you propose as an alternative?
   WELDON: I believe we need more local control of education and we need more parental involvement in education. That’s why I support school choice to allow parents to choose the best academic environment for their children.
   I believe in tax tuition vouchers to allow mothers and fathers to put their children in the best academic environment.
We need less Washington and more mom and dad involvement in education. I think that’s where the solution lies, not in programs and ideas emanating from Washington.
   DANFORTH: You voted to kill the AmeriCorps program, President Clinton’s pet project which allows students to earn almost $5,000 in college grants for each year of community service dedicated to helping the poor and disadvantaged. Why are you against AmeriCorps?
   WELDON: As you know, AmeriCorps is a new program created by Bill Clinton at a significant cost per student. We feel it would make much more sense to just give more money to tuition credits, Pell grants or student loans. The administrative overhead associated with the AmeriCorps program makes it a very inefficient program and that’s why I favor eliminating it.
   This administration is extremely skillful at presenting the image that they have a real well-run operation. In reality, it’s the most sloppy, disorganized, amateurish bunch of people that have ever run the White House. They can’t even spell.
   DANFORTH: You gave a speech on the floor of the house last session in which you explained that, despite the fact you used student loans to become a doctor, you want to eliminate subsidized student loans. Since only students at the bottom of the economic scale qualify for such loans, why are you fighting to eliminate them?
   WELDON: I don’t ever remember making that statement. Where did you get that from?
   DANFORTH: I got it from the Congressional Record.

Frank Kinney (left), Executive Director, Technological Research and Development Authority and Congressman Dave Weldon at the grand opening of the Florida/NASA Business Incubation Center on the Titusville Campus of Brevard Community College.

   WELDON: What did I say?
   DANFORTH: You mentioned that you personally received about $10,000 in student loans and we shouldn’t be subsidizing...
   WELDON: Oh ya. Let me clarify that. What we were trying to do is to increase the amount of money that goes to college and vocational students and less money to the higher education loan; the Ph.D. and MD programs.
   Those people get out and make a lot of money. Why should we in the federal government have all these discounted loan programs to help people who are going to become millionaires? We were just trying to shift the money down to the needy people.
   You have a student who goes to hairdressing school and spends six months, and he or she is gonna be paying through their taxes to send me to medical school. Then I get out and make $100,000 per year and they’ll be making $20,000 per year. I was just trying to get some fairness in the system.
   DANFORTH: You filled out a survey prior to your first term election in 1994 which said you wouldn’t vote to eliminate the Department of Education. Since that is one of the main goals of republicans, and something that was repeated over and over during the Republican National Convention, I was wondering if you’ve changed your mind, or are you taking a stance against the majority of your party members?
   WELDON: I think there’s an appropriate role to have an advisor to the president on educational policy. What I think is inappropriate is to have 5,000 bureaucrats in Washington.
I would favor block-granting the money to the state education departments and getting the federal bureaucracy and all the federal requirements eliminated. There’s no constitutional authority for this. We’ve tried it and it doesn’t work. I was a doctor, and if I had a patient come in with bronchitis and I gave him an antibiotic, and they returned seven days later and were worse, I didn’t say, “keep taking that antibiotic for another 10 days.” I switched them to another drug.
   Why would you continue to fund this behemoth in Washington that isn’t getting anything good done? It’s making matters worse, not better. If the patient keeps saying the cough is worse, why would we want to keep the patient on the same medication?
   DANFORTH: You are on record as being against the raising of the minimum wage, yet you voted to raise it. What caused you to change your mind?
   WELDON: I opposed raising the minimum wage, because whenever we have done that in the past it has lead to a significant increase in teenage unemployment.
   The vast majority of people who get the minimum wage are young people obtaining an entry-level position. More than 50 percent of the people who start at a minimum wage position are making more than minimum wage within six months. Every time the minimum wage has been increased it has lead to an increase in teenage unemployment.
   I ultimately did vote for the bill because the house leadership attached, to the minimum wage bill, a tax package that would allow small businesses to write off the cost of acquiring equipment. That makes it easier for small businesses to grow and prosper. More than half of the new jobs created in America are created by small businesses.
   They also put in that bill a $5,000 tax deduction for the cost of adopting a child. The average cost of an adoption is about $10,000. As an adoptive parent I felt compelled to vote for the bill in the end even though many republicans opposed it.
   DANFORTH: During the last session of congress you made a rather impassioned speech against the local newspaper, Florida Today. Do you still have a problem with Florida Today?
   WELDON: Florida Today, unlike the Orlando Sentinel, does not have good separation between their editorial policy and their news. There are many newspapers who have very liberal editorial boards, but they give their reporters the freedom to report the facts. Florida Today has editorialized the news itself.
   I think that’s very unfortunate. Reporters tell me they write stories that have all the facts and the editors go in and rearrange the facts to meet the political agenda of the editor.
   I think that’s very bad. I think it’s not a well-run newspaper. They need to make some changes.
   DANFORTH: Your opponent has been running ads saying you voted to cut student loans. What exactly did you vote to cut, and why?
   WELDON: We actually voted to increase student loans. What we did was to vote to decrease direct student loans which is the preferred program of the White House. It involves the federal government lending money directly to the student. The responsibility for collecting the money lies totally with the federal government. So, if the students don’t pay the money back we don’t have the infrastructure to make sure those monies are collected.
   When a lending institution lends money, they have the manpower to go after the students. So our concern has been with the direct student loan program. The president has wanted to increase that program dramatically. We have felt the need to monitor the program over a few years to make sure the monies are paid back.

   Previously published in The Capsule

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