Stephen Laffey on Education Republican Senate Challenger

Chafee failed on funding the IDEA program and the NCLB Act

CHAFEE: You want to return any kind of tax cuts you can to the citizens and every politician likes to do that. That's popular. But at the same time, I wanted to be responsible, having been a mayor and then going to the Senate, my view was let's help the property taxpayer before we help the tax cuts for the wealthy. The way we do that is fund a program that the Congress started in 1970 for the special education that helps in our schools which is all the property taxes and fund that special education. We promised in 1970 to get to 40%. We're not above 20%. So I said before we cut the taxes for the wealthy, let's fund this special education program. Get it up to the 40% we promised back in 1970, and that goes right to the property taxpayer before we help the wealthy.

LAFFEY: First, Chafee failed on funding the IDEA program. Two, he has voted for No Child Left Behind which is about $27 billion and counting unfunded mandate that's going on seemingly forever.