For the first time,

I used HEW's authority to bypass state and local school districts that did not provide a fair share of federal funds to [Roman Catholic] parochial elementary and secondary schools for compensatory education, books, equipment, and other materials and services.

We invoked the law to provide funds to [Roman Catholic] parochial schools in Missouri, Virginia, and Wisconsin and proposed legislative expansion of this authority.

I urged [Roman] Catholic schools to monitor the performance of the states carefully.

I established HEW's first Office of Nonpublic Schools, appointing as director Edward D'Alessio, president of Our Lady of the Elm College in Chicopee, Massachusetts, and former head of the elementary and secondary education division for the U.S. Catholic Conference."

From .......... GOVERNING AMERICA - An Insider's Report

By Joseph A. Califano, Jr.

303 ................. EDUCATION

Unlike a low-interest loan, it failed to meet the need of a middle income family to spread a much larger share of educational costs over a longer time.

I set forth the arguments against a credit for elementary and secondary schools, pointing out that the Packwood-Moynihan proposal would provide $500 per student at a private or parochial school, while at the same time federal funds for public schools averaged less than $140 per student in 1978. The proposal stood traditional concepts of government support for public education on their head. Such a lopsided shift in the federal investment in elementary and secondary education could have a ruinous impact on public schools. I recommended prompt action:

Concern about separation of church and state also drove many on those committees to oppose the tuition tax credit proposals for lower schools.

Two days later, Carter agreed to our proposal. Within ninety minutes after the President spoke to me, OMB Director McIntyre called, annoyed that Carter had approved the $1.2 billion package,

McIntyre shouted into the phone.

I suggested he talk to his own staff, which had been involved in developing the proposal.

McIntyre was exasperated, frustrated by his bureaucracy:

Despite McIntyre's last-minute objections, the President, flanked by key congressional leaders, announced the Middle Income Student Assistance plan on February 8, 1978. He warned that the Congress must choose between the tuition tax credit and his plan.

Bill Ford was delighted with a program that increased student aid for higher education by almost 40 percent in one year, and the number of students receiving aid from three million to five million.

Ford exulted, as Carter winced since he had just presented his proposal as frugal compared to the tuition tax credits before the Congress.

The same day that the President unfolded the administration's Middle Income Student Assistance bill, I asked Attorney General Griffin Bell for his formal opinion on the constitutionality of tax credits for parochial elementary and secondary schools.

304 ...................... GOVERNING AMERICA

On March 17, Bell responded to my request and a similar one from Missouri Democratic Senator Thomas Eagleton. The Attorney General concluded that

Bell concluded that the tax credit, dollar for dollar up to a certain amount, was in affect a federal payment to a parochial school for whatever purpose the school decided to use it, and so was unconstitutional. He cited 1973 Supreme Court decisions in Committee For Public Education v. Nyquist and Sloan v. Lemon holding similar New York and Pennsylvania tuition tax credit schemes for elementary and secondary schools unconstitutional.

The [Roman] Catholic bishops attacked the President's and my failure to support the Packwood-Moynihan tax credit. Virgil Blum, the president of the Independent [Roman] Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, an organization allied with the U. S. Catholic Conference, condemned the administration's proposal as a

Actually, Carter had limited his commitment to

Among [Roman] Catholic organizations, only the Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities supported our proposal. Some sophisticated [Roman] Catholic lobbyists were wary of the tuition tax credit for parochial schools because they feared it would lead to a general reassessment of tax policies affecting religious institutions.

But the [Roman] Catholic bishops, hard-pressed to finance huge parochial school systems in big cities, pressed their case aggressively.

When I argued that [Roman] Catholic schools would never see any money from a tax credit at elementary and secondary schools because litigation would tie up the funds for years, the bill was changed to mandate an immediate constitutional test in the courts.

While Carter and I refused to hold out false hopes of unconstitutional relief for parochial schools as Nixon had cynically done, we did work to help such schools in every constitutional way.

For the first time, I used HEW's authority to bypass state and local school districts that did not provide a fair share of federal funds to parochial elementary and secondary schools for compensatory education, books, equipment, and other materials and services.

We invoked the law to provide funds to parochial schools in Missouri, Virginia, and Wisconsin and proposed legislative expansion of this authority.

I urged [Roman] Catholic schools to monitor the performance of the states carefully. I established HEW's first Office of Nonpublic Schools, appointing as director Edward D'Alessio, president of Our Lady of the Elm College in Chicopee, Massachusetts, and former head of the elementary and secondary education division for the U.S. Catholic Conference.

- END QUOTE -

GOVERNING AMERICA - An Insider's Report

From the White House and the Cabinet

By Joseph A. Califano, Jr.

Published by Simon and Schuster 1981

ISBN 0-671-25428-6