Vital Signs: Hyde Opens Fire On Goals 2000

“What is essential,” wrote Carnegie-backed education bureaucrat Marc Tucker to Hillary Rodham Clinton just after her husband’s 1992 election, “is that we create a seamless web of opportunities to develop one’s skills that literally extends from cradle to grave and is the same system for everyone—young and old, poor and rich, worker and full-time student.” (See February 1996 Crisis, “Hillary’s Scarlet Letter”) Over the past five years, as everyday Americans have tried to fend off that smothering web of collectivized education, health care, and work-force prep, they have found few heroes among the nation’s political, academic, and media elite.

That is, until Congressman Henry Hyde, the pro-life stalwart from Illinois, caught on to how Tucker’s seamless web has been spun through work-force development legislation passed by both houses of Congress. Hyde denounced the scheme as the “granddaddy socialist plan of them all.” The bills expired in conference committee as the 104th Congress ended.

On February 12, Hyde threw open the hearing room of the Judiciary Committee, which he chairs, to a daylong conference of citizen-activists and state legislators from across America. They came to document and denounce School to Work, attitudinal assessment, electronic tracking, schools as Medicaid providers, Goals 2000, and other strands of the entangling web of government control.

Kent Masterson Brown, the government lawyer who sued to open to public scrutiny the records of Hillary Clinton’s health-care task force, showed in vivid detail how major foundations are essentially buying the socialized health-care policy they desire, piece by piece. State Senator Peggy Jeffries of Arkansas showed that, after ten years of education “reforms” put in place by the Clintons, children have plummeted 25 percent or more on standardized tests— a sad recommendation for the national standards the president now seeks in his second term.

California activist Roxanne Petteway showed how the Clinton regime is setting up a National Information Infrastructure—described by a Commerce Department report as “a seamless web of communications networks, computers, databases, and consumer electronics”—that will be able to track Americans through the health and education maze and into “lifelong learning” (skills retraining).

The room did a brisk business as curious Capitol Hill staffers dropped in to hear what was being said. For more information contact the office of Congressman Henry Hyde, 202-225-3121 or the legislative director of the Eagle Forum, Kristen K. Ardizzone, at 202-544-0353.

Author

  • Robert Holland

    Robert Holland is a Senior Fellow in Education at the Heartland Institute.

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