Freedom Line Blog

Despite the uproar, President Obama today is delivering his much-anticipated speech to the nation’s school children from Wakefield High School in Arlington, Virginia.  But as pointed out by Byron York today in the Washington Examiner:

[W]hen President George H.W. Bush delivered a similar speech on October 1, 1991, from Alice Deal Junior High School in Washington DC, the controversy was just beginning. Democrats, then the majority party in Congress, not only denounced Bush’s speech — they also ordered the General Accounting Office to investigate its production and later summoned top Bush administration officials to Capitol Hill for an extensive hearing on the issue.

Then House Majority Leader Richard Gephardt complained at the time that “The Department of Education should not be producing paid political advertising for the president.”

And, according to Mr. York:

Rep. William Ford, then chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee, ordered the General Accounting Office to investigate the cost and legality of Bush’s appearance. On October 17, 1991, Ford summoned then-Education Secretary Lamar Alexander and other top Bush administration officials to testify at a hearing devoted to the speech.

Read Byron York’s entire article here.