WASHINGTON – Calling it “probably the only chance in the next decade” to live up to Congress’s responsibility to provide all the funds it has promised for special education, Rep. Tom Allen Thursday asked the House Budget Committee to include additional money in its budget resolution.

“There is only one solution to achieve true reform,” Allen said. “It is simply to budget $17.7 billion for special education this year.”

With the additional money, Congress would finally fulfill its commitment to provide 40 percent of the cost of educating children with disabilities, as promised in the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1975, Allen said.

So far, the federal government contributes only 15 percent nationwide, leaving it up to localities and states to come up with the money, he said.

“Congress talks a lot about fully funding this mandate, but never puts in the money to actually do it,” Allen said in his testimony. “We pass nonbinding resolutions on full funding to make us feel good, but then leave our local school districts dry.”

Allen said he held several forums in Maine with teachers, legislators and families, and found that their biggest challenge is juggling the cost of educating students with disabilities.

“Everyone suffers,” he said. “Students with disabilities often do not receive necessary aid, students without disabilities miss out on programs that cannot be funded, and local taxpayers experience a high tax burden.”

With the federal budget debate focusing on how to use trillions of dollars in surpluses, increasing the special education budget should not be a problem, Allen said.

Allen said the federal surplus gives Congress the chance this year to use available money for improving special education, but warned if President George W. Bush’s $1.6 trillion tax cut passes, there will not be another opportunity to increase special education funding for years to come.

“If this tax cut goes through, it whites out full funding of special education for the next 10 years,” Allen said. “People will be back next year and ask for funding,” he said. “But there will be no opportunity to provide any funding, because the tax cut uses up all of the readily available surplus,” he said.

“Every person in Maine who cares about education should be screaming at their representatives” to make the tax cut half the size, Allen said, because “only then Congress can take care of its responsibilities to fund special education.”