Clinton Says GOP Tax Cut Threatens Public Education : Politics: He calls plan risky and announces $95 million in aid to charter schools in his weekly radio address.

EDGARTOWN, Mass. —  President Clinton took another opportunity Saturday to denounce the Republicans’ $792-billion tax cut package as unacceptably risky, this time calling it a threat to the future of public education.

In his weekly radio address, Clinton also announced $95 million in aid for charter schools and endorsed the education idea as “freer of red tape and top-down management” than traditional public schools.

Clinton contrasted the tax cut plan with what he called the education successes of his administration.

“Charter schools are living proof of what parents and teachers can do to reinvigorate public education. Investing in them means investing in accountability and excellence and a much better future for our children,” Clinton said.

“But just as our children are returning to class, the Republicans’ risky tax cut plan would undermine these investments by forcing deep and irresponsible cuts to education and other national priorities,” he said.

The grants include $41 million for 19 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico to fund the first of three-year grants for new charter schools. An additional $54 million will go to existing programs.

California and 13 other states already receive federal money to support charter schools and will continue to do so. The state Department of Education will receive $12.6 million in the next fiscal year. It is expected to run a competition for disbursement of the funds among charter schools in California.

Charter schools are often created by concerned parents or teachers and operate with a charter from a public agency. Supporters say such schools offer solutions to problems weighing on public classrooms.

Just one charter school existed nationally when Clinton took office in 1993, he said. Now there are more than 1,700, and the administration hopes to help foster 3,000 by 2001, Clinton said.

“Charter schools offer parents and students more choice in the kinds of public education available to them, coupled with public accountability,” Education Secretary Richard W. Riley said in a statement.

House Republican Conference Chairman J.C. Watts Jr. of Oklahoma praised Clinton’s support for charter schools. “For that, he gets an A,” Watts said, though he also criticized the president’s threat to veto the Republican tax cut package, noting that some parts of it are designed to help parents pay for college.

The criticism by Watts echoed complaints raised by Arizona Gov. Jane Dee Hull in the GOP’s weekly radio address. “He either has a deep-seated desire to increase government spending, or he just does not want to give the money back to the people who earned it in the first place,” she said. “President Clinton is playing politics with your money.”

Clinton typically tapes the radio address in advance. But he delivered the brief speech live Saturday at Edgartown School before an audience of Martha’s Vineyard residents who helped White House staff and reporters during the Clintons’ vacation this week.