    The federal budget is a document about the size of a big city phone book, and about as hard to read from cover to cover. The blueprint President submits this week contains many numbers, but there is one that probably counts more than any other -- $5.6 trillion. That is the surplus the federal government expects to collect over the next 10 years; money left over after we have met our obligations to Social Security, Medicare, health care, education, defense and other priorities. The plan President submits will fund the highest national priorities. Education gets the biggest percentage increase of any department in the federal government. We won't just spend more money on schools and education, we will spend it responsibly. We'll give states more freedom to decide what works. And as we give more to our schools we're going to expect more in return by requiring states and local jurisdictions to test every year. How else can we know whether schools are teaching and children are learning?
