Dear President Bush

Hi. We're the US Department of Education. We've been following this Wall Street Crisis closely and we really hope you work it all out up there. Wow, ya know? It's scary. Instead of having no money and expansive regulations (like we have), they had tons of money and almost no regulations. Our heart goes out to them.

Anyway, we know it's off the subject, but we were reading through the proposed budget for the Department of Education for FY 2009. We have to admit, we were surprised to read this:

"For 2009, the President is requesting $59.2 billion in discretionary appropriations for the Department of Education, the same as the 2008 level, and an increase of $17.0 billion, or 40 percent, in discretionary appropriations for the Department since fiscal year 2001."

That's great. It really is. We're facing a serious crisis in education, though, and its our hope that the government will come up with a great bipartisan solution to solve our problems, and to go after the root cause of the issues we have.

We propose that the federal government reduce the risk posed by troubled schools and supply urgently needed money so teachers and students can avoid collapse and resume learning.

Would you mind borrowing $700 billion from China to help increase teacher salaries and save our failing system? It's important that our kids we remain competitive in the global market.

Thanks so much!