[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 33 (Tuesday, March 22, 1994)]
[House]
[Page H]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[Congressional Record: March 22, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]
IMPROVING AMERICA'S SCHOOLS ACT OF 1994
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Fields of Louisiana). Pursuant to House
Resolution 366 and rule XXIII, the Chair declares the House in the
Committee of the Whole House on the State of the Union for the further
consideration of the bill, H.R. 6.
{time} 1244
in the committee of the whole
Accordingly, the House resolved itself into the Committee of the
Whole House on the State of the Union for the further consideration of
the bill (H.R. 6) to extend for 6 years the authorizations of
appropriations for the programs under the Elementary and Secondary
Education Act of 1965, and for certain other purposes, with Mrs.
Kennelly Chairman pro tempore in the chair.
The Clerk read the title of the bill.
The CHAIRMAN pro tempore. When the Committee of the Whole rose on
Monday, March 21, 1994, title IX of the proposed Elementary and
Secondary Education Act was open for amendment at any point.
Are there further amendments to title IX?
amendment offered by mr. rohrabacher
Mr. ROHRABACHER. Madam Chairman, I offer an amendment.
The Clerk read as follows:
Amendment offered by Mr. Rohrabacher: Page 762, after line
8, insert the following:
``SEC. 9508. PROHIBITING BENEFITS FOR ILLEGAL ALIENS.
``No funds authorized in this Act may be used to provide
any benefit or assistance to any individual who is not-
``(1) a citizen or national of the United States;
``(2) a permanent resident alien; or
``(3) an alien who is a parolee, asylee, or refugee under
the Immigration and Nationality Act.''.
Mr. ROHRABACHER. Madam Chairman, this amendment is one of a series of
amendments that I intend to offer to end the practice of providing
Federal benefits to illegal aliens. Each of these amendments will have
the effect of stemming the huge drain on the Federal budget caused by
opening the Federal treasury without restriction to people who have
violated the laws of our country by coming here.
In this case, my amendment will also eliminate one of the largest
unfunded Federal mandates in existence. This mandate has come about
through a combination of the Player versus Doe Supreme Court decision
and a lack of congressional policy in this area.
In 1982, the Supreme Court decided by a 5 to 4 vote that, in the
absence of congressional policy to the contrary, States must provide a
free education to illegal aliens. Let me repeat that, Madam Chairman.
This Supreme Court decision was not only decided by one vote, in a more
liberal Supreme Court than we have today, but even by its terms, it is
a mandate on the States, not the Federal Government.
And, as is obvious to anyone who actually reads the majority opinion
in this case, the only reason the State of Texas was not allowed to
make the distinction between citizens and legal residents on the one
hand, and illegal aliens on the other, was because Congress had made no
such distinction.
What I am proposing today, Madam Chairman, is for Congress to make
that distinction--so that the States can then constitutionally make the
decision that citizens and legal residents from all racial and ethnic
backgrounds shall come first; that those who have entered our country
in violation of our laws are not entitled to the same benefits as our
own citizens and legal residents. Once Congress makes this delineation,
Plyler versus Doe will no longer keep States from making the same
decision.
In my State of California, the most popular initiative currently
being circulated for placement on the ballot is the SOS initiative.
This initiative ends State-funded benefits, including education
benefits, to illegal aliens. The only way this initiative can be fully
effective, the only way California taxpayers and the taxpayers of other
States will be able to lift this burden from their backs, is for
Congress to adopt this amendment.
Yes, Madam Chairman, it is tough to tell parents that their children
will not receive a free education, if those children are not here
legally. And it is tough to tell them they won't receive long-term
disaster aid, or other Federal benefits. And it is probably even
tougher to tell them that they, and their children, will be deported
because they came here illegally.
But just because it is tough to do doesn't mean it shouldn't be done,
Madam Chairman. Just because it is tough to say ``no'' doesn't mean we
should entice everyone in the world with the promise that if they can
make it here illegally, they will get every benefit Federal, State, and
local governments provide to citizens and legal residents, including
educating their children, and in their own native language, no less.
Madam Chairman, continuing to provide the current panoply of
taxpayer-paid benefits to anyone who can make it here illegally is
fueling our deficit, and will eventually bankrupt this Nation, and its
State and local governments, as well. I ask my colleagues to support
this step toward fiscal sanity for all levels of government.
{time} 1250
Mr. RICHARDSON. Madam Chairman, I move to strike the last word.
(Mr. RICHARDSON asked and was given permission to revise and extend
his remarks.)
Mr. RICHARDSON. Madam Chairman, this amendment is counterproductive,
shortsighted, and an unconstitutional attempt to build upon anti-
immigrant sentiment. Not only does the amendment deprive children of
receiving an education, but it is also an unfunded Federal mandate that
places a huge financial burden on every local school in every district
in this Nation. Local schools would be forced to investigate the
immigration status of its students and their parents without receiving
any money from the Federal Government. In short, this amendment harms
schools, and sends the message to some children that they are different
and not good enough to receive the same education as other children
who, for some reason, are considered better than they are.
As proposed, this amendment would expose innocent individuals who are
U.S. citizens or otherwise legally admitted into this country to
widespread discrimination. It is likely that only those who look
different than someone like Mr. Rohrabacher will be asked by untrained
school officials to produce proof of citizenship when they are detained
or questioned. In fact, innocent individuals have been mistakenly
deported, and under this amendment, cases of mistaken identity will be
enormously increased. This amendment will force teachers to single out
and discriminate against students in order to receive the funds they
desperately need.
Furthermore, school administrators and teachers who are already
overwhelmed with the educational system would have to enforce complex
immigration laws. As an unfunded Federal mandate, this amendment would
place unreasonable administrative and costly burdens on every district
in this country including those with little immigration. The fact is
that this amendment will not prevent illegal immigration. Instead, the
result will be a country where children will grow up poorly educated
and will be unable to compete in a global economy.
The amendment also forces Federal, State, and local jurisdictions to
act against the principles of our constitution. The Supreme Court has
ruled that all children are allowed access to public education. More
importantly, the Court determined that children of undocumented
individuals eventually acquire legal status. Therefore, if these
children are denied an education, we will be creating an underclass of
individuals who will be ill-prepared to take on their roles as future
workers and contributors to society.
Madam Chairman, school boards as well as the Immigration and
Naturalization Service oppose this amendment. They do so because they
understand that our focus needs to be on the enhancement of our
educational system for all children. By discriminating against our
children and by adding more burdens and costs to our local schools, we
would be harming all Americans. We as a Congress, including a majority
of Republican Members, overwhelmingly voted against an effort to force
school officials to become INS agents. Let's take the next positive
step and help schools focus not on additional paperwork and more
redtape, but on the education of all our children.
Mr. GOODLING. Madam Chairman, I move to strike the penultimate word.
(Mr. GOODLING asked and was given permission to revise and extend his
remarks.)
Mr. GOODLING. Madam Chairman, I have one concern about the amendment,
and that concern is that it would appear to me to be broad enough that
it would include children of migrant laborers who come in from other
countries. If that is true, they are probably the most needy and their
parents are the most needed because, being in the orchard business
myself, to try to hire locally you might as well let the fruit rot and
drop because it is too expensive to get it harvested. But after you let
it rot and drop, you have to go out and pick it up anyway in order to
protect the soil.
So I would hope that it does not include children of migrant workers
who begin, when they come in and start harvesting in Florida, then they
move up through the South, come into Pennsylvania and Ohio and end up
in California generally. The youngsters have it difficult enough
because they are being moved from school district to school district to
school district. So I am concerned that the language would be broad
enough that they would not have an exemption because I do not read an
exemption for them in the legislation.
Mr. BECERRA. Madam Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of
words.
Madam Chairman, if you will recall, about a week and a half ago we
defeated an amendment that was somewhat similar to the amendment we
face today by the gentleman from California [Mr. Rohrabacher]. At that
point the amendment would have imposed upon schools a requirement that
they report the number of children in their schools who did not have
documents to be in this country, as well as to also document the number
of children who had a parent who did not have documents to be in this
country.
That was an amendment which had no funding behind it and would have
required schools to become INS agents, teachers to spy on the children,
children to snitch on their parents as well.
What we found was that it would have been unworkable and unfundable,
and it would have cost us millions, if not billions, of dollars to try
to enforce.
That amendment was defeated, defeated soundly, I must say, by a vote
of 78 in favor and 329 against. There were more Republicans who voted
against that amendment than there were Republicans who supported that
amendment.
This amendment does implicitly what that previous amendment did
explicitly; that is, require schools to document what their children's
status is, whether or not a child looks as Anglo as any other child in
this Nation, white or Latino or Africa-American or Asian, it would make
no difference. A school cannot discriminate and say, ``You look
foreign-born, and therefore I am going to find out if in fact you are
here with documentation.'' You would have to go to every child in every
school and document that this person somehow is not here legally. You
would have to undertake, if you are a school district, the same type of
action that the INS is required to take in order to deport someone,
because if you do not, then you are, in essence, admitting that you are
discriminating because you are somehow selectively deciding who to
choose to administer some type of examination to find out if this
person is here legally or not.
The worst part about this particular amendment, I would say, is that
the person whom we are choosing to go after is a child, a child who is
trying to receive an education.
I would hope that we keep in mind in this particular debate that we
are talking about imposing upon a school district, upon administrators,
and upon teachers and upon children and their parents a requirement
that they determine somehow what the INS is obligated by law to do--and
that is, if someone is here, legally or not--and here we are
pinpointing children.
What is the biggest problem with this particular amendment? Besides
the cost and the Federal Government here is providing not a single cent
to pay for the cost of a school to try to determine the status of a
child, but the worst part about this is that we are talking about a
bill, an amendment here that would have virtually no effect, if any at
all, on those who are coming into this country without documentation.
Think about it, a person who crosses the borders without documentation
is coming, for the most part, without children. The person is coming to
find a job. If someone is coming across these borders without
documentation and bringing a family, chances are the reason he or she
is bringing family is to flee conditions which are worse than they are
here in the United States.
Chances are the child of that particular immigrant without documents
will not be afforded education in that home country. Chances are the
health care for that child is going to be no better than the health
care in a country like the United States if we were to exclude any
funding for health care. But in terms of education, we are talking
about trying to educate a young mind, whether the mind is of a child
who came with parents, completely innocently, because the parents came
across this border without documentation, is completely ignored by this
amendment. What it says is that we will discipline, we will penalize a
child who is in the school to learn because his or her parent may have
come across the border without documentation. And I say may because you
have to prove it. You cannot deny someone access to something or the
benefit of something without proving he or she is not entitled to it.
You are innocent in this country until proven guilty. This would
require schools to determine that someone is guilty, something that
requires a judicial process.
So we are not only causing States and school districts to incur
tremendous costs through this amendment but we have no guarantees that
it will do anything to reduce the number of people who are coming into
our borders without documents because people certainly will not leave
if they hear that their child all of a sudden does not have access to
education, because what they truly are looking for is a way to provide
for their family. A lot of these immigrants were not heavily educated
themselves. They never were expected to have their child get educated
heavily in their own country. So, depriving the child of a decent
education probably will have very little effect, deterrent effect on
people who wish to come into this country without documents.
{time} 1300
It is an unfunded mandate, a heavy burden on school districts, and I
would urge my colleagues to vote against this particular amendment
because it does nothing to address the issue of immigration which we
should do through immigration laws.
Mr. BOEHNER. Madam Chairman, I ask unanimous consent to limit debate
on this amendment to 30 minutes, to be equally divided between both
sides.
Mr. CHAIRMAN pro tempore. Does the gentleman desire to include in his
unanimous consent request all amendments thereto?
Mr. BOEHNER. Yes, Madam Chairman, to include all amendments thereto.
Mr. CHAIRMAN pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the
gentleman from Ohio?
There was no objection.
Mr. CHAIRMAN pro tempore. The gentleman from California [Mr.
Rohrabacher] will be recognized for 15 minutes, and the gentleman from
Michigan [Mr. Kildee] will be recognized for 15 minutes.
Mr. KILDEE. Madam Chairman, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from
New York [Mr. Serrano].
Mr. SERRANO. Madam Chairman, I guess the best way to start this
discussion this time, as I look at the gentleman from California [Mr.
Rohrabacher], is to quote a Member of his party some years ago and
simply say: ``Here you go again.''
Madam Chairman, I have no understanding why the gentleman from
California continues to believe that this kind of an amendment can have
any real effect on the issue that he wishes to address, an issue of
whether or not we have an immigration problem or an immigration
situation in the country. If, in fact, it is a problem for some of us,
the time to deal with that is not when a child enters school. As the
gentleman from California on our side clearly stated, Madam Chairman,
this amendment is no different than the gentleman's original amendment
because that amendment stated that we had to count everyone. It said:
For this amendment to be carried out you have to count
everyone, and, if you make a mistake in counting, a district
runs the risk under this amendment of losing its funding.
Now we are not talking about funding only for undocumented children,
Madam Chairman. We are talking about funding for all children. So
technically, my colleagues, take a district anywhere in California, a
district anywhere in Michigan, in Illinois, in New York, in Florida. I
can say as a former school employee of a school district, what you have
to go through to find out who these children are takes weeks, months,
perhaps half a year, and the gentleman doesn't speak at all to what
happens to those funds during that time. So technically anyone, under
this amendment, could then sue in any court in the land to say ``Don't
allow New York City, San Diego, Pasadena, or anyplace in Hawaii,
wherever, to receive funding this fiscal year because they still have
not completed their study,'' and we would be in violation of the law.
Then we go to the point that we bring up every time which is: How the
heck do you get around finding out who is documented and who is not?
Well, the first unfair part of this continues to be, and it is like,
as my colleague knows, we are repeating ourselves all the time, but the
gentleman keeps coming up with these amendments. The first thing is
that only those who look foreign will be asked to prove that they are
citizens, and only those who look foreign will be asked to ask their
parents if they are citizens or not, and I think that that is, first of
all, improper, it is unfair, and it creates a problem because, as the
gentleman well knows, someone that would go in with my first name would
be asked to prove that he is a citizen, and, having been born an
American citizen, I have no proof, and I carry no proof with me, that I
am an American citizen.
So, I continue to implore the gentleman who every other time of the
day is one of the nicest people I know in this country, but the minute
he gets behind these amendments, Madam Chairman, he becomes an
individual that is so hard to understand. I implore the gentleman to
reconsider these kinds of amendments. I know he is going to come up
with one on every single bill every time we are allocating any dollars
to any area of this country. I ask him to reconsider what he is doing
and say, If you, in fact, believe that there is an immigration problem
in this country, then deal with it under an immigration package of
bills that deals with that issue. Once a child is here, once a person
is in a flood, once a person is in an earthquake, do not single them
out to be the only ones in the society that have to prove that they are
citizens.
Madam Chairman, this is costly. This is going to cost the local
districts a lot of money, and for a person who is known to be a fiscal
conservative I am surprised that the gentleman from California [Mr.
Rohrabacher] would put on different districts of the Nation such
difficult costs.
I say to the gentleman, Don't pass it on. Don't even consider going
through with this amendment today. Our rules allow us to pull the
amendments back, and you would get a standing ovation from this side if
you did so.
Mr. ROHRABACHER. Madam Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman
from Florida [Mr. Stearns].
Mr. STEARNS. Madam Chairman, I would just like to have a colloquy
with my friend, the gentleman from California [Mr. Rohrabacher]. This
particular amendment, and other amendments that he has had, have
brought up the question from the other side in terms of Federal
mandates, and I thought we might explore that a little bit because I
think there is some misinformation out here. I think this side
recognizes that we have an immigration problem, a situation, as the
colleague who just spoke, and we have to get to the heart of this
matter.
Another area I would like to explore with him is the idea of how the
Supreme Court's decision on this has been and how the gentleman's
amendment would tie in with the Supreme Court, and I think there has
been some statements by the Supreme Court on this matter.
So I think we should try and talk about the fact, and I would like to
yield to my colleague from California to talk about this, two areas, in
terms of the Federal mandates, what that means in the schools, and the
idea of what the Supreme Court has said on this, and how the
gentleman's legislation would affect that decision.
Mr. ROHRABACHER. Madam Chairman, will the gentleman yield?
Mr. STEARNS. I yield to the gentleman from California.
Mr. ROHRABACHER. Madam Chairman, the requirement, or the mandate,
that local school districts provide education for illegal aliens just
as they provide education for legal residents and U.S. citizens was
dictated by Pyler versus Doe. However a reading of Pyler versus Doe,
which was only a 5-to-4 decision in a court that was much more liberal
than it is today, a reading of that decision makes very clear that the
States are not mandated if the Federal Government sets a policy. What I
am attempting to do today and with the amendments which I will offer on
other bills in the future is for us to state the policy, which is what
the justices of the Supreme Court asked us to do, in terms of whether
or not benefits should be made available or be mandated for States to
be made available to illegal immigrants. If we indeed pass resolutions
and amendments like the one I am suggesting today, it complies with
what the Supreme Court suggested was necessary, for us to take the
mandate off of the local government and the local schools.
In other words, Madam Chairman, when we are talking about mandated
education costing billions of dollars, that is not mandated if the
Congress acts. It is very clear in that Supreme Court decision.
So, those on the other side of the aisle who are suggesting that the
mandate will be held if we indeed set the policy are wrong. In fact, we
are talking about saving the taxpayers billions of dollars by
eliminating that mandate on our local schools and our States.
Mr. STEARNS. So, to emphasize what the gentleman is saying here,
Madam Chairman, the Pyler versus Doe Supreme Court decision said States
are not mandated if the Federal Government sets a policy, and in this
amendment, the one that the gentleman had yesterday on striking the
provisions in dealing with bilingual education and in many of his
amendments, they have been shown to be setting the policy by the
Federal Government in the gentleman's amendment. So that precludes the
idea that there is any Federal mandates, so I think my colleagues
should realize this whole argument on the basis of this is that all
Federal mandates on the States is erroneous if we in Congress set the
policy.
Is that not true?
Mr. ROHRABACHER. The gentleman is correct. The purpose of my
amendment is to eliminate the Federal mandate on the State and the
local government, a mandate that today costs the taxpayers of this
country billions of dollars in order to provide benefits for people who
may not have contributed at all to the tax base--which may or may not
have contributed to the tax base which is being taxed in order to
provide that benefit.
{time} 1310
Mr. STEARNS. So in this case there are going to be extra funds
required, there is a stipulation, and we are setting the policy. We
hear on the other side that we are forcing children to spy on their
parents and things like that. The gentleman might want to address that
because we hear that continually from the other side.
Mr. ROHRABACHER. Madam Chairman, the amendment which would have
required the schools to count the number of illegal aliens at no time
suggested that those schools turn any name of anyone over to any
Federal authority. It is understood the amendment, of course, was a
tactic used to obfuscate the central point, and the purpose of that
amendment was to get a count. The amendment was very clear and the
newspaper accounts of my amendment were very clear that at no time did
I require, suggest, or in any way make any type of hint that local
school districts should be taking the names of the children and turning
them over to the INS. We specifically by that amendment wanted a count.
All we needed to do was to get a count of the problem.
In California we have millions of people who have come there from
other countries, not just from Latin America and Mexico but from other
countries of the world as well, who are now receiving educational
benefits for their children. It is breaking the budget.
Governor Chiles from the gentleman's own State of Florida complained
that the same thing is happening in Florida. The budgets of States are
being broken by the fact that people naturally want to come here. Good
and decent people want to come here from all over the world, but we
have to determine this today: Where does our allegiance lie? With the
people who have been here legally and are U.S. citizens, at a time of a
budget crunch, should we be spending the money, our limited dollars,
for their benefit, or shall we open it up to everybody in the world who
can come here illegally and thus hurt our own people?
Mr. STEARNS. Madam Chairman, taking back my own time, I have just one
other point. In Florida we have a number of illegal immigrants who are
in prisons, and we are trying to prevent that. Governor Chiles is suing
the Federal Government because of the illegal immigrants who are in
Florida.
I would just like to say in summary that all the gentleman is trying
to do is get information so we can have a handle on this problem. So
the gentleman's amendment is specifically saying, ``Let's find out how
many children there are.''
Mr. ROHRABACHER. Madam Chairman, the first thing is to set the
principle and then let us get the numbers, and then let us try to find
the enforcement mechanism.
Mr. STEARNS. Madam Chairman, I thank the gentleman.
Mr. KILDEE. Madam Chairman, I yield 4 minutes to the gentlewoman from
Hawaii [Mrs. Mink].
Mrs. MINK of Hawaii. Madam Chairman, I thank the gentleman for
yielding time to me, and I yield to the gentleman from California [Mr.
Becerra].
Mr. BECERRA. Madam Chairman, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding.
I only wish to speak for just a short moment for the purpose of
clarifying the colloquy that went on between the 2 gentleman on the
other side of the aisle.
I do not think anyone is saying that if the Federal Government
could--and it can at this stage--tell States they do not have to
provide education to a particular individual, that therefore there
would be some demand upon a State. Clearly there would not if in fact
there were no requirement by the Federal Government to do so.
But what the 2 gentleman forget completely in their colloquy is that
there has to be a determination made that someone is here without
documentation. Someone has to adjudicate that a child or an adult is
not legally here.
I say to the gentleman from California [Mr. Rohrabacher] that his
amendment does nothing to provide school districts the money they need
to go through the adjudicatory process to determine that. The gentleman
leaves it up to the States and the school districts, the schools
themselves, to pay for the cost of adjudication, and, therefore, that
is a heavy, large unfunded mandate.
What some of us on this side of the aisle are saying is, ``Let's deal
with those immigration issues, but let's deal with the issues in the
immigration law, not in education law, where we are going to impact
tremendous numbers of children.''
We do not know who we are going to attack, if we are not attacking
those who are here with or without documentation. So let us not fool
anyone. This is a magnificent unfunded Federal mandate the gentleman is
proposing. It may not be an unfunded mandate the way the gentleman has
explained it, but it certainly is an unfunded mandate that will require
schools to do something they are not right now required to do.
Mrs. MINK of Hawaii. Madam Chairman, I thank the gentleman for his
comments.
Madam Chairman, I think that this amendment is an egregious attempt
to alter what has been the basic philosophy of this country, and that
is to assume the fundamental responsibility of educating our children
in our public school systems by those who do not want to be in the
public school systems to preserve the integrity of the private schools.
But we have always felt undergirded by the Supreme Court decision
that the responsibility of all of us in our communities through our
local school boards, in our States, and indeed through the Congress, is
to afford educational opportunity to our children.
he mischief of this amendment is to say that there are some children
in our society that ought not to be educated, and that if a school
system does not segregate out from its population those who are not
entitled to an education, it could suffer the harm of losing Federal
funds, and that is a very, very difficult predicament that school
systems are going to find themselves in.
There is no doubt that there is an illegal immigration problem in
this country, but why use the children of our country to enforce the
laws that ought to be enforced by the Justice Department and by all the
other law enforcement agencies that we have put this responsibility
upon? Why do we want to do this to our children and to our school
systems that now have to segregate among our children to try to
determine whether indeed any one of them is receiving an education that
they ought not to receive because of this prohibition?
This is a very harmful amendment. It will divide our children, it
will divide our families, and it will cause egregious harm in our
communities.
Madam Chairman, I beg this House not to use the children of America
or our schools to enforce the laws with regard to immigration, and I
hope that this amendment will be defeated.
Mr. ROHRABACHER. Madam Chairman, I yield myself 3 minutes.
Madam Chairman, we do not want to use our children, that is right. We
are not talking about setting up a policy for our children. We are
talking about setting a policy for the children of the world and the
parents of the world. Let the word go forth from this Congress to
anyone in the world who wants to improve the life of their children if
they can make it across the borders of the United States legally or
illegally. The Members on that side of the aisle who are making that
argument at this time want to provide those children with all their
educational benefits.
Is that a threat to the well-being of the people of the United States
of America, to our children? Darned straight, it is a threat. We have
only limited funds in this country to provide education and health
benefits for our people. We are not talking about our children. We are
talking about all the people who would bring their children to our
country, good people, decent people, who are concerned about their
families. But we cannot afford to take care of them because it is going
to hurt the quality of education for our own children.
Let us not kid ourselves. The people out there who are listening to
this debate are not being kidded by this. We cannot afford to do this.
We say that anyone from far-off foreign lands, whether it is Latin
America, Asia, Africa, Europe, or wherever they are, do not have the
right to these benefits because we cannot afford to take care of
everybody in the world. They know that is a threat.
The fact is that there have been some legitimate arguments presented
today. Let me take care of one argument. This ends the mandate. Here is
the Supreme Court decision. We can read the Supreme Court decision. We
are talking about lifting the mandate that costs billions of dollars.
That is what we are talking about right now. The Supreme Court said
that Federal policy will determine whether or not there is a mandate to
educate illegal alien children, and until the Congress acts, the States
must educate those children.
Now what we are asking right now is to end that mandate in the way
the Supreme Court asks us to end the mandate.
Yes, our friends on the other side of the aisle have made these
arguments. They say people of color may feel humiliated because they,
more than other people, will be asked to provide identification, and
that, I think, is a legitimate argument, and one of legitimate concern.
It is not a concern, however, that cannot be met. We are trying to set
the principle down, and we can find enforcement methods once that
principle has been set down on how to do this without violating the
rights of our own people or humiliating our own citizens, of whatever
color or racial background.
For example, once we set the principle down, perhaps the American
people will go along with creating a tamperproof Social Security card
with a chip in it which will permit all citizens to identify themselves
without any racial or ethnic humiliation whatsoever, because it will
let everyone be able to prove their citizenship and their legal status
right there on the spot. That is one thing we are moving to once we get
down and recognize the problem.
Madam Chairman, in California and in many other States this is a
major problem and a major threat to the well-being of our people.
{time} 1320
The CHAIRMAN pro tempore (Mrs. Kennelly). The Chair would announce
that the gentleman from California [Mr. Rohrabacher] has 6 minutes
remaining, and the gentleman from Michigan [Mr. Kildee] has 6 minutes
remaining.
Mr. KILDEE. Madam Chairman, I yield such time as he may consume to
the gentleman from Michigan [Mr. Bonior].
(Mr. BONIOR asked and was given permission to revise and extend his
remarks.)
Mr. BONIOR. Madam Chairman, I rise in strong opposition to this
amendment.
Madam Chairman, we expect a lot out of our teachers in America today.
We expect them to be educators and role models, counselors and
motivators, babysitters, and disciplinarians.
And we ask them to do all that in the face of budget cuts and metal
detectors, turf wars and teenage angst, decreasing resources, and
increasing diversity.
And even with all that, most of them do a wonderful job.
But the supporters of this amendment feel that our teachers do not do
enough.
That they do not have enough responsibility.
So supporters of this amendment want teachers and school districts to
get into the Perry Mason business.
They do not just want teachers to be trained in reading, writing, and
arithmetic.
They want them to be trained as agents of the INS.
Instead of spending money on computers and books, supporters of this
amendment want to require schools to set up INS offices next to the
lunchroom.
Make no mistake about it, that is what this amendment does.
It not only requires local schools to police Federal immigration
laws. But it requires schools to conduct investigations of their own
students to make sure they are legal.
Madam Chairman, this is not what schools are for and that is why the
House overwhelmingly rejected a similar amendment a few weeks ago.
What is more, this amendment requires all of this--the
investigations, the background checks, the constant monitoring by
teachers--without providing so much as a dime of Federal money to help.
Madam Chairman, talk about redtape.
Talk about unfunded mandates.
This amendment is the mother load of all unfunded mandates.
But above everything else, this amendment does one substantial,
unforgivable thing, one thing that no government should ever be a party
to, this amendment codifies discrimination.
Ask yourself this: How are teachers supposed to decide who to check
and who not to check?
Will it be based strictly on appearances?
Will every student who doesn't have blond hair and blue eyes be
forced to line up in the gym and flash their papers?
Or will teachers just randomly pick students out of study halls and
recess lines who do not look quite right?
Is that how it works?
Madam Chairman, what kind of message does that send to the other
students? That it is OK to discriminate?
That it is OK to suspect somebody is guilty of wrongdoing just
because they look different or sound different?
Madam Chairman, maybe I come from the old school.
I believe teachers should focus on report cards, not green cards.
I believe they should prepare all of our students for the future, not
just a select few.
Let us be honest: This amendment will not improve schools or increase
test scores.
All this amendment will do is divert our teachers away from teaching
and burden schools with more redtape.
Madam Chairman, a first grade classroom is not the place to
interrogate students and enforce immigration laws.
We have other agencies to do that.
Yes, we need realistic approaches to solve our immigration problems.
But this amendment is nothing but a cost-shifting, teacher-
exploiting, student-discriminating amendment, and just as we did a few
weeks ago with an equally hateful amendment, I urge my colleagues to
reject it.
Mr. KILDEE. Madam Chairman, I yield 30 seconds to the gentleman from
New York [Mr. Serrano].
Mr. SERRANO. Madam Chairman, just to make a clarification, I asked
the city of New York to let me know how much it would cost just to
count 1 million school children, and they said $5 to $10 a head. That
is $5 to $10 million in New York City. In New York State it would be
from $15 to $30 million. In California, where there are 5 million
students, it would be $25 to $50 million just to count. Before a
hearing, any court case, any cleaning up of the system, just to count
the children, it would cost in California from $25 to $50 million.
Mr. ROHRABACHER. Madam Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman
from California [Mr. Stearns].
Mr. STEARNS. Madam Chairman, just a question. It costs $5 to $10 just
to count a child. Let me ask you this question: When a child comes into
school, do they not register and provide lots of identification when
they do this? Why could this not be done at the same time? So that
maybe the estimate that was given to you was on the basis of going out
separately and doing this. But this all could be done simultaneously.
First of all, I cannot believe it is going to cost $10 to count. But
let us set that aside. Let us talk about the idea, when you collect all
this other information when a child comes in, can you not at the same
time establish their citizenship and at that point have the
information?
Second, would not the gentleman concede that once this information is
provided that my colleague's amendment is offering, we might be able to
save money in the long-term, because we will have a handle on a very
significant problem, and we can come back here and actually tackle the
problem of what are we going to do about these large number of illegal
immigrants and how to correct this situation.
Mr. KILDEE. Madam Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from
new York [Mr. Fish].
(Mr. FISH asked and was given permission to revise and extend his
remarks.)
Mr. FISH. Madam Chairman, many of us are growing increasingly
concerned with two trends in Federal aid to education. The first is the
creation of unfunded mandates and the second is the erosion of local
control and flexibility in determining such matters as curriculum,
textbooks, and teacher certification.
There are far too many examples of unfunded mandates. The Asbestos
Schools Hazard Abatement Act once again has not been funded. Public Law
94-142, the Education for All Handicapped Children Act promised a 40-
percent Federal share. This year the Federal share is only 8 percent.
Goals 2000 for all its virtues is clearly more prescriptive than
necessary to meet the desirable national standards.
Madam Chairman, amendments we are considering to H.R. 6 attempt to
dictate to school authorities who they should teach and not teach
despite State laws to the contrary--the case in my State of New York.
We are asked to prohibit Federal funding if certain life styles are
presented in a positive way.
Madam Chairman, it is hard to imagine a deeper or more subjective
intrusion into curriculum decisions than what is before us.
I urge my colleagues to place the higher principle of local control
of what is taught in our classrooms over their particular bias.
Mr. KILDEE. Madam Chairman, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from
Ohio [Mr. Sawyer].
Mr. SAWYER. Madam Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding.
Madam Chairman, I apologize to this body for coming late to this
argument.
I rise in opposition to the Rohrabacher amendment for two reasons.
First, in trying to implement the amendment, we risk damaging the
entire learning environment and undermining the purpose of the
amendment. Second, the amendment imposes unworkable requirements on
schools.
We had this debate nearly 5 years ago. I would like to think I know
something or have had some involvement with the counting of the
population of this country.
In the fall of 1989 we confronted the question of whether or not we
were going to try to distinguish between legal and illegal residents in
the broader sense.
We came to the conclusion it would undermine public confidence in the
entire undertaking, that citizens and noncitizens alike would be
affected, that accuracy of the overall count would go out the window,
and the same arguments apply here.
These were not just my arguments. These were the arguments of the
Secretary of Commerce of the Bush administration and a very bipartisan
majority of this body.
In trying to implement the amendment we have before us, we risk
damaging the learning environment and unermining the purpose of the
amendment.
The purpose of the amendment is to target resources at entitled
students. But what we are talking about here is disturbing an entire
classroom by our effort. In doing so, we affect not only those children
who would be denied education, but our children as well, the majority
of children in that classroom that is so disturbed. The teacher's
relationships to students, parents, and the community would be affected
as a whole.
The real problem, however, is that the undertaking will not work. The
amendment assumes that schools know the students' immigration status or
that they will be able to find out. The fact is that there are dozens
of categories that range from seasonal agricultural workers, to
refugees, and parents and students can move from one category to
another without realizing it.
Students and teachers would need extensive training simply to carry
out the duties mandated by the requirement. According to the National
Academy of Sciences, even highly trained statisticians find categories
complex and confusing, and the same problem applied in the census.
Temporary enumerators cannot know the intricacies of immigration law
and carry out the normal duties.
As a result, accuracy goes out the window. After disrupting the
school environment, we would have, at best, flawed information,
students categorized by untrained personnel, miscategorized students
being denied benefits, and policymakers who will want to use these
numbers for a wide variety of additional purposes according to the
argument of the sponsors of the amendment.
Madam Chairman, for these reasons, and so many more that have been
laid here before us today, I hope that we can reject this amendment on
bipartisan grounds.
Mr. ROHRABACHER. Madam Chairman, I yield myself 3 minutes.
Madam Chairman, what we have got to determine here is do we have a
problem? And the fact is, I believe we have a problem. And I believe
that no matter what happens in the votes on this floor, the people of
the United States understand we have a problem when we are providing a
benefit level to illegal aliens to such a degree that it is attracting
people from all over the world to come here.
This is a major threat to the well-being of the people of my State. I
want Members to know that those illegal aliens coming to my State, the
people providing those services are taxpayers from all over the
country. And the flood of illegal aliens we have experienced will
continue to grow and grow until it affects every State, if we send the
message to the world that anyone who can come here is going to get the
same benefits as an American citizen or a legal resident.
It is a giant, 100-mile-high welcome home or welcome here sign to
anybody who wants to improve the well-being of their family. Most of
the people in the world who want to come here and most of the people
who come here are good and decent people, people we can respect and
identify with. If we were in their position, we would do exactly the
same thing.
But we cannot afford to take care of everyone in the world. This,
what we are determining today and by the amendments I will present in
the future, is whether or not the scarce resources that are paid for by
the taxpayers of our country will be first used to provide benefits and
services at the very least to our own citizens and legal residents.
Yes, we have a problem. This is immigration policy. Anybody who tells
the American people that we can solve this flood of illegal immigration
that is coming into our country now and still provide those benefits
simply by reinforcing the border, I do not believe that they are giving
an answer to the American people that the people will believe.
If there is an unworkable solution to trying to solve the immigration
problem, it is giving thousands of dollars worth of benefits to anybody
who can sneak across the border, and then claiming that the INS is
going to solve the problem at the border.
We also hear that asking, just asking, this is supposedly a
unsolvable problem, just asking someone to prove their citizenship or
legal residency is some type of a violation. Yet there is a vast, vast
majority of people in this hall, including on the other side of the
aisle, that believe employers should do this.
What we have now, and what has changed in our country in the last few
years, in the last 10 years, is illegal immigrants did not apply in the
past for these services because they were afraid they would be deported
and they would be reported by those people who run these services. That
is not the way it is now. In fact, what we have said is that an
employer must determine this status, must go through these procedures,
so we give a disincentive for illegal aliens to come here to work and
provide them an incentive not to work, but instead to apply for
Government services and programs.
What a travesty that is.
{time} 1330
Mr. KILDEE. Madam Chairman, I yield such time as she may consume to
the gentlewoman from California [Ms. Pelosi].
(Ms. PELOSI asked and was given permission to revise and extend her
remarks.)
Ms. PELOSI. Madam Chairman, I rise in strong opposition to the
Rohrabacher amendment, because I believe it undermines the
constitutional principle which guarantees education to all children
regardless of their citizen status.
Madam Chairman, I rise in strong opposition to the Rohrabacher
amendment which would deny the use of Federal funds to educate
undocumented students.
The Rohrabacher amendment would impose unfunded mandates on local
school districts by requiring all schools which receive Federal funding
to identify and collect data on the citizenship status of every
student. The mission of our public schools is to educate our children--
all of our children. Our schools have neither the capacity nor the
desire to track their students' immigration status. Forcing our
educators to serve as agents of the Immigration and Naturalization
Service [INS] diverts them from their appropriate mission.
In addition, this provision would undermine a constitutional
principle which guarantees the right of all children, regardless of
their citizenship status, access to a public education. The 1982
Supreme Court decision, Plyer versus Doe, requires that States provide
a public education to all children. By prohibiting Federal money from
being used for undocumented students, the Rohrabacher amendment would
shift the costs of educating these children to State and local
governments.
Madam Chairman, the Rohrabacher amendment would not serve any
legitimate public policy purpose. Denying students an education will
not prevent or discourage undocumented immigrants from entering the
United States. Rather, this provision would result in discrimination
U.S. citizens and documented residents who look or sound foreign.
This amendment would perpetuate an undereducated population in our
country. Uneducated children will likely grow up as illiterate adults,
unable to function in society and contribute to our tax base. This
provision would ultimately have a negative affect on all our children
and our society as a whole.
Immigration is an issue which need not and should not be addressed in
this bill. The Rohrabacher amendment would do no good and much harm to
our schools, our students, and our country.
Madam Chairman, I urge my colleagues to join in voting against this
amendment to H.R. 6.
Mr. KILDEE. Madam Chairman, I yield such time as she may consume to
the gentlewoman from California [Ms. Roybal-Allard].
(Ms. ROYBAL-ALLARD asked and was given permission to revise and
extend her remarks.)
Ms. ROYBAL-ALLARD. Madam Chairman, I rise in opposition to the
Rohrabacher amendment, because I believe it would threaten the very
fabric of our society by creating a permanent subclass of undereducated
children in this country.
Madam Chairman, I rise in opposition to the Rohrabacher amendment.
Over the past few weeks, this House has overwhelmingly defeated
amendments to H.R. 6 which would have imposed unreasonable
administrative burdens on our public schools and denied Federal funding
for essential educational programs. In both cases, the amendments
unfairly impacted the most vulnerable members of our society--our
children.
The Rohrabacher amendment would be even more harmful to our schools
and to our children by denying the use of Federal funds for any benefit
to undocumented children. Apart from violating the basic,
constitutionally guaranteed right of all children to a public
education, this amendment would have the devastating effect of denying
school districts a critical source of funding unless they assume the
role of the INS and somehow determine the immigration status of all
students. Clearly, this is a function our already overburdened schools
are neither equipped for nor should be required to undertake.
Perhaps even more tragically, this amendment, if adopted, would
threaten the very fabric of our society by creating a permanent
subclass of undereducated children in our country. The Federal
Government must not sanction a two-tiered educational system where the
quality of a child's education is determined by his or her parentage.
This amendment will do nothing toward either improving our schools or
addressing immigration policy and must be soundly defeated.
Mr. KILDEE. Madam Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.
Mr. ROHRABACHER. Madam Chairman, I yield myself the balance of my
time.
Madam Chairman, this is not a debate between Members on one side who
are a bunch of scrooges, who do not like people who come here from
other countries. In fact, the fact is that immigrants have played an
important role in the development of our country. They continue to play
a positive role in our country, as we bring in more legal immigrants
into the United States of America than all the rest of the nations
combined.
If Members look at my voting record, they will see that I support a
high level of positive legal immigration, because legal immigrants who
come here are required to take care of themselves and required not to
be people who are dependent on government services for their lives when
they get here. That is what differentiates legal immigration from
illegal immigration.
Illegal immigration now is threatening the well-being of the people
of the United States. We have a responsibility to watch out for them.
This includes legal residents and immigrants who have come here, gone
through the system, immigrants who have gone through the process.
They are the ones, by the way, who are the most insulted by this
argument that we have got to provide the same services to illegal
immigrants that we provide to them, after they have waited years and
gone through the process and obeyed the law.
This is a decision, what we are deciding on today and will be
deciding on with future amendments that I will propose, whether or not
this is the principle we will want to operate under, whether or not
this Government should accept that principle, that benefits and
services should be provided by Government only to those people who are
here legally and U.S. citizens and that people who come here illegally
are not, do not have the right to those same benefits.
If we continue to accept the principle that is being espoused by the
Members on the other side of the aisle, our country is going to go
broke. We are going to go broke in the fast lane. There is nothing,
nothing that we can do to afford to pay for all of the services that
will be needed to provide benefits for everyone in the world who can
come here, even if they come here legally.
The CHAIRMAN pro tempore (Mrs. Kennelly). The question is on the
amendment offered by the gentleman from California [Mr. Rohrabacher].
The amendment was rejected.
amendment offered by mr. doolittle
Mr. DOOLITTLE. Madam Chairman, I offer an amendment.
The Clerk read as follows:
Amendment offered by Mr. Doolittle: Page 762, after line 8,
insert the following:
SEC. 9506. SEX EDUCATION.
``(a) Sex Education Instruction.--All public elementary and
secondary schools receiving assistance under this act in
classes that teach sex education or discuss sexual
intercourse, sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), including
acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS), shall
continuously stress throughout the sex education program and
sexual intercourse discussion that abstinence from sexual
intercourse is the only protection that is 100 percent
effective against unwanted teenage pregnancy, STDs, and AIDS
when transmitted sexually. All material and instruction in
classes that teach sex education and discuss sexual
intercourse shall be age appropriate.
``(b) Criteria.--All sex education courses that discuss
sexual intercourse shall satisfy the following criteria:
``(1) Course material and instruction shall be age
appropriate.
``(2) Course material and instruction shall stress that
abstinence is the only contraceptive method which is 100
percent effective, and that all other methods of
contraception carry a risk of failure in preventing unwanted
teenage pregnancy. Statistics based on the latest medical
information shall be provided to pupils citing the laboratory
and real-life failure and success rates of condoms and other
contraceptives in preventing pregnancy.
``(3) Course material and instruction shall stress that
STDs are serious possible hazards of sexual intercourse.
Pupils shall be provided with statistics based on the latest
medical information citing the laboratory and real-life
failure and success rates of condoms in preventing AIDS and
other STDs among elementary and secondary pupils.
``(4) Course material and instruction shall include a
discussion of the possible emotional and psychological
consequences of preadolescent and adolescent sexual
intercourse outside of marriage and the consequences of
unwanted adolescent pregnancy.
``(5) Course material and instruction shall stress that
pupils should abstain from sexual intercourse until they are
ready for marriage.
``(6) Course material and instruction shall teach honor and
respect for monogamous heterosexual marriage.
``(7) Course material and instruction shall advise pupils
of the laws pertaining to their financial responsibility to
children born in and out of wedlock.
``(8) Course material and instruction shall advise pupils
that it is unlawful for males of any age to have sexual
relations with females under a certain age to whom they are
not married.
``(9) Course material and instruction shall emphasize that
the pupil has the power to control personal behavior. Pupils
shall be encouraged to base their actions on reasoning, self-
discipline, sense of responsibility, self-control, and
ethical considerations, such as respect for one's self and
others.
``(10) Course material and instruction shall teach pupils
to refrain from making unwanted physical and verbal sexual
advances and how to say no to unwanted sexual advances.
Pupils shall be taught that it is wrong to take advantage of,
or to exploit, another person. The material and instruction
shall also encourage youth to resist negative peer pressure.
Mr. DOOLITTLE (during the reading). Madam Chairman, I ask unanimous
consent that the amendment be considered as read and printed in the
Record.
The CHAIRMAN pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the
gentleman from California?
There was no objection.
Mr. DOOLITTLE. Madam Chairman, we face today a crisis of family
disruption due, among other things, to the explosion in out-of-wedlock
teenage pregnancies.
As this chart shows, teenager out-of-wedlock pregnancies have nearly
doubled over the past two decades, and this development is causing an
enormous problem that we confront every day as a country, when we talk
about the problems of criminal activity, of drug abuse, of
underachievement in school, etc.
In my opinion, and in the opinion of experts who have examined it,
these things all tie back into the problem of family disruption, much
of which is due to, in addition to separation or divorce or death of a
parent, out-of-wedlock pregnancies.
Illegitimate births have increased more than 400 percent since 1960.
We know that we can do something that makes a difference, and that
something is to give teenagers the skills that they need in order to
refuse early sexual activity.
Now, for decades we have tried the approach of teaching about
sexuality and about the pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases
and so forth. And it has not had any impact.
In Atlanta, one prominent gynecologist in the mid-1970's, who
instituted these programs, discovered that it was not having an impact
in terms of people reducing their sexual activity as teenagers or in
terms of increasing birth control efforts. And so this gynecologist, in
a program for junior high school students added to the existing
curriculum an element that taught people skills to resist advances for
sexual activity, to do some role playing, to give people some practical
reasons why abstinence was a good thing, not preaching, but simply to
explain to people why abstinence helped them avoid certain very serious
problems, among which were, of course, pregnancies or sexually
transmitted diseases or the reality of caring for an infant when they
are not financially equipped to do so or the impact that a baby can
have on a teenager's life.
These were the sorts of things that were added to the curriculum. And
lo and behold, it made quite a difference. This chart here illustrates
this difference.
In this program in Atlanta, which applied to the junior high grades,
Members can see at the end of the eighth grade for those who were in
the program, 4 percent initiated sexual activity. Whereas for those who
did not have the program, 20 percent did so.
Of course, as my colleagues can see, the older they get, the closer
these bars get. But they can still see, even here at the end of the
ninth grade, 24 percent of the students in this program, initiated
sexual activity versus 39 percent of the students initiated sexual
activity who did not have the abstinence-based sex education program.
{time} 1340
Madam Chairman, this translates for our purposes into many, many
billions of dollars that we can avoid spending on emotionally crippled
young people who got that way because they were born out of wedlock. We
can prevent this by undertaking measures which demonstrably work.
For that reason, I bring this amendment to the floor of the House,
feeling that we are genuinely in a crisis of family deterioration.
The CHAIRMAN pro tempore (Mrs. Kennelly). The time of the gentleman
from California [Mr. Doolittle] has expired.
(By unanimous consent, Mr. Doolittle was allowed to proceed for 2
additional minutes.)
Mr. DOOLITTLE. Madam Chairman, it is costing the taxpayers of this
country billions and billions of dollars. Any time we pick up the
papers and we read about the crime in the District of Columbia or any
other urban area across the United States, we ask ourselves, ``What can
we do about this situation? How are we going to change this?'' This is
one of the ways, I would submit, that we can begin to change the
deteriorating social conditions within the United States.
Yes, building prisons and having tougher laws are part of one
approach that we need to have, I stipulate to that, but we will never
build enough prisons or have laws Draconian enough that in and of
themselves they are going to stem this problem. We need to start right
at the beginning, on the other end of things, before we spend money to
build those expensive prisons and deal with people, equip our young
people to live better lives, to avoid the pitfalls of promiscuous
sexual activity, and the results from that will be much fewer problems
that we are going to have to deal with later on as a society, when all
we know to do ultimately is to lock people up and keep them locked up.
That is really not a very good solution. It may be part of the
solution, because we have to have some immediate answer, but the long-
term answer is to deal with this side of the equation.
Madam Chairman, this chart shows that abstinence-based sex education
works. I offer this amendment today in the hopes of encouraging more
districts, all districts who get Federal funds, to begin to incorporate
abstinence-based sex education into their programs.
amendment offered by mrs. unsoeld to the amendment offered by mr.
doolittle
Mrs. UNSOELD. Madam Chairman, I offer an amendment to the amendment.
The Clerk read as follows:
Amendment offered by Mrs. Unsoeld to the amendment offered
by Mr. Doolittle:
In the subsection (a) of the amendment made to page 762,
strike ``in classes that teach'' and insert ``which use such
funds to teach''.
In subsection (b) of the amendment made to page 762, strike
``shall satisfy'' and insert ``may use''.
Add at the end of the amendment made to page 762, after
line 8, add the following:
``(c) No Federal Control of Curriculum.--Nothing in this
section shall be construed--
``(1) to authorize an officer or employee of the Federal
Government to mandate, direct, or control a State, local
educational agency, or schools' instructional content,
curriculum, or related activities;
``(2) to limit the application of the General Education
Provisions Act;
``(3) to require the distribution of scientifically or
medically false or inaccurate materials or to prohibit the
distribution of scientifically or medically true or accurate
materials; or
``(4) to create any legally enforceable right.
``(d) Rule of Construction.--In carrying out the provisions
of this section, the Secretary shall not--
``(1) review any curricula or instructional materials;
``(2) promulgate regulations; or
``(3) take any administrative or legal action against a
State or local educational agency or school.
Mrs. UNSOELD (during the reading). Madam Chairman, I ask unanimous
consent that the amendment be considered as read and printed in the
Record.
The CHAIRMAN pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the
gentlewoman from Washington?
There was no objection.
Mrs. UNSOELD. Madam Chairman, although some Members have insisted
that they support the local control of education, the Doolittle
amendment would for the first time in history establish a Federal
curriculum that all schools would be required to follow. This
unprecedented and unwarranted Federal intrusion into the classrooms of
America must be opposed. The Doolittle amendment would establish
several pages of detailed requirement that every sex education class in
the country would be required to follow, even if the instruction was
paid for entirely by local funds.
The adoption of this amendment would subject every school in the
country to curriculum policing by the Department of Education to
maintain Federal funding. State and local educational agencies will end
up submitting textbooks and instructional materials to the department
for approval or evaluating them, again, checklists set out in Federal
regulations. Federal auditors may also be deployed to monitor classroom
instruction.
Madam Chairman, is it appropriate to request that the chart be
removed while I am speaking?
The CHAIRMAN pro tempore. Yes, it is. The Chair would request that
someone please remove the chart while a new amendment is on the floor.
Mrs. UNSOELD. Madam Chairman, the issues raised by the Doolittle
amendment are important, but they are ones that parents and local
communities are more than capable of deciding for themselves. They do
not want, nor do they need, Congress to tell them what to do, nor do
they wish to see the U.S. Congress become a national school board that
usurps the right of local communities.
My amendment clarifies that nothing in the section shall interfere
with the right of local communities to select curricula appropriate to
the needs of the children in their communities. My amendment preserves
local autonomy and acknowledges that local communities have the right
and the ability to determine what is taught in their schools.
Madam Chairman, I urge adoption of my amendment to the Doolittle
amendment.
Mr. DOOLITTLE. Madam Chairman, I rise in opposition to this
amendment.
Madam Chairman, I oppose this amendment. It would substantially
dilute the amendment which I have offered. To hear the talk about local
control, that ``we cannot have Congress becoming a national school
board,'' Congress is a national legislature to bail out people around
the country, to pay for welfare benefits and medical benefits of people
who are poor, and to provide for housing assistance for people who are
poor, to help States fight crime, so come on, these are the social
problems we are trying to avoid.
That is what my amendment goes to, by taking an approach that works,
and it has been proven that it works in various places across the
country, and it is helping young people to resist the pressures for
early sex.
When I contrast the benefits of that approach versus the supposed
negative, that Congress is mandating to local school districts,
violating something that is supposedly sacrosanct, we dictate to local
school districts all the time what they can and cannot do in various
programs in the Federal Government.
Madam Chairman, I just cannot see sitting here as a Congress and year
in and year out, borrowing money we do not have in order to fund
programs that do not work, remedial programs, that deal with people who
are already hardened criminals, or people who have been born out of
wedlock, and they are living in poverty, and trying to help them
somehow, and generally failing.
It just seems to me that my amendment is a better way to go, Madam
Chairman. This amendment is a proactive approach, to deal with the
problem before it is a problem, rather than taking the reactive or the
reactionary approach and simply dealing with the results of teenagers'
promiscuous sexual activity, results that in many cases could have been
avoided if we had taken an aggressive stand before real trouble
happened.
The California Legislature, of which I was a part a few years go,
passed a bipartisan program that basically stresses abstinence and we
are seeing positive results. There are positive results in the program
in Maryland, and in other programs around the country. I described with
the chart the program in Atlanta. It does work.
The Unsoeld amendment represents business as usual; throw in a word
or two about the virtues of abstinence, but just keep passing out the
condoms and keep the old traditional approach, which is not working.
We know what works. Traditional sex education, overlaid with
abstinence-based education, actually works. Interestingly enough, even
when the young people initiate sexual contacts, when they have come out
of this program the numbers of contacts are fewer and the rate of
condom use is higher, so it is a complete program. It does work, and
for that reason, in order to take what we know and give it to the
Nation as a whole, we need to defeat the Unsoeld amendment because,
basically, it will dilute the effect of the amendment which I have
offered.
Mr. GUNDERSON. Madam Chairman, will the gentleman yield for some
questions?
Mr. DOOLITTLE. I am happy to yield to the gentleman from Wisconsin.
Mr. GUNDERSON. Madam Chairman, there are questions meant in all
sincerity, because I frankly think some of the goals of what the
gentleman is trying to pursue here are not all bad.
I am a little confused as to the enforcement mechanism. How would
this operate, if the gentleman's amendment is passed? It is a
requirement that any school, any LEA in America, before they teach a
sex education course, would submit a study plan or a curriculum or a
textbook to the Department for approval? How do we accomplish that, No.
1?
No. 2, if a school should teach a sex education course that does not
comply, then what are the penalties in enforcement mechanisms? I am
asking these questions in good faith.
Mr. DOOLITTLE. Madam Chairman, I think the gentleman will find the
requirements are set forth in the amendment, setting forth that course
material and instructions shall emphasize abstinence and emphasize a
variety of things pertaining thereto.
Mr. GUNDERSON. If the gentleman will continue to yield, does the
State education agency, under the gentleman's amendment, approve this?
Does the Federal Department of Education approve it?
Who determines whether small town school district America complies
with the standards of the gentleman's amendment?
Mr. DOOLITTLE. It would be consistent with the process we have now
where these standards have been set forth in the bill, and the
districts receiving the funds from the Federal Government are obligated
to abide by them.
Mr. GUNDERSON. But under most of the plans what is done right now is
the State develops a plan and that State plan is approved by the
Federal Government, and then the States implement that within their
State.
Is it the gentleman's intent under this amendment that States would
be the enforcement tool, or is it your intent that LEA's must apply to
the Federal Department of Education for approval of a particular
curricula before they can teach it?
Mr. DOOLITTLE. I anticipate it would work the way it does now with
the planning going to the State and then that plan being approved by
the Government.
Mr. GUNDERSON. Madam Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number
of words.
Madam Chairman, I would like to just continue the discussion because
I did not have any time of my own previously.
What happens if a school does not comply under the gentleman's
amendment? What is the intent? Is it the gentleman's intent that all
funds in that school, all Federal funds from school lunch to chapter 1
to chapter 2, to bilingual to handicapped education, that all of those
would be eliminated? I am just asking, is that the intent?
Mr. DOOLITTLE. The intent, of course, is to get the abstinence-based
sex education in their existing sex education or sexually transmitted
disease programs, and we use money as the enforcement mechanism for
this, like so many other things around here.
Mr. GUNDERSON. But that gets back to my question, because I do not
think, I hope there is no Member of Congress who disagrees with at
least the sense of Congress that we ought to promote abstinence. I am
not arguing that at all. I am just trying to figure out how this works
in the real today world of education. Where is the enforcement section
of your amendment that would say that the Department of Education shall
monitor or the States are monitors, and if schools fail to comply with
this curriculum, that that language would require the elimination of
any Federal funds?
This is a good faith discussion. I am honestly asking questions.
Mr. HANCOCK. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?
Mr. GUNDERSON. I yield to the gentleman from Missouri.
Mr. HANCOCK. I realize there has to be certain enforcement
mechanisms, but can we not rely on the schools to enforce the law, the
schools themselves to enforce the law? And then if they do not, rely on
the parents to bring it to the attention of either the Federal
Department of Education or to the proper officials to enforce the law?
I did not realize that we have to come up with all types of mechanisms
to force our public schools to comply with the laws that are written in
the U.S. Congress.
Mr. GUNDERSON. There are a number of laws written that have no
penalty provisions. It is sort of like a sense of the Congress. They
are there, but if you do not comply, so what?
What I am trying to find out is if this is intended to be a sense of
the Congress, along that line, then hopefully the department will
encourage the States to encourage the local education agencies who
pursue sexual education courses to include and emphasize abstinence. I
mean if that is the goal, that is fine. The gentleman has a number of
criteria here in the course. I can only tell the gentleman from my
general discussions I think with most people, the No. 1 problem in sex
education courses in America is, frankly, the training of the teacher.
In all due respect, we have too many retired football coaches teaching
sex education in this country who do not know anything about it.
Mr. HANCOCK. If the gentleman will yield, I think one of the major
problems in all education in the United States is the training of the
teachers.
Mr. GUNDERSON. That might be. And frankly, I was tempted to offer an
amendment to the Doolittle amendment that has some kind of requirement
that the person teaching the course knew what they were talking about.
We dealt with the teacher certification issue 2 weeks ago, and I do not
think anybody wants to get back to that issue on the Federal level. I
am simply trying to figure out if this is mainly a sense of the
Congress, if it is our goal that States and the Federal Government
would encourage local education agencies to do these things.
Mr. DOOLITTLE. If the gentleman will yield again, I will respond that
this would all be done, as I understand it, through the existing plans
that are put together by the States, and then sent to the Secretary of
Education where I guess they are approved. And the enforcement
mechanism for that would be similar to what is done in other parts of
the bill relative to making sure that money is spent. In order to get
districts to pay attention to some of the successes around the country,
we would like to have the enforcement mechanism. I did not draft a
separate enforcement mechanism other than what already exists for other
moneys.
Mr. GUNDERSON. Perhaps the chairman of the subcommittee can help us
on this, because there are a number of sections in the bill where, as a
condition of receiving chapter 1 funds or chapter 2 funds, you have to
do certain things. And I am not attacking the amendment. I am honestly
trying to figure out where we are. I do not see that in this amendment.
The gentleman may want to offer that as an amendment to it.
Is there any enforcement tool? Does the chairman see any enforcement
tools in the amendment as written? What happens if the Osseo school
district in Wisconsin has a sex education course but does not comply?
Mr. KILDEE. If the gentleman will yield, I would suggest he address
that question to the author of the amendment.
Mr. GUNDERSON. The gentleman is suggesting that there may be an
ordinary enforcement tool for the entire Elementary and Secondary
Education Act that would apply. But I am not sure that there is such a
thing.
Mr. KILDEE. Madam Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of
words.
Madam Chairman, let me say that I find, and most Members in this
Chamber find the goal of the gentleman from California [Mr. Doolittle]
very laudable. I raised three children. They are all young adults now,
and I certainly tried to install that goal in my efforts to teach them
about the wonderful gift of sexuality. I think his goal is wonderful.
But I am wondering whether the Federal Government should get involved
in that goal.
We have voted on several amendments in the last few weeks during
consideration of H.R. 6 that would have limited local control of
curriculum, and all those amendments were defeated, and rightfully so.
Both in GEPA and in the act which established the Department of
Education, Members may recall that was a very hotly debated issue. We
put strict provisions into that legislation establishing the Department
to make sure that the Federal Government would not get involved in
matters of curriculum.
Very often all of us are tempted, because of some priority we may
have, to ignore that and try to inject ourselves into the local or
State curriculum, but we are forbidden to do that. And I think it is a
dangerous step, once we start moving into the area of curriculum, that
we open the door and more and more the Federal Government will be
dictating to the local school districts what their curriculum should
contain.
Let me read the language that was written in that law in 1979:
No provision of any applicable program shall be construed
to authorized any department, agency, officer or employee of
the United States to exercise any direction, supervision or
control over the curriculum, program of instruction,
administration or personnel of any educational institution,
school or school system, or over the selection of library
resources, textbooks and other printed or published
instructional materials.
I submit we take that language very carefully. That language was for
many an essential ingredient in their voting for the establishment of
the Department of Education. And I think while many of us on both sides
of the aisle are tempted to skirt around that, that we create a very
dangerous path when we do that.
Mrs. UNSOELD. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?
Mr. KILDEE. I yield to the gentlewoman from Washington.
Mrs. UNSOELD. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding. The
programs about which the gentleman from California [Mr. Doolittle] was
speaking, that is funding and also congressional Federal requirements
that went with them were federally funded programs. But the Doolittle
amendment imposes a Federal curriculum on how local school boards can
use their own dollars. It has not been done before in our history, and
it is not appropriate now for the Federal Government to dictate to
local governments how they would use their own education funding money.
Mr. KILDEE. Many of my colleagues heard me state many times that
education is a local function, a State responsibility and a very
important Federal concern, and I think that balance is very important.
{time} 1400
But with this amendment we make education a Federal function. We are
getting involved in the nitty-gritty of curricula, and again, all of us
from time to time have had something we would like to inject in that. I
think we are always safer when we avoid that path.
Mr. BEREUTER. Madam Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number
of words.
Madam Chairman, this amendment to the amendment is as good a time as
any to express some very basic concerns about H.R. 6 and the amendments
proposed to it.
I would urge that my colleagues who want to be educational activists
for elementary and secondary education run for the State legislatures
or the local school boards, or that they go back to those bodies,
because that is primarily where the responsibility for elementary and
secondary public education lies.
Madam Chairman, like the overwhelming majority of my constituents,
this Member has strong concerns regarding the intrusion of the Federal
Government in State and local education policy which is contained in
H.R. 6. For the same reason I am also especially concerned about a
number of amendments to be offered to this legislation. I agree with
the sentiment expressed in most of those amendments; however, the
Federal Government has no constitutional role in determining local
school policy or curriculum. The basic legislation before us, H.R. 6,
is similarly flawed by mandates of all kinds--regardless of the subject
matter or motives of the authors.
I want to remind my colleagues that under the determination set out
by article X of the U.S. Constitution, the responsibility to provide
and regulate education is left to the States; there is no primary
Federal role in public education specified by the U.S. Constitution, in
spite of the views of activists inside and outside of Congress.
Madam Chairman, again for these reasons this Member urges his
colleagues to reject H.R. 6 as a usurpation of the education
responsibilities of the States and their school districts.
This enlargement of the Federal role in certification and regulation
of education is in direct contradiction to our Federal system of
Government as prescribed by the U.S. Constitution.
This Member considers himself to be an activist on education, very
much interested in encouraging education at all levels. But in my
judgment, my colleagues, the responsibilities of the Federal Government
are primarily two, when it comes to education.
First is to assure equal access to public education to all Americans.
That is a primary role given to the Federal Government by several
amendments. That is our duty.
The second responsibility, to be exercised on rare occasions, it
seems to this Member, is to act in a few cases where there is
compellingly large public concern across the Nation about some
important aspect of education and encourage appropriate actions by the
States and their school districts to meet that concern of high public
priority.
A few years ago, for example, it was felt across the country, and
then reflected in this Congress, that there was a major deficiency in
the quality of science and math education, especially in our secondary
schools. And Congress at that time acted to provide encouragement to
the States and their school districts to act to meet this problem. That
is an example of the second and limited role for the Federal Government
in the field of elementary and secondary education.
Madam Chairman, beyond that, the Federal Government should permit the
States to do their job in education, and to give them encouragement for
their responsibilities. No mandates, no certifications, no requirements
from the Federal Government are justified in H.R. 6 or in well-intended
amendments.
Mr. ENGEL. Madam Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of
words.
Madam Chairman, I rise in support of the clarifying amendment offered
by the gentlewoman from Washington [Mrs. Unsoeld] to the Doolittle
amendment to H.R. 6.
Quite frankly, I am very surprised and appalled by some of the
statements from my friends on the other side of the aisle who have
always professed to be opposed to Federal mandates, to be opposed to
the Federal bureaucracy, who say they are for States' rights and for
local control and against the heavy-handedness of Washington coming
down and telling the States and localities what to do, and here we have
just such an attempt to try to do that, to mandate local education
policy from Washington.
I do not think we ought to do that. I do not think the American
people want us to do that.
I think the American people understand that the communities
themselves should decide what is appropriate, and that Washington
should not be saying, ``We are smarter than everyone. We are going to
tell you back, Mr. and Mrs. Hometown Person, what your schools ought to
be doing. We know better in Washington than you do back home.'' I do
not think we do.
I do not think that is what we want to do.
The Unsoeld amendment modifies the Doolittle language to make it
consistent with the prohibitions against Federal control of education
set forth in the GEPA in the Department of Education Organization Act.
If the Unsoeld amendment is not adopted, the Doolittle provision
would essentially direct Department of Education employees to perform
duties to which they are prohibited from doing by two other statutes.
The curriculum mandate that would be established by the Doolittle
amendment would involve the making of subjective judgments by Federal
bureaucrats about the extent to which curricula and the resources of
local schools comply with its requirements.
If a school's sex education curriculum included 5 days of instruction
and discussion of abstinence, is it meeting the Doolittle amendment's
mandate to stress abstinence, or are 2 days required, or are 20 days
required?
Under the Doolittle amendment as originally introduced, a bureaucrat
in Washington, not the parents and the local school boards, would make
this decision. The Unsoeld amendment would ensure that all of these
subjective decisions will continue to be made at the local level where
it ought to be made.
Finally, the Unsoeld amendment includes provisions which are
identical to provisions included in amendments offered by some of our
Republican colleagues regarding content, student performance, and
opportunity-to-learn standards. The purpose of the Unsoeld amendment,
as with these earlier Republican amendments is to ensure that States
and localities retain exclusive control over the content of curricula
and that the Federal Government does not impose any mandates on the
content of instruction in our schools.
I urge my colleagues to adopt the Unsoeld amendment.
The Federal Government does not have the authority to mandate sex
education curriculum. I would also say those of us on the Education
Committee have labored long and hard to make H.R. 6 the document that
it should be.
During the course of the past several days, we have time and time
again seen amendments come before this body that, in my opinion, have
no place here. It certainly tries our patience in terms of open rules
when amendments get defeated by more than hundreds of votes, and here
they are again and again.
I think that this amendment should be defeated, and the Unsoeld
clarifying amendment to the Doolittle amendment should be supported.
Mr. HERGER. Madam Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of
words.
Madam Chairman, I rise in strong opposition to the gutting Unsoeld
substitute and in strong support of the Doolittle amendment, which
would encourage teenagers to practice abstinence as the best method of
birth control and avoiding sexually transmitted diseases such as AIDS.
Our antidrug education programs tell young people that drug abuse is
dangerous and that alcohol use is inappropriate for minors, who do not
have the judgment or maturity to make responsible decisions in this
area. We tell kids to just say no to drugs and alcohol abuse. It is a
simple, clear message that young people can understand. It conveys the
values we want to transmit about drug abuse.
Why then, in the face of an AIDS epidemic, and with the explosion of
teenage pregnancy and illegitimacy, don't we use the same message in
our sex education classes? What's wrong with telling young people to
just say no to sexual activity when they are too young to engage in it
responsibly?
This is not an issue of attempting to force one sectarian viewpoint
on our public schools. Virtually every major religious tradition I can
think of discourages premarital sex.
Why? Because it makes sense. Teenagers who engage in early sexual
activity are far more likely to become pregnant. They are more likely
to drop out of school. They become vulnerable to deadly killer diseases
like AIDS.
Sex education programs that do not stress abstinence in essence give
students permission to engage in sexual activity. They tell them ``if
it feels good, do it, but do it with a condom.''
Where has this led? First of all, it has led to the explosion of
illegitimate births in this country. Since the permissive let it all
hang out decade of the 1960's illegitimacy has increased more than 400
percent.
The percentage of unmarried teenagers getting pregnant has nearly
doubled in the last 20 years. We have a welfare crisis in this country
as a result.
We also have an increasingly violent generation of virtually
parentless youths who carry guns and kill people for their sneakers.
The system is not working, and the failure to instill positive values
in our young people is the main cause of this misery.
The Doolittle amendment takes a step toward promoting positive values
that young people will respect. Sure, it will not be 100 percent
effective, but it is bound to be more effective than our current policy
of doing nothing to promote sound values. It will give young people the
power to resist peer pressure, and a reason not to do something they
are not ready to do.
The school systems that have tried abstinence education find that it
works. In the State of Washington, for example, students who
participated in the abstinence-based teen-aid program are 27 percent
less likely to begin sexual activity than those who do not take the
course once. When teen sexual activity could mean contracting AIDS,
that means young lives are being saved.
Let us do something positive to restore values in our school systems.
{time} 1410
Let us defeat the Unsoeld gutting amendment and adopt the Doolittle
amendment.
Miss COLLINS of Michigan. Madam Chairman, I move to strike the
requisite number of words, and I rise to support the Unsoeld amendment
and oppose the Doolittle amendment.
Many people think that ignorance is bliss. They think if you just do
not teach about sex education, that sex will just go away. They think
that if you just say ``no,'' that what you want will prevail. But we
know that that is simplistic at best.
The Federal Government has absolutely no right and no business to
legislate curriculum. Yes, I believe abstinence is best, yes, our
churches believe abstinence is best, our parents and schools believe
abstinence is best, but you do not legislate abstinence.
If you could do that, then it would have worked a long time ago. But
since biblical times it does not work.
What we have to do is educate our young children. Our young children
need to know about sex education, they need to know about birth
control, they need to know exactly what is fact and what is fantasy.
Yes, it is good to just say no; it is good to emphasize abstinence,
but what does emphasis mean, Madam Chairman? Does emphasis mean that
the instructor should mention it once and no more? Does it mean that
for every day of sex education the instructor should start off with
abstinence?
I think we are going into deep waters, Madam Chairman. I think that
the gentleman's motives are probably very good, but I think his message
is wrong.
I yield to the gentlewoman from the State of Washington [Mrs.
Unsoeld].
Mrs. UNSOELD. I thank the gentlewoman for yielding to me.
Madam Chairman, some speeches coming from across the aisle would be
much more appropriately made before a local school board. This is not
an amendment about values, it is not an amendment about abstinence, it
is not an amendment about those things that we feel would better our
teenagers. What it is about is who makes the decisions for local school
boards, the men and women from the community who run for the school
board or who work with the school officials, who work with the parents
on a daily basis? Are they rightly the ones to make the decisions about
what will be in their curricula and how their local money will be used?
I submit that that is where these decisions should be made, and not
imposed by a big-brother government that is drafting a curriculum at
the Federal level and imposing it on local schools.
For gosh sakes, get Government off their backs.
Mrs. MORELLA. Madam Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number
of words.
Madam Chairman, I rise in opposition to the Doolittle amendment and
in support of the second degree amendment offered by Representative
Unsoeld.
Regardless of the intent of Mr. Doolittle and Mr. Hancock whose
amendments will be offered subsequently, these amendments place Federal
control over local school matters. Congress has always uniformly and
consistently deferred all decisions with respect to curriculum content
to State and local officials.
The amendments would interfere with the authority of local school
boards to determine the content of their programs. In my own district
in Montgomery County, MD, the schoolboard is in the process of debating
some controversial changes in the sex education program in the local
schools. Members of the school board know the local community well.
They have received input from parents, teachers, and principals
regarding what is appropriate to address the needs of the children who
live in the county.
Madam Chairman, I believe abstinence should be emphasized as the most
effective means of preventing unwanted pregnancies, but the Federal
Government should not usurp the local government.
I have received numerous calls from constituents asking me to please
make sure that this important education bill does not interfere with
the decisionmaking powers of local education agencies. The Hancock and
Doolittle amendments would involve the making of subjective judgements
by Federal officials about the extend to which curricula and resources
of local schools comply with Federal mandates.
The Doolittle and Hancock amendments would burden Federal, State, and
local education officials with massive administrative requirements. The
Department of Education would be required to issue detailed regulations
setting forth what is and is not permissible. Local schools would have
to evaluate their curricula, school library resources, and
instructional materials to determine whether or not they meet these new
requirements.
The amendments could entangle our courts with new litigation cases.
Any citizen or advocacy group could file suit against a school charging
that elements of its curricula or the remarks of a classroom teacher
violated the provisions of the Hancock and Doolittle amendments.
The Unsoeld amendment limits the administrative burden imposed by the
Hancock amendment on Federal, State, and local governments. They would
prohibit the Federal Government from issuing regulations setting out
what can and cannot be taught in our schools. The Unsoeld amendment
would prevent Federal employees from monitoring and approving the
contents of instruction in our schools. The Unsoeld amendment would
protect local schools against having to refund Federal assistance
whenever department employees objected to the content of their
curriculum.
For these reasons, I urge my colleagues to vote in favor of the
second degree amendment offered by Congresswoman Unsoeld and preserve
the right of local school boards to develop programs that conform to
local community standards.
Mr. OWENS. Madam Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of
words.
Madam Chairman, I rise in support of the Unsoeld amendment. I do not
want to be redundant, but this is not an amendment about values, this
is an amendment about miromanaging and local control. Monstrous,
monumental micromanagement would have to take place in order carry out
the Doolittle amendment. The Doolittle amendment invades the
prerogatives of the local school boards as very few other amendments
have done. Throughout all of our debate on Goals 2000, where the
Federal Government seeks to set certain standards in content and
curricula and standards in performance, everything has been voluntary,
everything has been in terms of, We will state certain models and the
States, in the final analysis, will decide what they want to do. Local
control in curriculum has not been violated in any of the legislation
for education that we have pursued so far. If there are people who
really want to have the Federal Government have a greater role in
promoting values and preventing teenage pregnancies and providing more
positive sex education, then there are many things the Federal
Government can do.
{time} 1420
Madam Chairman, let us be brave enough to take on the media, be brave
enough to use the power of the Federal Government through the Federal
Communications Commission. The No. 1 problem in America with respect to
the values of young people is the influence of the media, television,
radio, and motion pictures. The Federal Government has direct control
over the airwaves either through the FCC broadcast regulations or
through the FCC regulation of cable.
I say to my colleagues, if you are interested in having this body do
what this body can do best and what local school boards cannot do, then
try to promote more stringent requirements on the manner in which sex
and the wanton participation in sex is encouraged via our media via the
radio, television, and motion picture formats.
We have the power to regulate interstate commerce, the movement of
pornographic magazines. There are a number of things we can do.
Corporations are responsible for most of the programming that appears
on broadcast television and much of the programming that appears on
cable television. We have power with respect to the regulation of
corporate activity. We have power with respect to regulation of how
they spend their advertising dollars.
If you want to be brave and do something about trying to influence
teenage values, then why not take on a greater regulation role with
respect to the FCC, with respect to corporate power and the kinds of
things they finance? Why not take on a greater regulation role with
respect to the motion picture industry, the magazine industry? There
are a number of ways in which you can deal with, and deal more
effectively with, your agenda to better promote more positive attitudes
among teenagers with respect to sex education. We have no business in
interfering, and we hope that they will take the necessary steps to
provide enough sex education to guarantee that the youngsters know how
to protect their own health to guarantee they know how to survive.
Madam Chairman, AIDS is a very deadly disease. Schools must not
ignore teaching about AIDS in a way which helps teenagers to survive.
Everybody is in favor of that. Nobody in America, no responsible adult,
and certainly nobody in this House, no school board in America, is
against teaching abstinence, and my colleagues will probably find no
school board in America where abstinence is not already a major part of
this concern. Everybody does it. We do not need to have regulations
handed down by the Federal Government to do what has been embedded in
our tradition and our culture. All the religions, as some have pointed
out, all the religions promote abstinence.
I say to my colleagues, If you want to do something about the
degrading influences of sex on teenagers, do what we can do best. Deal
with the FCC. Deal with those agencies that are under the Federal
Government that we do have power to regulate. Leave the school boards
alone. Leave local control of education alone.
Mr. POMBO. Madam Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of
words.
Madam Chairman, I feel it is critical that my colleagues understand
the meaning of the Doolittle amendment to the children of our Nation.
The Centers for Disease Control estimates that over 1 million
Americans are infected with HIV. This same agency estimates there are
12 million other cases of sexually transmitted diseases occurring each
year in the United States.
If sex education is going to be taught in school, it is apparent that
the lesson plan should include teaching abstinence. This is the
practice in my State of California, and that is why 180,000 teenagers
are learning to resist the message of rap lyrics by choosing education
and future success rather than settling for pregnancy and future
poverty.
The Doolittle amendment will ensure that all public elementary and
secondary school classes on sex education shall continuously stress
that abstinence is the only protection that is 100 percent effective
against unwanted teenage pregnancy, sexually transmitted diseases, and
acquired immune deficiency syndrome.
After decades of programs which emphasized contraception--the so-
called experts can look at their dismal results. The percentage of
teenagers getting pregnant has nearly doubled in 20 years and
illegitimate births have increased more than 400 percent in the last 30
years. Each year one in nine girls ages 15 to 19 become pregnant.
We as a nation should not be proud of these numbers. We need to make
changes. We need to find another way. The Doolittle amendment is
clearly a step in the right direction.
In the last 10 years some schools have been including abstinence in
their sex education curriculum. And the results have been clearly
positive.
I ask my fellow colleagues, if you believe we should reduce the
spread of sexual transmitted disease vote in favor of the Doolittle
amendment.
If you believe we should reduce the number of unwanted pregnancy in
this country vote for the Doolittle amendment.
It is time to go back to the basics. It is time to embrace the virtue
of chastity. Support the Doolittle amendment and give our children an
opportunity for a better life.
Madam Chairman, I yield to the gentleman from California [Mr.
Doolittle].
Mr. DOOLITTLE. Madam Chairman, in 1940 teachers named the top
problems in public schools as talking out of turn, chewing gum, making
noise, and running in halls. In 1990 teachers named the top problems as
drug abuse, alcohol abuse, pregnancy, suicide, and rape.
A recent Roper Starch Worldwide poll amongst 12- to 17-year-olds and
parents found that pressure to have sex at too young an age tops the
list of issues that both see as a threat to children. The pollsters
found that 46 percent of the parents and 44 percent of the children
ranked pressure for early sex as somewhat or extremely threatening to
young people. AIDS was ranked as the next biggest threat to young
people.
Madam Chairman, my amendment will ensure that all public elementary
and secondary school classes that teach sex education shall stress that
abstinence is the only protection that is 100 percent effective. It is
just that simple.
I believe in local control, too, and I do not believe this in any way
infringes on local control, but this goes right to the heart of the
issue. By passing my amendment and defeating the Unsoeld amendment we
are going to help young people help themselves.
Madam Chairman, we know abstinence-based sex education works. It has
been proven, so I ask my colleagues to vote no on the amendment offered
by the gentlewoman from Washington [Mrs. Unsoeld] and yes on the
Doolittle amendment.
The CHAIRMAN pro tempore (Mrs. Kennelly). The question is on the
amendment offered by the gentlewoman from Washington [Mrs. Unsoeld] to
the amendment offered by the gentleman from California [Mr. Doolittle].
The question was taken; and the Chairman pro tempore announced that
the ayes appeared to have it.
recorded vote
Mr. DOOLITTLE. Madam Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.
A recorded vote was ordered.
The CHAIRMAN pro tempore. Pursuant to rule XXIII, clause 2(c), the
Chair will reduce to a minimum of 5 minutes the recorded vote following
the vote on the amendment offered by the gentlewoman from Washington
[Mrs. Unsoeld] if there is no intervening debate.
The vote was taken by electronic device, and there were--ayes 262,
noes 166, not voting 10, as follows:
[Roll No. 76]
AYES--262
Abercrombie
Ackerman
Andrews (ME)
Andrews (NJ)
Bacchus (FL)
Baesler
Barca
Barcia
Barlow
Barrett (NE)
Barrett (WI)
Bateman
Becerra
Beilenson
Bentley
Bereuter
Berman
Bilbray
Bishop
Blackwell
Blute
Boehlert
Bonilla
Bonior
Boucher
Brooks
Brown (CA)
Brown (FL)
Brown (OH)
Byrne
Cantwell
Cardin
Carr
Castle
Chapman
Clayton
Clement
Clinger
Clyburn
Coleman
Collins (IL)
Collins (MI)
Conyers
Coppersmith
Cox
Coyne
Darden
de la Garza
de Lugo (VI)
DeFazio
DeLauro
Dellums
Derrick
Deutsch
Diaz-Balart
Dicks
Dingell
Dixon
Dooley
Dreier
Dunn
Durbin
Edwards (CA)
Edwards (TX)
Engel
English
Eshoo
Evans
Faleomavaega (AS)
Farr
Fazio
Fields (LA)
Filner
Fingerhut
Fish
Flake
Ford (MI)
Ford (TN)
Frank (MA)
Franks (NJ)
Frost
Furse
Gejdenson
Gekas
Gephardt
Gibbons
Gilchrest
Gilman
Gonzalez
Goodling
Gordon
Goss
Green
Greenwood
Gunderson
Gutierrez
Hall (OH)
Hamburg
Hamilton
Harman
Hefner
Hilliard
Hinchey
Hoagland
Hobson
Hochbrueckner
Hoke
Holden
Houghton
Hoyer
Huffington
Hughes
Inslee
Istook
Jacobs
Jefferson
Johnson (CT)
Johnson (GA)
Johnson (SD)
Johnson, E. B.
Johnston
Kanjorski
Kaptur
Kennelly
Kildee
Kim
Kleczka
Klein
Klink
Klug
Kolbe
Kopetski
Kreidler
Lambert
Lantos
LaRocco
Laughlin
Leach
Lehman
Levin
Lewis (GA)
Long
Lowey
Machtley
Maloney
Mann
Manton
Margolies-Mezvinsky
Markey
Martinez
Matsui
Mazzoli
McCandless
McCloskey
McCurdy
McDade
McDermott
McHale
McInnis
McKinney
Meehan
Menendez
Mfume
Miller (CA)
Miller (FL)
Mineta
Minge
Mink
Moakley
Molinari
Mollohan
Moran
Morella
Murphy
Murtha
Nadler
Neal (MA)
Neal (NC)
Norton (DC)
Oberstar
Obey
Orton
Owens
Pallone
Pastor
Payne (NJ)
Pelosi
Penny
Peterson (FL)
Pickle
Pomeroy
Porter
Price (NC)
Pryce (OH)
Rangel
Reed
Reynolds
Richardson
Ridge
Roemer
Rohrabacher
Romero-Barcelo (PR)
Ros-Lehtinen
Rose
Rostenkowski
Roukema
Roybal-Allard
Rush
Sabo
Sanders
Sangmeister
Santorum
Sawyer
Schenk
Schiff
Schroeder
Schumer
Scott
Serrano
Sharp
Shays
Shepherd
Skaggs
Slaughter
Smith (IA)
Snowe
Spratt
Stark
Stokes
Strickland
Studds
Stupak
Swift
Synar
Tanner
Thomas (CA)
Thomas (WY)
Thornton
Thurman
Torkildsen
Torres
Torricelli
Towns
Tucker
Underwood (GU)
Unsoeld
Velazquez
Vento
Visclosky
Washington
Waters
Watt
Waxman
Weldon
Wheat
Whitten
Williams
Wise
Woolsey
Wyden
Wynn
Yates
NOES--166
Allard
Andrews (TX)
Applegate
Archer
Armey
Bachus (AL)
Baker (CA)
Baker (LA)
Ballenger
Bartlett
Barton
Bevill
Bilirakis
Bliley
Boehner
Borski
Brewster
Browder
Bryant
Bunning
Burton
Buyer
Callahan
Calvert
Camp
Canady
Coble
Collins (GA)
Combest
Condit
Cooper
Costello
Cramer
Crane
Crapo
Cunningham
Danner
Deal
DeLay
Dickey
Doolittle
Dornan
Duncan
Ehlers
Emerson
Everett
Ewing
Fawell
Fields (TX)
Foglietta
Fowler
Franks (CT)
Gallegly
Geren
Gingrich
Glickman
Goodlatte
Grams
Hall (TX)
Hancock
Hansen
Hastert
Hayes
Hefley
Herger
Hoekstra
Horn
Hunter
Hutchinson
Hutto
Hyde
Inglis
Inhofe
Johnson, Sam
Kasich
Kennedy
King
Kingston
Knollenberg
Kyl
LaFalce
Lancaster
Lazio
Levy
Lewis (CA)
Lewis (FL)
Lightfoot
Linder
Lipinski
Livingston
Lloyd
Manzullo
McCollum
McCrery
McHugh
McKeon
McMillan
McNulty
Meyers
Mica
Michel
Montgomery
Moorhead
Myers
Nussle
Ortiz
Oxley
Packard
Parker
Paxon
Payne (VA)
Peterson (MN)
Petri
Pickett
Pombo
Portman
Poshard
Quillen
Quinn
Rahall
Ramstad
Ravenel
Regula
Roberts
Rogers
Roth
Rowland
Royce
Sarpalius
Saxton
Schaefer
Sensenbrenner
Shaw
Shuster
Sisisky
Skeen
Skelton
Slattery
Smith (MI)
Smith (NJ)
Smith (OR)
Smith (TX)
Solomon
Spence
Stearns
Stenholm
Stump
Swett
Talent
Tauzin
Taylor (MS)
Taylor (NC)
Tejeda
Traficant
Upton
Valentine
Volkmer
Vucanovich
Walker
Walsh
Wilson
Wolf
Young (AK)
Young (FL)
Zeliff
Zimmer
NOT VOTING--10
Clay
Gallo
Gillmor
Grandy
Hastings
Meek
Natcher
Olver
Sundquist
Thompson
{time} 1450
Messrs. APPLEGATE, BORSKI, PAYNE of Virginia, VOLKMER, and BRYANT,
Mrs. LLOYD, Mrs. MEYERS of Kansas, Mr. RAHALL, and Mr. QUILLEN changed
their vote from ``aye'' to ``no.''
Mr. KIM and Mr. JOHNSON of South Dakota changed their vote from
``no'' to ``aye.''
So the amendment to the amendment was agreed to.
The result of the vote was announced as above recorded.
The CHAIRMAN pro tempore (Mr. Darden). The question is on the
amendment offered by the gentleman from California [Mr. Doolittle], as
amended.
The question was taken; and the Chairman pro tempore announced that
the ayes appeared to have it.
Recorded Vote
Mr. GOODLING. Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.
A recorded vote was ordered.
The CHAIRMAN pro tempore. This is a 5-minute vote.
The vote was taken by electronic device, and there were--ayes 407,
noes 20, not voting 11, as follows:
[Roll No. 77]
AYES--407
Ackerman
Allard
Andrews (ME)
Andrews (NJ)
Andrews (TX)
Applegate
Archer
Armey
Bacchus (FL)
Bachus (AL)
Baesler
Baker (CA)
Baker (LA)
Ballenger
Barca
Barcia
Barlow
Barrett (NE)
Barrett (WI)
Bartlett
Barton
Bateman
Becerra
Beilenson
Bentley
Bereuter
Berman
Bevill
Bilbray
Bilirakis
Bishop
Blackwell
Bliley
Blute
Boehlert
Boehner
Bonilla
Bonior
Borski
Boucher
Brewster
Brooks
Browder
Brown (FL)
Brown (OH)
Bryant
Bunning
Burton
Buyer
Byrne
Callahan
Calvert
Camp
Canady
Cantwell
Cardin
Carr
Castle
Chapman
Clement
Clinger
Clyburn
Coble
Coleman
Collins (GA)
Combest
Condit
Conyers
Cooper
Coppersmith
Costello
Cox
Coyne
Cramer
Crapo
Cunningham
Danner
Darden
de la Garza
Deal
DeFazio
DeLauro
DeLay
Derrick
Deutsch
Diaz-Balart
Dickey
Dicks
Dixon
Dooley
Doolittle
Dornan
Dreier
Duncan
Dunn
Durbin
Edwards (TX)
Ehlers
Emerson
Engel
English
Eshoo
Evans
Everett
Ewing
Faleomavaega (AS)
Farr
Fawell
Fazio
Fields (LA)
Fields (TX)
Filner
Fingerhut
Fish
Flake
Foglietta
Ford (TN)
Fowler
Franks (CT)
Franks (NJ)
Frost
Furse
Gallegly
Gejdenson
Gekas
Gephardt
Geren
Gibbons
Gilchrest
Gilman
Gingrich
Glickman
Gonzalez
Goodlatte
Goodling
Gordon
Goss
Grams
Green
Greenwood
Gunderson
Gutierrez
Hall (OH)
Hall (TX)
Hamburg
Hamilton
Hancock
Hansen
Harman
Hastert
Hayes
Hefley
Hefner
Herger
Hilliard
Hinchey
Hoagland
Hobson
Hochbrueckner
Hoekstra
Hoke
Holden
Horn
Houghton
Hoyer
Huffington
Hughes
Hunter
Hutchinson
Hutto
Hyde
Inglis
Inhofe
Inslee
Istook
Jacobs
Jefferson
Johnson (CT)
Johnson (GA)
Johnson (SD)
Johnson, E. B.
Johnson, Sam
Johnston
Kanjorski
Kaptur
Kasich
Kennedy
Kennelly
Kildee
Kim
King
Kingston
Kleczka
Klein
Klink
Klug
Knollenberg
Kolbe
Kreidler
Kyl
LaFalce
Lambert
Lancaster
Lantos
LaRocco
Laughlin
Lazio
Leach
Lehman
Levin
Levy
Lewis (CA)
Lewis (FL)
Lewis (GA)
Lightfoot
Linder
Lipinski
Livingston
Lloyd
Long
Lowey
Machtley
Maloney
Mann
Manton
Manzullo
Margolies-Mezvinsky
Markey
Martinez
Matsui
Mazzoli
McCandless
McCloskey
McCollum
McCrery
McCurdy
McDade
McDermott
McHale
McHugh
McInnis
McKeon
McKinney
McMillan
McNulty
Meehan
Menendez
Meyers
Mfume
Mica
Michel
Miller (CA)
Miller (FL)
Mineta
Minge
Moakley
Molinari
Mollohan
Montgomery
Moorhead
Moran
Morella
Murphy
Murtha
Myers
Neal (MA)
Neal (NC)
Norton (DC)
Nussle
Oberstar
Obey
Olver
Ortiz
Orton
Oxley
Packard
Pallone
Parker
Pastor
Paxon
Payne (VA)
Pelosi
Penny
Peterson (FL)
Peterson (MN)
Petri
Pickett
Pickle
Pombo
Pomeroy
Porter
Portman
Poshard
Price (NC)
Pryce (OH)
Quillen
Quinn
Rahall
Ramstad
Rangel
Ravenel
Reed
Regula
Reynolds
Richardson
Ridge
Roberts
Roemer
Rogers
Rohrabacher
Romero-Barcelo (PR)
Ros-Lehtinen
Rose
Rostenkowski
Roth
Roukema
Rowland
Roybal-Allard
Royce
Rush
Sabo
Sanders
Sangmeister
Santorum
Sarpalius
Sawyer
Saxton
Schaefer
Schenk
Schiff
Schroeder
Schumer
Sensenbrenner
Serrano
Sharp
Shaw
Shays
Shepherd
Shuster
Sisisky
Skaggs
Skeen
Skelton
Slattery
Slaughter
Smith (IA)
Smith (MI)
Smith (NJ)
Smith (OR)
Smith (TX)
Snowe
Solomon
Spence
Spratt
Stark
Stearns
Stenholm
Stokes
Strickland
Studds
Stump
Stupak
Swett
Swift
Synar
Talent
Tanner
Tauzin
Taylor (MS)
Taylor (NC)
Tejeda
Thomas (CA)
Thomas (WY)
Thornton
Thurman
Torkildsen
Torres
Torricelli
Towns
Traficant
Tucker
Unsoeld
Upton
Valentine
Velazquez
Vento
Visclosky
Vucanovich
Walker
Walsh
Washington
Waxman
Weldon
Wheat
Whitten
Williams
Wilson
Wise
Wolf
Woolsey
Wyden
Wynn
Yates
Young (AK)
Young (FL)
Zeliff
Zimmer
NOES--20
Abercrombie
Clayton
Collins (IL)
Collins (MI)
Crane
Dellums
Dingell
Edwards (CA)
Ford (MI)
Frank (MA)
Kopetski
Mink
Nadler
Owens
Payne (NJ)
Scott
Thompson
Underwood (GU)
Waters
Watt
NOT VOTING--11
Brown (CA)
Clay
de Lugo (VI)
Gallo
Gillmor
Grandy
Hastings
Meek
Natcher
Sundquist
Volkmer
{time} 1458
Ms. WATERS, Mrs. COLLINS of Illinois, Mr. PAYNE of New Jersey, and
Mr. EDWARDS of California changed their vote from ``aye'' to ``no.''
Mr. SAWYER and Mr. MILLER of California changed their vote from
``no'' to ``aye.''
{time} 1508
So the amendment, as amended, was agreed to.
The result of the vote was announced as above recorded.
Mr. KILDEE. Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent that the remainder
of the bill be printed in the Record and open to amendment at any
point, and that the debate on the remainder of the bill and all
amendments be limited to 3 hours.
Mr. WALKER. Mr. Chairman, reserving the right to object, I do so to
ask a couple of questions. Would the gentleman tell us how many more
amendments there are to the bill?
Mr. KILDEE. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?
Mr. WALKER. I yield to the gentleman from Michigan.
Mr. KILDEE. Mr. Chairman, there are five more amendments on the
Clerk's desk.
Mr. WALKER. There are five amendments left for consideration. There
is no doubt that this has become kind of the forever bill on the floor.
Mr. KILDEE. The continuing saga of H.R. 6, right.
Mr. WALKER. I know of a number of our colleagues who have literally
hung around for days waiting for their amendments to come up. It seems
to me that by placing a limitation on five amendments, we could reach a
time where a couple of those amendments would literally have no time at
all for debate.
Mr. KILDEE. If the gentleman will continue to yield, I would ask the
gentleman if he would be willing to have 1 hour of debate on each
amendment?
Mr. WALKER. I wish the gentleman would withhold the request until we
have had a chance to check that out with the Members who offered the
various amendments. It may well be that when we come back into session
the next time, we could agree to that and agree to a time limitation at
that point. I am concerned that we do not understand at this point
whether or not that would be sufficient time for various Members to
debate their amendments.
Mr. KILDEE. We may very well not come back until after the Easter
recess. The gentleman understands that?
Mr. WALKER. However, at that point, certainly, the gentleman at that
time could raise a time limit request that would have been thoroughly
talked through with the Members who have potential amendments on the
floor.
Mr. KILDEE. If the gentleman will continue to yield, my only point
would be that it would be easier to go back to the floor if we know how
much time was to be consumed so the leadership could make plans
accordingly.
{time} 1510
Mr. WALKER. Mr. Chairman, as I would understand it, you could in fact
get permission in the full House at some other time to do that kind of
time limitation, once it is agreed to. But as far as I know, we have
not consulted with the Members on our side of the aisle as to whether
or not an hour of time would be sufficient for them. It may well be in
some cases that is more than enough time. But I do not know that to be
the case and so, therefore, at this time I would have to object.
Mr. KILDEE. I understand.
The Chairman pro tempore (Mr. Darden). Objection is heard.
Ms. LONG. Mr. Chairman, we are all aware of the link between
education and earning potential--the more you learn, the more you earn.
In order to increase the potential that the youth of our Nation
complete high school, we need to take preventive steps to ensure that
those most at-risk of dropping out--pregnant teens--are given the
support they need to stay in school.
A program currently operating in Indiana has successfully addressed
the needs of pregnant teens and, as a result, has increased the
birthweight of their babies and improves the potential that they will
return to high school after they give birth. This program, the ``Have a
Healthy Baby'' program, focuses on prenatal nutrition and wise
lifestyle choices for pregnant teens and adults. It is taught in 138
high schools in Indiana and is designed to address the issues of daily
nutritional choices and the relationship of life-style choices, such as
drugs, alcohol and smoking, which affect the health of the baby. Only
2.6 percent of the 1,716 females enrolled in the program gave birth to
low birthweight infants, compared to Indiana's average of 6.7 percent
of births being low birthweight. The savings to the Medicaid system
from this program are estimated at over $4 million. In addition, these
teens are more likely to stay in school while pregnant and return to
school after they give birth, giving them a better chance of obtaining
a job that would make them self-sufficient.
We cannot ignore the fact that teen pregnancy is a serious problem in
our country. However, it can be addressed constructively by improving
their chances of having healthy babies, staying in school and becoming
contributing members of society. Everyone benefits from programs such
as this and I am pleased to support the inclusion of programs like
``Have a Healthy Baby'' in H.R. 6.
Mr. KILDEE. Mr. Chairman, I move that the Committee do now rise.
The motion was agreed to.
Accordingly the Committee rose; and the Speaker pro tempore (Mr. de
la Garza) having assumed the chair, Mr. Darden, Chairman pro tempore of
the Committee of the Whole House on the State of the Union, reported
that that Committee, having had under consideration the bill (H.R. 6)
to extend for 6 years the authorizations of appropriations for the
programs under the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, and
for certain other purposes, had come to no resolution thereon.
____________________