[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 108 (Monday, August 8, 1994)]
[Senate]
[Page S]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: August 8, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
  DEPARTMENTS OF LABOR, HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES, AND EDUCATION, AND 
                  RELATED AGENCIES APPROPRIATIONS ACT

  The Senate continued with the consideration of the bill.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Who seeks recognition?
  The Chair recognizes the Senator from Iowa.
  Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, we are still on H.R. 4606, the Labor, 
Health and Human Services appropriations bill. For the benefit of 
Senators, obviously, the hour of 12 o'clock having passed, by unanimous 
consent no more amendments can be offered to the bill. There are now 
pending three amendments to the bill: An amendment by Senator McCain, 
an amendment by Senator Graham, and an amendment by Senator Helms. We 
have been basically debating the amendment offered by Senator Helms.
  Under a previous unanimous-consent agreement, there will be, 
obviously, no rollcall votes today or tomorrow, and the earliest 
rollcall vote will occur, as I understand it, at 10 o'clock on 
Wednesday, if there are, indeed, rollcall votes on the amendments that 
have been offered.
  I would like to take this time, however, to try to wrap up all of the 
business otherwise that we have pending on the bill with Senator 
Specter before we then turn the floor over to other Senators who will 
start talking about health care and other issues.
  Mr. SPECTER. Mr. President, I am advised that Senator McCain is 
willing to have the yeas and nays vitiated on his amendment since it is 
acceptable to the chairman and acceptable to the Republican side of the 
aisle. Senator McCain's amendment was a sense of the Senate to increase 
the Federal payments in lieu of taxes. I had introduced that earlier 
today. So I ask unanimous consent that the yeas and nays be vitiated.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. SPECTER. I urge adoption of Senator McCain's amendment.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The question is on agreeing to the amendment.
  The amendment (No. 2465) was agreed to.
  Mr. SPECTER. Mr. President, I move to reconsider the vote.
  Mr. HARKIN. I move to lay that motion on the table.
  Mr. SPECTER. And now, Mr. President, I believe we only have two 
amendments pending: An amendment by Senator Helms, and we are told that 
Senator Daschle wishes to speak in opposition. So if he would come to 
the floor, we could finish the debate on that.
  And we have the amendment pending by Senator Graham. Is there any 
further debate on that?
  Mr. HARKIN. I do have some comments that I am going to make on 
Senator Graham's amendment just to make sure that the Record is 
complete on opposition to the Graham amendment. So I am going to speak 
in opposition to the Graham amendment.
  Mr. SPECTER. Then, Mr. President, if we have those two statements, we 
will be prepared to go to third reading delaying only the vote on the 
pending amendments and the vote on final passage.
  Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I rise in opposition to the amendment 
offered by the Senator from Florida, Senator Graham. I have to say that 
the amendment surprises me. Our bill would provide $50 million for the 
immigrant education program, the same as the House, and a 28-percent 
increase over the 1994 level.
  Mr. President, again, we have frozen discretionary spending, and we 
have cut a lot of things. And yet, because of the importance of 
immigrant education, we increase it 28 percent. There are not many 
programs that get that kind of an increase around here. And now Senator 
Graham comes in and he wants to increase it by an additional $100 
million. And where is he going to take it? He is going to take it out 
of salaries and expenses. I will have more to say about that.
  If you look through the education portion of this bill, you will not 
find more than 10 or 12 out of over 200 programs that received 
increases of this magnitude, and that includes the President's 
investment initiatives. And even though immigrant education is not one 
of these investment initiatives, this is the second year in a row that 
we have given it significant increases.
  Last year, we raised it 32 percent over the 1993 level. So a 32-
percent increase last year, a 28-percent increase this year--over a 50-
percent increase in 2 years. In fact, I stand corrected. Over the last 
2 years, funding for this program has jumped by over $20 million, or 
almost 70 percent. And I think that is a pretty good increase, 
especially for a program that delivers 76 percent of its dollars to 
just five States.
  The increase in our bill looks even better when you consider the 
latest data from the Department of Education and the numbers of 
children served by this program.
  In 1993, States reported almost 826,000 immigrant students who were 
served by an appropriation of $29.5 million. In 1994, however, after we 
increased that appropriation by $9.5 million, States reported a total 
of only 809,000 immigrant children. That is a decrease of 17,000 
students or about a 2-percent decrease. So we had a decrease in the 
number of immigrant students and yet we increased the appropriation.
  California, for example, reported 338,000 immigrant students in 1993, 
317,000 in 1994. Texas also reported fewer students--54,000 in 1994 
compared to 56,000 in 1993. Despite these decreases, we have again 
provided a substantial increase for the immigrant education program in 
1995--as I said, up $11 million, or a 28-percent increase.
  So I suggest to the Senator from Florida that we should wait to see 
if this 1-year decline in immigrant students is a trend before we raise 
funds for this program any further.
  Let us also consider how the money is used. A recent evaluation of 
the immigrant education program found that these funds are not used to 
provide distinct services to immigrant students but are folded into the 
general budgets of school districts. Immigrant students are generally 
served through bilingual education programs or in English-as-a-second-
language programs.
  Now, there is nothing wrong with districts using their immigrant 
education funds this way, but it means that these funds are used to 
serve nonimmigrant students as well, since many students born in the 
United States are enrolled in bilingual and ESL programs. About one-
third of limited-English-proficient students are born in the United 
States. And just as some immigrant education funding benefits 
nonimmigrant students, other Federal education programs serve immigrant 
students. And this point is often overlooked by those who advocate 
increased funding for programs targeting immigrant students.
  The most obvious example is the bilingual education program 
authorized by title VII of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. 
According to an evaluation completed last year, as many as two-thirds 
of the students served by this program are immigrants. Since 1969, 
Congress has provided over $3 billion for bilingual education, and this 
bill would appropriate an additional $188 million for next year.
  So again, Mr. President, there are a lot of other programs that 
provide a substantial amount of money to immigrant students. A less 
obvious but probably more important example, at least from the funding 
perspective, is the $6.3 billion title I program that provides 
financial assistance to districts for the education of disadvantaged 
children.
  Title I allocations are based on counts of poor children. Since 
immigrant children are almost twice as likely to be poor when compared 
to all students, this program undoubtedly serves a significant number 
of immigrant students. I do not think it is any coincidence that the 
shifts in title I funding in recent years have been in the direction of 
exactly the same States with large numbers of immigrant children.
  For example, title I allocations to California grew from $463 million 
in 1990 to $693 million in 1994, an increase of almost 50 percent.
  Similarly, Texas will receive $500 million in title I funding for 
1994, an increase of $243 million or 79 percent over the $307 million 
it received in 1990.
  In these examples, higher levels of title I funding--generated by 
counts of poor children that included significant numbers of poor 
immigrant children--helped compensate States and school districts for 
the costs of educating immigrant students.
  I should also point out that the reauthorization of title I, which we 
just completed, recognized the role of Title I in serving immigrant 
children by requiring that States and school districts include these 
children in their plans for utilizing title I funds.
  In conclusion, the committee bill will--for the second year in a 
row--significantly increase Emergency Immigrant Education Program 
support for State and local efforts to meet the special needs of 
immigrant students.
  In view of data suggesting that growth in the numbers of these 
students may well be leveling off or even declining, and in light of 
the significant support for these students available through other 
Federal education programs funded by this subcommittee, the committee 
mark is more than fair, and I urge my colleagues to reject this 
amendment.
  I know this amendment will sound appealing to some because it cuts 
salaries and expenses $100 million. But as I said already, Mr. 
President, we have cut salary and expenses in this bill as much as we 
think we safely can without seriously impacting the management of these 
programs. We have already cut $63 million from the administration's 
request. This would be a further cut of 6.5 percent.
  Most agencies have had their administrative costs straight-lined 
while they face a mandated Federal pay raise and other inflationary 
costs, including operation of the clinical center at NIH, and it will 
slow down the payment of Medicare claims. If you take $100 million out 
of our bill for salaries and expenses, you are going to get rid of 
people. One-hundred million dollars, it is going to slow down the 
payment of Medicare claims, it will make our senior citizens wait even 
longer for reimbursements.
  I want Senators to understand that when they vote on the Graham 
amendment, as to who could probably take a cut, I assume that any 
salary expense account can take a small cut of $1 million here or $1 
million there. But $100 million? I am sorry, you really are going to 
dig deeply into the repayment of Medicare claims if you do that.
  It could possibly mean the closing of some Social Security offices. 
It will delay the processing of Social Security checks. It will slow 
down the implementation of the child immunization program, meaning 
fewer children will be vaccinated next year. It will cut funding to the 
States for foster care and child protective services. It will mean that 
the backlog of disability claims at the Social Security office will 
only grow larger. It will mean furloughs at most Federal agencies. We 
could easily lose more than $100 million in Social Security and 
Medicare funds through cutbacks in audits, and monitoring activities, 
including efforts to stop payments to drug addicts, alcoholics, and 
illegal aliens.
  We have a provision in our bill to put money in for more auditing to 
cut down on the waste, fraud and abuse. Well, if you take that money 
away, we cannot hire the auditors to do the auditing.
  The Graham amendment will reduce the ability of the Public Health 
Service to respond to disease outbreaks such as the hunta virus, the 
food-borne diseases. It will reduce the staff in States that work on 
tuberculosis, AIDS prevention.
  OSHA could lose up to 70 inspectors. We all remember the tragedy in 
North Carolina where workers died trapped in a fire because all exits 
had been locked. Do we want that to happen again? If we take $100 
million out of salaries and expenses, they will have to fire and 
furlough inspectors.
  The Pension and Welfare Benefits Administration would be forced to 
cut its pension plan inspectors and reduce by at least 100--threatening 
the security and solvency of millions of Americans' pensions and health 
plans.
  The Labor Department, if the Graham amendment is successful, will cut 
its investigations by 3,500 investigations of complaints of failure to 
pay minimum wage, and violations of laws that protect the American 
worker as well as child labor laws.
  So, Mr. President, for those reasons, the Graham amendment must be 
defeated.
  I understand the Senator from Florida desires to get more money into 
his State, and the cosponsors of the amendment, the Senators from Texas 
and California, want to get more money into their States for immigrant 
education. I understand that.
  But, Mr. President, we have done well by immigrant education. As I 
said, there is almost a 70-percent increase in the last couple of 
years, even while the number of students are leveling off or declining.
  Second, a $100 million cut in salaries and expenses will be 
Draconian, and will lead to the kind of layoffs and cuts in 
inspections, immunizations, audits for abuse, that we now conduct in 
the Department of Labor, Department of Health and Human Services and 
Department of Education.
  So I hope that Senators will resist this amendment. We have leveled-
funded salaries and expenses. If we cut some further, there just is not 
any more room, especially for a Draconian cut of $100 million.
  So I urge my fellow Senators to defeat the Graham amendment.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. SPECTER addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Glenn). The Senator from Pennsylvania.
  Mr. SPECTER. Mr. President, I have some comments to supplement those 
which the chairman has made. But the Senator from Kentucky has a short 
presentation. So I yield to him at this time.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. I would have to say that the distinguished 
Senator from Pennsylvania cannot yield time to someone else. He may 
yield for a question only.
  Mr. McCONNELL addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Kentucky.

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