[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 3 (Friday, January 6, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Pages S562-S563]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                   A SIGNIFICANT COMMITTEE ASSIGNMENT

  Mr. GORTON. Mr. President, as a result of committee assignments 
announced yesterday, I have the privilege and delight to be a member, 
for the next 2 years, of the Committee on Labor and Human Resources. I 
want to take this opportunity to discuss, in general, why I feel that 
assignment to be so significant and why I feel so privileged to be a 
member of a committee with the jurisdiction that it possesses. I also 
want to discuss one specific issue which has been discussed in that 
committee in the past, which I regard as being of peculiar and special 
importance.
  First, however, I express my delight in being a member of the 
committee chaired by the distinguished junior Senator from Kansas [Mrs. 
Kassebaum] who has been, during the course of the last Congress, my 
seat mate in this part of the body and will continue to be so. I look 
forward to her leadership and to her wise advice and counsel. Issues 
which will come before the Labor Committee include many that are of 
vital concern to all Americans in today's world. These issues include 
those relating to aging, to disability policies, overwhelmingly to 
education, to families and children, to employment, and to 
productivity.
  I see two profound tidal changes in American society today that are 
driving the concerns of millions upon millions of our people. As the 
United States is in the midst of an inevitable shift of its economic 
base from an industrial/manufacturing system to an information-based 
economy, millions of families find their justified expectations 
shattered and find themselves in a new and very difficult world. This 
shift gives every promise of being as cataclysmic as the shift from an 
agrarian-based economy to an industrial-based economy in the latter 
part of the last century and the beginning of this century.
  Understandably, many people are deeply concerned and apprehensive 
about this change, about the direction in which our country is heading, 
and wish that it were not so. It is so, however, and we need to meet 
that challenge.
  The American people understand that the societal contract is changing 
and that we must change with it. Today, the receipt of a high school 
diploma, or for that matter a college diploma, lacks the meaning it 
once had. Some families, some people are stuck on welfare and have few, 
if any, alternatives which they see as being viable. Today, there is no 
such thing as guaranteed lifetime employment. Working families find it 
more and more difficult to get ahead. Sending both parents into the 
workplace used to be a matter of choice, sometimes as a fulfillment for 
the second spouse to be employed, sometimes as an option to help a 
family buy a new home or to take a special trip. Today, for far too 
many, it is not a choice but a necessity. It makes or breaks a family's 
budget. And without two paychecks, bills would not be paid and the 
children might not be fed. Women in the workplace still find themselves 
stuck in either clerical or middle management positions and their 
growth stopped dead short by a glass ceiling that has not yet 
disappeared. Families are still deeply concerned about health care; 
some cannot change jobs for fear of losing their insurance; others let 
illness drag on because there is no money to pay in an uninsured 
situation; and many worry about retirement security. No individual 
wants to spend his or her golden years being taken care of, being 
dependent upon their children. But it seems increasingly difficult to 
save money for retirement.
  All of this I believe to be the most significant cause of the 
consistently found proposition that the majority of the American people 
feel that the country is moving in the wrong direction, that the 
programs of this Government do not help, but actually hinder, the 
ability of our citizens efficiently to manage their lives in a changing 
economy.
  As a result, I am excited and delighted about the challenges and 
about the prospects of being on a committee that is designed to address 
precisely these challenges. I believe we need to reorient the programs 
of the Federal Government to deal with this new reality. Only when this 
Government understands this changing reality will Americans believe 
that their Government is once again on the right track. I think the 
committee and its Members can make a difference.
  Beyond my desire to work with my distinguished colleague from Kansas 
and others on these paramount issues, I am convinced that one of the 
most important issues facing this country today is the need to educate 
our children in an environment conducive to learning. In the age of 
information, nothing--nothing at all--is more important to America's 
success than a well-educated citizenry.
  In that connection, I believe the largest single threat to successful 
education today is the growing spate of violence in our schools.
  A year ago this month, I held an education conference in Fife, WA, at 
which educators and parents from across Washington State spent an 
entire day discussing what the Federal Government could do to improve 
our system of education. For the first time in a long career, the No. 1 
priority was not more money, it was not more teachers in specific 
areas, it was not longer school days. The men and women and kids at 
this conference talked about school violence.
  In Washington State, violent crimes by young people have doubled in 
the past decade in spite of a 3-percent drop in the number of students. 
Recently, our superintendent of public instruction released a report 
that calculated a total of 2,237 incidents of firearms or dangerous 
weapons violations reported by school districts and by private schools. 
And just today, of course, in the Washington Post, we see of a gun-
induced killing at the very door of one of the high schools in the 
District of Columbia.
  Teachers and parents from all around Washington State have shared 
with me horror stories of violence in their childrens' schools: First 
graders threatening their peers with screwdrivers; a fourth grader 
extorting lunch money at knife point; a sixth grader who brought a fake 
but real-looking gun to school and threatened fellow students' lives 
with it.
  How can we expect our children to learn calculus and Tolstoy when 
they are afraid of walking the halls between classes?
  On the issue of school violence, the role of the Federal Government 
has not been a positive one. This Government has not concerned itself 
sufficiently with the safety of children threatened by these violent 
students. The Federal Government does not concern themselves with the 
safety of the faculty and administrators in these schools. It does not 
seem sufficiently concerned with the disruptive impact of violence in 
the learning process. In fact, the rules and regulations pursuant to 
statutes passed by this Congress on the part of the Federal Government 
has severely limited the ability of local school officials and teachers 
to deal effectively with violence in our schools. It has, in many 
respects, tied their hands. It has set up a double standard, depending 
upon the classification of students in our schools, with respect to the 
discipline of violent students who bring guns into the schools.
  Mr. President, this is profoundly the wrong direction in which to go. 
I am frustrated because the Federal Government, in fact, is making it 
far more difficult for communities to create an environment in our 
schools conducive to learning. As a result, last year, I led a fight on 
two separate occasions, with 
[[Page S563]] the distinguished Senator from Connecticut [Mr. 
Lieberman], which would restore to schools the authority to deal with 
this growing tide of violence.
  Our amendment, considered radical by many in this body, said that 
school districts in Morton, WA, for example, or in Bridgeport, CT, for 
example, were in a far better position than was any Federal bureaucrat 
to judge what was necessary to combat this rising and disruptive wave 
of violence. Although on both occasions our amendment was accepted 
first by a voice vote and secondly by an overwhelming majority, in each 
occasion it was dropped in conference. I felt so strongly about this 
provision that I voted against the final passage of the Elementary and 
Secondary Education Act late last fall.
  There are, of course, some who will continue to disagree with this 
goal, who will continue to find that only the Federal Government is 
capable of making value judgments among students when violence is at 
issue. I am certainly going to be willing to work with those who 
disagree and to craft a policy that will attempt to deal with their 
concerns. But our primary goal, one which cannot be compromised, must 
be to restore local control to the educators--who are on the firing 
line, who are in the classroom--the right, the privilege, and the duty 
to deal with school violence.
  I intend to work, as a member of the Labor Committee, to ensure that 
the Federal Government does not stand in the way of educating our 
children in a safe and positive environment.
  I invite all of the school teachers and principals and their 
organizations around the country who have stories to tell about how 
Federal rules and regulations have tied their hands when it comes to 
dealing with violent students to contact me, to contact my staff, to 
contact the committee. I want to know how I can make certain that the 
Federal Government does not make this problem worse.
  I want you to know that this Senator trusts the teachers and 
administrators of the schools of this country and wants to give to them 
the flexibility to deal with these challenges. We must do everything we 
can to ensure that our children go to school in an environment 
conducive to learning, and that means an environment safe for them and 
for their teachers.
  Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Chair, in his capacity as a Senator from 
Montana, asks unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be 
dispensed with.
  Without objection, it is so ordered.
  

                          ____________________