[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 85 (Monday, May 22, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Pages S7079-S7117]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                      UNANIMOUS-CONSENT AGREEMENT

  Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that a vote occur on 
or in relation to the Cohen Medicare fraud amendment, to be followed 
immediately by a vote on or in relation to the Democratic education 
amendment, at 7:15 p.m. this evening, with the first vote limited to 
the regular 20-minute time limit, and the second vote limited to 10 
minutes in length. I note at this point that this has been cleared with 
the Democratic side of the aisle. I further ask that no points of order 
be considered as having been waived by this agreement.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. LOTT. I further ask unanimous consent that no second-degree 
amendments be in order to either amendment, and that the time between 
now and 4:30 be equally divided for consideration of the Cohen 
amendment, and the time from 4:30 p.m. to 7:15 p.m. be equally divided 
on the Democratic education amendment, and that following the two back-
to-back votes, Senator Abraham be recognized to offer an amendment 
relative to education.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Under the previous order, the Senator from Maine is recognized.


                    Amendment No. 1116, As Modified

  Mr. COHEN. I send a modification of my amendment to the desk.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator has that right.
  The amendment is so modified.
  The amendment (No. 1116), as modified, is as follows:

       Strike all after the word ``section'' and insert the 
     following:

     SEC.   . SENSE OF THE SENATE REGARDING LOSSES OF TRUST FUNDS 
                   DUE TO FRAUD AND ABUSE IN THE MEDICARE PROGRAM.

       (a) Findings.--The Senate finds that--
       (1) the General Accounting Office estimates that as much as 
     $100,000,000,000 are wasted each year in the health care 
     system due to fraud and abuse;
       (2) outlays for the medicare program under title XVIII of 
     the Social Security Act during fiscal year 1995 were 
     $161,100,000,000, and the General Accounting Office estimates 
     that up to 10 percent of those outlays were wasted because of 
     fraud and abuse;
       (3) medicare beneficiaries incur higher out-of-pocket costs 
     and copayments due to inflated billings resulting from 
     fraudulent and abusive practices perpetrated against the 
     medicare program; and
       (4) funds lost because of fraud and abuse are contributing 
     to the financial crises of the Federal Hospital Insurance 
     Trust Fund and the Federal Supplementary Medical Insurance 
     Trust Fund, as identified by the Boards of Trustees of such 
     trust funds in their 1995 annual reports.
       (b) Sense of the Senate.--It is the sense of the Senate 
     that as the Committee on Finance of the Senate and if 
     established, the Bipartisan Commission on the Solvency of 
     Medicare recommended under section 307, address the long-term 
     solvency of the medicare program under title XVIII of the 
     Social Security Act (42 U.S.C. 1395 et seq.), high priority 
     should be given to proposals which identify, eliminate, and 
     recover funds expended from the Federal Hospital Insurance 
     Trust Fund and the Federal Supplementary Medical Insurance 
     Trust Fund due to, fraud and abuse in such program.
       In addition, the Senate assumes that funds recovered from 
     enhanced anti-fraud and abuse efforts be used to fund health 
     care anti-fraud and abuse enforcement efforts, reimbursements 
     to the Federal Hospital Insurance Trust Fund and the Federal 
     Supplementary Medical Insurance Trust Fund for losses due to 
     fraud and abuse, and deficit reduction.

  Mr. COHEN. The focus of debate today has been on what to do about 
Medicare. I think all of us share the concern over the grim news that 
the Medicare trustees announced a few weeks ago, namely, that the 
Medicare trust fund is going bankrupt.
  I support the budget resolution that calls for a bipartisan 
commission to devise a plan to basically pull Medicare out of its 
financial crisis. Just as we restored public confidence in the Social 
Security system over a decade ago through a bipartisan panel, the only 
way to fix Medicare is also through a bipartisan panel.
  The amendment I am offering today for myself, Senators Dole and 
Bradley, urges the bipartisan commission to give high priority to a 
problem that is costing the Medicare Program, senior citizens, and 
taxpayers across the country billions of dollars every year: health 
care fraud in Medicare.
  For the past 3 years, the staff on the Senate Special Committee on 
Aging has been investigating the explosion of fraud and abuse 
throughout the U.S. health care system. Nearly a trillion dollars is 
spent on health care each year, and roughly 10 percent is lost through 
abusive practices and fraudulent activities.
  Over the past 5 years, the estimated losses from health care system 
fraud total $418 billion. That is four times the amount lost to the 
savings and loan crisis--all those scandals, four times the amount just 
in the past 5 years.
  A major victim of this health care fraud is the American taxpayer. In 
1993, spending on Medicare and Medicaid totaled some $272 billion, or 
over 30 percent of all the moneys we spend on health care in this 
country. The Federal Government loses as much as $30 billion a year due 
to fraud in the Medicare and Medicaid systems and as much as $44 
billion from fraud when we take into account all of the Federal health 
care programs.
  Taxpayers are losing $44 billion a year today through health care 
fraud. I think this only represents a tiny fraction of the problem. 
These are the ones that we know about, the ones that are being caught 
and prosecuted. I think they represent a tiny fraction of the level of 
fraudulent activity taking place in this country.
  Mr. President, it is shockingly simple to defraud the current system. 
The payors are running as fast as they can to process the over four 
billion claims that are filed every year, and law enforcement simply is 
lacking in the resources necessary to really detect and prosecute this 
fraudulent activity.
  Recently the Aging Committee heard, I think, some compelling 
testimony on the extent of the fraud in this country. FBI Director, 
Louis Freeh, testified ``We see cocaine dealers turning into health 
care fraud entrepreneurs'' because that is where the money is big--but 
enforcement is little.
   [[Page S7080]] Director Freeh also told the committee about how the 
Russian mafia and other organized criminal groups from every corner of 
the globe are now engaged in creative schemes to siphon off money from 
the Government and private health care funds.
  Mr. President, padding claims and cost reports, charging the 
Government beneficiaries outrageous prices for unbundled services, and 
billing Medicare for program costs that have nothing to do with patient 
care are but a few of the schemes that are currently ruining our 
system.
  The Medicare system is the one that is being targeted because of its 
sheer size and complexity. At our hearing, the Aging Committee heard 
testimony that we are experiencing ``a feeding frenzy'' on the Medicare 
and Medicaid Programs, equivalent to ``unprecedented white collar 
wilding in which wave after wave of multimillion dollar frauds have 
swept through nursing homes and hospitals, clinics and pharmacies, 
durable medical equipment, radiology and labs, and more recently, home 
health care.''
  I would like to share with my colleagues just a few examples of how 
Medicare is being exploited and how fraudulent providers are draining 
Medicare, siphoning off these precious dollars from the Medicare trust 
fund and increasing the costs for senior citizens.
  A chain of health home care companies were discovered by Medicare 
auditors to have been billing Medicare for over $16,000 in alcoholic 
beverages at conferences, over $9,800 in personal travel for the 
owner's family, and over $3,200 in golf shop expenses. The home care 
companies also allegedly charged the Medicare Program for over $100,000 
in promotional items given to doctors and others to encourage them to 
use the company's home health care, including $85,000 in gourmet 
popcorn provided to doctors. Let me repeat that: $85,000 for gourmet 
popcorn going to doctors to promote the use of these home care 
companies.
  Mr. President, it is difficult to call on our senior citizens to bear 
cuts in Medicare when they learn that their Medicare taxes and premiums 
are being used to pay for gourmet popcorn.
  It is not limited to gourmet popcorn and golf shop fees. Let me give 
a couple of other examples of the costs that are driving Medicare close 
to bankruptcy.
  We have the case of a phantom laboratory allegedly cheating Medicare 
out of $300,000 for lab tests that were never performed. The so-called 
lab submitted the bills that were really no more than a rented mailbox 
and a Medicare billing number.
  We had a medical equipment supplier billed Medicare close to $1,300 
apiece for wheelchair pads that cost about $50 to $100 to manufacture, 
representing a markup of roughly 2,500 percent.
  We have an equipment supplier that allegedly billed Medicare for 
$4,000 apiece for compressors used to treat swelling. The devices cost 
less than $500 each.
  We have a chiropractor and his wife who defrauded Medicare and 
private insurers by billing for services never provided. One time bills 
were submitted for 169 patients supposedly treated in a single day.
  We had four companies who peddled liquid nutritional supplements by 
offering ``free medical milk.'' These companies then billed Medicare 
for over $14 million for the supplements that were not medically 
necessary, and that were often not even delivered to the Medicare 
patients.
  While I want to emphasize that by far most health care providers are 
honest professionals with only the best interest of patients and 
Medicare beneficiaries in mind, without a doubt there is fraud in each 
segment of the health care industry. The cases I have mentioned are 
just a small example of the kinds of rip-offs that are being 
perpetrated day in and day out in our Medicare Program, and indeed, 
throughout the entire U.S. health care system.
  Mr. President, we cannot wait any longer. I have tried for the past 2 
years to introduce legislation that would deal with Medicare fraud. 
Each time it has been blunted. On the one hand, the Senate passed an 
amendment to the crime bill containing some of the provisions of my 
legislation, only to have the House strip them out saying that this 
anti-fraud legislation does not belong on the crime bill. It belongs on 
health care reform. Of course, we did not have health care reform last 
year.
  I tried every single way to attach the health care fraud legislation 
to appropriations bills last year, including the D.C. appropriations 
bill, but others sought to amend it, because they wanted to load down 
this amendment with other issues.
  Mr. President, as a result of this, we have had to wait for health 
care fraud reforms. What we are doing is we are losing roughly $11.5 
million to health care fraud every hour. That is precisely what is 
being lost through fraud. We are losing $11.5 million an hour, $275 
million a day, $100 billion a year.
  Mr. President, this legislation that I have introduced the past 2 
years was included in virtually every health care bill that was 
circulating last Congress: The Dole bill, the President Clinton bill, 
the so-called Mainstream Coalition bill. These provisions in the 
legislation that I have introduced had the support of the Justice 
Department, the Director of the FBI, and the Department of Health and 
Human Services' inspector general. I believe the White House is now 
also advocating health care fraud enforcement measures.
  Now is the time to move forward with the bill. It has been introduced 
and will be considered as separate, free-standing legislation, 
hopefully in the very near future. In the meantime, what we have to do 
is at least go on record as saying we have to put a stop to the level 
of fraud taking place in our health care system today, particularly in 
Medicare and Medicaid.
  This resolution calls upon the bipartisan panel to look at ways in 
which we can reduce the perpetration of fraud against our system, that 
those moneys can be saved. Perhaps we will not be able to recover all 
the dollars lost to health care fraud in Medicare, but we will be able 
to recover some of these billions that are now being lost to fraud and 
abuse. Hopefully, the amounts recovered will be used to increase our 
health care fraud enforcement efforts, to reduce the deficit, and to 
apply to the Medicare trust fund itself. It seems to me that would be 
an appropriate recommendation for the trustees of the Medicare trust 
fund to endorse.
  I am hoping that we will use the same sort of bipartisan commission 
to restore public confidence in the solvency of Medicare that was 
formed in the wake of the declaration over a decade ago that Social 
Security was going broke.
  I mentioned this morning during my remarks that the issue was 
exploited by the Democratic majority at that time. They waited until 
after the 1982 elections were over and exploited the issue and then 
came back in and said, ``Let us form that bipartisan panel.''
  We did. The Social Security trust fund is solvent at least until the 
year 2020 or 2030. We need to do precisely the same thing now. We have 
to call together a bipartisan panel to look at what is taking place in 
our health care system. The FBI has identified areas of fraud. We can 
look at the New York Times on Sunday's edition and find another example 
of the kind of scams that are being perpetrated against our elderly--
not confined just to health care, but scams that target the elderly in 
general--and we have to put a stop to it. We have an opportunity to 
take a big step toward cracking down on scams targeting the elderly and 
programs serving the elderly by passing legislation that will give the 
tools and resources necessary to law enforcement officials to 
accomplish that end.
  There should be no political disagreement on this issue. This cannot 
be delayed another day, another week, another year, or else the very 
people that we are trying to help who are now facing the prospect of 
having their Medicare trust fund go broke within a 6\1/2\ year period 
of time will be the ultimate losers. We will be the ultimate losers.
  We have an opportunity to prevent that from taking place through 
reforms contained in the budget resolution itself, which Senator 
Domenici as chairman is calling for so we do not see the growth of 10.5 
percent but rather 7 or 7.1 percent. In that 7.1 percent, we can save 
billions of dollars by adopting the legislation that everyone says that 
we need.
  Mr. President, I will not take a great deal of time today since time 
has now been limited. Let me say that this is an 
[[Page S7081]] important resolution. Hopefully, it will enjoy 
bipartisan and perhaps even unanimous support, so we can all go on 
record as in favor of giving this panel an opportunity to consider ways 
to shape legislation to prevent the kind of fraudulent activity that is 
robbing our senior citizens of their trust funds and driving up the 
costs of Medicare and the entire health care system.
  Mr. President, I reserve the balance of my time.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Craig). If neither side yields time, the 
time is charged equally.
  Mr. CONRAD. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. CONRAD. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that we go into a 
quorum call and that both sides be charged equally.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                Amendment No. 1116, As Further Modified

  Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the amendment 
presented at the desk by Senator Cohen be modified. I send a copy of 
the modification to the desk.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The amendment (No. 1116), as further modified, is as follows:
       On page 94, after line 21, add the following new section.

     SEC.   . SENSE OF THE SENATE REGARDING LOSSES OF TRUST FUNDS 
                   DUE TO FRAUD AND ABUSE IN THE MEDICARE PROGRAM.

       (a) Findings.--The Senate finds that--
       (1) the General Accounting Office estimates that as much as 
     $100,000,000,000 are wasted each year in the health care 
     system due to fraud and abuse;
       (2) outlays for the Medicare program under title XVIII of 
     the Social Security Act during fiscal year 1994 were 
     $161,100,000,000, and the General Accounting Office estimates 
     that up to 10 percent of those outlays were wasted because of 
     fraud and abuse;
       (3) medicare beneficiaries incur higher out-of-pocket costs 
     and copayments due to inflated billings resulting from 
     fraudulent and abusive practices perpetrated against the 
     medicare program; and
       (4) funds lost because of fraud and abuse are contributing 
     to the financial crisis of the Federal Hospital Insurance 
     Trust Fund and the Federal Supplementary Medical Insurance 
     Trust Fund, as identified by the Boards of Trustees of such 
     trust funds in their 1995 annual reports.
       (b) Sense of the Senate.--It is the sense of the Senate 
     that as the Committee on Finance of the Senate and, if 
     established, the Bipartisan Commission on the Solvency of 
     Medicare recommended under section 307, address the long-term 
     solvency of the medicare program under title XVIII of the 
     Social Security Act (42 U.S.C. 1395 et seq.), high priority 
     should be given to proposals which identify, eliminate, and 
     recover funds expended from the Federal Hospital Insurance 
     Trust Fund and the Federal Supplementary Medical Insurance 
     Trust Fund due to, fraud and abuse in such program.
       In addition the Senate assumes that funds recovered from 
     enhanced antifraud and abuse efforts be used to fund health 
     care anti-fraud and abuse enforcement efforts, reimbursements 
     to the Federal Hospital Insurance Trust Fund and the Federal 
     Supplementary Medical Insurance Trust Fund for losses due to 
     fraud and abuse, and deficit reduction.

  Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, by most estimates, the costs of health care 
in the United States approach $1 trillion annually. By the turn of the 
century, the figure will exceed $1.5 trillion, consuming up to 16 
percent of the Nation's gross domestic product.
  Since health insurance experts, the FBI, and other agencies agree 
that fraud and abuse can account for as much as 5 to 10 percent of 
these costs, any effort to rein in health spending needs to address 
this problem. That is why I commend my colleague from Maine for 
bringing his amendment to the floor.
  Still, I must raise some concerns about the language my colleague 
proposes which would have the Senate go on record in support of using 
health care fraud related fines and penalties to finance our 
investigative efforts in this area.
  Frankly, I feel it is a dangerous precedent. We need to carefully 
contemplate whether such a financing mechanism will taint our anti-
fraud effort.
  Historically, Congress has frowned on financing law enforcement 
activities through criminal and civil fines and penalties. Yet, this 
amendment--as did most of the major health care bills last Congress--
suggests that our Nation's antifraud efforts should be funded through 
fines, penalties, and damages collected.
  I believe this sort of a system will create an incentive for Federal 
investigators to forgo prosecution or exclusion where warranted--or 
pursue civil actions where unwarranted--in favor of large civil 
penalties that will provide additional funding for investigators. Year 
after year, Federal agencies associated with such a program will be 
motivated by their immediate fiscal needs. I think this is a serious 
issue.
  Americans have witnessed how civil forfeiture and the resultant dash 
for cash by law enforcement has, in some cases, inappropriately driven 
law enforcement investigations. We must be sure that we do not 
compromise the priorities and integrity of our law enforcement 
officials.
  I also have concerns about taking one penny which could be used to 
replenish the Medicare trust funds and dedicating it to law enforcement 
purposes. According to the Congressional Budget Office, in fiscal year 
1994, Federal spending for the Medicare Program totaled an estimated 
$162 billion, or over $440 million a day. CBO estimates that, in less 
than a decade, Medicare spending will more than double from $181 
billion in 1995 to $463 billion in 2005.
  Even by the most conservative estimates, billions of dollars are 
being lost to waste, fraud, and abuse and that is a luxury we cannot 
afford. However, Medicare's hospital insurance trust fund is going 
bankrupt; in fact, its balances will dip into the red next year. We 
should use any recoveries from illspent Medicare funds to put back into 
the trust funds, not for new purposes.
  As I stated earlier in my remarks, I have strong concerns regarding 
the use of health care fraud related fines and penalties to finance 
investigative efforts in this area. Moreover, it seems to me that any 
funds recovered should be used for their original purpose which is to 
provide health care to Medicare beneficiaries.
  I support the spirit with which my colleague offers this broadly 
crafted amendment. But, I have serious reservations about the so-called 
bounty hunter provisions contained in the second part of this sense-of-
the-Senate amendment.
  Nevertheless, I will support the Cohen amendment, but reserve my 
rights to debate this matter further on the floor should legislation in 
this area be considered.
  Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. In suggesting that, does the Senator suggest 
that the quorum be divided equally?
  Mr. GREGG. I ask unanimous consent that the time be charged equally 
with the time running against both sides.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I be 
allowed to speak on the Harkin-Hollings amendment during the remainder 
of this time between now and the beginning of the debate on that 
amendment.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, I do not think anybody disagrees that we 
need to reduce dramatically the portion of our revenues that we expend 
on interest on the national debt. There is no disagreement that the 
current level of debt which was built up particularly in the 1980's and 
early parts of this decade needs to be brought under control. The 
interest on that debt is robbing us of the ability to invest in our 
children and in our future. We need to bring our annual deficits down 
to zero. We need to start to reduce the underlying debt in order to 
ensure that our children are not saddled with the interest burden that 
we bear today. [[Page S7082]] 
  Mr. President, we can go about this task in a shortsighted way by 
just cutting programs, including education and training programs and 
investments in our future, and reducing taxes at the same time--that is 
essentially what the Budget Committee has proposed. It said we shall 
cut programs, we shall take the savings from those cuts and reserve 
them for a tax cut . Or we can take the responsible and long-term and 
comprehensive approach that the Harkin-Hollings amendment will propose. 
That amendment restores funding to the function of the budget that 
provides for education and training, including student loans.
  If we free our children from the burden of the Federal debt only by 
depriving them of the education and training they will need to compete 
and succeed in the global and technologically driven economy of the 
next century, then we have not been responsible. All we have done is 
trade one burden, which is debt payments, for another, which is 
inadequate skills. The budget resolution which has been presented does 
just that. It is anti-working-families and anti-seniors and anti-
future.
  What the Harkin-Hollings amendment does is to take the $170 billion 
the committee has identified and earmarked for a tax cut, and applies 
$40 billion of that to restore some of the funding that has been cut by 
the Republican budget in the areas of education and training. The $40 
billion is still far short of what we should be restoring to that vital 
function, but it will help significantly.
  When given the choice of a tax cut, which will go largely to wealthy 
taxpayers--at least the blueprint that the House has announced clearly 
intends that--or reinvestment in education and training for working 
citizens and for our neediest children, I do not think we should 
hesitate for a moment to forego the cut in taxes and seek the longer 
term benefit that we will reap from educating our children.
  Let me make one thing very clear. The Budget Committee resolution 
does drastically cut education and training programs. I have heard 
various proponents for the budget say that all they are doing is 
restraining the growth in spending and not really cutting. That 
argument does not apply to the budget for education. The GOP budget 
does provide for less funding in 1996 than we are spending in 1995. It 
provides for a decreasing amount thereafter. Over 7 years, 25 percent 
is taken out of the level of funding for these programs, the level that 
they receive today, when you measure that in constant dollars.
  Furthermore, the GOP figures make no adjustment for the fact that the 
population is growing. There will be 9 percent more children of school 
age in the next 7 years in this country. In my home State of New 
Mexico, the estimate is there will be 12 percent more children in 
school. But the GOP budget does not take into account that increase in 
the school age population. So the effect of the budget is to make 
States stretch dollars with a shrinking value over an increasing number 
of students.
  Let me be specific. My State of New Mexico has the third highest rate 
of child poverty of any State in the country. More than 1 in 4 children 
in my State live in families with incomes below the poverty line. One-
third of the students in New Mexico's schools have limited proficiency 
in English. Our school-age population has grown tremendously. It has 
grown much faster than the school-age population in most parts of the 
country, and that growth is anticipated to continue.
  Against this background, we are facing actual decreases in funds for 
the programs that serve our students.
  The title I program, formerly known as chapter 1, provides about $850 
per disadvantaged student to help them meet high standards in math and 
in reading. That is the 1995 number, the current fiscal year, before 
the rescission that we have voted on and that the President has 
indicated he will veto.
  The Budget Committee chairman has expressed an intent, expressed in 
this budget resolution, that title I funds not be cut but instead be 
frozen. If that intent is carried out by the appropriators and title I 
in fact is not cut the way that other education programs will be cut, 
the result for New Mexico is not that we will enjoy ``level funding'' 
of the program; no, it will mean that we receive the same number of 
dollars each year for the program. Those same number of dollars will 
buy less and less as the 7 years progress and the costs of education--
supplies, teacher salaries, and energy costs--all increase.
  So even if our population did not grow, we would be facing a decrease 
in the real buying power of the Federal dollars for education. But, of 
course, the population is growing. It is expected to grow over 12 
percent in the next 7 years. So instead of 88,000 children being 
eligible for title I services in my State, as is the case today, there 
will be almost 99,000 eligible students by the year 2002. Today we 
serve 73 percent of the students eligible for title I. In 2002, that 
percentage will decline considerably to near 50 percent. That will mean 
almost 50,000 poor children from New Mexico who will not receive the 
services they need to meet high standards that we are setting for our 
children.
  It is clear that if the funding is frozen to 1995 levels, then almost 
4 million needy children will be denied assistance nationwide. If 
programs are cut at even 25 percent across the board, then title I 
would leave another 1 million children unserved.
  What I just described assumes that title I will not be cut and that 
that proposal to not cut title I is carried out. If that assumption is 
correct, then all of the other programs will have to be cut drastically 
in order to achieve the overall decrease in the budget category that 
this budget requires.
  What are some of those other programs? Technology is one of the 
programs. The current programs which are attempting to bring technology 
to the classroom will have to be cut. Mr. President, these programs are 
very, very limited at the present time. In 1995, we have committed $40 
million to this effort, assuming the rescission bill does not pass. But 
even that would be seriously jeopardized if this budget resolution is 
adopted.
  The Star Schools Program, again, would face a drastic cut. Obviously, 
we cannot tell just what the appropriators will do. The Star Schools 
Program tries to bring distance learning, technology-based education to 
our neediest schools, especially those in isolated rural areas, and 
those funds will likely be cut as well.
  Because of the nature of Federal programs--which are usually targeted 
to the neediest students--withdrawal of Federal aid will hurt those 
States that are least able to make up the shortfall themselves. New 
Mexico is one of those States.
  Let me talk for just a moment about higher education funding, Mr. 
President. The budget includes a $14 billion cut in student loan aid 
and an undetermined cut in Pell grants.
  Mr. President, Pell grants are critical to students in my State. I 
noted above that the poverty rate in my State is among the highest in 
the Nation. The way out of poverty is education. Yet many of our 
citizens are not able to afford that education. They depend upon Pell 
grants. They depend upon work-study and Stafford loans and State aid to 
pay for the increased cost of higher education.
  The GOP budget says that the Pell grants will remain at current 
funding--at least that is the apparent intent--but what does it mean? 
It means that the total Pell grant funding will remain at 1995 levels 
with no cuts or increase through the year 2002. That would mean that 
real funding, measured in constant dollars, would decline by reason of 
the growth of student population and by reason of inflation.
  Today, about 33,000 students in New Mexico receive Pell grants. I 
think it is pretty obvious that this budget is going to either cut the 
amount these students receive in Pell grants or result in a much 
smaller percentage of our young people who are eligible to apply and 
receive those Pell grants.
  It is clear to me that the budget is going to have a profound impact 
on students in my home State, even if you look just at the students who 
receive these Pell grants. When you look at other programs, you have to 
come to the same conclusion.
  The Federal work study program provides about $5.4 million in grants 
to 6,300 students in our State.
  The Federal supplemental opportunity grant program serves 6,500 
students in our State. [[Page S7083]] 
  Perkins loans serve over 5,000 students in New Mexico.
  The numbers they have provided in this budget resolution point in one 
direction, Mr. President. The numbers indicate that the Stafford 
program will not be impaired, but if, in fact, we are going to save the 
$14 billion that is contemplated in the budget resolution, we are going 
to have to cut that program. We are going to have to charge interest to 
those students from the time they take those loans just as the House 
has proposed to do.
  Mr. President, the proposal before us has as its purpose to cut the 
deficit. Clearly, we need to accomplish that. I am proud of the deficit 
reduction we have accomplished in the last 2 years. I am sorry we did 
not have the same zeal for deficit reduction by many of my colleagues 
when those votes were being cast in the last few years.
  But cutting investment in education and training for our children is 
not the right way to accomplish deficit reduction. If this Nation is to 
remain the world leader in the 21st century, we cannot cut investments 
in our most important resource; that is, in our children.
  The effect of this amendment that Senators Harkin and Hollings are 
offering would be to reduce the size of the proposed tax cut by $40 
billion so we can return some reasonable level of support for education 
and training. It is an amendment that makes excellent sense for the 
future of America.
  I urge my colleagues to support it.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under a previous order, amendment No. 1116 is 
temporarily set aside.
  Under the previous order, it would now be in order for a Democratic 
amendment regarding education.
  Mr. EXON. That order had been agreed to previously; is that correct?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. It has.
  Mr. EXON. Then the Chair will be recognizing the Senator from Iowa; 
is that correct?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. That is correct.
  Mr. EXON. I thank the Chair.
  Mr. HARKIN addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Iowa, Senator Harkin.


                           Amendment No. 1117

 (Purpose: To restore funding to education by using amounts set aside 
                             for a tax cut)

  Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I send an amendment to the desk on behalf 
of myself and Senator Hollings.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report.
  The legislative clerk read as follows:

       The Senator from Iowa [Mr. Harkin], for himself and Mr. 
     Hollings, proposes an amendment numbered 1117.

  Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the reading 
of the amendment be dispensed with.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The amendment is as follows:
       On page 74, strike lines 12 through 24 and insert the 
     following: ``budget, the appropriate budgetary allocations, 
     aggregates, and levels shall be revised to reflect 
     $28,000,000,000 in budget authority and outlays of the 
     additional deficit reduction achieved as calculated under 
     subsection (c) for legislation that reduces the adverse 
     effects on discretionary spending on education and 
     $12,000,000,000 in budget authority and outlays for 
     legislation that reduces the adverse effects on direct 
     spending for education.
       ``(b) Revised Allocations and Aggregates.--Upon the 
     reporting of legislation pursuant to subsection (a), and 
     again upon the submission of a conference report on such 
     legislation (if a conference report is submitted), the Chair 
     of the Committee on the Budget of the Senate may submit to 
     the Senate appropriately revised allocations under sections 
     302(a) and 602(a) of the Congressional Budget Act of 1974, 
     discretionary spending limits under section 201(a) of this 
     resolution, budgetary aggregates, and levels under this 
     resolution, revised by an amount that does not exceed the 
     additional deficit reduction specified under subsection 
     (a).''.

  Mr. HARKIN. Will the President please advise the Senators as to the 
timeframe now for debate on the education amendment?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The time until 7:15 this evening is to be 
equally divided, with Senator Bingaman having asked unanimous consent 
and spoke using some of the time allocated to the Democratic side.
  Mr. HARKIN. So between now----
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Right now the Senator has 72 minutes.
  Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I join with Senator Hollings in offering 
this amendment. I believe this amendment really does set the stage for 
what we are talking about in terms of priorities and choices. We all 
agree we need to get the deficit down and balance the budget, but what 
we have all talked about is in terms of reducing the deficit and what 
it does to help future generations of Americans. There has been a lot 
of talk about our responsibility to balance the budget for the sake of 
our children and their future, and that is true.
  But what this budget does is it cuts off the very fountain of life 
and funding that ensures that our children and future generations will 
be able to have a better life in our country because of the devastating 
cuts that this budget makes in education.
  We have seen report after report after report, study after study 
telling us about the importance of investing in education. I am 
reminded even of the group of CEO's that was brought together by 
President Reagan. These were not social planners and thinkers, these 
were CEO's of our major corporations, charged with the responsibility 
by President Reagan of determining what we needed to do in our 
educational system. They met, they filed their reports, and what they 
said basically is that we have to fund education, we have to fund early 
intervention programs, and we cannot back off on the Federal commitment 
to education.
  The President of the United States, President Bush, convened the 
Governors, and in 1989 they set up the national education goals, agreed 
upon by a Republican President, by Republican and Democratic Governors, 
by the U.S. Congress--by the Senate and by the House--what our goals 
were in education by the year 2000.
  Mr. President, we do not need any more reports. We know what needs to 
be done. We know how critical education and training is to competing in 
the world economy. We know that investing in education will save us 
money in the long run. We know that we are falling behind our 
competitors. We know that it is more difficult for middle-class 
families to pay for college education today. How many more reports do 
we need to tell us what we already know? We do not need any more 
reports.
  We know that slashing education by the largest level ever is wrong. 
Taxing millions of college students with more debt is wrong. Denying 
Head Start to hundreds of thousands of young Americans is wrong. The 
amendment I am offering with Senator Hollings will do what is right: It 
will keep us on the right path, the right course.
  Our amendment restores $40 billion for education and training 
programs. Our amendment restores $12 billion for student loans, $28 
billion for discretionary spending. It restores common sense by 
investing in education.
  Mr. President, this is an anxious time for our Nation's students. 
They will soon be getting their report cards and, I must say, it is an 
anxious time for parents who are funding our kids in college. We want 
to see those report cards, too. We want to see how they have done in 
the classroom. I asked my daughter today if she got her report card 
from college. No, she did not have it yet.
  I think it is time for us to look at a report card to see how this 
budget would do in our Nation's classrooms. Let us see if this budget 
that we have before us passes or fails, what kind of a grade it gets.
  So let us look at the different assignments, Mr. President, and I 
have it here on the report card. Let us look at the different 
assignments that the people of this country have given to us, the 
national education goals, what they have set out. Let us see how this 
budget does on a report card.
  Our first assignment was to make college affordable for students and 
for working families. How does this budget do? It cuts student loans 
and reduces Pell grants by 40 percent. It cuts $5 billion from other 
grant and loan programs. It increases the personal debt of college 
students by anywhere from 20 to 48 percent.
  What that means is a lower income college student going to college 
borrowing money will have his or her debt increased by anywhere from 20 
percent minimum to 48 percent maximum. The maximum increase, of course, 
falls on the poorest students because they borrow the most money, and 
so they will [[Page S7084]] have the biggest debt to pay back. Just the 
opposite.
  What kind of a grade do we give this assignment? It cannot be 
anything more than an F. It flunks at making college affordable for 
students and working families.
  Our next assignment: Make sure all children will start school ready 
to learn. Mr. President, the No. 1 goal of the President's Conference 
on Education set up by President Bush, agreed upon by Republican and 
Democratic Governors in 1989, the No. 1 goal: All children will start 
school ready to learn.
  What does this budget do? It freezes Head Start funding so that by 
the year 2002, 350,000 to 550,000 fewer children will be served. It 
freezes Head Start. Fewer children will be served. Another F.
  Another assignment: Improve student achievements so that U.S. 
students will be best educated. Another one of our goals, by the way. 
What does the budget do? It freezes title I funding so that by 2002, 2 
million fewer children will be served. Right now, Mr. President, the 
Federal Government provides about 6.6 percent of funding for local 
school districts. In 1980, that was 11 percent. It is now down to 6.6 
percent, and that includes the school lunch program. So if you take out 
the school lunch program, it is even a lot less than that. Education 
right now is 2.2 percent of the Federal budget--2.2 percent. In 2002 
under this budget proposal, it will fall; 1.4 percent of the Federal 
budget will go for education.
  What does that mean? That means that if our local school districts 
and our States want to continue a high level of education and input, it 
can only mean one thing: Hang on, your property taxes are going to go 
through the roof. And so this budget fails in improving student 
achievement so that they will be the best educated.
  The next assignment, making sure that all schools will be safe and 
drug free, another one of our goals, to make our schools safe and drug 
free.
  This program funds things like the DARE Program that we are all so 
familiar with and I am sure we hear about in our States when we go back 
there and how successful the DARE Program is. This budget cuts over $1 
billion from the Safe and Drug Free Schools Program. Ninety-four 
percent of school districts will lose funding from it, affecting over 
39 million children. So on keeping our schools safe and drug free, this 
budget, another F.
  Another assignment we have is to increase the Federal commitment for 
funding of special education and reduce the costs to local school 
districts.
  Mr. President, this Congress in 1975 passed legislation for the 
education of all handicapped. It is called now IDEA, Individuals with 
Disabilities Education Act. The commitment of Congress in 1975, and in 
every Congress since then, has been to pick up 40 percent of the costs 
of special education for our school districts--40 percent. Do you know 
what it is now? Eight percent; 8 percent.
  We are not talking about something that local schools can do or 
cannot do at their will. There is a constitutional obligation on our 
local school districts that if they provide a free and appropriate 
public education for nonhandicapped students, they have to do it for 
handicapped students.
 Constitutional requirement. We have said that we will come in and help 
local school districts meet that constitutional requirement by helping 
fund special education. Five-and-a-half million students with 
disabilities. Over the next 7 years, under this budget, school 
districts will lose over $5 billion in Federal funding for special 
education. And again, these school districts cannot say: OK, now we 
have lost the Federal funding, so all you disabled kids, out, we are 
not going to give you the kind of education that is comparable to other 
students. They cannot do that. The Constitution of the United States 
commands that they have to do that.

  So what it means, again, is hang on to your hat in your local school 
districts, Mr. President. Property taxes will go up through the ceiling 
to pay for special education, because we, in this budget, are saying we 
are not going to fund it. So another F on that assignment.
  Another assignment is to make the United States first in the world in 
math and science--another goal--by 2000. In an international assessment 
of eighth graders on math in 1992, the United States ranked 13th out of 
15 countries. This budget cuts $700 million in teacher training for 
math and science teachers--400,000 fewer teachers will receive training 
and retraining.
  So in trying to make our country first in math and science, another 
F.
  Another goal is to improve technology to prepare students for the 
21st century. We are saying we have to get better technology in the 
schools: Up-to-date computers, fiber optics and interaction, and get on 
the superhighway, get all this technology, Star schools, we are all for 
it. We have to do it if our kids are going to be competitive in the 
future. Over the next 7 years under this budget $175 million will be 
cut from Star schools and education technology. Another F.
  Well, lastly, I think our overall assignment, is it not, is to ensure 
a better future for our children. Is this not really why we are here? 
Is this not why we take time on the Senate floor to debate and offer 
amendments? Is this not why our constituents put us here, to ensure a 
better future for our children? This is the largest education cut in 
the history of this Congress, the largest education cut in history. 
How, I ask, is that ensuring a better future for our kids?
  So, Mr. President, in test after test, this Republican education 
budget fails our children. It fails them in the earliest times, getting 
them ready for school, and it fails them later on when they go to 
college. It fails our future. As a parent, I would be upset if my 
daughter brought home a report card with nothing but F's, and if she 
did, she would have to go back to school and do it all over again. That 
is what we are trying to do with our amendment. We are saying: Go back 
to school, those of you on the other side that want this budget. You 
have failed. So Senator Hollings and I are saying, we will make it 
right and we will send you back to school. We will send you back with 
this amendment so we do not fail our kids. We want them to pass and we 
want to invest in education. The way to do it is to restore these cuts 
and restore some common sense back in the budget.
  Mr. HOLLINGS addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Does the Senator yield time to the Senator 
from South Carolina?
  Mr. HARKIN. Yes, I yield whatever time the Senator may wish to 
consume.
  Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the 
distinguished Senator from Nebraska, Senator Exon, be added as a 
cosponsor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, One of the most distinguished 
forefathers, James Madison, said that ``a popular Government without 
popular information or the means of acquiring it is but a prologue to a 
farce or a tragedy, or perhaps both.'' He said that in a letter to John 
Adams, and Adams wrote back that ``The whole people must take upon 
themselves the education of the whole people and be willing to bear the 
expense of it.''
  Coming up to Horace Mann's day, he referred to the Northwest 
ordinance where we laid the groundwork to develop Iowa--and it is a 
distinct pleasure to be associated with Senator Harkin. Those States in 
the Midwest were set up in 6 mile by 6 mile blocks, and the middle 
block--number 16--was reserved for public education.
  Horace Mann said:

       This law laid the foundation of the present system of free 
     schools. The idea of an educational system that was at once 
     both universal, free, and available to all the people, rich 
     and poor alike, was revolutionary. This is the great thing 
     about America. No other nation ever had such an institution. 
     Three centuries later, it is a stranger to the bulk of the 
     people of the world. The free public school system, which 
     Puritans conceived, has been in large measure the secret of 
     America's success. In these classrooms children of all races, 
     nationalities and tongues learn the common language and 
     became imbued with one central idea--the American conception 
     that all men are created equal, that opportunities are open 
     to all, that every minority, whether respected or despised, 
     has the same guaranteed rights as the majority. Parents who 
     landed here often brought with them the antagonisms, the 
     rivalries and suspicions of other continents. But their 
     children became one and united in the pursuit of a democratic 
     ideal.

  Mr. President, this idea was brought up-to-date, this observation of 
Horace [[Page S7085]] Mann, just Sunday before last, on May 14, at the 
graduation exercises at the College of Charleston in my hometown which, 
incidentally, was founded in 1767. It is the fourth-oldest liberal arts 
college in the United States and the oldest municipal college in the 
United States, now having become a State university. Our distinguished 
colleague from Kansas, the Senator from Kansas, Senator Nancy 
Kassebaum, was the graduation speaker. As Dr. Alexander, our greatest 
of great presidents there, spoke and introduced the program, he said 
this, and I think it should gain the attention of everyone:

       A few more than 900 soon-to-be graduates are seated behind 
     me. If I ask each of them to stand who had attended college 
     on a grant from the Federal Government, 405 of them would 
     stand. If I then asked those to stand who had received a 
     Government loan, an additional 198 would stand. If I then 
     asked all those to stand who had received a scholarship which 
     included at least some Government involvement, an additional 
     120 would stand. Eighty percent of today's graduates would 
     then be standing. Of course, all the rest, as well as those 
     who are standing, had a part of the expenses at the college 
     paid for by the State of South Carolina.
       So while our graduates are thanking their families and 
     friends, they might do well to also thank the Government. At 
     the College of Charleston, we do not think of the Government 
     as our enemy. It is not possible to love the College of 
     Charleston and hate the Government. In the American 
     democracy, the Government, in the phrase of Lincoln, is ``of 
     the people, by the people and for the people.'' Speaking for 
     myself, I do not think it is possible to love America and 
     hate the Government.

  So my plea this afternoon is if we can set aside partisanship 
momentarily and get some bipartisanship back on track for the general 
good, let us look at this amendment and realize that we have to move 
forward.
  This particular amendment has what aim? Is it our aim to streamline 
the Government and cut out the fat? Or is it our aim to hack away 
indiscriminately, to tear down Government, to cut out not just the fat 
but also the muscle? Quite frankly, I look at the unprecedented 
education cuts in the budget resolution and this is what I see--not an 
efficiency inspired streamlining, but ideologically-driven amputation.
  I am reminded of the Florida doctors down there who recently went 
into the operating room to amputate a foot,
 when the patient awoke, he discovered that the doctors had amputated 
his healthy foot.

  That is exactly what is occurring here in this particular budget 
resolution. We are not talking here, Mr. President, about highway 
demonstration projects and more subsidies and the usual litany of 
Government waste. To the contrary. We are talking about Government at 
its best. Government at its most cost efficient.
  We are talking about proven programs--Head Start, Title I, assistance 
for educating disabled people, and college loans for low-income people. 
These are programs that demonstrably work, and work for our neediest 
citizens.
  By the most conservative estimate, Mr. President, every $1 spent on 
Head Start translates into $2 in later cost savings and educational 
benefits. One investigation, the famous Perry Preschool Study, 
determined that there are $3 in benefits for every $1 spent on Head 
Start.
  We see an even greater return from Title I programs. For every poor 
child, thanks to Title I intervention, who does not have to repeat a 
grade, Mr. President, we save $7,000. For every child who, thanks to 
Title I, does not drop out of school, we save potentially tens of 
thousands of dollars in welfare costs.
  Mr. President, the cuts proposed in the budget resolution give rise 
to a broader question: How in the world did we allow education to 
become a partisan issue? How in the world did we reach a point where 
virtually every Republican is reported ready to vote for radical cuts 
in the education budget, and virtually every Democrat is ready to vote 
against the cuts.
  I will never forget the bipartisan move over the years with the 
distinguished Senator from Vermont, Bob Stafford. We had been Governors 
together and worked on education and the education amendments. Thanks 
to the success of Senator Stafford, we had equally wonderful bipartisan 
support and leadership.
  We used to have two rules for nonpartisanship around this place: One 
rule was politics stop at the water's edge; the other rule was that 
politics stops at the schoolhouse door. I deeply regret in the rush to 
dismantle Government we are willy-nilly throwing away our consensus on 
education.
  Mr. President, I come to the floor to plead for a restoration of that 
consensus, to plead with my colleagues on the other side of the aisle 
to join in support of the amendment. Republicans have spoken very 
passionately about the need for people to pull themselves up by their 
own bootstraps, to stand on their own feet, to get out of the wagon, 
and help pull the wagon.
  The distinguished Speaker of the other body has made a compelling 
case for what he calls ``conservative opportunity society,'' a society 
which, he says, should guarantee equal opportunity but not equality of 
results. Fine. How can we credibly talk about equality of opportunity 
at a time that we are making radical cuts in education? How can we tell 
poor and disadvantaged persons that we believe in equal opportunity at 
the same time we are cutting the dickens out of Head Start, Title I, 
and other programs whose entire purpose is to make opportunity less 
unequal?
  Indeed, Mr. President, if the cuts proposed in the budget resolution 
are allowed to stand without modification we will deal a devastating 
one-two punch to poor Americans.
  First, we will shred the social safety net by enacting cuts in child 
nutrition, health care, job training and so on. Sixty percent of the 
$961 billion in budget cuts planned over the next 7 years will come 
from programs for poor and elderly. By hacking away at education, we 
cripple the ability of poor children to get a decent start toward 
literacy and other skills that they will need to stay off welfare and 
survive in the new economy.
  I see a common thread, Mr. President, running through this budget 
resolution. The more needy a person is the more deeply they get cut. 
This is true not just of children but of States as well. Cutbacks in 
the budget resolution will hit hardest in the States that are most 
dependent on Federal aid.
  These States tend to be small, they tend to be poor, and, yes, they 
tend to be Southern. Consider the following States and how much they 
depend on Federal assistance in their education budgets: Mississippi, 
17 percent; New Mexico, 12.4 percent; Alaska, 11.5 percent; Alabama, 
11.4 percent; South Dakota, 11.1 percent; North Dakota 11.1 percent; 
Louisiana, 10.8; Arkansas, 10.8; Kentucky, 10.1 percent; my own State 
of South Carolina, 9 percent.
  The main program cut back by the resolution is Title I for the 
disadvantaged. We now serve, Mr. President, about 6 million children 
under the program, and projecting the same across-the-board cut to 
education, the Department of Education says that we will be serving 
only 4 million children when that particular cut has become law.
  Taken together, the cuts in the budget resolution make a mockery of 
any notion of an opportunity society. This budget resolution tells poor 
people to pull them themselves up by the bootstraps, and then it takes 
away the boots.
  It strikes me strongly that those who would make deep cuts in the 
social safety net have a special obligation, a special moral 
obligation, to at a minimum maintain the Federal Government's current 
level of investment in education. The bottom line, of course, is 
education equals opportunity.
  The income and opportunity gap is already striking. Between 1973 and 
1989, the annual earnings of black male high school dropouts in their 
twenties declined by fully 50 percent.
  Consider this, Mr. President: Kids whose parents are on the top 
quartile of income have no trouble going to college. A whopping 76 
percent of them earn Bachelor's degrees. But for kids whose parents are 
on the bottom quartile, a shockingly different story. Only 4 percent of 
these lower-income kids receive a Bachelor's degree.
  Mr. President, we are limited on time here this afternoon and many of 
our distinguished colleagues are interested in addressing this 
particular problem.
  Let me just say these are exactly the kids who are most at risk in 
underachieving, flunking a grade or dropping out. Take away Head Start 
and Title I and we are yanking the rug out from under the kids. 
[[Page S7086]] 
  We have to get real. We cannot claim to favor an ``opportunity 
society'' at the same time we enact savage cuts in education. The 
opportunities of society should not be for those who are born on third 
base; rather, we also need an opportunity society for poor children who 
are born stuck in the batter's box with a two-strike count.
  Yet by cutting deeply into Head Start, Title I, and the other 
education programs for the disadvantaged, we are heading in exactly the 
wrong direction. It is too late, now, Mr. President, to reconsider the 
priorities set forth in the budget resolution. To that end, therefore, 
I urge a strong bipartisan vote in favor of this amendment. If we are 
serious about opportunity for everyone, then we should be boosting our 
investment in education, not busting it.
  Mr. HARKIN. I thank Senator Hollings for his support and for his 
cosponsorship of this amendment and his long-time support for education 
in our country.
  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to add the following as 
cosponsors: Senator Jeffords, Senator Kennedy, Senator Pell, Senator 
Dodd, Senator Bingaman, Senator Simon, and Senator Murray as 
cosponsors.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I yield 8 minutes to the Senator from 
Washington.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Frist). The Senator from Washington.
  Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, of all the pain in this budget, nothing 
will hurt our Nation more than the draconian cuts to education.
  Education allows Americans to pull themselves up by their own 
bootstraps. And I know this first hand. I am one of seven children from 
a family in a small town in Washington State.
  My parents taught us the most important lessons in life. They taught 
us that everyone can make a difference. They showed us the bright 
promise of the American dream.
  And, they taught us that education was the key to success.
  That's why my parents--like many--are watching this debate closely. 
They understand what's at stake--because they know the difference 
education made in their children's lives.
  Every one of my brothers and sisters, every one of us went to 
college. Every one of us has been able to follow our dreams--and one of 
us--my twin sister--is now a teacher herself.
  When I stand here in this debate, I think of my sister, Peggy, in her 
classroom in Bellingham, WA. I know the challenges she faces as a sixth 
grade teacher.
  Peggy tells me how class size will grow if these types of cuts are 
made. If we just shift costs from the Federal to local level in this 
way, the quality of education in her classroom will decrease.
  I know she is watching this budget debate--like teachers all across 
this Nation--and she is expecting us to keep education funding a top 
priority.
  Peggy instills the same hopes and dreams in today's children our 
parents and teachers instilled in us.
  And, she knows that the priorities in this budget are misguided. 
Taxes on working families. Drastic cuts to Medicaid and Medicare. 
Slash-and-burn education cuts.
  It frankly amazes me that we are seriously considering a budget which 
cuts education so severely.
  The fundamental goal of any economic policy should be to raise the 
standard of living, and increase opportunity for all Americans.
  You achieve this by strengthening education at all levels.
  Last year, I worked with some of my colleagues from across the aisle 
in a bipartisan fashion to help expand educational opportunities for 
all Americans. Unfortunately, it seems--in this budget--that spirit has 
now collapsed.
  This year, we are taking giant steps backward. In this budget, 
education is targeted for some of the largest cuts.
  I have stated many times that I am all for deficit reduction. 
However, it is irrational to cut investments in our children and in our 
workers--and then turn around and say these cuts are good for our 
future. How is cutting education good for our future?
  The American people have the right to know what's in this budget. 
Let's look at the specifics:
  Head Start, one of the most effective early nutrition and education 
programs, in cut by $3 billion. This draconian cut will deny as many as 
100,000 low-income children the benefit of a pre-school education. That 
makes no sense.
  K through 12 education programs also take a big hit. This budget 
would eliminate Goals 2000, which supports the efforts of schools and 
communities to raise academic standards in their areas. That makes so 
sense.
  Training programs are cut. The School-to-Work Program ensures that 
all young people attain the skills they need to enter the workforce. 
Some of our colleagues want to eliminate this program. That makes no 
sense.
  Finally, I am truly concerned about the absence of student financial 
aid funds in this budget. Nationally, the costs for higher education 
have increased at twice the rate of family income over the past decade. 
Without financial aid, college has simply become unavailable to the 
middle class.
  I would have never even thought of college if it were not for 
financial aid. Neither would any of my six brothers and sisters. This 
budget says to young Americans ``you have to be rich to go to 
college.'' Again, that makes no sense. Again, this is the wrong message 
to our young people who far too often feel today there is no hope and 
no future for them.
  We can not expect to retain our position as a leader in innovation, 
research, and production--unless we continue to invest in education.
  At a time when Americans are fearful of losing their jobs; when 
Americans need training; when our high school seniors lack the funds 
for college; at this time, it makes no sense to turn our backs on them.
  Every day, I hear my distinguished colleagues--who were captains of 
industry--talk about what private industry and big business need in 
this budget.
  I do listen to leaders in industry. They tell me how important 
education is to American competitiveness. High tech companies and 
manufacturing firms need well-trained, high skilled work force. So, I 
do listen to them. And, I also listen to Americans who do not have 
rich, powerful lobbyists behind them.
  Let us listen to America's displaced workers who need to be 
retrained. Let us listen to America's teachers. Let us listen to 
America's schoolchildren. Let us remember the common sense our parents 
taught us. Let us remember how each and every one of us got to this 
Senate.
  I urge my colleagues to vote for this amendment and restore these 
education cuts, restore some hope to our children's faces, and restore 
some common sense to this budget process.
  Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I yield 10 minutes to the Senator from 
Massachusetts.
  Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I thank my colleagues, Senator Harkin, 
Senator Hollings, Senator Murray, and others who have made such a 
strong presentation on an issue which is of such fundamental importance 
to all Americans as the priority of education for the young people of 
this country.
  What this amendment to the budget proposal is doing is restoring in a 
dramatic way support for higher education.
  If there has been one extraordinary success story in the postwar 
period in the United States, it has been higher education. Of the 140 
great world universities, 127 of them are in the United States of 
America. That is not an accident. Our higher education is the envy of 
the world. We are doing it right.
  How has that come about? One reason is because you have participation 
of individuals that is not simply based on their ability to pay; 
another is government support for research, and finally, we have a 
system that attracts the best academic minds in the world. Overall, 
higher education has been an extraordinary success.
  Mr. President, we have many problems in this country. We have many 
problems around the world. One problem that is growing increasingly 
serious is that access for the sons and daughters of working families 
to higher education is becoming more difficult. The escalation of costs 
has become a serious problem.
  The universities, the teaching hospitals, the schools of this country 
are the envy of the world, and we have to [[Page S7087]] ask ourselves 
in this budget resolution, as we are looking to the future: Why are we 
putting them at risk? And we are putting them at risk by the reduction 
of $30 billion in education funding over the next 7 years. That is the 
very basic and fundamental question. In a minute, I will come to the 
same question in terms of what we are doing in primary and elementary 
education, as well.
  I would like to review for all of our colleagues the figures about 
what people earn when they achieve higher education--this chart can be 
viewed by our colleagues. The chart is self-evident, but fortunately, 
or unfortunately, we have to remind our colleagues and remind the 
American people.
  The chart shows average annual earnings by level of education. If you 
do not finish high school, the average income is $12,000. If you 
complete high school, the average over the lifetime is $18,000. If you 
have some college but do not complete 2 years, it goes up to $19,000. 
It is $24,000 if you get an associate's degree from a 2-year college, 
and up to $32,000 if you graduate from a 4-year college. It goes on. 
For a master's, $40,000; a doctorate, $54,000; for a professional 
degree, $74,000 individually.
  Our older brothers and sisters and parents understand it because they 
had the GI bill. Generally, borrowers under the GI bill repaid $8 for 
every $1 that was expended. Student loans work. Higher education works 
in the United States of America.
  What did we do in the last Congress? In the last Congress, because of 
the concern about increased cost of education and the costs of loans to 
the Government--we moved toward a direct loan program to try to 
recapture some of the funding that was going to banks in the guaranteed 
loan program. We moved to phase in a direct loan program. We moved in a 
moderate way. There were some who believed we ought to go to a full 
direct loan program immediately. There were some who said, ``Senator 
Kennedy, Senator Simon, and Senator Durenberger, since we have the best 
in terms of higher education, why do you risk the system by going to a 
direct loan program when we do not really know?''
  We said, ``Fine.'' We worked out a compromise, Republicans and 
Democrats alike, to move into a direct loan program in a moderate way. 
The direct loan program is now being managed by the Department of 
Education effectively. We have a direct loan program going on with 
competition with the guaranteed loan program, and we have reduced the 
losses that were coming from failure to repay student loans from $2.7 
billion down to less than $1.2 billion--a dramatic reduction.
  It is so interesting to hear Mr. Bennett talking about the Department 
of Education and we ought to abolish it. I wish he had been as good a 
manager as Dick Riley in recapturing the billions of dollars that were 
lost during his tenure. If he knows so much about the Department, where 
did not he recapture the funds?
  So we have a situation now where we are doing well in implementing a 
direct loan program. We are also lowering the basic fees, reducing 
those the initial fee students have to pay.
  We have also adopted national service as an additional way to get 
young people to go to college because we know that our Nation's future 
depends upon education.
  Now we have before us the dramatic changes proposed the Republican 
budget to the Pell grants. This chart shows what is going to happen to 
these grants even though the chairman of the Budget Committee is 
telling us he is going to hold them harmless. You can hear all the 
statements that you want, but if you want to know what is going to 
happen to costs for students as we follow through the years of this 
budget, look at this chart. The bottom line shows what the value of the 
Pell grant will be in the year 2002--$1,501. The other line shows the 
average cost of going to State universities across the country--$8,026. 
Right now, the Pell grant is worth $2,590 and the average cost at a 
State university is $5,314. That shows you pretty clearly what is going 
to happen to students.
  It is interesting that in 1965, when the Aid to Education Program was 
passed, we had three-quarter grants, one-quarter loans. Why? Because we 
set the economic challenge to the young person by figuring out what 
that young person could bring to their education, what they could earn 
over the course of the summer and during the year. But we did not want 
to encumber that individual and that family far into the distant 
future. If they were eligible on the basis of need, we intended that 
they were going to be able to get a grant and only a quarter was going 
to be a loan. Twelve years later, three-quarters are loans and one-
quarter grants. What do our friends on the other side say? They are 
going to make the loans even more expensive.
  So they are going to indenture the young people of this Nation. We 
hear all these speeches by our Republican brothers and sisters saying 
we are doing the young people a favor because we are going to keep the 
next generation out of debt. Instead, they are putting them in debt, 
putting them in debt by what they will have to pay for college to say 
nothing of what they will have to pay for graduate school.
  I see our distinguished friend and a distinguished doctor presiding 
now. He can certainly tell us about what happened with his own 
classmates at medical school and the indebtedness of those individuals.
  Whatever help and assistance we are providing in terms of the young 
people is going to be heavily undermined with this particular proposal. 
There is no other way about it. You can say, ``Well, we are going to 
hold them harmless. We are going to provide the services.'' If you one 
program harmless, then you are going to find the further emasculation 
of some other program such as the chapter I program, the title I 
program, about $6.8 billion that goes to the neediest children, or you 
are going to emasculate others like the Head Start programs that depend 
upon the same pot of funding. It makes no sense. It makes no sense for 
the young people that are going to go through this system. It makes no 
sense for the universities and, most importantly, it makes no sense for 
the country. We have something that is working, and we are putting it 
at serious risk at the present time.
  Mr. President, this amendment moves us dramatically back into a sane 
and rational position by restoring some $40 billion to education.
  Mr. President, if we look where we are in primary, elementary, and 
secondary education, the fact of the matter is all of us who have 
supported the various programs understand that education is a local 
responsibility. I hear so much about what we need to do is get parents 
back in the school system and I agree that we do have to do that. I 
hear what we have to do is let teachers make changes in the curriculum 
and that is also true.
  As the Senator from Iowa and the Senator from South Carolina know, 
and others know, only about 7 cents out of every dollar is provided by 
the Federal Government. But they are important dollars. Just look at 
the special needs children that were never being taken care of prior to 
the program that was developed in a bipartisan way under Senator 
Weicker, Senator Harkin, and many of the members, Republican and 
Democrat, on the Human Resources Committee and on the Appropriations 
Committees. Education is not just a Democratic effort. I daresay that 
Senator Weicker had as much to do with increasing the commitment of 
this Nation to special needs children as any Member here. This has been 
a Republican as well as a Democratic effort.
  We have often listened to our colleagues talk about how migrant 
children and illegal children have settled in various States and 
schools, and how they need some help and assistance. But if you take 
out the nutrition programs, and the special needs programs, if you take 
out Star schools, take out technology, take out the TRIO program, what 
do we have left? These are programs that have been tested, evaluated, 
challenged, and worked. Those are the programs they are emasculating.
  What happened last year? We had a bipartisan commission that was set 
up to review what had happened in Head Start. In the 1980's and into 
the early 1990's, there was some increase in funding, to the credit of 
President Bush. But the problem was there was not quality control. You 
had continued turnover in programs without insisting on quality 
provisions for the teachers that were involved. [[Page S7088]] 
  So there was a real question about the quality of the Head Start 
Program. We had a very good bipartisan panel, and their recommendations 
were reported out with only one dissenting vote on the Human Resources 
Committee, Republicans and Democrats alike.
  I am not going to quote many of our colleagues on that side talking 
about the changes in the Head Start Program, how we were at last 
getting this on track, how important that was because I do not have the 
time, but we made important changes. Then we went ahead and took a look 
at the chapter I program because of the various challenges that were 
suggested by many for that program. We reviewed and had hearings as did 
the House as well. Those changes were supported overwhelmingly by the 
Republicans and Democrats. We dealt with the changes that were taking 
place with different kinds of poverty impacting local communities and 
the growth of poverty in some of the rural areas. We went through that. 
We did not do all the things that everybody would have wanted, but we 
worked together and made great progress, Republicans and Democrats 
alike. Even in the Goals 2000 Program, Republicans and Democrats alike 
came together to pass legislation that provides new help and assistance 
to schools. Of that funding, 85 percent goes to local schools.
  Goals 2000 was developed by Dick Riley from South Carolina, one of 
the most effective Governors in education, and also Governor Bill 
Clinton. Riley had great credibility because he had changed the 
academic achievement and outcomes of the black and brown and white 
students of his State of South Carolina in an extraordinary way, 
involving parents, involving local communities, involving the 
businesses. In Goals 2000 he brought that experience to the 
legislation.
  We also had bipartisan support for the School-to-Work Program. I was 
with a former Governor of Maine, a Republican, last week at the 
dedication of the 1-year anniversary of the signing of the School-to-
Work Program. This Republican Governor said that this is one of the 
most important programs of education that he has seen in the State of 
Maine.
  At a hearing in our Human Resources Committee Tommy Thompson, 
Republican Governor of the State of Wisconsin, down, also said that 
this is one of the most important initiatives in his state. School to 
Work would be emasculated in this budget.
  I mean, what is the sense? We have hearings, we develop the 
coalition, we develop the bipartisanship, we have men and women that 
are out on the front line, Republicans and Democrats, and we have 
educators and parents saying how the good the programs are. And we are 
effectively emasculating them, saying we are going to have to cut 
someplace, and we are going to go ahead and cut it.
  So, Mr. President, I do not believe the wholesale cuts that have been 
effected in this budget are justified or warranted. I find to the 
contrary.
  I think one of the things that I remember so clearly--is my time 
running out? Mr. President, how much time do I have?
  Mr. President, if I can have 2 more minutes.
  Let me just give you a few instances about the importance of support 
for students. This stack here on my desk represents the mail that I 
have received on the Internet system from students all over the 
country. I hope that our Members check their mail because when they do 
they will finding out what these proposed cuts mean.
  I think there has been a great deal of trivializing the importance of 
the extra debt burden to students. You know, people are saying, ``It is 
really only the cost of a big gulp a day. Really, it is only the cost 
of a one-way plane ticket down to Ft. Lauderdale.'' People are trying 
to trivialize this. I can tell you the increases are not trivial to 
students and working people.
  I think this whole process demeans the young people of this country. 
It demeans their parents who have worked hard, worked and scraped and 
saved over the course of a lifetime to help send their children to 
college.
  A student attending medical school in Massachusetts writes:

       I am a 24-year-old African-American woman, born and raised 
     in St. Louis, MO. I come from a poor, working- class, two-
     parent household. I am proud to say I was the first African-
     American valedictorian in my high school. I went on to 
     college at a private institution. I received much-needed 
     financial aid while there, including loans and scholarships. 
     My parents helped as much as they could, but with two other 
     children, they could only help a little.
       Without the Stafford and Perkins loans that I received, I 
     would not have been able to continue my education. After 
     graduating from college I was accepted to an Ivy League 
     medical school where I am still very much dependent on 
     Federal financial aid. I hope to practice primary care 
     (pediatrics) in an indigent community.

        I am close to finishing school and may not be affected by 
     such harsh cutbacks, but I am very concerned for the future 
     generation of students.

  Mr. President, this student and thousands of other students just like 
her are exactly what we need, primary care physicians in indigent 
communities.
  Under the Republican budget a student following this course of study 
could well face over $40,000 in additional interest payments at the end 
of her medical training.
  A student from New York writes:

       ``My mother just got laid off today. I only have one year 
     left before I receive my bachelor's degree. I don't want my 
     opportunity and those of others to be cut short. Everyone in 
     the White House, on Capitol Hill, and in the state 
     governments had their opportunity. Why are you taking away 
     ours?

  A college graduate from Colorado writes:

       ``I am not a student, but I'm raising my voice in support 
     of government backing for student loans. If it were not for 
     student loans, I would not have been able to attend college. 
     My mother was supporting two kids and we lived in government 
     subsidized housing--the projects. There was simply no way she 
     could have paid for a college education for us, so we applied 
     for loans and more loans. I received some grants and a great 
     deal of loan assistance, and still I worked at McDonald's. I 
     am now a consulting writer and I never have to look for work 
     . . . it looks for me. This is a most wonderful life and I 
     wouldn't have had any chance at all of attaining it without 
     those student loans and grants. Please do whatever it takes 
     to ensure that others get this chance . . . it is what 
     allowed me to become who I am today, and I thank you all.
       Another student, from Maine, summed up the situation: ``If 
     you think education is expensive--try ignorance''
       I ask each of you to think seriously before you consider 
     voting for a budget that contains $30 billion in cuts to 
     student aid. You will see very clearly that this budget is 
     turning its back on the nation's students.
       The Republican budget turns its back on education, and it 
     does so in order to pay for a tax cut for the wealthiest 
     individuals in the country. That makes no sense. It is the 
     wrong priority for education, and the wrong priority for the 
     nation.
       The pending Democratic amendment restores $40 billion to 
     this anti-education budget--$40 billion that will help to 
     correct these misplaced priorities. I urge the Senate to 
     support the Democratic amendment.
  I thank the Senator from Iowa for yielding time.
  Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Massachusetts for 
a very eloquent and learned statement. I again wish to thank him for 
his great leadership over so many years in the area of education. I 
think what the Senator from Massachusetts just said really pulls it all 
together in terms of what this budget is about and what it is doing to 
kids in this country, and the history of what we have tried to do over 
the last couple of generations of young people to ensure that our kids 
do get that affordable, quality education in this country. Senator 
Kennedy has captured it in his statement.
  Mr. President, how much time do I have remaining?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator has 21 minutes.
  Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I yield 8 minutes to the Senator from 
Rhode Island. I apologize. If he does need some more, I will try to get 
some more time for the author of the Pell Grant Program.
  Mr. PELL. Eight minutes is fine.
  Mr. HARKIN. Senator Pell has been so important in making sure that 
the poorest kids in this country get a decent education. I am proud to 
yield to the Senator from Rhode Island.
  Mr. PELL. I thank the Senator from Iowa. I second his remarks about 
the Senator from Massachusetts. He has shown remarkable leadership.
  The budget resolution before us would have a very detrimental impact 
on Federal education spending. Instead of adjustments, fine tuning and 
reasonable savings, this resolution would produce drastic and 
unwarranted reductions of the small but critical role 
[[Page S7089]] our Federal Government plays in education--5 percent for 
general education and 11 percent for higher education is the share of 
the Federal Government.
  According to the Budget Committee figures, this resolution assumes a 
reduction of $59.4 billion in outlays for function 500 over the next 7 
years when compared with current law. When compared with the 
President's budget, though, the estimate is that the reduction would 
total $65 billion over the same 7-year period. According to the Labor 
Committee's own estimates, education makes up about 58 percent of 
function 500, and this means therefore that the reduction in education 
spending could total as much as $38 billion over the next 7 years.
  The reduction in education would come in two areas, mandatory 
spending and discretionary spending. The Hollings-Harkin amendment 
before us would add back $40 billion in both mandatory and 
discretionary spending. It would have the effect, therefore, of 
ensuring that we would not experience drastic cutbacks in Federal 
education spending.
  Failure to approve this amendment would surely put education in 
harm's way. While the budget resolution assumes protection of certain 
programs, those are only assumptions. They do not have the full force 
of law. The final decision for discretionary cuts will be left to the 
Appropriations Committee, while the final decision for mandatory cuts 
will fall to we, the authorizing committee.
  My fear is that the size of the cuts in the budget resolution are so 
immense that no program will be protected and all will be at risk. If 
the cuts are applied across the board, the Congressional Budget Office 
estimates that one-third of the Federal investment in education will be 
eliminated by the year 2002.
  In mandatory spending, the budget resolution before us assumes 
savings of $13.8 billion in outlays over the next 7 years. Seven 
assumptions are made in order to achieve those savings, but only five 
of those are within the jurisdiction of our Labor Committee. According 
to OMB, the total of the remaining five options is less than $5 
billion. That includes about $3.3 billion in savings if we eliminate 
the in-school interest subsidy for graduate students, an option which I 
for one would vigorously oppose.
  The Labor Committee is also left with the responsibility to come up 
with almost $9 billion in additional savings. This is such a massive 
requirement that the only option available would be the elimination of 
the in-school interest subsidy for undergraduate students who come 
primarily from middle-income families.
  To my mind, this is not the road we should travel. Elimination of the 
in-school interest subsidy for all students would, according to the 
Department of Education, increase student indebtedness by 20 to 50 
percent. In a period when more Americans are borrowing more money to 
help finance a college education, this would be the wrong step and the 
wrong direction to take. In a very real sense, we would be increasing 
private debt to decrease public debt, an option that is not at all 
satisfactory.
  With respect to discretionary program spending, the effect would be 
equally alarming. Freezing the Pell Grant Program at the current law 
level would diminish the value of that program by as much as 40 percent 
over the next 7 years. According to OMB, half of that is because of the 
increase in eligible students and the other half because of the 
expected increase in inflation in the next 7 years.
  Freezing the title I program in elementary and secondary education 
for the 7 years comes when we anticipate at least a 9-percent increase 
in student population. The result: According to OMB, we will serve 2 
million fewer students by the year 2002. That is 2 million fewer 
students by the year 2002.
  According to OMB, failure to protect the Safe and Drug Free Schools 
Program would save $1 billion over the next 7 years. It would also mean 
that 94 percent, almost all of our Nation's school districts would lose 
funding that now goes to help 39 million students.
  Failure to protect vocational education and training would place the 
very existence of this program at risk. OMB estimates that a possible 
cut of $5.3 billion over the next 7 years means that some 12 million 
fewer students would be served. This would come at a time when business 
and industry leaders are telling us they need a better and more well-
educated work force if we are to remain leaders in the world 
marketplace.
  Passage of this resolution without adoption of the Harkin-Hollings 
amendment before us would alter almost 30 years of a strong bipartisan 
partnership on behalf of education. It would seriously threaten 
bipartisan accomplishments that have brought the dream of a college 
education within the reach of every American who has the drive and the 
desire and the yearning that has begun to bring poor children into the 
education mainstream and that have brought real meaning to the concept 
of equal educational opportunity.
  Mr. President, this is not the time to retreat in education; it is 
the time to advance. As President Clinton has noted, as a nation we 
face both a budget deficit and an education deficit. To my mind, we 
should not increase the latter to decrease the former. A strong and 
sound economy depends on a well-educated, well-prepared work force. To 
pull back in education is the wrong step, in the wrong direction, at 
the wrong time, and I hope we would not do so.
  Accordingly, with all the strength we have, let us support the 
amendment before us.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I take this opportunity, in this small 
amount of time, to thank the distinguished Senator from Rhode Island 
for his many years of leadership and service to the young people in our 
country. There is a reason why they are called Pell grants. Go to any 
college, any student in this country--well, you go to anybody who is 
out in the professional world, who has graduated from college in the 
last 20 years. They all know one thing. They know what a Pell grant is. 
So many of our young people who came from lower-income families, who 
otherwise would not have had the ability to get through college, got 
those Pell grants. They are educated; they are making money; they are 
paying taxes; and we are all better off for it. We are a better country 
because of that.
  I wish to say to the Senator from Rhode Island, thank you so much on 
behalf of millions of students, present-day students and millions of 
Americans who are out there now earning a decent living, raising their 
families, passing on a better life to the next generation, living the 
American dream because of the efforts of the Senator from Rhode Island.
  Mr. PELL. I thank the Senator.
  Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I yield 5 minutes to the Senator from 
Vermont, and I will try to yield more if I can.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Vermont.
  Mr. JEFFORDS. Thank you, Mr. President.
  I rise in favor of the amendment.
  I also want to echo the accolades for my patriot on the Education 
Committee, Senator Pell, who has done so much over the years. I stand 
here as the new subcommittee chairman of the Committee on Education, 
because I feel, as he does and others have, that we must be sure of 
what we do now. This is serious business.
  Everybody recognizes that finally we have to balance the budget. But 
if we do not do it carefully, what we do will be counterproductive and 
will result in increased costs and decreased revenues.
  It is so simple and easy for us to all hold hands, close our eyes, 
and cut across the board. But that will not do it. This will not do it 
if you get into the area of education.
  Education has always been bipartisan and it should remain so today. 
So let us strike any partisanship out of here and take an examination 
of what will happen if we do not do this carefully. Let us talk about 
the counterproductive aspects of cutting education.
  First of all, the business community came to me a year ago and cried 
to me, ``You have to do something about increasing our productivity, of 
helping us improve the education of this Nation, because we are not any 
longer as competitive as we used to be.'' And unless we improve things, 
we will be less competitive in the next century and this Nation will 
slip into a Third World capacity. Why? [[Page S7090]] 
  Let us take a look at this chart. A chart is worth a thousand words.
  The first chart is high school graduates unable to perform basic 
tasks. Just take our standards, forget about the international 
standards. Over half of our kids graduate unable to do simple functions 
that would mean that you are at least basically literate. I will show 
you later what that has an impact on.
  Let me take the next chart. Let us take a narrow look at the 
international scene, where we stand in the world with respect to our 
education system. And I will end up with it in another area. We are now 
in the area of math, and the same is true in science, dead last when we 
compete with those other countries that are giving us competition in 
the international fields. That is shameful.
  Are we going to do something about it? We cannot, if we cut 
education.
  Let us take a look at what this failure of education has to do with 
our budget situation right now. We have a loss, through education 
failure, of $\1/2\ trillion in our GDP. That is because we are slipping 
behind with respect to productivity. We have problems. Eighty percent 
of those incarcerated in jails, costing $20,000 to $60,000 a year to 
incarcerate, are school dropouts; 60 percent of the teenage pregnancies 
are school dropouts.
  In addition, the literacy level reduces our productivity level, 
losing more, and we have $208 billion a year through lost productivity 
through welfare. And it costs us another $200 billion for remedial 
training to bring our students up to the capacity where they can be 
productive in our industrial society.
  In addition to that, because they earn less money being nonproductive 
citizens, it costs us $125 billion in lost revenue.
  So let us take a look at the next chart and see what this has done to 
the median family income in this country and why we are losing that 
revenue.
  Two-thirds of our society over the last 20 years--over the last 20 
years--have had a decrease in their family income. And that is true 
even though we now have more two-worker families than ever before.
  Education is related to what you earn. You will see the only ones now 
that are increasing their income in this decade are those that have had 
post-graduate education in college.
  Now let us take a look at what is happening with respect to another 
area. One area in here, which is part of this proposal as well, but one 
that seems to be the easiest thing to do--our graduate students. Why do 
we not just increase their debt load a little bit? Why allow them to 
get subsidies for interest while they are in graduate school? Seems 
like an innocuous thing to do.
  Well, this Nation has the best graduate schools in the world. 
Everybody wants to come here. However, over the last several years, a 
decade, the debt load of our college students has gotten so high now, 
it is estimated it will be up around $22,000 when they get out.
  Well, they cannot go on to graduate school. We have fewer and fewer 
and fewer people that are going to graduate school.
  Now what has that done to us? Let us take a look at what it has done 
to us in a competitive area.
  Mr. President, I ask Senator for an additional 30 seconds.
  Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, how much do I have remaining?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Six minutes 5 seconds.
  Mr. HARKIN. I hate to tell the Senator from Vermont, I only have 6 
minutes 5 seconds. I have two people that I promised more time to.
  Mr. JEFFORDS. My punch line is all I wanted to get out.
  Mr. HARKIN. The Senator gets at least 2 minutes for his punch line.
  Mr. JEFFORDS. Well, it will not take that long.
  What this chart shows here is, before, you know, we used to have all 
the foreign students come here. They used to get educated and they 
stayed. You saw them at IBM and all over the country allowing us to be 
more productive. Now what is happening, because of the debt load, fewer 
and fewer of our kids are going to graduate school and more foreign 
students are going to graduate school. The blue indicates the ones that 
are going home and the red indicates the ones that are staying here. 
More and more are going home. So what we are doing now is we are seeing 
almost all of the graduate students are being foreign students, a 
majority are, and they are all going home. Ours are staying here, but 
we do not have enough to fill the slots.
  So that one little thing in this budget proposal would probably do 
more damage to our competitiveness than about anything else.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. HARKIN. I thank the Senator from Vermont for his contribution now 
and in the past.
  I yield 3 minutes to the Senator from Illinois.
  Mr. SIMON. Mr. President, I will try to make it fast.
  Of course, we need a balanced budget. But, of course, we have to have 
the right priorities.
  Every study that has been made by any group--conservative, liberal, 
you name it--says we have to invest more in education. I have never 
seen a study that suggests to the contrary. And yet what we are asked 
to do is to cut back--cut back on Head Start, cut back on title I that 
helps poor kids that is really showing results, cut back in higher 
education.
  Senator Jeffords is absolutely correct. In the narrative on the 
budget, you will see we are going to get that $14.7 billion in savings 
by cutting out assistance to graduate students. That is bad enough.
  But you put the numbers together and you only get $2 billion of that. 
Where do we get the other $12.7 billion? Well, we get it out of the 
hides of students. And it means a lot of students are not going to go 
on to higher education. That is not the way we ought to go.
  In fiscal year 1949, I say to Senator Harkin, we devoted 9 percent of 
the Federal budget to education. We are now devoting less than 2 
percent. And if this budget is adopted as is, it will go down even 
further----
  Mr. HARKIN. To 1.4 percent.
  Mr. SIMON. Down to 1.4 percent, Senator Harkin says. It just does not 
make sense.
  I visited a Head Start group in Rock Island, IL, an impoverished part 
of that city. Like every Head Start group, they have a waiting list. 
Monday morning, one set of kids comes in, Tuesday morning a different 
one, Wednesday morning a different one, and so forth.
  I asked the woman in charge what would it mean in the lives of these 
young people if they could come here 5 days a week. She smiled and she 
said, ``You could not believe the difference it would make in their 
lives.''
  We are denying them that chance. Oh, we are saving money, like you 
save money when you put up a house and you do not put a roof on it. You 
do not save money in the long run. We have to face up to the reality 
that we are going to have to change in this field of education. We are 
going to have to fund it more adequately.
  I think of the testimony before our committee by the Secretary of 
Labor talking about a manufacturing company from Connecticut, I believe 
it was, making a decision, do they build in Mexico, the United States, 
or Germany? Mexico offered cheap labor, poor education; the United 
States better education, higher wages; and they reluctantly made the 
decision to build their plant in Germany where they have to pay $6.50 
more per hour but where people are well prepared.
  We are cutting back on our future if we do not adopt this amendment. 
I hope we do.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. HARKIN. How much time do I have remaining?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Two minutes 20 seconds.
  Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I must say that I find the fact that we 
only have 3 hours to debate education unconscionable. We should have 
more time. I was under the impression we were going to have 6 hours. I 
found out when I walked on the floor we have 3, by unanimous consent. I 
do not know how that happened. We need more time. This is the most 
important part of the budget to future generations.
  I yield whatever time I have to the Senator from Minnesota.
  Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I think it is unconscionable that we 
not have more time.


                         Privilege of the Floor

  Mr. WELLSTONE. I thank Mary McEvoy, who is a fellow with me who 
[[Page S7091]] helped write, I think, an important speech. I ask 
unanimous consent that she be allowed the privilege of the floor during 
the rest of this debate.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, what we have before us today is a 
budget that says loud and clear to the American people that education 
is no longer a priority. The proposed $40 billion cut in education 
spending represents the largest education cuts in American history. In 
fact, it is estimated that by the year 2002, the Federal Government's 
commitment to young Americans will be cut by over 33 percent. And these 
cuts span all age groups. For example, by the year 2002:
  Over 400,000 young children will be denied a Head Start through 
preschool education;
  Education for over 5.5 million children and youth with disabilities 
will be eliminated;
  School-to-work programs, partnerships between businesses, 
communities, and schools stand to lose over $5.3 billion.
  And less than one-half of the children who need it will receive 
assistance to improve their reading and math skills. Are these 
America's new Goals 2002?
  The cuts I have listed above are devastating. But there is also 
another program that the proposed Education budget reductions will 
negatively impact. I want to talk to you about cuts in student aid.
  Remember, all of those who signed the Contract With America have 
signed a document that says they intend to support cuts in student aid. 
The proposed Senate budget is serving as another vehicle to accomplish 
this devastating promise.
  Under the proposed budget, $30 billion would be cut in Federal aid to 
college students over the next 7 years, affecting over 4 million 
students. For example, last year in Minnesota, over 14,000 students 
received assistance from the Federal Stafford Loan Program alone. And 
these students are not from wealthy families who could afford to bear 
the entire brunt of the cost of their child's post-secondary education. 
In fact, the average income for the families of these students was less 
than $37,000 per year.
  A college education is an essential part of the American dream. It 
gives people an opportunity to be all that they can be. And, I know 
from what my father always believed for me and I believe for my 
children--that their lives will be better than the last generation 
because they went on to pursue a higher education. In fact, over 92 
percent of all Americans believe that investing in a Federal support of 
a college education is an investment in our country's future.
  We also must remember that college education also significantly 
benefits to our Nation as a whole. Our communities are stronger, our 
economy is stronger and our democracy is stronger.
  But the dream of an education is more and more difficult to achieve. 
Most students now are not going straight to college from high school. 
It is not affordable. Some have to save some money before they can 
afford to go. Some have small children to take care of. The student 
body these days includes a lot more non-traditional students--those who 
are returning to school, those who only go part time because of jobs or 
family or both, and those
 who take more than 4 years to get their degree.

  The costs of going to school keep going up. Students are forced to 
put off school until they have saved enough money, seek student grants 
or go into a lot of debt. It used to be that State and Federal 
governments provided more grants than loans. Students were not asked to 
mortgage their future. But over the last 10 years the balance between 
grants and loans have been inverted--the number of loans far outweighs 
the number of grants. Loans are now the largest source of Federal 
student aid.
  The Federal Government has had a commitment to high education for 
almost 50 years. Yet even at its current level of resources, the 
Federal Government's contribution is insufficient. We should not be 
cutting financial aid programs--we should be increasing and improving 
those programs. Higher education is one of the best investments we can 
make as a country and it is one of the best investments individuals can 
make in their own future. An education increases earning potential, 
decreases unemployment, and improves the standard of living.
  As a Nation, we cannot afford to cut educational financial aid to 
America's families. We should not be taking away one of the few 
opportunities families have for their children and grandchildren to 
make a better life for themselves.
  The Senate should go on record in saying that in our effort to 
balance the budget we should not be reducing opportunities for students 
to improve their lives.


         it is extremely difficult to go to college these days

  The total costs of attending a 4-year public institution averages to 
about $7,600. The average cost to go to a 4-year private institution is 
around $16,000. Tuition alone has increased more than 120 percent over 
the last 10 years. At this cost higher education is out of reach for 
many middle income families. Without student aid many would be unable 
to pursue higher education. Students must seek out scholarship and 
other grants and awards. Many borrow, but even that is not possible 
without help from the Federal Government. For the 1993-94 academic 
year, students borrowed a record amount--$23 billion from Federal 
guaranteed loan programs. The average loan exceeds $2,700 annually. 
And, borrowing of course sends recent graduates into the working world 
with a pile of debt along with their nice new diploma. Debt that is 
sometimes with them for half of their lives.
  Krista Hannem is a sophomore who will be graduating from community 
college and going on to Mankato State University to get a B.A. She is 
24 years old, and married. She writes:

       I do not receive State or Federal grants, nor do I have any 
     scholarships. In order to pay for my 2 years at [a community 
     college], I have had to take out over $5,000 in student loans 
     ***. Last year I was receiving help through the State work-
     study program. When that was cut I suffered again. I realize 
     that part of education is receiving some debt, and that it 
     should not be a free ride, but neither should it be a weight 
     tied around my neck. So I ask that whatever decision you 
     make, you consider the many students like myself who are 
     choking with this weight.
                   most students are non traditional

  The typical student these days is not the Brady Bunch kid who 
graduates high school and goes straight on to college. Forty-five 
percent of the student body these days is over 25 years old. In fact, 
nearly 20 percent of all students are older than 35. Many are single 
parents. Forty-three percent attend on a part time basis, thus probably 
not finishing a B.A. in 4 years. Even traditional students, students 
who enroll full time at 4-year institutions immediately after high 
school are remaining for 4 consecutive years, obtain a bachelor's 
degree within 5.5 years. Sixty-two percent of students of all ages 
work, including nearly half of traditional students. And, about one 
student in five is a member of a minority group: African American, 
Asian American, Latino, or Native American.
  Denise Peters from Edina writes:

       I am a 29 single parent currently enrolled as a Jr. at the 
     U. of M. Because of the excellent support of financial aid 
     and other programs I have been successfully maintaining a 
     3.76 GPA. Before returning to school--from the time my son 
     was 6 weeks old I worked as a medical assistant making $9.00 
     an hour * * *. Without the needed assistance the rug would be 
     pulled out from under me * * *.

  Sandra Mitchell from St. Louis Park writes:

       I am devastated at the idea of any financial aid cuts. Not 
     only would I need to drop out of college--I am a sophomore--
     but it would leave me with only two options. First, I could 
     obtain an entry level position. Second, I could remain a 
     public assistance recipient for a while. At any rate the best 
     I could do for my self and my son and society is to maintain 
     at below poverty level. I faced these options after a 
     miserable divorce which left me without a home, money, or 
     even credit to plan for the future. I have goals, not only 
     for myself, but to be allowed to contribute and replace what 
     I have used. By the time I graduate in 1997, I will be 
     financially independent. Likewise I am setting an example for 
     my son to achieve independence and pride which are invaluable 
     to our whole society.
  Troy Goodwater is a sophomore at Austin Community College. He is a 
20-year single male. He lives at home. He has a part-time job and 
attends college full time. He writes:

       My father is retired and receives only a four hundred 
     dollar check each month from [[Page S7092]] social security 
     and my mother works two jobs in an effort to make ends meet. 
     They are unable to assist me in anyway in helping paying my 
     tuition. I receive federal and state grants to help me pay my 
     tuition, without these grants I would not be able to further 
     my education. These grants pay for all my schooling, because 
     of my low finances. The Federal and State grants are very 
     helpful to myself and many others college students and if 
     these
      grants are cut the people who want an education and can not 
     afford one will suffer the most in the long run.


 our federal commitment to higher education should be strengthened not 
                                  cut

  For almost 50 years the Federal Government has made a commitment to 
helping students go on to higher learning. Just during the academic 
year of 1993-1994 the Federal Government spent $31.4 billion to ensure 
that lack of resources does not prevent people from pursuing their 
dreams of a college education. In Minnesota alone, students received 
more than $420 million in Federal dollars.
  The Federal Government provides 75 percent of all student aid 
including federal grant, loan, and work-study programs.
  In 1990, about 5 million students received Federal student aid under 
one or more Federal programs. In the 1993-94 academic year about 3.8 
million students received Pell grants; 4.5 million received Stafford 
loans; 991,000 received supplemental education opportunity grants; 
697,000 received Perkins loans; 713,000 received Federal Work Study 
awards; and 650,000 received State student incentive grants.
  Most Federal student aid is based on need, with the amount of 
assistance determined by formulas that factor in family, individual 
earnings, savings, and the cost of education. Pell grants are targeted 
to the neediest students. The campus-based programs--supplemental 
educational opportunity grants, Federal work study, and Perkins loans--
gives school financial aid officers the flexibility to respond to 
unique student needs.
  These programs help both low- and middle-income families. Of the Pell 
grants awarded to dependent students--those who are financially 
dependent on their parents--41 percent goes to students from families 
with incomes less than $12,000 and 91 percent goes to students from 
families with incomes below $30,000. Among Pell recipients who are 
financially independent, 73 percent have an income below $12,000.
  Stafford and direct loans primarily benefit middle income families. 
Most subsidized student loans--72 percent are awarded to students who 
are still financially dependent on their families. The average family 
income of a dependent student who receives a Stafford loan--a loan on 
which interest is not charged while students are in school--is 
approximately $35,000. Seventy-five percent of such students have 
family income between $12,000 and $60,000. Among independent students 
who receive loans, average family income is $14,400. More than 69 
percent have incomes above $6,000.
  More than half of the students who receive Perkins loans have family 
income below $30,000. More than half of the students who receive funds 
under the work-study program have family income below $30,000. And more 
than 75 percent of students who receive funds under the Federal 
supplemental education opportunity grant program have family income 
below $30,000.
  In recent years the Federal Government commitment has been 
diminishing. It used to be that State and Federal governments provided 
more grants than loans. Students were not asked to
 mortgage their future. But over the last 10 years the balance between 
grants and loans has been inverted--the number of loans far outweigh 
the number of grants. Loans are now the largest source of Federal 
student aid. And, even the number of loans has decreased. The explosion 
in the numbers of eligible Pell grant recipients combined with 
inflation meant that in 1992, 4.2 million students were forced to share 
the same amount of money that served 2.8 million students in 1987.


              FINANCIAL AID IS AN INVESTMENT IN OUR FUTURE

  Statistics show that financial aid to students more than pays for 
itself by stimulating economic growth, expanding the tax base and 
increasing productivity. A college degree makes an extraordinary 
difference in the lives of people holding them and in the lives of 
their communities. Our new service and information based economy 
increasingly requires the technical skills and knowledge that can only 
be obtained through higher education.
  Higher education also makes a difference to us as a Nation. A more 
educated citizenry makes a strong democracy.


THERE ARE BIG DIFFERENCES IN THE FUTURE OF THOSE WHO GO TO COLLEGE AND 
                            THOSE WHO DO NOT

  Higher education is a ticket to greater opportunity and a better 
standard of living for millions of people. That is why over 82 percent 
of Americans feel that without a college-educated work force we will 
not be able to compete in a global marketplace.
  It certainly has been instilled in me since I was young that the most 
important way to improve your lot in life was through an education. An 
education meant that your life would be better than your parents. That 
you would have more opportunities that they did. I feel the same about 
my children, and now my grandchildren. And, I think an education is 
even more important now than it was when I was growing up. The economy 
is so unsure these days that there is no guarantee that our children 
will be better off than we are. This is one of the biggest worries I 
hear back home. And part of that concern is the affordability of 
college.
  According to the Department of Commerce, the lifetime average 
earnings of a man with a college degree is 51 percent higher than his 
colleague with a high school degree. The difference for women is even 
greater. The lifetime average earnings of a woman with a college degree 
is 57 percent higher than her colleague with a high school diploma.
  In 1992, figures showed that the median income of men who were 
dropouts was $15,928, for a man with a high school diploma it was 
$22,765, and for a man with a college degree it was $36,691. For women 
dropouts the median income was $9,784, for a woman with a high school 
diploma it was $13,266, and for a woman with a college degree it was 
$24,126.
  And, of course unemployment rates are decreasing according to 
education levels. In 1990 the unemployment rate for high school 
dropouts was about 12 percent. A high school diploma cuts that rate in 
half. A college degree cuts the rate in half once again.


                               CONCLUSION

  All children, and all people, must share in America's future. We 
should not be balancing the budget on the backs of students, nor should 
we be balancing the budget by cutting back on investments in our 
future. And this must include opportunities for a college education.
  The numbers in the current budget proposal that we now have in front 
of us do not add up. Despite what may be said, we cannot cut $40 
billion without substantially reducing Federal aid to undergraduate and 
graduate students thus denying opportunities for millions of our young 
people. This educational opportunity cannot belong only to the well to 
do.
  I urge my colleagues to restore the $40 billion proposed cuts in 
Education programs to the budget. We must send the message loud and 
clear that this Congress is committed to assuring that all children, 
youth, and young adults have educational opportunities to become 
productive, tax-paying citizens of America.
  Finally, all I can say as somebody who has been a teacher for 20 
years--and it is impossible for me to speak about this issue in now 1 
minute or less--I will just say to my colleagues that they are being 
myopic, very shortsighted, if they do not understand that the very best 
we can do is invest in the health, intellect, and skill of young 
people.
  If we want to reduce poverty in this country, focus on a good 
education. If we want to have real welfare reform, focus on a good 
education. If we want to have a stable middle class, focus on a good 
education. If we want to have a country that can compete in the 
international arena, focus on a good education. If we want to have a 
representative democracy where men and women can think on their own two 
feet, understand the world, the country, and community they live in, 
and know what they can do to make it a better world, [[Page S7093]] a 
better country, and a better community, focus on a good education.
  This budget resolution takes us exactly in the wrong direction, and 
that is why I support this amendment and that is why, one way or 
another, we will have a lot more debate on this issue over the next 4 
or 5 months, several years to come.
  This resolution is a huge mistake. We will never reduce the violence, 
Mr. President, in our communities unless we understand an essential 
truth, which is we must invest in the health and the skills and the 
intellect and the character of young people in America, and that starts 
with investment in education.
  That is all I can do, I say to my colleague from Iowa, in 1\1/2\ 
minutes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Time has expired.


                         Privilege of the Floor

  Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Elizabeth 
Street, a congressional science fellow, and Ruth Hardy, a J.J. Pickle 
fellow, be granted privilege of the floor during the remainder of the 
debate on Senate Concurrent Resolution 13.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. BENNETT addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Utah.
  Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I understand we have 82 minutes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator is correct.
  Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I will have some opening remarks, but my 
colleague from Indiana wishes to speak first, and so we will turn to 
him. But before I do, and while my friends from the other side are 
still on the floor, I would like to make one opening comment for myself 
that I believe resonates with other Members on this side.
  Senator Wellstone said if you want to solve poverty, focus on 
education; if you want a solid middle class, focus on education; if you 
want a sound working force--et cetera--focus on education.
  I wish the record could be very clear that this Senator could not 
agree more with that statement. Indeed, if I may be personal, Mr. 
President, the thing that got me back into public life after I had left 
it and decided that I would spend the balance of my career in the 
private sector as a business executive was when I got a phone call 
asking me to serve as chairman of the Strategic Planning Commission for 
Education in the State of Utah. For the next 18 months, I immersed 
myself in educational issues. I came out of that with the conviction 
that with the collapse of the Soviet Union, education has replaced 
defense as the No. 1 survival issue in this country.
  So I yield to no one on either side of the aisle in my conviction 
that we must, as a Nation, solve our educational problem. But I ask 
this rhetorical question as we begin this debate: As we agree about the 
importance of education, does that mean that there is no such thing as 
an educational program that is not working and may need to be defunded? 
Does that mean, in our conviction that education is essential to our 
survival, that there is not anything in the Department of Education 
that could be done more efficiently than is being done today and might, 
indeed, with better management yield up some hard-earned dollars to go 
toward balancing the budget? Does that mean we cannot have a lucid 
discussion about education in this Chamber that focuses on the 
effectiveness of the educational dollars that we are spending because 
education is such a Holy Grail that nothing relating to its 
effectiveness or its performance can be discussed?
  If that is what it means, then I think the debate in this Chamber 
will not be particularly enlightening on this subject to either side.
  Before I yield time to the Senator from Indiana, I would like to 
review the overall record. In unadjusted dollars, Federal spending for 
education has gone up 900 percent from 1965 to 1993. In constant 
dollars, it has more than doubled in that same time period. And what 
has happened to our educational achievements in the period when we have 
been doubling our commitment? The national assessment of educational 
progress says that over the past 20 years, there has been little 
overall change in student proficiency in reading, writing, science, and 
mathematics.
  The senior Senator from New York, prior to his entering this Chamber, 
was a distinguished writer, and I remember reading an article by him 
where he said whimsically--and we all know he is given to whimsy at 
times--if you were to put educational achievement and educational 
spending on the same chart and track the trend lines, you would come to 
the conclusion that increased spending produces decreased performance 
in a straight cause-and-effect relationship.
  The senior Senator from New York obviously does not believe it. He 
did not believe it when he said it, but he said it to make the point 
that the problems in education are not necessarily problems of money. I 
came to that conclusion in the 18 months that I immersed myself in 
educational issues in Utah.
  I am dedicated to doing what I can to resolve and repair educational 
problems in this country. I have established a foundation to which I 
have given my personal wealth, whose primary focus right now is 
exploring new ways of solving our educational problems. We have some 
pilot projects which I may talk about where we are achieving dramatic 
breakthroughs in teaching and learning progress among disadvantaged 
students without any increase in costs.
  With that opening statement, then, Mr. President, I yield such time 
as he may consume to the Senator from Indiana.
  Mr. COATS addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Coverdell). The Chair recognizes the 
Senator from Indiana.
  Mr. COATS. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Utah for yielding, 
and I certainly want to say how much I respect the amount of effort and 
time that he has personally committed into looking into this issue, 
certainly more than this particular Senator. I am anxiously looking 
forward to his discussion with us about what he has found and what he 
learned in those 18 months that he has committed to studying this 
subject.
 And I think he raises the essential point that we are attempting to 
deal with here, and that is not whether or not Members of either side 
are more or less committed to education. I think we are all committed 
to education. I think our record shows that we are committed to 
education. But what many of us are attempting to communicate is that 
the current system of education--providing public education for our 
children in this country--does not seem to be working very well. Report 
after report throughout the decade of the 1980's, and now the 1990's, 
indicates that there are significant problems with the public education 
system in America. It is not based on anecdote, but it is based on 
facts, studies and statistics.

  And so the question that Republicans are essentially raising is: Is 
there a better way to provide education for America's young people, so 
that they are better prepared to enter today's work force, so that we 
as a Nation are better prepared to compete internationally, so that we 
as parents can provide our children with better opportunities to learn? 
Those are the questions that are before us.
  It is, in a sense, a question of, do we retain the status quo, the 
structure, the framework that has brought us to this point in American 
education, or do we allow for change? Do we allow for experimentation? 
Do we allow for a different approach? And perhaps if we do that, we can 
find that there is a more effective, more cost-effective and results-
oriented way of providing education in this country.
  Now, if it were simply a matter of money, we would be the best-
educated Nation in the world. Our children would be head and shoulders 
above everybody else, because we have poured untold amounts of money 
into education in an attempt to solve the very problems that I think we 
all recognize exist today in education. It is the solution where we 
draw a line of distinction in terms of the difference between us.
  The fact is that education spending has increased dramatically. In 
the last 30 years, we have increased spending four times what we spent 
in the 1950's. On average, we pay as much per student per year in 
public schools as many private schools charge. Per pupil spending 
tripled from its 1960 level, resulting in an average cost of $5,971 in 
1993 figures. In the last 10 years alone, [[Page S7094]] per pupil 
spending nationwide has increased 30 percent above the level required 
to keep up with inflation. That is according to the Education 
Commission of the States' report.
  The Department of Education, in its first year, which was fiscal year 
1980, housed 150 programs funded at $14 billion. Today, just 15 years 
later, it houses 250 separately authorized programs, employing nearly 
5,000 people. Its fiscal year 1995 appropriations total is $33.7 
billion. Their administrative costs alone are $440 million. The 
Education Department spends nearly $500 for every student in America.
  So the question is not, are we pouring money into education, or are 
we making resources available either at the Federal, State or local 
levels for education. That is being accomplished. The question is: What 
are we getting for the money that we are putting into education? Are we 
getting the kind of results back that all of us here would desire? Or 
should we look to see if there is a more effective way of accomplishing 
this goal?
  I suggest that we need to look--and look pretty immediately--at 
whether or not there is a more effective way, because the results are 
pretty discouraging.
  We have all heard about the decline in SAT scores and the National 
Assessment of Educational Progress Reports, where in the face of the 
fact that real public spending in elementary and secondary education 
rose from just over $50 billion in 1960 to nearly $190 billion in 1990, 
and whereas real per pupil spending more than tripled from $1,450 in 
1960 to $4,622 in 1990, I do not know of anybody saying that the result 
has been a tripling of the quality of education that is being received 
by our students.
  Eric Hanushek, in his book, ``Making Schools Work,'' which was 
published by the Brookings Institution, concluded from an exhaustive 
study of educational funding in America, that funding is not related to 
school quality.
  A study done by American Demographics, a publication of the U.S. 
Census Board found that----
  Mr. WELLSTONE. Will the Senator yield?
  Mr. COATS. I will be happy to yield when I have finished my 
statement. My understanding is that the Democrats have had their full 
90 minutes. We would like to use some of our time. I know the clock is 
running.
  Mr. WELLSTONE. I did not mean to interrupt. I understand.
  Mr. COATS. The results of the American Demographics study found that 
there was no direct correlation between the amount of money spent per 
pupil and student performance. In fact, there were many examples where 
it was the reverse--the more money spent per pupil, the worse the 
student performance in that school actually was. And oftentimes, where 
the amounts per pupil were relatively low, performance was relatively 
high. And so experts studying the situation had to go in and determine 
whether or not there were other factors involved in providing learning 
and education for our students. They found that there were many other 
factors involved.
  Many have pointed to those factors. And those are factors that I 
would hope throughout the debate this year on education--and to my 
colleagues who said it is unconscionable that we only have 3 hours, let 
me just reply that I was not here when the unanimous-consent agreement 
was offered, but unanimous consent by its very nature means that any 
one of us can object. If anybody wanted to object, I suppose we could 
have objected to that.
  We will have probably hundreds of hours of debate on education this 
year in this Congress. There are many bills that will be coming up. 
Senator Lieberman and I are offering a bill, which may be an amendment 
to education. Others will be offering amendments on various bills. We 
will be dealing with this subject at length. So I do not think anybody 
needs to worry that we are going to be shorted in the amount of time we 
are going to speak on education subjects.
  But, clearly, for those who think the solution to education is simply 
to pump more money into a system that has produced such disastrous 
results--I cannot understand that logic. It seems to me that now is the 
time to be asking fundamental questions about how we can reform the 
education system in this country. What changes can we make? What 
demonstration programs should we enter into to give us more data with 
which we can make decisions?
  I have found--and I think this is supported by a number of studies 
and researchers--that there are some very basic principles that are 
involved in providing sound education. If you study schools that 
produce results, if you look at students that can demonstrate through 
their educational achievement the kind of success that we are looking 
for, you find some very common themes running through the whole 
program.
  One theme is that the education process to which those students have 
been subjected to dealt with basic core subjects--the reading, writing, 
arithmetic and other subjects that have traditionally formed the core 
of our elementary and secondary education in this country.
  We have seen a great deviation from that in the last few decades. 
There have been many new experimental programs and so forth, and 
unfortunately, the kind of electives that students have been allowed to 
sign up for, have not resulted in the kind of educational achievement 
in the basic subjects necessary for adequate performance in the 
workplace.
  Schools that have returned to basic core subject teaching have turned 
out students that are much better prepared to compete in today's 
society.
  Second, we found that in those schools that have demonstrated success 
and students have demonstrated success, we have found that there has 
been a pretty steady, high level of discipline, that the standards 
established by the schools, by the communities in which those schools 
resided, and administered by the administrators and the standards to 
which the students were held accountable, were high standards. 
Discipline was one of the major ingredients, one of the basic 
principles underlying the education process.
  Third, we found that there was an emphasis on teachers, not on 
administrators. We have seen an explosion of administrative costs in 
our schools, where it seems that we have more positions filled by 
administrators than we do teachers.
  Mr. WELLSTONE. Will the Senator yield? I wanted to ask a question.
  Mr. COATS. Mr. President, I give the same reply to the Senator from 
Minnesota that I gave before. I would like to be able to complete my 
statement. I am sure the Senator has a number of questions he would 
like to ask, but I would prefer to make my statement. To the best of my 
knowledge, we allowed your side to make your statements without 
interruption, and I think we would appreciate making our statements 
without interruption. I know the Senator would like to engage in debate 
on this subject. The time is divided. We will be happy to do that. 
There will be plenty of opportunities all year long, in committee, on 
the floor. We are under a time limitation. The limitation was agreed 
to. The Senator from Minnesota and Iowa agreed to it, or did not object 
to it.
  So here we are. I think those of us who have a statement to make, to 
counter the statements made by the Senator from Iowa, the Senator from 
Minnesota and the Senator from Massachusetts, would like to make those 
statements without interruption.
  Mr. President, if I could do that, I would appreciate that.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator has the right not to yield.
  Mr. COATS. Mr. President, as I was saying, I think one of the basic 
principles underlying the provision of a sound education is the 
emphasis on those providing the education, not on those administering 
the building. One of the most discouraging things to this Senator in 
viewing public education is to find the layer upon layer upon layer 
upon layer of administrative bureaucracy designed to solve every 
problem in the school except providing the teaching of the student.
  Inevitably, the more we involve the Federal Government in the 
educational process, the more layers of administration are required. 
The more assistant principals for this, that and everything else, the 
more forms, the more procedures, the more rules, the more of everything 
but what ought to take place in the classroom. [[Page S7095]] 
  I, for one, have been urging the Senate to revise the way in which we 
fund our schools so that we can provide funds to hire competent 
teachers and then let them teach.
  Another thing I have noticed: it does not make a difference how fancy 
the school is, how much equipment they have, or what the condition of 
the building is, these items pale in comparison to the requirement that 
the teacher knows what they are doing and the teacher is able to 
provide sound teaching to the students under his or her tutelage.
  The fourth basic principle I found that seems to be a component of 
successful education is that the school involves the parents, that 
there is parental involvement and community involvement in the 
education process. There is a direct correlation between parental 
involvement and educational success.
  Those are part of the values that we cannot necessarily legislate. 
Pumping more money into the Department of Education is not going to 
suddenly transform parents into being more concerned about their 
children's education. It is not going to make them show up at school 
more often, be more involved in the homework, be more involved in 
making sure their student gets to class on time and performs the work 
that is assigned. Community involvement and parental involvement is an 
essential key ingredient to educational success.
  Finally, and I know this is controversial, but those schools that 
maintain some core basic values, have some value education as part of 
their curriculum, are more successful in turning out students who 
perform better, who are better trained, who do better on the tests. It 
provides, I believe, a better atmosphere for learning and has been 
demonstrated to be effective.
  The sad reality that has emerged from about 30 years of Federal 
involvement and ever-increasing Federal dollars and ever-increasing 
Federal rules and regulations into our education is a pattern of more 
spending, especially as I said for administration, fewer students 
staying in school through graduation, lower SAT scores, lower 
graduation rates and dismal rates of academic proficiency.
  We only need to look at the District of Columbia right outside our 
door to show that spending per pupil is not the solution to the 
problem. Most public school graduates arriving at college, graduating 
from District of Columbia schools, are ill-prepared for their further 
education. Nearly 90 percent of the freshmen at the University of the 
District of Columbia last fall needed remedial work in English, 49 
percent had trouble reading, and 49 percent could not do basic math.
  Now, is the solution to pour more money into the system? Or is the 
solution to say maybe there is something wrong with the system. Maybe 
we ought to look at ways in which we can change the system.
  That is one of the things that Senator Lieberman and I are attempting 
to do with our school choice demonstration project, designed for low-
income families and low-income students and parents who find that their 
students are trapped in a public education system that is not going to 
provide them with the education they need to rise out of their current 
level of poverty. Many parents, particularly those who live in the 
inner city, are begging for the opportunity to send their students 
somewhere other than the public education facility.
  We have a school in Indianapolis, IN, which is a private parochial 
school that spends one-third of the amount per pupil as the public 
school just down the block. We have parents standing in line trying to 
enroll their students in a parochial school that spends one-third less 
on their students than the public schools, because they know they are 
going to get a better education. And why will they get a better 
education? Because the basic principles underlying the education in 
that parochial school, many of which I have outlined earlier, are not 
provided in the local public school. All Senator Lieberman and I are 
attempting to do is set aside some funds so that on a voluntary basis, 
communities can enter into demonstration programs, demonstration 
programs which will provide this Congress with objective data about the 
school choice alternative, which we can use to determine how best to 
make the necessary changes in the education system to enable the 
children in this country to lead successful, productive lives.
  Yet each time we offer this amendment, we are thwarted by the same 
proponents of this amendment. We are not allowed any experimentation. 
``Do not do anything different. Keep the system just exactly as it is. 
The only thing it lacks is more money.''
  Well, I would argue, Mr. President, that it lacks much more than 
greater amounts of money, rather that it needs fundamental, basic 
reform. I do not have the answers as to exactly what that reform ought 
to be, but we ought to at least be able to experiment and give students 
and parents a choice outside the system. If we can give them a choice 
outside the system, maybe it will make the system better.
  If we had one car company in America, I daresay that we, as 
consumers, would not enjoy the variety, the quality, nor the cost 
effectiveness that we get from having competition throughout the 
industry.
  I am not aware of any system in America, that as a monopoly, operates 
efficiently. Competition spurs better performance, it spurs more cost-
effective performance, it spurs better results. Yet we do not have 
competition in schooling alternatives in America for those with low 
incomes.
  It is easy for Senators to say, ``Let us keep all the emphasis on 
public schools.'' We can afford to send our kids somewhere outside the 
public schools. My children go to public schools, but it is easy for 
me. If I do not like the public school I can afford to send them 
somewhere else. But what about the low-income mother, living in the 
inner city? What about the parents who do not have the income to have a 
choice? They are condemned to a school which is condemning their child 
to an inferior education, trapping that child in circumstances and in 
poverty. And we cannot even provide a demonstration project to see 
whether or not it would benefit the children to have a degree of choice 
as to what school they attend.
  Who are we trying to protect? The administrators? The system? Or do 
we really care about the education of children? I submit our goal here 
is not to protect the system. It is not to protect the administrators. 
It is not to protect the lobbying groups. Our goal is to look out for 
the children and give them opportunities that they have not had under 
our current system.
  So, I urge my colleagues to reject this ``Let us just put more money 
into the existing system'' amendment. That is what it is. ``Let us make 
sure we perpetuate the status quo. Let us keep everything within the 
box and the framework will be defined by the public system and their 
lobbyists. They will define the framework. And do not let anybody dare 
compete with them because they might do it better.''
  Who do we really care about? Who are we really looking out for? I 
contend it is the students we should care about. It is their future we 
should care about. And we ought to give them the opportunities to 
escape a lousy, rotten, failed school if that is where they find 
themselves.
  There are many public schools doing a fine job in America. But there 
are many lousy schools doing a lousy job in America. And to trap a 
certain segment of our population, low-income families, in that 
situation I think is a great disservice to the future of this country. 
To argue that those who object to putting more money into the failed 
system are against education, or do not care about the future of 
America, or somehow do not care about the future of our children, is 
the most disingenuous argument that I have heard. It just flies in the 
face of the facts that we all know are true.
  As the report in the 1980's said, we are just treading along in a sea 
of mediocrity in public education in this country. It is high time we 
made some changes in the system. In 1995 let us be a little bit 
innovative, let us be bold, let us take some chances, especially when 
we are dealing with a system that has failed us so badly.
  I went on longer than I intended. I thank the Senator from Utah for 
his generous yielding of time. I yield the floor. [[Page S7096]] 
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Chair recognizes the Senator from Utah.
  Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I yield myself such time as I may require 
and will yield shortly to the senior Senator from New Mexico, who has a 
point to make.
  Mr. WELLSTONE. May I have a point of inquiry and that is it?
  Mr. BENNETT. I will be happy to yield to my friend for a question.
  Mr. WELLSTONE. Will there be any opportunity for questions and 
discussion after the Senator speaks? Or does he want to just go forward 
without any questions?
  Mr. BENNETT. I cannot speak for other Senators. When I get in my 
presentation, if the questions are not so much a barrier to prevent me 
from going on to the point I would make, I will be happy to yield for 
questions at the appropriate time, and tell my friend he could look 
forward to that, if he can stand the boredom of staying on the floor 
until I get going.
  Mr. WELLSTONE. I thank my colleague for his graciousness and say to 
him, as a teacher, as long as we are talking about education, the best 
education is when we have a chance to have this exchange of views. I 
thank my colleague.
  Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, we have had some general statements about 
education here. Undoubtedly we will have some more before this time is 
up.
  May I ask how much time remains?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Chair would advise the Senator from Utah 
that he has 49\1/2\ minutes remaining.
  Mr. BENNETT. I thank the chair.
  Let us talk for just a minute, although it may seem extraneous to the 
discussion we have had, about what the amendment does. Let us talk 
about the parliamentary situation with which we are faced, rather than 
about cosmic matters relating to education in general.
  The total amount of Federal spending in America's educational system 
comes to 6.6 percent of the total figure. So we are talking about what 
happens to that Federal 6.6 percent. With all of this talk about 
gigantic slashes, even if we were to eliminate all of it that would be 
a 6.6 percent cut. But of course we are not talking about eliminating 
all of it. We are talking about funding here at a level that has been 
established in fiscal 1992. Someone says, ``Why do you go back to 
1992?'' Simply because as I understand the budget process, there was a 
strong blip up in 1993 and 1994, and the Budget Committee has gone back 
to the level that they would consider to be more traditional, to hold 
that level through the year 2002. So we are talking about level 
funding, not slashing all of the 6.6 percent.
  From some of the rhetoric I have heard on the floor this afternoon 
you would think we were cutting the entire educational system of the 
country by huge, huge amounts when in fact the amendment proposed by 
the Budget Committee would establish a level of funding for that which 
is 6.6 percent of the total rather than the other implications we have 
had.
  Do Washington education dollars fund my daughter's textbooks? No. 
That is all done with State and local funds. So this budget has nothing 
to do with textbooks.
  Do Washington education dollars pay for my son's teachers? No. That 
is all done with State and local funds. This has nothing to do with the 
paying of teachers' salaries.
  Then do Washington education dollars build my neighborhood schools? 
No. We are not talking about building schools, paying teachers, buying 
textbooks or supplies.
  The Federal dollars we are talking about go to very specific 
programs, primarily to assist State and local governments in efforts 
for special populations: Disadvantaged, individuals with disabilities--
Federal dollars go to assist State and local people in that population. 
I stress assist, because, once again, the bulk of the funds come from 
the States and the localities. I will address that in just a moment. It 
goes to assist those with special needs: Bilingual education, drug use 
prevention, dropout prevention and so on. Some assists with research.
  The programs with the largest outlays in the Federal dollars are 
Indian education, impact aid, school improvement--that is drug-free 
schools--math and science improvement kinds of things, education for 
the disadvantaged--we call Chapter 1 programs--and, as I say bilingual 
education, special education, rehabilitation services for those with 
disabilities, some vocational, libraries and so on.
  I alluded, in my opening comment, to my experience as chairman of the 
Strategic Planning Commission for Education in the State of Utah. We 
looked over the budget. That is where you start. You look at the 
numbers. And as the folks were outlining the budget to me, I said, 
``Can we move any money from this to this?''
  I was told, ``Oh, no. You cannot move any money from this function to 
that function.''
  ``Why not?''
  I am coming in as a businessman, all excited with this assignment 
from the State Board of Education. I am going to show them some sound 
business practices--all the naivete that comes with that kind of 
assignment, with those who really do not understand what they are 
getting into.
  I was told: ``You cannot move this money from this program to this 
program because when it is over here, it is matching Federal funds.''
  And naively I said ``Oh, matching Federal funds? OK. I understand 
that. We are spending 50-cent dollars, are we?
 The Fed put up 50 cents, and we put up 50 cents. I can understand 
that. Is it not wonderful to spend 50 cents out of every dollar?'' 
``Oh,'' they said. ``Bob, you really are naive. The Feds do not put up 
50 cents. The Feds will put up 15 cents and require you to match the 
85.'' ``Oh. Well then,'' I said,''in that case, if we do not like the 
program, let us just tell the Feds to keep their 15 cents, and we will 
spend the 85 cents someplace else.'' Once again, with the shake of the 
head, ``Bob, are you naive? You have to put up the 85 cents whether you 
want to or not. The Federal law requires it.'' I said, ``Wait a minute. 
What is it? Matching funds? Matching means 50-50.'' They said ``No. 
Matching means whatever the Feds decide it means.'' ``You mean we 
cannot refuse the 15 cents? We have to take the 85 cents, whether we 
want to or not, and spend it in this program?'' They said, ``Now you 
are beginning to understand.''

  I said, ``What would happen if we did refuse the 15 cents?'' They 
said, ``The Federal Government would sue you. And they would win.'' I 
said, ``Isn't there any program of matching funds where the Feds put up 
at least 50 cents out of every dollar?'' They said, ``Yes. There is one 
program where the Feds put up 50 cents out of every dollar. It is 
school lunch. But everything else the Feds put up less than 50 cents 
and the States have to put up more.''
  So they said, in effect, even though the Federal Government only puts 
up 6 percent of the total educational budget, the Federal Government 
controls the State priorities through this process because they distort 
how you are spending your State funds. My first education, if you will, 
in education and the discovery of how intrusive the Federal Government 
can be. Somehow I came back here with the desire that that ought to be 
changed. And this budget resolution which begins to level out rather 
than continue to spiral up Federal spending, I think, gives us an 
opportunity to effect that kind of change.
  We have heard a great deal on this floor about the cost of college 
education, how we need to bring down the cost of college education, to 
do something about student loans, as this budget resolution does, and 
that it would be devastating to every college student who has to borrow 
money to go to college. Now, in this debate they are ignoring one very 
important thing when they say that.
  I am about to yield time to the senior Senator from New Mexico 
because he has a chart on this and is ready to talk to us about that.
  The important thing to remember is that the Congressional Budget 
Office has told us that, if we adopt this budget resolution, interest 
rates will come down. That means students who borrow money to go to 
school will have to pay back less because they have lower interest 
rates. Not only those students who are borrowing student loans, but 
also those students who, for one reason or another, cannot get a 
student loan [[Page S7097]] will also benefit as a result of this 
budget resolution. The benefit will be across the board. All students 
who have to go into debt to pay their college education, whether 
themselves or their parents, will benefit as a result of this budget 
resolution, and you are diluting that if you adopt this amendment.
  Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, will the Senator from Utah yield for a 
question?
  Mr. BENNETT. I am happy to yield for a question.
  Mr. GREGG. Does the Senator from Utah think there is a certain amount 
of irony in this? You have these Members from the other side of the 
aisle who I know come here in good faith, spending money which is 
basically the result of the efforts made by Members on our side of the 
aisle to get the budget balanced, which dollars are generated by a 
scoring of a balanced budget, as a result of which the CBO says they 
can score a 2-percent reduction in interest rates.
  So the money which is being used in this amendment to fund this 
alleged expenditure, or this expenditure they are proposing, is 
generated by a 2-percent dividend which is the result of the drop in 
interest rates. Yet, they totally ignore at the same time that that 2-
percent dividend in a drop in interest rates will run to the benefit of 
all the students who are borrowing money, all the homeowners who are 
borrowing money, all the people who have credit cards, all the folks in 
this country who are involved in the use of credit, whether it is for a 
home or for getting through the day with their Visa card or 
MasterCharge card, or whether it is their education.
  So they are perfectly happy to spend the money that is generated by 
this 2-percent dividend, but they give us no credit for scoring the 
benefits to the students of this country as a result of getting that 2-
percent dividend.
  Is not that ironic?
  Mr. BENNETT. I agree that it is ironic. But it goes beyond that, if I 
may respond.
  The adoption of this amendment would imperil the creation of the so-
called special fund or discretionary fund at the end of the process 
from which they intend to take the $40 billion. In other words, if in 
fact more money is spent on education than is called for in this 
resolution, the fund at the back end will not occur and, therefore, it 
will not be available to them to pay for the $40 billion that they are 
spending. The only way that can be there is if the budget amendment is 
held intact.
  So it is not only ironic; it is fiscally impossible for you to do 
both things at the same time.
  Mr. GREGG. If the Senator will yield for an additional question.
  Mr. BENNETT. I will yield for an additional comment.
  Mr. GREGG. I think this point is very important to emphasize because 
I asked my staff. If they are going to continue to spend this 2-percent 
that is generated as a result of interest rates coming down, should not 
we at least find out what that benefit is to the American people 
generally, not only in the area of deficit reduction but generally? So 
I asked my staff. They talked to the people at the Federal Reserve and 
found what the gross consumer debt is in this country and what the 
gross home ownership debt is in this country. One can make a simple 
calculation. What is 2-percent of that worth to the American people? 
They did that. I am not sure how good their math is, but their numbers 
say that the 2-percent savings on the gross consumer debt, which 
happens to be $928 trillion, 2-percent savings----
  Mr. BENNETT. Was that $928 trillion?
  Mr. GREGG. That is right.
  Mr. BENNETT. I think the Senator missed a decimal point.
  Mr. DOMENICI. That is the entire consumer debt.
  Mr. GREGG. The entire consumer debt. The Senator is right, ``billion 
dollars''; $928 billion.
  Mr. BENNETT. The entire worth of the country is about $27 trillion.
  Mr. GREGG. Just a second. I will get to the trillion dollars. The 2-
percent savings on that is $18 billion annually. On home ownership 
mortgages, the entire debt is $4.3 trillion--$4.3 trillion--which means 
that the annual savings on that number is approximately $90 billion.
  So you put those two together, and you are up to $100 billion of 
savings in interest costs that we are going to generate for the 
American consumer over the next year, every year that we have in place 
this balanced budget.
  I did not happen to get the number for what the gross amount is of 
student loans, but I think that would be a very interesting number. The 
gross amount of student loans which we have in this country, take 2 
percent off that, and I suspect you are going to see that the dividend 
to the students in this country far exceeds the number which is being 
considered here over a 5-year or 7-year plan.
  I think this is critical to understand because there is nobody on 
that side, nobody, who is going to vote to institute the type of 
changes that are necessary in order to get to a balanced budget which 
generates this dividend, this reduction in interest rates.
  I think it is critical. I appreciate the Senator from Utah correcting 
my math. That is deeply critical. But I think it is very important, as 
the Senator from Utah has pointed out; it is a very significant fact.
  Mr. BENNETT. I thank the Senator.
  I have two observations. One is a personal one. I remember when I 
went to the University of Southern California where my son decided he 
wanted to go. I went there with some fear and trembling because I did 
not think I could afford to have him do that, my two other children 
having gone to much cheaper institutions financially.
  I said, ``Can I get a loan?'' They said, ``Well, what is your 
income?'' I told them my income. They said, ``Well, we are not sure. Do 
you have any other children in college?'' I said, ``Oh. Sure.'' I have 
six children and not all of them were in college at the same time but 
enough were. They said with other children in college I could get a 
loan. I said, ``Good. At a lower interest rate?'' ``Oh, yes. Subsidized 
interest rate.'' Then they said, ``By the way, what is your house 
worth?'' I was living in southern California at the time, and real 
estate prices had gone sky high. And when I told them what my house was 
worth, they said, ``There is no way in the world you can qualify for a 
loan with that much net worth.'' The only way I could get that son in 
school was to take out a second mortgage on my house. But I could not 
get it subsidized with a Government program because my house was worth 
too much.
  So, on a personal basis, bringing down the interest rates 2 percent 
on my home loan would have been tremendously valuable to me in terms of 
what I could afford for that student. And that goes to the point I was 
making earlier, which is this budget resolution, if passed intact, will 
not only benefit those students that are getting student loans from the 
Government but the over 50 percent of students whose loans are not 
subsidized by the Government but whose parents are paying for it 
directly.
  I refer you to the chart which the senior Senator from New Mexico has 
placed on the floor, and I ask the Senator if he would care to take us 
through that.
  I yield such time as the senior Senator from New Mexico may require.
  Mr. DOMENICI. I thank the Senator very much.
  Mr. President, I am not sure that Senator Harkin would be within 
earshot of these comments, but actually, from my standpoint, I would 
just suggest he very much wanted to speak and apparently did not get a 
chance. I would have no objection if he wanted to use 5 or 6 minutes of 
our time, if he appeared here shortly on the floor, I say to the 
Senator.
  Mr. BENNETT. I would have no objection.
  Mr. DOMENICI. If the Senator would like to come to the floor, I will 
yield him 6 or 7 minutes if he wants to speak. We will try to work it 
out where he does not get the last remarks, just as a matter of 
principle but, otherwise, I would not mind at all.
  Mr. President, maybe what I will do for a few minutes is just go 
through about 5 charges, what we have been charged with doing in this 
budget, and respond to it in terms of what we think we are doing. So 
maybe I could just take a few minutes and do this.
  Yesterday, I was on the floor and heard this. I would be very 
surprised if it was not said again today. Under the 
[[Page S7098]] Senate resolution, thousands of students will not have 
access to Pell grants. Remember that statement?
  Response: The budget resolution before us makes a number of 
assumptions and comes out with exactly the amount of money saved and 
spent in this resolution. The answer to that charge is: Absolutely 
false. The Senate resolution assumes no changes in the Pell grant 
program.
  In fact, the report accompanying the resolution states clearly 
current law funding for Pell grants is assumed. The Pell grant program, 
while a discretionary program and thus up to the appropriators, is 
funded on the basis of eligible population. The resolution assumes that 
this will continue to be the case. The Pell grants will be $2,340 per 
student. The Senate resolution has no change in current law.
  Next one. Charge: Under the Republican plan--and this is the most 
gross charge and grossly erroneous charge--it will cost graduate 
students $40,000 more to go to school.
  Response: This argument is based upon the assumption that the student 
borrows the maximum amount for all 4 years of undergraduate education, 
for 2 years of graduate school, that interest accrues during that 
entire period while the student is in school, and they repay the loan 
over 20 years.
  Now let me suggest, the Senate plan does this: For the above student 
that I just referred to, interest costs would accrue during school only 
for those loans taken out as a graduate student, not undergraduate. 
Under the Senate plan, under the most extreme case, for example, if a 
student borrowed the maximum amount, $65,000 over 6 years, and took 30 
years to repay--not 20, but 30; so we even make it a longer period of 
time--their cost would rise by 10 percent over what they would pay 
under current law.
  Under current law, this student would repay a total of $173,605. 
Under the Senate plan, in an extreme case, affecting less than 1 
percent of all students--that is why I used it; it is an extreme case--
we would add $17,000 over 30 years, not $40,000 over 20, and only 1 
percent of the students borrowing money today would be affected by that 
most extreme scenario. And they are all graduate students. Now, that is 
the truth.
  Charge: Under the Senate resolution, it will cost undergraduate 
students an additional $5,000 repayment of their loans.
  Our response: That assumption is based upon the premise that an 
undergraduate student borrows the maximum amount allowable each year 
for 4 years, and that interest accrues during the in-school period.
  Again, this is false. The assumption about the Senate resolution is 
false and is being done in a vacuum. The Senate resolution assumes 
current law with respect to undergraduate students while they are in 
school. Under current law, while they are in school, their interest 
will not accrue until graduation.
  Under the Senate balanced budget resolution, a student who borrows 
$17,125 over 4 years will pay an additional $182 over the 10-year 
repayment, for approximately $1 per month.
  Now, I could go on, but I will insert in the Record the charge about 
middle-class families not being allowed to send their children to 
college. That is an allegation, a charge.
  Response: For all students, the plan provides a current growth in 
loan volume as projected by the Congressional Budget Office.
  According to the Congressional Budget Office, the availability of 
loans for students at much lower cost than what they could receive in 
consumer markets will not be limited in any way under this budget plan.
  Under this Senate plan, students will receive $26 billion in 1996. 
The level of available loans will continue to rise to $33 billion by 
the year 2000.
  Over the next 5 years, $151.4 billion in student loans will be 
available.
  Now, Mr. President, I am quite sure that for those who listened to 
the debate, they would never have assumed that that is the case, for 
they would have assumed the Republicans do not understand the value of 
education. They would have assumed that we just set out on a course to 
say even those programs that are successful, we are for cutting them, 
tightening them up, getting rid of them, none of which is true.
  Mr. President, I would like very much to go through this chart for a 
minute and then tell the American people what we are trying to do.
  Here is the way the undergraduate program looks.
  Current law, original principal and amount borrowed, $10,000. Senate 
budget resolution, same, $10,000. Difference, zero.
  Amount used to pay fees, $400; $500; $100 in additional fees.
  In other words, we are having the student pay a little bit of the 
fees, $100.
  Amount available to pay education costs over 10 years, $9,600; 
$9,500; minus $100.
  Original principal amount of repayment, $10,000; $10,000. Difference, 
none.
  This next one, the accrued interest during 6-month grace period. This 
is the change. Right now, you have 6 months after graduation and 
obtaining the degree before interest starts to accrue. So during that 6 
months, there is zero. In the suggested program in that budget 
resolution, you do not get that 6-month grace. You start paying 
interest--$330 total amount at repayment. You would have thought these 
undergraduate students were going to end up paying three or four times 
what they are paying--$10,000; $10,330; plus $330.
  Perhaps there are some who would like to say, ``We can't afford that. 
We just cannot do that. Do it somewhere else.'' Or, ``Do not get a 
balanced budget. Just charge the future generations. That is a little, 
tiny bit of money.''
  Repayment at a standard 10 year monthly payment, $123. Estimated 
after the balanced budget, $124. Why? Interest rates come down. The 
amount is $1.
  Somebody might say, ``But what if those interest rates do not come 
down?'' Let me see if I can read what happens. This one is changed to 
$8, Mr. President. So instead of $1, which we assume will be the case, 
a $1 increase, it will be $8. This is the entire student loan program, 
$26.6 billion. Are we cutting the $26.6 billion? How much is it going 
up to? One hundred fifty-one billion dollars over 5 years, that is what 
we are recommending this loan portfolio be for undergraduates. 
Cumulative repayment.
  College students of America, your contribution to helping us balance 
the budget of the United States under the student loan program is $1 a 
month increase, an astronomical amount over the 10-year repayment of 
$142. Frankly, I will take my chance on that on any campus in America. 
I will go tell the freshmen and the seniors: For your student loan 
program, do you want to share a little bit with us the sacrifice so we 
can get a balanced budget, or do you want to listen to people who say 
to do that is to destroy universities, is to eliminate opportunities 
for all our children, all those wanting to go to college?
  I do not believe that is the case, and I do not believe the young 
people in college feel that. If we were not going to get a balanced 
budget, and we were just going to run-around here like we have been 
doing for all these years and tinkering around the edges and say we 
will take care of that some day, some day some year--in the meantime, 
get your college degrees and go to work and then we will make you start 
paying off these bills. Not these bills, these other giant bills, these 
billions that we are going to charge to you, you college students, we 
are going to make you pay them off, I would think they would jump for 
this proposition. Frankly, that is not all.
  We have been accused here of cutting title I for the poor children. 
Let me tell you, I do not know whether the appropriators will cut it or 
not, but we left it at current law. We did not even touch title I. It 
needs a lot of reform, everybody knows that. It has been reformed 
somewhat. We did not touch it. We said it is a good program.
  You know, Mr. President, we do not have the time to go through every 
charge, but I thought it might just do a little bit of good to put in 
perspective one program that people are talking most about. That is the 
undergraduate student loan guarantee program. I think we have done that 
fairly well here, and I thank the Senator for yielding.
  Mr. BENNETT. I thank the Senator. Mr. President, how much time 
remains?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Chair advises the Senator from Utah that 
there are 20 minutes remaining. I notice the Senator from Idaho on the 
[[Page S7099]] floor. I yield 10 minutes to the senior Senator from 
Idaho.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Chair recognizes the Senator from Idaho.
  Mr. CRAIG. Mr. President, let me thank the Senator from Utah for 
yielding in what is really one of the most important parts of the 
debate as we consider Senate Concurrent Resolution 13, and that is a 
portion of the debate that most of us would consider, and many would 
argue from the other side, is a portion of the Federal budget that is 
an investment in the future, an investment in the education of our 
young people.
  While the amendment of the Senator from Iowa and South Carolina would 
argue all of these very worthy issues and attempt to put them in 
perspective, what they are really arguing is against a balanced budget. 
They are largely arguing that at least there should be somewhere near a 
$40 billion to $50 billion deficit built into the budget as we are now 
having it proposed to us, at least to the future, the next 5 to 6 
years, and the dividend that the chairman of the Budget Committee and 
that Senate Concurrent Resolution 13 embodies that we believe would go 
into potential reductions in taxes that would stimulate the economy 
simply is not what ought to be done or how it ought to be spent.
  So it really is important when you listen to the Senator from New 
Mexico argue about an investment in our young people's future. To begin 
to weigh just how important a balanced budget is, last year the Office 
of Management and Budget, I believe, proposed that young people in the 
very near future, at least in their earning lifetime if they were born 
last year, would have to start investing as much as 80 percent plus of 
their gross income into all forms of Government just to continue 
current services as they would be projected from last year into the 
future 30 to 40 years and into the peak of their earning capacity.
  That is talking about the future. If I have to turn to the young 
people in my family and say you are going to have to pay 65 to 75 to 80 
percent of your gross pay to afford all levels of Government, I am 
awfully afraid they are going to say: ``Dad, I don't want to work that 
hard. What is the advantage in working hard to get ahead? I can't own a 
home or at least the kind of home that you and mom used to own. I am 
not sure I can afford to provide for my children the kind of education 
that you helped me get, because we cannot afford the Government that 
you left us.''
  So the reason I am on the floor tonight and the reason a lot of 
Senators have come to the floor the last few days and will through 
tomorrow and Wednesday is because for the first time in this Senator's 
legislative life in Congress, I have a chance to vote for a balanced 
budget amendment. No longer is it just the idea or the concept that 
since 1982 I have come to the floor to debate, and that is a 
constitutional amendment requiring a balanced budget, we are doing what 
the other side, the Democrats for over 5 weeks, challenged us to do: 
``Don't put forth an amendment, put forth a balanced budget. Don't talk 
just rhetoric, do it.''
  So the Budget Committee of the U.S. Senate and the Budget Committee 
in the House are doing it, and they are doing it in a way that 
absolutely begins to cause the American people to understand that this 
is not pie in the sky, this is reality. It can be done.
  So, Mr. President, for the next few minutes, let me give you the top 
10 list of why we ought to have a balanced budget amendment and why 
Senate Concurrent Resolution 13 is or should be rated as No. 1, if you 
are listing top 10 lists.
  The first reason we ought to have it is the very reason I have been 
talking about, the very reason the Senator from Utah and New Mexico 
have talked about. It is our children, it is the future, it is 
providing them with an unburdened, debt-free opportunity to achieve. 
And when you strive to do that, you create an economic environment in 
which our colleges and universities can thrive in the very economy that 
supports them, and that is usually the State economy, and the local 
economies can also thrive.
  What is the second reason in the top 10 list? It is jobs. It is the 
fact that DRI McGraw-Hill, one of the leading economic forecasting 
firms, has projected that a balanced budget will create 2.5 million new 
jobs by the year 2002. That is exciting to think that if we get our 
economic house in order that the economy of this country will begin to 
respond by the generation of an additional 2.5 million jobs. That makes 
a world of sense.
  What is the third reason in the list of 10? It is the seniors, the 
seniors of our Nation, who I think really recognize what this debate is 
all about because they were born into a debt-free society. They were 
taught by their elders to live within their means, and it is awfully 
frustrating for them today to understand, or to try to understand, why 
we have a $4.8 trillion debt and why we are having to look at 
Government and attempt to downsize it and change it and shift the 
priorities today.
  And when we debate Social Security on the floor, they understand 
better than anybody else that the debt is the threat to Social 
Security, not the U.S. Congress. The reason Medicare is in trouble is 
the spending rate and the fact that it will be bankrupt, and President 
Clinton's own advisers said it. Yet, the other side ties their hands 
and walks away and uses the language of fear. The seniors understand 
that in this country. They know that the debt is the threat to Social 
Security, to the future of our young people, to the strength of our 
colleges and universities, and to Medicare.
  What is the fourth good reason? Well, it is lower taxes. It is the 
stimulation of an economy. It is what makes sense in America, that we 
do not overburden our society beyond their ability, or their will, or 
their enthusiasm to produce.
  The fifth reason is economic growth. It is not trickle down. It is 
called leaving money in society to generate an economic base that fuels 
an economy that creates jobs.
  It really means if we do what we say we are trying to do, that we put 
$1,000 in every wage earner's pocket, that the Federal Government would 
have reached out and snatched away by 2002, if we pass this resolution 
and if this Congress becomes committed to a balanced budget amendment.
  Reason 6 in that top 10 list is investment. Over $200 billion a year 
in annual deficits drag the economy down, and we know--and economists 
are telling us--that if we balance the budget, we are going to see an 
economy begin to pick up at another 2 or 3 percent annually. That is 
jobs. That is exciting.
  Well, if you really look who is buying the debt, who is really taking 
advantage of a Government that is in perpetual debt and has to borrow a 
lot of money, it is an awful lot of overseas interest. We used to hear 
that argument from the other side. Somehow they are quiet today. They 
are not interested in the fact that we pay $75 billion or $80 billion 
interest that flows abroad when that money can stay here and be 
invested in our society and create jobs for our people.
  Of course, what we are doing with this resolution also empowers the 
U.S. Congress to begin to look at the priorities of what Government 
really ought to be doing and, most importantly, what Government should 
not be doing; what State government ought to be doing that the Federal 
Government now may be doing but that it should not be doing. That is 
the kind of shifting in priorities that I think is fundamentally 
important. When we talk about the Domenici dividend and the $170 
billion that will be saved and, therefore, create an opportunity 
through taxation to--reductions to stimulate our economy, that is the 
kind of empowerment that our Congress is talking about.
  The ninth reason is a reasonable and responsible glidepath. Anybody 
who has served in Congress any length of time who is committed to 
balancing a Federal budget knows, and knows very clearly, that it 
cannot be done overnight. It probably should not, under any 
circumstance, be done overnight. But this Budget Committee, with the 
direction of this side of the aisle, has built a glidepath to take us 
to the year 2002 that makes a heck of a lot of sense. And that builds 
the kind of economic resurgence we need and says to the average worker: 
You are going to have less Government to pay for. And, in simple terms, 
that means you are going to have more money to spend on 
[[Page S7100]] yourself and your kids. That is what this budget really 
ought to be all about.
  In the end, the 10th and most important reason is the people of our 
country. Seventy-five to 80 percent of the American people, year after 
year, for well over a decade, have said: Congress, wake up, balance the 
budget, get your fiscal house in order. The debt is really the threat 
to our future and the future of this country, and they, as the average 
citizens, know it. The common sense of balancing your own checkbook has 
already said it.
  For years, we have labored under the burden that if we just spent a 
little more in every program, the world would be just a little better. 
We have put a lot of money into education, and our educational system 
today does not meet the test and standards that we want it to meet.
  Mr. President, those are the top 10 reasons that the Harkin amendment 
ought to be voted down and that we ought to stay with Senate Concurrent 
Resolution 13, the reasonable approach toward balancing the Federal 
budget and forcing this Congress into the kind of spending priorities 
that it must make and it never before has caused itself to do.
  I yield the remainder of my time.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Who yields time?
  Mr. BENNETT. How much time remains?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Eight minutes three seconds.
  Mr. BENNETT. As per the previous agreement, I yield 4 minutes to 
Senator Harkin and reserve the remainder for myself.
  Mr. HARKIN. Thank you. I appreciate the yielding of the time so that 
we can have a few more minutes to respond and make a couple of points 
on this side.
  First of all, the Senator from Utah is a very thoughtful individual. 
I wanted to respond about some of the comments he made at the opening 
of the debate in regard to reviewing on a regular basis and changing 
education programs. I want to assure the Senator that on a regular 
basis, our committee, the Education Committee, reviews--as we do in the 
authorizing process every year--and has hearings, and we do change 
programs. We are doing that right now with IDEA, Individuals With 
Disabilities Education Act; we are changing it. Last year, we 
reauthorized the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, and we made 
several changes to the title I program. We rewrote the formula. It was 
quite a fight around here, as the Senator probably remembers. That went 
on for several months. In 1992, we reauthorized the Higher Education 
Act and again made changes, in responding to the concerns of our 
constituents. For example, one of the changes we made concerned a lot 
of farm kids with parents that were land rich but had no cash. They had 
a farm but did not have any money. We changed that so these kids could 
be eligible, also, for financial assistance.
  Finally, every year the appropriations process also does its part. 
For the 6 years that I chaired the subcommittee, we eliminated programs 
every year. Last year, more than a dozen education programs were just 
eliminated. I wanted to respond to the Senator that we do take our 
responsibility seriously, and we do have the authorizing process here 
under which we do, in fact, review these programs and get rid of some 
in the appropriations process, change them as times and circumstances 
demand. I feel very strongly that trying to use the budget process to 
maintain certain changes without having gone through this authorizing 
process and without looking at the history, I think, is really the 
wrong approach on this.
  Finally, I wanted to respond to the chairman of the Budget Committee, 
Senator Domenici, in talking about some of the figures and how they add 
up. When you look at the assignment from the new GOP budget, the 
numbers do not add up. They require a $13.7 billion cut. But when you 
look at what the Budget Committee proposed in privatizing Sallie Mae, 
we get no money. Maintaining long-term interest rates for student 
loans, we pick up about $229 billion. Extending the State default fee 
to direct loans, we get $702 billion. Eliminating in-school interest 
subsidy for graduate students, $3.3 billion. There is about $4.257 
billion in the instructions of the Budget Committee. Yet we are 
supposed to cut $13.7 billion. Maybe this is why I am so interested in 
putting more in education. This math does not add up. I hope the 
chairman will look at his math. And $13.7 billion does not equal $4.257 
billion. So there is a gap here of money that needs to be raised.
  I submit, Mr. President, that really the only way we can possibly get 
it would be through the undergraduate student loan program, which is 
the only program large enough under which we can get the missing $9 
billion.
  Finally, the budget chairman claims to hold the Pell at the current 
level. But if we add inflation and the additional growth of students, 
that comes out to be a 40 percent reduction in value of the grant by 
the year 2002.
  What is now about a $2,500 a year grant will now be down to about 
$1,600 by the year 2002.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The time of the Senator from Iowa is expired.


                      Unanimous-Consent Agreement

  Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President,
   I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate considers the 
conference report accompanying H.R. 1158, the supplemental rescissions 
bill, that it be considered under the following time agreement: 20 
minutes under the control of the chairman and ranking minority member 
of the Appropriations Committee; 30 minutes under the control of 
Senator McCain; 10 minutes under the control of Senator Feingold; 15 
minutes under the control of Senator Wellstone; and that following the 
conclusion of the debate, the Senate vote, without any intervening 
action or debate, on adoption of the conference report.

  I understand this has been cleared with the minority side.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, we have come to the end of this debate. 
We have heard a great deal about education, a great deal about numbers, 
whose numbers add and whose numbers do not.
  Mr. President, I will not try to repeat or summarize all the rhetoric 
that has gone down. There is one point that perhaps has not been 
adequately made that needs to be understood by all Senators before we 
vote.
  If we pass this amendment, the entire $170 billion reserve is lost. 
The $170 billion reserve exists only if the Senate budget resolution 
passes as structured. It comes from the scoring of the CBO that says if 
this amendment passes as structured, the lowering of interest rates and 
other economic activity that will occur as a beneficial result of this 
budget will produce an additional $170 billion.
  If the budget does not pass and is not enforced as structured, the 
$170 billion will not be there. So the $40 billion that is taken in 
additional spending breaks through the one condition that the CBO laid 
out when they promised the $170 billion--I am informed by the chairman 
of the committee that if this amendment passes, the $170 billion that 
we thought would be available to the Finance Committee for 
consideration for other purposes will, in fact, not be there. And the 
whole $170 billion will disappear.
  If for no other reason, Mr. President, that alone is reason enough to 
vote down the Harkin amendment.
  We must recognize the work that the Budget Committee has done and how 
carefully they have structured all of their numbers, how carefully it 
has been examined by the CBO, and on what thin ground the $170 billion 
reserve fund rests. It is not thin ground in the analysis, but it is 
thin ground in terms of the ease with which the ground could be cut 
away by amendments that break through the overall limit.
  If we, in our wisdom, decide we want to increase the budget by that 
$40 billion, meaning there will be no balanced budget by the year 2002 
because there are no offsets in the Harkin amendment, meaning that we 
do not reach our target, then what the CBO says the cost will be, will 
be $170 billion gone in the form of lower interest rates and lower 
economic activity.
  The Budget Committee, as I understand it, did not put that in. It 
came from the CBO after the analysis. Senators must keep that in mind 
as we cast this vote. I yield the floor.
[[Page S7101]]

            Vote on Amendment No. 1116, as Further Modified

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The question now occurs on amendment numbered 
1116, offered by the Senator from Maine [Mr. Cohen].
  Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?
  There is a sufficient second.
  The yeas and nays were ordered.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk called the roll.
  Mr. LOTT. I announce that the Senator from Texas [Mr. Gramm] is 
necessarily absent.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Are there any other Senators in the Chamber 
desiring to vote?
  The result was announced--yeas 99, nays 0, as follows:

                      [Rollcall Vote No. 174 Leg.]

                                YEAS--99

     Abraham
     Akaka
     Ashcroft
     Baucus
     Bennett
     Biden
     Bingaman
     Bond
     Boxer
     Bradley
     Breaux
     Brown
     Bryan
     Bumpers
     Burns
     Byrd
     Campbell
     Chafee
     Coats
     Cochran
     Cohen
     Conrad
     Coverdell
     Craig
     D'Amato
     Daschle
     DeWine
     Dodd
     Dole
     Domenici
     Dorgan
     Exon
     Faircloth
     Feingold
     Feinstein
     Ford
     Frist
     Glenn
     Gorton
     Graham
     Grams
     Grassley
     Gregg
     Harkin
     Hatch
     Hatfield
     Heflin
     Helms
     Hollings
     Hutchison
     Inhofe
     Inouye
     Jeffords
     Johnston
     Kassebaum
     Kempthorne
     Kennedy
     Kerrey
     Kerry
     Kohl
     Kyl
     Lautenberg
     Leahy
     Levin
     Lieberman
     Lott
     Lugar
     Mack
     McCain
     McConnell
     Mikulski
     Moseley-Braun
     Moynihan
     Murkowski
     Murray
     Nickles
     Nunn
     Packwood
     Pell
     Pressler
     Pryor
     Reid
     Robb
     Rockefeller
     Roth
     Santorum
     Sarbanes
     Shelby
     Simon
     Simpson
     Smith
     Snowe
     Specter
     Stevens
     Thomas
     Thompson
     Thurmond
     Warner
     Wellstone

                             NOT VOTING--1

       
     Gramm
       
  So the amendment (No. 1116) was agreed to.
  Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, I move to reconsider the vote by which 
the amendment was agreed to.
  Mr. President, may we have order, please?
  Mr. President, the pending Harkin amendment is not germane to the 
provisions of the budget resolution. Pursuant to section 305(b)(2) of 
the Budget Act, I raise a point of order against the pending amendment.


                     motion to waive the budget act

  Mr. EXON. Mr. President, pursuant to section 904 of the Congressional 
Budget Act of 1974, I move to waive section 305 of that act for the 
purposes of the Harkin amendment.
  I ask for the yeas and nays.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?
  There is a sufficient second.
  The yeas and nays were ordered.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The question is on agreeing to the motion from 
the Senator from Nebraska to waive the Budget Act for the consideration 
of amendment No. 1117 offered by the Senator from Iowa. On this 
question, the yeas and nays have been ordered, and the clerk will call 
the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk called the roll.
  Mr. LOTT. I announce that the Senator from Texas [Mr. Gramm] is 
necessarily absent.
  Mr. FORD. I announce that the Senator from New Jersey [Mr. Bradley] 
is necessarily absent.
  The yeas and nays resulted--yeas 47, nays 51, as follows:

                      [Rollcall Vote No. 175 Leg.]

                                YEAS--47

     Akaka
     Baucus
     Biden
     Bingaman
     Boxer
     Breaux
     Bryan
     Bumpers
     Byrd
     Campbell
     Conrad
     Daschle
     Dodd
     Dorgan
     Exon
     Feingold
     Feinstein
     Ford
     Glenn
     Graham
     Harkin
     Heflin
     Hollings
     Inouye
     Jeffords
     Johnston
     Kennedy
     Kerrey
     Kerry
     Kohl
     Lautenberg
     Leahy
     Levin
     Lieberman
     Mikulski
     Moseley-Braun
     Moynihan
     Murray
     Nunn
     Pell
     Pryor
     Reid
     Robb
     Rockefeller
     Sarbanes
     Simon
     Wellstone

                                NAYS--51

     Abraham
     Ashcroft
     Bennett
     Bond
     Brown
     Burns
     Chafee
     Coats
     Cochran
     Cohen
     Coverdell
     Craig
     D'Amato
     DeWine
     Dole
     Domenici
     Faircloth
     Frist
     Gorton
     Grams
     Grassley
     Gregg
     Hatch
     Hatfield
     Helms
     Hutchison
     Inhofe
     Kassebaum
     Kempthorne
     Kyl
     Lott
     Lugar
     Mack
     McCain
     McConnell
     Murkowski
     Nickles
     Packwood
     Pressler
     Roth
     Santorum
     Shelby
     Simpson
     Smith
     Snowe
     Specter
     Stevens
     Thomas
     Thompson
     Thurmond
     Warner

                             NOT VOTING--2

     Bradley
     Gramm
       
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. On this vote the ayes are 47, the nays are 51. 
Three-fifths of the Senators duly chosen and sworn, not having voted in 
the affirmative, the motion is rejected.
  The amendment expands the subject matter contained in the underlying 
resolution in violation of section 305(B)(2) of the Congressional 
Budget Act. The point of order is sustained. The amendment falls.
  Mr. DOLE addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority leader.


                           Order of Procedure

  Mr. DOLE. Mr. President, we have had a lot of inquiries as to what 
will happen the remainder of this evening. We are still discussing this 
with the Democratic leader, Senator Daschle. Let me indicate what I 
hope will happen for the remainder of the week.
  As I understand, when we complete action today, if we stay 5 more 
hours, there will be about 15 hours left on the resolution. And then 
tomorrow, to accommodate the other side for their fundraiser, we can 
only go to about 6 o'clock, but we can still maybe get 8 hours in by 
working through the lunch hour--or 10 hours--and start at 8, 8:30. So 
then that would leave 5 hours remaining on Wednesday. If we start early 
on Wednesday, we hope to finish this bill by mid-afternoon on Wednesday 
and, I assume, as in many other cases, there will be a number of votes 
before final passage.
  Amendments will be called up and voted upon. You could have 2 or 3 
hours of votes because we want to move to the antiterrorism bill, 
hopefully, on Wednesday, try to complete action on that Thursday or, if 
not, on Friday. We indicated to the President we would do that.
  It is my hope we can have a bipartisan effort so that we can pass 
that legislation before the Memorial Day recess, as we indicated to the 
President we would.
  We are not in a position to indicate there will be no more votes, but 
there will be no more votes at least until 9:15, 9:30, if that is of 
any help to anyone. Otherwise, we will be here a number of hours and 
there will be votes. If we are here, we could have votes.
  Mr. DOMENICI addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Mexico.
  Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, we on our side are entitled to an 
amendment. Senator Roth is going to offer an amendment. I designate him 
to be in control and manager of the time on our side.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Delaware.


                           Amendment No. 1121

(Purpose: To express the Sense-of-the-Senate that the number of Federal 
full-time equivalent positions should be further reduced, and for other 
                               purposes)

  Mr. ROTH. Mr. President, I send an amendment to the desk.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report.
  The assistant legislative clerk read as follows:

       The Senator from Delaware [Mr. Roth] proposes an amendment 
     numbered 1121.

  Mr. ROTH. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the reading of 
the amendment be dispensed with.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Thompson). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  The amendment is as follows:

       At the appropriate place in the resolution insert the 
     following new section:

     SEC.   . SENSE OF THE SENATE REGARDING FURTHER FEDERAL 
                   WORKFORCE REDUCTIONS.

       It is the sense of the Senate that the assumptions 
     underlying the functional totals in this resolution include 
     that the reductions in Federal full-time equivalent positions 
     required under section 5(b) of the Federal Workforce 
     Restructuring Act of 1994 (5 U.S.C. 3101 note) should be 
     further reduced to provide that--
       (1) the total number of full-time equivalent positions in 
     all agencies shall not exceed 1,682,300 during fiscal year 
     2002; and
       (2) of the additional reduction of 200,000 full-time 
     equivalent positions provided for [[Page S7102]] under 
     paragraph (1), no more than 50,000 shall be within the 
     Department of Defense.

  Mr. ROTH. Mr. President, my amendment would express the sense of the 
Senate to reduce the number of Government-wide full-time equivalent 
[FTE] positions over the next 7 years. It is consistent with the 
Domenici budget to streamline and eliminate several Government 
functions and programs.
  The amendment provides for a reduction of 200,000 positions by 2002 
in addition to the already enacted reduction of 272,900 FTE's by 1999 
in the Federal Workforce Restructuring Act of 1994. That legislation 
included government-wide annual FTE caps on civilian employment as well 
as provided buyout authority to help agencies downsize in a more humane 
fashion.
  The Domenici budget calls for the elimination of the Department of 
Commerce, an idea that I have endorsed since the early 1980's. It also 
calls for the elimination or phase out of nearly 150 Federal programs 
and functions. My estimates show that with these programmatic changes, 
over 150,000 positions could be eliminated in non-Defense agencies by 
fiscal year 2020.
  My amendment limits the overall reductions within the Department of 
Defense to 50,000. Current Clinton administration projections show that 
208,000 of the mandated 272,900 FTE reductions will be within the 
Department of Defense. This amendment will help to achieve the 
originally intended balance to further downsize the non-Defense related 
agencies as well. My amendment is consistent with the Roth-Kasich 
Defense Department acquisition reform bill to reduce the number of 
acquisition personnel. According to the Congressional Budget Office, 
this reform bill would produce 42,500 in FTE savings with the Defense 
Department.
  Current FTE reductions to comply with the 1994 Federal Workforce 
Restructing Act of 272,900 by 1999 are proceeding as planned. Further, 
OMB has estimated that the total civilian workforce will be 
approximately 25,000 below the existing FTE cap levels for 1995 and 
1996.
  Let me take just a few moments to explain the personnel savings that 
could be achieved within the acquisition workforce at the Defense 
Department. Despite recent efforts at improvement, DOD programs 
continue to experience significant cost, schedule and performance 
problems. A recent Defense Department study found that defense programs 
are over budget and behind schedule by one-third, on average. The 
Defense Science Board reported that ``* * * without fundamental reform, 
DOD will be unable to afford the weapons, equipment and services it 
needs to provide for our national security.'' After spending billions 
of dollars this suggests our troops in the future could face an enemy 
who is better equipped, because of the failure of the current 
bureaucracy to efficiently procure weapons.
  Last month, I introduced the Defense Acquisition Management Reform 
Act to address this situation. It contains two key elements. First, it 
busts the bureaucracy. It combines the three separate maintenance and 
procurement systems--the Army, Navy and Air Force--into one. This is a 
commonsense solution for incredible duplication and inefficient 
bureaucracy. In fact, this bill turns 20 levels of bureaucracy into 3, 
and eliminates hundreds of paperwork requirements.
  We are proposing that the Pentagon use the lean, results-oriented 
approach employed by globally competitive high-technology firms. This 
will not only highlight results over process, but it will cut the 
timeline in half! As the result, the bill returns authority to program 
managers and those who actually use the weapons.
  Second, it changes the incentives and rewards that drive the day-to-
day actions of the individuals in the buying system. The Defense 
Acquisition Management Reform Act of 1995
 gives managers and contractors the incentives they need to deliver 
their programs on time and on budget. If they deliver more than 10 
percent ahead of time and under budget, they get bonuses. If they 
deliver more than 10 percent late or over budget, they are penalized. 
If they are more than 50 percent over budget, the program is cancelled. 
It is that simple.

  These changes are only a few of the many features contained in this 
bill that will save the American taxpayers some $20 billion each and 
every year. As a part of these savings, we calculate that this bill 
will allow a reduction of the defense acquisition work force, currently 
estimated at 425,000, by at least 10 percent. This is a bill with 
teeth, different from past reform efforts because of the incentives and 
penalties that will affect the program managers. Pay for performance 
and busting the bureaucracy will make all the difference.
  The act focuses on eight, key principles: First, expanding the 90 
percent cost, schedule and performance goals established for defense 
acquisition by the Federal Acquisition Streamlining Act of 1994; 
second, creating a single, lean DOD acquisition command which is more 
responsive to the war fighters; third, more directly tying the pay of 
the work force to achievement of program goals; fourth, establishing an 
accelerated, results-oriented acquisition cycle which is more sensitive 
to user needs; fifth, speeding up the contracting process; sixth, 
instituting performance-based contract management which focuses on 
sharing with defense contractors the gain (or the pain) of meeting (or 
missing) program performance goals; seventh, requiring improvements in 
the financial management systems and procedures used to ensure the most 
effective stewardship of taxpayer dollars; and eighth, increasing the 
efficiency of acquisition operations through consolidation of military 
depots and elimination of duplicative defense industry capabilities.
  Mr. President, as I said, the purpose of this amendment is to express 
the sense of the Senate that the number of Federal full-time equivalent 
positions should be further reduced.
  It is a very simple amendment. It provides that it is the sense of 
the Senate that the assumptions underlying the fundamental totals in 
this resolution include that the reductions in Federal full-time 
equivalent positions required under section 5(b) of the Federal Work 
Force Restructuring Act of 1995 should be further reduced to provide 
that, first, the total number of full-time equivalent positions in all 
agencies shall not exceed 1,682,300 during fiscal year 2002; second, of 
the additional reductions of 200,000 full-time equivalent positions 
provided for under paragraph 1, no more than 50,000 shall be within the 
Department of Defense.
  Mr. President, I urge the adoption of my amendment. I yield the 
floor.
  Mr. GLENN. Mr. President, I rise to oppose the amendment by my 
colleague and committee chairman on Governmental Affairs. I do it, 
although this is a sense of the Senate and is not binding on the 
Senate. I am afraid that it sets out goals that are not achievable.
  Let me go back. The new administration came in. One of the things 
that they set out to do was to downsize Government. They have been 
doing a pretty good job of it. They have been getting very little 
credit for it. They have been doing a pretty good job. First off, they 
do not go about their task of downsizing Government just by picking a 
number off the top of their head to set out as a goal for reducing the 
full-time employees of Government, the FTE's.
  What they did was have the Office of Personnel Management actually 
make estimates, department by department, agency by agency, all over 
Government, and come up with a total of what they thought was really 
doable.
  Mr. President, they set out to have the Office of Personnel 
Management do actual estimates, the numbers of full-time employees that 
the managers, doing the work of Government, thought they could do 
without. They came up with a total. It came out to 272,900, to be done 
over a 4-year period.
  Now, Mr. President, that was doable. That had a basis in fact, a 
basis in the estimates that were made by the various departments and 
agencies.
  Now, that was a very studied approach. As a result of that, we had 
fewer reductions in force where they are mandatory, where they call 
people in and fire them. That was not necessary.
  What we did was we provided for buy-out legislation, put some money 
in the kitty so they could address this problem of getting people to 
leave Government, not just solely by attrition, because attrition, 
unfortunately, occurs in the lower GS ratings and fewer in 
[[Page S7103]] the higher GS ratings. That is understandable, more 
turnover at the lower level.
  What they did was they asked Members to go ahead and set up buy-out 
legislation. We did that. I proposed that in committee. We had it 
patterned after the civil service ratings, on the same basis we had 
provided for the Pentagon some time before on reduction in force over 
there, and doing it in a way where we did not have to really just call 
people in and fire them. We wanted to do as much as we could by 
attrition but have buy-out legislation to encourage people to get out 
if we needed to use it. That has worked very, very well. It was one of 
our better administered plans in Government.
  Let me say that along the way we had an additional thing we were 
trying to achieve with this buy-out legislation. Through the years, 
great inefficiencies have developed in the Government in our hiring and 
staffing patterns in that we had about one boss, one supervisor, for 
every seven employees in the Federal Government, just on an average. 
Some areas that required higher level GS ratings, as NIH and places 
like that, would be different, but overall across Government, there was 
one supervisor for each seven employees.
  Now, how does that compare to private industry? Private industry 
averages 1 to 15 on an average across the country for the average 
business. Some employee-intensive industries will vary from that ratio, 
obviously. However, there would be many on the other side that would 
balance it the other way. The overall ratio for the country is about 1 
to 15.
  With this buy-out legislation, we provided a way in which different 
departments and agencies could help correct that imbalance while we are 
getting people out. We wanted the buy-out legislation targeted at GS 
13's, 14's and 15's so we could correct this imbalance. It has been 
working very, very well.
  How far have we come with this goal of 272,900 people? Right now they 
estimate 108,000 people are actually out, and they are hoping by the 
end of the year to have the whole 272,900 reduced.
  This was done on a very studied basis. It was not done just on 
picking a number off the top of our heads and saying, well, we will 
shoot for there and see how many more we can get out.
  Nevertheless, whether this is a studied basis or not, it is set as a 
goal. How on earth would we meet it? We say that defense would be left 
out of this equation here except not completely left out. We say no 
more than 50,000 more shall come out of the Department of Defense. What 
is to protect NIH? What is to protect those areas--the Center for 
Disease Control in Atlanta? What is to protect the FDA? What is to 
protect areas of health and safety that we should be protecting, also?
  My colleague on the other side of the aisle says, well, commerce is 
going to be put out of business, perhaps, if the plan goes through and 
some 150 Federal programs will be out. We do not know that yet for 
sure. We do not know what ones.
  It seems to me that the approach we should be using is to set what we 
want to define as the functions of Government, not just swinging a 
machete wildly and say, pick a number, any number, off the top of our 
heads and say we will set that as a goal to meet as though we could do 
just as good a job in Government no matter how low we cut the FTE's 
down.
  I think we should be defining the functions of Government first. I do 
not know that there was any real thought given on how we arrived at 
that 200,000. I would ask my colleague, Senator Roth, the Senator from 
Delaware, how he arrived at that 200,000.
  Where did he come up with that? Was it a studied approach such as OPM 
used on behalf of the administration to be used on behalf of the 
272,900? That was not a figure just picked wildly at random, but 
arrived at by totaling the number of people that agencies and 
departments said they could probably do without. And we came up to 
272,900 that could be cut. That was done on a very, very, studied 
basis.
  I do not know how we arrived at this 200,000. I do not know, in 
addition, how much it will cost for a buy-out if we are not to just set 
out wholesale firing people. I know it was said we would try to do this 
as much by attrition as possible.
  Let me say this: Attrition does not work if we are going to correct 
the imbalance between the supervisors or the bosses in Government and 
the employees that are the workers across Government. If we were just 
to take attrition, attrition normally occurs in the lower civil service 
ranks. It does not occur in the higher ranks. We specifically, in the 
legislation that was passed before that helped them along to get the 
administration's reduction of 272,900, we provided money in there, buy-
out money, to help attain that goal.
  That approach was worked very, very well. If we are to do this 
further downsizing as my distinguished colleague from Delaware 
indicates, then it seems to me we would want to continue this 
correction of the imbalance in the GS ratings as much as we possibly 
could. We are not providing for that in this sense-of-the-Senate 
proposal.
  My colleague also talks about the procurement legislation, putting 
defense procurement all into one section. We still have different 
functions of Government to be performed, whether they are left in the 
individual services or combined into one section. We will still have to 
have people that do the design work, the evaluation work on airplanes, 
ships, tanks, infantry and tactics, and all of the other things.
  I do not know whether that will save money or not. I am certainly 
willing to look at the defense procurement bill in 1995 and see how 
that works out. What my distinguished colleague from Delaware said a 
little while ago as far as time limits on this, if it runs 10 percent 
over dollars or 10 percent over time, that the contract would be 
canceled, if I understood his proposal correctly,
 I would say would almost certainly have precluded some of the major 
advances we have had in military equipment in the past.

  When we procure military equipment we are not just procuring Ford and 
Chevy trucks off the line in Detroit, where you can predict exactly, 
with great accuracy, when they come off the line, how much they will 
cost, and when they can be delivered.
  We are talking about tanks that, as you go along, may need some 
change to the original design. We are talking about the development of 
lasers, where you do not really know the cost, exactly, nor the time, 
yet you know it is worthwhile to go ahead and develop that particular 
capability.
  On guided missiles, we rarely know exactly when, what date they are 
going to come into active service on because, as you go along, you find 
problems. The same thing with aircraft. Yet we do not want to say that 
every aircraft that we design for the military would have to be such a 
simplistic design, not getting into state-of-the-art matters, that it 
could possibly adhere to an absolute 10-percent dollar or 10-percent 
time limit or have its contract canceled. You are not talking about 
things that are that neatly developed and that much here and now.
  Many of these are programs that need to be developed and I do not 
know how you would take care of something like that.
  I am happy to look at the defense procurement legislation but I think 
we have to be very, very careful when we set hard and strict rules that 
say things will be canceled if they are 10 percent over budget or 10 
percent over time. Perhaps bonuses can be given for coming in on time 
or coming in ahead of time. Maybe that would be a different approach 
and I will be glad to discuss that and work with my colleague from 
Delaware in looking into that. But I think, to get back to the original 
proposal here on passing a sense-of-the-Senate resolution that just 
automatically says:

       The total number of full-time equivalent positions in all 
     agencies shall not exceed 1,682,300 during fiscal year 2002; 
     and, No. 2, of the additional reduction of 200,000 full-time 
     equivalent positions provided for under paragraph (1), no 
     more than 50,000 shall be within the Department of Defense.

  That leaves 150,000 other cuts in Government.
  I just cannot in good conscience vote for something that maybe some 
people would interpret to mean cuts in FDA, cuts in NIH, cuts in the 
Centers for Disease Control; cuts in safety for our people, for health 
and safety matters for our people. We can say, ``I know it is not 
likely that would occur.'' But do [[Page S7104]] we have any guarantee 
it will not occur? And with other things being proposed, the big cuts 
being proposed in other areas within this budget resolution, I do not 
have much faith we would not have to take cuts in NIH and CDC and 
everywhere else. And I do not want to see that happen. I think that 
would be a major, major mistake.
  So I rise in opposition to this legislation even though it is only a 
sense of the Senate. I know it is easy, sometimes, to say it is sense 
of the Senate so it is not really binding so let us not worry about it, 
let us pass it and we will work it out later on. But I do not look at 
this as being quite so innocuous, because what we are doing is we are 
going on record saying the best judgment of the Senate of the United 
States is that we can, without defining where they would come from, cut 
another 200,000 people beyond the 272,900 that will already have been 
cut by this administration by the end of this year.
  If we wanted to charge the Office of Personnel Management with going 
through once again at the end of this 272,900 cut and say OK, let us 
look at this now, see what the job is of Government, see how many 
people we need to do it, and can we really safely cut some additional 
people in Government without hurting the function of Government, 
whatever it is--NIH or FDA or whatever--then that would make some 
sense. But to just pick an arbitrary figure and say we will cut 
200,000--we could just as well have said cut the work force in half. 
Cut the work force by 800,000. Cut the work force by half a million. It 
would have made just as much sense. But the 200,000 to me is a figure I 
would not want the Senate to go on record as saying that would be the 
objective, even in a sense-of-the-Senate resolution.
  So, Mr. President, for all those reasons I oppose the amendment by my 
distinguished colleague from Delaware. I will be glad to work with him 
on some of the defense procurement legislation he is proposing, but 
just to go out and say we will automatically whack another 200,000 
people out without knowing exactly where they are coming from or 
defining this, agency by agency, or department by department, would be 
a big mistake.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. SARBANES addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Maryland.
  Mr. SARBANES. Mr. President, has enough not happened over the last 
few weeks that this abysmal practice of beating up on Federal employees 
ought to come to an end? ``Oh, it is just a sense-of-the-Senate 
resolution,'' the sponsor says. Nevertheless, it would represent a 
judgment of the Senate that we are going to cut the Federal work force 
another 11 percent over and above, I repeat, over and above the 272,000 
reduction in force that has already been programmed; over and above 
that reduction in force.
  At some point I hope people will reach the conclusion that Federal 
employees have a reasonable role and place in the workings of our 
system and they ought to be treated with a measure of dignity. Why, 
once again, are we landing with both feet on the men and women who 
render dedicated service to the country? They are already taking a very 
heavy hit in this budget resolution.
  In fact, over the period of this budget resolution Federal employees 
will, in effect, give up $85 billion of pay adjustments that are 
provided for by law in terms of assuring them comparability with the 
private sector. Yet here some come, late at night, with this amendment. 
There is no study that backs these figures. They say, ``We assume the 
Department of Commerce is going to be done away with.'' Even the people 
advocating the elimination of the Department of Commerce are not 
advocating the elimination of all of the programs carried out by the 
Department of Commerce. When questioned, they in effect say, ``This 
program is going to go here, this program is going to go there. Yes, 
this activity should continue.'' So most of those activities have to go 
on. They are important to the economy of our country.
  Now we are going to say to the Federal employees: Over 11 percent of 
you are going to go by the board, over and above the reduction of 
272,000 which has already been programmed and which is well underway. 
In fact, now well over 100,000 of those positions have been phased out 
in the course of the reduction that is taking place, and the rest are 
projected to accrue by the end of the century.
  This amendment says to people who have already been through turmoil, 
who have already had all of the worry and the anxiety connected with 
these reductions, ``Well, now there are an additional 200,000--well 
over 10 percent of those of you that are left--who are on your way 
out.''
  What do you think that does for the morale of the work force? What do 
you think that does for the health of their families? What do you think 
that does to having a first-rate Federal service? We have a national 
interest in having a first-rate Federal service. You do not want a 
second-rate Federal service. But, if you continue in effect to assault 
people, keep them in this state of agitation and anxiety and fear and 
apprehension, you are well on your way to bringing about a second-rate 
service. People have other opportunities. Good people have other 
opportunities and will leave to take them. Good people will not come in 
because they do not want to live in this environment. This is not a 
rational, sensible proposal. It is not a proposal that is grounded on 
some thorough analysis working up from a real examination of 
activities. It arbitrarily imposes this upon the work force.'' We have 
had far too much of that.
  For years the Federal employees have been a favorite target. Take it 
out on the Federal employees. Call them ``bureaucrats'' with a sneer. 
Deprecate the work that they do. How long is this going to go on?
  Are my colleagues finally going to begin to say these are dedicated 
people, the vast number of them. They render important service. Many 
are highly trained and highly skilled. They are proud of the work they 
do. They give a good performance. They carry out very important and 
essential functions. Yet, many constantly berate them, denigrate their 
work, treat them not even as second-class but third-class citizens. Now 
they come along and make these proposals. Proposals that have not been 
worked out carefully. They propose to go ahead and slap the Federal 
employees once again, or twice again. After all, they are a favorite 
target, even though they are making, and have made, extraordinary 
sacrifices throughout this deficit reduction process.
  Literally tens and tens of billions of dollars for the deficit 
reduction process have come out of the Federal employees. Now the 
offeror of this amendment comes along and says, despite the downsizing 
of 272,000 which is now on track to be carried through by the end of 
the century, let us add another 200,000 to it; over an additional 10 
percent of the work force.
  At some point enough is enough, and this ought to be the point. We 
ought to stop this practice of berating the Federal employees and stop 
now.
  Some say, ``Well, it is only a sense-of-the-Senate resolution.'' I 
simply say to them, that the message that is sent to the Federal 
employees, and the message sent to the public at large about the 
Federal employees, is every bit as strong in this sense-of-the-Senate 
resolution which the Senator from Delaware has introduced as it would 
be in a piece of binding legislation.
  Mr. President, I say to my colleagues, it is time to stop this 
abysmal practice. These employees have sacrificed a lot. They ought not 
to be held under this sword of Damocles hanging over them, and be kept 
in this state of turmoil and apprehension. We ought to have some 
sensitivity for the situation in which they find themselves, and reject 
the constant assault that is made upon hard working, dedicated men and 
women in the Federal service. They deserve to be treated with some 
measure of dignity. This resolution does not do that. I hope it will be 
defeated.
  Several Senators addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Pennsylvania.
  Mr. SANTORUM. I ask if the Senator from Delaware will yield time on 
the amendment.
  Mr. ROTH. I will be happy to yield as much time as the distinguished 
Senator from Pennsylvania may desire.
  Mr. SANTORUM. I thank the Senator from Delaware for the time yielded.
  I would like to first just respond to the comments made by the 
Senator from Maryland. I am the son of two [[Page S7105]] Federal 
employees. My parents worked for the Federal Government for their 
entire careers.
  I think the Senator is right. I think Federal employees do get beat 
up on a lot. A lot of them are doing the best they can in a system that 
is not working particularly well for them, a Government which was 
designed under the theory of bureaucracy, a theory created prior to the 
invention of the typewriter. That is how we wrote our Federal 
Government.
  So to saddle them with a bureaucratic organizational structure in an 
era where we are debating a telecommunications bill that is going to 
move us into the next millennium, which was unthinkable as much as 10 
years ago, to saddle them with that and to suggest that they can 
perform their functions is almost asking too much of them.
  In addition, to suggest that the number of Federal employees in this 
information age cannot and should not be reduced, as it is in every 
private sector employment of any major corporation, is again not to 
face reality, that in fact structures must change, delivery systems 
must change, theories that ran our Government from the time of the 
revolution to now must change, and as a result the Federal compliment 
of employees must change, as it is in every major corporation in the 
country of any size.
  I would daresay that if the Senator from Maryland suggested we had a 
10 percent cut in employment, we cannot afford another 10 percent, I 
would look to any major company in the country that has not cut their 
work force by 5, 10, or 20 percent or more. We have to do the same 
thing here. We have to understand that we have to deliver services more 
efficiently using technology that is available for us to do it better, 
cheaper, more efficiently and with less people in many cases.
  So I do not think the argument--at least my argument is not to look 
at these Federal workers as terrible, these do not do a good job. I 
disagree with that. I think the Federal workers that I know--and I know 
lots of them--work very hard, are very concerned about their job and 
want to do the best they can, and in the most of the cases are 
hamstrung by their own internal operations from doing the job that they 
wanted to do. But to suggest that now as we move into this information 
age that we cannot modernize like everybody else and as a result of 
that modernization be able to downsize the work force I think just 
flies in the face of what is going on in the entire world around us.
  Government should reflect what the country is doing, and what the 
private sector is doing to be able to streamline and make more 
efficient.
  I would suggest that there is one Federal employee who is not doing a 
very good job, who does need to be scrutinized more in this debate in 
particular; that is, the President of the United States.
  If there is a Federal employee who is not facing up to the demands of 
his job and coming forward with solutions to solve problems that face 
this country, it is, in fact, the President.
  We have the President now standing tall and firm against deficit 
reduction by saying he is going to veto the rescissions bill which is 
trumpeted to be $16 billion but, as most of us in this Chamber know, as 
the Federal Government continues to spend money day after day after 
day, that rescission bill is not worth $16 billion any more. We might 
be able to get $9 billion in savings. But the President says, ``No, you 
have got a couple of million dollars or so that I don't like and so we 
are going to throw the whole thing out.'' Leadership. Leadership.
  In trying to solve the problem that is most pressing on the American 
public's mind and one that is front and center to this U.S. Senate 
these last 2 weeks when we are debating the budget resolution, where 
has the President been on the budget resolution? Well, he did present 
his budget earlier this year that called for $200 billion and $300 
billion deficits for as far as the eye can see, which last week was 
voted down 99 to nothing, 99 to nothing. Hardly leadership, hardly 
visionary on the part of the President to put forward a budget that 
simply was a nonstarter on both sides of the aisle unanimously.
  So where has he been? Where has the leadership been from the one 
Federal employee that we demand the most from? Nowhere.
  And so I came to the floor last week and I said that I would be here 
every day between now and the 1st of October when the new fiscal year 
starts and remind Members of the Senate of the kind of leader we have 
in the White House when it comes to balancing our budget.
  On Saturday, the President did not present a budget that brought this 
country into balance over the next 7 years. That was the third day that 
before the Senate was the balanced budget resolution. On Sunday, day 
four, the President did not present a balanced budget resolution. And 
today, day five, the President did not present a balanced budget 
resolution.
  It is incredulous to me that the President of the United States, who 
said during the balanced budget amendment debate, the amendment to the 
Constitution, that the we did not need a balanced budget amendment to 
move forward and solve the deficit crisis that faces us; that all we 
needed was our own resolve, our own resolve. This same President 2 
years ago during his budget debate, his first one, in 1993, when he 
passed a large tax increase and a few spending cuts along the way 
challenged Republicans and said, ``Where is your plan? Where is your 
plan? Why don't you come up with something? Show us your specifics?'' 
He said ``No hot air, show me where.'' Show me where.
  The minority leader, Senator Daschle, on March 3, 1995, during the 
balanced budget debate said, ``And for those who say we do not need a 
constitutional amendment to do the job''--that job being balancing the 
budget--``I think it is all the more important that we demonstrate that 
we can, that we are up to the task, that we can meet our 
responsibilities to make it happen correctly, to make it happen in a 
way that was foreseen when we passed the law setting up the budget 
process.''
  And what amendments have we seen? Are they amendments that have been 
brought to the floor by the other side of the aisle the substitutes to 
show us what their plan is to get to a balanced budget? No. Are they 
rearranging spending priorities to say we should cut from this area of 
Government and add to another area of Government in setting priorities? 
No.
  What are they? They are amendments to spend more money, to take the 
reserve account, which is theoretical on the part of the Congressional 
Budget Office, that only occurs if we, in fact, have a budget that 
brings us to balance in 7 years. Then they give us a bonus of $170 
billion because they figure lower interest rates, more economic growth, 
and lower inflation.
  So this bonus now, what do they want to do? Do they want to put it 
toward the deficit? Do they want to give it back to you, the taxpayers, 
who paid it in the first place? No. We want to spend it right away. We 
do not want to wait until it accrues in the future. We want to spend it 
now.
  This is responsibility? This is demonstrating that we can, that we 
have the resolve?
  I suspect the American public has a hard time buying all of this--
certainly, I have a hard time buying all of this--that the President 
and his party are serious about making tough decisions; about having 
ideas and vision as to where to take this country into a future that is 
a fiscally sound future; about having innovative approaches like the 
Senator from Delaware, who does not just and has not, as chairman of 
this committee, just proposed cuts in Federal employment. He proposes a 
performance-based budget which puts managerial goals for Federal 
employees to achieve, to give flexibility to managers, to make it more 
like a private sector employment place, to give the kind of flexibility 
that many Federal employees ask me, plead for me, to give.
  So the Senator from Delaware is not just out here willy-nilly 
throwing numbers around. He is putting forward responsible proposals 
that have a vision as to where to take this country in the future. And 
you will see, and have seen from this side of the aisle, such 
proposals, and you will see more.
  So I commend the Senator from Delaware for his amendment. I wish him 
success in that amendment. [[Page S7106]] 
  I hope that I do not have to be here tomorrow. I hope that I do not 
have to be here with this chart. I hope the President has read the 
polls, seen the position he has taken is not one that is particularly 
popular with the American public and, more importantly, is not what is 
right for this country.
  For this system to work, we need a healthy dialog and we need 
leadership from both sides for us to come up with this compromise and 
the strategy to move us forward
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Who yields time?
  Mr. GLENN addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Ohio.
  Mr. GLENN. Mr. President I would like to respond to my colleague from 
Pennsylvania briefly.
  Mr. SARBANES. Would the Senator yield to me for a question?
  Mr. GLENN. Yes.
  Mr. SARBANES. I wanted to ask the Senator from Pennsylvania, if he is 
here tomorrow with his chart, will that fellow who puts the numbers up 
be here with him in order to make this demonstration work? I am just 
curious. Unfortunately, he left the floor once he got the number up. 
And I just wanted to know, if you are here tomorrow and you have to put 
a number up, will that fellow come back so we can catch another glimpse 
of him, the one who puts the next number up.
  Mr. SANTORUM. His wife and kids like to see him, too.
  Mr. SARBANES. I am glad to hear there is concern about his wife and 
kids, because I listened to this diatribe about the President, when we 
needed to talk about a very serious matter affecting the rank and file 
of the Federal employees. So I am glad to see there is some 
sensitivity.
  Mr. GLENN. I yield 15 minutes to the Senator from Maryland.
  Ms. MIKULSKI. I thank the ranking member for yielding such time.
  Mr. President, I rise to oppose the Roth amendment to further reduce 
the Federal work force beyond the quarter of a million that we have 
already done under the Clinton reinventing Government framework.
  I am concerned that we are engaging in a mass mania of who can rack 
up the biggest number. Every day there seems to be a bidding war on who 
can escalate the numbers of Federal employees that need to be laid off 
in this so-called downsizing of Government.
  But make no mistake, every time we raise the number beyond a 
reasonable and rational level that we can achieve through technological 
innovation, we are not accomplishing downsizing; we are accomplishing 
downgrading.
  The sense-of-the-Senate resolution essentially says what it is that 
the Senate wants to do. Well, I believe that we have already been on 
record to support reinventing Government as laid out by President Bill 
Clinton and Vice President Al Gore, looking at the best available 
management practices and technological innovation to reduce, in a 
rational way, the Federal work force.
  What this says to 200,000 more Federal employees is we do not want 
you to show up; we do not value you; we do not think you are needed; we 
think your time is up and it is time for you to go.
  Well, Mr. President, who is it that we do not want to show up? I want 
to talk about my own State of Maryland. I have the honor of 
representing the National Institutes of Health, which are located in 
the State of Maryland, and there are thousands of Federal employees 
working there from research scientists to lab technicians to back-up 
support services to security personnel.
  Now who are we saying not to show up at the National Institutes of 
Health? Are we saying to that Nobel prize candidate who could have a 
breakthrough in AIDS research, Don't bother to show up, we're 
downsizing, we're going to technological innovation, we don't need your 
intellectual competency, we'll do a computer simulation?
  What will we say in this decade of the brain research to those 
scientists working on Alzheimer's research which killed my father--
Alzheimer's killed my father--and if we can find a cure for it it would 
significantly reduce the health care debt in this country. Are we 
saying to NIH, Don't show up?
  But let us not just stay around the State of Maryland. Let us go to 
the Centers for Disease Control. We now know Ebola virus threatens 
Zaire and could even possibly threaten the world.
  We had a near outbreak in something called The Hot Zone in northern 
Virginia. If you read the book, you know what the story was. It was 
Federal employees at Fort Dietrick who were willing to risk their 
lives--willing to risk their lives--who were willing to go into the hot 
zone to kill the monkeys that carried this disease.
  When you read the newspaper accounts--this is not Mikulski memos, 
this is newspaper accounts--that talk about how skimpy the resources 
are at CDC and in infectious diseases, they are stretched so thin that 
they are now afraid an accident could happen at the CDC exactly at the 
same time when we are asking for their help. The world is asking for 
their help to come and take care of the Ebola virus.
  Let us talk about other threats to the safety and security of the 
United States. Let us talk about our law enforcement. Who else are we 
telling not to show up? Shall we say no more FBI agents, do not show 
up? Are we saying to the Secret Service, Well, you might be in the line 
of fire in one way, but we're going to put you in the line of fire in 
another way. We are going to tell them not to show up?
  We in Maryland were willing to take a Federal prison. There is a 
medium-security prison right now in the Allegheny Mountains in the 
community of Cumberland. We have a Federal prison for medium-security 
prisoners. Are we telling the prison guards that they are superfluous, 
we are going to have better locks, better keys, maybe have chain gangs; 
we do not need you?
  Well, I want those prison workers there. I want the bums and thugs 
off the street. I supported life without parole legislation. I have 
supported not only prevention programs but tough prison sentences. So 
are we going to tell the prison workers we do not want you; do not show 
up?
  And then here we are now on the eve of celebrating victory in Europe, 
the end of World War II, and what do we say to the GI Joe generation? 
Oh, aren't taking your health care, but we are going to say no to the 
doctors at VA; we are going to say we are going to shrink the nurses; 
we are going to say we are going to shrink the lab technicians; we are 
going to say we do not need them. We are going to replace them with 
something called technological innovation.
  We know we are going to downsize. We have already begun to do it. The 
President of the United States has not been AWOL on this issue. He has 
been in the forefront. He has charged the Vice President to do it, and 
we have absolutely done it.
  In Maryland, this downsizing will have devastating impacts on the 
economy of Maryland but also on the morale of Maryland. Right now, 
there is a morale crisis among Federal employees. They have essentially 
been told they are not needed, they are not valued, and now the bums 
and thugs in the world are even targeting them for violent attacks.
  I do not think this is the United States of America. We are from the 
generation that when Jack Kennedy said ``Ask not what your country can 
do for you, but what you can do for your country,'' we answered that 
call. Many of the people in my generation saw public service as a noble 
calling, a way to serve the United States of America to do good and 
earn a decent living. Now they feel that they are absolutely under 
attack.
  I can tell you what is going to happen. You will not only downsize 
Federal employees, but, no smart, self-respecting person will want to 
come to work for the Federal Government.
  And who do you think is going to be in these Federal agencies? Do we 
not want a Government at all? If we want to do that, well then let us 
do that. Let us not go through this charade of downsizing, if you are 
going to have a Government and you believe that there are core 
functions that Government must perform, not only in national defense, 
but on domestic security issues and the risks that the United States of 
America faces--crime on the streets, drug dealing, punks that want to 
sabotage the United States of America, and we need law enforcement.
  We are also plagued by another horseman of the apocalypse called 
plague and pestilence, and we want to [[Page S7107]] make sure that we 
have the medical research and the staff at FDA and the Centers for 
Disease Control that are going to find the cures for disease and be 
able to work to contain pestilence around the world. We think that is 
important.
  What are the other threats to the security of the United States of 
America? It is a crisis of confidence. We should make sure that we have 
a core set of values that encourage people, along with the values of 
duty, obligation, loyalty, patriotism.
  If we treat our Federal employees this way, how are we going to call 
it forth? We are going to ask them to be loyal to us when we are not 
loyal to them, to have a sense of duty about the job they do when we do 
not have a sense of obligation to them? I think this is a terrible 
course of action.
  There is a logical, rational way to downsizing. I oversee as an 
appropriator 25 different agencies. We are already taking concrete 
steps to be able to do it. I was the one that commissioned the study on 
the National Association of Public Administrators, which is now being 
used as the framework to downsize HUD. I am not opposed to shrinking 
the work force, but I am opposed to shirking our duties to our Federal 
employees.
  Mr. President, our Federal employees have served their country, they 
have devoted themselves to public service, they deserve our gratitude 
and our support. We are already reducing by 272,000 positions. The Roth 
amendment is not only going to result in downsizing but, as I said, in 
downgrading. So I stand here to support those Federal employees and to 
defend them who defend my health, my safety and my national security.
  Mr. President, I hope we defeat the Roth amendment and, most of all, 
I hope we defeat the attitude that underlies the Roth amendment.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Who yields time?
  Mrs. HUTCHISON addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Who yields time?
  Mr. ROTH. I yield the distinguished Senator 10 minutes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Texas.
  Mrs. HUTCHISON. Mr. President, I have, of course, been watching the 
debate for the last few days and there is no question, this is a tough 
debate. We are getting down to the decisions that are very difficult to 
make. But I have been watching my colleagues with charts really since 
this debate started last week. You see everybody's chart, and there are 
the budget lines that go up and budget lines that go down. But now we 
are into making those tough decisions and saying, You know, everybody 
in America is going to disagree with something that we do. In fact, 
probably every Member of the Senate is going to disagree with something 
we do in this budget resolution. But, in fact, we have to make the 
priority choices. We have to go back to the basics and talk about what 
is the role of Federal Government.
 what must we do to set those priorities and then with the money that 
we have left, we have to determine where we have to cut and where we 
need to spend.

  I think that Senator Roth has done a very responsible thing. He has 
proposed a sense of the Senate about what we would look for in ways to 
meet these budget targets that we are going to be voting on for the 
next few days--200,000 positions by 2002. That is over a 7-year period 
and is about 11 percent of the work force. Now, if we make the budget 
cuts that we are talking about making over the next 7 years to get to 
that magic number in the year 2002, we are going to have to cut. We are 
going to have to cut the size of Government, and that means that we 
will have to downsize departments.
  I remember when I first got here about 2 years ago, I introduced an 
amendment to cut the legislative branch budget by 7 percent. Mr. 
President, you should have heard the debate. People came running on the 
floor and they said we might have to shut the Library of Congress. We 
might have to shut the Washington Monument. You know, we always have 
our priorities and we decide what is important in those priorities. Of 
course, shutting the Library of Congress would not have been an option. 
But we heard the sky-is-falling-theories all over the place. I lost on 
that amendment by about two votes. Do you know what happened? After all 
the sky is falling and after losing that amendment 2 years ago, guess 
what? This year, we come in and we have cut our legislative branch 
budget about 15 percent. Is the sky falling? I do not think so. Are we 
making do with less? Yes. Are we doing the responsible business of our 
Government? Yes. And I do not think one person in America has written 
me a letter saying you cut your legislative branch budget 15 percent 
and I miss that money. Not one person.
  So I think that Senator Roth is trying to do the responsible thing. 
He has come in and he has said we are going to have to have an 11 
percent cut. Well, if we are going to cut the budget for the next 7 
years in the places where we can, if we are going to stop the growth in 
increases in our budget, of course, we are going to have fewer 
employees. And I think it is very important that we establish a sense-
of-the-Senate resolution so that we can have the parameters we need 
when we start making these tough decisions.
  You know, the people of America have been looking at the debate for 
the last few weeks in the House, and the last few days on the Senate 
side, and I think the people of America are really beginning to see the 
differences between the two parties and the way we come at the problems 
of Government. And I think the people of America are going to be able 
to make a decision about what is right. And I think they are seeing all 
the smoke and that there is a group of Senators that really wants to do 
what we said we were going to do. I was elected in 1994 and I did 
promise that I would do everything in my power to have a balanced 
budget for the future of our country. I am going to do everything in my 
power to keep that promise. That is something the American people have 
not had for so long--politicians who make a promise and lo and behold, 
keep it. They are going to keep their promises this time, and that is 
new. We have seen politicians from both parties--this is not in any way 
partisan --come in and they make promises and then the election is held 
and they go about the business of Government, business as usual, just 
like it has always been. Not this year. This year is going to be 
different. We are going to pass a balanced budget resolution. We are 
going to take the tough steps. And even if we disagree on this part of 
it or that part of it, I think enough Senators are going to take the 
responsible step and say my part may not be so important that I would 
hold up the progress of this Senate for the future of America. That is 
the parameter we are going to have to put around that final vote.
  Is it more important that we get every single thing we want, just the 
way we want it, or is it more important for us to say in the long-term, 
the most important vote we will ever take is to start that long march 
toward a balanced budget for the future of this country.
  This is a historic moment; it is a historic debate and we do have the 
opportunity to do what is right for America.
  So I appreciate my colleague, Senator Roth, and my colleague Senator 
Domenici for working so hard, for so many years to try to make this 
happen. I appreciate the input that we are having on this floor. But I 
hope that in the end, when all of us, Democrats and Republicans, have 
had our say, maybe we have won a few, maybe we are going to lose a few; 
but when it all comes down to that last vote, the people of America are 
going to have the ability to judge which politicians are keeping their 
word and which of us are ready to take that historic step, change the 
way Washington does business and start balancing that budget.
  Mr. President, this resolution is going to be one of those first 
steps. We will see a lot more over the next few days. But on Wednesday, 
I hope we will be ready to do the right thing for America.
  Thank you. I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Who yields time?
  Mr. GLENN. How much time remains on this side?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator has 23 minutes. Senator Roth has 
29 minutes.
  Mr. GLENN. Mr. President, I would like to respond very briefly to 
some of [[Page S7108]] the remarks made by the Senator from 
Pennsylvania that did not address directly the proposal of this sense 
of the Senate resolution by my distinguished colleague from Delaware. 
He talked about the President of the United States and what he has 
done. I would like to go back a little and take a few minutes to 
describe what actually has happened over the past 15 years or so. We 
came out of the Carter years, and President Carter, during his time in 
office, I think, did a lot of fine things, foreign policy and so on. 
One thing that did not occur is a real close control of the economy. We 
hit a time period where there was 21 percent interest rates and 17 
percent inflation rates. I think that contributed a lot to President 
Reagan being elected when he was. What happened? A lot of people were 
scared and President Reagan proposed the supply side economics and the 
budget cuts, and we reduced taxes here by 25 percent over a 3-year 
period--over a 3-year period, 5 percent the first year, 10 percent each 
of the next 2 years. This was supposed to stimulate the economy so much 
that it was going to result in such a new level of business activity 
and consumer confidence that we were going to see the new business 
level raised to such a point that there was going to be more than 
enough revenue to make up what had been left and we were going to move 
on to a new higher level.
  Now, what happened? That did not occur. Most voted for that, but some 
with the idea after trying to get it down to 15 percent reduction and 
trying to make several changes, finally voted for it because we had 
been scared, too, about what had happened before. We voted for it with 
the idea that we would try to come back and change it if it did not 
work.
  Now, what happened? Over the next 12 years, we saw an additional $3.6 
trillion in debt pile up as supply-side economics did not work. Then we 
came into the time period where Gramm-Rudman-Hollings was placed out 
here. That did not do the job. Then we came to the election of 
President Clinton. President Clinton said privately as well as publicly 
that the first thing we had to do was get control of the economy.
  What did he do? He proposed a way of getting control of the economy 
that he sent the Congress and we farmed it out here on the Democratic 
side, farmed it out to the committees, with targets to hit, targets to 
try to meet the efforts to balance the budget that President Clinton 
proposed.
  Now, we passed that reconciliation bill in the summer of 1993. I 
think we need to look at what happened on that. Now, President Clinton 
was honest enough that he said I will not promise people a lot of tax 
cuts back then. No. What he said was we will cut as many programs as we 
can and we will increase taxes. Much has been made of that since then. 
We will increase taxes--what, on the top 1.2 percent income people of 
the country, not the middle-income people, not the poor folks of the 
country. He is going to increase taxes on the top income people of the 
country, the top 1.2 percent. That is where half of that budget 
balancing effort came from.
  Now, what happened? After all the dire predictions here on the Senate 
floor about all the unemployment this would cause if we passed that 
President Clinton proposal--there would be millions unemployed was one 
of the statements here on the floor.
  What happened? Well, I can say at that time when we passed that 
budget reconciliation bill, we passed it without one single Republican 
vote in either the House or the Senate. Not one single vote. Not a one. 
And it was a moment of high drama here in the Senate when the vote was 
tied 50-50, and the Vice President broke the tie and cast a winning 
vote.
  What happened? At that time the budget deficit was running right at 
$300 billion a year. As a result of that reconciliation effort in the 
summer of 1993, last year the budget deficit was down do $246 billion. 
This year, it is $192 billion. It is the first time since Harry Truman 
that the budget deficit has gone down 3 years in a row--the first time 
since Harry Truman.
  I say one-half of it was reduction in programs and one-half was the 
tax on the top 1.2 percent income people of the country.
  Now, that is real leadership. We can have all the derogatory signs 
put up on the Senate floor that deride the President and make light of 
the President if we want to. That is what actually occurred for the 
first time since Harry Truman. Three years in a row, the budget deficit 
has gone down as a result of President Clinton's policies.
  What we should be debating is how we keep that going, how we keep it 
going down incrementally, rather than some of the schemes that are 
being proposed. Some of the proposals out of the House here make 
assumptions on how we can balance the budget now, make assumptions that 
I cannot go along with.
  Medicare. We say we will take $87 million out of Medicare over the 
next 7 years, meaning we assume that it will not grow at the 9 percent 
it is growing now, that it goes down to 3 percent to 4 percent in 
growth.
  We are saying that we will assume that doctors and hospitals will not 
be allowed to make as much as they can. They will be kept below 
inflation rate, as a matter of fact, and we will limit the fees for 
doctors and hospitals.
  Those assumptions are made. We make assumptions for HMO savings. That 
is how we get $87 billion proposed. Some of the assumptions, I think, 
are false. We have to depend on a CPI adjustment downward from where it 
is now. We have to assume that the average inflation will not go above 
2.5 percent. We have to say there will be no inflation increase in 
administrative costs, and that will save 22 percent in that area. These 
are assumptions that really are not very realistic when we get into it.
  Back to the President's proposal. Now, what happened out of that 
reconciliation bill we passed in the summer of 1993? Since then, we 
have had the lowest unemployment in 4 years. In cutting back on the 
size of the Government, the administration has cut over 300 programs 
out of Government.
  They set a goal of cutting 272,900 people out of civil service by the 
end of the administration's term. They are well ahead of schedule. They 
have 108,000 actually cut up to now and think they will be able to meet 
the whole 272,900 target by the end of this year. When that occurs, 
there will be the lowest Federal employment overall since John F. 
Kennedy was President, the lowest Government employment since John F. 
Kennedy was the President.
  Now, along with that, last year we passed a crime bill, a very major 
bill. I know there will be efforts to override some of it this year. 
That was a major effort. We passed the GATT legislation, General 
Agreement on Tariff and Trade. That is a mighty big step forward in 
recognizing we no longer could be an isolationist nation if we wanted 
to be in this country, because most of our trade, in fact, about one 
out of every eight manufacturing jobs in the whole country, and it is 
certainly true in my State of Ohio, works to make a product that gets 
exported.
  We can no longer be an isolationist America. We have moved into the 
world. And the GATT agreement, with its readjustments being required, 
indicate our willingness to move into that international world.
  We passed a family leave bill. We passed a Head Start bill in the 
first 2 years of this administration that helps over 200,000 kids get a 
fair start in school. We passed the national service bill. We passed a 
college loan bill that over the period of 5 years will let an 
additional 20 million young people go to school.
  Now, all of these are things that were passed in the first 2 years of 
this administration in spite of all of the things that are said about 
this administration on the other side of the aisle.
  Do Members know what Time magazine said last October? They printed a 
chart showing what agenda--announced agenda--had been passed by each of 
our past Presidents. They pointed out that President Bill Clinton had 
the best record of getting his agenda through in the first 2 years of 
Congress of any President since Lyndon Baines Johnson, and before that 
going clear back to Eisenhower.
  Now, I think that is a remarkable record. It is one I am proud to 
support the President on. When I hear all these derogatory remarks 
about the President and what is going on and signs up here on the 
Senate floor that are meant to be derogatory, then I just have to take 
exception to that.
  Now, back to our current sense-of-the-Senate resolution that is up 
now. [[Page S7109]] This administration has already cut 108,000 jobs 
out of the Federal work force, and done it in a responsible manner, 
done it in a way that helps correct the imbalance between the higher GS 
ratings and the lower GS ratings, through the buyout legislation that 
we passed out of the Governmental Affairs Committee.
  I know that a sense of the Senate that would just arbitrarily add 
another 200,000 to it is not binding, but it certainly sets the course. 
I do not know how we would meet that. I would rather ask OPM do another 
study, a follow on and see where we can do this, and do it responsibly 
rather than just setting what I view as a goal that might result in 
some real harm being done to our Government.
  If we want to do the thing that we should do, what we do is define 
the role we want Government to have in all these different areas or 
different departments or agencies. If we are eliminating the agency, 
fine, eliminate it. But rather than just pick an arbitrary figure, we 
will have OPM study the Government again, each agency, department by 
department, agency by agency, and decide how many they think can be 
cut, and do this responsibly and target those departments where we have 
too big an imbalance yet.
 That is the way the figure of 272,900 was arrived at. It was not a 
figure off the top of somebody's head. It was a figure arrived at by 
study, by canvassing the agencies, by holding their feet to the fire on 
what they could do or not do. I think that is what we should be doing 
for the future.

  I hate to have to oppose my colleague from Delaware but I do. I think 
to pass this Sense-of-the-Senate would indicate a wrong direction for 
us to be taking.
  Mr. President, how much time do I have remaining on this side?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. DeWine). The Senator has 10 minutes and 50 
seconds.
  Mr. GLENN. I thank the Chair. I reserve the remainder of my time and 
yield the floor.
  Mr. ROTH. Mr. President, I yield 5 minutes to the distinguished 
Senator from Texas.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Texas.
  Mrs. HUTCHISON. Mr. President, I just want to talk about some of the 
things that were just said by my distinguished colleague from Ohio. I 
would like to talk about the tax increase that he mentioned that was 
passed without one Republican vote in 1993, because I do think there 
was a difference of opinion that became very clear when the Democrats 
passed the largest tax increase in the history of America without one 
Republican vote. It was described as a tax on the rich, but I do not 
think Social Security recipients making $34,000 a year or couples 
making $44,000 a year are rich people. That is middle income. And the 
taxes were raised on those people.
  I do not think that was the way to start the process of getting to a 
balanced budget. In fact, the President's budget that has been sent to 
us does not balance the budget. The President gave up on balancing the 
budget. He left it to us to do it. He left us the responsibility.
  In fact the deficits are lower in the last 2 years but the reason the 
deficits are lower is because we have financed our debt with short-term 
borrowings. We are in fact in one of the weakest recoveries from a 
recession that we have ever had. We should be in a booming economy and 
we are not in a booming economy. We are in a relatively flat economy. 
It is going up a little. The deficit is coming down a little. But we 
are going to have to pay the price. We are going to have to pay the 
price for short-term borrowing to finance that debt. That was a bad 
decision and we will have to pay for that later. If interest rates go 
up there is no question that the deficit is going to rise when we have 
to refinance that debt.
  This is all going to become very clear when we have to raise the debt 
ceiling toward the end of the summer, this year. That is going to be 
the scary thing. We have $5 trillion in debt in this country. That is 
not a small amount.
  The debate we are having today is for the future of our country. We 
cannot continue to raise that debt ceiling without taking care of that 
long-term debt situation. So I think it is very important that we keep 
our eye on the ball here. We cannot continue to raise taxes to try to 
bring the deficit down. We cannot do short-term financing on that long-
term debt, because the price will go up.
  Alan Greenspan, the Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, told us 
what would happen if we balanced the budget and if Congress shows it 
has the will to balance the budget. That is when we will see our 
economy take off. That is when the investors in our country will know 
that they are making a good and wise investment for the long term.
  We will be able to see our economy take off. We will be able to see 
the deficit come down, if we take the steps to balance the budget. I 
just hope my colleagues, like the Senator from Ohio and the Senator 
from Minnesota, will help us when that final vote is taken. It is going 
to be tough. Senator Roth is giving us a tough choice. But we are going 
to stand up and we are going to do it and I hope it will be a 
bipartisan effort in the end, because we are going to do it without 
increasing taxes and that is the distinction between the philosophy of 
the President, who gave us a budget that is not balanced, and the 
Republican majority in Congress that is going to give a balanced budget 
to the people of this country.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  Mr. WELLSTONE addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Who yields time?
  Mr. GLENN. Mr. President, I yield the Senator 4 minutes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator is yielded 4 minutes.
  Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I do not come on the floor with any 
well-rehearsed speech. But it does seem to me that, once again, we are 
not actually debating whether or not there ought to be deficit 
reduction. We are also not debating whether or not anybody is in favor 
of the debt that we built up in this country.
  As a matter of fact, I could make my own analysis about what happened 
starting with what was euphemistically called the Economic Recovery 
Act, passed in 1981, pushed by President Reagan, which eroded the 
revenue base of this country about $700 billion over 5, 6, 7 years; 
plus an unprecedented buildup in the Pentagon budget.
  I find it interesting that by and large we still have not heard very 
much discussion about all the subsidies that go for oil companies; all 
the subsidies that go for tobacco companies; all the subsidies that go 
for pharmaceutical companies; all the subsidies that go to some of the 
largest corporations and financial institutions in America. But we have 
been talking about cuts in nutrition programs and financial aid for 
higher education. We did not have much time to debate that on the floor 
this afternoon. And, I think, draconian cuts--draconian cuts in 
Medicare and Medicaid. I do not have the time and I do not have the 
data right now to go into those arguments in great detail.
  But I will say to my colleagues that when I presented this this 
morning on policy grounds, I did not hear any rebuttal. So in terms of 
``we have to do all of this,'' let us not be so generous with other 
people's suffering. Let us make sure we do it in a responsible way.
  The reason I support my colleague from Ohio is that I consider this 
to be bashing. I mean, 200,000 additional positions eliminated--by what 
agency? What job? What position? A description of those positions? Who 
are we going to do it to? What positions are we eliminating?
  It is very easy to just say eliminate 200,000 positions. I would like 
to know: Where? Where do these men and women work? For what agencies? 
Is it the National Institutes of Health? Or is it going to be some of 
the other Federal agencies?
  Where are you eliminating these positions?
  It seems to me it is not responsible unless the Congress approves in 
advance exactly what agency, what positions, what descriptions, what 
men and women, whose positions are you eliminating?
  Colleagues stand up on the floor and they say ``Oh, these decisions 
are so difficult. We have to make difficult decisions.'' Easy if it is 
not our job. Very easy. We have to make these difficult decisions. 
[[Page S7110]] 
  Sometimes I think we get a little bit too generous with the suffering 
of other people. Before I would vote for such an amendment I would want 
to know exactly which people we are talking about. Let us just get 
concrete. What agency? What descriptions? Which Federal employees? 
Providing what kind of work in this country? For whom? Let us have a 
discussion of that. I think in the absence of that kind of specificity 
this is a profoundly mistaken amendment.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Who yields time?
  Mr. GLENN. Mr. President, how much time is remaining?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Ohio has 67 minutes and 32 
seconds remaining, and the Senator from Delaware has 24 minutes and 7 
seconds.
  Mr. GLENN. I thank the Chair.
  Mr. ROTH addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Delaware.
  Mr. ROTH. Mr. President, I yield such time as I may take.
  Mr. President, I was surprised to once again hear the attack on the 
Reagan years. I recall during the Carter administration when we had 
double-digit unemployment, double-digit inflation, the misery index, 
which was based upon unemployment and inflation, was never higher, and 
unemployment was as high as it has been in recent years. But after the 
tax cut in the Reagan administration, we enjoyed the longest peacetime 
growth period in the history of this country.
  Mr. FORD. And the largest debt.
  Mr. ROTH. I hear someone talk about the largest debt.
  But let me point out that Congress, part of Congress, was Democratic, 
the House of Representatives. And I would say that the problem there 
was that, yes, the President was trying to build up defense but the 
other party was trying to build up social spending. Unfortunately, the 
compromise was by increasing spending everywhere. So both Democrats and 
Republicans can take a partial credit for the increase in the debt. 
That was not just the act of the administration.
  But what we are talking about today is trying to make Government 
smaller, Government less obtrusive, and Government more efficient.
  There is no question that but what modern technology has made it 
possible for Government, as well as the private sector, to do more with 
less.
  What we are proposing today in the way of reductions in personnel are 
not just figures drawn out of the air, but based primarily on the 
proposals in the Domenici budget. What we are proposing in the way of 
reduction in employment, first of all, is a 50,000 reduction in FTE 
savings below the current FTE caps. And the GAO figures show that is a 
reality.
  With the elimination of the Department of Commerce we expect a 
reduction of 30,000 in FTE, HUD, 20,000, and the Department of Defense, 
50,000.
  Let me point out that the administration has made significant 
reductions in the DOD. But basically most of the reductions are in 
Defense Department, and not in the other civilian agencies. As a matter 
of fact, defense military functions will be reduced something like 
208,000 under 272,000.
  What we are proposing in our reduction of 200,000 is that most of 
these reductions will come from the civilian agencies, limiting the 
reduction in the Department of Defense to 50,000. Currently, in the 
acquisition of military systems there is something like 17 to 20 levels 
of bureaucracy. This bureaucracy does not add value or expedite the 
acquisition of new weapons. Instead, it takes about twice as long in 
the military area to go from an idea to fielding a weapon as it does in 
the private sector to go from an idea to selling a product in the 
market.
  What we are seeking here is a reduction of personnel that is based on 
those programs and departments that would be reduced or eliminated 
under the Domenici budget.
  Just let me point out that for the fiscal year 1996 the chairman's 
mark lists something like 150 different programs that are going to be 
eliminated. And obviously, when you eliminate programs, you do not need 
the personnel that you otherwise have. So that is where we are 
proposing these reductions. By doing this, we expect better service to 
be given the American people.
  Let me point out that one of our concerns is that we want to make the 
Federal Government a desirable place in which to work. And, 
unfortunately, anyone who has discussed the matter with people in the 
executive branch will tell you the frustration, the inability to move 
forward because of the process that has been built up over recent 
years. And that is what we are trying to eliminate today. Hopefully, by 
reducing the size of Government, and by changing the personnel 
policies, the Federal work force will find this a better place in which 
to work because what we are proposing as changes is that individuals 
who perform in the executive branch will be rewarded for their 
accomplishments. They will also be penalized if they do not perform.
  My distinguished colleague and friend from Ohio said that we proposed 
to do away with a military system, if it were 10 percent off the 
proposed goal. In other words, if the cost of the system was 10 percent 
higher than schedule, or if the time was 10 percent longer, the system 
would be canceled. That is not what I have proposed.
  To the contrary, what we are proposing is that, in order to get a 
bonus, an employee would have to perform 10 percent better than the 
goal set as the acquisition of the weapons system, or, on the other 
hand, if it is 10 percent more expensive, the schedule is 10 percent 
behind, then the employee can be penalized. But we would only revoke 
the system if it were 50 percent off course, and hopefully those 
opportunities would not present themselves too often.
  But again, let me spell out what we are proposing in this amendment. 
Our amendment expresses the sense of the Senate to reduce the number of 
Governmentwide, full-time equivalent positions over the next 7 years. 
And it provides for a reduction of 200,000 positions by 2002 in 
addition to the already enacted reduction of 272,900 FTE's by 1999 in 
the 1994 Federal Work Force Restructuring Act.
  Not more than 50,000 of the reductions may be within the Department 
of Defense. As I have already indicated, of the reductions that have 
already been made by this administration, the vast majority have 
already been in the Defense Department. And our program is consistent 
with the Domenici budget to streamline and eliminate several Government 
functions and programs.
  It is also consistent with the Roth-Kasich Defense Department 
acquisition reform bill to reduce the number of acquisition personnel. 
This reform bill would produce savings of 42,000 in FTE's with 
Department of Defense. Current FTE reductions to comply with the 1994 
Federal Work Force Reduction Act of 272,900 are proceeding as planned.
  And it has been further estimated by OMB that the total civilian work 
force will be approximately 25,000 below the existing FTE cap for 1995 
and 1996. Current projections show that 208,000 of the mandated 272,000 
FTE reductions will be within the Department of Defense, and this 
amendment will help to achieve the originally intended balance to 
further downsize the non-defense-related agencies as well.
  So in conclusion, just let me point out, Mr. President, that what we 
are proposing is based upon the Domenici budget. We are eliminating 150 
different programs and activities. We are going to be reducing the size 
of departments, if not the department itself, and the number of 
positions that we are eliminating reflect those changes.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Who yields time?
  Mr. GLENN. How much time is remaining, Mr. President?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Ohio has 6 minutes 27 
seconds, the Senator from Delaware has 12 minutes 7 seconds.
  Mr. ROTH. Mr. President, I yield 5 minutes to the distinguished 
Senator from South Dakota.
  Mr. PRESSLER. Mr. President, I rise in support of the Domenici 
budget. As I have said on the Senate floor before, I strongly believe 
that this represents a solid blueprint that finally will lead this 
government to a balanced budget.
  It has been a very strange sequence of events here in the Senate when 
we [[Page S7111]] saw the entire Senate reject the President's budget. 
I would certainly welcome a debate on the President's budget, but the 
members of his own party voted his budget down. Thus, the only budget 
that is before us is the Domenici budget.
  Overall, this budget is a solid, responsible plan, and takes an 
across-the-board approach to achieve balance. Without this kind of bold 
plan, we will be facing bankruptcy, both in terms of the Federal 
deficit and in terms of Medicare. The liberals may be criticizing this 
budget, but where is their budget?
  Insofar as agriculture is concerned, I think many of us have said 
that we will take an across-the-board approach, and I think this budget 
does that. There will be efforts, and perhaps I will join them, to make 
some minor changes in the Domenici budget, but overall it represents a 
path or a guidepost to a balanced budget.
  Mr. President, recently our dollar has been doing very poorly. We 
have an unstable dollar. It is because of our huge Federal deficit. We 
have reports that Medicare will go bankrupt by the year 2002. I would 
rather give senior citizens a stable, sound dollar and a secure 
Medicare than to continue going on year after year without taking some 
action. It is time that we take sound action in this Chamber, and this 
represents that opportunity.
  So, Mr. President, I commend Senator Domenici and the Budget 
Committee for their leadership and its hard work. I know there may be 
some changes in that document this week. But I would say to the 
liberals who are criticizing it to bring forward a complete budget of 
their own. Indeed, the Democrats on the other side of the aisle voted 
down the President's budget entirely. Where is their plan?
  The Senate Republicans have a plan. It is a solid plan for the 
American people. I believe that we are on the right path.
  I thank the Chair, and I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Who yields time? If no one yields time, it 
will be deducted equally from each side.
  Mr. ROTH. Mr. President, I yield such time as I have remaining to the 
distinguished Senator from Wyoming.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Wyoming.
  Mr. THOMAS. Mr. President, it has been an interesting experience 
today to listen to the debate about balancing the budget. It is a 
little bit surprising, as a matter of fact, I suppose, that there is a 
great deal of debate about balancing the budget. It is legitimate to 
have differences of view as to exactly how that is done, but the fact 
is that we have to do something to be fiscally and financially 
responsible.
  I am encouraged, frankly, by the chance to do something. For the 
first time in three decades we have a chance to balance the budget. And 
I suppose, when we think about that, my goodness, that is 
irresponsible. How can that be? But it is a fact. We have gone all this 
time with no balanced budget.
  So I am encouraged by the opportunity. I am encouraged by the fact 
that voters said to us clearly a few months ago that Government is too 
big and it costs too much and it is time you do something about that. 
And I think a measure of good Government is the responsiveness we have 
to doing something about it.
  So I am encouraged by the fact that we have this opportunity. I know 
there are differences. There are some here who really believe that 
balancing the budget is not important, that it is just a matter of 
dollars, it does not really matter.
  Let me suggest to you that I think it is terribly important for some 
very concrete reasons, such as the fact that it takes money out of the 
economy to finance this deficit, maybe more to the point that the 
interest on the debt will soon be the largest single line item in the 
budget, larger than the total budget was just a couple of decades ago. 
It is important.
  There are those that believe that more spending through the 
Government is a better way to do it; that, in fact, Government spends 
money better than you and I do in our families. That is a legitimate 
view, I suppose.
  There are those who think we are better off with more Government and 
more spending. I do not happen to agree with that, nor do most of us on 
this side agree with that. We believe that we have to balance the 
budget, that it is the responsible thing to do, and we have an 
opportunity to do it.
  I hear everybody who stands up starts out by saying, ``We have to 
balance the budget. I know we are going to balance the budget, I want 
to balance the budget,'' and then goes on to point out the reasons why 
it cannot be done.
  We heard the same thing about the balanced budget amendment. ``Well, 
I wanted to balance the budget but we do not need to do this, we can do 
it by just making the hard decisions.'' Well, now is the time to make 
some hard decisions. What we have is each time we come up with another 
amendment, we hear arguments that you cannot do it. It is time to make 
the tough decisions.
  I suspect this is the kind of conversation that has gone on for 
decades here, and that is why we have not done it, and that has been 
the history of what we have to do. We clearly have to do something 
about Medicare. It is not an option unless you simply do not want to 
have a program to provide health care for the elderly. Do nothing, as 
is the proposal from that side, and the program goes into reserves in 2 
years, goes broke in 7 years, no question about that.
  Or, in fact, we can take the approach that has been taken and say, 
``Let's raise taxes.'' In order to balance the budget without doing 
something about spending, we would have to raise taxes by $950 billion 
in 7 years. How is that as an option? I do not think many people would 
choose it. And yet we cannot seem to say, ``Yes, we can make cuts, not 
draconian cuts but to reduce the spending from 5 percent a year to 3.'' 
That is hardly asking too much, and voters are asking that of us.
  So, Mr. President, it is interesting as we go forward that we always 
hear, ``Well, we have to balance the budget, I want to balance the 
budget, but we cannot do that to balance the budget, we can't do this 
to balance the budget.'' What can we do to balance the budget? There is 
no plan on that side. The President has no plan.
  So despite that, Mr. President, I am very optimistic that we will for 
the first time in my legislative experience, for the first time I guess 
in my political experience, have a genuine, legitimate, bona fide 
effort to balance the budget to cause the Government to be a little 
smaller, a little less expensive.
  Give us the opportunity to choose some options, to look at programs 
and make sure that they are efficient and effective and, in fact, that 
they are legitimate, that they need to be done, and we can do that. We 
can do that. No one argues with that concept. Unfortunately, it does 
not happen. We find a million excuses why we cannot do that, why we 
cannot cut it here, why we cannot slow growth. Why we really should not 
take a look at why the program cannot be changed, to be more efficient, 
the delivery of programs cannot be done more efficiently.
  I do go away from the last 3 or 4 days of this debate, again 
optimistic that we will do something that has not been done for a very 
long time, and that is lay before the American people a plan to balance 
the budget in 7 years, and we can do it.
  The committee has laid out a plan. Of course, it is not perfect. Does 
it take some pain? Of course it takes some pain. It always takes some 
pain to recoup when you find yourself in this kind of a financial 
problem--$5 trillion in debt, taxes at the rate of about $21,000 per 
household, to pay the interest on the debt costs $5,000 for each 
household each year.
  That is where we are, Mr. President. So we do not really have a 
choice as to whether we do something. The fact is we need to do it. We 
have to do it. We can have legitimate debate about options but not a 
legitimate debate about just saying, ``No, no, can't do it,'' and that 
is what we hear.
  Mr. President, I thank you for the time. I yield the floor.
  Mr. SARBANES. Will the Senator yield me 2 minutes?
  Mr. GLENN. I yield 2 minutes to the Senator from Maryland.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Maryland.
  Mr. SARBANES. Mr. President, because there have been general 
statements about the budget tonight in addition to the statement about 
the [[Page S7112]] amendment that is pending before us, I just want to 
underscore this point. The budget resolution that is before us takes 
$175 billion, which the CBO has put out there as a pot to be available 
at the end, and commits it for tax cuts.
  Now the amendments that have been offered today on Medicare and on 
education have said rather than committing that money to tax cuts, you 
should make a less draconian cut in Medicare and education. You should 
not come down with such heavy force on our senior citizens or on our 
young people seeking an education, and that, as a matter of national 
priorities, we should place ahead of a tax cut, which in the House-
passed legislation is overwhelmingly committed to the very wealthy, the 
people at the very top of the income scale, overwhelmingly so 
committed.
  These amendments, in effect, are saying that instead of a tax cut 
that has that impact, we should make less draconian cuts in Medicare 
and in education. As a matter of national priorities, educating the 
next generation and preparing them for the 21st century and assuring 
that our young people's capacities are developed to the fullest extent 
possible should put that ahead of taking this pot of money and 
committing it to tax cuts.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator's 2 minutes has expired.
  Mr. GLENN. I yield him another 2 minutes.
  Mr. SARBANES. So there is a very important question of priorities 
that is at issue here, and the same is true with respect to each of the 
measures being taken in order to bring about this drastic reduction.
  It is one thing to deal with a matter in a reasonable way, it is 
another thing to deal with it in an extreme way. I submit that much of 
what is in the budget resolution is extreme, and it is particularly 
extreme when it is seen that the purpose of it is to create this pot of 
money to be committed to tax cuts which, as I said, in the House-passed 
bill overwhelmingly committed to the people at the upper end of the 
income scale. In order to achieve this, our senior citizens receiving 
Medicare are being subjected to incredible cuts, and our young people 
seeking an education are going to find that their opportunities are 
being frustrated and may be perhaps even denied to them.
  So that is an issue that is put and it is put very clearly by the 
resolution that is before us and by the amendments which have been 
proposed to the resolution. I have supported those amendments because I 
think they represent a better balance in terms of what our national 
priorities are.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The time yielded to the Senator has now 
expired.
  Mr. SARBANES. I thank the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Ohio has 51 seconds and the 
Senator from Delaware 43 seconds.
  Mr. GLENN. I reserve the remainder of my time.
  Mr. President, what is the time situation?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Delaware has 33 seconds. The 
Senator from Ohio has 41 seconds.
  Mr. GLENN. I yield the remainder of my time.
  Mr. DOLE. I yield back the remainder of our time.
  Mr. GLENN. I ask for the yeas and nays.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?
  There is a sufficient second.
  The yeas and nays were ordered.
  Mr. DOLE. Mr. President, I am waiting for the distinguished 
Democratic leader. Let me indicate while he is on his way to the floor 
that I want very much to accommodate the Democrats tomorrow evening. 
But we will complete at least 10 hours on the resolution tomorrow. We 
are going to have two or three votes. We tried to get credit for that. 
We cannot get that. So I just suggest that we will have to stay here 
beyond 6:30, probably, to get the 10 hours--maybe 7 o'clock. We will 
try to accommodate our colleagues in every way possible.
  As I understand, we will be working through the policy lunch period 
tomorrow, and so if there are no amendments, I assume there will be a 
quorum call so the clock will run against the resolution.
  Mr. President, in an effort to complete action on this resolution by 
early Wednesday afternoon, I yield back 3 hours and 51 minutes of the 
majority side time for debate.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority leader has that right.
  Mr. DOLE. Mr. President, as I understand it, if I can inquire of the 
chair, does this not mean there are 14 hours for total debate 
remaining?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator is correct.
  Mr. LAUTENBERG. Mr. President, I rise in strong support of the 
pending amendment.
  This amendment again poses the central question in this budget 
debate: Whose side are you on?
  In this case, the issue is whether the Senate will side with 
ordinary, middle-class families who are trying to ensure a decent 
education for their kids. Or whether we will again side with the 
wealthy, by preserving the slush fund that will be used to provide them 
with lavish tax breaks.
  I have heard Senators from the other side of the aisle say that this 
budget is for our children and grandchildren. They say it is for their 
future.
  Yet if Republicans really are concerned about our children, why are 
they proposing the biggest cut in education in the history of the 
United States? Let me repeat: This budget contains the largest cut in 
education in the history of this country.
  Is that their idea of helping our children?
  This budget resolution cuts education for young people from pre-
school to graduate school. These cuts will affect all students. From 3 
year olds who are learning fingerpainting, to graduate students 
studying business administration. No young person will be spared.
  The Republican budget cuts the Federal investment in education by 33 
percent by the year 2002. This figure comes from CBO, not from the 
Democrats on the Budget Committee.
  Mr. President, let me tell you the impact that this will have on our 
young people. Let us go chronologically.
  First, let us start with the preschoolers. The discretionary cuts in 
this budget mean that 350,000 to 550,000 preschoolers will not be able 
to get into a Head Start Program.
  Second, let us take a look at what will happen to those children from 
kindergarten through 12th grade. The Republican budget will: Cut funds 
for math and reading for 2 million children. It will cut $1 billion for 
the Safe and Drug Free Schools Programs. It will cut $5 billion for 
special education for almost 6 million children with disabilities. It 
will cut assistance for school to work programs that help students who 
don't go to college to acquire skills and obtain meaningful employment.
  Regrettably, the education cuts do not end at the 12th grade. These 
cuts will also hurt those young people who want to get a college 
education.
  The Republican budget also makes deep cuts in the student loan 
programs and Pell grants. These programs help young people attend the 
college of their choice. They help them obtain skills to get a foothold 
in our economy. They help them live out the American dream, just like 
the GI bill did for me and other Members of this body.
  The student loan program is not a welfare program for poor children. 
It is for all low and middle income Americans. In fact, 50 percent of 
all college students receive Federal financial assistance.
  Middle class families need this assistance because college tuition 
has gone through the roof. Tuition, room and board at a private college 
now costs approximately $25,000 per year. If you think I am kidding, 
let me give you some examples of these costs. These include tuition, 
room and board: Brown University--$26,000; Dartmouth College--$24,000; 
Georgetown--$24,500; Harvard--$25,000; Yale--$25,000.
  Mr. President, if you think you can avoid paying such costs by 
sending your child to a quality State university--think again. Tuition, 
room and board for non-residents at many State schools also are 
staggering. Consider two examples: University of Michigan--$16,000; 
University of California Berkeley--$20,000.
  It is very difficult for American families to afford this type of 
tuition without borrowing money. The proposed Republican deferral of 
interest will cost these students and their families another $3,000 to 
$5,000 on top of the thousands of dollars they now 
spend. [[Page S7113]] 
  Members of the other side of the aisle have talked a lot about 
balancing the budget so that the young people of this country will not 
be burdened by the national debt. Well, if we pass this Republican 
budget they will be saddled with more debt. They will be punished for 
trying to get ahead. Punished for getting a college education. This is 
simply wrong.
  I urge the Senate to adopt this amendment. Stop the tax cuts for the 
rich and restore these harmful cuts in education.
                        opposing education cuts

  Mr. AKAKA. Mr. President, I rise today to support the Democratic 
response for funding education and to speak in opposition to the 
education cuts that are assumed in the Republican budget plan. The 
resolution reported by the Budget Committee calls for $97 billion in 
education cutbacks over 7 years, a 33-percent reduction from current 
service levels.
  This adverse disregard for our most important long-term asset--the 
knowledge and skills of our emerging and future workforce--illustrates 
the failure of the Republican agenda.
  It reveals that Republicans are willing to destroy the single most 
important factor that will determine the success of our Nation's future 
economic viability--educational opportunity.
  My colleagues on the other side of the aisle claim that their package 
of spending cuts and tax changes is proof that they are serious about 
eliminating the deficit. I welcome this expression of fiscal 
responsibility, if it is genuine; I only wish we heard such oratory in 
the Reagan-Bush years, when supplyside, trickle-down policies created 
the fiscal debt we find ourselves in today.
  But the fact that my colleagues are pondering a massive tax cut for 
the wealthy at the same time they are proposing massive reductions in 
social expenditures reveals more about the majority's priorities than 
their newfound demands for fiscal responsibility.
  Even if we accept the claim that their priority is not to benefit the 
rich but to eliminate the deficit, it is obvious that their strategy is 
fatally flawed. For the proposed education cuts will profoundly affect 
our future economic viability and our ability to compete 
internationally. Reducing investment in education, which is already 
low, will inevitably limit economic growth and undermine the standard 
of living of middle-class Americans in the twenty-first century. And it 
will close the window of opportunity for the economically disadvantaged 
among us who are pursuing the American dream.
  Mr. President, reducing our commitment to an educated, skilled 
workforce in the name of deficit reduction is short-sighted and 
terribly misguided. As this country struggles to find its way in a 
global marketplace dominated by cheap foreign labor and high 
technology, withdrawing our investment in education is economic 
suicide.
  This budget proves that Republicans are more committed to protecting 
the interests of the haves than in accommodating the aspirations of the 
vast majority of Americans who want only to improve the quality of 
their lives through education.
  Mr. President, nowhere does the impact of the proposed cuts in 
education fall more heavily than on two areas, Head Start and Student 
Loans.
                          impact on head start

  The resolution reported by the Budget Committee proposes cutting Head 
Start by $600 million in 1996 and $3 billion over the next 7 years. 
This means that as many as 100,000 children would be denied the 
opportunity to utilize the program and to be appropriately prepared for 
school.
  Mr. President, it has been fashionable of late to criticize many of 
the Great Society Programs that were established in the 1960's; some of 
this criticism is justified. But at least one program, Project Head 
Start, has consistently received praise for its work. Since its 
inception in 1965, the program has helped 14 million underprivileged 
children prepare for school. And this year, Head Start will serve 
approximately 740,000 kids, roughly a third of all poor children aged 3 
to 4.
  Why is this program so important? Well, statistics demonstrate that 
children who enter the program score higher than comparable non-Head 
Start kids in pre-school achievement tests for cognitive abilities; 
they perform equal to or better than their peers when they enter 
regular school, and, they experience fewer grade retention and special 
class placements.
  Reports also indicate that Head Start has had a positive impact on 
children's motivation, self-esteem, socialization, and social maturity. 
In addition, the studies show that participation in the program 
resulted in lower absenteeism and better health. Head Start has even 
had a positive impact on the attitudes of parents toward their children 
and an improvement in their employment and education status.
  But statistics and reports aside, I think that all of us who are 
parents understand from personal experience why the Head Start concept 
works. It is simply this: During the preschool years, children undergo 
an accelerated phase of learning which is never again duplicated.
  The rapidity of a child's development is truly amazing. Seemingly, in 
the blink of an eye, kids are running when they were once crawling, 
feeding themselves when they were once fed, arguing when they were once 
crying. They learn to drink milk from a glass rather than a bottle; 
they begin to use spoons and forks instead of their hands to eat. They 
learn the alphabet and how to brush their teeth. They learn what a joke 
is and how to turn on the TV. If they live in a multilingual household, 
they become fluent in several different languages. They acquire the 
rudiments of moral and social behavior. In short, well before they 
enter school, children have acquired the basic motor skills as well as 
the mental, social, and emotional attributes that they will build on in 
later years.
  However, it is clear that the economic and social circumstances of a 
child's family have an impact on this crucial, peak learning period. If 
a child is undernourished, if he does not receive proper health care 
such as immunization from childhood diseases or treatment for a 
disability, if he is not exposed to books or proper educational 
materials, if he lacks parental attention or his mother or father are 
abusive or otherwise lack parenting skills--all of these factors will
 probably have an adverse effect on his ability to socialize and 
acquire appropriate knowledge and skills. And once a child has been 
handicapped in this way, it will be difficult if not impossible for him 
to catch up with his peers.

  Head Start's comprehensive approach to child development, which 
involves education, physical and mental healthcare, nutrition, parental 
involvement, and social services, has proven to be an effective method 
of breaking the cycle of poverty that has helped millions of 
disadvantaged children and has given them the opportunity to achieve 
their full potential, which in turn has had a salutary effect on our 
economic well-being.
  Until this year, Republicans appeared to embrace the goals and 
philosophy of Head Start, working side by side with Democrats to 
support the program. Indeed, under President Bush, the program received 
its single largest funding increase. And only last year, Head Start was 
reauthorized on a broad bipartisan basis. Yet we are now considering a 
budget plan that proposes to undermine much of the work of the last 30 
years, a plan that balances tax cuts for the wealthy against the future 
of disadvantaged children, and finds the children wanting.
  How is it, Mr. President, that our colleagues on the other side of 
the aisle can tell us with straight faces that this budget plan is good 
for the country? How can it be good for America to take away a resource 
that has the potential to help a hundred thousand poor children grow up 
to be productive, educated citizens? This is a question that 
Republicans have yet to answer.


                       reductions in student aid

  Mr. President, on the other end of the educational spectrum, the 
budget measure calls for reductions of as much as $20 billion in higher 
education aid over the next 7 years. Of this amount, $14.5 billion in 
cuts would be in Student Loan Program cutbacks alone, mostly in the 
form of eliminating the in-school interest exemption for 4.5 million 
student who receive Stafford loans. I have been told that this 
represents the single largest reduction in student financial aid in 
history. [[Page S7114]] 
  Again, I believe this is a penny-wise, pound-foolish approach that 
will save us money in the short term but will cause us grief in the 
long run. Unlike other education programs which are largely financed by 
the States, postsecondary student aid programs account for 75 percent 
of all available student aid, $31.4 billion of a total of $42 billion 
during fiscal year 1994. Thus, education cuts of the magnitude 
contemplated by the pending measure would have a disproportionate 
impact on these programs.
  Mr. President, if the in-school interest exemption is eliminated, the 
individual indebtedness of Stafford loan recipients could rise to more 
than $3,000 for undergraduates and thousands of dollars more for those 
who pursue advanced degrees. In fact, it could increase the total cost 
of college for students and their families by 20 to 50 percent, 
depending on the amount borrowed and the length of time a student is in 
school.
  According to the National Association of Independent
   Colleges and Universities, this would mean an additional debt burden 
of $12 million over 5 years for the 4,900 Stafford loan borrowers in my 
own State of Hawaii. Here, in the District of Columbia, the debt would 
increase by $186 million. And, in California, the total 5-year debt 
incurred by students would rise by more than a billion dollars.

  Mr. President, this is an outrage. Student aid now will be less 
affordable to lower- or middle-income students, especially when one 
considers the proposed reductions in the constellation of other student 
aid programs, including campus-based aid and Pell grants.
  If this budget is implemented, students of modest means may have to 
forgo a college education; others who are fortunate enough to achieve 
their baccalaureates may have to forgo their dreams of pursuing 
graduate study. And those students who exit college in the future will 
be saddled with huge debt burdens at the time when they are least 
likely to be able to afford payments.
  All of this means that our future workforce is likely to be less 
educated, less productive, and less well off. This in turn will reduce 
the Nation's taxbase, placing further upward pressure on the deficit, 
exactly the opposite effect from the stated purpose of this budget 
plan.


                               conclusion

  Mr. President, I have touched on only two areas--Head Start and 
student loans--that will be impacted by the proposed budget plan. But, 
as I have indicated, the GOP budget calls for nearly $100 million in 
total education cuts by the year 2002. This includes cuts in many other 
important programs, such as GOALS 2000, Title I, Safe and Drug-Free 
Schools, Special Education, and School-to-Work initiatives.
  This wholesale disinvestment in our most important resource, our 
young people, is not merely shortsighted, it is blind. Blind to the 
imperatives of the new global marketplace, blind to the effect that 
cuts in education will have on our ability to prosper in an 
increasingly complex world, and blind to the effect it will have on our 
deficit.
  But competitiveness, economic viability, and individual opportunity 
will not be the only victims of the proposed cutbacks in education. Our 
sense of civil community, of history, of tolerance, the ability to 
conduct informed, rational discourse--these are also the potential 
victims of this harsh and ill-conceived budget plan. For education is 
not just about making enough to feed the kids or to buy a new car or to 
own a home--it is also about preparing ourselves to carry out the 
multiple responsibilities of citizenship in the world's oldest and 
greatest republic.
  Mr. President, no sane nation embraces ignorance. Yet, this is what 
the proposed resolution would have us do. I urge my colleagues to 
reject this war on knowledge by opposing the cuts in education 
contained in this measure that threaten our future.
  Mr. DODD. Mr. President, I rise in strong support of this amendment 
by my colleagues, Senators Harkin and Hollings, to restore funding for 
education in this budget. This amendment would restore $40 billion to 
our most critical national investment.
  As a percentage of overall spending, our Federal commitment to 
education programs has fallen significantly over the last two decades. 
Although recently these numbers have climbed thanks to the leadership 
of the Clinton administration, this budget resolution would scale back 
those modest improvements and put overall spending in this vital sector 
into a tail spin.


                   growing challenges in our schools

  Even as our Federal commitment declines, the challenges to our 
schools have grown. Children walking through our school doors today are 
quite different from those of two decades ago--fewer and fewer come 
from two-parent homes, a growing number are poor and many come from 
communities plagued with violence and crime. Our classrooms are also 
seeing the first generation of crack babies, and far too many of our 
children continue to enter school unprepared to learn.
  These social changes come on top of wrenching economic 
transformations. There was a time when blue-collar workers formed the 
bedrock of the middle class. High-wage jobs for people without years of 
advanced education were plentiful, and a high school education was a 
passport to a healthy future. That time is gone.
  In less than one generation, the payoff for those with education and 
skills has risen substantially, and the penalty for those lacking a 
high school or college education has become more severe. These trends 
show no sign of abating. The wage gap between college graduates and 
high school graduates doubled during the 1980's. College graduates used 
to earn about 30 percent more than high school graduates--they now earn 
more than 60 percent more. Every year of postsecondary education or 
training boosts earning power by 6 to 12 percent.
  But education does much more for our economy than increase individual 
earnings. It is also the fuel that drives the engine of productivity. A 
recent study by the Census Bureau and the University of Pennsylvania 
commissioned by the Bush administration demonstrated that education 
demonstrably increases productivity in the workplace. In fact, 
increases in educational attainment produce twice the gain in workplace 
efficiency as similar increases in plant and equipment.
  Education is clearly the best investment we can make in our economy. 
Our future strength will be derived from education for all, not tax 
cuts to the most affluent. That is the alternative we offer in this 
amendment.


                         the budget resolution

  This budget resolution takes a different course: It would abandon our 
schools and our children. In the name of eliminating the deficit, this 
budget proposal would create an education deficit far more costly in 
the long run.
  In real terms, the resolution cuts education by an average of 25 
percent over 7 years. Because the cuts gets progressively larger in the 
out years, in 2002, we will have fully a third less money to spend on 
education than we will spend this year.


                            higher education

  For millions of families, higher education has been the road to a 
better future for their children. Federal aid has been the bridge that 
extended this road across the high-priced gulf between families and 
college. This budget resolution would wash out this bridge for millions 
of American families. It would cut college loans, freeze Pell grants, 
cut college work study, eliminate other campus-based aid, and broadly 
increase student debt.
  This budget resolution would increase student loan costs by $14 
billion over 7 years. Four million needy students a year could lost 
this in-school interest assistance they currently receive on their 
student loans, raising their personal debt from 20 to 50 percent. This 
would mean that a student who completes a master's degree and borrows 
the maximum of $34,125--not uncommon with annual college costs rising 
above $25,000 at many schools--would end up paying an extra $13,320 
over the life of his or her loan. This is not debt reduction. It is 
debt shifting.
  The budget resolution promises to freeze Pell spending--as if that is 
protection. Because of the annual increase in eligible programs and 
losses to inflation, however, even at a freeze Pell grants would lose 
40 percent of their purchasing power by 2002. And there are no 
guarantees that Pell would not be cut further--as we know, 
appropriators are in no way bound by the Budget Committee chairman's 
promises.
[[Page S7115]]

                   elementary and secondary education

  The front lines of our educational system--our public schools--are 
also under attack. The severe reductions proposed in this budget would 
have a real impact on whether or not students have such basic 
educational supports as smaller class sizes, safe and drug-free 
schools, more teachers for reading and math, access to computers, and 
other services that make the difference for millions of young students.
  The cuts may seem abstract, but the impact will be real--94 percent 
of school districts in America would lose over $1 billion that they use 
to keep students safe and drug-free. With the elimination of the 
school-to-work program and vocational education, 12 million students 
would see their opportunities to learn job skills curtailed. States and 
localities could see losses of $5 billion in Federal assistance for the 
5.5 million special education students if the chairman's promised 
freeze does not hold in the Appropriations Committee. Title I for 
disadvantaged students also is at risk of cuts that would leave 2 
million needy children without these services.


                               head start

  Head Start is on the line as well. It too is promised a freeze--
although just last year, 98 colleagues joined me in passing legislation 
that promised full-funding for this model Federal program. Does that 
promise mean anything now? Let's assume that this year's promise of a 
freeze in Head Start will hold--even though it isn't binding on 
appropriators. Even at a freeze, 350,000 fewer children would receive 
Head Start by the year 2002. And if the promised freeze doesn't hold, 
over half a million children would be out of this program.
  Our amendment today offers us the chance to make a different choice 
in addressing the education deficit as well as our Federal deficit. Our 
amendment does not increase the fiscal deficit; it does not challenge 
the goal of a balanced budget by 2002. It simply puts our investment in 
education before tax cuts for the well off.
  It ensures that our children enjoy the benefit of a balanced budget 
without diminishing their educational opportunities for diminishing the 
very foundation of our economy--education itself.


                        the anxious middle class

  This is not an academic debate: It is central to the future of this 
country. In the past two decades, our economy and our work force have 
experienced tremendous economic and structural changes. Growing 
international economic competition and rapid advances in technology 
have created a widening gulf between those at each end of the income 
scale. Income inequality is accelerating, and it is doing so faster in 
the United States than anywhere else in the world.
  In 1976, 1 percent of the population owned 19 percent of America's 
wealth. Today, 1 percent of the population owns 40 percent of our 
Nation's wealth. In Britain, in contrast, the wealthiest 1 percent owns 
18 percent of its country's wealth. Between 1979 and 1993, incomes of 
the least affluent three-fifths of the Nation's families dropped by 3 
to 17 percent.
  There are no easy answers to these problems, but I know that slashing 
funding for education is not one of them. We must come together as a 
nation to invest in our children, not turn our backs on them. I urge my 
colleagues to support the Harkin-Hollings amendment.
  There are no easy answers to these problems, but I know that slashing 
funding for education is not one of them. We must come together as a 
nation in invest in our children, not turn our backs on them. I urge my 
colleagues to support the Harkin-Hollings amendment.
  Mr. BRYAN. Mr. President, I rise today in support of the Harkin-
Hollings Democratic Leadership's amendment to restore $40 billion in 
funding to the Federal student financial assistance program, and 
education programs, such as Head Start, to be paid for out of proposed 
tax cuts for the wealthy.
  Cutting the student financial assistance program by $14 billion over 
the next 7 years, and eliminating the in-school interest subsidy for 
graduate and professional students is truly beyond my understanding.
  Over and over again Senators come to this floor and talk about how 
the most important resource we have in our country is our children. 
Over and over again Senators lament that our country's children are 
behind the rest of the industrial world in educational achievement, and 
that we must focus on educational opportunities to keep this country 
competitive.
  And yet, we are offered a budget resolution that would cut back 
substantially on student financial assistance. I do not understand.
  This Budget proposal would freeze funding of Pell Grants. These are 
needs-based financial assistance grants. These are the grants that help 
ensure approximately 4 million low and middle income students have the 
opportunity to go to college or receive vocational training. We have 
not yet been able to provide funds for all of the students who qualify 
for these grants. Still this budget proposal would freeze such grant 
funding.
  What should I say to the low or middle income mother and father with 
a child who wants to go to college? No Pell Grant for your child. We 
had to freeze those funds to pay for a tax cut to benefit some of the 
most affluent in our country--those making up to $200,000. Do we really 
want to say the need for the affluent to get a tax cut is greater than 
a low or middle income child's need to go to college? I can hardly 
believe such a message.
  I know firsthand how important educational opportunity is for helping 
assure employment achievement. I have three grown children, all of whom 
received bachelor degrees. I am particularly proud each has also gone 
on to earn graduate degrees in medicine, law and education. Thankfully 
all three of my children have also been able to find work in their 
chosen fields.
  But not all children qualified to further their education get to do 
so, simply due to the lack of money. And yet this budget proposal would 
end the AmeriCorp program. The President's program allows people the 
option of working in their communities to earn financial credits to go 
to college or to pay off school loans already incurred. And why would 
we want to eliminate that option for hardworking and dedicated students 
to earn their way into college or out of their school debts, so those 
making $200,000 can receive a tax cut?
  And not only does the budget proposal cut and freeze student 
financial assistance, it would force graduate and professional students 
to pay interest that accrues on their student loans while they are 
still in school. Under current law, the Federal Government pays the 
interest on student loans while the students are in college. During a 
recent conversation, a Nevada lawyer told me the recent law school 
graduates he has hired quite commonly carry a law school loan debt of 
$1,000 per month. This frequently is being paid over a 10-year period. 
And yet this Budget would require interest accrual while the student is 
still in school. Students could face increases in their loan debt of 20 
percent to 50 percent, depending on how much was borrowed. Why would 
anyone want to pay for a tax cut for the affluent by requiring young 
people to go further into debt--while they are still in school--by 
paying interest on their school loans?
  Additionally, this budget proposal would freeze funding for Head 
Start and special education programs. Like Pell Grants, we have not yet 
been able to provide funds to cover all of the children eligible for 
Head Start--those low income children most at educational risk. And 
once children start school, this budget would freeze the funding for 
their special education needs. Again--why would we want to pay for a 
tax cut for the affluent by cutting off funds to the most vulnerable 
young children in our country who are just starting to begin their 
education? Who needs the leg up here--the person making $200,000 or the 
low-income child needing a lunch and a chance to learn their colors and 
numbers before starting first grade?
  I have a long record reaching back to the beginning of my political 
career in the 1960s of supporting balancing the Federal budget. As a 
U.S. Senator, I have voted twice for such legislation. There are many 
cuts I will support, some will be unpopular, some will take a hit on 
Nevada. But I also have a long record of supporting investing in our 
children and their education as a top priority for whatever funds we 
have. We cannot maintain a viable economy [[Page S7116]] at home, nor 
be a viable competitor abroad if our children are not educated.
  I have, and will continue to support efforts to try to balance the 
Federal budget by 2002--but through a fair budget proposal. When 
efforts to balance the budget rely on eliminating educational 
opportunities for our children, it is a most foolhardy way to 
accomplish.
  I urge my colleagues support the Harkin-Hollings amendment. We must 
continue to invest in our children to ensure they do not have the door 
to educational opportunity slammed in their faces.
  Mr. ROCKEFELLER. Mr. President, education is fundamental to our 
country's future. If we are serious about strengthening our country and 
staying competitive in a fierce global marketplace, America must 
educate its children and offer continuous education to working adults.
  Previously, we might have differed on some details and policies, but 
a tradition of bipartisanship support for basic education programs was 
something Americans could count on--from Head Start to Chapter 1 help 
for elementary schools to student loans for college. Fairly recently, 
under the leadership of President Bush, along with the National 
Governors Association that included Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton, 
that bipartisan commitment to basic education goals was visible and 
real.
  I support those goals and am horrified to see a budget resolution 
before the Senate that makes basic education programs the victim of 
major cuts.
  For example, how can we meet our goal of having every child enter 
school ready to learn if Head Start is cut by $3 billion?
  How can we ensure that our schools are safe and students steer clear 
of drugs, if the Safe and Drug-Free Schools program is virtually 
eliminated by a $1 billion budget cut? I worked hard to establish this 
program in 1986 with Republicans. Since then, I have visited numerous 
West Virginia classrooms and watched police officers in the DARE 
Program, to cite one example, make a real difference with students.
  How can we expect students to enter the modern workplace with the 
skills they need if we cut Federal funding for educational technology? 
In today's Washington Post, there is an excellent story about children 
signing up for time to work on computers at the local public library. 
What will happen if we pave a new information superhighway, but we 
don't provide an on ramp or instructions for our schools and libraries?
  Again, I have visited West Virginia classrooms, libraries and 
community centers and sat with children as they show me what they can 
learn on the Internet. Connecting students to technology is vital.
  This resolution undercuts our national commitment to lifelong 
learning by cutting college assistance and increasing student loan 
interest.
  It undercuts the School-to-Work programs, just passed last year with 
bipartisan support. The School-to-Work initiative was endorsed by both 
business and labor unions. It is a partnership between the Departments 
of Education and Labor. It is where we should be investing our energy 
and efforts. With Secretary Bob Reich, I visited a West Virginia 
program and watched students get hand-on experience to prepare them for 
the challenges of work in today's world. But this budget resolution, 
instead, proposes a cut of $5.3 billion from this relevant, needed 
program.
  I am personally disappointed by the suggestion of eliminating the 
AmeriCorps program. National service is something that works, and has 
won the hearts, the minds, the support of Americans everywhere. It is 
today's symbol and substance that stand for responsibility and values 
like community. Just this past weekend in West Virginia, I was with 
AmeriCorps and VISTA workers and former VISTA volunteers at a special 
30th reunion event. The people in that room are committed to making a 
real difference for West Virginia, working in domestic violence 
shelters and providing primary health care through the Children's 
Health Van. This is important, meaningful work that kindles the kind of 
community spirit we need. I know, because it was VISTA that brought me 
to Emmons, West Virginia years ago. AmeriCorps has that same spirit, 
and deserves the same support.
  Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, there are many things I do not like about 
this Republican budget. But, one of the most outrageous parts of this 
proposal is the increased burden it would put on college students.
  Currently, students who take out loans to go to college do not have 
to pay interest on those loans while they are in school. The Federal 
Government pays it for them. This is known as the in-school interest 
subsidy. And, it has been a fundamental part of the student loan 
program since its inception 30 years ago. Without this protection--if 
the interest were to accumulate while an individual is in school--the 
cost would simply be prohibitive for many families.
  But, that is just what is about to happen. The Republican budget in 
the Senate would end the interest subsidy for graduate and professional 
students. That is bad enough. But the House-passed budget is even 
worse. it would end the interest subsidy for all students.
  This comes at a time when a higher education is increasingly 
important and at a time when the cost of that education is increasingly 
expensive. Studies show that a person with a college degree earns about 
$12,000 more each year than a person with only a high school degree. 
The unemployment rate for college graduates is 3 percent; for those 
with a high school diploma, it is 6 percent; and for those who are high 
school dropouts, the unemployment rate is 12 percent. And, yet, getting 
to college--opening up that door to economic opportunity--has become 
harder. During the 1980's, the cost of attending college rose 45 
percent, while disposable income rose only 15 percent.
  Mr. President, we are not talking about deadbeats. We are not talking 
about those who default on their loans. We are talking about middle 
class students from hard-working middle class families. The average 
annual family income for those students who borrow money to go to 
college is $35,000. These are middle class students who have to borrow 
money to get to college, who work hard to get ahead, who are playing by 
the rules and just want a fair shot. The Republicans are turning their 
backs on these young people by raising the costs of college loans.
  The fact of the matter is this is a tax increase on college students. 
Already, for too many college students, when they graduate, they are 
handed not only a diploma but also a big IOU. This Republican budget 
makes the IOU even bigger. For example, a medical student could see his 
monthly loan repayment increase by more than $200 per month. A typical 
graduate student could easily see his or her loan increase by $5000.
  Already, few young doctors who have to borrow money to attend medical 
school can afford to be primary care doctors in underserved rural and 
urban areas. Already, few young lawyers who have to borrow money to 
attend law school can afford to be public defenders. Already, it is 
hard for graduate students to pursue degrees in math and science--
something we need desperately in this country for the Twenty-First 
Century--because, unlike doctors and lawyers, they do not have very 
many high-paying job alternatives. And, already, there are thousands 
upon thousands of undergraduate students who want to be policemen and 
teachers--but cannot because their loan repayment is too high. By 
removing the in-school interest subsidy, the Republican budget would 
only make it worse.
  Frankly, we should be moving in the opposite direction--making 
college more affordable. Higher education is clearly an investment in 
our country's future, and it is without a doubt in the national 
interest. We should encourage parents to provide a college education to 
their children by changing the tax laws to make it easier for them. I 
am cosponsor of a bill to allow Americans who send their kids to 
college to deduct up to $10,000 of the cost of that education from 
their taxes. That is a real investment. That is a real tax cut. That is 
a real benefit to the Nation and to middle class families.
  I disagree with some of my Democratic colleagues who argue that we 
should not cut taxes. We should. But, we should not cut taxes as 
proposed by the House Republicans--where the cuts overwhelmingly 
benefit the wealthy. 
[[Page S7117]] We need and we can afford--in fact, I would argue that 
we cannot afford not to provide--a tax cut targeted to middle-class 
families for the cost of an education.
  This budget does not do that. It fails to provide relief for families 
who pay for their kids to go to college, and it punishes those who must 
borrow to go to college. The Republican budget, instead of making a 
college education more affordable, makes a college education less 
affordable.
  Mr. President, from the establishment of the land-grant university 
system in the late 1800's to the GI bill at the end of World War II to 
the creation of the Pell Grant and Guaranteed Student Loan programs in 
the 1960's, the Federal Government has been committed to seeing that 
young people desiring to go to college would not be turned away because 
of the cost. It was a national goal to see a college education within 
reach of every American.
  And, no matter who you talk to--black or white, rich or poor--every 
American family has the same goal: that their children will go to 
college. It was my dad's dream for his children, and it was my dream 
for my children. It is the dream of the richest businessperson and the 
poorest welfare mother. It is the dream of every American parent. We 
have not always reached the dream. But, we have always tried, and we 
have never turned our backs. We should not now. But, I am afraid that 
the Republicans are about to.
  Balancing the budget is important, and it is important for our 
children. But, balancing the budget for future generations will be 
counterproductive if in the process we slash the programs like 
education that are an investment in our future.


                          ____________________