[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 93 (Thursday, June 8, 1995)]
[House]
[Pages H5745-H5747]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


              THE PRESIDENT'S VETO ON THE RESCISSIONS BILL

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of May 
12, 1995, the gentleman from Florida [Mr. Scarborough] is recognized 
for 30 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
  Mr. SCARBOROUGH. Mr. Speaker, I could not help but notice that the 
President vetoed the rescissions bill, and our attempts to cut back 
spending on the Federal level, and to send money back home on education 
programs and on job training programs. The President vetoed the bill 
because he thought it cut too much. I have to tell you, I agree with 
the President that the bill was not perfect, but I do not think it was 
perfect for another reason. I do not think we went far enough.
  Let me explain, Mr. Speaker. When he talks about education dollars, 
when he talks about job training dollars, what he is actually talking 
about is spending money on the Department of Education bureaucracy in 
Washington, DC. We are not talking about spending money on children, we 
are not talking about spending money on raising teachers' salaries, we 
are not talking about spending money on hiring more teachers so we can 
lower the student-teacher ratio, so our students can learn more. We are 
talking about spending more money in Washington, DC, on an education 
bureaucracy that has, unfortunately, failed miserably over the past 15 
years.
  Mr. Speaker, I was named to head the task force to look into 
education reform. I believe today, more than at any other time in this 
country's history, we have to be bold and aggressive in reforming the 
educational system of this country, because if our children are going 
to be prepared for the 21st century, and if our children are going to 
be able to work in the 21st century workplace, they are going to have 
to do it by having the best education possible. With two young boys in 
public schools, I have as much at stake in this fight as anybody.
  Mr. Speaker, we have to start with basics. The bill that we are 
introducing is called the back-to-basics education reform bill. The 
basics that we begin with are these. First of all, parents and teachers 
and principals know how to teach our students and our children better 
than a bureaucrat in Washington, DC. That is not a foreign concept in 
this country's history, or in our educational history.
  The fact of the matter is that over 200 years ago we had Founding 
Fathers, who believed that education belonged in local communities; 
that we were to be a nation of communities, instead of a nation of 
bureaucrats and a nation of education bureaucracies.
  James Madison wrote, as he was helping to frame the Constitution, 
``We have staked the entire future of the American civilization not 
upon the power of government, but upon the capacity of each of us to 
govern ourselves, to control ourselves, and sustain ourselves according 
to the Ten Commandments of God.'' That was from James Madison, one of 
the 3 men that was most responsible for framing the Constitution.
  Of course, Thomas Jefferson wrote that ``The government that governs 
least governs best.'' As they were saying that, they were not saying 
that because they were antigovernment. Far from it. The men and women 
that helped found this great constitutional republic believed 
government could serve a useful purpose. In fact, they dedicated their 
entire lives to this government, put their lives on the line in a 
brutal war, where they could have been killed or where they could have 
been hung as traitors. They believed that the Federal Government had a 
role, but that role
 was in protecting the God-given rights of the men and women and the 
children of the country that they were serving.

  One of those rights, I have to believe, was the right to teach your 
children and to educate your children, instead of having bureaucrats in 
Washington, DC do it. Thomas Jefferson and James Madison believed that 
this country should be a great experiment; that we should have a 
country that was a nation of communities, and not a nation of 
bureaucrats and bureaucracies; that would have parents and individuals 
and families and communities making decisions on how to teach children, 
and what type of school programs needed to be implemented.
  Unfortunately, somewhere along the line we lost our way, because in 
the late seventies the great education bureaucracy experiment began. It 
began in 1980, as Jimmy Carter struck a deal with the NEA teacher's 
union to set up a national education bureaucracy. Since that time, we 
can see what has happened to education.
  Back when it started in 1980, we were spending $14 billion on 
education in this Federal bureaucracy. Since 1980, spending has gone 
from $14 billion in Washington, DC, to $33 billion. What have we gotten 
for our education revenue? The fact of the matter is that despite the 
fact we have gone from spending $14 billion on an education bureaucracy 
to $33 billion in 15 years, we have spent more money on the 
bureaucracy, but as you might guess, the results have not been 
positive. Test scores have gone down. Dropout rates have risen.
  Of course, as all of you know, violence in schools has risen. You go 
to inner-city schools, whether it is in the South Bronx or whether it 
is in South Central Los Angeles, or Gary, IN, or in parts of Miami or 
Tampa, or even in your hometown, you know and parents know and I know 
as a parent that our educational system in this country continues to 
decline.

                              {time}  1730

  That is because education dollars are not getting into the classroom. 
They are coming up to Washington, DC, to our Federal bureaucracy.
  Let me give you a perfect example of how this has happened. Do you 
know this year the Department of Education will be cutting $100 million 
from their budget to keep our schools safe? Think about that. They are 
cutting $100 million to keep the infrastructure in our schools safe 
across the country. But at the same time when they are saying we don't 
have the money to keep our school buildings safe for our children, they 
are spending $20 million to upgrade their own bureaucracy right down 
the street.
  Think about that. This is not robbing Peter to pay Paul. This is 
robbing our schools across the country, I suppose what they consider to 
be the flyover space between Washington, DC and Los Angeles. They are 
taking the money out of our schools so they can bring it up to 
Washington, DC, and upgrade their bureaucracy.
  Is that what education should be about? Is that what educational 
reform should be about? I don't think so, and I know that men and women 
across the
 country that have a little bit of common sense don't think so, either. 
We need to put our education dollars in our school system, but the fact 
of the matter is that by the time the money goes through the process, 
the education dollars don't get to the schools.

  Think about it. Where I come from--I am from northwest Florida, 
specifically I live in Pensacola, FL--when I have to pay a dollar for 
my taxes, that dollar goes from Pensacola, FL, to Atlanta, GA. That is 
our regional IRS center.
  So when it goes up to Atlanta, the IRS center up there, they 
obviously [[Page H5746]] have to take out their brokerage fee in 
Atlanta. Then it comes up to Washington, DC, goes to the IRS there, 
they take out their brokerage fee, so this education dollar is getting 
carved up a little bit around the edges.
  Then it goes to Treasury and they take out their brokerage fee. After 
that, of course, it goes over to the Department of Education and they 
take out their brokerage fee, so the education dollar is getting cut 
up.
  Does it go down to the schools now? No, it goes to our State capital. 
In Florida, that State capital is Tallahassee, so the dollar goes to 
Tallahassee. Of course they have to take out their brokerage fee, too. 
By the time it gets back to our community, that dollar is being carved 
up and cut up in such a way that you would not even recognize it.
  Some officials of the Department of Education claim that they only 
spend 2 percent on overhead. If you believe that, I have got some 
swampland to sell you in south Florida. We all know that is not the 
case. That dollar takes a very tortured route before it gets back to 
the school districts. We need to keep education dollars in the 
communities.
  This is not a budget-cutting exercise. It is about making sure that 
our children get the most bang for their educational buck. We are not 
going to do it as long as we keep throwing money at Washington and that 
money is not coming back home.
  Some people have suggested that this is some ideological battle, that 
Republicans, or conservatives, want to take power away from an 
educational bureaucracy for their own ideological purposes. The fact of 
the matter is, Republicans and Democrats alike, as well as liberals and 
conservatives, are slowly coming around to the realization that our 
teachers and our parents and our communities and our States can be 
trusted with the important role of educating children.
  Alice Rivlin, the President's OMB director, wrote a book back in 1992 
when she was at the Brookings Institute. Of course at that time she was 
not working for President Clinton, so she was allowed to think for 
herself. When she did, she wrote what I thought was a tour de force on 
educational reform and on reforming this Federal Government.
  Alice Rivlin talked about a productivity agenda where you had States 
experimenting in educational reform and in job training reform and in 
other areas. She talked about the States all competing against each 
other to see who could come up with the best idea for educational 
reform, instead of having Washington throw down all these dictates 
saying this is how you are going to teach your students.
  So we allow the States to compete, and the States that have the best 
educational system will obviously have the greatest economic 
development, and will have money coming into their States and will have 
students coming into their States. It is what I like to call 
legislative laboratories.
  Ask yourself this: Would you rather have Bill Clinton and an 
education bureaucracy in Washington tell us all how to teach our 
children, or would you rather have your State and your community 
competing with 50 other States to see who could do the job best?
  What they would do is create legislative laboratories that would 
experiment, and they could borrow from other States. If California was 
doing something Utah liked, Utah could borrow from there. If Florida 
was doing something that Georgia liked, Georgia could borrow from that, 
instead of having Washington, DC, and bureaucrats in Washington 
continue to labor under the extremely, extremely presumptive belief 
that they know how to teach our children better than we know how to 
teach our children. It is a false premise. I have got to tell you, I 
believe that it is a very, very dangerous premise.
  We have got again to spend our education dollars on teachers' 
salaries, on computers, on improving the teacher-student ratio. Let me 
tell you, I had an education townhall meeting in my district. I was 
absolutely stunned to find out that a special education teacher had 30 
students in her class. Let me tell you something. There is no way a 
teacher teaching special education is going to be able to give children 
the type of attention that they need to have.
  But there are shortfalls, budget shortfalls in the State. Why was 
that? Because we have got $33 billion in education money coming up to 
Washington instead of going to the schools. We have got to do something 
about that.
  I talked before about our Founding Fathers. We can talk about what 
works, what does not work, but we also need to look at what is 
constitutionally proper and what is constitutionally improper.
  I would certainly say that any reading of the Constitution of the 
United States of America would show that the system that we are 
laboring under right now is patently unconstitutional. Read your 
Constitution. If you read the 10th amendment, the 10th amendment states 
explicitly that all powers not specifically granted to the Federal 
government in the Constitution of the United States are reserved to the 
States and to the citizens that live within those States.
  You can look through the Constitution all you want to. But our 
Founding Fathers did not state that the Constitution of the United 
States allowed the Federal Government to get involved with an education 
bureaucracy.
  If you read the Federalist Papers, when they explained why they wrote 
the Constitution the way they did, there is nothing in the Federalist 
Papers that show that the Federal Government wanted us to have an 
education bureaucracy. The fact of the matter is the Constitution, the 
Federalist Papers, and all the other documents of the Founding Fathers 
show that they believed that our parents and our teachers and our 
communities should teach children instead of having an education 
bureaucracy in Washington, DC, teach children. I think they were on to 
something.
  If the Federal Government does not have it in the Constitution, what 
about the States? It is not surprising that in all 50 State 
constitutions, every one of these documents state explicitly that State 
governments and communities and local governments should be the ones 
that get involved in educating our children. I think that is extremely 
important to realize, that the States and the Federal Government got 
together, drafted constitutions that clearly show that the Federal 
Government has no business in forming an education bureaucracy, that 
again it needs to be formed back into the States.
  Mr. Speaker, I believe that we need to turn back where we trust 
communities again and we trust parents again and don't labor under this 
false assumption that they are too backward or too stupid to take care 
of their most important resource, and that is children, and in 
educating children.
  I hear a lot of people say, well, look what happened 30 years ago. 
Look what happened when Bull Connor was running the streets of 
Birmingham, or 60 years ago when Huey Long was Governor of Louisiana. 
Can we really trust the States?
  I say, yes, emphatically, we can trust the States. Alice Rivlin in 
her book ``Reinventing the American Dream'' talks about moving to a 
point where we can trust the States again. David Halberstam in his book 
``The Next Century'' talked about the face that the most talented and 
most gifted leaders in this country did not occupy the well of the 
House of Representatives, and I know that might shock a lot of people 
in Washington, DC. But the people who know where the rubber meets the 
road are back in the States. They are the ones who have to put together 
an education budget every year, they are the ones who understand what 
losing $33 billion in education revenue means. They are the ones that 
are closest to the problem.
  Let's trust our parents again. Let's trust our teachers again.
  As a parent of two young children who are in public schools, I have 
got to tell you, I am deeply offended by any bureaucrat in Washington, 
DC, who tells me they know how to teach my children better than I know 
how to teach my children.
  I will side with James Madison and Thomas Jefferson and the 
Constitution of the United States any time over bureaucrats in the 
education bureaucracy who have destroyed our public education system 
over the past 15 years. If they have not destroyed it, well, they 
[[Page H5747]] sure have not done anything to improve it.
  A lot of people will say that the burden of proof rests on those who 
say abolish the Federal Department of Education bureaucracy and send it 
back to the States.
  I say the burden of proof rests on those
   bureaucrats that take $33 billion out of local communities and 
school boards all across this Nation and give us very little in return.

  Look at the test scores. Look at the dropout rates. Look at violence 
in schools. They have to step forward and explain how the principals of 
the NEA teachers union and how the principals of the education 
bureaucracy are somehow in harmony with the philosophies of Jefferson 
and Madison. I have got to tell you, they cannot do it.
  Again, listen to the great words of James Madison:

       We have staked the entire future of the American 
     civilization not upon the power of government but upon the 
     capacity of each of us to govern ourselves, control 
     ourselves, and sustain ourselves according to the 10 
     commandments of God.

  It is a very simple premise. Trust communities, trust families, trust 
individuals, trust parents. You can do that.
  Two hundred years after the greatest experiment in the history of 
government, we are getting back to a point where we once again are 
going to untie parents and communities and teachers and school boards, 
and say, ``Be creative, dare to make a difference.'' If we do that, if 
we return authority back to parents and teachers and school boards 
instead of an education bureaucracy in Washington, DC, then my two boys 
and children all across this country will once again be able to take 
control of their school system and be prepared for the 21st century 
workplace. We have got to do it now. We cannot delay any longer. I 
certainly would ask for all of your support.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from California.
  Mr. DORNAN. I just wanted to thank the gentleman. As one of my 
troopers on the Military Personnel Subcommittee, it has been a joy 
working with the gentleman from Florida [Mr. Scarborough].
  Because my fatherly days are behind me as far as education is 
concerned--my youngest son is graduating from UCLA on Sunday, the 18th 
of this month--but I have got nine grandchildren and, God willing, more 
to come.
  Your statement resonates in my ears. I also take personal affront to 
any bureaucrat saying, ``I know how to teach your children better than 
you do.''
  No, when that report came out that showed that for the first time in 
the history of this great Nation, in over two centuries, a generation, 
the current one, was not as well educated as their parents, the prior 
generation, we hit a stonewall in education, where all the educrats, 
the bureacrats of education, do not have the answers anymore.

                              {time}  1745

  That is why I am a strong supporter of home schooling. I have not had 
to do that with any of my sons or daughters yet, but home schooling is 
growing across this country because the main area where our education 
system has failed us is in the area of teaching values, ethics, and if 
we have to come down to a plan that a grandmother told me the other 
day, not my own wife, but a grey-haired grammy, said, ``Why don't you 
people just broadcast to every school in America now that we are on the 
informational highway on Mondays and Tuesdays the prayer at the 
beginning of the House of Representatives, and then on Wednesdays and 
Thursdays--you are smiling, Speaker Gilchrest, this is not your idea, 
is it?--then on Wednesdays and Thursdays we broadcast the prayer to 
every public school in America at the beginning of the U.S. Senate's 
day, and on Friday, a special day, the prayer at the beginning of the 
U.S. Senate, in every school in America. And then occasionally we can 
sing at general assemblies the most popular song during the War between 
the States that kept our Nation together, ``The Battle Hymn of the 
Republic.'' Mine eyes have seen the glory in the coming of the Lord. 
Who would that be? I do not know, would it be Jesus Christ, our savior, 
our redeemer, the son of God. Lilies across the sea in Jerusalem or 
Bethlehem or Nazareth, names familiar to one generation of 
schoolchildren, not anymore. I would love to see pumped to every school 
in America rabbis as we have seen here coming invoking the God of 
Abraham and the code of ethics of Moses, who is staring right down at 
the gentleman from Florida, look at him looking down at Speaker 
Gilchrest there, over in the corner, Maimonides, who in Sephardic 
tradition in Spain and Portugal rewrote the entire code of ethics for 
every Jewish person in the world. On this wall look at the wall of 
saints up there, Edward the Confessor, St. Ed, Alfonse, a saint of 
Spain, Gregory IX, a saintly pope, St. Louis, whose mother said ``I 
would rather have my son dead at my feet than see him commit a grievous 
mortal sin.''
  So there is a lot of education our kids are not getting, it is being 
denied, and there is a way to do it, to recognize the Western 
civilization, culture, and there are a lot of colleges around, 
including UCLA, where in my son's first five classes Christianity was 
attacked by name in two of those classes, Catholicism attacked by name 
after they worked over Christianity, and in one of those classes 
Jesuits attacked. My son has never had the thrill of sitting in a class 
with a Jesuit teacher at the front, but I had 7 great years of it, and 
I am still grateful for my teachers. The Jesuits were all conservatives 
in those days and lived up to their fourth vow of being loyal to the 
Pope. They are having some problems these days. But I tell you, we are 
going to get this education thing solved, and why are we going to do 
that, because Ronald Reagan said we are Americans, which means we can 
win any battle. Thank you for weighing in today. Glad to associate 
myself proudly with your words.


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