[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 164 (Monday, October 23, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Pages S15435-S15436]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                        EDUCATION IS A PRIORITY

  Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, I appreciate the excellent comments by 
the Senator from North Dakota. I want to speak about one portion of the 
priorities that he discussed there with his chart. I want to talk about 
education--and education is a priority for this country--and what is 
reflected in the budget that is about to be passed here in the Senate 
and, in the next few weeks, sent to the President.
  This week, the Senate is getting ready to take up a reconciliation 
bill which contains a $10.8 billion cut in financial support for 
Federal student loans. I share my colleagues' distress that at the 
moment tuition costs are rising, the Senate is asking to save billions 
of dollars on the system that helps students and their families pay 
their tuition.
  If such a change in the student loan program was the only cut being 
made in education, obviously, we would be concerned. And if there were 
no other way to balance the Federal budget, we would be concerned and 
perhaps be able to see our way clear. But neither is the case. Cuts in 
student loans are, unfortunately, the tip of an education-cutting 
iceberg. The debate on the reconciliation bill will be in the spotlight 
on these cuts in higher education. The Labor-HHS appropriations bill 
cuts billions more in elementary and secondary education.
  Mr. President, I am concerned at the magnitude of the cuts. I am 
concerned at the erosion of the bipartisan commitment that we have had 
to support education here in the Congress. Most of all, I am concerned 
with the abandonment of a clear vision and a sense of urgency regarding 
the need to raise the performance of our educational system.
  The magnitude of these cuts, Mr. President, is enormous. Let me show 
a chart here that indicates some of the problems as I see it. This 
chart shows the last 7 years--1996 being the seventh year, so it is the 
last 6 years, I guess, of support for education. It is easy to see from 
this chart that, in each year, from fiscal year 1990 to fiscal year 
1995, there has been some increase in funds for education voted by the 
Congress. That was, in some years, not as much of an increase as I 
would have liked and, in some cases, it was not as much of an increase 
as an increase in inflation, but there was some increase. I should make 
clear, this is not a chart that shows increases in growth; this is a 
chart that shows absolute increases and absolute cuts.
  In 1996, according to the budget resolution which we are about ready 
to have a final vote on, there is a proposal for a $3.7 billion cut in 
the educational funds. This reverses a bipartisan agreement over the 
last three administrations that improving education is a top priority 
in this country. That priority has been expressed each year in annual 
increases in total educational funding that varied from $2.6 billion in 
1991 to $0.6 billion in 1993. Compare this to the House proposal to cut 
$3.7 in fiscal year 1996. We are making a very dramatic reversal in our 
priorities this year for the first time in many years.
  Twelve years ago, the Reagan administration appointed a blue ribbon 
group called the National Commission on Excellence in Education. In 
1983, they issued a report, which many of us have heard about now for 
over a decade, called ``A Nation At Risk.''
  That commission concluded in that report in 1983:

       * * * the educational foundations of our society are 
     presently being eroded by a rising tide of mediocrity that 
     threatens our very future as a Nation and a people. What was 
     unimaginable a generation ago has begun to occur--others are 
     matching and surpassing our educational attainments.
       If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on 
     America the mediocre educational performance that exists 
     today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war. As it 
     stands, we have allowed this to happen to ourselves. * * * We 
     have dismantled essential support programs which helped make 
     [prior] gains possible. We have, in effect, been committing 
     an act of unthinking unilateral educational disarmament.

  That report ``A Nation at Risk,'' called on the public to rally to 
deal with the situation. It challenges Americans to undertake a long-
term effort to achieve excellence in education and the public did 
respond. States raised their high school graduation requirements. 
Today, States require more years of study in the basic subjects of the 
curriculum that were recommended by that commission--subjects of 
English and mathematics and science and social studies and computer 
science.
  In 1982, the year before the ``A Nation at Risk'' study came out, 
only 13 percent of all high school students graduated with 4 years of 
English, 3 years of math, 3 years of science, and 3 years of social 
studies. Those are the amounts recommended in that report.
  By 1987, that percentage had gone from 13 percent up to 29 percent. 
By 1990 it was at 40 percent. In 1992 when this administration took 
office, it was 47 percent.
  At the same time, student achievement--this is not just the number of 
courses taken, but this is actual achievement--as measured by the 
National Assessment of Educational Progress made only modest 
improvements.
  These achievements resulted from a broadly based bipartisan effort 
involving educators, public policymakers and the public itself focusing 
on how to achieve excellence. These efforts received an additional 
boost in 1989 when President Bush invited State Governors to an 
education summit in Charlottesville. In fact, then-Governor Clinton was 
one of those who attended that Charlottesville summit.
  The purpose of that summit was to focus on a list of specific 
national education goals for the country. The goals were to be 
measurable and to be attainable by the year 2000.
  The Bush administration developed an America 2000 strategy, lending 
the authority and the bully pulpit of national leadership to a program 
to focus schools on how to improve performance 

[[Page S 15436]]
and how to achieve better educational results.
  The business community has embraced these goals and become the most 
articulate spokespersons for this national need to raise education 
standards. When the Goals 2000 legislation was passed into law in the 
last Congress it was endorsed by the National Alliance of Business, the 
National Association of Manufacturers, and the U.S. Chamber of 
Commerce, as well as by the National Parent Teacher Association, and a 
long list of other educational associations.
  Why has business taken such an interest? Because business leaders are 
acutely aware that modest improvements in student achievement cited 
above are just not adequate to prepare young people to succeed in the 
work force. Competition in the global economy would demand higher 
levels of reading and writing and problem solving than we have ever 
needed before.
  Schools need to help graduates meet the real world standards that 
will be applied when graduates are hired and retained and promoted in 
jobs. Business leaders recognize the urgency of the need for schools to 
realign their academic standards which the higher standards at the 
workplace will demand of them as graduates.
  Lou Gerstner, who is the chairman and CEO of IBM Corp., addressed the 
Nation's Governors at one point earlier this summer. He pointed out to 
the Governors that it has been 12 years since ``A Nation at Risk'' was 
published and U.S. students still finish at or near the bottom on 
international tests of math and science.
  He said the first priority for public education should be ``setting 
absolutely the highest academic standards and holding all of us 
accountable for results. Now. Immediately. This school year. Now if we 
don't do that, we won't need any more goals, because we are going 
nowhere. Without standards and accountability, we have nothing.''
  Now, how does the budget that we are going to vote on this week match 
up to Lou Gerstner's sense of urgency and the need to improve 
education? He talks about how we have to do it ``now, this school 
year.''
  I submit that this budget does not measure up at all. This budget is 
an abdication of our responsibility to deal effectively with this 
problem. The budget cuts in education are too much and they are in the 
wrong places.
  Mr. President, the reconciliation bill proposes $10.8 billion be 
saved from student loans in postsecondary education over the next 7 
years. The appropriations bill which eventually will have to be passed 
in some form magnifies this very unfortunate trend.
  In fiscal year 1996, the House appropriations bill cuts overall 
spending for elementary and secondary education in the Department of 
Education by $5.9 billion--from $32.9 to $27 billion.
  Cuts are made in Head Start programs, safe and drug-free schools, and 
bilingual education, Indian education, and the list goes on. These are 
the wrong priorities. Let me show one other chart here, Mr. President, 
just to make the point about priorities.
  This is a chart that summarizes the various discretionary spending 
accounts in this year's budget proposal. Starting on the left, we have 
agriculture, where there is a slight cut in discretionary spending, 
going on across. There are additional cuts in entitlement programs that 
are not reflected on this, but these are the additions and the cuts in 
discretionary spending where we get to make a decision every year 
without question.
  When we look at where the largest single area of cut in discretionary 
spending is, it is in education and training. Obviously, the largest 
area of increase is defense, and the only other area of increase is in 
crime. But the largest single area of cuts in discretionary spending is 
in education and training.
  Mr. President, these are the wrong priorities. These do not reflect 
the priorities of the American people.
  One particular program I want to talk about which concerns me greatly 
in this budget bill is the Goals 2000 Program. In the House 
appropriations bill dealing with education they cut the funding in that 
program from $361 million in 1995 to zero dollars in 1996.
  Yet the purposes for which Goals 2000 makes Federal funds available 
to States and local school districts are exactly the purposes that as a 
Nation we most need to pursue.
  This Goals 2000 Program is a flexible program. It makes block grants 
to States for their own school improvements. Next year, 90 percent of 
the funds that will be used in that program will go to local districts. 
In 48 States, these grants are being used as the States decide to use 
them.
  In Washington State, for example, for 30 districts in which mentor 
teachers train other teachers. In Kentucky, for homework hotlines and 
other efforts to enhance parental participation. In Massachusetts, for 
14 charter schools. In other States, for other efforts at achieving 
high educational standards.
  This program will not tell States what higher standards have to be. 
The States decide that for themselves.
  In my own home State of New Mexico, our State has developed the 
educational plan for student success. Like other States, we use our 
Goals 2000 money to bring together the citizens and the educators and 
the business leaders to look at existing State policies, compare them 
with where we want to go. They--this group in New Mexico--will use the 
Goals 2000 funds to pursue strategic planning, to improve student 
learning and success and New Mexico's own standards of excellence.

  We are not a rich State in New Mexico. Without Goals 2000 funds, New 
Mexico's efforts to reach the vision that Louis Gerstner talks about 
will be significantly slowed down.
  Worse, without support from Goals 2000 and other important Federal 
programs, we signal to New Mexico and to other States that Louis 
Gerstner's sense of urgency is misplaced. We signal that it is enough, 
in our view, to allow States to progress at whatever pace they would 
like, without any help from the Federal Government. That simply is not 
true.
  This year, the year 2000, is fast coming on us. How we balance the 
budget today is going to shape how we enter this new century. The 
budget needs to reflect our priorities. Improving education needs to be 
high on that list of priorities. And while some progress has been made, 
our Nation is still at risk.
  Presidents Reagan and Bush and Clinton have joined with the public to 
improve the education offered to the next generation. The budget that 
is going to be on this Senate floor for a vote later this week is a 
retreat from that commitment. We know better. And we owe much better to 
the next generation.
  I hope we can find ways to do better before we adjourn this year.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Kempthorne). The Senator from North 
Dakota.

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