[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 179 (Monday, November 13, 1995)]
[House]
[Pages H12171-H12177]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                  EDUCATION: AN ISSUE WHICH UNITES US

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of May 
12, 1995, the gentleman from New York [Mr. Owens] is recognized for 60 
minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
  Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, we are at a critical moment in the life of 
the American democracy. I think it would be helpful if we lower our 
voices and come together on an issue which unites us. Education is that 
issue.
  On this Wednesday, the day after tomorrow, National Education Funding 
Support Day has been proclaimed. It is important to note at this point 
that education has always been an issue that has received bipartisan 
support.
  Education is an investment. It has always been recognized by both 
Democrats and Republicans as an investment. Only this year has 
Republican extremism and recklessness led to a division that has 
critically injured the support for education in the Congress.
  On our National Education Funding Support Day, we hope that we can 
reach out to both sides, both Republicans and Democrats. We hope that 
we can get the American people to understand what is at stake in the 
Federal support for education.
  I think to have something now which leads us to lower our voices and 
come together would be a good thing. Despite all of the heated rhetoric 
of the next few days, and despite the fact that there are real issues 
on the table and very important decisions to be made, I think it would 
be good if we sort out something that we can agree on, and education is 
the one thing in the past that we have agreed on.
  It is time for some effort to calm the waters. Like the gentlewoman 
from Colorado [Mrs. Schroeder], I happened to hear part of the GOPAC 
celebration. It was on C-SPAN this morning. I could not avoid it. It 
was on a respectable media outlet, and I heard part of Rush Limbaugh's 
speech to the GOPAC audience here in Washington.
  He was addressing a crowd of people who seemed to need at this time 
some therapy, so Rush the jester, he is the Speaker's jester, became 
Rush the therapist. It was very interesting to watch how he was calming 
the fears of the GOPAC crowd that the American people have 
misunderstood them. He kept telling them do not be anxious, do not be 
bitter; the American people are going to understand you sooner or 
later.
  The fact that the Republican extremism policies have taken a great 
plunge in the polls, a Wall Street Journal poll shows that more than 60 
percent want the President to veto the Republican budget, and more than 
70 percent are against the Medicare cuts, has led to some serious soul-
searching among Republicans. So Rush Limbaugh was there spreading his 
arms to calm down Republican fears.
  I thought that was very interesting. Everybody needs something at 
this point to calm them down, and certainly to come together on an 
issue like education I think would have a calming influence.
  Mr. ROEMER. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. OWENS. I yield to the gentleman from Indiana.
  Mr. ROEMER. Mr. Speaker, I would just say to the gentleman that he is 
talking about some of the fears and some of the concerns that the 
American people have at this point in time. He talked about some of the 
objections to cuts in very, very important programs that are helpful to 
senior citizens and students that are trying to get back to school.

[[Page H 12172]]

  This is not a poll from a Democratic pollster. It is not a poll from 
the President's White House. It is a CNN/USA Today poll that recently 
showed that 75 percent of the American people are against the tragic 
cuts in the Medicare Program, and 74 percent of the American people are 
against the cuts in the student loan program. This is not political 
information, not driven by pollsters from our party or pollsters from 
the other side of the aisle. This is a poll taken directly by an 
objective, very reliable and very respected firm.
  What we are saying, and I serve on the Committee on Economic and 
Educational Opportunities with the distinguished gentleman from New 
York, is that we have always agreed that education can and should be an 
investment for our workers, for our senior citizens, going back to 
school to learn more and contribute to the economy when they are not 
making enough money from Social Security or getting help from Medicare, 
from workers that have been on the assembly line doing the same thing 
for 20 years, screwing a screw into a door, and now that assembly line 
has changed dramatically, and they are working on a computer and 
working in teams to create a better quality product.

                              {time}  2045

  This is no time to be cutting off their loans for college education, 
whether they are 55 years old or 25 years old. I just wanted to point 
out the two things that I very much agree with the gentleman from New 
York, that education should be bipartisan, and that, second, the 
American people are against these education cuts at 74 percent of the 
people against these cuts.
  Mr. OWENS. I thank the gentleman very much. He has made a very 
compact, well-focused statement which would make it unnecessary for me 
to say a great deal of what I was going to say. The American people 
have shown consistently over the years that education is a high 
priority.
  It is interesting now that I think it is clear that health care is 
the first priority but education is a close parallel, almost the second 
priority, almost a parallel priority of the American people. So 
education should not be forgotten in this great debate.
  Education Funding Support Day, November 15, day after tomorrow, is 
designed to have the American people reinforce what they have already 
shown in the polls. They keep stating over and over again, in poll 
after poll, that education is a high priority. Yet the public officials 
who make the decisions keep cutting education. At the city level in New 
York, over the last few years, we have lost $2 billion. New York is a 
system which serves a million students. We have lost $2 billion over 
the last 5 years in education funding at a time when more children have 
come into the system. The State has now cut the State aid for New York 
City a great deal, and, of course, at the Federal level we had $4 
billion of cuts recently proposed by the Republican budget.
  Republican extremism and recklessness is being ratcheted upward at a 
time when there is no war, no real crisis; a catastrophe is being 
manufactured.
  It is not the President who is being blackmailed, as we have heard 
over and over again. It is the American people who are being 
blackmailed. The children are being blackmailed. The students are being 
blackmailed.
  Let us pause for a moment to reconsider what is happening. I hope the 
Republicans will join the Democrats in supporting National Education 
Funding Support Day and try to refocus on the bipartisan effort we have 
made over the years on education.

  In the days before Republican extremism, education was a unifying 
issue, even more so than defense. I have seen many votes on the floor 
of this house where a greater proportion of the body voted for 
education than voted for defense, which was also a unifying issue. But 
we had more votes on education bills. Many of the authorizing bills for 
education on this floor have received almost unanimous approval.
  We have gone through a process at the committee level where at the 
committee level there was a great debate, in the conferences there was 
a great debate. In fact, some of our conferences have gone on for 
several weeks. Many committee markups have gone on for days. So we have 
had great debates on education, with each side, of course, offering 
varied opinions, and there are some differences. In the end, both 
Republicans and Democrats came together on education, and we need to 
try to get back to that. We could assert ourselves in the next few days 
and reach some kind of agreement to communicate to the President that 
both parties agree that we should rescind that $4 billion in education 
cuts and deal with making cuts somewhere else to facilitate moving 
matters forward.
  In the days before Republican extremism. Education was a unifying 
issue, even more so than defense. Under Republican Reagan, under 
Republican Bush, we had major steps taken toward the offering of 
guidance by the Federal Government in the area of education. Education 
reform was taken on by the Federal Government as a major 
responsibility. Republican Ronald Reagan had the commission to publish 
the report, ``A Nation at Risk,'' and he launched the effort. Bush 
followed with America 2000 and the six goals that were set forth at the 
Governors' conference in Virginia. President Clinton attended that 
conference, where the Governors set forth the six goals for education, 
and President Clinton has steadfastly enforced those goals.
  President Clinton has taken America 2000 that was put forward by Bush 
and launched Education 2000, which, in many ways, has the same basic 
foundation. So we have a continuation of bipartisan support for 
education.
  On November 15, day after tomorrow, we want to reemphasize that and 
let the American people know that we continue to have this major goal 
of pushing education forward as a bipartisan concern.
  Republican extremism wrecked the bipartisan support for education 
this time. This is at a time, unfortunately, where education is needed 
more than ever before.
  As I have said many times before, our economy, our society is at a 
critical transition period. Our society is now in a period where the 
economy is booming, Wall Street is booming, the stock market is 
booming, profits are higher than they have been for a long, long time. 
And yet, on the other hand, people are losing jobs through downsizing 
and streamlining.
  The American wages have suffered a dramatic decline over the last two 
decades, the last 20 years. So we are in a transition period, a period 
unlike any that we have ever experienced before. It is necessary more 
than ever that we step forward with a new investment in education. Not 
less should be invested in education, but we should be investing more 
in education. We should invest more at this particular period because 
we are making a transition where education and greater training will be 
needed.
  You know, I think last night, whenever this GOPAC celebration was 
held, I heard it this morning on C-SPAN, Rush Limbaugh kept saying that 
if you cannot make it in America, it is your fault; you know, nobody 
should ask for help. If you cannot make it in America, it is really 
your fault. It is very strange that Rush Limbaugh, a talk show host who 
is dependent on the airwaves, radio and television, which are a 
Government, you know, they are government-facilitated outlets, you 
know, he would not be a millionaire and a superstar if there were no 
FCC, if there were no Federal Communications Commission, a Government 
body which regulates and helps to nurture the whole broadcast industry 
from its inception to the present. He would not be there. Rush Limbaugh 
should send a ``thank you'' letter to the FCC every day.
  The U.S. Navy helped perfect radio and helped perfect the kind of 
things that made it necessary for radio to move from radio to 
television, the orderly transition, the development of a whole 
industry. The broadcast industry was not charged any money every time 
they used the airwaves. Yet the broadcast industry was not unlimited, 
not every American could gain access to the broadcast industry, not 
every American could be a talk show host, because the broadcast 
airwaves are owned by certain companies. There are a limited number. If 
we did not have a Government which regulated that limited number, then 
you would have chaos and nobody would be able to have signals that got 
through.

[[Page H 12173]]


  So, you know, the FCC, the U.S. Navy, the space program, and all of 
the Government research that went on with radar and various defense 
industries that made it possible to develop, you know, the compact kind 
of technology that allows you to have transistors and to do the 
marvelous things we do with television sets and with radio and all the 
things that facilitate cable television and all the things that are 
going on now which make people like Rush Limbaugh rich, all of them are 
maintained by a society and a Government that, if it did not exist and 
did not carry out these functions, the opportunity would not be there 
for Rush Limbaugh and his kind.
  The illogical rationalization that is going on, the monstrous excuse 
that Republican extremists are making is that we need to inflict these 
cruel and unusual budget cuts, these measures which go after everything 
from Medicare, Medicaid, to education, we need to inflict these 
measures on the elderly, on children and on students in order to save 
future children from debts.
  Men and women who have no compassion for living, breathing Americans 
want us to believe that they have great compassion for the children of 
the future, they have compassion for posterity. They want to trade the 
compassion of today that requires a few sacrifices by the rich for the 
cheap abstract compassion of the distant future, have compassion for 
posterity, have compassion for the children of the future, but do not 
have compassion for the living, breathing, elderly who are sick and 
need health care today, do not have compassion for the students who 
want an opportunity to get through school, to have decent lunches so 
that they are not hungry and can learn, the students who want to get 
through college on Pell grants and student loans; do not have any 
compassion for them. Let us think about the children of the future, the 
children to come, not the children of today; let us think about the 
students of the future, students to come, not the children of today.
  Compassion is a concern, and it is one concern we should always bear 
in mind. We should always be concerned with compassion. I think 
compassion might be interpreted as a willingness to share the benefits 
of society with everybody in the society because we recognize that all 
human life is sacred. Merely by being born, all human beings deserve 
compassion. Medicare and Medicaid are expressions of compassion, very 
important expressions of compassion. The elderly and the children 
probably deserve the most compassion in our society. So compassion is 
important.
  Compassion is a basic value of the American majority. I think most 
people in America have compassion. They want their Government to 
reflect a concern with compassion. They want their decisionmakers, 
their congressmen as well as their State legislators and their local 
legislators to always move in ways that show that they care about 
people.
  The great majority of the American people are caring people. There is 
a caring majority out there, and the caring majority has reflected its 
sentiments. They have aroused themselves, and they are being felt in 
the public opinion polls. They are showing through the polls that they 
do not care for this extremism. They want it stopped. It is not 
consistent with American compassion. It is not consistent with the 
caring majority.
   But while I am very concerned about compassion, I am talking about 
education today, and education is an investment. It is not a matter of 
compassion. Support for education programs does not represent 
compassion. Support for education programs represents a commonsense 
investment in the future of America. Support for education means you 
care about young people being able to get an opportunity so they can 
help themselves. You care about young people being able to get an 
opportunity so they will keep our economy going. If young people are 
not out there working in our economy, they will not produce the taxes 
that we need, they will not produce the money to fund the social 
security fund. It is working young people in the American economy who 
make the economy go.
  I read in the Wall Street Journal today that China is leaping forward 
at a far more rapid rate than anybody ever predicted. China, China, 
when I was in school, I remember in the geography books always that 
phrase, ``China is a backward country.'' The implication was that 
Chinese are backward people; inevitably China will always be at the 
bottom of the heap; all those people there, they gave the impression 
that they will never do anything but trip all over themselves and cause 
chaos and China will never be a force in the world.
  Well, now, China may be bidding to become the third largest economy 
in the world merely by the fact that they exist, a billion people. You 
know, a billion people just selling things back and forth to each other 
creates quite an economy.
  The Chinese suddenly have leaped into the export market. This Wall 
Street Journal article said the Chinese may surpass the Japanese in 
terms of exports to America soon and that the Chinese are seeking to 
protect their position in the world through the GATT treaty. They know 
that, as they become more and more of an export power, they are going 
to be the victims of attempts at restrictions of trade from China, so 
they are getting ready.
  The article continued to say it surprised everybody because the 
Chinese are not a high technology society in the same sense as Japan or 
West Germany, France, a lot of the other industrialized societies. 
China is leaping forward partially because of its tremendous 
organization of the one greatest resource it does have, and the 
greatest resource the Chinese have is people. Human beings are their 
greatest resources.
  Whatever you may say about the totalitarian government of China, they 
have invested in education. They know that good schools are a great 
investment. They have made an investment in education.

                              {time}  2100

  They have human beings who are well organized and who, despite the 
fact that they may have a technological disadvantage, are able to 
produce a great deal because of the fact that they are well-organized, 
well-trained, well-focused.
  So the Chinese, who were called backwards when I was in the third 
grade, are going to leap forward as a major world economy, and they are 
going to dislocate children in our economy. The children in our economy 
who are going to be adults, if they do not have a great deal of 
training, they cannot stay way ahead of the Chinese in technology, and 
they lose, because our policies are such that most of what is being 
exported from China to America is being financed by American companies.
  The Chinese are getting rich off of the American Fortune 500 
corporations, who make contracts for them to make goods at very low 
cost that they then bring back to our economy and sell. So pretty soon 
we are going to wipe out this great consumer market that we have 
created over the years by having fair policies, by having strong labor 
unions, by having a situation that generated a massive number of people 
who have a lot of money, enough money to be able to buy consumer 
products in large quantities.
  We are destroying the great engine that has driven the free world 
economy for the last 50 years. We are going to destroy American 
consumers by not educating them properly and by having trade policies 
that allow our economy to be invaded by a country that has seen the 
benefits of educating their population and taken advantage of all the 
loopholes in the international trade policies.
  In the midst of the storm that is going to rage for the next few 
days, I hope no more than a few days, but maybe weeks, we would like 
for there to be one dry spot. We would like for there to be one shaft 
of bipartisan light. We would like for education to return to be 
understood to be the core of our prosperity. Education must remain at 
the core of our prosperity. We must understand that education is at the 
core of our prosperity. We must act that way. We must understand that 
education is the most practical investment that we can make in America.
  We cannot afford to go forward and continue the bipartisan bickering 
and smother everything. Let us return at least to an understanding that 
health care, the American people have ranked health care as one of 
those top priorities, and education has been ranked as 

[[Page H 12174]]
another tomorrow priority, almost equal to health care.
  So in the next few days, I hope that the President and the 
Republican-controlled Congress will stop and think seriously about what 
is going on and say that, look, health care should come first, 
education should come second, and then let us take a look at everything 
else if you want to balance the budget. And let us get off this extreme 
drive, this extreme, dogmatic notion that you have to balance the 
budget in 7 years.
  Those who want to balance the budget, we ought to be able to reason 
with them and say 10 years instead of 7 years, and maybe we should lock 
in the law so there could be no reneging on that 10 years. But 10 years 
to balance the budget would be a better approach, a less extreme 
approach. It would not require that we throw education overboard as an 
investment. It would not require that we throw large numbers of senior 
citizens overboard in their life and death situations day-in and day-
out. We do not have to do things in an extreme and mean way. We could 
do it in a more rational way over a longer period of time and 
achieve the same objective.

  So we are at a critical moment in the life of American democracy. We 
are at a critical moment, and I think that the proclamation of National 
Education Funding Support Day by an organization which I helped to 
fund, the National Commission for African-American Education, took the 
lead in proclaiming that November 15 would be National Education 
Funding Support Day. November 15 happens to be in the middle of 
American Education Week, so we are following a tradition. A lot of 
different school boards and school systems around the country have open 
school week during this time. So it is an appropriate time to try to 
link up with what is happening in education in the localities with what 
is happening in Washington.
  The Federal Government is responsible for only a small portion of the 
total American education budget. We only supply about 7 percent. It 
went up as high as 8 percent at one time. But we only supply about 7 
percent of the total education budget. Local governments and State 
governments supply the rest. And it is probably going to be much that 
same way for a long time. I really think the Federal Government should 
be more involved. We should be more like the other industrialized 
nations. All other industrialized nations have a greater participation 
in education by their central governments than the United States of 
America.
  China has a greater participation, and they have taken advantage of 
the use of education to turn their population into an asset. All other 
nations, the nations of Asia, the Asian rim that is bursting with 
economic activity, a great investment has been made by Singapore. A 
great investment has been made by Taiwan.
  When I was in Taiwan you saw students going to school at all hours of 
the night. Their schools operated around the clock. They had computers 
that they were using to train students. Those computers got no rest. 
They had shifts of students who were going to school around the clock 
to take advantage of the equipment and the space that they had. They 
understood the value of investment in education.
  We should lower our voices and get our senses together and look at 
the world with practical eyes. We want compassion, but in addition to 
compassion, there is just common sense and survival that is at stake 
here.
  Education is a matter of survival. Education has to be moved up to a 
place in the national security pantheon. Education may be far more 
important than weapon systems that we are spending great amounts of 
money on.
  Expenditures for education would be far more productive than further 
expenditures on the Seawolf submarine. Expenditures for education would 
be much more productive than expenditures we are undertaking for the F-
22 fighter plane manufactured in Speaker Gingrich's district in 
Marietta, GA. They would certainly be far more productive than the CIA 
expenditures that we continue.
  We continue to expend at least $28 billion for the CIA. That is the 
conservative figure, because we do not know the real figure. At least 
$28 billion per year is being spent for the CIA. That is a great waste. 
Some of that money is being wasted. If you just cut the CIA by 10 
percent a year, $2.8 billion for the next 5 years, you would generate a 
great amount of money that could be applied to education.
  Education is suffering. You can balance the budget and not hurt your 
scheme of things by just taking the money from the defunct, dangerous 
CIA, and moving it over to education.

  The CIA is a dangerous institution. I thought it was very interesting 
that a great deal of furor was generated by the Secretary of Energy. 
Mrs. O'Leary, a great deal of furor was generated when it was found 
that she had misspent money on a study which studied the media, 
newspapers and journalists, and studied how they covered her agency. I 
agree, it is a great waste of money. I agree that she certainly should 
be chastised. I agree that certainly some steps should be taken to deal 
with the people who came up with that bright idea.
  However, I found it very interesting that immediately there was a 
loud cry for her dismissal. Yet the CIA found a slush fund just a few 
months ago, the CIA found a slush fund, a petty cash fund that nobody 
knew about, of $1.5 billion, at least. I am told by somebody who knows 
that it was more than that. They could not tell me exactly how much. A 
petty cash fund of $1.5 billion was discovered at the CIA, and the 
director of the CIA said that he did not know about it. It has existed 
for some time because it takes time to build up a petty cash slush fund 
that nobody is really accountable for of $1.5 billion. And yet nobody 
called for any dismissal of anybody. I did not hear anybody say the CIA 
director ought to be fired. I did not hear anybody say that some top 
people at the CIA, at least the bookkeeper, ought to be fired. I do not 
know if anybody got fired as a result of the discovery of a $1.5 
billion-plus slush fund.
  That is surprising, and it is something the American people with 
their common sense ought to take a close look at. Where is the money 
being wasted in our government? The money we need to invest in 
education, where is it? I can find it for you. I can find it for you. 
$1.5 billion in the CIA slush fund, we are off to a good beginning.
  A little while before that we discovered that the CIA had in process 
the building of a building which cost almost $400 million. A building, 
a facility, is being constructed near the Dulles Airport by the CIA, 
and nobody knew about it. The members of the Intelligence Committee on 
Oversight here in the House of Representatives said they did not know 
about it. The Members of the Committee on Oversight in the Senate said 
they did not know about it.
  How do you construct a $400 million building, $370 million-some to be 
exact, how do you construct a building that costs that much money near 
Dulles Airport and nobody in the government who has oversight 
responsibility for the CIA knows about it? And when you find that kind 
of mistake, why do they not call for somebody to be fired? Who got 
fired? Who got fired?
  We recall that Aldrich Ames was discovered to be a Soviet agent. 
Aldrich Ames was not a small guy down the line. Aldrich Ames was in 
charge of the American espionage operation in Eastern Europe and the 
Soviet Union. He was in charge.
  He had an interesting history. His father had been in the CIA before, 
and he had risen through the ranks, although people always wondered 
about the fact he was not very bright. They wondered about the fact 
that he did drink too much. They wondered about the fact he broke 
various rules.
  He used the CIA safe houses for fornication regularly. He got away 
with all this. Then he had a lavish lifestyle. And the CIA makes a good 
salary. They are not secret. I think that you can find out what the 
salaries of most CIA agents are, but you cannot find out what the 
expense accounts are.
  At any rate, the expense account plus the salary of Aldrich Ames 
could not have supported his standard of living. He drove expensive 
cars, he lived in elaborate houses, he seemed to have all the money he 
needed all the time. All of this went on for over 10 years. Agents died 
who were in the employ of the CIA. Information was compromised.

[[Page H 12175]]


  Recently the CIA in its damage control mode has released a few more 
facts about the damage done by Aldrich Ames. We now hear that 
information fed to three presidents through the channels that Aldrich 
Ames was responsible for was compromised information; that much of the 
Reagan buildup and much of the Bush buildup of defense was guided by 
information the Soviet Union was feeding through its bogus agents 
working for the United States into our decisionmaking process.
  Yet, when Aldrich Ames was discovered, nobody called for the firing 
of the CIA Director. When the investigation was conducted and the 
internal report was issued, the director of the CIA at that time did 
not recommend the firing of a single person. It is true there was a 
great outcry and he finally had to resign, the Director of the CIA at 
that time walked away, but there was no outcry in the press, there was 
no outcry in Congress, for the firing of anybody.
  This is the kind of America we are into. Ladies and gentlemen in 
America with their common sense, look under their magnifying glass of 
just plain common sense at what is going on here. What is going on here 
is we are about to have a great showdown on the budget and the 
appropriations process. We are about to have a showdown. And yet we 
have all these outrageous situations that exist, and they are not on 
the table for discussion. Nobody is discussing cuts in the CIA. Nobody 
is discussing cuts of the F-22 fighter plane that nobody needs. Nobody 
is discussing the B-2 bomber, which the President and Secretary of 
Defense say we do not need. The Joint Chiefs of Staff say we do not 
need the B-2 bomber. Everybody says we do not need it. Yet the 
Republican controlled Congress has the B-2 bomber in this great budget 
they are trying to cut in order to make it safe for future posterity, 
not to have debts.
  Look at all this through the eyes of ordinary, common sense 
Americans. Look at it through the eyes of Hans Christian Anderson's 
little boy in ``The Emperor Who Had No Clothes.'' The emperor was 
naked, but the whole society was willing to go along and say the 
emperor was wonderfully dressed. Only one with the innocent eyes of a 
child, with the common sense of a child, pointed and said ``Hey, the 
emperor is naked.''

                              {time}  2115

  There are a lot of institutions that are spending a lot of their 
taxpayers' dollars that are naked. They do not deserve the money. We do 
need the money in education. We do need the money in health care. We 
need the money in Medicaid and we need the money in Medicare.
  Mr. Speaker, what I am saying is that for a moment let us pause and 
try to get back on track with education. Let us start with education to 
get back on track. Let us do what we have done for the last 10 years, 
have a bipartisan approach to education. Education Funding Support Day, 
on November 15, day after tomorrow, is a time for getting together and 
returning to a focus on education as something that brings us together, 
as an issue and a program that we very much need. Sometime the camera 
is going to catch the exhibits, and I would like to make sure the 
camera does catch the exhibits tonight.
  Education Funding Support Day is November 15. We are asking parents, 
community leaders, union leaders, church leaders, everybody to do 
something out there at your school. Go to the nearest public school. We 
do not have to have a central direction for this or wait for flyers or 
wait for posters. We do not have to wait for anything. It is like the 
National Night Out Against Crime. Everybody is familiar with the 
National Night Out Against Crime. On a Tuesday night in August 
everybody comes out all over the country that night to show they are 
not afraid to come out to things, to let them know we control the 
streets and we are, as a society, dedicated to the proposition that we 
will fight crime. We will fight crime across the board, universal, at 
every level.
  Now, Mr. Speaker, It so happens that since we have begun the National 
Night Out Against Crime, crime has going down dramatically. There are a 
lot of reasons we might cite, but one of the basic reasons, I think, it 
that a unified concern about crime has led to a consistent set of 
measures, a watchdog approach by the people that make the institutions 
that are related to crime and the criminal justice system function 
better. I expect that a National Education Funding Support Day will get 
the same result.
  Mr. Speaker, the result will be that we will follow up on the public 
opinion polls that show consistently that the public supports education 
as a No. 1 priority for government expenditures. The polls keep showing 
it over and over again, but the decision-makers, at every level, 
keeping ignoring it. They keep ignoring the fact the public wants us to 
spend more money on education. It is time we stop that.
  So we should go out to nearest public school and at our nearest 
public school we should do something positive for education. Let the 
fact that people are doing it all over New York City, all over New York 
State, all over the country, in Washington, DC, everywhere, at the same 
time, let that send a message to the decision-makers here in Congress, 
the Republican controlled Congress, the Democrats, who sometimes do not 
have enough enthusiasm for education also.
  Let it send a message to the Governors, who are cutting education 
programs. Let it send a message to Governor Pataki of New York, who has 
made dramatic cuts in education and is proposing more cuts. Let it send 
a message to Mayor Giuliani, who is making cuts in New York City in 
education programs. And all he say as an answer to the problem is he 
wants to control the board of education, control the school system from 
city hall. And at the same time he is making these cuts and gives the 
impression there will be some kind of magic, that city hall is 
operating at so much less money that they can somehow do a different 
kind of job.
  Well, how can they deal with the problem that existed in the New York 
City schools at the beginning of the school year? Mr. Speaker, 8,000 
youngsters in high school and nowhere to sit when school opened. Forty 
in a class now in most of New York City elementary schools. Forty in a 
class. Equipment systems in disrepair, where they exists, and most 
schools have never had science equipment. Ninety percent of the schools 
have never had a decent computer program. On and on it goes in New York 
City, and most of the other big cities, in terms of education funding.
  Across the country most school boards could use more money, where 
those that are in good shape understand they need more funding and 
support for improvement. Those that are falling apart, such as the big 
city systems, desperately need more help. And the small amount the 
Federal Government contributes is a small proportion, but the Federal 
Government sets a tone. When we make cuts in Washington, it gives 
credence to the cuts that are made at the State level and a new impetus 
for cuts to be made at the city and local level.
  So we need to stop and think about what we are doing, Mr. Speaker. If 
we, in the midst of this crisis that has been manufactured, lower our 
voices and stop and reconsider, we might find that education is an 
issue that can bring us together. We need therapy.
  I think Rush Limbaugh last night at the GOPAC meeting was on the 
right track. He was not cracking as many jokes as he usually cracks. He 
stepped from the role of being the Speaker's jester to being the 
Speaker's therapist. And for a moment there, I thought he might be one 
of the Speaker's new candidates for office, because here is the man who 
provides the function of comic relief coming to the rescue to calm down 
the Republican extremist supporters in the room because they have 
witnessed the uprising of common sense in American public opinion.
  Mr. Speaker, Amercian public opinion is expressing a commonsense 
approach to this budget crisis that has greatly frightened the 
Republican extremists. I know they pretend to be stalwartly forging 
ahead, but they understand the implications of the polls. I think they 
understand what happened last week in the election process. There was 
several election contests over the country which were clear barometers 
of what the American people, the voters, the taxpayers, think of the 
Republican extremist policies. There were 

[[Page H 12176]]
clear indications that the American people reject the Republican 
extremist policies.
  My father gave me an odd name, Mr. Speaker. My name is Major not by 
accident. My father was a frustrated militarist. He wanted to be a 
soldier. He wanted to be a soldier in World War I and he was too young. 
They would not accept him. World War II came along and he had too many 
children and they would not accept him in World War II. So he took it 
out on me by naming me Major. But he was an interesting individual. He 
only went to the sixth grade in school, but he could work all kinds of 
mathematics problems. He read all the time.
  We could not afford many books. We could not afford magazines like 
Life magazine, for example. I do recall Life magazine always being in 
the house because I had an aunt who worked for rich people and she 
would always bring Life magazines home, and my father would always be 
urging her to stop bringing just back issues but to quickly liberate 
from the people she was working for, to get him the magazines faster so 
he could follow what was going on.
  He read the newspaper every day and he used to particularly read the 
parts about the war, as World War II progressed. I was very young but I 
used to watch him and listen to him as he watched the arrows in the 
various charts that appeared in the newspaper. They used to have maps 
and charts and the maps would show the movement of Hitler's army across 
Europe. And at one time the arrow was always going forward. The 
invincible German army was moving forward. Always the arrows were 
jumping forward. And suddenly one day I came home and found a big smile 
on my father's face and he pointed to the arrows and he said they 
stopped Hitler's army at Stalingrad. They stopped Hitler's army at 
Stalingrad.
  Stalingrad became the turning point in World War II. Not that the 
Russian soldiers or the Russian army was so superior to the men and 
women who invaded on D-Day and pushed the fight across Europe, but it 
was the turning point because psychologically it let the world know 
that Hitler's army was not invincible. The German war machine was not 
invincible.
  Last week, Mr. Speaker, on election day, we found that the Republican 
juggernaut, the blitzkrieg that started in November 1994, is not 
invincible. It ought to give pause to a lot of people. Common sense 
should tell us that the overwhelming rejection of Republican policies 
in Virginia and in Mississippi and Kentucky and a few other places 
means that the American people have awakened. They are rising up 
against extremism.
  Extremism is foreign to American compassion. It is foreign to the 
caring majority philosophy. Extremism cannot survive. It cannot exist, 
and that is being demonstrated. So we should begin to think about how 
we can retreat from extremism. We should stop the ratcheting up of 
extremism, the recklessness that is going on. We should stop and pause 
and begin to look at a way to turn around.
  Mr. DIAZ-BALART. Mr. Speaker, would the gentleman yield for filing a 
rule?
  Mr. OWENS. No, Mr. Speaker, I will not yield.
  Mr. DIAZ-BALART. If the gentleman would yield just for 10 seconds, 
and the gentleman from Georgia, [Mr. Kingston] would be very happy to 
grant the gentleman----
  Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, does the gentleman have an announcement from 
the Senate or the President? I cannot yield at this point. I will yield 
in a few minutes.
  Republican extremism is being ratcheted upwards at a time when there 
is no war; no real crisis. A catastrophe is being manufactured. Earlier 
speakers have said it. I don't want to be redundant and repeat it. This 
is a planned crisis. It is a manufactured catastrophe. It is not the 
President who is being blackmailed, not the President being pushed into 
the corner, it is the American people who are being blackmailed by the 
policies that are going forward in this continuing resolution and the 
debt ceiling legislation.
  Mr. Speaker, the American people are being blackmailed. The children 
and the students are being black-mailed. There is no concern being 
shown here about education. Not only is there no compassion for the 
elderly, there is no compassion for the sick. There is no common sense 
which says we should continue to invest in education. It is a situation 
which is very serious.
  As I said before, Mr. Speaker, in the days before Republican 
extremism, education was a unifying force, even more so than defense. 
It was an issue that brought us together. We should return to that. We 
should remember Republican Ronald Reagan and his pleas that we are a 
nation at risk and we need to take some unusual measures to turn that 
around. We ought to remember the pleas of George Bush when he issued 
America 2000 and said that he wanted to become the education president. 
We should remember that President Clinton was at that conference in 
Virginia where President Bush set forth the goals, the six goals for 
American education. We ought to appreciate the fact that President 
Clinton has continued the basic policies of President Bush.
  The Republicans have chosen in this extremist budget to cut the Goals 
2000 legislation. Cut the funding for it. One of the backbones of 
American Federal education assistance is the title I program. The 
Republican extremists have chosen to cut title I by $1.1 billion. That 
is about one-seventh of the total amount. If the American people are 
out in their local school district or in their city and town and want 
to figure out what these big numbers mean, take the amount of money 
that they are receiving for title I programs, of title I funding, and 
reduce it by one-seventh and they will know what the cut of $1.1 
billion in title I programs for next year, they will know what that 
means for their particular city and town, for their education unit at 
the local level.
  So, Mr. Speaker, they have made cuts which are reducing the 
investment in education at a time when we need the investment more than 
ever before. Good schools are a great investment. They are the kind of 
investment that Americans had the good sense to make a long time ago 
and they are still very important.
  The philosophy of Rush Limbaugh that if an individual does not make 
it in American society it means something is wrong with them and nobody 
should worry about them is a philosophy that needs to be rejected. We 
should not applaud a Rush Limbaugh who says if a person's mother is 
sick, they will not go out on the street and beg somebody to help them, 
so why do they ask the government to help them.
  The government is a society. A government is a complex mechanism that 
has been made over the years, over the centuries, and a lot of people 
have made contributions to this process of making American civilization 
what it is. In the Vietnam war, which we still say is important, 
regardless of what we think of the specifics or the objectives or 
whether it should have gone on so long, American policy said the 
Vietnam war was important. American policy went forward to the tune of 
57,000 American lives and numerous others who were wounded and in 
various ways suffered as a result of that war. Forty percent of the 
bodies that came home from Vietnam were minorities.

  Forty percent of the bodies were minorities. Many of them were from 
these same big cities that we claim are wasting our money because they 
want more money for health care, they want more money for education. 
Forty percent.

                              {time}  2130

  In all the wars that have ever been fought, who comes out to give the 
dead soldiers' families millions of dollars? Does Rush Limbaugh deserve 
to make millions because of some special endowment from God while the 
soldiers who died to make the country great do not deserve anything? 
Does Rush Limbaugh deserve more than the inventors who created radio, 
television?
  Does Rush Limbaugh deserve more than the offspring of some of 
scientists and researchers who make it possible for us to have the 
technology which makes cable television and television and all these 
communication media possible and cheaper? Does Rush Limbaugh deserve 
more than the person out there who does not have the money to buy a 
frequency in order to be able to own one of these cable stations? 

[[Page H 12177]]

  Is there any American who deserves so much more by right of God than 
another that our society should show no compassion and no concern for 
those who cannot make it? Society does owe it to itself to develop the 
abilities and definitely the capacity of everybody. Make an investment 
in education. Society should do that.
  The illogical rationalization, the excuse that the Republicans keep 
using that they want to make people suffer now in order to have 
posterity, not have the burden of a debt, they are so compassionate for 
posterity, for the unborn, for the people who come in 10, 20 years from 
now, and yet they show no compassion for those living breathing souls 
that are here right now. Compassion has to be a concern at all times, 
as I said before.
  When you stop and think about the fact that all that we have 
discovered in the past few decades about the rest of the universe, 
about the solar system, about the Moon, we have not gone to Mars, but 
we have sent exploratory ships that have been able to take samplings of 
the atmosphere of Mars. With the samplings that have been taken of the 
gases that exist out there in the universe, we have concluded that 
nowhere in the universe is there any other human life, there can be no 
life similar to the life here on Earth.
  It is very possible with all of these planets and all the new 
expansive universe that is being discovered, that there are no other 
human beings, nothing like a human being. In this whole vast universe 
there is nothing out there that has a heart, nothing out there that can 
dream, nothing like human beings that we stop and we think that with 
all these people in China and all these people who are producing and in 
underdeveloped countries and all the population explosion in South 
America that there are too many human beings on the face of the Earth. 
If you were to stop and think about the universe, there are too few of 
us.

  We ought to look at every human being as being sacred. Everything 
that breathes, that is human, has a heart and a soul is sacred. 
Everything that breathes has a heart and soul is an opportunity for us 
in terms of if you develop that soul and that heart properly, it will 
reinvest in the Earth and in our societies on Earth and we will be able 
to gain from it. Instead, we have no compassion and we have no common 
sense, so we do not invest in people first.
  We have the Rush Limbaughs of the world laughing at programs that 
seek to help people who need help. The Rush Limbaughs of the world make 
fun of senior citizens who have to eat dog food. We have the Rush 
Limbaughs of the world who think slavery is a great joke. That the 
greatest crime ever created in history is a joke; 232 years of American 
slavery is funny. We have that kind of prevailing attitude. That jester 
becomes the counselor and therapist, for great amounts of money, who 
support a party that has control of the Congress, the House of 
Representatives, and the Senate. All of this is going on in America. 
Look with common sense and ask yourself the question, how can we get 
out of it. Let us start by making an investment in education.
  Stop and think about all the kind of cuts that have been made in 
education. Let me refresh your memory. Overall, the Republican budget 
cuts in education cut domestic spending. Republican budget cuts cut 
domestic spending overall by only 4 percent. But when it comes to 
education, the appropriations bills related to education, they cut the 
budget by 16 percent, almost $4 billion to be more exact, 3.9 some 
billion, but almost $4 billion is cut in education. When you go onto 
job training and other programs related to workers, it is 24 percent.
  The Republican extremists have declared war on students, on 
education, and on workers. Workers who were trained in this transition 
economy to become more productive, workers who drive the great consumer 
market that makes it possible for us to have prosperity, they are under 
attack. The greatest cuts are aimed at them. We have increases in the 
defense budget, we may have increases even in the CIA budget. We have 
no way of knowing. We certainly do not have the proper cuts in the CIA 
budget.
  As I said before, of these cuts, 1 billion or 17 percent are aimed at 
title I. Title I is the biggest Federal program for elementary and 
secondary school assistance. Title I goes to practically 98 percent of 
the school districts in America. So we are cutting title I, a small 
portion of the budget, 98 percent of the school districts of America at 
a time when they need more help than ever before in education. We have 
eliminated in the same budget the summer youth employment program. The 
summer youth employment program provides jobs for 600,000 youth across 
the country. School systems will tell you it is very important in terms 
of the work that they do to have those jobs available for their 
students during the summer.
  This House had some alternatives. The Republican majority is not 
operating in the dark. The Congressional Black Caucus put forward a 
budget which, like the Republican plan, proposed to eliminate the 
deficit over 7 years. We did not agree with 7 years. We think that, if 
you are going to balance the budget, you should take 10 years or 
longer, but 10 years is reasonable. But we had to do it in 7 years in 
order to be allowed to bring it, in order to gain access to the floor. 
We were told you cannot bring a budget unless you balance the budget in 
7 years. We balanced the budget in 7 years. We did not cut Medicare. We 
did not cut Medicaid. We increased education by 25 percent, and we 
still had a balanced budget.

  The President has proposed to increase education. Education is one of 
the few areas that the President proposes to increase the budget at. 
The President has the support of the business community. The article 
that appeared in Washington Outlook had a title which said, ``Will 
Republicans Make Clinton the Education President?'' This article is 
about the support that President Clinton is getting from businessmen, 
from the heads of corporations on this education budget.
  They are saying to the President, we would like for the President to 
forge ahead on Goals 2000. We would like not to turn back the clock on 
educational reform. We want to continue what Ronald Reagan started. We 
want to continue what George Bush advanced.
  We are all together on this, the corporate executives who make 
decisions about life and death of America every day in terms of 
production, in terms of the way we use our resources, they want 
education to be funded. Many of them are supporting National Education 
Funding Day on November 18. They understand the good sense of bringing 
to the attention the fact that education is a top priority. If we 
cannot read the polls and we do not understand what happened in 
Virginia, what did Democrats in Virginia do, they made education their 
primary concern. Identification was no secret. It was a weapon out 
there on the table, and they ran on an education platform and they 
pulled a Stalingrad. They showed that the invincible war machine of the 
Republicans can be defeated. What do these education cuts mean in terms 
of my home State of New York?
  Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Florida [Mr. Diaz-Balart].

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