[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].
____________________