[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 204 (Tuesday, December 19, 1995)]
[House]
[Pages H15180-H15189]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                  AMERICANS SEE THROUGH SCARE TACTICS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of May 
12, 1995, the gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Goodling] is recognized 
for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
  Mr. GOODLING. Mr. Speaker, the administration and the minority have 
waged a real campaign of misinformation regarding the Republican 
Balanced Budget Act of 1995, and I think it is finally starting to 
catch up with them.
  On Medicare they say that the Republican plan is extreme, will gut 
the program and will devastate the program, but ABC's Ted Koppel on 
``Nightline'' last week showed that the President and the minority were 
misinforming the public, that the Republicans were increasing Medicare, 
and that senior citizens were the victims of an orchestrated scare 
campaign.
  We have the same type of scare campaign lodged against Republicans 
with regard to what our balanced budget plan does with education, 
including student loans. The administration has used the power and the 
high profile of the office of the presidency to scare young people into 
believing Republicans plan to balance the budget, and that would 
prevent them from obtaining student loans. The President just as 
recently as last week said the Republicans cut deeply into student 
loans.
  He also claims we are increasing the cost of student loans, and I 
think it is time to set the record straight. As you can see, in 1995, 
we spent $24.5 billion on student loans. At the end of our 7-year plan, 
we spend $36.4 billion. That is a 50 percent increase, hardly cutting 
student loans. Therefore, who knows how many young people out there 
have been scared by these tactics, have given up on college because 
they think loans will not be available? How many parents believe now 
that they will not be able to help their children with a college 
education because of the scare tactics that are used? As I said, it is 
time to set that record straight.
  They also tell us in relationship to Pell grants that student should 
worry. Well, here is the Pell grant chart. In 1990, maximum grant 
$2,300; 1995, maximum grant, $2,340; in 1996, under our plan, $2,440, 
the highest point in history for Pell grants. So again, I think it is 
very important that we set the record straight so that we do not have 
students or parents worrying about what we may be doing or may not be 
doing with student loans and Pell grants.
  Mr. Speaker, we hear the same thing about education in general, and I 
think it is very important that we take a look at this and set the 
record straight. You will notice from this chart that the minority, 
when they were in the majority during the previous 7 years, spent 
$315.1 billion over a 7-year period on elementary, secondary education, 
job training, student loan funding. Our 7-year proposal proposes to 
spend $340.8 billion during that 7-year period, which again shows that 
we plan to spend $25 billion more on education than what the minority 
spend during the last 7 years, again setting the record straight.
  I would like to briefly review again some of the things that were 
said this afternoon when we had the debate in relationship to the 
President's budget. The minority leader indicated that he has real 
concerns about school lunch, and I said that I welcome him to the group 
who has that concern, because I have a real concern about student 
lunches. My concern is that after all of the money that we have spent 
from the Federal level, 50 percent of all of the students who are 
eligible for free and reduced-price meals are not participating, 50 
percent. Where are those children getting any food? Where are they 
getting any nutrition? Are we trying to educate them on an empty 
stomach?

  I am not so concerned about the fact that only 46 percent of the 
paying customers, the eligible paying customers participate, because 
obviously they have money for breakfast, obviously they have money for 
lunch; but what about that 50 percent who are eligible for free and 
reduced-price meals and are not participating? That is why the minority 
leader and I should have a concern; that is why we should do what the 
young lady from Arkansas said this afternoon.
  She said she did not come here to promote the status quo, and I 
welcome her to our opportunity to change the status quo and do a better 
job in providing education for our youngsters and providing school 
lunch and child nutrition programs.
  One other said that we are decimating education. Well, again, as I 
indicated here, we increase dramatically in a 7-year period our 
participation in education programs.
  So again, I would hope that we can make sure that the public 
understands exactly what we are doing. I yield to the gentleman from 
California.
  Mr. HUNTER. I thank the gentleman for yielding. I just want to get 
something straight. The President was on television the other night 
saying that he rejected, quote, the Republican package because among 
other things, according to him, it slashed and cut education.
  Now, are these the same numbers, the increase, for example, in job 
training and student loan funding, the $340.8 billion that is projected 
under the Republican plan for the next 7 years, those numbers were in 
front of the President while he was standing there telling the American 
people that the plan cut education?
  Mr. GOODLING. It is just the opposite of what we are doing. We are 
increasing by $25 billion over the next 7 years over what the former 
majority spent.
  Mr. HUNTER. But he had that increase in front of him in the plan and 
obviously his analysts put it into executive summary for him: What it 
does in education, what it does in other areas; but he had that while 
he looked at the camera and said, this slashes education. He had those 
numbers in front of him, correct? 

[[Page H15181]]

  Mr. GOODLING. I am sure he had those numbers before him. Whether 
anyone in the administration has read the Republican budget, I cannot 
prove. If they had, they would not continue to misinform the American 
public about what we are doing in nutrition or disinform, because I was 
corrected by an English teacher who was watching me once before from 
some other person's district, and she said, he is using the word 
misinformation, it is disinformation, she said, because they know it is 
wrong.

                              {time}  2000

  Mr. HUNTER. I would just say to my friend, first, thanks. We all owe 
you a real debt of gratitude for setting the record straight.
  But, second, this is kind of tragic, that the President of the United 
States, who has these numbers in front of him, has obviously scared a 
lot of people. If I had not seen the gentleman's numbers that he is 
presenting tonight and did not know anything about this plan and heard 
him describing the Republican education numbers, it would give me the 
impression that we were slashing that $315 billion that the Democrats 
spent over the last 7 years in half, or doing something like that. But 
there is no way that any reasonable individual could conclude from the 
President's remarks that we were actually increasing the amount of 
money to be spent on job training and student loan funding, which in 
fact we are under out program.
  Mr. GOODLING. When the tragedy is of course that we are using 
children and we are using senior citizens to make whatever point the 
administration wants to make. That is a real tragedy, because you are 
upsetting the most vulnerable people we have in our entire constituency 
when it is not correct. The figures are incorrect. What we are doing is 
improving.
  What we try to do, however, is insist on quality. That is where we 
run into a philosophical difference because of course the status quo is 
what they want. It has always been their philosophy to pour more money 
into the program, and somehow or other the program will get better.
  As I will point out later after some of the others have an 
opportunity to participate, the programs have not gotten better, and 
the programs have not helped the disadvantaged that we were trying to 
help. My chairman used to say that all the time, ``The programs, BILL, 
are not helping those we were trying to help.''
  I would always say, ``Let's change them.'' But we could never change 
them. Now we have an opportunity to change them so that we help the 
very people that we were trying to help but in fact we disadvantaged.
  I yield to the gentleman from California, another member of the 
committee.
  Mr. RIGGS. I very much appreciate the chairman yielding to me, since 
I have the honor and pleasure of serving under his chairmanship on the 
Committee on Economic and Educational Opportunities.
  I also find myself in sort of a dual capacity as an appropriator 
serving on the funding side of the equation, if you will, on the House 
Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education Appropriations 
Subcommittee. And I very much appreciate this special order opportunity 
to point out, I was going to say some of the misinformation and 
deliberate distortion that has taken place around the education and job 
training issues, specifically funding for the various Federal education 
and job training programs, but I think in fact disinformation is a more 
apt and correct description.
  I want to start out by pointing out, Mr. Chairman, something that you 
already know, one of the best kept secrets in official Washington, and 
that is, in the President's own budget, the budget that no Democrat 
Member of the House or Senate would offer, but the budget that was 
offered by two Republican Senators in the other body and was defeated 
on a vote of 96 to 0, in that budget the President proposed $2.2 
billion in education spending cuts.
  I have not heard the news media report on that fact as recently as 
yesterday, when the President went across the Potomac River to a public 
school in Arlington, in northern Virginia. So I think we ought to start 
out this special order by just pointing out some facts about the 
President's plan.

  The minority whip is on the floor. Perhaps he would like to engage in 
a gentlemanly conversation or colloquy, because I would love to hear 
some short of explanation given regarding the President's plan. Because 
when you look at his proposed budget, he recommended terminating 16 
education programs in the 1995 rescissions bill, which has become law, 
another 21 programs in his 1996 budget request, and 4 more programs 
which would begin phaseout in 1996. These 41 program terminations 
requested by the President total approximately $803 million in savings.
  Now if we were doing that, that would be $803 million in cuts, not 
savings, that could be applied to deficit reduction or some other 
important purpose of the Federal Government. The President has actually 
embraced our idea of consolidating those programs that can be 
consolidated with education programs at the State and local level. He 
has embraced our idea of terminating those programs which are redundant 
or for that matter which have never been funded by the Congress, and 
streamlining the delivery of Federal taxpayer services for public 
education. In total, he has recommended terminating and consolidating 
68 programs for a total savings of $757 million.
  Those recommendations were incorporated into the 1995 rescissions 
bill and the 1996 Labor, Health and Human Services and Education 
appropriations bill which has already passed this body, the House, and 
is now pending action in the other body.
  This proves, I submit to you, Mr. Chairman and colleagues, that the 
White House agrees with Republicans on the concept of reducing the 
number of unneeded and outdated education programs, that they agree 
that it is time to stop throwing money at the problem of poor 
educational results in American, and to start getting parents and local 
communities involved again in real solutions to the problem with 
learning and public education, the bootstrap improvement of public 
education in this country at the grassroots level.
  Those are all concepts that we very much believe in and, as the 
chairman has pointed out, we are proposing in our different concepts. 
This works on both the macro level as well as the micro level.
  I hope we will talk a little bit about the current what I regard as a 
crisis in the District of Columbia public schools before we complete 
our special order tonight, where I think we do have a very real 
oversight responsibility to the District of Columbia public schools. 
Perhaps we can talk a little bit about some of the reforms that we have 
put forward to improve this crisis situation that prevails in the 
District of Columbia public schools today, but that is sort of a micro 
application of education reform.
  But whether we are talking macro or micro educational reform, we are, 
as you have already said, Mr. Chairman, demanding results from Federal 
programs for the Federal taxpayer dollar rather than simply throwing 
more money at programs that are not working. We want less Washington 
interference, we want to respect the long-standing American tradition 
of decentralized decisionmaking and decentralized management in public 
education which the chairman knows so well from his distinguished 
career in public education as a school administrator. And we want to 
demand tangible results from Federal programs. We want proof that those 
programs are actually helping and serving students and not Federal 
bureaucrats.
  I just want to make two other quick comments before yielding back to 
the chairman so we can go on to our other colleagues. But I want to 
reemphasize the chairman's point because I think this is terribly 
important.

  We have gotten a new term in Washington jargon about school lunching, 
as part of the official rhetoric and sometimes the demagoguery that 
comes out of Washington. We do not want to be ``school lunched'' by the 
minority party when we are talking about some of the other reforms 
contained in the Balanced Budget Act of 1995.
  This is so misleading and patently unfair, because what we proposed 
to do was take, as the chairman well knows, 6 separate school-based 
nutrition programs and consolidate them into one 

[[Page H15182]]
block grant for State and local education agencies. We have a 
requirement in the block grant that limits the amount that State 
education agencies can take off the top for administration of the 
program, and we effectively force almost all of the money down to the 
local community level where it can be used to meet the nutritional 
needs of our kids in local schools.
  That was our proposal. Why have six separate programs, the before 
school, after school, hot lunch, school milk program?
  Mr. GOODLING. Summer feedings.
  Mr. RIGGS. Why have all these programs, each with their own set of 
rules and regulations, each requiring a separate application from local 
education agencies to Washington? Why not, instead of that very 
bureaucratic process, full of red tape and regulatory hurdles, why not 
put them all in a block grant?
  That is what we did. In putting them in a block grant, we proposed to 
increase spending for the school-based nutrition block grant 4.5 
percent each and every year for the next 5 years, a total increase in 
spending of $1 billion in school nutrition programs.
  Mr. GOODLING. Here is a good example, because in the red is what the 
President proposed in 1995 and what the President proposed in 1996. 
This is what we proposed, the 4.5-percent increase in each one of those 
years.
  Mr. RIGGS. The other criticism that we heard from the other side and 
their allies across the country was that we eliminated mandatory 
Federal nutritional standards for this block grant program. Well, what 
we did instead, of course, as the chairman well knows, is suggest 
voluntary nutritional standards.
  We know full well that, because this goes back to the canard that in 
the absence of mandatory nutritional standards, somehow, some way, 
local school districts are going to start feeding our kids ketchup, 
when we know that is just a bald falsehood. But I also know from my own 
experience as a local school board member, which I am sure the chairman 
as a former school principal and educational administrator would attest 
to, we know from our personal firsthand experiences that if any local 
school district in this country attempted to feed their kids ketchup, 
they would hear about it loud and clear at the very next school board 
meeting.
  I appreciate the chairman giving me the opportunity to join the 
special order to make that point, and also reemphasize his point that 
we are proposing to increase funding for school loans, by $12 billion, 
from $24 billion today in 1995 to $36 billion in the year 2002. That 
proposal is incorporated into our plan, our 7-year plan for balancing 
the Federal budget known as the B Balanced Budget Act of 1995, a $12 
billion increase in spending for student financial aid, student loans, 
and as the chairman has already pointed out, next year we will witness 
the highest level of Pell grants in our country's history.

  So so much for these claims as we have heard. I actually gathered 
some of the more descriptive adjectives that I have seen in my local 
media back home in the First Congressional District, in and around the 
First Congressional District of California. We have heard descriptions 
used such as drastic, catastrophic, devastating, used to describe our 
proposals.
  I hope that our constituents and fellow Americans listening to us 
tonight realize that a $12 billion spending increase for student loans, 
a $1 billion spending increase for school nutrition programs is hardly 
drastic, catastrophic or devastating. And I hope they will be able to 
see, with the help of this special order and other efforts such as this 
special order, through all this deliberate distortion and misleading 
rhetoric. I thank the gentleman for yielding.
  Mr. GOODLING. You mentioned consolidating programs, that the 
President was interested in consolidating and eliminating some and we 
are interested in doing that.
  It is interesting, I think, for the public to understand that there 
are 500 education programs on the Federal level. Only one-third of 
those are in the Department of Education, and the Department of 
Education cannot tell us where the others are, nor can they tell us 
whether they are effective, nor can they tell us how much they are 
costing, which means we are probably wasting about $100 billion on 
these phantom programs somewhere that apparently are not very effective 
because nobody seems to know anything about them.
   I yield to another colleague from our committee, the gentleman from 
Michigan [Mr. Hoekstra].
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. I thank the chairman for yielding. I would like to just 
reference some of the comments from my colleague from California.
  Not only is going from 298 and increasing by $12 billion, not only is 
that not catastrophic, not only is that not devastating, I believe 
that--and my principal can correct me, perhaps--I believe that in 99 
percent of the country, every place but Washington, when you go from 
298 and you go up by $12 billion, I believe every place else in the 
country that is not a cut. I believe that that is an increase. It is 
the same thing for a number of other programs.
  If I could just then talk a little bit about the bigger picture 
because also, in addition to serving on the Education and Economic 
Opportunity Committee, I also serve on the Budget Committee, and just 
frame it a little bit because I think as the chairman has laid out so 
effectively, we are increasing spending on a number of different 
programs.
  People ask, ``Well, now can that be? You guys are cutting the budget 
in Washington.'' In reality we are just slowing the growth.
  We are slowing the growth for a very, very important reason. I think 
that is why last week, Friday, so many of us were disappointed, because 
in the middle of November we thought we had reached an agreement with 
the President.
  We thought that we had reached an agreement that said he was going to 
submit to us a plan to balance the budget, a plan to balance the budget 
within 7 years, and that he would use Congressional Budget Office 
numbers. So that we then could take our plan to balance the budget, 
compare it to his plan to balance the budget, and we could get off of 
this debate about whether balancing the budget was important or not, 
but that we would all agree and then we could actually get into the 
policy differences.
  That did not happen. Last week, Friday, the President, we were 
expecting his plan. He did present a plan. The disappointing thing with 
the plan is that that plan never got to zero. I think the best estimate 
said that in year 7 there would still be a $75 billion deficit, and the 
number could be higher than that. It just did not reach zero.
  Actually, when I was back in my district a couple of weeks ago and 
talking to some of my constituents, they said, ``Pete, we are really 
disappointed. Ever since you got to Washington, you forgot the word 
surplus.''
  When you were in the private sector, working for a publicly held 
corporation, a Fortune 500 company, the expectation from your 
shareholders, from your employees, was that you would deliver a profit.

                              {time}  2015

  Now that the gentleman has gotten to Washington, he thinks that 
getting to zero is good enough. It is kind of like, yes, you are right, 
we ought to be talking about a surplus because what we are really 
trying to do here in this bigger picture, in a positive and 
constructive way, is we are trying to, I think, preserve the future for 
our kids, provide them with the educational opportunities, the 
educational reforms, the education spending that can create a positive 
educational environment for our kids but from an economic standpoint 
can do the right things, that says we are going to gradually move to 
balancing the budget and hopefully after that getting to a surplus so 
that we can start paying back the debt because what we are doing today 
is we are saddling onto our kids $4.9 trillion, close to $5 trillion 
worth of debt.
  A kid born in my district today, in the gentleman's district, 
anywhere in this country is going to pay in their lifetime $187,000 of 
interest on the debt if we do not change the way that we do our 
spending programs. They will face effective tax rates of 82 percent.
  Most of these are discretionary programs, correct, the discretionary 
part of the budget. What happens to these programs in the year 2012 
when the only money that we have coming in for tax revenues, it is only 
available for entitlement programs? What happens to a lot of these 
programs?

[[Page H15183]]

  Mr. GOODLING. They are going to fall with their weight.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. They are going to be gone.
  Mr. GOODLING. They will not be able to be funded.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. There will not be any money for education if we do not, 
and I do not consider these tough decisions, I consider these 
reasonable decisions to reform and slow the growth of Federal spending.
  Remember, in 1995 we spent, what, the numbers are big, $1.5 trillion. 
The year 2002, we are not going to be spending $1.4 trillion, it is not 
going down. We are going to be spending $1.85 trillion. We are going to 
add $350 billion more per year to spend. What we are trying to do is 
allocate those dollars toward the priorities that we think are 
important for this country.
  So we are not cutting spending. We are trying to more effectively 
target the programs. The chairman has done an excellent job of 
identifying reforms in a number of programs so that these dollars will 
go back to the States, will go back to the kids in more effective ways.

  We had the vote today on the President's budget which does not get us 
to zero. I applaud the vote that we had today; 412 Members of this 
Congress, of this House, stood up and said, a $75 billion deficit in 
year 7 is not good enough. We need to do better than that. We need to 
do better than that for our kids, for the next generation. We are going 
to have, and I think the House is going to have, to take the lead. We 
have worked hard all year. We have developed a lot of innovative new 
programs, a lot of reforms.
  The House has led the way. I think we are going to have to lead, we 
are going to have to lead the President now because this is an historic 
debate. Are we finally going to take the lead in actually having a 
realistic plan to balance the budget? Or what a lot of my constituents 
are afraid of, they are afraid that there was a plan to balance the 
budget in the mid-1980s, there was one to balance it in the late 1980s. 
There was a Bush plan in 1990. There was President Clinton's plan in 
1993, all of which have two things in common. They all promised to 
balance the budget, and they have all failed miserably.
  We still have a $160 billion deficit. We are going to make sure that 
this Congress comes down and that we do not join that pattern. We are 
not the fifth in a series of failures. This Congress is actually going 
to go though the process and say, we are going to have a real plan. We 
are going to come back next year. We are going to monitor the programs 
and the changes and the reforms that we have made. We are going to fix 
them where they do not work, and we are going to build on them where 
they do. But we are also going to come back and make sure that we hit 
year 1 of the 7-year plan. Then I think we will do it the Republican 
way.
  We are not going to meet the targets of year 2. We are going to 
exceed, not exceed in spending, we are going to beat the deficit 
targets, and we are going to improve on these plans, because I still 
think there is room for improvement. We just have to get better at 
monitoring, reforming and transferring power out.
  Mr. GOODLING. Mr. Speaker, I had recently a letter that was 
devastating to me, because it came from someone who I admire greatly 
and someone with whom I am very close. He bought the rhetoric that he 
has heard and the things that he has read that somehow or other we are 
cutting education and we are cutting nutrition. Therefore, he decided 
that I was not doing what he and I had talked about to improve 
education and training in this country.
  He equated, I suppose, additional funds with the improvement, and 
what I was trying to do was just the opposite. I was trying to do what 
he and I talked about, and that was to move us from access only, access 
to mediocrity, to access to quality. And so I tried to point out to the 
American public that we have spent $90 billion on title I, $90 billion 
since its inception.
  Then I read what the department says. The department says, under 
program effectiveness, comparisons of similar cohorts by grade and 
poverty show that program participation does not reduce the test score 
gap for disadvantaged students. Indeed, they went on, chapter 1 
students scores in all poverty cohorts declined between the third and 
fourth grades.
  What I am trying to say is that it does not matter whether we spend 
$180 billion. If it is not directed toward quality, if we are not 
demanding more from these students, then, of course, we are spending 
the money to develop mediocrity. We cannot survive if we do that.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, I had much the same dialogue with a very 
good friend of mine back in Michigan. We were talking about head Start 
and said, you are taking money away from some of the neediest kids. I 
thought, well, I will come back, and I talked with the staff and said, 
give me the numbers on Head Start.
  We have gone through this earlier this year. We felt good about what 
we did. But some people have heard some things. Let me revisit the Head 
Start Program. Got the numbers and, kind of like 1989, we were spending 
$1.2 billion, $1.2 billion is a lot of money. I worked for a Fortune 
500 company for 15 years. We tried to get to be a billion dollar 
company. They finally hit it this last year, and 5000 families depend 
on this company. It is a lot of money.
  But in 1989, $1.2 billion. Now 1995, we are spending $3.5 billion. So 
this program had tripled, almost tripled in the amount of dollars that 
were being spent. I think the chairman is an expert on this, but one of 
the things that has happened is, you would think that the number of 
kids being served by the program might have at least doubled or tripled 
just like the dollars, but the number of kids served has only gone up 
by 40 percent.
  Some of the studies that we have gotten back have said parts of this 
program are working. Some of it is not working, perhaps, or is not 
working quite as well as what we need.
  I think we did a very good thing. We basically stabilized the growth. 
We cut it by, what, by about 3 percent this year. So we are still 
spending 3.4 billion, and we said, this program has grown very, very 
quickly over the last number of years. We are getting mixed kinds of 
feedback. Let us step back and assess the program, see what is working, 
see what is not. Let us make sure that we do not just dump a lot of 
money on it.
  I think people too often, they have pealed the onion back. Just 
throwing dollars at these programs does not mean that they are 
accomplishing the goals that we have set out. I think that is the same 
thing that the gentleman was bringing out in his point.
  Mr. GOODLING. Mr. Speaker, as I tried to point out this afternoon, 
and the gentleman just pointed out, this program, Head Start, has grown 
186 percent in 5 years as far as dollars are concerned. But, again, 
there was less than 40 percent in increased student participation. But 
it was the health and human service inspector general who said, the 
reason for the problems is that we increased the money so dramatically 
that we have sloppy program management. They also then go on to say 
that only 50 percent of the programs they would rate as good programs.
  So again we are talking about getting quality programs so that these 
children have an opportunity to be successful and get a part of the 
American dream. And just throwing money at mediocrity will not improve 
their chances of making a success of life. I think that is why we have 
to talk about reforms.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, sloppy program management, what does that 
mean when we have sloppy program management on $3.5 billion? Sloppy 
program management, private sector, my boss came to me and said, you 
have got sloppy program management. We were not talking anywhere on 
these kinds of numbers, but it means dollars going down the drain that 
are not being used for the goals and the objectives that we have set.
  It is maybe time to step back and take a look and not throw more 
money at it but say, let us take a look at the money that is going 
there, that $3.5 billion. Let us tighten up our program assessment, our 
criteria so that we can get more effectiveness out of $3.4 billion or 
$3.5 billion rather than just throwing another $2- or $300 billion at 
it, because that $2- or $300 billion is going to be administered how? 
Sloppy program management means a portion of it is gone before we ever 
educate one more child.

  Mr. GOODLING. Every administration, not just this administration, but 


[[Page H15184]]
every administration and every Congress, each administration would say, 
give us more money for these two programs. All the Congress would say, 
more money for the program. No one paid very much attention until the 
last couple years as to the possibility that maybe it is mediocrity 
rather than quality that is being produced out there.
  So, all we are saying is, sit up and take notice. These children 
deserve more than mediocrity. They deserve excellence. We need to 
demand more from them so that they have an opportunity to get a part of 
the American dream.
  Mr. RIGGS. Mr. Speaker, one thing that we have not mentioned tonight 
is the three of us and our other colleagues in the majority on the 
Committee on Economic and Educational Opportunities are in the process 
of developing a very ambitious legislative agenda to address 
educational reform and improvement in America for next year, 1996.
  I want to salute the gentleman from Michigan in particular because he 
is the chairman of our newly created Oversight and Investigations 
Subcommittee. He has helped us attend to one of our fundamental 
responsibilities as Members of Congress, and that is performing 
legislative oversight of these different programs.
  Mr. Speaker, the gentleman mentioned just a moment ago the chapter 1 
program, the basic skills education program, which was originally 
intended, going back to the congressional intent in the authorizing 
legislation, to help the most disadvantaged and to provide some 
assistance from the Federal taxpayer to low income school districts.
  This program has grown in leaps and bounds as well. I am just looking 
down here at the latest information. Again recent studies demonstrate 
that the program has the long-term impact of improving educational 
achievement. That, after all, ought to be the bottom line.
  I fully agree with the premise that equating money with educational 
progress or educational achievement is really a false equation. 
Education funding has risen steadily and dramatically in America in 
recent years. Yet test scores, probably the best barometer for gauging 
pupil achievement and educational performance, have shown little or no 
improvement. But this particular program, this chapter 1 program, is no 
longer targeted to the most disadvantaged. Ninety percent of the school 
districts in America receive this funding, including, as the chairman 
knows, the 100 most affluent school districts that received $490 
million, almost half a billion dollars, in fiscal year 1994.
  So it has become an operational subsidy that local school districts 
are now relying on, more largesse from the Federal taxpayer. There is 
no connection or nexus necessarily between this Federal taxpayer 
funding and results. As I mentioned at the outset, in my remarks, we 
are interested in results. That is why performing the oversight 
function, the oversight responsibility, of the legislative branch of 
Government is so important so that we really can take a hard look and 
determine which programs are working well, which programs are producing 
results and the proper bang for the taxpayer dollar.
  Mr. GOODLING. And I think it is important to point out that together 
the administration, the majority, the minority, brought about a careers 
bill that took all of those, again, programs, 163, 153, how many ever 
may be out there again, who knows how many Federal programs that are 
there for job training, and together we said we got to get some quality 
programs out there. All we are doing is spending money so thinly all 
over everything that we do not know if we are accomplishing anything to 
help people to be better trained, and in this day and age they have to 
get trained and retrained constantly, and so we work together to do it, 
and I would call on the minority and the administration to do the same 
thing now for every other program. Do not keep accepting the idea that 
we cannot admit that they have not done well. Let us admit that we 
failed and then say from what we have learned we can build quality 
programs.
  That is, I think, the message that we should get out to everybody.
  Mr. RIGGS. Mr. Speaker, the gentleman mentioned the, and so did the 
gentleman from Michigan [Mr. Hoekstra] the concept of transferring 
responsibility and authority out of Washington back down to State and 
local communities, and I tried to make the point that again the 
centralized decision making is fundamental to America education, but I 
want to--you mentioned the career legislation that I, all three of us, 
worked on in this House, and it uses the concept of block grants, as 
does the school-based nutrition program as potentially further 
legislative initiatives will in the future. Yet our political opponents 
and their allies have managed to kind of give this concept of block 
grants a bad name. It is sort of a nasty term now when people talk 
about block grants, and I think we ought to point out that what we are 
attempting to do is consolidate programs first of all, which gives us 
the opportunity to identify those that can be eliminated because they 
are either redundant with State or local programs or they are better 
performed at the State or local level, and you pointed out that with 
the careers work force development job training consolidation 
legislation--that is quite a mouthful, but you pointed out that there 
is something like 160 separate Federal job-training programs, what we 
call categorical programs, and they are spread across virtually the 
entire Federal bureaucracy, administered by 14 different departments 
and agencies. So we thought it would make sense to take those programs, 
consolidate them down into a few block grants; in the case of the 
careers legislation, ultimately three block grants, and then use those 
block grants to transfer the authority and the revenue down to the 
State and local level with proper oversight from the Federal Government 
and the Congress as the legislative branch of Government so that these 
programs would be closer to the people they are intended to serve. In 
the process of doing that consolidation and streamlining, Mr. Speaker, 
we assumed that there would be an administrative cost savings that we 
could then use to our long-term plans to balance the Federal budget and 
ultimately generate a budget surplus which is so critically important, 
as the gentleman from Michigan has already point out, in order to pay 
down and pay off that $5 trillion national debt, $1.5 trillion of which 
are funds borrowed from the trust funds of the Federal Government 
including Social Security. So we are moving on two paths here. We want 
to improve programs by emphasizing results, not just money, and we want 
to do the very best things that we can possibly do for the future of 
our children even before improving the quality of American 
education, bootstrapping the performance of our schools, and that is 
balancing the Federal budget and getting our Nation's fiscal house in 
order.

  Mr. GOODLING. And I think it is very important to point out to the 
American people what I have pointed out in committee time and time 
again, and what I pointed out here on the floor, and what I pointed out 
to the Governors. We are not talking about revenue sharing. We do not 
have any revenue to share. We are talking about this is what we expect 
you to accomplish, these are the goals you must reach, you use your 
creativity, you use what you know on the local level to bring about the 
changes that have to be brought about, if we are going to move from 
mediocrity to excellence.
  So we are not talking about revenue sharing, and I think it is 
important that the American public understands that, and I yield again 
to the gentleman from Michigan.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. Well, the gentleman may be disappointed he yielded. We 
have had our discussions and our debates about revenue sharing, but I 
think we are pretty close together.
  As long as the money--it is kind of interesting. Revenue sharing is 
kind of like the impression is we are sharing with the rest of the 
country. It is kind of like they are sharing with us. The money comes 
from there in the first place, but, as long as the money is coming from 
the local communities and it is coming to Washington, then we are 
sending it back to them, I think it is important that we send it back 
with some broader goals, and some criteria and some measurements so 
they can drive toward successful programs. I think what my colleague 
from California was pointing out so correctly, we 

[[Page H15185]]
are not taking away the criteria, and the goals and the objective 
measurements, but what we are doing with block granting is we are 
putting in place a lot more flexibility for the people in Holland, MI; 
Muskegan, MI; or Ludington, communities in my district, versus 
communities in your district, versus communities in California, to take 
these dollars, take a look at the broad objectives and goals that we 
think they should be striving for and put the programs together to go 
after meeting those objectives. What we want to eliminate, and you know 
we had the hearings a couple of weeks ago talking about values, 
schools, and parents, and Bill Bennett came and testified, and he 
seemed to imply, and I think we going to do some followup work on this 
with our staff and research with the people in the Education Department 
that the 6 percent of dollars, the education dollars that are coming 
from Washington at the elementary-secondary level, that when those 
dollars go back to the community, the belief is that maybe they go back 
with too many strings attached, too many rules and regulations, so that 
what happens at the local level is administrators and teachers are 
looking to Washington for their direction in what they should be doing 
when really, as Mr. Bennett said, great schools, effective schools, are 
those that are forming a partnership with the parents in the community 
in talking together with about here collectively our goals and our 
objectives for your kids, and we are going to work together on reaching 
those, and what you have here is when the dollars start coming from 
Washington with rules and regulations, all of a sudden the 
administrators are looking somewhere else about what they should be 
doing, and what rules and regulations they should be following, and we 
are detracting away from their primary focus. Their primary focus 
should not be filling out paperwork for bureaucrats in Washington. 
Their primary focus should be dealing with parents in the community, in 
dealing with the kids in the classroom and meeting their needs, and not 
trying to meet the needs of detailed rules and regulations from people 
that cannot even find our districts on a map.

  Mr. GOODLING. And what they are looking at most and what detracts 
them most is that they are worried about the audit because, if they 
commingle one penny, they are in trouble, yet they know that here are 
10 small categorical programs and they are accomplishing nothing. They 
could put some of those together, and commingle that money and produce 
good programs that are effective for that particular area, but they 
cannot do it because the auditor will be there.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. Block grants are a positive thing because they will get 
rid of rules and regulations, they will be broad objectives, and it 
will return the primary focus back to the kids and getting them 
educated, and the administrators will spend more time worrying about 
what is happening in the classroom and less time about what is, or less 
time worrying about what is going to happen when the people in 
Washington review our documents.
  It is a constructive change, it is a positive change, it is moving 
control back to where it should be.
  Mr. GOODLING. I would like to very quickly review one other area that 
does not deal with education, but, you know, every time we come here we 
hear somebody get up and say, ``Oh, you're taking from the poor and 
you're giving to the rich with your tax program,'' and I will come down 
every time, I will challenge them, tell them exactly what is in the tax 
bill. They will never get up and rebut it, but the next day they will 
come and say the same thing over and over again.
  And so I come down, and I say, ``Is a $500 tax credit for long-term-
care insurance, is that something for the rich?'' Every senior citizen 
is worried out there about what happens if I have a lengthy illness.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. It is not every senior citizen, it is every one of us 
is worried about.
  Mr. GOODLING. But this is one where the $500 credit for long-term 
care cannot be for the rich. A thousand dollars for home care where 
every senior citizen wants to stay and where it is so much cheaper for 
everyone to have them, and is that for the rich? Of course not.
  Is a correction of the marriage penalty for the rich? Of course not.
  Is a $2,000 IRA for the parent that stays home with their children 
for the rich? Of course not.
  Up to $5,000 credit for adoption? Is that for the rich?
  A $500 credit; now here they like to play with this one, for each 
child under 18, but 35 percent of all of those dollars go to a family 
of four with an income of $30,000 or less. The next 35 percent goes to 
$50,000 or less. Again, something for the rich?
  Capital gains. Sixty-five percent of all capital gains transactions 
are brought about by senior citizens, and, therefore, if some senior 
citizen wants to take care of themselves in their golden years, and 
they have to sell their property, sell their farm, between State and 
Federal government will take 60 percent of everything, and then we will 
create programs down here to send money out to try to take care of the 
very people whose money we took from them and brought it down here.
  So again the whole package was built around how do you keep the 
family, the struggling young family, together, and what can you do to 
get small business to create more jobs, because if our welfare program 
works, we need those jobs, and we need them to create them.
  I yield to the gentleman from Michigan.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. And I believe that it is not like our tax revenues are 
going to go down--I mean and let us see. We have got $175 billion 
deficit or a $160 billion deficit, and this year we spent $1.5 
trillion, so our tax revenues must have been about $1.325 trillion, a 
lot. But $1.3 trillion rounding. In 7 years, we are going to have a 
balanced budget, we are going to do the positive kinds of tax reforms 
that you are talking about, and what is our revenue going to be? It 
will be $1.85 trillion. Tax revenues are going to go up, and they are 
going to go up significantly over the next 7 years even though we have 
made these tax reforms, so it is not like we are sitting here on a diet 
saying, ``Oh, boy, we're not going to be getting as much money in.'' We 
are going to be getting a lot more money and we are going to be getting 
almost $500 billion more per year into Washington in taxes in 7 years 
than what we are collecting this year.
  Some tax cut.
  Mr. GOODLING. Yes.
  I yield to the gentleman.
  Mr. RIGGS. I just want to make a couple of other quick points, Mr. 
Speaker, because I came across some information that I think answers 
some of the rhetorical questions we were raising earlier. I want to 
point out to our colleagues, our constituents, our listeners that a lot 
of the Federal funding on education in recent years has gone to fuel a 
large bureaucracy back here known as the U.S. Department of Education, 
and I am going to introduce a couple of articles for the Record, but I 
want to point out according to a couple of articles from Investors 
Business Daily. Since its creation in 1979 the Education Department has 
doubled in size from $14.2 to $32.9 billion today, 1995. That is three 
times the growth rate of all other discretionary nondefense programs in 
the Federal budget. In the past 5 years, the Education Department has 
grown from 4,596 bureaucrats and 155 programs to 5,100 bureaucrats and 
more than 240 programs, and that is, as you pointed out earlier, Mr. 
Speaker, that is just the U.S. Department of Education. That does not 
include the 30 other Federal agencies which spend more than $27 billion 
on 308 education programs that the General Accounting Office deemed 
often duplicative and overlapping.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. If the gentleman would yield, we are working on this 
project to define or redefine the role of the Education Department in 
the future, and I think, as the staff, the committee has gone through 
that number you quoted, $27 billion in spending on education outside of 
the Education Department. I believe that the staff has come up with a 
number that says that number is closer to $80 to $100 billion. But that 
is the problem. We do not know where all of this money is which may be 
job security for me, but I think there is a role for oversight, 
significant oversight, and you know we have had some--we have had some 
very good hearings in trying to track down that 

[[Page H15186]]
kind of money, having the kind of expertise that my colleague from 
California and the enthusiasm that he brings for this issue I think 
means that we are going to have a good opportunity to manage our growth 
and significantly increase our effectiveness as we go through what is a 
more difficult process than I believe it has to be of trying to balance 
the budget.

                              {time}  2045

  Mr. RIGGS. If the gentleman will yield again, and I thank the 
gentleman for his comments, I want to introduce for the Record a 
commentary published in the American Legion magazine entitled ``The 
Wrong Answer: Washington's movement toward centrally run, politically 
correct, `no-fault' education proves the government is out of touch 
with what America wants from its schools,'' by Bruno V. Manno, the 
former U.S. assistant secretary of education for policy and planning, 
now a senior fellow at the Washington, DC, office of the Hudson 
Institute, and also an associate director of the Hudson's Modern Red 
Schoolhouse project, which I think attests to what the gentleman from 
Michigan was saying. In fact, I would change that subhead to say ``This 
idea of federalizing education in this country proves that the 
government is out of touch with what American parents and guardians 
want from its schools.''
  I wanted to make one other point, though, because it is crucial to 
the debate we are going to have here over the next couple of days on 
the House floor. That is the District of Columbia public schools. I 
think it is a real concern for all of us. One of my colleagues on the 
Committee on Appropriations, the gentleman from Virginia, [Mr. Wolf], 
who represents a northern Virginia suburban district, has called the 
situation in D.C. public schools a disgrace and a tragedy. He has 
suggested that no Member of Congress would willingly send their 
children to attend District of Columbia public schools. I would point 
out that the President and the Vice President, who can obviously afford 
to send their children to private schools, so those children do not 
have to attend the District of Columbia public schools, do so.

  I want to point out that Washington students consistently score the 
worst in the Nation, lower than any other inner-city group on the 
national education assessment progress test. And here is truly a 
shocking figure: Only 56 percent of city students even graduate high 
school. In recent weeks, we have seen newspaper articles appearing in 
the local media. Here is one from the Washington Post. I believe I have 
it here, if I can find it.
  Mr. GOODLING. Mr. Speaker, while the gentleman is looking for it, I 
might point out that the per pupil expenditure is one of the highest in 
the country.
  Mr. RIGGS. In the range of $8,000 to $9,000 per pupil annually. Here 
is an article in the December 9 Washington Post, and the headline says, 
``Third Graders Mark Time During Parade of Teachers; D.C. Class Settles 
Down With Fourth Substitute.'' And we hear these stories of kids who do 
not have permanent teachers, who lack just basic education equipment, 
they lack proper textbooks, we hear horror stories, literally, of 
rundown facilities, facilities that do not have working plumbing, 
working, operating bathrooms. It is just really a crime and disgrace.
  Mr. Speaker, we have passed, as an amendment to the District of 
Columbia annual appropriations bill, the D.C. School Reform Act. That 
originated, of course, with the efforts of the chairman of the 
committee, the gentleman from Pennsylvania, [Mr. Goodling], the efforts 
of our colleague on the Committee on Educational and Economic 
Opportunities, Mr. Gunderson; the D.C. School Reform Act will establish 
a challenging economic core curriculum in the District of Columbia 
public schools and provide scholarships for low-income families so they 
have the same right of choice across all competing educational 
institutions, public and private, as more affluent families.
  It establishes independent public charter schools, expanded parent 
literacy schools, a work force preparation initiative, and it spends 
money to improve the District of Columbia school facilities. That 
particular amendment, which again was attached to the District of 
Columbia annual appropriations bill, has caused a great deal of 
controversy in this House. It has actually held up final passage of the 
District of Columbia appropriations.
  I hope that we can make good on our commitment to the young people, 
the students of the District of Columbia public schools, because this 
is one case where a school district is, in fact, under our direct 
oversight by virtue of our being Members of Congress, and I appreciate 
the chairman of the committee not only taking the initiative tonight on 
this special order, but for all the work he has done to demonstrate his 
concern for the District of Columbia and to try to improve the caliber 
of District of Columbia schools.
  Mr. Speaker, I include for the Record the articles referred to 
earlier:

            [From Investor's Business Daily, Nov. 21, 1995]

                    The Federalization of Education?


            clinton wants washington in charge of schooling

                         (By Matthew Robinson)

       President Clinton's latest line in the sand in the budget 
     battle is education spending.
       Clinton considers his education policies one of his 
     greatest achievements. He cites Goals 2000 and expansion of 
     the federal student loan program as too important to trim.
       But Clinton is facing a GOP just as steeled to reform the 
     education status quo as he is bent to defend it.
       The budget battle represents two different views of the 
     federal government's role in education. Clinton wants to 
     preserve his education policies which broaden federal power. 
     The GOP wants to send education back to the states.
       A look at the numbers shows that Clinton's favorite 
     education programs not only have failed to deliver better-
     educated kids, they have undermined traditional state 
     authority.
       To address this, the GOP is seeking changes in federal 
     education programs, which have been the fastest-growing items 
     in the federal budget.
       In total, Washington spends about $70 billion a year on 
     education programs, according to the General Accounting 
     Office.
       Since its creation, the Education Department's budget has 
     more than doubled from $14.2 billion in 1980 to $32.9 billion 
     in 1995.
       In the past five years, the Education Department has grown 
     from 4,596 bureaucrats and 155 programs to 5,100 bureaucrats 
     and more than 240 programs.
       The House wants to cut $3.6 billion from the Education 
     Department, and the Senate want $2.9 billion in cuts.
       Despite his line in the sand, Clinton also called for a 
     drop of $2.2 billion in education outlays in his 1996 budget.
       Federal education spending also has risen dramatically 
     relative to other discretionary spending since 1979, 
     according to John Berthoud, vice president of the Alexis de 
     Tocqueville Institution, a think tank in Arlington, Va.
       In the '70s, inflation-adjusted federal education spending 
     grew only about half as fast as other non-defense 
     discretionary spending items (35% vs. 65.4%).
       But with the creation of the Education Department, federal 
     education spending surged--rising three-and-a-half times as 
     fast as the non-defense discretionary budget (29.5% vs. 
     7.9%).
       And it's not just the department. Some 30 other federal 
     agencies spend more than $27 billion on 308 education 
     programs that the GAO deemed often ``duplicative and 
     overlapping.''
       Despite the surge in federal spending, educational 
     achievement barely roes. Average SAT scores rose just 1.1% 
     during the '80s. And in more than a third of the states, 
     scores fell.
       ``We have been throwing an endless stream of dollars at 
     education with ever diminishing results,'' Berthoud said.
       Still, the president has staked a lot on Goals 2000: The 
     Educate America Act. The legislation builds on ideas begun in 
     the Bush administration. It provides aid to states to develop 
     education reform plans and implement ``voluntary federal 
     standards.''
       The president asked for $750 million--an increase of more 
     than 87% over fiscal year '95--to finance the program. By 
     2002, total funding for Goals 2000 would reach $896 million.
       But House Republicans have chosen to zero out Goals 2000. 
     The Senate has opted to keep some of Goals 2000, cutting only 
     $62 million--a drop of 16.6% from the 1994 budget.
       When compared to a federal budget of more than $1.5 
     trillion dollars, Goals 2000--even if fully funded--is hardly 
     a drop in the bucket.


                        philosophical direction

       And the federal share of education pales next to state and 
     local shares. The U.S. spends about $484 billion a year on 
     education at all levels--7.6% of the GDP. The federal share 
     comes to about 6%.
       It isn't just the funding that bothers Republicans, it's 
     the philosophical direction of Goals 2000.
       The House, driven by the New Federalists, a group of about 
     50 Republican freshmen, chose to eliminate it.
       Goals 2000, critics note, aims at raising national 
     standards and performance. But it 

[[Page H15187]]
     does so by expanding the federal presence in education, even though 
     supporters claim the federal standards are voluntary.
       Some of the controversial elements include:
       Goals 2000 uses the command ``will'' more than 45 times 
     when describing what states must do to receive federal money. 
     The word ``should'' is only used three times.
       States must submit plans to federal education officials 
     showing how they will accomplish the national education 
     goals.
       Once a state accepts Goals 2000 money, it must implement 
     the program's requirements or be subject to federal action. 
     Thus, a local charter school free from state regulations 
     would have to answer directly to the federal government.
       Tests used to evaluate students are based on criteria such 
     as self-esteem and thinking ability, not factual knowledge. A 
     typical question on such tests is: ``What are your feelings 
     after reading this?'' The answers may include ``symbols, 
     images and drawings'' in place of words.
       Curricula and textbooks must fulfill federal specifications 
     including ``gender equitable and multicultural materials.''
       Controversial history standards that critics say are 
     politically biased also are an outgrowth of the Goals 2000 
     reforms.
       But the federal guidelines don't stop there, critics say. 
     So intrusive are these measures, said Edward Kealy, director 
     of Federal Programs for the National School Boards 
     Association, that ``I do not think any (corrective action) is 
     left off the list short of a nuclear attack on school 
     districts.''
       It boils down to one issue, others say. ``Ultimately, it is 
     an issue of local control,'' said Natalie Williams, an 
     education specialist with the Claremont Institute, a 
     California-based think tank. ``Goals 2000 purports to be a 
     wonderful reform measure. However, the GOP is looking to 
     reform schools by freeing up schools with charters and 
     restoring local control.
       ``It is tempting to look at Goals 2000 money and not see 
     the implications. It's stifling creative reform efforts,'' 
     Williams added.
       The education establishment is up in arms at the GOP 
     efforts to stop Goals 2000 before it gets started. The 
     National Education Association, a union representing 2.1 
     million of the nation's teachers, has started a campaign to 
     block the Republican budget plans.


                          hyperbolic rhetoric

       Declares one NEA press release: ``(T)he sound of the school 
     bell is being drowned out by the growing roar of a chainsaw 
     as Congress hacks billions of dollars from education to pay 
     for tax cuts for the wealthy and giveaways to big business. 
     As the school year begins, vital education programs are on 
     the chopping block as never before.''
       Dale Lestina, senior lobbyist for the NEA is just as blunt. 
     ``Both the House and Senate proposals are poison to 
     education. One just kills it a little faster. The Senate 
     version is a little slower, but it'll still kill the 
     program.''
       The GOP also wants to reverse Clinton's changes in student 
     aid. Such aid is still a mainstay of the Education 
     Department, with some 40% of its spending devoted to it.
       The department spends about $12 billion a year to make more 
     than $32 billion in grants, loans and work-study programs 
     available to 6.5 million students--nearly half of the 
     nation's college and university population.
       Clinton has pointed to this program as an example of 
     ``investing in the next generation.'' To do so, he pushed 
     through a change in student aid, from federally backed 
     private lending to direct government lending.
       Yet his direct lending program has not produced the savings 
     he promised.
       By eliminating the free-market lenders and administering 
     the loans directly, the government hoped to save $5 billion.
       But according to the Congressional Budget Office, the White 
     House plan has cost $1.5 billion to administer.
       Republicans plan on shifting the burdens back onto the 
     private lenders who benefit from the loans. They predict a 
     savings of $10 billion.
       The GOP desire for local control has even led to the first 
     voucher-like initiative in the District of Columbia.
       The House's D.C. appropriations bill approves $3,000 
     scholarships for parents to choose the schools their children 
     attend, whether public or private.
       Washington students consistently score the worst in the 
     nation--lower than any other inner-city group on the National 
     Education Assessment Progress tests. Only 56% of city 
     students even graduate high school.
       But these arguments may soon become moot. In many states, 
     there is a growing resolve to reject Washington money. States 
     want to proceed with their own reforms free of federal red 
     tape.
       Montana, Virginia, New Hampshire and Alabama have all 
     declined Goals 2000 money. And in California Gov. Pete 
     Wilson's office, a debate rages about whether to accept $42 
     million of Goals 2000 funding.
       Not all Republicans want to trim the federal role in 
     education.
       Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania helped save Goals 
     2000 in the Senate, fighting to keep $300 million in funding. 
     His office also has been urging states to take the money and 
     promising changes when state officials balked.
       Even with the budget impasse, education reform is coming.


                           in the crosshairs

       Ever since President Reagan promised to abolish the 
     Education Department, conservative Republicans have had their 
     sights set on the department.
       The Back to Basics Education Reform Act, a measure 
     introduced by Ohio Republican Steve Chabot, a former school 
     teacher, would abolish the department.
       It also would send $9 billion in block grants to the states 
     for elementary and secondary education and provide $2 billion 
     for higher education.
       Student loans, Pell Grants and the Individuals with 
     Disabilities Act programs would be moved to the Department of 
     Health and Human Services.
       The bill has 120 cosponsors and is expected to reach the 
     House floor for a vote next year.
                                                                    ____


            [From Investor's Business Daily, Nov. 27, 1995]

                       Education Bait and Switch

       The program encourages states to adopt ``voluntary federal 
     standards'' to qualify for new federal grants. Clinton wants 
     to boost funding to $700 million--almost double last year's 
     $370 million. The Senate wants to spend 16.6% less than last 
     year. The House wants to zero out the program.
       Its backers call Goals 2000 the most important education 
     reform in three decades. But four states have already said 
     ``No,'' and California may join them. Virginia, Montana, New 
     Hampshire and Alabama have rejected more than $11 million of 
     Goals 2000 funds.
       Yes, it's a drop in the bucket. Virginia spends more than 
     $6 billion a year on education. Montana spends more than $700 
     million, New Hampshire $980 million and Alabama $2.8 billion.
       The states, which all have Republican governors, say 
     they're rejecting the federal intrusion and ``potential 
     interference'' in state authority. Alabama Gov. Fob James 
     complained that Goals 2000 doesn't move in the ``direction of 
     decreasing the role of the federal government and returning 
     power to the states.''
       California Gov. Pete Wilson, who said last month that he 
     would ``probably not'' accept $42.1 million in Goals 2000 
     money, has the same beef. Goals 2000 is an intrusive measure 
     filled with a ``myriad of federal dictates'' that may lead to 
     the ``federal micromanagement of California's education 
     policy.''
       Goals 2000 backers say it has some of the ``most flexible 
     requirements'' of any education act ever handed down from 
     Washington. And it began at the initiative of the nation's 
     governors, back in 1989. Why are they turning down what they 
     asked for?
       In fact, it's the same old Washington bait-and-switch. The 
     standards are only voluntary if you turn down the money. Take 
     it, and you're under the thumb of a half-dozen new 
     bureaucracies and research institutions. You have to submit 
     plans to the federal government to show how you'll reach 
     Goals 2000 standards.
       The passages on what states that take the funds must do 
     uses the command ``will'' 45 times, and ``should'' just 
     thrice.
       Most important, Goals 2000 isn't really what the governors 
     asked for. It doesn't boost education standards. It boosts 
     education bureaucrats who will just add ``standards'' to 
     their jargon, and go on as before.
       This establishment is run by union bosses, administrators, 
     and education professors who never master any other subject. 
     Classroom teachers have next to no voice.
       Since its creation in 1979, the Education Department has 
     doubled in size, from $14.2 billion to $32.9 billion in 1995. 
     That's three times the growth rate of all other 
     discretionary, non-defense programs. Nationally, inflation-
     adjusted per pupil spending grew 35% from 1979 to 1992.
       And all that bought us is a 1.1% increase in SAT scores.
       Paul Gagnon, a former director of the Education 
     Department's Fund for the Improvement and Reform of Schools 
     and Teaching, considers the problem in the December issue of 
     The Atlantic Monthly. He looks at the debacle of another 
     Education Department attempt to fulfill the governors' 
     mandate--the effort to write national content standards.
       Education hired scholars and teachers to write the 
     humanities standards. They failed miserably. The English 
     project was suspended after spending more than $900,000. One 
     subcommittee voted that the phrase ``standard English'' be 
     replaced by ``privileged dialect.''
       The history standards won headlines for their relentless 
     pursuit of political correctness. At 314 pages, the experts' 
     ``outline'' of world history is longer than many textbooks. 
     And it emphasizes everything but the foundations of Western 
     culture and thought.
       The problem, writes Gagnon, is that the education 
     establishment has opposed real standards for over a century. 
     As a result, we write off 80% to 90% of all kids as unable to 
     learn the basics of citizenship and success.
       The nation does need education reform, and it would be 
     worth higher spending. There's even room for a healthy 
     federal role.
       But Goals 2000, like most other current federal ``reform'' 
     efforts, only buys more red tape, bureaucracy and double-
     talk. It's an investment in failure.
                                                                    ____


                 [From the American Legion, Dec. 1995]

                            The Wrong Answer

                          (By Bruno V. Manno)

       She is a 10-year-old blank slate sitting with hands clasped 
     in a classroom in Anytown, USA. Her brown eyes are large and 

[[Page H15188]]
     luminous, her long dark hair is tied behind her in a satin bow. Perhaps 
     she is your daughter, or granddaughter, or niece.
       What she learns here will determine how she sees the world 
     and her place in it. Naturally you are concerned. You want to 
     know that her schooling will equip her to compete. You want 
     to know what she is being told about life and living.
       About all, you want to know who is making the decisions 
     that determine what she thinks about life.
       Although there have been myriad debates about the 
     ``meaning'' of the election of November 1994, this much is 
     known: The American people used the ballot to express 
     discomfort--if not outright disgust--with the government's 
     paternalistic role in their daily lives. At a time when 
     Washington's role in education has been steadily growing, 
     this raises a number of serious questions about U.S. 
     education policy.
       Can Washington do right by the nation's nearly 50 million 
     school kids?
       Are the aims of Washington out of tune with the aims of 
     America-at-large?
       What should be done to resolve this disparity?
       The answers are ``perhaps,'' ``quite probably,'' and 
     ``listen to the people.''
       The Clinton administration's elementary and secondary 
     educational policies are packaged in a comprehensive two-part 
     education overhaul known as Goals 2000 (the Educate American 
     Act) and HR 6 (the Improving America's School Act). Together, 
     these two pieces of 1994 legislation represent a vigorous and 
     misguided attempt to centralize and standardize what this 
     country does in education.
       Most of the administration's agenda is a throwback to the 
     mid-60's ``Uncle Sam knows best'' policies of the Great 
     Society. It imposes nationwide a single education game plan, 
     so-called ``systemic reform.'' It maximizes Uncle Sam's role 
     in the classroom and minimizes the role of communities and 
     parents by tying federal education funds to the states' 
     willingness to embrace Goals 2000 and the HR 6 agenda.
       This Washington-knows-best education policy has several 
     serious flaws. First, it downplays the academic results 
     students achieve--``outputs''--in favor of such ``inputs'' as 
     school spending, class size, and other resources or money 
     issues. It thus shifts the focus of national education reform 
     from what children learn, to what bureaucrats spend (once 
     more assuming that the way to fix a problem is to throw money 
     at it). This approach, of course, has almost nothing to do 
     with the content of what is taught, or how it is taught, to 
     that little dark-haired girl and her millions of classmates 
     nationally.
       This leads us to flaw number two. The Clinton approach 
     gives far greater clout to education ``experts'' at the 
     national level, while slighting civilian consumers such as 
     parents and elected officials. For starters, Goals 2000 
     establishes a National Education Standards and Improvement 
     Council (NESIC). This new bureaucracy, comprising powerful 
     interest groups, is akin to a national school board. NESIC, 
     could, for example, set national standards for what kind of 
     technology classrooms should have, what teaching methods are 
     best for students, what training programs are best for 
     teachers, or other controversial issues.
       The danger here is amply demonstrated by the firestorm 
     ignited by the debut of the new national history standards. 
     In a now-famous essay for the The Wall Street Journal, former 
     National Endowment for the Humanities chairman Lynne V. 
     Cheney attacked them as ``politicized history; [they] tend to 
     save their unqualified admiration for people, places and 
     events that are politically correct.'' To a lesser degree, 
     the political correctness of Goals 2000 even seeped into its 
     science curricula.
       Meanwhile , HR 6's ``Gender Equity Act'' mandates ``gender 
     sensitivity [and] gender-equitable practices.'' This approach 
     is a supposed remedy for an alleged ``academic gender gap'' 
     that is based on discredited research. It may earn political 
     capital for its authors, but will do little to promote 
     quality education.
       Finally, the Clinton plan bans the use of federal money to 
     develop or administer the sorts of ``high stakes'' tests that 
     should be used by states and districts in making major 
     decisions about student promotion, graduation and employment. 
     This reinforces and accelerates the slide toward no-fault 
     education which began a few decades ago with the advent of 
     ``gradeless'' classes. It also undermines those few aspects 
     of Goals 2000 that are worth supporting. For example, it 
     advocates establishing voluntary standards in such core 
     academic areas as math, science, English, history and 
     geography.
       We are left with a system of education that neither 
     penalizes failure nor rewards success--this, in the name of 
     protecting kids' feelings or ``safeguarding the civil 
     rights'' of low-achievers.
       In sum, the new laws are little more than a Washington 
     power-grab in which Uncle Sam appears on the doorstep of 
     local communities and states bearing gifts. But gifts from 
     Washington seldom come without strings, and this is no 
     exception. The inevitable result will be more federal red 
     tape imposing rules and regulations on parents, teachers and 
     communities that ``can't be trusted'' to decide what is best 
     for their own children.
       What makes all this more than mildly ironic is that the 
     American people apparently feel it's Uncle Sam himself who 
     can't be trusted.
       Today, public confidence in Washington is at the lowest it 
     has been in 36 years of survey research. That's the sober 
     verdict of the most comprehensive examination ever undertaken 
     of the ``American dream,'' done for the Hudson Institute's 
     Project on the New Promise of American Life.
       The Hudson survey reveals that only 2 percent of Americans 
     trust Washington to do what's right ``all the time,'' and 
     just 14 percent ``most of the time.'' Incredibly, more than 
     one in five trust our federal government to do the right 
     thing ``almost none of the time.''
       Also revealing was the survey's examination of which 
     government branch or level has, or should have, the most 
     power. While 55 percent believe Congress has the most power, 
     only 29 percent believe that's the way things ought to be. 
     Conversely, while 41 percent believe that states and 
     localities should have the most power, fewer than 10 percent 
     think that situation actually exists. These basic findings 
     hold across all demographic lines.
       Put simply, the vast majority of us believe that things are 
     precisely ass-backwards when it comes to the distribution of 
     power and influence. Washington is on a collision course with 
     what most Americans want.
       These facts take on added meaning as we examine more 
     specifically what Americans expect of their public schools: 
     According to a poll released by the Phi Delta Kappa education 
     publication and the Gallup Organization:
       Americans rank educaiton at or near the top among national 
     priorities.
       Almost 90 percent say that developing the world's best 
     education system is essential to America's future. Indeed, 
     support for education as a No. 1 priority exceeds support for 
     industrial development (60 percent) or the military (40 
     percent).
       Americans want meaningful, measurable standards.
       Eighty-one percent think schools should conform to national 
     achievement standards and goals, with 70 percent supporting 
     the standardized ``high stakes'' national tests eliminated 
     under the Clinton plan.
       Americans want key decisions about education made locally.
       Some 77 percent of us want federal agencies to give local 
     authorities more, not less, say in spending tax money from 
     Uncle Sam, and 62 percent advocate families choosing which 
     public schools their kids attend. Minorities--the people the 
     new Clinton plan is trying to be ``sensitive'' to--are among 
     the staunchest backers of school choice, and respective 
     figures of 70 percent for blacks, 66 percent for Hispanics.
       Another poll by the prestigious Public Agenda foundation 
     showed:
       Americans want no-nonsense schools where kids must show 
     what they've learned before they can move on.
       Fully 81 percent support student promotion only when a 
     child has demonstrated mastery of what he's already been 
     taught. Indeed--far from the Clinton notion of making school 
     easier--more than three-quarters of Americans want teachers 
     to toughen grading and be more willing to fail high-school 
     students. Further, 76 percent say high-school diplomas should 
     never be given to students who can't write and speak English 
     well. (That this should even be a topic for discussion is a 
     sad commentary on the state of education and society in 
     general.)
       The bottom line? The American public wants safe, orderly 
     schools where discipline is enforced and students master 
     ``the basics'' before promotion. As the Public Agenda poll 
     itself puts it, Americans ``seem to want a new and improved 
     version of the little red schoolhouse.''
       The stark contrast between this report, and the beliefs 
     espoused by the ``experts'' who are shaping national 
     education policy, shows just how out of sync Washington is.
       What does all this mean for Congress as it looks anew at 
     education?
       Elected officials should begin with the premise that local 
     education can't be fixed in Washington. Accordingly, the 
     104th Congress should:
       Undo the worst damage. That is, repeal the most damaging 
     provisions of both the Goals 2000 and HR 6 federal power 
     grabs.
       Abolishing NESIC is a start. This would remove the 
     ``experts'' from the driver's seat of a centralized national 
     education policy. In fact, Congress should bar the federal 
     bureaucracy from doing almost anything that interferes with 
     local control of standards, curricula, testing and teaching.
       Eliminate, too, all criteria that value money over marks. 
     Don't judge progress by the amount of money a school district 
     spends on education, but by the kinds of grades students are 
     getting. This, of course, means overturning the provisions 
     that frown upon the use of tests. In the final analysis, how 
     do you really determine how well students are doing without 
     them?
       Congress also should take a clear position that true civil-
     rights enforcement means protecting the rights of all 
     individuals as individuals. Enforcement should not be based 
     on contrived gender-equity research, so-called ``race 
     norming'' that ``adjusts'' test scores for characteristics 
     such as race and poverty, or any other form of civil-rights 
     activism that benefits specific groups.
       Send programs home. About $10 billion in federal programs 
     should be re-routed to the states, which can use the money to 
     purchase needed services. Congress should consult with the 
     nation's governors to fine-tune the details. The final 
     package should eliminate 

[[Page H15189]]
     one-size-fits-all thinking and allow states and communities to decide 
     what they want to do.
       Eliminate the Department of Education. It sounds drastic--
     but with so many programs sent back to the states, there's no 
     need for a cabinet-level agency. What remains could be housed 
     in an independent agency with a White House adviser reporting 
     to the President.
       Washington, however, should continue support for some 
     research and statistics activities, especially state, 
     national and international comparisons of what students are 
     learning so that information is available to report on the 
     nation's progress in achieving its education goals.
       The time has come for an arrogant and meddlesome Washington 
     to divest itself and send education back to families, 
     schools, communities and states. It's the will of the people. 
     And our children will benefit immensely.

  Mr. GOODLING. When I went with the Speaker to the town meeting 
downtown at one of the schools, my closing remarks to the audience were 
something like this: ``We have a golden opportunity to help the 
children get a part of the American dream in the District of Columbia, 
but my fear is that adults will act like children and nothing will 
happen.'' I hope I am not prophetic. I hope we can get beyond that, but 
unfortunately, that is the way it looks at this particular hour on this 
particular day.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will yield, I think it is 
all of our vision. I am glad my colleague, the gentleman from 
California, brought up the District of Columbia. I think it is our 
vision that when educators from around the country come to Washington, 
they stop coming here trying to get their piece of the pie, their piece 
of the dollars, and they come here so they can learn about the District 
that we have some oversight on and say, ``Here is a district that we 
can learn from.''
  Our vision is to have a school district that is turning out well-
trained, well-educated kids, that is the envy of other school districts 
around the country, so they come here not for money but they come to 
learn from the school district we have in Washington here. We do not 
know whether those reforms are going to work, but we recognize that we 
have to do something, and we think these are constructive approaches 
that we can experiment with, that hopefully will make things better, 
and again, we will do the normal thing. We will build off of those 
things that work and eliminate those things that do not, but we are 
going to keep plugging at this.
  I thank the chairman for having this special order. I think we have 
been able to dispel some myths tonight and hopefully educate and share 
some knowledge with people.
  Mr. GOODLING. Let me close by saying that there are two major 
responsibilities as far as the Federal Government is concerned in 
relationship to public education, because, as we all know, that is 
guarded very jealously by local communities and by States. There are 
two major responsibilities. That is equal access to all for a good 
education, and the research that must be done.
  I would appeal to the American public, please, encourage us, help us 
make the kind of reforms that have to be made if, as a matter of fact, 
quality is going to be the name of the game, rather than mediocrity. I 
appeal to all Americans, do not encourage us to continue the status 
quo, encourage us, as a matter of fact, as a body to bring about the 
necessary reforms so that quality in education, quality in job 
training, will be the goal that we reach and the goal that we attain.
  I thank both of you very much for participating in this discussion.

                          ____________________