Congressional Record, Volume 142 Issue 28 (Tuesday, March 5, 1996)

[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 28 (Tuesday, March 5, 1996)]
[House]
[Pages H1708-H1714]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

INVESTMENT IN EDUCATION VITAL TO RESPOND TO TECHNOLOGICAL REVOLUTION

The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the
gentleman from New York [Mr. Owens] is recognized for 60 minutes.
Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, we are now in our second week following the
recess, a recess where every Member had an opportunity to consult with
his constituents, and I think that most of the Members had the same
kind of experience that I had. That was an experience of talking with
constituents who displayed in their commonsense reasoning far greater
wisdom than is often displayed here in this institution.
This body seems to have lost touch with common sense. Common sense of
the people says clearly that education is a No. 1 priority. They have
been telling us this in many ways for the last 5 years. For the last 5
years, education as a spending priority has ranked in the top five
priorities as designated by the American people in public opinion
polls. They clearly have shown that education is very important.
Seventy-two percent of the people recently interviewed said that if
there are going to be cuts made in the Federal Government, then the
cuts should not be in education. Education should not be one of the
areas where you streamline or downsize. They clearly stated that this
was not desirable.
We have common sense repeating over and over again what ought to be
clear to everybody that is in a decisionmaking position in Government.
We have a crisis.
We have a situation that ought to be clear by now, where
technological change is escalating. Technological change, the
telecommunications revolution, the information age revolution are all
upon us. As they take hold, it is quite clear that we need more and
more educated people. It is quite clear that the people who are
educated now need to have an upgrading and different changes in their
education.
In order to meet the present upheaval, in order to be able to deal
with it, the minimum need is a massive education and job training
program. Common sense tells us we need a massive education and job
training program. Without any further research, that is quite clear.
Nobody knows where this technological information is going, this age
of information, the age of telecommunications. Nobody can really
predict where it is going to go and what we should do. Nobody can lay
out a detailed plan as to exactly where we are going to be able to take
hold of the situation and not have it wreck our economy.

It is a revolution that is displacing large numbers of workers. We
have seen large numbers of blue collar workers displaced over the last
20 years, but now we have the middle-management workers, clerical
workers. Large numbers of them are being displaced, certainly
temporarily dislocated, and there is no solution in sight to this.
Large amounts of money are being made in a booming economy. The
economy is booming if we look at it in general. These are very
prosperous times. So if in very prosperous times we are losing large
numbers of jobs and there is a great deal of dislocation and upheaval
in the job market, then what is going to happen if we fall into a
recession and the boom is no longer there? We have a boom which is
unprecedented, in that profits are higher than ever on Wall Street, and
yet at the same time people are less secure than ever before. More jobs
are being lost than ever before.
I would certainly call to the attention of all the Members of this
House an article which is must reading. It is a series of articles that
started in the Sunday New York Times, March 3 New York Times. It is
called, ``On the Battlefields of Business, Millions of Casualties.''
That is the title for this particular article which is the beginning of
the series: ``On The Battlefields of Business, Millions of
Casualties.''
This is a series which is called ``The Downsizing of America'' and
this is the first of 7 articles. It is must reading for all Americans,
must reading for decisionmakers in Washington, and must reading for
Members of the House, because it talks about mostly middle-class
people, mostly people who were employed as of 2 or 3 years ago in very
good jobs, and the kind of suffering they are going through and have
gone through as a result of this technological escalation, the age of
computers and telecommunications displacing large numbers of people.
It has not yet moved to the point where they are offering remedies,
but I think previous editorials in the New York Times and a few other
of our leading newspapers have quite clearly come down on the side of
more education. Nobody understands all that has to be done, as I said
before, but everybody who is thinking about the problem clearly
understands that there will have to be a greater amount of investment
in education, a greater amount of investment in job training. It is
self-evident. If the experts cannot see what is self-evident, then
certainly the common sense of the American people has repeatedly
reinforced and underlined the fact that it is self-evident to them that
we need a greater investment in education and a greater investment in
job training.
National security now must be defined not in terms of our military
strength and not in terms of our economic prowess, but the things that
support that military strength, economic prowess, leadership in the
world. Underneath it is an educated populace. Nothing is more important
than an educated populace. Nothing is more important for the security
of the country.

{time} 1830

Nothing is more important to the quality of life in the country.
Nothing is more important in terms of maintaining our central humanity
than a massive investment in education.
Instead of a massive investment in education which is going forward,
this present Congress is proposing that we disinvest, that we
deescalate, that we downsize the commitment in education. Part of that
disinvestment argument is that the Federal Government should get out of
the business of education.
We have had the Republican majority propose that the Education
Department be totally dismantled, that we get rid of the Department of
Education. They put zero in one of the budgets for the Department of
Education.
You know, no sane industrialized nation walks away from its
commitment to education to that extent. Every industrialized nation, on
the other hand, really has a far greater commitment to education at the
central government level. There is not a single industrialized nation
that does not have a substantial commitment to education, and it is
reflected in some kind of single government coordinating body at the
top, whether they basically are highly centralized, as they are in
Japan and Germany, France, or whether they are moving away from a
centralized model and having more flexibility and greater innovation at
the local level, as they are in Great Britain, and they still have very
strong centralized departments of education to give some kind of
guidance and direction.
In this country, traditionally we have had a strong central
department of education. I am certainly not advocating that we have one
now. I am not advocating that we go to the other extreme, that we have
zero, nothing, because our involvement at the central government level
in education is minimal. At its very height, when the Department of
Education was even funded at a higher level than it is funded at now,
we had a very minimal commitment to education at the central level, and
the operation of education in this Nation remains in the hands of local
education agencies and local school boards. It still does.
Our commitment to education at this point at the Federal level is
less than 8 percent of the total amount spent on education, 8 percent
of the total. You know, more than $360 billion was spent on education
last year, and of that $360 billion, most of it was spent by State
governments and local governments.

[[Page H1709]]

Only 7 percent, between 7 and 8 percent, was provided by the Federal
Government. A large part of that 7 to 8 percent provided by the Federal
Government comes in the form of commitments to higher education through
the loan programs and grant programs at the higher education level. So,
when you are talking about Federal commitment to education at the
elementary and secondary level to the schools across America, you know,
at the local school boards and local school districts, you are talking
about a very minimal commitment. That minimal commitment, however, sets
a tone. It sets a direction, a sense of direction, a sense of tone. It
has been very important in the last 10 to 15 years in stimulating
reform, in stimulating more activity that is positive at the local and
State level.
The fact that our national government, the Federal Government, now is
choosing to back away from that commitment and to downsize and to cut
education at the Federal level has set off a domino reaction at the
State levels and at the local levels to cut education fiercely in some
places, and in my home State of New York, large cuts are being proposed
in education aid from the State to the city of New York and in the
upstate district also, but greatly the cut impacts most on the city of
New York.
In the city of New York itself, the city government, the mayor has
waged a war against the board of education, and in his attempt to
balance the budget of the city, the board of education is being made to
pay a higher price than most other city agencies.
So, what started at the Federal level has set off a chain reaction
which has been carried through devastating proportions at the State and
local level. I give New York as an example, but across the country this
phenomenon has taken hold in most big States. There are cutbacks in
most big cities. There are cutbacks, and we are going in just the
opposite direction than we should be going. There should be an
escalation of investment and an escalation of activities in the area of
education, and we are going in just the opposite direction.
Today the Education and Economic Opportunity Committee, the Committee
on Economic and Educational Opportunity, what we used to call the
Education and Labor Committee; the new Republican majority went to
great lengths to take out the word ``labor,'' not have ``labor'' appear
anywhere. I am glad they at least left ``education'' in the title of
the committee; the Committee on Economic and Educational Opportunities,
Democratic members held a hearing, a forum, you cannot actually call it
a hearing; it was a frustration forum, because out of frustration, the
Democrats had to set aside time and recruit witnesses for an unusual
kind of exercise. It was not an official hearing, because the people
that we have sought to call for all of the official hearings have not
been accepted by the majority. In fact, the majority, not following the
tradition and the pattern set by the Democratic majority, which always
allowed a reasonable number of witnesses from the minority in ration to
the majority witnesses, the majority has chosen to limit the minority,
the Democratic minority has been limited in our committee to no more
than one witness at each hearing. You know, one witness has been all we
have been limited to as we proceeded to discuss revolutionary changes
in education, and even the number of hearings has been limited.
The hearings that are stacked in favor of the majority witnesses and
opinions that are only favored by the majority have been all too few.
So we are proposing revolutionary changes, gigantic budget
cuts, changes in structure, elimination of the Department of Education,
the restructuring of the School Lunch Program, the restructuring of the
careers program, total revamping of education for individuals with
Disabilities Act, all of those sweeping changes have been proposed and
are under way without any reasonable number of hearings.

We have spat upon the democratic process. We have just denigrated the
democratic process, which at least called for an opportunity for
controversial ideas and new proposals to be discussed. The Republican
majority has not permitted that.
So we had to have our own hearing out of frustration, and large
numbers of people were called on one day, kind of an overwhelming
enterprise that we had to undertake today. I do not recall exactly how
many witnesses, but I think there were more than 20, 20 witnesses
called by five panels, and some of the witnesses, of course, were
outstanding spirits, outstanding philosophers, outstanding advocates
for education. We are quite proud of the fact that we finally had the
opportunity to have them go on record in this very critical year of
decisionmaking.
This is a critical year of decisionmaking because even through the
Republican majority has not been able to go through the usual
democratic legislative procedure and work its will, they have not been
able to get many of the revolutionary changes they wanted passed. They
have chosen the appropriations route, the budget-making and
appropriations route, to work their will. They cannot get the
reauthorization of certain laws. They cannot get many of the items that
they passed at the level of the House of Representatives passed in the
other body. So they have turned to the appropriations process and
legislate through the denial of funds to certain activities, denial of
funds to the Department of Education, cutting back at a certain level,
the denial of funds to title I.
You do not like title I, you do not have the opportunity to get ride
of it fully, revamp it in the way you want it, so you cut it be $1.1
billion, about a 25 percent cut. And you follow that pattern with other
programs. Even Head Start, which is frowned upon unfavorably by certain
sectors of the Republican majority, and Head Start gets the first cut
in the history of the program. Ronald Reagan did not cut Head Start. He
increased the amount of funds for Head Start. George Bush did not cut
Head Start. No President has cut Head Start. Only now does the
Republican majority in the House venture to cut Head Start by $300
million.
Summer Youth Employment Program, which is on the border between
education and job training, very important for education because it
sends a positive message to the young people during the summer. They
can be employed. It says to them that their Government cares something
about them. It has been program that has been cut down, whittled down
over the years.
Ten years ago, in New York City, 90,000 young people were employed in
the summer youth employment program. Last year, 32,000 were employed.
It has been steadily cut down to lower and lower levels over the years.
Now we do not know what is going to be funded for the coming summer or
not. There is a shadow over it. It is in the continuing resolution,
like everything else, but when it is not mentioned specifically, it say
it is funded at 75 percent of last year's level. In the case of the
Summer Youth Employment Program, we cannot really determine what last
year's level is, because there was a move to phase out the program, and
the amount of funds appropriated was an amount needed administratively
to phase it out. So there is a big question mark.
This is March 5. Summer youth employment programs usually go into
motion sometime this month in terms of administrative planning, the
recruitment, et cetera. As of March 5, we do not really know what is
going to happen in the Summer Youth Employment Program.
We have, through the budget process, through the back door, been able
to Whittle down very critical education programs. We have done all of
this, as I said before, without going through the democratic
legislative process. We have treated the process with great contempt.
To compensate for the contempt that the majority has shown for the
democratic process, the Democrats on the committee called today's
forum, which is, again, not an official hearing. It does not have
minutes and records of the same type as we have in official hearings.
It does not or did not have both parties there, and only the Democrats
were there. So it is not a substitute for what should have happened.
But it is an opportunity or was an opportunity for people who have
opinions, people who are advocates, people who have been around a long
time who have experience. They should have their voices heard in this
process of changing education radically.

[[Page H1710]]

The radical changes are unnecessary. I always frowned on radical
approaches when they are not necessary. Revolution is a dangerous
operation always. Revolution, things can always get more chaotic and
more people can end up suffering if you take the revolutionary route.
So, revolution should only be undertaken when it is necessary. It is
not necessary to have a revolution in education, however bad things may
be. We were moving forward in an evolutionary way.
I think proposals that have been on the table for a long time, made a
lot of sense, starting with the Republican President, George Bush, and
his proposal for America 2000 and his establishment of the six goals,
the Clinton program of Goals 2000, are not so far from the Bush Program
of American 2000. There was some continuity. Democratic Governors and
Democratic legislators were involved in both processes. All of that was
moving forward.
Standards were being established which were first proposed by the
Republican administration, and they are now being established under a
Democratic administration. We did not need a revolution.
The evolutionary process needed to be speeded up. The evolutionary
process needed to have some resources put behind it. All of the
structural changes were not being accompanied by proposals to increase
the investment. We needed more money. You know, to keep changing the
structure and playing with standards to institute new evaluations and
do all the kinds of things that are proposed in the Goals 2000
legislation does not really allow education to be impacted in the way
it should be impacted.
During the process of these negotiations and discussions on Goals
2000 last year, not last year, year before last, when the Democrats
were in the majority, during those discussions we had long debates
about opportunity to learn standards. Everybody was interested in
standards for teaching the subject matter. Everybody was interested in
standards for testing. But we talked about opportunity to learn
standards, and opportunity to learn standards means that you have to
provide the resources for young people to be able to measure up to the
standards that are the educational standards and to be able to pass the
tests.
If you do not have science equipment, then do not ask youngsters to
pass a test which is a strenuous test about science if they do not have
science equipment, if they do not have the books, if you do not have
the necessary physical plant. We have many schools across the country
where it is just unsafe to have young people in the schools, let alone
they do not have proper lighting, they do not have proper ventilation.
We have asbestos, in many cases, still around when it should not be
around, unsafe school as well as schools that are not conducive to
study.

{time} 1845

All of those factors we try to build into the standard setting
process. There is a great debate, and we had a compromise. At least the
phrase ``opportunity to learn'' is built into the standards.
If you follow the course of action proposed by Goals 2000 and deal
with standards for curriculum, course content, you deal with standards
for evaluation and have some kind of uniformity so you can compare from
one district and one State to another. And if you deal with standards
for opportunity to learn, if you move in that way, then you put some
funding behind the opportunity to learn standards. You have to have
some money. You need more money for science equipment, you need money
for books. We have libraries in New York that have books that are 35
years old, history books that are 35 years old. What can you teach a
youngster from a history book that is 35 years old that is going to
allow them to really deal with 1996 and history standards being
promulgated for the rest of the country, where the rest of the country
has books that are up to date.
So in numerous ways, investment is needed. You need to put money
behind the effort. Among the people testifying today at our forum was
the distinguished author, Jonathan Kozol. Mr. Kozol has written many
books, and I think the most famous and current of the two is ``Amazing
Grace.'' Before ``Amazing Grace'' is his recent book which was released
last year, before that a book called ``Savage Inequalities.'' I think
that there is no more appropriately entitled book than ``Savage
Inequalities.''

Mr. Kozol spent the day with us, since he testified. In fact, he is
here right now in the audience. I think nothing was more penetrating
than his statement that you cannot keep asking the question that most
conservatives use. The favorite statement of the Republican majority,
the favorite evasion of the Republican majority, the favorite evasion
of the Republican majority, is ``You can't solve educational problems
by throwing money at them. You can't solve the problems related to
urban education by throwing money at them.''
One is supposed to cringe and fall back in the face of that kind of
statement and apologize for asking for more money. I think Mr. Kozol
made it quite clear that the answer to that statement is, Oh, yes, you
can. Oh, yes, you must. You must have more money, more resources
applied to the problem, or you definitely will not solve it.
We do not try to solve any other problems in this Nation or this
society without the appropriate resources. I think this country would
sort of applaud itself for its high-technology military machine that we
have, a military unlike any that the world has ever seen. We are
continuing to perfect that high-technology military machine. We are
throwing a lot of money at that. We have thrown billions and billions
of dollars at the military in order to have the military solve problems
and come up with some gadgets that nobody really needs and continue to
throw money at the military. We are building another Seawolf submarine
in Connecticut, and the only justification for that submarine is we
want to keep the technology alive. We want to keep the workers' ability
to deal with that technology current and alive. That is the
justification for building another Seawolf submarine, which costs $2.1
billion. We are throwing $2.1 billion at a problem that is really not a
problem anymore, because we already have enough Seawolf submarines.
The Soviet Union does not exist anymore and is not building new
submarines. We are throwing money at it. That is a problem that the
establishment, a problem that the people who are hypocritical about
streamlining the budget, choose to designate as a problem. So they
throw money at it.
We are throwing money in the sky at F-22 fighter planes. In Marietta,
GA, the Speaker's district, we are building F-22 fighter planes that
are not needed. There are high-technology fighter planes unlike
anything the world has ever seen. We already have the best fighter
planes in the world. We already have fighter planes that nobody is
challenging. The Soviet Union is not building any new fighter planes to
challenge the ones we have.
Why do we have to throw money at the problem of high-technology
fighter planes? But we are throwing money at it at Marietta, GA. It
might not be a problem we need to throw money at to solve the problem.
By throwing money at the F-22's in Marietta, GA, in the Speaker's
district, we are certainly solving the problem of employment in that
district. That district happens to be the district that receives the
greatest amount of Federal aid in the country. The county that the
Speaker represents receives the greatest amount of money per capita of
any county in the whole country. So by throwing money in that
direction, we certainly are solving a problem of prosperity and
employment in that country.

So why not provide appropriate resources, or even, if you must have a
phrase, throw money at education, if you want to solve the problem of
education? We need money to build schools, because some of them are
literally unsafe and falling down. Many of them are, if not unsafe, are
not conducive to learning. We need money to throw at that problem and
get new schools built.
Senator Carol Moseley-Braun and I introduced a bill 2 years ago which
would provide for the introduction of a program just to repair
dilapidated schools and maybe build a few. It was passed in the Senate
she even got an authorization of $600 million, which is a small amount
when you are considering physical renovations and construction. But the
other body passed it.

[[Page H1711]]

Later on they cut that down to $100 million, and it passed both the
Senate and the House in the reauthorized legislation that we passed in
the fall of 1994, before the Republican majority took over in January
1995.
That money has been totally wiped out of the budget, $100 million to
deal with asbestos problems, to deal with lead in the water, to deal
with unsafe conditions, $100 million zeroed out completely. It is not
even under discussion anymore.
We needed to throw money at the problem of asbestos and lead in the
water. We needed to throw money at unsafe conditions in certain
schools.
So I want to salute Mr. Jonathan Kozol today when he said,

Despite all that we face in education, we face the strange
phenomena of being asked repeatedly by those who spend as
much as $20,000 yearly to enroll their children in exclusive
private schools, whether money really matters when it comes
to the education of the poor. Can you solve these kinds of
problems, we are asked, by throwing money at them?

I think that no more appropriate statement could be made than to
begin the dialog on whether Americans in decisionmaking positions are
serious about wanting a society which is a fair society, a society
which is feasible in terms of being able to maintain a sense of justice
and some kind of law and order that everybody can live with.
To continue from Mr. Kozol's testimony,

I always find this a strange question, but especially when
it is asked by those who do precisely this for their own
children. Money cannot do everything in life. It cannot buy
decency. It obviously does not buy honesty or generosity of
spirit. But if the goal is to repair a roof or to install a
wiring system or remove lead poison or to pay for a computer
or persuade a first-rate teacher to remain in a tough job. I
think money is a fine solution. Money is a fine solution.

If money is a solution for the military machine, then why is it not a
solution for the building of a society where the most important
resource is an educated population? An educated population is the most
important resource of a great power.
Mr. Kozol goes on to point out that many people use as an example
some urban district somewhere which has a high per capita education
expenditure, but is not working. This is using an example of why money
does not solve problems.
I doubt if you can find three or four education systems where you
have a higher amount of money being spent per capita than is being
spent in the suburban districts across the country. Where people have
money, they choose to spend large amounts on their schools. There per
capita rates are much higher.
In New York State, the highest per capita rate is $17,000 per pupil.
That is only one district. Many other districts spend $12,000, $11,000,
$10,000 on their schools per pupil. In New York City they barely eke
out $7,000 per year per child. When studies are done on how the $7,000
per child per year is spent, there is a clear indication that it is
lopsided from one district to another. New York City has a student body
of 1 million pupils, 60,000 to 65,000 teachers. It is a mammoth system,
shifting things around. You will find the poorest neighborhoods and the
lowest grades which have the most difficulty in teaching children have
the least amount of resources. They are not spending $7,000 per child
simply because the biggest expenditure in any budget is the personnel
budget. The personnel budget is driven by the length of time that
teachers are in the system. The districts which have the children which
need the help most, they have the least experienced teachers, because
they have the most difficult school systems, difficult jobs. Many
teachers, as soon as they qualify for tenure, they move out of those
districts, they get transfers, so you have an ongoing condition where
the districts that need the help most and the best teachers have the
least experienced teachers. The most experienced teachers move out, and
subsequently the amount of money being spent per child is lower and
lower in the districts that need the most expenditures.
That is just one basic phenomena which explains expenditure
difference, even in a city where the average is $7,000 per child. You
have in the poorest districts, in Brownsville, which is in my district,
or the South Bronx, which is in Congressman Serrano's district, you
will have the expenditure down as low as $3,000 per child, because of
these disparities in personnel salaries.
So it is far too low in many cases, and in many cases, of course,
there are always ways in which you can improve the distribution.
So I want to go back to the basic thesis, is if we are in times which
require greater and greater amounts of education, where individuals
cannot survive, families cannot survive unless they have wage earners
who do have exceptional education, wage earners who have the kind of
education which allows them to fit into this high-tech
telecommunications information age society, we need those people, and
the only way you are going to get those people is to have an education
system which allows them the opportunity to get the kind of education
necessary to qualify for these jobs.
This is something that planners have understood for a long time,
professors in universities have understood a long time. The people in
the street understand it, too. They keep crying. They cry out for more
and more resources to be devoted to education. Whenever they are asked
a question or given an opportunity to express their opinion, they make
it quite clear that education ought to be one of the highest priorities
in Federal expenditures.
We keep ignoring them. It is amazing how we just turn our back on the
will of the people in a democracy. The great question is when are the
people going to wake up and understand that they have the power? They
have the power, if they really believe that education is a priority and
it has been that way for the last 5 years, it is ranked in the top four
or five. Health care was once a priority 3 or 4 years ago, but
education was No. 2 or No. 3. Recently the New York Times and USA Today
and some others did polls which show that education had eclipsed
everything. It was at the very top for a while, over health care, over
crime. So people keep telling us again and again that their commonsense
knowledge tells them that we ought to be investing more in education.
But we refuse to do it. We let these savage inequalities that Jonathan
Kozol talks about, savage inequalities that are destroying young
people, continue year in and year out. We are reminded of Shakespeare's
words in King Lear, ``Fool me not so much to bear it tamely; touch me
with noble anger,'' which in street language means somebody ought to
get mad, ought to get very mad.

{time} 1900

This is rotten. Smells to high heaven. Why are our mayors cutting
education when the people said that education should be the highest
priority expenditure? Why are Governors cutting education when the
people in the States said education ought to be the highest priority?
Why does our Federal Government insist on cutting education when the
people across the Nation said education should be the highest priority?
What is going on? What is going on in our democracy?
Somebody ought to get very mad, and I hope that every parent, every
person who cares about America, will understand that we ought to get
angry at decisionmaking which completely ignores priorities that are
set by the people. Education is that clear priority.
We had testifying today Deputy Secretary of Education Madeleine
Kunin, and she only echoed what the other witnesses had said before. I
quote from the testimony of Deputy Secretary Kunin:

As Secretary Riley and I meet with parents, students and
business and community leaders around the country, we hear
what you hear, that education is America's top priority
because it is America's greatest concern. The public
understands what education means for our children's future
and for the future of our Nation. As they see companies
downsizing, their own jobs threatened or lost, they look
around and they see who is left standing: the men and women
with the highest computer and technical skills.

In short, Americans are seeing that the greatest job security belongs
to those who have the best and most advanced education. Education is
the currency of the future.
I continue to quote Deputy Secretary Kunin. ``As the President has
often said, how much you learn determines what you earn.'' Few
Americans argue with that conclusion.

[[Page H1712]]

Many Americans, however, argue with the approach that the majority in
Congress has taken in cutting support for education at the very moment
when the demand for higher and more education by all Americans is
growing at an unprecedented rate. Demand is growing on two fronts.
Sheer numbers tell part of the story. We are going to be educating more
children in elementary and secondary education than ever before. We
expect growth to increase by a million students next year, nearly 6
million students by the year 2005, a 10 percent increase nationwide,
including a 22 percent increase in California alone.
Continuing to quote Deputy Secretary Kunin:

Just to imagine present class sizes, which already are too
large, 50,000 new teachers will have to be hired for the
coming school year. Fifty thousand new teachers have to be
hired just to keep up with the growing numbers. If we want to
move to improve the ratio of teachers to students and have
lower class sizes, smaller classes, then of course we would
need more than 50,000 new teachers.

To continue to quote Secretary Kunin:

Today every student has to reach here or his full
potential. No mind can be wasted. Without a high school
degree today, you can't earn a decent living. Even with a
high school degree, you have a tough time in the job market.
K-12 is becoming K-14 as technical schools and community
colleges are providing first-generation college students with
the skill they want and they need. Our ability to meet this
avalanche of demand for education depends on support from all
levels of government aimed at providing better educational
opportunities for children. All those who have an impact on
education must join hands. Together we must build this
village in which to raise our children. There is no time for
the politics of blame or for demonizing the Federal
Government.

It is hard to understand why the majority in Congress would decrease
resources in the face of rising demand for education. the House
appropriations bill would create a massive education deficit, and among
the victims would be our children and our Nation's future. Their cuts
are in the areas of highest priority to the American people: support
for basic skills, safe and drug-free schools, raising standards, better
training for teachers, getting technology into the classroom, and
access to college and post-secondary education.
To continue to quote the Deputy Secretary:

For example, the House-approved appropriations bill would
take away $3.7 billion from education. That is for one year,
the coming fiscal year. Sadly, the loss of these funds will
have the greatest impact on children who need to read better,
who want to prepare for a career, and who may attend schools
where standards are still low, and these children can catch
up and do well if they are given extra help, the extra help
that they need.

Why should we take this chance away from them? Indeed, the purpose of
title I programs is to help these needy children succeed. How odd it is
then that this program takes such a big hit in the budget fight.
Education takes a 17-percent cut across the board. In some communities
with a high percentage of poor children, the impact of this cut will be
as high as 25 percent. If these cuts are enacted, some 40,000 to 50,000
aides and teachers will have to be let go. The Washington jargon,
continuing resolution it is called, has a different meaning for the
children served by these aides and teachers. For them it is a
discontinuing resolution, stopping their education just when many were
getting started.
Let me give you a few examples of what these cuts mean in classrooms
across this country. ``Last year I was in California,'' I am quoting
Madeleine Kunin, Deputy Secretary of the Department of Education:

Last year I was in California meeting with San Francisco
School Superintendent Bill Rojas and mayor Willie Brown. They
told me that these cuts would force elimination of 12 schools
from the title I program, affecting 4,162 students who need
to learn the basics to pass and get ahead. The remaining
schools of the title I program could face the elimination,
would face the elimination of teacher aides, library staff,
computer labs, and the gutting of reading labs through the
loss of reading specialists, materials, and equipment.

Their story is not unique. New York City, while we have seen great
success recently in improved test scores, will lose $67 million in
title I funds. And those dollars support 1,500 classroom teachers.
These cuts come at a bad time, right when the new chancellor announced
that he is determined to make sure that every third-grade child reads
at grade level.
Secretary Riley, in his state of education speech last week, called
for the entire Nation to focus on helping our children read, a goal
that will not be achieved if these budget cuts stay in place. The same
story is true in Philadelphia. A loss of $13 million, 300 teachers and
aides as well as services. In Chicago, these title I cuts could
translate to layoffs of 600 teachers. In San Diego, 11,000 students
could be denied title I services. Perhaps the most disastrous impact
will be felt by our youngest children at the highest poverty levels.
At McNair school in north Charleston, 80 percent of the students live
in public housing. The school receives $455,000 in title I support.
What will change without this money? The Charleston Post and Courier
report that the programs at risk include all-day kindergarten, special
reading programs, the schools' computer lab, staff development, and a
6-week summer enrichment program. These cuts will be real and painful
if the Congress does not act to prevent them.
Already schools are being forced to take action because they must
plan ahead. As you know, the education budget is forward-funded, and
for good reason. Schools must get budgets passed in their own
communities and sign contracts and buy books for next year. Such local
decisions are made in the springtime, months after Congress usually
enacts an education appropriations bill for the next school year. But
this springtime, time is running out.
It makes no sense that some of the same people who say government
should be run like a business are willing to let school principals,
superintendents, legislators, and school boards twist in an uncertain
wind with no sense of how much Federal aid they can expect. The result
of this uncertainty is that decisions to cut back on education are
being made at school board meetings around the country as we speak.
In Boston, school officials had to submit their draft budget for next
year 4 weeks ago. If nothing changes, teachers must be notified by May
15 of any layoffs. Monroe County, WV, receives 25 percent of its
district budget from Federal funds and would have to announce teacher
contracts by April 1. Right now, they plan to lay off 15 to 20 teachers
in six schools.
Moreover, the House-approved appropriations bill would actually
eliminate all funding for Goals 2000, ending excellence grants to
thousands of schools around the country which are trying to raise their
academic standards, involve parents in communities and education, and
they are preparing teachers for the challenges of the 21st century
classroom.
At a time when 72 percent of Americans say drugs and violence are
serious problems in local schools, it is not easy to understand how the
House could approve a 55-percent cut in the safe and drug-free schools
program, reducing funding in this program by nearly $200 million.
The impact of budget cuts will be felt on higher education as well.
If direct lending is capped or killed, students and schools in the
program will be deprived of a streamlined program that has worked,
making access to student loans easier and cheaper and enabling them to
pay their loans back more readily.
We also have a difference of opinion with the congressional
leadership on Pell grants. We are pleased that a $100 increase was
approved, but we must do more and raise the grant to $2,620 as more
students depend on financial aid to further their college education.
I am still quoting from the Deputy Secretary of Education, Madeleine
Kunin: From my own life, I know the value of education. I came to this
country as a child who could not speak English. My mother believed that
anything is possible in America and our access to education made her
more than an idol dreamer. It made her a prophet. What was there for me
and for you must be there for this generation of children. That is what
this budget battle is all about. It is about making hope more than
rhetoric, making it a reality.
I end the quote from the testimony of the Deputy Secretary of
Education, Madeleine Kunin, and I return to the

[[Page H1713]]

statement of author Jonathan Kozol and the spirit of the testimony of
Jonathan Kozol. The spirit of the testimony of Jonathan Kozol is that
we have a moral dilemma. We have a situation where the powerful
decisionmakers of America have made a decision to throw overboard large
numbers of children, a large percentage of the population, just forget
about them. We have a situation in America where large numbers of
decisionmakers, people in power, are choosing to take care of their
children, send them to the best schools, appropriate money and
resources or make available money and resources through private sources
for their own children, while the rest of America, a large part of it,
goes down the drain.
I think Mr. Kozol used the word ``triage.'' Triage is something that
originated in war. It is a French term where when you had large numbers
of wounded congregated, they had to make some decisions about how to
use their meager resources. They had a limited number of doctors,
nurses, and medicine, so they would line people up, and those who were
only partially wounded or not so serious were put in one category and
not given much attention, and those who were so far gone that it was
felt that resources should not be wasted on them were put in another
category and left to die, and those in the middle, of course, who
belonged to neither category were given attention.
Well, we have decided to do something similar in a situation where
there is no need for it. We are not on a battlefield. There is no
emergency. We do not need a revolution. We do not need to balance the
budget overnight in ways which force us into a situation where we have
to participate in triage. But triage is going forward because the
majority in this House and the majority which controls the Congress at
this point has decided that America should be an America for an elite
group. We are going to go into the pampering of an oligarchy. A small
group will be placed into the situation where they will be able to make
unlimited profits, they will be able to live without any disturbances
from the rest of the population. Ten percent of the people will make
all the money they can make. Ten percent of the people would not have
to be bothered with any taxes which fund the programs that make the
Nation go. Ten percent of the people are going to be parasites on the
national tradition and on all that has gone before them.
People are making large amounts of money on Wall Street on
telecommunications investments, investments in computers, investments
in cable television, investments of all kinds of gadgets which are
driven by modern technology which was developed by the American
people's money. Taxpayers financed the development of
telecommunications. At the end of World War I and World War II, we
invested billions of dollars to develop radar, to develop
miniaturization, to develop ways in which you could use frequencies
more effectively. All of this was developed by the resources and the
taxes of the American people. And the American people deserve to have a
share of that investment.

{time} 1915

We now have frequencies, spectrums above our head. I have used this
example many times, and I do not think I can say it too often. The
spectrum belongs to the American people. The air over our heads, the
atmosphere over our heads, nobody has the right to claim that. It
belongs to the people. The Government should not give that away. The
Government should use it in ways which benefit all of the people.
If we are going to sell it, we should sell it at prices which benefit
all the taxpayers. I certainly propose we do not even sell it, we lease
it, so nobody thinks they own the spectrum, they own the frequencies up
there. It is like the early America, where we had the great land rush,
and there was land which we claimed that nobody owned, and we gave it
to white American settlers. The native Americans, they owned it, so it
was taken from them.
But without getting into that argument, at least there was a
democratic process of allowing people to participate in the land rush.
Black people were not allowed to participate, even after the slaves
were freed. They could not participate in the land rush, but all white
Americans could participate in the land rush. Immigrants who were white
could participate in the land rush. They were given land, land that
belonged to the people, that belonged to the Government.
So we have a similar situation above our heads with a spectrum as
invaluable as land. Let us not cry about the lack of resources. Let us
not tax American families anymore. Let us make the corporations who
want to use those frequencies and want to use those spectrums, let us
let them pay for it. It is a way to justly derive revenue, revenue
which can then be used to pay for more education.
Why do we not have a dedicated tax for all the Internet transactions
above a certain amount of money, commercial transactions above $10, put
a tax on them of some percentage, and have that tax on the Internet
transactions become a way to finance the information access that is
needed for the rest of the public? We need to have access for
everybody, so we need libraries and schools to be wired, we need
computers to be available in some public centers, public
telecommunication centers, or in libraries where people can go in and
make use of the information age, regardless of their income.
All of this could be financed painlessly by attaching a dedicated tax
to transactions that take place over the Internet, or various other
electronic communications transactions. We could have a trust fund. We
call it the information superhighway, so let us use the analogy. We
have a highway trust fund very successfully. The highway trust fund is
based upon a tax that is placed on gasoline. That tax money is used to
build highways, a successful interstate net across the country. We have
the best highway system in the world, because we had a dedicated tax to
take care of that.
Now we are on the information superhighway, and why not have that
funded in the same way: establish a trust fund through dedicated
revenue, give the revenue that we have derived back to the States on a
per capita basis. If we want to hand things down to the State, there is
a situation where we could easily, without a bureaucracy, hand down the
money that is collected through this dedicated revenue process to the
States on the basis of the number of people in each State.
I say that because I would like to see New York State for a change
get a fair shake in some kind of Federal program. We have the
phenomenon in New York where we are still paying far more into the
Federal Treasury than we get back in aid. You would not believe that
when you hear them talk. We get large amounts of aid from title I, a
large amount of aid from Medicaid and Medicare. People look at all that
and say ``New York gets more than anybody else.'' New York has more
people, and New York chooses to spend its money on Medicaid and on
Medicare, instead of on F-22 planes or Sea Wolf submarines. I can think
of no more noble way to spend money than to spend it on the health of
people.
Yes, you can always get rid of some waste, some corruption; you can
always streamline the process. But if you are spending money on the
health care of New Yorkers, that is money well spent. In New York, we
should raise our heads high, because our share of what we are getting
from the Federal Government is being used to help people in various
positive ways. We are not building weapons systems that will no longer
be needed, weapons systems that are very expensive and obsolete.
New York State in 1994 gave, through a tax collection process, the
Federal Government $18.9 billion more than it got back in Federal aid.
You might say ``Why did you calculate it that way?'' We have been
following this for a few years. The Kennedy School of Government has a
table which shows that consistently, New York has given more to the
Federal Government then it has gotten back in terms of aid. We do not
have any big defense plants, any Sea Wolf submarines, any aircraft
carriers, so we do not get back large amounts of money like Marietta,
GA, does. The southern States altogether get back $65 billion more from
the Federal Government than they pay into the Federal Government.
I am mentioning this because we have a dogma here about States rights
and block grants to the States, the States can do it so much better.
New

[[Page H1714]]

York could probably exist far better if you were to give it back its
own money. If we had $18 billion, almost $19 billion that is ours to
spend as we see fit, we can solve all the budget problems of New York
State.
Those who talk about States rights and passing education programs and
school lunch programs and AFDC, Medicaid, passing it down to the
States, you had better stop and think twice about placing such a high
priority on States rights in running programs and funding programs. On
education, there are many States that would be shortchanged if they
have to pay for their own costs without Federal funds. Many of the
Federal funds flow out of the northwest States like New York and
Michigan; midwest States like Michigan and Wisconsin. They are still
paying far more to the Federal Government than they get back.
Let me conclude by saying what we need is leadership that recognizes
that triage will not work. No part of the population should be thrown
overboard. If you are not going to throw a portion of the population
overboard, then you invest in education.
You must face the realities of 1996. There is a technological
revolution. There is an information age revolution. There are going to
be large dislocations that you have always in the work force. We want
to have certain kinds of value systems developed. We want to have
fairness across the board, and everybody participate in the prosperity
of America.
The only way we know at this point to do that, the way we are certain
will have a direct impact on that problem, is education, more
investment in education, more investment in job training. Some genius
may come along later on and find some other way to deal with
the problem in addition to investing in education and job training. It
may be there may be a pill people can take to help solve the problem at
some time in the future. I do not know. We do not have any way to
predict the wonders of technology and medicine.

But we do know education and job training are absolutely necessary in
order to cope with the current difficulties we are facing in this
society, whether you are talking about crime problems, AIDS problems;
you name the problem, and education is part of the solution.
Let us go forward and reject the philosophy of the Republican
majority. Let us not disinvest in education at this point. Let us
follow the trend of the thinking of the people who appeared at our
forum today. Twenty people came from all walks of life. They said ``The
American people say that common sense dictates that we should invest
more and more in education.'' I hope we will go forward and do that.

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