[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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