[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 33 (Tuesday, March 12, 1996)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1792-S1808]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                  BALANCED BUDGET DOWNPAYMENT ACT, II

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Chair lays before the Senate, H.R. 3019.
  The clerk will report.
  The legislative clerk read as follows:

       A bill (H.R. 3019) making appropriations for fiscal year 
     1996 to make a further downpayment toward a balanced budget, 
     and for other purposes.
  The Senate resumed consideration of the bill.

       Pending:
       Hatfield modified amendment No. 3466, in the nature of a 
     substitute.
       Daschle (for Harkin) amendment No. 3467 (to amendment No. 
     3466) to restore $3.1 billion funding for education programs 
     to the fiscal year 1995 levels.

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Minnesota.


                           Amendment No. 3467

  Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I rise to speak on behalf of an 
amendment that a number of us have introduced which adds back $3.1 
billion to education programs to restore education funding to fiscal 
year 1995 levels.
  Mr. President, I will summarize. This amendment restores funding for 
the following programs: Goals 2000, title I, safe and drug-free 
schools, charter schools, vocational and adult education, educational 
technology, Head Start, dislocated workers, adult training, school-to-
work, summer jobs for youth, and one-stop career centers.
  Mr. President, as the minority leader pointed out yesterday, we have 
offsets for this increased funding. Mr. President, let me, first of 
all, say to my colleagues, and especially to my very good friend, the 
chairman of the Appropriations Committee, whom--you do not call people 
heroes unless they truly are, and he is to me, one of the great 
Senators in the history of the country. I really believe it was a 
terrible mistake for the House of Representatives to send over a 
continuing resolution with these very deep cuts in education.
  Mr. President, as I think about where we are in the country right 
now, it seems to me that people in our Nation are saying very clearly 
that they care about opportunities. They worry about their children, 
and they want all of God's children to have opportunities. Mr. 
President, I just think that slamming the door of opportunity for 
children is a huge mistake. I think that some of the discussion about 
children

[[Page S1793]]

of the next generation--absolutely, we need to pay the interest off on 
the debt. But you do not save the children of the next generation by 
savaging the children of this generation.
  Mr. President, I think that as we look at where we are in the country 
and where we need to go together, Democrats, Republicans, independents, 
you name it, each and every time, I would emphasize a good education as 
a foundation of it all--for welfare reform, for reducing poverty, for a 
stable middle class, for economic performance, for a functioning 
democracy; each and every time, I would say you need to emphasize a 
good education and a good job.
  Mr. President, I have tried to be an education Senator. I spend time, 
about every 2\1/2\ or 3 weeks, at a school in Minnesota teaching. I was 
a teacher for 20 years. I have to tell you that the shame of all of 
this is that, for some reason, we have not looked very carefully--or at 
least the Gingrich-led House has not--at what these cuts will mean in 
human terms. I will not even give you the statistics, Mr. President. 
But I will tell you this: If I was to just take the title I program in 
my State of Minnesota, which is a $13.5 million cut right now in this 
continuing resolution, the very negative effects this will have on 
children is absolutely unbelievable.
  We want children at a young age to be wide-eyed. We want them to be 
experiencing all of the unnamed magic in the world before them. We want 
them to be nurtured. We want them to be encouraged. What do we do with 
title I money in Minnesota? Talk to the teachers and talk to the 
parents--the title I parents in Minneapolis-St. Paul. What do we do? We 
give kids at the elementary school level one-on-one--I know you, Mr. 
President, are very committed to children--one-on-one instruction.
  I met a mother yesterday. She said, ``My son was a slow reader 
falling behind, not doing well. From title I he received that special 
attention, one-on-one instruction, through some additional teachers and 
teacher assistants. He is now a seventh grader in junior high school, 
and he is a straight-A student. I come here today to tell you that if 
not for title I, I do not know where he would be.''
  Title I money is not just a bureaucratic program. It works. I was at 
a school, Jackson Elementary School in St. Paul, with a wonderful 
principal, Louis Mariucci, which is a great hockey name in Minnesota 
from the Iron Range. He is committed to the inner-city school, and they 
are doing well. The students have high achievement levels. It is 
diverse. It is rooted in the neighborhood.
  When I was meeting with a class of third graders and then a class of 
fourth graders, I asked these kids how many languages are spoken at 
home. In one class there were three different languages spoken in the 
homes, and in another class there were four different languages. Then I 
met with the parents later on from the Hmung community and the Laotian 
community.
  Mr. President, we say we want the parents to be involved. Well, there 
were two young people who are translators. They are proud because they 
could use their ability. They were bilingual to help other kids that 
were younger. They had graduated from college. There are jobs for them. 
The parents could participate. I could understand what they were saying 
to me as a Senator. The teachers could and do understand what I was 
saying.
  Mr. President, that is funded out of title I money. That school, 
Jackson Elementary School, which is an outstanding success, does not 
know where it is going to be next year because of these deep, 
draconian, mean-spirited cuts in funds which provide opportunity for 
our children. Mr. President, is this not shortsighted?
  Other examples: Meet with some of the teachers that are title I 
teachers. They will tell you about the ways in which that money is used 
for literacy training for adults, the parents, so that they can be 
involved. They talk about ways in which parents are involved in the 
kids' education. In school after school after school, whether it is 
Minneapolis-St. Paul, whether it is Rochester, whether it is Fergus 
Falls, whether it is Bemidji, whether it is Duluth, whether it is the 
Iron Range, over and over and over again there are success stories 
where this title I money was used to provide kids from difficult 
backgrounds, kids who were disadvantaged, with the additional one-on-
one support they needed in reading or mathematics so they could do well 
at the elementary school level and then go on and do well in school. 
And we are going to cut this program? What kind of distorted priorities 
are these?

  Mr. President, I wish every one of my colleagues was on the floor 
right now, especially on the other side. Little kids do not understand 
budgets. Little kids do not know what ``continuing resolution'' means. 
Little kids do not know what the ``Congressional Budget Office 
scoring'' means. Little kids in Minnesota, Massachusetts, Oregon, Ohio, 
and all across this country do not understand why they cannot receive 
help to be better readers. Do my colleagues have any answers for them? 
They do not understand the budgets. They do not understand why they do 
not get any help. They do not know why they are not getting help so 
they can do better in reading classes. They do not know why they are 
not getting any help so they can be better in mathematics. They do not 
know why they are not receiving help.
  Mr. President, a definition from an elementary school student on 
leadership--I say this to my colleague from Massachusetts. I think he 
fits this definition. An elementary school student's definition of 
``leader.'' ``A leader is someone who gets things done to make things 
better.'' ``A leader is someone who gets things done to make things 
better.'' Kids know what is right, and I say to my colleagues that they 
know what is wrong. We should not kid ourselves. To cut title I money 
from my State of Minnesota, or any other State, to shut off children 
from the opportunities they need, from the support they need so they 
can reach their full potential, is not right.
  Leaders are Senators who get things done to make things better. This 
amendment that restores some funding for educational opportunities for 
children gets things done to make things better.
  Cameron Dick, from South Minneapolis, testified last week in a 
hearing. Cameron Dick had dropped out of school. He is a native 
American. He was ``going nowhere.'' But the School-to-Work Program 
saved him. Working with the American Indian Opportunities Center, he 
now goes to school, has a job, sees the connection between his 
schooling and a work opportunity, and in his spare time--you will love 
this--he tutors other children.

  I met a young woman yesterday in St. Paul, MN. I am embarrassed; I 
forget the last name. The first name is Erika. She is a Hispanic woman 
who came to Minnesota from California. She has lived in some 
communities with some very difficult circumstances. She had dropped out 
of school for several years and then went back to school in the School-
to-Work Program at Humboldt High School on the west side of St. Paul 
and found herself an apprenticeship program with a business, began to 
study accounting, now has a job, is proud of her work, makes a decent 
income, and is now going to go on and pursue higher education.
  These are not the programs we ought to be cutting. I mean, what is 
the House of Representatives trying to say to people in this country? 
``We will not shut the Government down, but the price we exact for not 
shutting the Government down is to cut Pell grants or to cut Head Start 
or to cut low-interest Perkins loan programs or cut vocational 
education or cut title I or cut safe and drug-free schools. These are 
not the priorities of people in this country.
  Mr. President, I believe that this debate on this amendment to 
restore $3 billion in funding for children for education and for 
opportunities is one of the most important debates that we are going to 
have. This is all about who we are as Senators, whom we represent, what 
values we believe in, and what our priorities are.
  I say to some of my colleagues, especially on the House side, that 
your agenda is too harsh, your agenda is too extreme, and it is a 
profound mistake for us to begin to divest from children.
  It is a profound mistake for this Nation to abandon children. It is a 
profound mistake for this Nation to move away from providing 
opportunities for children.

[[Page S1794]]

  I will conclude. Little kids do not understand budgets. Little kids 
do not understand why we cannot help them. Little kids who are trying 
hard do not understand why we cannot help them do better in school. And 
that is exactly what we ought to be doing because this is the very 
essence of the American dream.
  There is a former teacher from Northfield, Joanne Jorgensen, who is 
visiting with me today with her husband, Paul, who is an education 
professor at Carlton College. Much of politics is personal. Our 
daughter, Marsha, when she was in elementary school at least up through 
around fifth grade I would say, was put in a lot of the lower classes. 
No matter what we call those classes, ``blackbirds'' or ``redbirds,'' 
everybody knows who are the students that are not doing well. Some of 
the other kids were calling her a ``retard,'' and as parents it was 
painful to see your own little girl or to see any little girl or any 
little boy not feel good about himself or herself, but this was our 
daughter. Then Joanne Jorgenson became the teacher, and Joanne 
Jorgenson said to Marsha, ``Marsha, you are not stupid. You can draw. 
You are an artist. Marsha, you are not stupid. You can write poetry. 
You have rhythm. Marsha, you are a smart little girl. You are not dumb. 
You can do well.''
  Now be a proud Jewish father. By the time Marsha finished high 
school, she was a great student and she went on to the University of 
Wisconsin-Madison, top Spanish student and she is a great Spanish 
teacher at the high school level. She is a public schoolteacher. I do 
not know whether she would have been able to do that were it not for 
Joanne Jorgenson. This is the kind of support that we give students. 
And Marsha did not come from some of the difficult background 
circumstances that a lot of the students come from that are able to 
receive the support they need from title I or vocational education or 
school-to-work Programs or, for God sake, the Head Start Program. The 
Head Start Program is what we say it is. We have decided as a nation 
that we are going to give certain kids a head start.
  This is a profound mistake. Do not divest from children. Do not 
divest from education. Do not divest from opportunities for children. 
Our amendment restores this $3 billion, and we should do so.
  Mr. President, my final point. My final two points, and I promise my 
colleagues only two points. Point No. 1. I do not want to stand out on 
the floor of the Senate and argue for this amendment just on the basis 
of reducing violent crime. I can think of a million reasons why we 
should invest in education for children beyond that. But I will tell 
you one thing. Investing in children when they are young and making 
sure they have the educational opportunities beats the heck out of 
having to spend money on prisons.

  There is a judge, Rick Solum--and maybe my colleagues have heard the 
statistic before. I have only seen one report on this and maybe it is 
not corroborated. It is a startling statistic. In Hennepin County, he 
tells me there is a high correlation between high school dropouts and 
incarceration, winding up in prison, and cigarette smoking and lung 
cancer. If the statistic is true, and the judge says it is, that tells 
a very large story.
  I also know, Mr. President--and I try not to do this top-down or 
outside-school-in--I spend time in schools, Jill and I spend time with 
street kids, with homeless kids, with at-risk youth, with youth 
workers, and all of them say the same things: Senators, you have to 
give these kids positive things to do. You have to give them 
opportunities.
  It starts when they are young. We are never going to stop this cycle 
of violence by just building prisons. We have to make sure our children 
in this country, all the children in this country, have hope, have a 
future that they can believe in, have goals, and have the ability to be 
able to live for their own dreams. That is what these educational 
programs mean.
  This amendment restores the funding. We should have the support for 
this amendment, and I look forward to the final vote. I yield the 
floor.
  Mr. KENNEDY addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Massachusetts.
  Mr. KENNEDY. I rise in strong support of our education amendment, to 
restore the funding for some of the very basic and fundamental 
education programs to reaffirm this country's commitment to investment 
in the young people of our country in the limited but important way in 
which the Federal Government works in partnership with the States and 
local communities.
  We will have an opportunity to vote on this measure, and I should 
like to underscore a few of the principal reasons why this issue is of 
such importance and to review very briefly with the Senate why we are 
where we are at the present time.
  We should understand at the very beginning what is in the legislation 
and what is not in the legislation. And nothing is clearer than to look 
at the legislation itself in the final general provisions on page 780. 
Section 4002 says:

       No part of any appropriation contained in this title shall 
     be made available for obligation or expenditure nor any 
     authority granted or be effective until the enactment into 
     law of a subsequent act--

  I mention that again for emphasis.

     of a subsequent act entitled ``An Act Incorporating an 
     Agreement Between the President and Congress Relative to 
     Federal Expenditures in Fiscal Year 1996 and Future Fiscal 
     Years.''

  This title may be cited as, ``The Contingency Appropriations Act of 
1996.''
  This is the Contingency Appropriations Act. It is important as we 
start the debate that we listen to many of our very good friends who 
say, ``Well, we have really restored a great deal of education funding 
in this program so that parents should not worry, teachers should not 
worry, school boards should not worry because we have restored the 
money, perhaps not all of the money that we would have liked to have 
done, but, Senator, we have a difficult financial situation and 
education has to take the hit like anything else.''
  I would differ with that and say as to the proposal in the budget, 
the Republican budget, which provides the tax breaks for wealthy 
individuals ranging from some $240 billion, or the revision down, one 
of the proposals, to $178 billion, can you not give us $4 billion of 
the tax break that is going to go to the wealthiest individuals and 
fund these essential education programs because, my friends, basically 
what they are saying is that to be effective there is going to have to 
be a subsequent act, and that act is going to have to pass the House of 
Representatives and the Senate of the United States. That is not going 
to be a reflection of the will and desire of some of our Republican 
friends who are strongly committed to education. This legislation is 
very clear in that there is going to have to be action in the House of 
Representatives and the Senate of the United States in order for any of 
the provisions in here to be effective.
  That is not satisfactory. Effectively this comes back now to the 
question of priorities. Are we going to say we will not even seek any 
restoration of funding for education until we are going to get the tax 
breaks for the wealthy individuals? That is effectively what this 
provision says. You will not hear a lot of people talking about it. You 
will not hear a lot of people saying, ``Well, look, my Republican 
friends want that big tax break for the wealthy; can't we take $4 
billion off there and just put it right in here on education.''
  You will not hear a lot of people saying, ``Yes, that is the way to 
do it.'' That is not the proposal before us. So we have a measure that 
says, all right, we are going to put in some real money and we are 
going to put it in now. We are going to put it in education. We are 
going to support the school boards, the parents, the teachers who are 
meeting all over this country even while we are in here this morning 
with their pencil and paper wondering what they are going to be able to 
do for the children of this country over the next fiscal year.
  That is happening in every city and town in my State and in every 
other State. I will come back to that in just a moment.
  Mr. President, are these programs really worthy of support? I think 
we have to be able to justify the particular programs that are going to 
be added to.
  We have the Goals 2000 Program that had strong bipartisan support in 
the last Congress, Republicans and Democrats alike basically accepting 
what

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the Governors had agreed to in Charlottesville that said one of the 
most important elements in education is raising the bar and the 
challenge to the young people of this country. They will be able to 
measure up, if we establish some increased academic challenges to the 
young people.
  That is exactly what Goals 2000 is meant to do, not at the State 
level but at the local school levels. It is meant to get the funding 
into schools, get parents involved, get the business community 
involved, teachers involved, and begin to establish the higher 
standards for the young people.
  Those standards are voluntary and have been worked out in some 
important areas; for example, in math and in science. A number of 
communities have accepted those particular standards, and do you know 
what? The latest review shows there is a measurable improvement in the 
young people who have been challenged by those standards in math and 
science. It is beginning to move. The challenges are out there. There 
is an increase in academic achievement and accomplishment.
  The bipartisan Democratic and Republican Governors who supported the 
concept of the Goals 2000 is beginning to work, but not according to 
this budget. We are cutting back on those Goals 2000 programs so that 
thousands and thousands of schools will not be able to provide the same 
opportunities for those children. We are not doing anything about the 
tax breaks, but we are cutting back on Goals 2000.
  We had lengthy debates last year about the effectiveness of the title 
I program: Should we pull out students to be able to participate in the 
title I program? If they are not pulled out, are the students missing 
more than if they stayed in that class? Should we not have perhaps the 
opportunity to have greater flexibility at the school level?
  We had days and days of hearings on that and hours and days of 
debates in the House and Senate. Many, many good ideas were put forward 
by parents to try and help and assist those who have some disadvantage 
in terms of their past educational achievement. In many instances, they 
were not able to get into the Head Start Program or they need that 
extra help and assistance in literacy, in confidence-building skills, 
in the basic elements of decent education.

  Do you know what has happened to that? That was cut back initially by 
almost 1 million children. Now 700,000 will not participate in that 
program which makes such a difference.
  Mr. President, in talking to Mayor Menino in Boston 2 days ago, he 
said that 14 out of the 78 different programs in the city of Boston are 
now going to have to be cut out for those schoolchildren.
  The Safe and Drug-Free Schools Program--this is a beauty. By 57 
percent, it slashes the drug abuse and violence prevention programs for 
40 million youth--40 million youth. It cuts back on the help and 
assistance to the school systems of our country for safe and drug-free 
schools.
  Maybe many of our Republican friends are going to be able to respond 
to what I heard from the assistant district attorney, Mr. Gittens who 
is a deputy DA in Suffolk County in Boston who I heard on Friday 
afternoon and who also happens to be head of the school committee. He 
is head of the school committee and a prosecutor, and he asked me a 
very basic question and one which I would like to address to those who 
want to cut this program. He said: ``Do you know when the increase in 
juvenile violence takes place, Senator? Do you know what time? You can 
almost set a stopwatch by it. When the schools close down.''
  We should be surprised by that? In the afternoons is when the 
principal increase in juvenile crime occurs.
  What are these programs? Many of them in the Safe and Drug-Free 
Schools Program go for dispute resolutions. We have a number of schools 
in my own city of Boston that have enacted that program, and they have 
seen a dramatic reduction in tension in the schools for a whole range 
of different reasons.
  We have these voluntary programs in the city of Boston for kids who 
are the most vulnerable children in our communities to get involved, 
and it is vastly oversubscribed--vastly oversubscribed. There is strong 
support from the district attorneys.
  Meanwhile, in another part of our governmental body, we are cutting 
off and censuring Colombia to show how tough we are on crime and 
substance abuse and, at the same time, we are prepared to cut back on 
programs that reach out into those communities and make a real 
difference for children. Mr. President, 57 percent of the children.
  While I was having meetings out in the community on Friday afternoon, 
we heard from so many of the ministers in Boston talking about the 
summer jobs for youth. The 12-, 13-, 14-year-old kids, again, some of 
the most vulnerable, are talking to their teachers now: ``Is that 
summer job going to be out there?'' ``Will I be able to have that 
employment that I had last year?'' ``You know, we want to do something, 
we want to make something of ourselves.'' And I tell them that this 
Republican Congress has zeroed their program out.

  Mr. President, it makes no sense. If you talk to some who are 
involved in the program, they say those kids at the end of the summer, 
if they go the whole summer, may make $900. They say you cannot believe 
the difference it makes in their attitude when they come back to school 
after they have been participating in that program. Their whole 
attitude changes about themselves, about their school, about the 
importance of schools, about staying out of gangs and staying out of 
trouble. Well, $867 million is cut out.
  What are we going to tell the 1,200 schoolchildren in Boston who 
otherwise would have been participating in this program, in close 
collaboration with the private sector that works very closely in the 
administration of that program, uses that as a principal source for 
trying to bring young people back into the private sector for training 
and doing evaluations? It has been a very, very important program, not 
only in the major cities--in Lawrence, New Bedford, Worcester, 
Springfield, and many of the other cities.
  Also, there has been a $137 million reduction in Head Start. We have 
been around for years. We saw a significant increase under President 
Bush in the Head Start Program. Then we had some questions about what 
was happening to the quality of the Head Start Program. So we revised 
that with strong bipartisan support. I do not think there were three 
Members of the U.S. Senate who voted against restructuring of the Head 
Start Program and the increase in the funding for that program, because 
it only reaches about 35, 40 percent of the children who are eligible 
for that program. But nonetheless, they are cutting back that program, 
a program that helps develop confidence-building skills for young 
people.
  And the work goes on. The Dislocated Workers Assistance Program, 
there is a 29-percent cut. It excludes 157,000 workers who have lost 
their jobs from programs that teach them new skills.
  At the same time, I was reading in this morning's Washington Post an 
article by James Glassman which talks about provisions that we have 
considered in the Judiciary Committee under immigration. Some of us, 
including myself, do not believe that we ought to fire American workers 
who are qualified to permit American companies to hire foreigners who 
have no better skills or equal skills and then drop their cost in 
wages. So you have American workers who have lost their jobs, the 
company has lower wages, they compete with American firms, and those 
firms go out of business. But at the same time, we will have a chance 
to debate those issues later on.

  The point that Mr. Glassman makes is:

       Also, many of the best U.S. jobs go begging, simply because 
     we don't have workers smart enough to fill them. In an 
     extensive new study for Empower America, Stuart Anderson 
     reports that 16 large, high-tech companies alone had 22,000 
     job openings in January.

  That is 22,000 jobs. What do those people need? Some training, so 
that they are going to be able to be productive, useful members of this 
society and provide for their families. What does this program do? It 
cuts out the dislocated worker assistance to be able to give those 
skills to American workers so that they can get those jobs.
  Are we missing something here, Mr. President? Are we going to say to 
those

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workers who are dislocated, with all of the phenomenon that is taking 
place in terms of the requirements in the job market, without the kind 
of training that should be provided by the companies and corporations 
of America--only a handful of them do; they should be commended for 
doing it, but only a handful of them do--and then on the one hand say, 
here are thousands and thousands of jobs that are here, and in the same 
proposal cut back on the dislocated worker assistance?
  Mr. President, one of the most important, innovative programs that we 
passed--again, with strong bipartisan support. We had Republican 
Governors who have testified in favor of this very exciting program, 
the former Governor from the State of Maine. Also, we have in the State 
of Michigan, the School-to-Work Program to try to reach out to the 
three out of four high school students who do not go on to college but 
go on into the employment market.
  Let us show some consideration for those kids. Let us not just have 
them every time go on out to McDonald's. Let us try to give them some 
opportunity of getting on a path that can give them some hope in terms 
of the future. That is what the School-to-Work Program is about, and it 
is successful, Mr. President. But we have now a cut in that program 
that was passed on.
  So, Mr. President, we will hear later on about, ``Well, we will be 
able to deal with some of these issues, perhaps, a little later on.'' 
We are halfway through or more, certainly, in terms of the planning and 
programming for the school year.
  Let me just mention quickly what is happening out there in the 
various school boards. I have a deputy superintendent in Worcester, MA, 
who told me planning next year's budget in the midst of the Federal 
budget confusion is like reading tea leaves in the middle of an 
earthquake. Worcester loses $2 million in Federal funding. More than 
4,000 students will lose access to support services. Title I will be 
cut by $1 million. That translates into 700 fewer students. That is $1 
million, with 700 fewer students being served, and the layoff of 16 
teachers.

  In Ayer, MA, they depend on the Federal impact for 23 percent of its 
budget. The picture is stark. If the Federal funding impasse is not 
resolved by April 22, they will close the schools 2 months earlier this 
year.
  You have heard about stories in Newport News where they were cutting 
back on heating for 2 hours in the schools, cutting back heating in a 
program that we refuse to address. We have the issue of increased tax 
breaks, and they have cut back heating in the public schools of the 
country. You wonder why we are putting this legislation out here and 
why we are demanding that we have a debate and a focus on this.
  In Chicago, the chaos caused by the budget impasse will move from the 
central office to teachers and parents and schools. March 18--next 
week--the district's budget director has to tell each school the size 
of their budget for the next year--by the middle of May, local school 
councils, made up of teachers, parents, community members, and the 
principals, must submit it for approval--next week. But they will have 
the assurances of the Contingency Appropriations Act of 1996 to help 
them out. What does that mean?
  The uncertainty about Federal support for education will cause 
Chicago to waste valuable time deciding how to allocate a lump sum that 
could change at any time. They will be forced to assume the worst. 
Chicago schools will lose nearly 20 percent of their budget, or $40 
million. That means laying off 600 teachers. The district will have to 
deny extra help in math and reading to 43,000 students.
  Mr. President, this would be bad under any circumstance, but it is 
particularly bad now. Why? Because of the demographics of this country, 
we have increased the total number of students anywhere from 3 to 5 
million in our schools. Just to keep even with 1995 figures in support, 
we would need 50,000 additional teachers--50,000 additional teachers--
just to keep the pupil-teacher ratio, we would have to add those. We 
would have to increase the funding.
  We are not even asking to increase it. We are just trying to get back 
to 1995. So you are starting off with 50,000 less teachers than you 
would need if you are going to be where you should be in 1995. And with 
the loss of funding of the other program, you lose another 50,000.

  Mr. President, that is a matter, I think, of national urgency. I 
think it is a matter of national crisis. It is a reflection of national 
priorities, whether we are really serious. If we cannot find the way 
and the means to try to at least make sure that we are going to do what 
we did in 1995, let alone try to meet responsibilities in the areas of 
new technologies to help and assist students, which we should be doing, 
if we are, as an institution, so bound by procedures that in a $1.7 
trillion budget we are not able to find those funds, it is a fierce 
indictment.
  Mr. President, the list goes on. I just want to say, Mr. President, 
that I do not believe, and I think most Americans do not believe, that 
education is a contingency as a priority for this country. School 
boards cannot write their school budgets with contingency moneys. They 
cannot hire teachers with contingency money. They cannot buy books and 
pencils and computers for their students with contingency money. They 
need real numbers now to write their budgets for the coming year. This 
bill leaves school districts stranded in confusion and uncertainty once 
again. That is the reason why this amendment which we offer to restore 
the education funding is so necessary.
  Education is not a contingency for the American people. It is not a 
contingency for the millions of schoolchildren today who will enter the 
work force in the 21st century. If our commitment to education is real, 
we should fund it with real money. I urge my colleagues to support the 
education amendment in the pending appropriation.
  Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I will just take a couple minutes, I 
say to my colleague from Pennsylvania. If he is getting ready to speak, 
I will just take probably 2 or 3 minutes. If not, I will take a little 
more time. Might I ask my colleague if he is ready to speak now? I had 
an opportunity to speak. I will be very brief.
  Mr. SPECTER. I thank my colleague from Minnesota for his inquiry. I 
am ready to speak, but I have no objection to his taking 2 or 3 
minutes. I will be here all day.
  Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I thought I would supplement earlier 
remarks that I made on the floor when proposing our amendment, along 
with the Senator from Massachusetts.
  I'd like to take a closer look at these education cuts. Look at this 
chart for a moment--Goals 2000 is cut by $82 million; that is a 22-
percent cut. This slashes school improvement efforts in over 2,000 
schools, serving over 1 million children. Title I, $679 million; denies 
700,000 disadvantaged children crucial reading and math assistance.
  I tried, Mr. President, to give examples, many examples from my 
State, about what an important program this is. I will repeat what I 
said earlier: Little kids do not understand all this budget language 
and do not understand why we cannot help them be better readers and 
help them do better in school. I also want to provide information that 
has been given to me by Ms. Susie Kay, an outstanding teacher at the 
H.D. Woodson Senior High School in the District of Columbia. Mr. 
President, for examples of what education cuts mean to students, we 
need go no further outside this Chamber than a couple of miles away, to 
Ms. Kay's classroom. She writes:

       Our students are not born criminals; they are not lazy or 
     stupid. They just want, and so deserve, the same chances that 
     this country is supposed to guarantee all its citizens. The 
     last thing that they need is to be set back by further budget 
     cuts in education, cuts which would only serve to discourage 
     students and the teachers committed to helping them beat the 
     odds. H.D. Woodson literally survives from the assistance 
     that the Title I Program provides. To cut any further into 
     our resources would be nothing short of criminal. We should 
     be doing everything we can to help them. Too many people ask 
     me why I continue to teach. * * * I respond * * * how can you 
     not?


[[Page S1797]]


  I ask that Ms. Kay's eloquent and impassioned statement be printed in 
the Record at the conclusion of my remarks.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  (See exhibit 1.)
  Mr. WELLSTONE. The Safe and Drug Free Schools Program is cut by this 
omnibus appropriations bill a total of $266 million. That is a 57-
percent cut. This omnibus bill slashes drug abuse and violence 
prevention programs for over 40 million young people. Mr. President, 
you have certainly taken a real leadership role in this area. The only 
thing I say is that I am immensely impressed not based upon debate on 
the floor of the Senate, not based on abstraction, but visits to 
schools at the mentoring programs, at the counseling programs, and 
really the success of the Safe and Drug Free School Program in doing 
everything we can to try and address what I think is apparent, the huge 
problem of substance abuse.
  Head Start Program, $137 million cut; denies 50,000 children services 
that help them become ready to learn. Now, Mr. President, again I 
remind my colleagues that the Head Start Program, which has 
overwhelming support in the country, does just what the title says it 
does. That is, gives children who come from families in very difficult 
circumstances, very tough backgrounds, a head start. I have taught Head 
Start mothers; I have taught and worked with Head Start families. There 
are two things that are very important about the Head Start Program: 
First, we better invest in children when they are young. That is what 
you have to do. That is what this program is about. The second thing is 
the involvement of the parents, and the education of their children. 
What are we doing cutting the Head Start Program? Does anybody think 
that is what people voted for in 1994?
  Summer jobs for youth, cut $867 million--I did not talk about that 
before--100 percent they want to eliminate it, preventing 673,000 high 
school students from gaining valuable work experience.
  Mr. President, I will just tell you right now that those publicly 
elected officials that are more down in the trenches--the 
commissioners, the school board members, the city council people, the 
mayors, and I do not mean just in our large cities but I mean in 
greater Minnesota as well--they will tell you that they have a 
tremendous amount of fear, I think is the right word, about this 
extreme House effort, this extremist agenda, of eliminating summer jobs 
programs for youth. What we want to do is get our young people involved 
with work. We want them to feel good about themselves. We want them to 
have these opportunities. This is a critically important program. What 
are we doing eliminating it?

  Mr. President, $362 million for dislocated workers assistance, a 29-
percent cut, excluding 150,000 workers who have lost their jobs, in 
programs that teach new job skills.
  Mr. President, every day we are reading about downsizing and 
restructuring--which is euphemism for some of the large companies in 
this country--large multinational corporations just firing people. What 
are we doing cutting a program that provides people who maybe are 
middle aged who have been working hard all their lives who thought if 
they did work hard all their lives they would have secure employment, 
what are we doing cutting a program that provides the dislocated 
workers with some assistance to make a transition back into the 
workplace? Did anybody hear a hue and cry from people in 1994 that the 
kind of change they were voting for was to cut dislocated workers 
assistance or summer jobs for youth? Finally, Mr. President I talked 
about this earlier, school to work is cut $55 million--a 22-percent 
cut, curtailing efforts of 27 States, including Minnesota, to provide 
students the skills they need to get a good job. Mr. President, I heard 
the other day in a hearing from the business community that supports 
it, from labor that supports it, from youth workers that support it, 
from teachers that support it, and maybe most important of all, from 
young people, for whom this has made all of the difference in the 
world.
  Mr. President, the definition for family security in Minnesota is to 
focus on a good education for our children and our grandchildren and to 
focus on educational opportunities and job opportunities. Mr. 
President, good family values is to invest in children. Good family 
values is to invest in educational opportunities. Good family values is 
to make sure that children can have dreams and can fulfill their 
dreams. Good family values is to give children hope. Good family values 
is to give kids a lending hand when they need it. Good family values is 
to give children the careful consideration and nurturing and support 
they deserve to do better in reading, to do better mathematics. Good 
family values is to make kids feel good about themselves. Good family 
values, Mr. President, is to understand that education and educational 
opportunities are the essence of the American dream.
  This is one of the most important amendments, I think, that has been 
proposed on the floor of the Senate in my 5 years in office. I am very 
proud to be a Senator that brings this amendment to the floor, and I 
hope we will restore this funding. I have said it 10 times on the floor 
of the Senate. I will say it an 11th time and then be done. Now that I 
have grandchildren, I see these little children--they surprise me 
because our children are all 30, 26 and 23; I hope I have that right. 
Now three grandchildren. I see these kids. It is incredible. Every 15 
seconds they are interested in something new. They can be in the same 
room and they can come back weekend after weekend and they always find 
something new. Those children are experiencing all the unnamed magic of 
the world. You take that spark of learning and you ignite it and it 
takes a child from any background to a life of creativity and 
accomplishment; you throw cold water on that spark of learning and that 
is the cruelest thing you can do as a Senator, as a government, as a 
country, as a society.
  By trying to enact the deepest cuts we have ever had in education as 
the price for not shutting the Government down--that is precisely what 
the Speaker and other Members of the House who support this have sent 
over to the U.S. Senate--an effort to pour cold water on this spark of 
learning is unconscionable, unacceptable, and Senators should vote for 
our amendment to restore this funding. I yield the floor.

                               Exhibit 1

       My name is Susie Kay and I have been a 12th-grade American 
     government teacher at H.D. Woodson Senior High School for the 
     past five years. I am one of four non-minority teachers at 
     Woodson, which has a 100% African American student 
     population. H.D. Woodson is a D.C. Public High School, 
     located in the inner city, east of the Anacostia River.
       Teaching at Woodson has been a powerful experience, and, 
     while often disheartening, my days are filled with constant 
     inspiration and small miracles. The noted education writer 
     Jonathan Kozol has put my Woodson experiences in chilling 
     perspective. He writes in Amazing Grace, ``No viable human 
     society condemns its children to death. Yet, through public 
     policy and private indifference, we have guaranteed that our 
     poor inner city children will lead lives stunted by heart-
     break, violence and disease.'' He continues, ``. . . that 
     each casualty, part of the beauty of the world is 
     extinguished, because these are children of intelligence and 
     humor, of poetic insight and luminous faith.''
       The story of the inner city and its youth is all this and 
     infinitely more. It is a tale of survival, not only from a 
     culture of economic despair and hopelessness, where too often 
     nothing seems to change, but survival against the temptations 
     of ``easy money'' in an area where there are virtually no 
     available jobs or means of ``legal employment.'' It is a tale 
     of survival amidst drug dealings and drive-by shootings and 
     too often its innocent casualties .  .  . ``dreams 
     deferred.'' Mostly, it is a story of the survival and triumph 
     of the human spirit through resilience and finding hope in 
     even the darkest corners. Our students want to survive, and 
     they want to succeed, despite the multitude of odds against 
     them. My friends hear all of my stories day after day; it is 
     a world so foreign to most of them, in fact to most people in 
     this country, and one which too many people don't want to be 
     bothered with. It can be symbolized in the paradox of 
     Washington, D.C., this glorious, powerful city, where blocks 
     separate these two worlds. My students do not feel the same 
     reverence and respect for our government that I was taught 
     growing up, but rather an alienation, abandonment, and 
     disillusionment of it. I must say that it is often difficult 
     to blame them for this.
       From what I have witnessed, those students that make it 
     have truly survived against the odds. Many of their obstacles 
     are so seemingly insurmountable, that there is an unwritten 
     creed that making it to graduation day alive is, in itself, a 
     victory. Death is a culture in the inner city, and one that 
     is prevalent. One of the most incredible aspects

[[Page S1798]]

     of these children's lives is the amount of death that they 
     must constantly deal with, and the accompanying complacency 
     and acceptance of it. Every Monday brings with it a new list 
     of immediate family members and close friends who have either 
     been killed or died because of the critical lack of available 
     medical attention. This year alone, I have attended the 
     funerals of three of my graduating 1995 seniors. They were 
     all bright and beautiful young people, rich with intelligence 
     and talent. This is not a sane way to grow up, nor is it 
     conducive to a clear mind ready to begin the school day. Too 
     many of our students come to school weary from sleepless 
     nights spent worrying about things that citizens of this 
     country, the richest country in the world, should not have 
     to worry about. Will I have a place to live this week-end? 
     Will that next stray bullet come through my bedroom 
     window? Where will my next meal come from? As if teachers 
     don't have enough to worry about, feeding, clothing, and 
     sheltering our students with our own money has become 
     routine. It is just part of the job. For the past three 
     weeks one of our students has been homeless. A few 
     teachers and myself have spent a great deal of time 
     feeding, sheltering and locating suitable housing for this 
     young man. It has been frustrating, but as always, we have 
     been inspired by his determination to get through this. 
     And once the students do beat the odds and arrive at 
     school safely, what awaits them? Too often they face 
     deplorable physical conditions and severe lack of supplies 
     and resources (yes this does include text books). They 
     face no heat in the winter and no air conditioning in the 
     sweltering warmer months of May and June. School should be 
     a haven and a refuge from the ills of the outside world; 
     instead it is a place where even the presence of metal 
     detectors and too few security guards can only do so much 
     to keep our children safe.
       We read daily about the lack of supplies, money and 
     resources in the District of Columbia Public Schools. I am 
     sure this is a story that is repeated in inner city school 
     districts throughout the country, but these stories only 
     scratch the surface. The reality is much worse, in fact 
     tragic. Many classes did not have books until November of 
     this year. Until recently, there was only one copying machine 
     for use by the entire faculty, and now budget cuts have 
     eliminated the repair of that machine. We were often 
     relegated to using a hand-crank, 1950's style ditto machine 
     located in the women's bathroom or expending our own funds to 
     purchase copies of materials at Kinkos or Staples. Most 
     teachers spend an average of $500-700 per year on supplies 
     that are taken for granted in suburban schools through this 
     country. Even the most basic supplies are now elusive . . . 
     pencils, paper . . . what's left? It is impossible to teach 
     effectively without spending our own money.
       We are often inundated with news about teachers who have 
     given up . . . burned out . . . who are apathetic . . . who 
     simply do not care. This is not a fitting description of so 
     many of my colleagues at H.D. Woodson. Certainly it does not 
     bespeak the endless hours of work done by teachers who 
     increasingly are being called upon to fill so many abdicated 
     roles in their students lives. It is not an accurate 
     description of Barbara Birchette, the lead teacher of the 
     accelerated charter school at D.H. Woodson, the Academy of 
     Finance and Business. She daily and tirelessly performs the 
     job of an army battalion. Nor does it describe Kenneth 
     Friedman, the English teacher to whom students know they can 
     go to be fed and so much more . . . nor Coach Bruce D. 
     Bradford, the swimming coach who continuously teaches his 
     students invaluable life lessons. The names and stories of 
     dedicated teachers are endless. We daily confront multiple 
     obstacles and see them as challenges to be surmounted, while 
     fighting off the temptation to give up. Our reward is our 
     students . . . it certainly is not monetary.
       The H.D. Woodson Swim Team placed 2nd in the DCIAA 
     Championship over the past week-end . . . an amazing feat 
     considering that we had no water in the swimming pool this 
     entire season. Due to budget cuts, the necessary pool repairs 
     have not been made. I guess there is nothing like dry land 
     workouts for a swim team. Congress could learn a lot from our 
     Woodson swimmers . . . how to do more with less. The Woodson 
     Warriorsharks epitomize how success in these circumstances is 
     still possible. So many of these students are the most 
     creative, determined and loving people that I have ever met 
     in my life. In spite of the odds, they desperately want to 
     make it, and many miraculously do. In spite of the constant 
     reinforcement of messages, both subliminal and blatant, our 
     society, our government, our country is saying to these 
     children that they are not valued as much, or deserving as 
     much, as our (other) children. It is a race issue. It is a 
     social class issue, and, if not quickly addressed, we will 
     all suffer in the end. For those who think that this is not 
     their problem, I say to you, you can run, but you cannot 
     hide.
       For many of my 17-year-old seniors, I am one of the few 
     white people with whom they have had a daily relationship. 
     Their experience with my race has often been either non-
     existent, negative or at the very least, confusing. I am 
     constantly faced with the challenge of answering logical 
     questions that have no reasonable answers--at least ones 
     which I find satisfactory as I face into the eyes of these 
     children. Why do white people cross the street and hold their 
     purses close and follow us around stores as if we are all 
     criminals? Why do white people look at us with such anger and 
     fear? Why does our government seem not to care about us? 
     These are good kids growing up in a cruel world. Yet I'll say 
     it again. The story is in the miracle . . . the thirst for 
     knowledge and the will to survive.
       I have made a point of exposing my students to my friends 
     and to their jobs as lobbyists, hill-staffers and lawyers in 
     the hopes that stereotypes will be dispelled on both sides . 
     . . they always are. One of the largest voids in these 
     students' lives are contacts and positive exposure to people 
     beyond their immediate community. We all know it's who you 
     know, and by no fault of their own, those connections are 
     just not there. It does not take a congressional study to 
     understand this simple philosophy of how so many of these 
     kids are sent off into the world to complete with those who 
     have been economically and academically advantaged, equipped 
     to succeed. Our students are not born criminals; they are not 
     lazy or stupid. They just want, and so deserve, the same 
     chances that this country is supposed to guarantee all of its 
     citizens. The last thing that they need is to be set back by 
     further budget cuts in education, cuts which would only serve 
     to discourage students and the teachers committed to helping 
     them beat the odds. H.D. Woodson literally survives from the 
     assistance that the Title I Program provides. To cut any 
     further into our resources would be nothing short of 
     criminal. We should be doing everything we can do help them. 
     Too many people ask me why I continue to reach and care about 
     these kids. I respond . . . how can you not?

  Mr. LEVIN. Mr. President, I am a proud cosponsor of the pending 
amendment because I feel that education is so critical to this 
country's future. The worst thing we can do, the worst thing we can do 
when we look at budget priorities, is to make the kind of cuts in 
education programs that are proposed to be made for next fall and for 
the fiscal year that we are debating. These are the largest cuts in 
education programs in this Nation's history.
  By the way, the same day that we made a $3 billion cut in education 
programs on an annualized basis, the cuts which were contained in the 
interim funding bill that we are now operating, $7 billion was added to 
the defense budget for items not requested by the Pentagon.
  Within 2 hours we had two votes in this body. One of the votes passed 
a continuing resolution, interim funding, with cuts in education 
programs, cuts in title I programs that provide teachers, for math and 
science, for most of our school districts, cuts in Head Start programs, 
cuts in loan programs for colleges, cuts in the School-to-Work Program, 
which is a new form of vocational training education and is working so 
beautifully in our high schools; a 17-percent cut we had in the title I 
program; and a 22-percent cut in school-to-work.

  Within 2 hours of that vote, which cut $3 billion in education, which 
represents the future of this Nation, we adopted a defense 
authorization bill that added $7 billion for items that the Pentagon 
did not ask us to add--ships and planes, mainly--and which the 
President did not request. Those are not the priorities that the people 
of this Nation want.
  The cuts in education are proposed at a time when a recent NBC News/
Wall Street Journal public opinion poll says that 92 percent of all 
Americans believe that the Federal Government should spend the same or 
more on education; 92 percent of our people do not want us to cut 
education.
  The continuing resolution and the appropriation bill before us now 
makes historic cuts in education. These are cuts in programs that are 
working. We are not talking about cuts in programs that are not 
working. These are cuts in programs that are having a positive impact 
on the lives of people, according to, I think, all the authorities that 
I can talk to.
  I have traveled around my home State of Michigan for the last month 
talking to parents, educators, and students. I asked them to talk to me 
about school-to-work, and to tell me what difference the School-to-Work 
Program means in their lives. And I am told what that program means in 
the lives of students.
  We finally have a School-to-Work Program where the business community 
is involved in education. The business community is designing the 
curricula in the high schools that will provide students with schools 
that the business community can use.
  Finally, we have a true marriage between business and education to 
provide real-world skills with real-world

[[Page S1799]]

technologies. What do we do? There is a proposed cut in the School-to-
Work Program of 22 percent. This is a program that is working. This is 
not a program that is floundering, a program that is wasteful.
  When you travel around our States--and I can only speak for my State, 
but I go to school after school after school, from one part of my State 
to another, just on the School-to-Work Program. Another group of visits 
was on the title I program. These are programs where the Federal 
Government is making a positive difference. These are not wasteful 
programs. This is not where there is waste, fraud, and abuse, where we 
ought to be active. These are programs where we are making a positive 
contribution to the lives of students and to the future of this Nation, 
and it is proposed that we cut these programs by a historic amount of 
$3 billion, and where the American people have told us in public 
opinion polls, in our mail, phone calls, and in our visits, that 
education is a very big priority for them. They believe these programs 
are making a difference.

  These college loan programs are making a difference. Head Start, we 
know, makes a difference in the lives of students. Only half of the 
students now eligible for Head Start get Head Start. Only half. That is 
all the funding that is available. So instead of increasing Head Start, 
we have an appropriation bill before us which reduces Head Start.
  Now, in addition to the huge cuts that this bill would make in 
education and that our amendment would restore, that the Harkin 
amendment would restore, we have another problem, which is that the 
appropriation proposal before us causes local school districts 
tremendous uncertainty because the proposal before us says that there 
is a contingency fund, and if that contingency fund is funded, then 
they are going to get one level of funding, and if it is not funded 
through some budget agreement between the Congress and the President, 
then it is not going to be funded.
  How do we expect school districts to be budgeting for next fall when 
we have, as part of their funding level, a contingency fund which 
nobody has any idea whether or not it is going to be funded? These are 
administrators of schools. They have responsibilities to people--to our 
children, in the case of high schools and elementary and intermediate 
schools, and colleges, in the case of college students. They have 
responsibilities to plan a budget.
  The appropriation bill before us says, well, some of these cuts you 
are talking about maybe will be restored. If the President and the 
Congress get together on a budget deal, then there is going to be a 
higher level of funding, and those $3 billion in cuts you are talking 
about will not happen. They cannot budget that way. It is not a 
responsible way to budget. So right now, as they are budgeting for the 
fall, trying to figure out whether they have to lay off title I 
teachers, and they are trying to figure out whether they will have to 
terminate school-to-work programs, this new form of vocational 
education training, which, as I said before, finally marries the 
business community with our schools in the most creative kind of 
partnership, that I have seen in education. We have business people in 
our schools working together on a curriculum that will provide skills 
for students that are needed by business.

  Mr. President, I have been in room after room with business people 
and students together in my State of Michigan, where the business 
people tell me that when these kids complete this course, this School-
to-Work Program, when they learn these skills and when their attendance 
record is what it has to be under this program, and when they do all 
the things required of them, they will have a job with me. When you 
look at a room full of kids and when they are told by business people, 
``When you complete this course in this high school, when you graduate 
this School-to-Work Program, you have a good-paying job with my 
company,'' that is real, and that is happening in the school-to-work 
world. That is what is proposed for a cut, unless, of course, there is 
a contingency fund that is funded.
  But school districts cannot budget on that basis. They have to figure 
out now whether or not next fall they are going to have to reduce their 
School-to-Work Program, or whether they are going to have to lay off 
title I teachers. These are real budget decisions, and they should not 
be left up in the air the way this proposal does.
  The bill includes significant funding cuts in some of the most proven 
education programs that we have. As I said, school-to-work initiatives 
are cut by 22 percent. We ought to be increasing school-to-work. It is 
a tremendous success. Goals 2000 is reduced by 22 percent; Perkins low-
interest college loans is cut 37 percent; State student incentive 
grants is cut 50 percent; the title I skills program is cut by 10 
percent; Head Start is cut by 4 percent; funding is eliminated 
altogether for the summer jobs program. This program has a direct 
affect on thousands of young people who otherwise are going to be 
without work and in the streets. It affects their education because 
many of these jobs are directly connected to whether or not they are in 
school or not.
  As I have said, Mr. President, my reaction to these cuts is not just 
based on some philosophical belief that I hold deeply that education is 
the key to our future. It is based on personal experiences and 
traveling around my home State of Michigan.
  (Mr. KYL assumed the chair.)
  Mr. LEVIN. Let me give some examples of some of the comments of the 
various educators and people relative to these cuts.
  Larry Campbell, the superintendent of the St. Joseph County 
intermediate school district said this:

       It is difficult for me to fathom proposed cuts in Federal 
     education funds for title I, Goals 2000, school-to-work, 
     and safe and drug-free schools. I am deeply distressed at 
     the prospect of losing $265,600 in title I Federal funding 
     for schools in St. Joseph County. This will have a 
     profound affect on our ability to educate children, 
     especially those with the greatest need.

  Mrs. Jean Sawaski, the vice president of the Wakefield Township 
school board of education says:

       I am deeply distressed at the prospect of losing $93,300 in 
     title I Federal funding for schools in Gogebic County. Please 
     consider the impact of these cuts to education.

  David Defields, the superintendent, and Mary Stessard, the director 
of programs and instruction of the Coloma community schools, in a 
February 15 letter, said to me:

       In Berrien County we are projected to lose $1.1 million in 
     title I funds alone, at a time when teachers have begun to 
     accept the research on how children learn, have invested much 
     time in professional development and are excited about new 
     teaming efforts to get it right the first time. You folks are 
     asking us to cut back and curtail the momentum. It is all 
     very discouraging for educators. Many at-risk students 
     will lose services. We are willing to tighten our belts. 
     However, we hear that on the same day that a budget cut of 
     $3 billion from education funding is proposed, an increase 
     for the defense budget of $7 billion is proposed. Is 
     providing contracts for the defense manufacturers more 
     important than the education of our children?
  Mr. Richard van Haaften, superintendent of the North Branch Area 
School, said:

       I am very concerned about possibly losing $350,000 in title 
     I Federal funding for schools in Lapeer County. A loss of 
     revenue of this magnitude will have a significant impact on 
     our ability to educate children with the greatest need.

  Marilyn phillips, Principal of Beetle Lake Elementary School in 
Battle Creek, talks about real children where title I has made a 
difference in their lives. She says:

       I wish you could see how title I funds have helped so many 
     students in our school. We have an excellent early 
     intervention program for our kindergarten, first- and second-
     grade students which will have to be curtailed if you reduce 
     funding for next year. For instance, Caitlin, a first-grader 
     who was not succeeding in kindergarten, is now a fluent 
     reader in the first grade because of the extra help given her 
     through title I funding. Adam, Travis, and Mark, and so many 
     others have been helped, too. Won't you please think about 
     the importance of good education for this generation of 
     children?
       Won't you please think about the importance of a good 
     education for this generation of children?

  Superintendent of the Detroit Public Schools, Dave Snead, told me:

       The elimination of the Summer Youth Program is short-
     sighted and sacrifices our ability to teach skills related to 
     the work ethic, economic independence, and self-sufficiency. 
     Reduction of funding for Head Start, Title I, School-To-Work, 
     and Safe and Drug-Free Schools shortchanges students most in 
     need of assistance. The proposed cuts must not stand.


[[Page S1800]]


  Well, if these cuts do become law--and, if we do not correct them 
through the pending amendment--our Nation is going to face the largest 
cut in education funding in our history. Over $3 billion will have been 
taken from America's schoolchildren, and the loss of the investment in 
their futures will have harmed us all.
  So, Mr. President, President Clinton has said he will not sign this 
bill in its present form. And he should not. But it should not get to 
him in its present form. The Senate should adopt the pending amendment 
which should restore educational funding to at least last year's level, 
and we should not rob our children of their future, which is what we do 
when we cut education programs which are working.

  I want to close with that thought because a lot of us in this body 
have gone after programs which do not work. We spend a lot of time 
trying to reduce programs which should either be eliminated or be 
reduced. That is true of many programs. And that is the responsibility 
which we have, and which some of us have tried to carry out. But these 
programs work, and we have to make a distinction between programs which 
work and programs which do not. When we have a title I program which is 
working, when we have school-to-work, and vocational education programs 
that are working, Head Start programs that are working, we should be 
finding ways to increase the availability of these programs.
  We should be making college more available to students--not less. We 
are in the midst--and have been for about 20 years--of a real economic 
crunch on the average American family. It is something which we have 
been concerned about and have tried to turn around for a long time. We 
know that there is a direct relationship between how much education you 
have and what your lifetime earnings are going to be. It may not be 
true in every case. But it is true in most cases. The more education 
that you have the greater the likelihood is that you are going to have 
a better income for your whole life. We know it statistically. And what 
we also know is that the relationship is closer than it has ever been. 
To put it another way, the gap in income between those that have 
education and those that do not is growing.
  When we are in a situation--I think it is a deeply troubling 
situation--when that average American family has seen stagnation in its 
income, when that average American family is working longer hours, 
because they are, or more hours put in per family to earn either the 
same amount, or less, in real terms after inflation and after taxes, it 
seems to me that we have to look for ways that we can turn that around 
where we can again see real growth in family incomes.
  One of the ways to do that--and there are many--but one of the ways 
to do it is a proven way of increasing educational opportunities for 
the breadwinners of those families. We know it as certain as we are 
standing here; that, if we can increase educational opportunities for 
people, there is a strong likelihood--not a 100 percent likelihood but 
a strong likelihood--that they will be better off economically through 
their lifetime. Knowing that, why in Heaven's name we would be 
proposing historic cuts in education programs is beyond me. When we are 
struggling to find ways to improve family income to finally get it back 
into a growth mode, under this a appropriations bill--unless it is 
amended--we would be making reductions in one of the ways that we can 
be enhancing family income.

  Our families are not only working longer hours, they are more 
productive than they have ever been. Our productivity as a people has 
gone up dramatically.
  So the families of America are working more hours, are more 
productive than ever, and yet family income is stagnant. Median family 
income in America has actually gone down over the last 20 years. It is 
a situation which has troubling--indeed, tragic--overtones. And what we 
must do is continue to seek ways that we can reverse that situation. We 
must look for ways to improve the standard of living of average 
American families. And the worst thing we can do--the last thing we 
ought to do--is to be cutting the education programs which can help 
families, and help future families earn more.
  So I hope that we will be adopting the amendment before us. I hope 
that we will restore not just in a contingent way, or in a hypothetical 
or possibly a theoretical way but that we will actually restore funds 
which have been cut from some very vital education programs.
  I again am proud to be a cosponsor of the pending amendment and hope 
that it passes with an overwhelming vote of the Senate.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. SPECTER addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Kyl). The Senator from Pennsylvania.
  Mr. SPECTER. Mr. President, in my capacity as chairman of the 
Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, and 
Education, I have been struggling to meet the requirements of these 
three important departments in a way to present on the floor of the 
Senate a bill which can pass and will be signed by the President. There 
is an open question as to whether there can be passage of a bill by the 
Senate on a 51 majority vote on the declaration of an emergency without 
having offsets so that we reach the objective of a balanced budget, 
which is the objective articulated by the Congress as well as the 
President.
  It has been this search for offsets which has occupied me for many 
weeks up to this instant. This morning I was on the phone trying to 
reach Chief of Staff Leon Panetta, with whom I have talked about these 
offsets again and again and again. We are still struggling to find 
those offsets, because if we do not find those offsets there is a real 
threat that there will be a stalemate again between the Congress and 
the President which will lead to a closing of the Government, which I 
think has been cataclysmic and would be even more so if it happened 
again.
  That is not something I am saying for the first time in this Chamber, 
on March 12, today. I said that back on November 14, on the second day 
of the first closing of the Government because of my view that if we 
are going to have political gridlock, we ought to find a way to carry 
forward and crystallize the issue for the November elections and then 
take it to the American people as to whether they prefer the approach 
of the Congress or prefer the approach of the administration.
  So as we have had these continuing resolutions late last year and 
again early this year, I have been talking to the administration's 
chief negotiator, Mr. Panetta, to try to find out the offsets. I wrote 
to Mr. Panetta back on February 20 of this year. I will read the first 
paragraph.

       Dear Leon: I called again this morning to try to find out 
     from you the possible offsets to add approximately $3.3 
     billion for appropriations for my subcommittee on Labor, 
     Health and Human Services and Education. As you know, when we 
     talked the week before last you expected to be able to 
     identify those offsets by last Tuesday. When I caught up with 
     you on Friday, you thought the offsets could at least be 
     identified by today.

  We had scheduled a hearing for the three Secretaries for February 21, 
which was deferred in the absence of those offsets, and we finally had 
those hearings trying to get the priorities from those top 
administration officials a week ago today, on March 5. I had actually 
gone to Wilkes-Barre, PA, on February 16 in the hope that I would see 
Mr. Panetta. I could not reach him on the phone. He was traveling with 
the President. I got to Wilkes-Barre, PA, when the President was 
scheduled to inspect flood damage with a number of Pennsylvania 
officials from the Pennsylvania congressional delegation and the 
Governor. I found Mr. Panetta was not there, so I had a chance to talk 
to the President about this issue.
  President Clinton said to me that he had discussed this offset 
question with Mr. Panetta and that offsets had been identified. I asked 
the President what they were, and he did not have the specifics at that 
time. But we are still in search of those offsets.
  The bill which passed the Appropriations Committee provided an 
additional $3.3 billion for these three departments. The amendment 
which has been offered by Senator Daschle reduces that figure and calls 
for additions of $3,098,637,000. In working with Senator Harkin, who is 
the ranking Democrat on this subcommittee, in what was virtually an 
all-night session--Bettilou Taylor nods in the affirmative--we have 
been able to come up with offsets of $2,634,239,000. And in

[[Page S1801]]

my efforts to reach Mr. Panetta again this morning, talking to Miss 
Barbara Chow of his office, talking about offsets perhaps from 
extending current fees of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, there is a 
question as to whether that fits into this year or not.

  When my colleagues from the other side of the aisle have been talking 
about the importance of education, I will not take a back seat on 
education funding to anybody in this Chamber or anybody in this 
Congress or anybody in this country. The education issue was very 
heavily stressed in the Specter family when I was growing up because my 
parents had so little of it. Both immigrants, my mother only went to 
school through to the eighth grade; my father had no formal education; 
but my brother, my two sisters and I have been able to share in the 
American dream because of educational opportunity. And I am determined 
to see that for America today and for America tomorrow.
  There is another public policy consideration. Equality is in the eye 
of the beholder in how we get there. And that is the commitment which 
the Congress has made to a balanced budget, which the President has 
agreed to. That is why we are searching for these offsets. When 
comments are made about grandchildren, I concur totally on educational 
opportunity. But I am also concerned about not paying our bills that we 
run up on a credit card today, as we have for so many, many years with 
a national debt which exceeds $5 trillion and annual deficits which 
exceed $200 billion. So that is what we are struggling to do.
  Comments were made about summer jobs. One of the Senators on the 
other side of the aisle said that he talked with the assistant district 
attorney in Boston who pointed out that crime increased when school 
closed. I do not know why you have to talk to anybody special to find 
that out. I was an assistant district attorney many years ago. The city 
of Philadelphia has a lot of similarities to Boston. And I saw that 
when school was out crime went up, and I did not have to find that out 
that particular summer. It was the summer of 1960 when I saw that.
  I have been as concerned as my colleagues on both sides of the aisle 
about summer jobs, and the add-backs which are in the committee report 
provide for $635 million for summer youth jobs, which is what President 
Clinton had asked for in the add-back request.
  When there is talk about the importance of school-to-work by my 
colleagues on the other side of the aisle, I agree with that, too, and 
we have added back in the bill currently pending from the committee 
$182 million for school-to-work programs, which is the President's 
request.
  When you talk about the vital factor of title I compensatory 
education, again we have met the President's request on the add-backs 
putting in $1,278,887,000 billion.
  So that we are struggling to find enough money in offsets which will 
enable us to proceed, to maintain the objective of a balanced budget by 
having offsets. It is something which Leon Panetta is committed to do, 
searching for offsets. I repeat the quotation of the President when I 
talked to him in Wilkes-Barre on February 16 that there were offsets 
and we are still trying to identify them. And this business about an 
emergency, if that is sufficient to avoid a 61-vote determination, that 
all anybody has to do in any amendment which is offered by any Senator 
is to say it is an emergency situation.
  The logic is that if it is determined to be an emergency by the 
President and by the Congress, then that is an emergency and it is an 
exception to the Budget Act. But the question remains as to what kind 
of a vote it is which determines whether there is such an emergency.
  There are extensive parliamentary considerations as to the ruling of 
the Chair and overturning the ruling of the Chair by a majority vote, 
and I would like to see us not engage in that kind of parliamentary 
maneuvering. I would also not like to see us engage in jeopardizing 
portions of this bill which provide for emergency relief for the 
terrible floods which ravaged my State of Pennsylvania and many, many 
other States.
  That is why I am hopeful that we can come to terms and find the 
necessary offsets so that we maintain the commitments which I think, 
realistically stated, remain on both sides of the aisle to balance the 
budget and not to undercut that, but where we do add to education and 
summer jobs and school-to-work programs, programs that I totally 
subscribe to, that we do so in a way which comports with our 
responsibility on a balanced budget and meets that with offsets.
  At this point, I am going to continue my work on the offsets. That 
concludes the essence of what I have to say. I know of no other Senator 
seeking recognition, Mr. President, so I suggest the absence of a 
quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. KOHL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. KOHL. Mr. President, I come here as an original cosponsor of the 
Daschle-Harkin education amendment. With this amendment, we have the 
opportunity to answer a daunting question for school administrators, 
teachers and parents across the country: How much does this Congress 
value education?
  With this amendment, we can make the right choice. By passing it, we 
can prove to our children and their teachers that Congress will back up 
its words extolling the virtues of a good education with actions that 
will provide a good education.
  This amendment does not represent empty promises. It brings education 
funding back to last year's level and is paid for with real spending 
cuts, not with the fund contingent on some uncertain future event.
  Last week, the Appropriations Subcommittee for the Departments of 
Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education heard from the 
Secretaries of these agencies. As a member of that subcommittee, I was 
stunned by the extent that education and job training programs have 
been hampered by the sharp cuts in the current continuing resolution 
and by disruptive Government shutdowns.
  Despite these warnings, the Appropriations Committee reported a new 
continuing resolution containing over $3 billion in cuts to education 
and job training resources. My own State of Wisconsin will be hit with 
a $20 million cut in education, including almost $1.5 million less for 
Goals 2000, $2 million in vocational education cuts, $4.5 million in 
cuts to the Safe and Drug-Free Schools Program, and a debilitating $12 
million cut in title I, which is the money that goes to our most 
disadvantaged young students.
  Supporters of this continuing resolution will argue that there is 
over $3 billion in education money provided, contingent upon Congress 
passing entitlement reform. Mr. President, school administrators cannot 
bank on some unknown budget breakthrough that may happen in 2 or 3 
weeks or perhaps not even at all. I hope we do get a breakthrough on a 
budget deal, but these school officials need to make budget decisions 
for the coming school year right now.
  Let us present our school officials, our parents and their children 
with real solutions and not illusions. Our amendment takes the 
education priorities identified under the contingency account and pays 
for them right now. Real offsets are provided for real restorations in 
the title I program, school to work, drug-free schools, Goals 2000, 
higher education and Head Start.
  Mr. President, no one believes that balancing the budget is easy, but 
people do question the priorities of the 104th Congress. People do 
question why the Pentagon was given $7 billion in spending it did not 
even ask for or need when, in fact, education is slated for huge cuts. 
People do question why we would shortchange education when 
noncontroversial offsets exist to pay for continuing funding at last 
year's level.
  I am a strong advocate of balancing the budget. To get to that goal, 
I know we have to consider cuts in programs that we all support, and I 
am willing to do so in every area, except in core education programs.
  Reducing our spending on education is perhaps the most unbalanced and 
unfair act that this Congress can take. We have already saddled our 
children

[[Page S1802]]

with Government debt topping $5 trillion. It is unconscionable at the 
same time to take away the tools that will allow them to earn money to 
pay off that debt.
  When I ran my own business, Mr. President, the people I hired were 
the best people with the best education. What was true for our chain of 
stores at that time is true in the national and international 
marketplaces as well. Study after study has shown that the wages and 
quality of life of workers are directly related to their educational 
achievement. In the international economic arena, the country with the 
best educated work force will inevitably get the high-paying, high-
technology jobs in the future.
  To leave the next generation with huge debts is disgraceful. To leave 
them with an education deficit as well, I believe, is criminal. 
Skimping on education funding runs counter to almost every stated goal 
of this Congress. How can we reach a sustained balanced budget without 
giving the next generation the tools that they need to grow the 
economy? How can we reform welfare into a work program without giving 
our young people the skills they need to get and hold good jobs? How 
can we address the income disparity in our country if we deny students 
the quality education that will allow them to improve their standard of 
living?
  I believe that our choice today is stark. We want to give our 
children the education they need to keep this country's economy healthy 
and to keep their standard of living decent. I hope that the Senate 
will make the right choice--to choose the future and pass the Harkin 
education amendment. Thank you, Mr. President.
  Mr. SPECTER addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Pennsylvania.
  Mr. SPECTER. Mr. President, while the distinguished Senator from 
Wisconsin is on the floor, I would appreciate it if he would be willing 
to have an exchange of views and respond to a question or two on some 
of the statements which he just made.
  Mr. KOHL. Go right ahead.
  Mr. SPECTER. At the outset, I express my admiration for the work that 
the Senator has done. We have worked very closely together on a number 
of committees, including the Terrorism Subcommittee. I note his 
comments and concern, which I have heard before, about the balanced 
budget.
  When the Senator says that there are offsets, it is my analysis, 
backed by staff, that the amendment offered by Senator Daschle does not 
have offsets for the full amount of $3,098,637,000. In the efforts 
which Senator Harkin and I have made to try to find offsets, we have 
come to a figure of $2,634,239,000.
  There is, in Senator Daschle's amendment, a provision for a 
declaration of emergency which seeks to take this amendment out of the 
provisions of the Budget Act requiring 60 votes. A concern that I have 
is that we will structure a bill here which will not be acceptable to 
both the Congress and the President.
  We will have another closure of the Government if we send to the 
House of Representatives a bill which is based on the emergency 
determination without offsets. I think it is not highly probable--it is 
virtually certain it will be rejected and we are not going to have this 
issue resolved. I very much lament the fact that we are here on March 
12, looking at a March 15 deadline.
  I have spoken earlier, before the Senator came to the floor, about 
the efforts I had made with Mr. Panetta in trying to get this matter 
resolved earlier, and calls going back over several months, and 
referencing a letter I had written him about that. So that, if faced 
between the choice on finding hard budget offsets which come to, say, 
roughly $2.63 billion, what would the Senator's response to that be, 
contrasted with the pending amendment?
  Mr. KOHL. Yes. It is my understanding that the offsets for the 
education amendment are not controversial and they were agreed upon 
during previous budget negotiations and have been scored by the CBO. 
What I have is $1,359,000,000 from the privatization of the uranium 
enrichment offset, $1,320,000,000 from extending the NRC commission 
fees, and $292 million from the sale of the strategic petroleum 
reserve.
  So those are the offsets that have been agreed upon and have been 
scored. So I am satisfied and comfortable that we are not only adding 
back, as you point out, over $3 billion in education funding, but we 
are also providing an equivalent amount of cuts.
  Mr. SPECTER. The facts that I have differ to some extent of 
significance. What we have come to in offsets of $2,634,000,000 is $1.3 
billion, where I agree, as to the sale of the Uranium Enrichment 
Corporation. Then there is $292 million from the sale of oil from the 
strategic petroleum account and $526 million from the FAA rescission, 
$159 million of unobligated balances from Pell grants, and $166 million 
from unused budget authority in the committee allocation, $200 million 
in year-round youth training, which is back to the fiscal year 1995 
level, and $25 million from the unemployed trust fund.
  I think it is useful to talk about these in specifics so that our 
colleagues who may be watching will have some of the specifics. But 
with respect to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, I had thought when I 
called Mr. Panetta this morning and finally talked to Ms. Barbara 
Chow--and she brought up the subject--that would be more than enough, 
$1.3 billion. But there are no savings from that account until 1999. I 
think that is why Senator Daschle has inserted in this amendment the 
emergency provision, which he hopes will take his amendment out of the 
limitations of the Budget Act.
  So, I guess my question would be, or the point of discussion really, 
not so much a question, but debate as a dialog on where we are heading 
here, that if those offsets do not exceed $2.634 billion, you do not 
really get the $3.09 billion that Senator Daschle wants. And we look to 
send a bill to the House of Representatives which will be tough enough 
to get if there are hard offsets.
  What would Senator Kohl's response be?
  Mr. KOHL. Well, I think that we are debating whether or not the 
offsets that I have offered are legitimate. I think for the most part 
they are. They are legitimate, I think, to the extent that we are 
missing, perhaps, just a relatively small portion to get to $3.1 
billion. I think we need to work a little harder to get there, because 
it is a question of priorities.
  If we do not feel the priority, then we will not find it. You never 
do. You have to feel the priority, or those of us who feel strongly 
about it feel strongly enough so that we feel we have to fund those 
offsets so that we can in fact make this priority one of educational 
needs a reality and not find a way to not accomplish it.
  Mr. SPECTER. Mr. President, I agree totally----
  Mr. KOHL. I did offer, as I say, something like $3 billion, very 
close to $3 billion, in cuts that have been debated and agreed upon. 
This Uranium Enrichment Corporation cut from extending the Nuclear 
Regulatory Commission fees, and the $292 billion from the sale of the 
strategic petroleum reserve, this totals up to $3 billion, very close 
to the $3.1 billion we are talking about in terms of education.
  Mr. SPECTER. The problem is the $1.3 billion from the Nuclear 
Regulatory Commission is not realizable until the year 1999. But I 
agree with what Senator Kohl said about working hard to try to find 
them. But if we do not find them, I do not believe it is realistic to 
send to the House legislation which is based upon anything but hard 
cuts which come within the timeframe that we are talking about here.
  I thank my colleague for engaging in this discussion.
  Mr. KOHL. I thank my colleague.
  Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, if I could just pick up where the colloquy 
between the Senator from Wisconsin and Pennsylvania left off, I would 
like to emphasize what I think is the most important point, which is 
that over the 7-year period there is a sufficient offset. The Senator 
from Pennsylvania is correct that you do not get it every single year 
and you do not have it necessarily in the up front, but we are talking 
about a 7-year budget, and over that 7-year budget there is a 
sufficient offset.
  Now, if there is not, assume for the purposes of argument there is 
not, my question to the Republicans is: Are we going to offer that as a 
show stopper, or are they prepared to put the money where their 
rhetoric is and, in fact, fund education to the level that it ought to 
be in this country?
  Now, if there are not sufficient offsets, are we being told by the 
Republicans that out of a $1.5 trillion budget,

[[Page S1803]]

$1.3 trillion or so of which is actually revenue funded, we cannot find 
a sufficient amount of money to guarantee that the disadvantaged school 
communities in this country will get funded? That Head Start will be 
funded? That school to work is going to be funded? That summer jobs are 
going to be funded?
  Look, this is a statement about priorities. There has been no trouble 
funding the B-2 bomber in the year 1996; there has been no trouble 
funding the freedom-to-farm bill, which finds an extraordinary amount 
of money being given away to the mining interests in this country, 
extraordinary amount of money being given away to the timber industry, 
extraordinary amount of money being given away to people to not grow 
crops. So we are going to pay people in America not to grow a crop, but 
we are not going to pay people in America to grow a child? Unbelievable 
choice of priorities. Unbelievable choice of priorities. Pay people not 
to grow something out of the ground, but do not pay for this kid that 
is already alive that needs Head Start, hot lunches, or decent 
education? That is the choice on the floor of the U.S. Senate.
  The Senator from Tennessee, Senator Thompson, the Senator from 
Arizona, Senator McCain, Senator Feingold, and I were able to identify 
60 billion dollars' worth of cuts that we thought were pretty 
reasonable that we could come to. Now everybody here will agree they 
are reasonable, but it certainly is fairly indicative of something, 
that the Senator from Arizona, a Republican, the Senator from 
Tennessee, a Republican, two divergent areas of the country for 
Democrats, the State of Wisconsin and Massachusetts, could all agree on 
60 billion dollars' worth of cuts.
  What kind of things did we find? We found the closing of the 
Uniformed Services of the University of Health Sciences, increasing the 
burdening sharing of the Republic of Korea, terminating the advanced 
neutron project, consolidating and downsizing overseas broadcasting by 
capping our funding to Radio Free Europe to perhaps only $75 million 
per year, putting other fiscal restraints on it, eliminating certain 
travel authorizations, reducing some of our export enhancement program 
for corporations that make millions of dollars.
  We have people in the U.S. Senate who a few weeks ago voted to 
continue to fund extraordinary amounts of money to multimillion-dollar 
corporations making a profit, to help them sell their products 
overseas. How do you balance the equities of funding a profitmaking 
American corporation to sell its product overseas but not fund a 
nonprofitmaking entity that is trying to raise our kids for the future 
here in this country? I think the choice is very, very clear.
  I said yesterday in my comments on the floor and I repeat again, 
obviously money is not the whole solution. We all understand that. 
Clearly, we need reform in our school systems. We need testing. We need 
to know when a student gets a diploma they can actually find the 
Capital of the United States on a map or recite the basics of American 
history, or do basic math. Regrettably, we have people in America who 
are content to pass kids on from one grade to the other without even an 
assurance that they can do that. That is disgraceful. That ought to 
change. A large part of that is a matter of personal accountability 
within the school system. But there is not any one of us who has not 
traveled to school systems in our States where they do not have 
computers, where they are not wired to the network, where they do not 
have state-of-the-art laboratories for science, where they do not have 
language laboratories, where they do not have modern reference books 
for their libraries, where their libraries do not even stay open, where 
the whole school shuts at 2:30 in the afternoon.
  Mr. President, it seems to me that if we are going to talk about 
values in the United States of America we ought to start living them 
here on the floor of the U.S. Senate in our votes. This is a value-
oriented vote.
  What is extraordinary to me in this measure is that children in the 
United States are being held hostage to the whole budget process. This 
is a game that is being played; one more political game. What is the 
game? The game is that all of this money that is being talked about as 
an add-back is not an add-back at all. It is a contingency. It is going 
to be there if something else happens. It is not going to be there 
because we think our kids need it. It is not going to be there because 
it absolutely ought to be there, and schools ought to be able to plan 
on what they will spend next year. It will be part of the great 
political game in Washington because the section in the bill that does 
the add-backs, section 4002, says none of this money can be spent, even 
if we pass this today, unless there is a future agreement that is 
passed between the President and the Congress regarding all of the 
fiscal years of the budget agreement.

  In other words, we could pass this today and some people can go home 
and say, ``Aren't I terrific, because we just added back money to 
education,'' but it will not be added back at all unless Medicare is 
cut, Medicaid is cut, taxes are cut to the level that the House of 
Representatives is currently holding everybody hostage to. That is not 
serious legislating, Mr. President.
  What we have done is offer an amendment that is real, that offers 
real money, that brings us back not to the level that many of us in the 
U.S. Senate think we ought to be back to with respect to spending on 
education, but at least gets us back to hold us harmless from last 
year.
  It is a tragedy that in the United States of America, recognizing 
what is happening to our workers, recognizing what is happening to the 
whole workplace where people's ability to be able to get ahead is tied 
to their ability to get an education, where countless numbers of our 
workers now are the victims of the downsizing and of this new 
information age that we live in, where people are working harder and 
harder and harder just to pay the bills and to make ends meet, here we 
are debating add-backs that do not even get us to last year's level of 
commitment to education. It is astonishing, absolutely astonishing.
  There is not an educator in America who will not document the need to 
have sufficient basic skills to be able to move into the information 
world. All of us are on the floor constantly talking about the virtues 
of technology. You look at the entire history of this country from 
World War II, 75-plus percent of the productivity increases in America 
since World War II have come from advances in technology. Every one of 
us understands that in order to continue to compete to advance our 
productivity we will continue to diminish the labor of human hands in 
the workplace.
  Now, if we are going to increase that labor with respect to services 
or with respect to the new technologies, people have to have the skill 
level. Mr. President, they are not getting it in our school system in 
America today sufficiently. They could. Let me share quickly an 
experience from a school in Boston. This came to me from the principal 
of the school, Thomas Gardner School. He wrote and said,

       The staff and the parents of the Thomas Gardner School were 
     devastated to learn recently that the title I funding for 
     1996/1997 school year will be taken away as a result of 
     Federal funding cuts. After working so diligently in 
     implementing an Inclusion Program at the school and 
     receiving the Boston School Improvement Award in the Fall 
     of 1995 for being the second most improved school in the 
     city, it is a rude and sad awakening to all of us that 
     with the loss of our Title I Grant, our efforts to 
     establish a superior educational environment may have been 
     in vain.
       Without the $213,000 that we received this year from Title 
     I, two full-time and one part-time teachers will not be with 
     us next year. The loss of these teachers will result in our 
     having to relinquish the Inclusion Program which has been so 
     successful and return to the traditional classroom setting. 
     This will seriously disturb our school climate, ultimately 
     reducing our students' self-esteem which we at the Gardner 
     School have worked so hard to increase. This will also 
     gravely affect the students in our Bilingual Program because 
     we are losing both a literacy and an English as a Second 
     Language teacher. Not only will the students suffer with the 
     loss of the program but this will also cause low morale 
     amongst the staff. Since my announcement of this tremendous 
     loss of money, I can already see that there is an air of 
     dismay and anxiety in the building because a number of staff 
     members are wondering if they are going to be displaced. This 
     affects teaching and learning because it breaks the spirit of 
     the school community--the teachers, the parents and the 
     students.
       Our new computer system, which was funded by Title I money, 
     helped us accomplish a

[[Page S1804]]

     very difficult task during the 1994/1995 school year. During 
     that year there was a significant rise in the Metropolitan 
     Achievement Reading/Math Percentile test scores. With this 
     success, we planned to move forward with Title I money so 
     that every classroom at the Gardner School would have 
     Computer Assisted Instruction next year.
       The teachers and parents of the Gardner School and the 
     other 22 Boston schools which stand to lose a total of 3.5 
     million dollars in Title I funding next year, strongly 
     protest the insensitive and unjustifiable cuts in Title I 
     funding proposed by Congress.

  Mr. President, that is one example. I know that can be replicated in 
schools all across this country. But what really leaps out at me here, 
above all, is this contradiction: ``During that year, there was a 
significant rise in the Metropolitan Achievement Reading/Math 
Percentile test scores.''
  That is what we are trying to achieve, what we are talking about, 
what we are struggling about. They had planned to put it in every 
classroom. That is what we are talking about. Every classroom in 
America ought to have this. We ought to want to do that before we build 
the next bomber, before we put out the next set of missile systems, or 
whatever it is. We ought to want every classroom in this country--and 
we ought to make a commitment--to have that computer capacity. We know 
it is more than just computers. It is guidance counselors, books, the 
whole atmosphere of the school, its safety, its drug-free schools. Why 
are we cutting drug-free safe schools by 57 percent? That was the 
original effort. Now the Senator will come back and say we are going to 
add back that money. As I pointed out, it is not a real add-back, 
unless we get all the other cuts that will come with the rest of the 
budget agreement. So we are holding children and the education goals of 
this country hostage to the politics of Washington. They do not come 
first; the politics are coming first.
  Let me share another quick letter. This is from the mayor of the city 
of Boston:

       I am writing to alert you to an urgent situation facing 
     economically disadvantaged youth next summer--the elimination 
     of the Federally-funded summer jobs program for 1996.
       As you may know, funding for the Summer Youth Employment 
     and Training Program was eliminated in both the Senate and 
     House appropriations bills for 1996--

  Why would we eliminate them? What is it that sets a priority in the 
first place to eliminate this? Why is our time being consumed to come 
back here and have to struggle to put back into a bill money for summer 
jobs for youth? What U.S. Senator believes that kids are better off 
wandering around the streets of our country in the dead of night in the 
summer because they have not had a constructive day? Who believes that? 
Why was it taken out in the first place? Why are we struggling to do 
that here at the last moment?
  Well, maybe it ties everybody up and it ties up the energy of the 
Senate. But it is surely not a great statement about the priorities of 
this country. The mayor writes:

       In Boston, as across the nation, the JTPA IIB 
     program provides constructive activities for young people 
     and keeps them from idling in the streets during the hot 
     summer months. Through the program, thousands of young 
     people gain work experience, build academic and employment 
     skills, and earn money through service at neighborhood-
     based community organizations and downtown government 
     agencies.
       The program also includes specialized units emphasizing 
     life skills, academics and the arts, and tailored efforts for 
     young people with special needs, including employment for 
     deaf/hard of hearing youth; English as a Second Language 
     instruction for refugee/immigrant youth; and counseling for 
     court-involved youth.

  Mr. President, we have a provision in our Tax Code that encourages 
companies to take a deferral and reduce their taxes for moving their 
jobs overseas. Here we are fighting to put back money at the expense of 
that program so kids right here at home can have a job during the 
summer. That is a pretty fundamental choice.
  Let me share one last example of what is at stake here. This 
information comes to me from New Bedford, MA, one of the highest 
unemployment sectors of Massachusetts, perennially, which has been 
hard-hit now by the loss of industrial jobs and jobs in the fishing 
industry.
  There is a program there that started, a Head Start program in New 
Bedford. It has been about a year going on. It actually has a two-part 
program called People Acting in Community Endeavors. In 1994, because 
of the capacity to do this inexpensively and keep the administrative 
costs down and run a whole program, they bought a building, in order to 
create a second outreach program of Head Start for kids who need it. 
And 294 children are participating in the New Bedford Head Start 
program as of a year and a half ago. That program provides nutrition 
and educational services to a multi-cultural community. Now we learn, 
according to the budget cuts that have been proposed here, that there 
will be a 50-percent reduction in that funding, which adds to their now 
$6.5 million debt and to other cuts in the CDBG title I. So you are not 
only going to wind up laying off teachers, you are going to wind up 
cutting the program.
  Mr. President, it just does not make sense. I know there are 
colleagues of mine on the other side of the aisle, like the Senator 
from Vermont, Senator Jeffords, and others, like the Senator from New 
Hampshire in the chair, who care enormously about education, who are 
committed to this. I do not think that the U.S. Senate should have that 
hard a time finding a way, out of this $1.5 trillion budget, to 
guarantee that we provide what is needed, not what we sort of want to 
find to provide, but what the country desperately needs in order to be 
able to provide structure for these kids. We cannot just come to the 
floor of the U.S. Senate and be bombastic about illegitimacy, births 
out of wedlock, and run around saying how the values of the country are 
imploding and then forget that the three great teachers of values are 
the schools, parents, and religion.
  There are too many kids today who grow up without contact with any 
one of those. It is no wonder that we have sociopaths raised in this 
country who are prepared to shoot another human being just to wear 
their Levi jacket or their Reebok sneakers. If we are going to be real 
in our talk about how you inculcate values into young human beings, let 
us recognize the lessons of what taught all of us.
  Let us affirm some structure in those children's lives. Let us 
somehow find a way in the Senate to guarantee that the 36 percent of 
all the kids in America who are born out of wedlock are going to 
somehow find some teacher in their life, a mentor, one-on-one, some 
outreach, some affirmation that will give them an opportunity to 
believe that they too can make it in this country because, if we do not 
do that, it is an absolute certainty that we will continue to fill our 
jails, our substance abuse programs, our shelters, and we will continue 
to bemoan the loss of the country that all of us care about and want to 
have.
  That is what is at stake in this debate. That is what this amendment 
is about. And I hope we can find it in ourselves to strip away the 
politics, to strip away the sort of the scorecard, if you will, of who 
wins and loses. We all win. We all win. Most importantly, the children 
of America will win, if we can find a way to sufficiently guarantee the 
resources for our education system are adequate. I hope we are going to 
do that today.
  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the two letters I used be 
printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                                            Boston Public Schools,


                                        Thomas Gardner School,

                                      Allston, MA, March 12, 1996.
       The staff and the parents of the Thomas Gardner School were 
     devastated to learn recently that the Title 1 funding for the 
     1996/1997 school year will be taken away as a result of 
     federal funding cuts. After working so diligently in 
     implementing an Inclusion Program at the school and receiving 
     the Boston School Improvement Award in the Fall of 1995 for 
     being the second most improved school in the city, it is a 
     rude and sad awakening to all of us that with the loss of our 
     Title I Grant, our efforts to establish a superior 
     educational environment may have been in vain.
       Without the $213,000 that we received this year from Title 
     I, two full-time and one part-time teachers will not be with 
     us next year. The loss of these teachers will result in our 
     having to relinquish the Inclusion Program which has been so 
     successful and return to the traditional classroom setting. 
     This will seriously disturb our school climate, ultimately 
     reducing our students self-esteem which we at the Gardner 
     School have worked so hard to increase. This will also 
     gravely affect the students in our Bilingual Program

[[Page S1805]]

     because we are losing both a literacy and an English as a 
     Second Language teacher. Not only will the students suffer 
     with the loss of the program but this will also cause low 
     morale amongst the staff. Since my announcement of this 
     tremendous loss of money, I can already see that there is an 
     air of dismay and anxiety in the building because a number of 
     staff members are wondering if they are going to be 
     displaced. This affects teaching and learning because it 
     breaks the spirit of the school community--the teachers, the 
     parents and the students.
       Our new computer system, which was funded by Title I money, 
     helped us accomplish a very difficult task during the 1994/
     1995 school year. During that year there was a significant 
     rise in the Metropolitan Achievement Reading/Math Percentile 
     test scores. With this success, we planned to move forward 
     with Title I money so that every classroom at the Gardner 
     School would have Computer Assisted Instruction next year.
       The teachers and parents of the Gardner School and the 
     other 22 Boston schools which stand to lose a total of 3.5 
     million dollars in Title 1 funding next year, strongly 
     protest the insensitive and unjustifiable cuts in Title I 
     funding proposed by Congress. We urge everyone who agrees 
     that funding for education is the most valuable investment we 
     can make today to join our protest.
                                       Catalina B. Montes, Ed. D.,
     Principal.
                                                                    ____



                                             Boston City Hall,

                                    Boston, MA, December 14, 1995.
     Hon. John F. Kerry,
     Russell Senate Office Building, Washington, DC.
       Dear Senator Kerry:  I am writing to alert you to an urgent 
     situation facing economically disadvantaged youth next 
     summer--the elimination of the federally-funded summer jobs 
     program for 1996.
       As you may know, funding for the Summer Youth Employment & 
     Training Program (JTPA-IIB) was eliminated in both the Senate 
     and House Appropriations Bills for 1996, while the new 
     workforce development legislation will go into effect at the 
     earliest on June 1st, 1997. This situation leaves the summer 
     program unfunded in 1996.
       Your strong support has helped counter efforts to reduce 
     and eliminate the summer youth program in the past, and again 
     your help is needed to preserve this important opportunity 
     for young people.
       In Boston, as across the nation, the JTPA IIB program 
     provides constructive activities for young people and keeps 
     them from idling in the streets during the hot summer months. 
     Through the program, thousands of young people gain work 
     experience, build academic and employment skills, and earn 
     money through service at neighborhood-based community 
     organizations and downtown government agencies.
       The program also includes specialized units emphasizing 
     life skills, academics and the arts, and tailored efforts for 
     young people with special needs, including employment for 
     deaf/hard of hearing youth; English as A Second Language 
     instruction for refugee-immigrant youth; and counseling for 
     court-involved youth.
       Operated by Action for Boston Community Development, Inc. 
     over the past three decades, the program has provided 
     thousands of low-income youth with their first work 
     experiences and has strengthened hundreds of community-based 
     organizations throughout our neighborhoods. Over the past few 
     years, the integration of education into the program has 
     reinforced the connection between school and work that has 
     been missing from the academic experience of so many of our 
     young people.
       As the budget reconciliation process goes forward, please 
     support the restoration of the summer jobs program for 1996. 
     Thank you for your efforts on behalf of the young people in 
     our communities who need and deserve a chance to work and 
     learn during the summer.
           Sincerely,
                                                 Thomas M. Menino,
                                                  Mayor of Boston.

  Mr. DODD. Mr. President, I rise today in strong support of this 
amendment to increase real education funding for our Nation's children.
  Over the past year, this Congress has eliminated billions of dollars 
for educating America's young people. And this CR would continue that 
process by slashing $3 billion from vital education programs. This 
moves us toward the single largest cut in education spending in our 
Nation's history.
  And, there are real children behind these cuts: $137 million would be 
slashed from Head Start, affecting more than 20,000 3- and 4-year-olds; 
$679 million would be cut from math and reading programs, affecting 
700,000 children; $266 million cut from the Safe and Drug-Free School 
Program; affecting 23 million kids.
  And all funding for summer youth jobs would be cut, leaving half a 
million American teenagers with nothing to do this summer.
  In my State of Connecticut, $9 million in Federal education funding 
will be lost. And most of those cuts come in the title I program, which 
provides remedial education for thousands of Connecticut's poorest and 
most disadvantaged children.
  These cuts make it near impossible for schools and colleges across 
this country to plan ahead.
  School districts do not know how many new teachers or new aides to 
hire. Educators are faced with appalling choices--which programs and 
what children will receive meager Federal benefits.
  And all this comes at a time when public schools are making real 
progress in solving the myriad problems that face them; at a time when 
a good education is more essential than ever to guarantee our children 
the ability to compete in the global economy.
  But instead of increasing funding, or at the least, maintaining 
current levels, this Congress is intent on pulling the rug out from 
underneath America's children.
  This CR would wreak severe havoc on America's schools, on America's 
education programs, and most of all on America's children.
  This is no way to run the Government and this is no way to balance 
the budget.


                 CUTS ARE NOT BACKED UP WITH REAL MONEY

  To add insult to injury, while the majority party claims they are 
adding back funds for education, there is little real money in these 
appropriations.
  These add backs are conditional on the Congress and the President 
agreeing on future cuts in Medicare and Medicaid and other essential 
programs; the same cuts that we haven't been able to agree upon over 
the past year.
  So the only way we could increase money for education is by taking 
desperately needed funds away from America's most vulnerable citizens, 
the elderly and children. It is like robbing Peter to pay Paul and it 
is unacceptable.
  This is the ultimate example of smoke and mirrors. The Republicans go 
to the voters and say ``We're serious about education,'' when in fact 
they provide hardly any real money to fund Federal education programs.
  The Democratic amendment proposes real offsets and real spending cuts 
that would allow Congress to maintain its commitment to education.
  This is the real way to balance a budget, by matching spending 
increases with real spending cuts.


                    THE GOP BALANCED BUDGET STRATEGY

  To be honest, I have given up trying to understand the rationale of 
the majority party's budget cutting strategy.
  First, they shut the Government down, costing the taxpayers over a 
billion dollars.
  Then they continue this dangerous and chaotic policy of haphazardly 
passing CR after CR, all of which cut desperately needed funds for 
education, technology and crime programs, the environment, and the list 
goes on and on.
  Now, realizing the folly of their ways, realizing that the American 
people don't want these draconian spending cuts, realizing that they 
cannot blackmail President Clinton into accepting their demands, the 
majority party proposes to restore a fraction of education funding--
that is conditional on cutting money for essential programs that serve 
America's youngest and oldest citizens.
  This is a foolhardy and dangerous approach, particularly in the face 
of earlier budget agreements, passed in a bipartisan manner, to protect 
education as a national priority.
  All Americans can agree on the enormous importance of education for 
the future of our children, our families, and our country.
  In fact, a recent Gallup Poll showed 75 percent of Americans support 
expanding Federal aid for education.
  We must draw a line against these cuts in education and give our 
children the educational opportunity they need to succeed.
  Mr. KERREY. Mr. President, I rise as a cosponsor of the Daschle-
Harkin amendment. This amendment adds back $3.1 billion for vital 
education programs such as title I, Head Start, School-to-Work, and 
Education Technology.
  I have often said that children will do as we do and not as we say. 
If we want our children to value learning and discovery, we just value 
them as well and demonstrate by our actions here in the Senate that we 
are willing to invest in their education and their futures by providing 
the money necessary to ensure a quality learning experience for all our 
children.

[[Page S1806]]

  Recent polls show that education is a national priority among all 
Americans. These polls reflect what I have been hearing from 
Nebraskans--that Americans want their tax dollars to go to a strong 
education system--a system that will work for all its citizens. They 
are willing to spend more if they get more for their money. We must be 
willing to invest in education and spearhead a national commitment to 
achieve results in every school, rich and poor.
  As I examine the programs that will receive additional funding under 
this amendment, I am struck by the fact that these dollars will be 
providing opportunities for our young people to do exactly what we all 
as parents admonish them to do--prepare themselves to live meaningful 
and productive lives. Under this amendment, we add back money to Head 
Start to enable our youngest citizens to enter school prepared to 
learn; to title I to allow our economically disadvantaged youth the 
opportunities afforded more affluent students; to vocational, school-
to-work and summer jobs for youth programs to train, and educate our 
young people for the future workplace; and to technology programs such 
as STAR schools to provide exciting resources for all our students 
regardless of geographical limitations.
  All of these programs are vital to my State of Nebraska, as they are 
in States throughout our country. I hear daily from Nebraskans who are 
concerned about the cuts to education being considered by Congress. 
They understand the serious budget considerations with which we are 
faced. However, they urge us to set our priorities in much the same way 
they prioritize their own budgets, and to secure our future by 
investing in our youth.
  To those who argue that money will not solve our schools' problems, I 
will counter that we should put real money on the line here, not just 
spare change. It is past time for us to stop wishing our schools get 
better and start doing something about it. We are losing too many of 
our young people of all economic backgrounds to drugs, despair, and 
underachievement. We must be willing to invest in education just as we 
have been willing to invest in our national defense when our Nation's 
security has been at stake, because in a very real sense, our national 
security is at stake here.
  Mr. President, as is so often the case when we are fighting for 
increased funding for discretionary programs such as these, it is 
becoming more and more difficult to secure the dollars necessary to 
make a difference. I am convinced that unless we are willing to commit 
to reforming our entitlement system, we will be unable to adequately 
fund vital education programs such as these.
  I urge my colleagues to support the Daschle-Harkin amendment. By 
doing so, we will demonstrate our commitment to our children and their 
future.
  Mr. JEFFORDS addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Vermont is recognized.
  Mr. JEFFORDS. Mr. President, I have listened very carefully to the 
very eloquent statements of my colleagues on the other side of the 
aisle with respect to education. There is nothing that I disagree with.
  I ask my colleagues on the other side of the aisle to remember that 
the first vote this afternoon will move us from the macro 
responsibilities we have with respect to education to the micro 
responsibility we have for the District of Columbia. I hope when the 
fourth cloture vote comes up, on the D.C. appropriations bill, that my 
colleagues on the other side of the aisle will remember their 
responsibilities to the education of the children of Washington, DC, 
and will express that same compassion and vote for cloture so that we 
can move that conference report, which will do so much for the children 
of Washington, DC, on to the President.
  I want to remind everyone that we are coming to a crisis point. First 
of all with respect to the budget of the District of Columbia as they 
are fast approaching the point of bankruptcy, and will reach it very 
quickly, if we do not pass that bill. That bill is locked up because we 
are arguing about a small provision included in the conference 
agreement that deals with education on a very controversial issue. But 
one which has been worked out between the House and Senate conferees 
which allows the District of Columbia, if they so desire, to have a 
very small voucher program for the purposes of allowing kids to have an 
option of the school that they will attend. It is done in a way that is 
only a local decision. It is not anything which has been characterized 
on the other side as shoving it down the throats of the people of DC.
  So I urge you to keep in mind that we have this responsibility and 
that we are now over halfway through the school year. If we do not do 
something quickly, we will lose the whole school year. In fact, we will 
be into the next school year as far as planning goes and the inability 
to really enact anything which will help those kids.
  So I urge you to use compassion and express it today in the vote for 
the District of Columbia in order for those young people to get the 
tremendous advantages that will occur by virtue of the reform which is 
contained in that package. Do not deny the city the opportunity to 
start its education reform over one issue which has become a national 
symbol, for what reason I do not know because it has nothing to do with 
what would be a federally-imposed voucher system on a community, or a 
State, or the country.
  I urge you, please, when that vote comes up, vote for cloture today. 
Otherwise, we are going to find ourselves embroiled in even a greater 
conflict over the same DC appropriations bill in the large omnibus 
appropriations bill we are considering. The simple way to get out of 
the mess is to vote for cloture, and to get the DC bill out so we do 
not have to have the fight within the comprehensive package which is 
facing us today.
  So, Mr. President, I again urge all of my colleagues to support the 
cloture motion which we will be voting on as soon as we come out of our 
weekly Tuesday luncheons.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor. Mr. President, I suggest the 
absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I want to speak briefly--about 10 minutes--
about where we are on this piece of legislation, and then later in the 
day I will be offering an amendment relative to the amendment offered 
by the Democratic leader.
  We have heard a great deal of discussion from the other side of the 
aisle. We have heard from both Senators from Massachusetts, from the 
Senator from Minnesota, and I believe the Senator from Michigan. There 
must be something about States that start with the letter M. But we 
have heard a great deal from the other side of the aisle about how, if 
we do not proceed on this course, if we do not add in this additional 
$3 billion-plus into--I guess it may be more than that--education, that 
all sorts of disaster and plague will occur with the educational system 
of the United States.
  One must ask the question, how can that sort of representation be 
made in light of the history of the educational experience over the 
last 15 to 20 years? We know, I think, as a country because we have 
seen--and we have had enough experience with it now over the last 15 to 
20 years--that putting more into education is not necessarily the way 
to resolve the underlying problem in education. Yet, there is no 
question that more money in some instances significantly improves 
education. Take, for example, title 94-142, the IDA accounts for 
handicapped disability education. Yes, there is no question, to put 
more money into those accounts would certainly assist us in helping 
those individuals to be educated. It would take the pressure off our 
local school systems. Later in the day maybe I will even offer an 
amendment that will try to address that.
  But the concept generally of putting more dollars into education will 
improve education is, I think, one that has been fundamentally 
disproved. There is study after study. In fact, the University of 
Rochester reviewed something like over 400 different studies and 
concluded after looking at those 400 different studies that there is 
very little correlation between the significant

[[Page S1807]]

increase in dollars spent on education and the improvement in 
education.
  If we look at the academic performance of our students over the last 
10 to 15 years, where we have seen a significant decline in our 
students' ability to score well in internationally evaluated exams, 
especially in the math-science area, while at the same time we have 
seen a significant increase in dollars in education, I think we must 
conclude that there is very little direct correlation between the 
amount of money you spend and the type of education you get. Yes, there 
is a correlation, but it is not a formula that says 1 equals 1--for 
every new dollar you spend in education you get an equal increase in 
quality. In fact, the formula for increasing and improving education is 
much more complex than that, and it involves, I think, primarily 
maintaining individual and parental involvement in education, 
maintaining local control over education, especially at the principal 
level and at the teacher level, with parent input, and allowing the 
school systems to have an activist approach from the community rather 
than have them told how to educate their children by either the State 
government or the Federal Government.
  Buried within this amendment is the funding, of course, for Goals 
2000, which takes us in exactly the opposite direction from local 
control, the basic theory of Goals 2000 being that there should be a 
national agenda, a national curriculum in fact designed to control the 
manner in which local education is delivered and which as a practical 
matter would probably be the most single debilitating event in the 
panoply of debilitating events that have impacted our education system 
were it carried to its true goals and fruition, which is basically to 
have a nationalization of the education curriculum in this country. So 
not only do we not necessarily get better education by spending more 
dollars in some instances, but in this instance by spending more 
dollars we get worse education because what we are going to get is more 
Federal control over education and the loss of local control which is, 
I happen to think, the essence of good education.
  But the real core problem here is not the application of these 
dollars. It is the illogic of putting forward the increase in these 
dollars while at the same time being unwilling to face up to the 
underlying threat to our students which far exceeds anything else that 
they may be threatened by relative to their future which is the deficit 
of this country and the fact that we are passing on to the next 
generation of Americans who are today in school a Nation which is 
fiscally bankrupt.
  We hear from the other side that, well, if we will just put more 
money into that program and more money, and give me another program and 
put more money into that program, and give me another program and put 
more money into that program, we will correct all the ills of our 
society and manage this country in a much more efficient way, which 
begs the fundamental question of, who is going to pay for all this that 
is being spent? Who is going to pay for all these additional dollars 
that are being spent?

  I would be willing to consider the amendment brought forward by the 
Senator from South Dakota, the Democratic leader, if he and his party 
and his President at the same time had the responsibility to come 
forward and say, well, we are going to pay for this by controlling 
those discretionary accounts in the Federal Government which are 
driving us into these tight fiscal times. I would be willing to 
consider it under those terms. But we hear nothing from the other side. 
In fact, we have heard a rejection from the other side of any attempt 
to try to bring under control those functions of the Federal 
Government, specifically the entitlement programs, which are forcing us 
to contract our ability to spend moneys in the area of education that 
we might otherwise wish to spend. In fact, the irresponsibility of the 
other side is so excessive now that you have the President of the 
United States, having once agreed to welfare reform, which is one of 
the core entitlements which we should be getting under control, now 
rejecting a plan which was passed out of this Congress, this House of 
the Congress by 87 votes in favor of it. While the President at the 
same time has claimed that this was going to be the essence of his 
Presidency, or an essence of his Presidency, that he would reform 
welfare as we know it, change it fundamentally, now he has rejected a 
plan which once he accepted and which the Senate accepted by an 87-vote 
majority.
  Then we have the same administration and the leadership on the other 
side of the aisle rejecting a plan brought forward by the Governors of 
the States, all 50 Governors in unison, saying let us use this as a way 
to bring under control this entitlement program, welfare. They are 
rejecting that program. And then when the Governors came forward as a 
unified body, all 50 Governors, Democrats and Republicans, and said let 
us correct the entitlement program, Medicaid, once again we hear from 
the other side of the aisle, no, we cannot do that because we will be 
giving up control here in Washington; we will be giving it back to the 
Governors; we cannot afford to do that so we are not going to correct 
that.
  When you have the trustees of the Medicare trust fund coming forward 
and saying, if you continue to spend money the way you are spending 
money today, the Medicare trust fund is going to go bankrupt in the 
year 2002--now it is going to be bankrupt in the year 2001--trustees 
who were appointed by the President of the United States who serve in 
his Cabinet, you have the President of the United States and the other 
side of the body walking away from that issue as if it does not exist, 
either turning a blind eye to that problem and not being willing to 
address that problem or wishing to use the politics of fear and scare 
tactics against senior citizens in alleging that any proposal to 
address fundamentally the improvement in Medicare is a proposal to 
undermine the quality of Medicare. It is totally inappropriate for the 
administration and the other side of the aisle to say that.

  So where are the proposals from the other side which would bring 
under control that function of the Federal Government which is going up 
at such a rate that it is leading the Nation into bankruptcy and is 
forcing us to have to limit our capacity to put funds into those 
accounts which many of us feel we might like to do such as special 
education in the area of IDA, 94-142, or chapter 1, which is also a 
good program. Where is the other side in coming forward with proposals 
on the entitlement accounts, because until they come forward with 
proposals on the entitlement accounts, they have no credibility on this 
issue.
  When they bring forward an amendment which simply says spend the 
money and uses some fallacious offsets, when they bring forward such an 
amendment and at the same time fail consistently to address the 
underlying problem which is driving the fact that we do not have the 
resources necessary to address accounts which we think are appropriate 
in the discretionary side of the budget because of the rate of growth 
of entitlements, then they have no credibility.
  That is what I find disingenuous in the arguments from the Senators 
from Massachusetts, Minnesota, and Michigan because there appears to be 
no program that they are not willing to spend more money on, but there 
appears to be no proposals to bring under control those programs which 
are bankrupting this Government and our children's future, which is 
what it comes down to as the bottom line, of course. Passing on to our 
children a finer education is something we all wish to do. There are 
ways to improve our educational system, and money does not happen to be 
the only way to do that. But there are things we could do here at the 
Federal Government level that would obviously improve our children's 
educational system. But passing on to our children a better education 
system is going to do very little good for them if at the same time we 
pass on to them a Nation that is bankrupt, where their opportunities 
for prosperity are dramatically limited because their Government was 
irresponsible and unwilling to address the core problems of 
expenditures growing so fast that they were outstripping the country's 
capacity to fund them, such as the entitlement programs of Medicare, 
welfare, and Medicaid.

  So when the other side comes forward with these proposals, I think 
you have to take them with a grain of salt. You have to recognize that 
this is an election year; that they are going to continue to propose 
ideas to spend

[[Page S1808]]

money without being accountable until they feel that they have 
identified all constituencies necessary to build the voting majority. 
But I hope the American people will be a little more sophisticated; 
that they will understand this issue is about how you make the Federal 
Government responsible, how you pass on to our children not only 
excellent education but a chance for a prosperous and fulfilling 
lifestyle, and that that second part of the exercise involves 
addressing the issues of how this Government spends its money in the 
entitlement accounts, something about which, unfortunately, the other 
side of the aisle has decided to bury its head in the sand and the 
President of the United States has decided to join them.
  I thank the Chair for his courtesy. I note the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Will the Senator withhold that suggestion?
  Mr. GREGG. Yes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Does the Senator yield the floor?
  Mr. GREGG. I withdraw my suggestion.

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