[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 34 (Wednesday, March 13, 1996)]
[House]
[Pages H2195-H2202]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                       DEVASTATING EDUCATION CUTS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of May 
12, 1995, the gentlewoman from Connecticut [Ms. DeLauro] is recognized 
for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
  Ms. DeLAURO. Mr. Speaker, tomorrow we are likely to take up another 
temporary spending bill to keep the Government open. Unfortunately, 
that bill will very likely contain the same

[[Page H2196]]

devastating education cuts that were put in place by the current 
continuing resolution.
  These cuts in education are causing a crisis, truly a crisis in 
American education. I know in my school district and school districts 
all over this country, what they are trying to do at the moment is 
struggle and grapple with a plan for the upcoming school year.
  How much money will they have available in order to carry out what 
their mission is, that is, to educate our children in this Nation? They 
have no idea today how much money they are going to have to carry out 
education functions.
  The budget plan will have a tremendous, a tremendous impact on the 
lives of schoolchildren all over the country, and, in fact, they are 
going to have a tremendous impact on what happens for our future and 
the future of these young people.
  My Republican colleagues offer no relief to these school districts. 
What we are likely to do tomorrow is extend the uncertainty for yet 
another week.
  Let me pause a moment here to say that I often hear my colleagues on 
the other side of the aisle for the past year and 3 months talk about 
what they felt their mandate was in 1994. That is, they were going to 
come here, revolutionize the Congress, make it run like a business, a 
laudable goal. But what business do you know of that is open for 2 
weeks, that closes for 2 weeks, that says to its vendors or the people 
who supply it with services, that maybe we will pay you, maybe we will 
not pay you, or maybe we will pay some and not others?
  What business do you know that says we are only going to extend our 
services a week at a time? I do not know any business that does that 
that could stay in business.
  So that this way of managing is truly incompetent, total 
mismanagement. And what is at stake here in the education area is the 
future and the lives of our young people and their ability to be able 
to compete in an international world, their ability to have an 
education, that they ultimately can work and work and get a living 
wage.
  School districts, let me repeat, all over the country, are in the 
dark about the type of Federal assistance that they will be able to 
count on in order to continue what they are doing.
  I went to a school in my district where I met with parents. I went to 
a kindergarten class, several of them, and I watched these little bits 
of kids at their computers with their earphones on and reading, 
identifying the alphabet, and looking at the letter C and saying yes, 
this is a cake, looking at the letter D and say this is a duck, this is 
a deer, and doing this with the computer, listening to stories with 
comprehension and then writing down what they hear there.
  These are the kinds of initiatives that are in jeopardy because of 
the irresponsibility of this congressional majority.
  The funding of these kinds of efforts is unknown, and therefore we do 
not know whether these programs will be able to continue, in addition 
to which one of the things we talk about in private education and 
private schools is that classroom sizes are very small so you have 
individual attention. Well, in our public school system, the classes 
are larger, and therefore we deal with aides who work with the teacher, 
who can get around to all the kids in the class. So that we are not 
only dependent on private education in this country which, but in fact 
that we have a good strong public education system.

                              {time}  1800

  Mr. Speaker, my kids went to public school. I believe in the public 
school system. Now, with a cutback, we will see those aides removed. So 
in public education, where you have an expanded and larger classroom, 
these children are not going to get the kind of attention that they 
need in order that they might learn and learn quickly and have 
opportunities available to them.
  Worst of all, my Republican colleagues in the House are promising to 
continue the deep cuts in education that they have made so far this 
year, at a time when we know in this Nation that Americans are rightly 
anxious about their job security and at a time we all know that a good 
education is the key to a good job, congressional Republicans are 
launching an assault on American education.
  Poll after poll shows that the American public overwhelmingly 
supports education and schools. As public servants, it is our duty to 
ensure that our schools are able to provide quality academic 
foundations for our kids to be able to meet the challenges of the 21st 
century.
  Despite this obligation, and that is one of the reasons we are sent 
here, congressional Republicans are making tough times even tougher for 
kids trying to get a good education and for their parents who want to 
see their kids get ahead. They are making the largest cuts in the 
history of Federal aid to education.
  In addition, money is being cut for a school-to-work program. We have 
young people in this country who go to high school and then go to work. 
The majority of our young people do that. It is a small percentage that 
go on to a 4-year liberal arts college. It may be that that is okay. We 
may have enough history majors and enough English majors to take care 
of ourselves forever. But the aspirations and the values of these young 
people who want to go from school to work, those aspirations are being 
crushed.
  We began the school-to-work program and it works. Talk to the 
business community, talk to the academic community, talk to the 
youngsters involved, they need to bridge that time between high school 
and the job market in order to go in and to be good, solid, 
professional workers.
  We are going to pull away that funding for school to work.
  The new temporary measure that funds education, which is known as a 
continuing resolution, is expected to continue to cut basic skills 
training, reading, and mathematics, by 17 percent; funding to keep our 
schools safe and free of drugs is expected to be cut once again by 25 
percent.
  Talk to any of the DARE officers, any of our law enforcement 
community who work in the program, in a DARE program, they tell you 
that this program is working, let us give it a chance. Let us work the 
bugs out. Let us start with our youngsters in the elementary grades and 
follow them along to see if this training has made a difference in what 
happens with drugs in our school and with our young people today. Let 
us give this program a chance. People who are working in it believe 
that it is working.
  I also might add that our colleagues in the Senate, which I think is 
interesting to note, our colleagues in the Senate yesterday voted 
overwhelmingly, I think the vote was 84 to 16, to restore some of this 
funding in education for Head Start, for skills training, for school to 
work, for reading and mathematics readiness.
  Yet, in today's Washington Times, the majority leader of the House of 
Representatives, the gentleman from Texas [Mr. Armey], commented, and 
this was only restoration of money for education because there is a 
recognition of how important education is in our lives, what kind of 
opportunity it provides to people in this country, Mr. Armey said: 
``Well, isn't that typical of the Senate? All they want to do is spend 
money.''

  Mr. Speaker, it was 84-to-16, a bipartisan vote on a Democratic 
amendment, I might add, but a bipartisan vote to restore some of the 
funding to education.
  Before we can expect our kids to do all of the great things we wish 
for them, we indeed have to provide them with the essentials, training 
and basic skills, a safe place for them to learn.
  It is in these areas where my Republican colleagues have made 
crippling cuts. Congress will soon face a choice: Will we allow my 
Republican colleagues to extend these cuts, or will they restore the 
funds that they have taken from America's classrooms and America's 
children? I can tell you in my State of Connecticut these cuts spell 
disaster. We cannot continue to do this; $8.6 million will be taken 
from the State of Connecticut for basic skills training; 9,200 needy 
students will go without. Schools in my district will lose $1.5 
million. Under the safe-and-drug-free program, $729,000 will be cut for 
the State of Connecticut.
  Mr. Speaker, what makes these cuts so wrong-headed is that our Nation 
now stands at this crossroads. We can either choose to give our people 
the skills they need to compete and win in a global marketplace, or we 
can allow

[[Page H2197]]

our citizens to fall further and further behind as they compete with 
low-skill workers around the world for the lowest paying jobs in the 
world.
  Getting a good education has always been a tremendous part of the 
American dream. It is what has enabled our people to succeed. Public 
education has been the great equalizer in this Nation. It is said to 
all children, let us emphasize your God-given talents. Let those 
talents take you to the highest pinnacles that you can reach.
  These cuts will dash that dream for too many of our kids and for too 
many of the working families in this Nation.
  As Congress considers a new spending message for the rest of the 
year, I urge my colleagues to remember the children in the classrooms 
all over America and the parents who have a bright hope for their kids' 
future. We need to restore the Federal funds that enable our children 
to make those dreams a reality.
  I am delighted to be here this afternoon with several of my 
colleagues to talk about this issue of education, its importance in 
this country, and what the importance of these cuts are and what a 
devastating effect they will have on our kids future.
  I yield to my colleague from West Virginia.
  Mr. WISE. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for taking this time.
  The title I program which you have talked about some, I decided it 
was time to put some faces in front of the statistics. You just look at 
programs as title I, what is wrong with cutting it 17 percent? I have 
been visiting title I programs across the State of West Virginia.
  Of course, there is a problem too that you pointed out. All of our 
States have to prepare their budgets for the next school year now in 
the spring. In the State of West Virginia, on April 1 they have to post 
the list of transfers and layoffs by State law on April 1. So the fact 
that this Congress has not gotten around to getting them a 1996 budget, 
even though the Congress is working on a 1997 budget at this point, 
doubly compounds the problem. They are presently operating under the 
assumption there will be a 17-percent cut.
  What that means to the State of West Virginia is on April 1 they will 
have to announce the layoffs of 226 title I teachers and 90 aides. Of 
the roughly 38,000 students that take advantage of the title I program 
across the State, title I being assistance in math and reading, but it 
has actually expanded far beyond that to be a total classroom approach 
in many of our schools, in addition to the 226 teachers and the 90 
aides, 6,500 out of 38,000 students will not be able to get title I 
services.
  Some would suggest maybe this perhaps needs to be cut. I would point 
out it has been cut and restricted significantly in past years. In one 
school district I was in yesterday, a few years ago there were seven 
schools that participated in it. Right now it is at three. If these 
cuts go into effect, it will probably be only two. Whether you are 
talking about Chesapeake Elementary School in Kanawka County, Rock 
Branch Elementary School in Putnam County, or Ransom Elementary School 
in Jefferson County, every one of them came out and parents took time 
off from work to come educate me about what title I meant.
  If you listened to Melissa's mother at Rock Branch grade school begin 
crying as she pointed out how Melissa had been earning F's before the 
title I teacher intervened, Melissa is now earning B's and has a 
positive outlook on life.
  If you listened to Mrs. Clark yesterday in Ransom Elementary School 
talk about how much her children had benefited from it and how 
concerned she was that this program would be cut back, or Patty 
Lavendar at Chesapeake Elementary School, who really saved the program 
when the Kanawha County Board of Education was having to look at where 
they would cut, that one was on the block. They were able to save the 
program because of the outpouring from the parents, the parental 
involvement. That is one of the things that title I focuses on, is 
parental involvement, not just teacher involvement.
  So title I is a vital, vital program. It has always had strong 
bipartisan support. The interesting thing is we are now having to look 
to the Senate, which did restore basically the funding for title I 
yesterday, and hope that same spirit follows through over here.
  This is a program that has blossomed. At one time it used to be a 
teacher pulling a few kids out of class and working on math and 
reading, and in some cases that is still the appropriate educational 
forum. But it is also a case where the title I teacher and aides are 
actually working in the classroom. They are working with the entire 
class in some situations, assisting that classroom teacher, as well as 
providing additional skills.
  It is true that title I is a program that the formula is based upon 
free and reduced lunches in schools. But yet students benefit far 
beyond just those receiving free and reduced lunches.
  In closing, my visits to title I programs have caused me to think 
anew what it is we are asking from Government. The fact of the matter 
is that for many parents, they do not have the resources of a Steve 
Forbes. They are not able to go out and hire resource rooms and 
teachers. They, by the same token, most parents do not have the 
resources to have a library of 1,000 or 2,000 volumes and CD-ROM disks 
and the computers that go with it. What we do as a people is pool our 
resources in something called education, and we pool it in title I.
  One mother pointed out to me the other day her real concern that if 
title I was not there, what would be the outlook for her children in 
years to come? She says the very worst case would be possibly jail or 
prison, but at the least, a child has an increased frustration level, a 
child is not succeeding.
  The one common element to every program I visited was self-esteem. 
The children were doing better because they felt better. There is 
nothing worse than a child, a young child who is having trouble reading 
and no one is reaching out to them, or having trouble with a certain 
subject and no one is reaching out to them. This helps them to develop 
those skills and move on.
  So, as I say, I consider the cuts that have been passed by this 
House, 17 percent in title I alone, shortsighted. My concern is that 
the boards of education across the country are having to implement 
those even before they are finally passed, because they have to make 
some assumptions, and that the title I program is already suffering 
some impact, adverse impact, by actions, even though there has not been 
finality or closure yet on what the budget situation is.
  My advice to every Member of the House is go visit a title I program.

  Ms. DeLAURO. You just encapsulized it. I think it is so critical. 
When I told you I went, there were 20 youngsters around the table. They 
had their sheets of paper and they were counting. You had the teacher, 
and what they had to do was count each of the lines, whether it was 7 
or 6 or 8 in a row, and then they put their number in. The teacher took 
one-half, the aide had the other, and individually going to each child. 
And when they saw the answer, if the answer was correct, they put a C 
on it, and if it was not, they would go back and count with the 
youngster so that they would get it right and understand where they had 
made the error.
  What we talk about in this body all the time, there are folks here 
who want to provide vouchers to families to be able to go to private 
schools where they get individual attention and they have all of the 
resources that are there. For God's sakes, we have got a resource. We 
have public education. We have a program that is providing this kind of 
individualized attention to these children. What we want to do is end 
it. It is to have half of that classroom or a fourth of that class 
there not have individual attention, and someone there who can help 
them with their self-esteem if they get it right, show them where they 
may have had an error, and let them move on and allow them to learn and 
progress. And it is mindless what is being done here with regard to 
education.
  I would like to yield time to my colleague from New York, Major 
Owens. No one has spent more time on this issue of education than the 
gentleman has. We are grateful to you for your commitment and vision.
  Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague from Connecticut 
for the special order. We cannot come to this floor too often. We 
cannot say too much about education at this critical hour.

[[Page H2198]]

                              {time}  1815

  It is a critical hour, and I would like to use it to make one last 
appeal to our colleagues on the other side of the aisle. The majority, 
the Republican majority, has the power, and they can use that power to 
strengthen education and do a great deal for this Nation. They can use 
that power to wreck what has been accomplished to date in this country 
in terms of building some meager Federal support for the great 
educational apparatus that we have spread out across the country.
  The Federal Government only has a small role, you know, of all the 
money spent for education. It is about 7 percent to 8 percent, and a 
large part of that goes into higher education.
  So we only have a small role to begin with, but that role is 
critical. We are like the gyroscope on an airplane. That role is 
critical in terms of giving guidance and direction and inspiration and 
encouragement to the rest of the country.
  When you do not have that support coming from the Federal Government, 
all kinds of things begin to happen at the local level. The commitment 
is lessened at the State level, the commitment is less than at the 
local level. We have had a retreat which has followed the drumbeat of 
the Republican majority here in Washington, a retreat across the 
country, in terms of Governors and legislatures and local mayors, in 
terms of commitment, their commitment to education.
  What the Republicans have done, the majority of Republicans have 
launched a savage guerrilla warfare against education. I am baffled. I 
do not understand why the attack has been launched against the children 
of America, starting with the School Lunch Program, which baffled me 
greatly in terms of the amount of money. They squeezed some savings 
out, but the amount of money they saved is relatively small.
  Yes, we want to eliminate inefficiencies; yes, we always want to 
eliminate waste. And that is a constant process. We must constantly 
strive to eliminate inefficiencies, to eliminate waste. We must 
constantly strive to get rid of incompetence and to replace it with 
competence and the best possible management. But more than that is 
being attempted here, and money seems not really to be the problem. We 
are not really talking about saving money. There seems to be a 
concerted effort to wreck, to recklessly destroy, the education 
improvement effort in America.
  They call for the elimination of the Department of Education as key, 
and anyone observing the situation and understanding what is going on 
here, it is not about saving money only. It is about destroying the 
public education effort in America. Someone has made a determination 
that they can take care of a small elite group of children, students 
that they want to take care of, but they do not want the burden of 
educating all Americans, a commitment that is made from the very 
origins of the Nation. It is made not so much by the Federal 
Government, but certainly by the various State governments, and as the 
society has gotten to be more complex, that part of our Constitution 
which talks about promoting the general welfare is a joke if you do not 
focus your attention on improving education.
  No modern society can prosper and grow without paying a great deal of 
attention to education, and all of our competing industrialized 
nations, they all clearly understand this. It might be that we may 
never want to go as far as Japan or Germany in terms of centralizing 
the direction of education through a Federal department; that is not 
necessary. But we are a long ways from that when you only have a 7-
percent investment at the Federal Government level, a long ways from 
any centralization that is going to destroy local initiative.
  Local control is there now. Local control will be there for a long 
time to go. If you increased education, the Federal share of education 
expenditures, by 25 percent, and we have a comparable amount of 
control, then you might have 25-percent Federal control, using that 
word, and 75-percent State and local control. Well, with 75-percent 
State and local control, it is still basically a State and local 
control operation. We have no danger of that happening with our 7-
percent commitment.
  We have to understand, however, that we cannot go forward and promote 
the general welfare, we cannot go forward and produce the kind of 
population, which is the greatest resource that any civilized nation 
can have right now, is an educated population. Our military might will 
do us no good if we do not have an educated population to win the 
economic competition. Our military might will not do us any good if we 
do not have an educated population, and we cannot maintain basic law 
and order, and we cannot have a society which is a viable society.
  You know the kind of recklessness that we see first with the missiles 
aimed at the Department of Education and then the guerrilla warfare 
conducted against school lunches, and even the summer youth employment 
program is not a part of the school system, is not a part of the 
Department of Education; it is a basic part of the orientation of 
children as a basic part of a message that the Federal Government sends 
to children that it cares. And that, too, is under attack. Small 
amounts of money within the context of the overall Federal budget, but 
they have chosen to go after it anyhow. They have chosen to deal with 
the one area where there is some possible relief for local and State 
governments.
  Local and State governments are under a lot of pressure, the expenses 
for education expenditures are increasing to deal with some of the 
modern requirements of education, and some of the myriad of problems 
faced by our schools means they need more money. Where can the money 
come from? It should come from the Federal Government. Certainly 
research and development, certainly support for populations that need 
extraordinary attention; that is the whole philosophy behind Title I 
and the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. We need more help from 
the Federal Government.
  All taxes originate locally. Tip O'Neill used to say all politics is 
local. All taxes originate locally. The taxes that run the Federal 
Government come out of the pockets of people who live in cities and 
towns and school districts, and some portion of their taxes they should 
be able to get back in order to deal with the crisis in education. We 
ought to be able to get back more than 7 percent. To cut it off 
completely, however, and to wage a guerrilla warfare on the commitment 
that has been made, and chip away at it, as we are presently, is a 
reckless and savage act.
  Jonathan Cozel uses the term ``savage inequalities'' when he is 
describing the differences between the best in America and the schools 
that are usually serving our poor and minority populations. But what we 
have here is a savage attack on the whole public school system, a 
savage attack that will destroy the effort that has been made over the 
years, and we were making some progress, even through Republican 
administrations, the steady movement from President Reagan's 
recognition of the fact that something had to be done when he 
commissioned the report that led to, commissioned a group that produced 
support called a Nation at Risk. Following that, George Bush and his 
efforts with America 2000, and all of it has just been one seamless 
effort, not such a disjointed partisan effort.
  And suddenly, after President Clinton follows through on George 
Bush's goals, and we are moving in the same direction that the 
Governors and a whole lot of very intelligent and powerful people have 
decided we should move, suddenly the Republican majority in this House 
decides they want to wreck it all, they want to destroy it all. They 
are barbarians, and this is a barbaric act.
  Mr. MILLER of California. I thank the gentleman from New York, and I 
thank the gentlewoman from Connecticut, for taking this time.
  I think the gentleman from New York [Mr. Owens] makes an important 
point. It would be one thing if what we were considering was a well-
thought-out proposal about the reform of one of these programs, if we 
were trying to better target the money, if we were trying to put it 
into a reducing the class size where we have students who are 
educationally handicapped or economically disadvantaged, some of the 
intensive title I. It would be different if we were asking people to 
refocus on a path that we thought would bring these young people a 
better education.

[[Page H2199]]

  But this is simply the crass withdrawal of resources, and the 
gentleman from New York is so right. We have in the private sector, in 
the nonprofit sector, and in the public sector under the leadership of 
Presidents of both parties, we have tried to continue to develop the 
means by which we can improve the Nation's schools for all of our 
students, for those going to college and for those who are going to 
work and maybe to continuing education in connection with their 
employment.
  But this is the first time where we just see the radical withdrawal 
of resources and say that is it, you take care of it, but with less 
resources.
  You know, in the district that I represent in the San Francisco Bay 
area of California the school districts that are going to lose this 
money, the West Contra Costa School District, is going to lose 
$837,000. It has no ability to go out and to replace that money.
  So, as I think the gentlewoman from Connecticut pointed out, this 
program is simply going to be withdrawn wholesale from schools as they 
start to retrench. That does not mean that children in that school are 
not deserving or needing of the additional resources that title I 
brings to that school, but they simply will be cut out of that because 
you are retrenching and trying to serve these. The same is true of the 
Mount Diablo School District. They have no ability to make up $324,000 
of this, or--I see the gentlewoman from San Francisco here--$2 million. 
Here is a school district that just took an initiative on its own to 
try and reduce class size in the first 3 years of school because of the 
returns that they believe they will get with these children, and now 
they are going to withdraw $2 million from the school district.
  This is not just about title I students, or title I classrooms, or 
title I schools. It is the entire drawdown on education resources that 
this kind of arbitrary and capricious decision--because this decision 
is simply a number picked out of a hat. It is not related to education 
reform, it is not related to educational preference. The gentleman from 
New York is exactly right. This is a dramatic and historic reversal of 
what has been a bipartisan trend to try and to improve and to upgrade 
the education and resources of this Nation so that the children can be 
gainfully employed, so they can go on to higher education, so they can 
take their place in the American economy.
  And all of a sudden what we see is the wrecking crew comes in, and 
the wrecking crew says we are going to cut your resources by 17 
percent. They do not ask you whether or not this is going to interrupt 
their reforms, they do not ask you whether or not this means our 
children are going to go without research. They just picked this number 
out of a hat.
  Now fortunately, as you both mentioned, the Senate maybe sees it 
another way and maybe wants to continue the notion of the reforming of 
our schools. And I just want to say this. You know, if people had been 
visiting their schools and visiting with the parents, and we had the 
President in for Nut Day in the Mount Diablo School District in my 
district, and a number of parents showed up with their children in tow, 
excited about the expanded educational opportunities that being on the 
Internet would mean for their children.
  People again, because of the economy, because of this problem of 
sliding wages and living standards, are revaluing, revaluing education, 
and they know that they need more out of it, that their children need 
more out of it, and at the exact same time of course the Republicans 
have been out of step with the public on most of their agenda, but at 
the exact same time where America is revaluing education and the 
teachers of education, the Republicans walk in with the wrecking ball 
and just knock it all down and remind you. This is a lesser of the 
cuts. The House Republicans, these cuts would have been much deeper. 
They were looking for deeper cuts than this.
  And I think the gentleman from New York just makes an excellent 
point, that this is not a strategy to improve or reform our schools. 
This is just the wholesale withdrawal of resources, and we should 
reject it, if we get a second chance in the House. Hopefully maybe the 
Senate provision will hold, and we will stop this just arbitrary 
playing of politics with the future of our Nation's children.
  I thank the gentlewoman for yielding and the gentleman from New York.
  Ms. DeLAURO. I just want to add one point. Your notion about when you 
are retrenching is that you pull out that money. If the school 
districts decide that it is important enough to do and they want to do 
it, where are they going to go for the funding? They are going to a 
property tax, and they are going to look at increased revenues, and 
most of that comes with increased taxes for people in your district and 
my district and districts everywhere.
  And then the other piece is that they cannot do that, they do not 
want to risk raising the taxes; so, as you said, it is gone, and the 
ripple effect of that going is just enormous, and you cannot even 
calculate it.
  Mr. OWENS. Why should they raise property taxes and other taxes when 
the Federal Government has a tremendous amount of waste that ought to 
be transferred into education? Just to give one example. Most Americans 
are not aware of the fact that auditors at the CIA found $2 billion. 
Hear me carefully; I use the word B--billion--$2 billion was found in 
the petty cash funds that they had lost track of.
  Ms. DeLAURO. At the CIA.
  Mr. OWENS. At the CIA.

                              {time}  1830

  Two billion dollars. There is an agency that the President does not 
know has $2 billion, the director does not know has $2 billion, it is 
just wandering around there. Think of what that could do for the 
education budget. One and one-tenths billion dollars of those $2 
billion could go to end the cuts. That is the exact amount of the cuts, 
the $1.1 billion proposed for title I.
  You could take another $300 million for Head Start. Those are the 
Head Start cuts proposed. You could take $600 million for the summer 
youth employment program. It is $2 billion. That adds up to quite a bit 
for education funding.
  People of America should not rally to fill up the gaps when our 
Federal Government really has the resources, and the resources are 
still going in the wrong directions. They are being wasted, and not 
being directed at the priority of the moment. The priority of the 
moment is an educated population in America. We need more money in 
education from the Federal Government.
  Ms. DeLAURO. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from California 
[Ms. Pelosi] to join the conversation.
  Ms. PELOSI. Mr. Speaker, let me thank the gentlewoman from 
Connecticut for her leadership in this body, and particularly this 
evening, for calling this special order on education.
  I would like to follow up on what has been said earlier by my 
colleagues. As a member of the Permanent Select Committee on 
Intelligence, and also as a member of the Subcommittee on Labor, Health 
and Human Services, and Education of the Committee on Appropriations, I 
saw firsthand the budgeting for the intelligence budget, and I agree 
with the gentleman from New York [Mr. Owens] on his observation about 
our spending priorities; and then also on the front line in our 
subcommittee, when we saw the $1 billion being slashed from title I, 
with the blink of an eye.
  When we said to our Republican colleagues, ``But what will happen to 
the 1 million children who will not be able to have access to Title I 
services,'' they said ``We have to cut somewhere.'' As our colleague, 
the gentleman from California, said----
  Ms. DeLAURO. In reading and mathematics.
  Ms. PELOSI. It would be one thing if they brought in a critique or 
criticism of title I, and they said, ``This is where we think the same 
number of children or even more children could be served with the same 
money or less money by addressing some reforms,'' but they could not 
criticize title I. Title I is effective. It does the job. The money 
will mean that 1 million children will not be served.
  In California, and I would like to put some observations on the 
record, in California, that will mean over $123,000,000 out of our one 
State, over 100,000 children will no longer have this special 
assistance for reading and math. That is why I rise also and join you 
to express my great concern about the future of our Nation's education 
programs at the hands of the Republican majority in the House.

[[Page H2200]]

  So drastic was this cut that even the Republicans in the Senate 
abandoned it. So drastic was it that they agreed to add back billions 
of dollars for education, because they knew that they were slashing 
right at the heart of America.
  Following up on something the gentleman from New York [Mr. Owens], 
said earlier about our entire budget, we hear a great deal of talk 
around here about how we have to reduce the deficit, and therefore we 
have to cut the budget to do that, cut spending to do it. But the very 
idea of cutting education, and that is going to increase our deficit, 
unless we invest in our children, enrich their lives, make them 
productive members of society, increase our competitiveness 
internationally, we are going down a path of increasing the deficit and 
increasing the national debt, because we are not investing in our 
greatest resource, our children.

  Our Federal commitment to education is truly a measure of our 
sincerity about economic recovery, social progress, and our children's 
future, again. In the House omnibus appropriations bill, as has been 
mentioned, $3.3 billion is cut from the Department of Education, $3.3 
billion, or 13 percent; as has been mentioned, a 17-percent cut in 
compensatory education, title I.
  Ironically, just this week, March 15, the Ides of March and the last 
day for this CR is also the day that California school districts are 
required to notify teachers whether or not they will have jobs in the 
fall. Unless funding for title I is restored, thousands of California 
teachers and teachers' aides will lose their jobs. Tell me how that is 
going to help the children of California.
  In the House bill also, funding for safe and drug-free schools, an 
issue that I know that the gentleman from California [Mr. Miller] has 
worked very hard on, will be cut by $12 million or 25 percent. The 
safe-and-drug-free-schools program is vital, especially to urban school 
districts like the one I represent in San Francisco.
  The drastic cuts proposed by this funding would place in jeopardy the 
most vulnerable students. Basic needs that help young people survive 
cannot be addressed. At-risk children need the assistance that these 
programs offer.
  Funding for bilingual education in California would be cut by $18 
million, or 32 percent, one-third of the funding for bilingual 
education. We talk about wanting everyone to speak English and making 
English the official language, and yet we are cutting funding for 
bilingual education. Anyone who supports any initiatives for English-
only has to be a staunch supporter for bilingual education. That 
funding should follow. I, myself, do not subscribe to that theory of 
English as the official language, but ironically, those who do are just 
the ones who want to cut the funding for bilingual education.
  No funds for Goals 2000, the bill the President requested, $750 
million. As the gentleman from California [Mr. Miller] said earlier, 
these programs were developed under a Republican President, President 
Bush, with bipartisan cooperation of Republican and Democratic 
Governors across the country, passed in a bipartisan fashion in the 
House, signed by a Republican President, and yet zeroed out in the 
labor, health, and human services, and education bill.
  I almost think we should strike education from the name of the 
committee, because we have taken such a blow at the education funding. 
I have more facts and figures, but I know my colleagues need time. I do 
not know how much time can be allocated. Perhaps I can resume later.
  Mr. MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, on the point of the Goals 
2000, which unfortunately has become a political football, it has 
become a political football in Washington, DC, but not in the States. 
In the States where it was originally designed by the Governors and 
brought to the Congress with recommendations made, it is being embraced 
now as, again, parents hunger to know that their children are going to 
have to meet world class standards; that this education is the very 
best education; that we should not accept the dumbing down of 
education, we should not accept a second-class education; that our 
children not only deserve the very best education, but in fact the 
world's economy requires that they be given that.

  Now we just see that swept aside in a fit of ideology, in just an 
absolute fit of some kind of extreme ideology that says that the 
Governors should not have a right to apply for this money, to upgrade 
the quality and the class.
  These standards that are being developed are being developed with 
private sector associations. The American Electronics Association wants 
to be able to develop standards and have them incorporated so a young 
student can take that and go anywhere in the United States and work, 
and the employer will know that that certificate, that diploma, means 
that that person is qualified to do that job and to enter that 
industry, and to participate in that.
  What do we have today? We have in many instances diplomas that do not 
mean anything. That is what Goals 2000 is about, it was about upgrading 
that. It is swept aside in this provision. It is just crazy that this 
kind of extreme ideology would drive these kinds of education 
decisions, because it is not even a matter of debate. It is just a 
matter of pulling these numbers out of the hat. As the gentlewoman 
said, in her committee, unfortunately, the attitude was ``Well, we have 
to cut somewhere.''
  All things are not equal. Whether or not a child gets a first-class 
education, as the gentlewoman so correctly pointed out, the gentlewoman 
from San Francisco, that is the beginning and the end. That is either 
the beginning of a wonderful life in this country, or it can be the end 
of that. It is a question of whether that is the beginning of your 
productivity, that is the beginning of your being able to provide for 
yourself and have economic self-sufficiency, or if you choose to start 
a family. That is what that education is about.
  Somehow the people who cheapen that education are now the 
Republicans, because they slash it again without blueprint, without 
detail. They simply pick a number and say ``This is the number we are 
going to give the President to spend, because we are angry at him 
because we got caught shutting down the government,'' or something. The 
whole thing is just a tantrum and a fit of anger that really is an 
insult to parents of this Nation who are struggling to educate their 
children. I want to thank the gentlewoman again for taking this time.
  Ms. DeLAURO. I want to thank my colleague. I would like to mention a 
couple of things. One is that there is all this talk about how we 
cannot spend this money and we have to cut, and it is the Democrats who 
want to spend all of this money. But what they do not want to tell us 
about is where they do want to spend money, and that is on the tax 
breaks for the wealthiest Americans.
  They will deal with repealing the alternate minimum tax, and 
expatriots getting a break for renouncing their citizenship and being 
able to not pay any taxes. They do not have any problem at that end. 
But with kids and their future, they say, ``We have to cut back, we 
have to tighten our belts.''
  The AmeriCorps Program, let me just say this, this is a program that 
says to young people, ``We will help you with your college education if 
and only if you give back something to your community, you exercise 
some responsibility for getting this assistance. We want you to 
participate in the life of your community.''
  We are trying to teach our young kids values and responsibility. We 
are caught up today with saying young people do not have any 
responsibility, the ``me generation,'' the x generation; that they just 
want to take something and not do anything. This is a program that goes 
after that very fundamental value that we have tried to instill in 
people of responsibility and taking on something, and it is working.

  Again, it is working all over this country. Young people are involved 
in the lives of their communities and are given some help to be able to 
further their college education. Now we are saying ``Forget it. No. It 
is over.'' We have about 800 kids in Connecticut who are going to be 
just cut off of that program, not only the work they are doing in the 
community, but their ability to be able to go to school.
  Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, in less than 2 years the barbarian Republican 
majority has destroyed all of that. A

[[Page H2201]]

piece of civilization that has been wrecked by the pressure that has 
been put on them, budget-wise. We have large numbers of people being 
forced to sort of retire early and drop out. Experienced administrators 
and experienced teachers are going. You have large numbers of people 
who are planning to get out, and are just marking time in the system. 
You have reductions in any investment in equipment and plant buildings.
  They have, in less than 2 years, done an amazing job. I tremble when 
I watch what the blitzkrieg against education has accomplished so far. 
The American people had better take note of what you can do with the 
appropriations process, how you send a message out there. As well as 
take away the dollars, you send a message to every level of government 
that public education is expendable, public education is no longer a 
part of the grand design of a great America. They have accomplished 
that in less than 2 years, the Republican barbarians.
  Ms. PELOSI. If the gentlewoman will continue to yield, and when we 
think that this is done in the context of a $250 billion tax break to 
the wealthiest people in our country, $250 billion, and we are here 
talking about $3 billion or $4 billion. Could they not make the tax 
break that much less? It is penny-ante. It is change to them. It is a 
little bit of money when it is a tax break, but it is all the money in 
the world when we are trying to deal with education.
  Mr. OWENS. They are not rational. That is the most foolish thing.
  Mr. PELOSI. I think there is a lack of understanding by some of our 
Republican colleagues about how this issue is understood in the 
country.
  As a member of the subcommittee, I get many calls and letters, et 
cetera, from very different people; not the usual folks who usually 
call, but members of PTA's across the country. This has gone beyond the 
usual advocacy groups who will pay attention to what goes into 
legislation in Congress. This is well beyond that. This is parents, 
members of PTA's and the rest, members of school boards across the 
country. They are not particularly political, but they understand how 
this is going to affect their neighborhood schools. That is critically 
important.
  I certainly think the Senators understand, because they put back 
almost all of the $2.7 billion. I think nothing speaks more eloquently 
to the bankruptcy of the policy in this House on education funding than 
the fact that even the Republican Senators disassociated themselves 
from it and came back with $2.7 billion, which I hope we can get into 
the House bill, or in conference back in.
  The other point I want to make is that in the course of all of this 
appropriating, our colleagues on the Republican side say, ``We will put 
more money back into some of these programs, contingent upon the House 
passing a separate bill, a reconciliation bill, and then we will have 
money for education, if you pass a balanced budget bill in 7 years, a 
reconciliation bill.''
  We can never let that stand, that children are contingent upon some 
reconciliation bill. Children are a first priority. This is not 
something we do when we see how much money we have left over from tax 
breaks and an increased defense budget that the Pentagon did not even 
ask for. This is what we do first, take care of our children, educate 
them; that is, if we have, I think, our priorities in order.
  Our budget must be a statement of our national values. It must 
reflect what is important to us, and that is what we would put our 
resources to. It certainly is not, in the case of the budget we have 
before us.

                              {time}  1845

  Of course, that goes on to higher education, as well. Eliminates 13 
percent for student financial assistance, less than 1995, eliminates 
the Perkins Loan Program, and the direct loan program is capped at 40 
percent, and further reductions, which will again pose an obstacle for 
people without means or middle-income people in our country to receive 
the benefits of higher education.
  Then it goes on and on to what has happened to job training, school-
to-work, lifetime learning, reflecting that our economy is a different 
one and that people in the work force must be constantly educated in a 
lifetime, but much of that job training funding is also cut on the 
labor side of the Labor, Health and Human Services and Education. I 
might say that the Senators restored the education cuts, but there are 
other problems that we have with the bill for cuts that were not 
restored.
  I would be happy to yield to my colleague.
  Mr. MILLER of California. The gentlewoman from Connecticut mentioned 
that our Republican colleagues and sometimes the editorial boards get 
mad at us when we talk about the cuts to children that were scheduled 
in the school lunch program or in student loans or in title I or 
Medicare and Medicaid cuts. We say they are taking from the neediest 
people in this country to provide this tax cut, and yet here is the 
graphic example.
  Here are children that are identified as economically disadvantaged, 
as educationally disadvantaged, and we try to target some resources 
into the schoolrooms where those children reside, and yet we find out 
that as we read down the impacts in the State of California, district 
after district, school after school, 150 students, 170 students, 694 
students, 1,000 students, 131 students, it goes on and on and on, these 
children.
  This is not abstract. I have been teaching the last several Monday 
mornings at a continuation high school, and I visited with the teachers 
at Olympic High School after I was done with my class period, and they 
said, here is the impact of the cuts. This woman, who is helping these 
young people with business subjects and is here as a student assistant, 
she is gone if we lose this. In their budget, they had some upgrades 
for the computers. They thought maybe they were going to get hooked up 
to the net. That is not going to happen now.
  Those children are losing those kinds of resources and that kind of 
access. These are among some of the most disadvantaged children in our 
society, and we have decided that we would rather cut them than ask if 
the wealthy could just wait until there is a balanced budget, just wait 
until there is a dividend, and let us see if that is what the country 
wants to do.
  But here we are whacking up the education budget on an arbitrary 
manner, and the job opportunity budget, the AmeriCorps budget that is 
trying to send a message to young people in this country that they 
care, that they matter, that they are a resource, that they can make a 
difference in our communities.
  The brilliance of AmeriCorps, like Vista that was before it, is not 
what that individual does, but they become a catalyst for other 
resources in the community. They attract somewhere between $10 and $25 
for every dollar they get in in-kind services and help from other 
organizations. That is the message we want to send young people.
  We keep blaming young people. We keep getting mad at young people. We 
blame the education establishment after we withdraw the resources. The 
next thing what will become is the same people who cut these budgets 
are going to tell us, they could not educate the kids, so give them a 
voucher and send them down the road. They will be cutting the vouchers 
once that is accomplished.

  As Major Owens said, people better wake up and understand the kind of 
systematic, comprehensive assault that public education is under in 
this Congress by the Republicans. This is not an accident. We say it is 
arbitrary. It was not arbitrary in their minds. They made the decision 
that this is where they were going to cut the budget, not in the waste 
in the CIA, not in the waste in other programs, programs that you 
cannot even debate on this floor. This is systematic. This is 
intentional, and it is about the destruction of the public education 
system in this country and certainly the Federal contribution to that 
effort.
  Again, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding.
  Ms. DeLAURO. Again, it was Major Owens who mentioned the issue of 
military might. If we only measure this Nation in terms of its military 
might, our national security is at great risk. Education is as much a 
part of what the national security of this country is all about as is 
the number of weapons that we have in our arsenals.
  I come from a State that is defense dependent, that depends on tanks 
and

[[Page H2202]]

aircraft and engines. But I will tell you that if we do not have the 
young people who are smart enough and competent enough to be designing 
and manufacturing and doing all those things, our national security is 
at great risk. When we cut preschool and when we cut school lunch and 
we cut summer employment, and when we cut skills training and when we 
cut higher education, we are doing an enormous disservice to the 
national security of this country.
  Mr. OWENS. Our economic viability is directly threatened. Education 
is the basis for the kind of skills that we need in order to compete 
economically. Bangalore, India is now called the computer programming 
capital of the world, Bangalore, India which is in a country which is 
considered a developing nation. But they have as good a computer 
program in English as you have anywhere in the world, and many of the 
companies of this country are contracting their computer programming to 
Bangalore, India where they can get a year's worth of work for a 
month's salary, what they pay to computers in this country.
  Economically the competition is going to broaden, and the competition 
economically will be more dependent upon the educated population that a 
nation has and the way it utilizes that educated population. People are 
not going to have the jobs if they do not have the skills and the 
education.
  The corporations that are now uniting with the Republican majority to 
cut the budget for education are the same corporations that are asking 
for, in the immigration bill, that we allow them to keep bringing in 
technicians.
  Ms. DeLAURO. Foreign workers.
  Mr, OWENS. And people at high levels, especially computer 
programmers, in order to fill the gap they have here for computer 
programmers. So it is all interwoven, interconnected, and we cannot 
maintain a military power if we do not maintain our economic might.
  We cannot provide for average families and keep the economy healthy 
unless we have a strong school system which is dedicated to the 
education of all children, not an elitist system seeking to get away 
with just educating one portion of the population and allowing the 
other portion of the population by triage to go overboard and not 
provide them with a decent education.

  Ms. DeLAURO. My colleague, the gentlewoman from California [Ms. 
Pelosi].
  Ms. PELOSI. Yes. I know the focus of this special order is education 
and the Republican cuts, and that is most appropriate, but I want to 
also point out that these cuts are not made in a vacuum. Our colleague, 
the gentleman from California [Mr. Miller], talked about community 
service in AmeriCorps, as did the gentlewoman from Connecticut [Ms. 
DeLauro], and I wanted to just add something briefly there because I 
think we will have to have our own special order on community service 
cuts, too, but they are related to education.
  In the same Labor, Health and Human Services and Education 
appropriations bill there are drastic cuts in community service, and 
some of the programs affected are RSVP, foster grandparents, et cetera. 
In our testimony, all the testimony that we get from professional 
judgment opinions and testimony of those who have to justify the 
spending in their agencies, looks to what the gentleman from California 
[Mr. Miller] said.
  For every dollar you spent on an AmeriCorps volunteer, you get at 
least $25 return on your investment. So, too, with community service 
across the board, also contained in this bill. It flies in the face of 
the trend, because what we are saying here is everybody wants to reduce 
the deficit, right? So how do we use the spending to the best 
advantage? Of course we educate our children. That is an investment.
  But we also had what they call the twin engines of paid supervisors 
and thousands of volunteers, but who need the employees in place to 
organize their work and them, in order for us to have the big payoff in 
our society of people coming together and helping children to read or 
taking seniors to the park or whatever it happens to be to meet the 
need. It was referred to as the catalytic power of community service.
  This is what we should be doing if we want to reduce the deficit, is 
make sure that the dollars that we spend are investment and that they 
have a multiplier effect across the board. When we cut those dollars 
for community service, we are really going backward. It does not take 
an economic genius to see the worth of all of that, the power of men 
and women across the country volunteering.
  But subtract the Federal commitment there and you lose the 
supervision, the organization, the guidance and the catalyst for making 
all of that work. So these education cuts are taking place at the same 
time as we are making community service cuts. Begging off of AmeriCorps 
captures both aspects of it, education and community service, and it 
does a grave disservice, whether it is to civic associations or 
volunteerism in our country or, as President Bush so aptly called it, 
1,000 points of light. Let us support President Bush's 1,000 points of 
light by fueling and funding the community service agencies that we 
have in Government.
  Ms. DeLAURO. I want to thank my colleagues for joining me tonight. If 
there is a place we can cut, we do not have to repeal the alternate 
minimum tax. We could apply $17 billion to either the deficit or doing 
some of these other things.

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