[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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