[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 38 (Tuesday, March 19, 1996)]
[House]
[Page H2325]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                   CUTS IN EDUCATION ARE HITTING HOME

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of May 
12, 1995, the gentleman from New Jersey [Mr. Pallone] is recognized 
during morning business for 5 minutes.
  Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, I wanted to focus on education this 
afternoon, because I am very concerned about the consequences of the 
House Republican leadership and their spending proposals with regard to 
education, the cuts that they have implemented or they are trying to 
implement in education.
  Essentially what we are seeing now is that these cuts are hitting 
home. I am going back to my district, and I know others have heard from 
their districts and their hometowns, are hearing back from the school 
boards and from local residents about the fact that teachers now have 
to be laid off or taxes have to be raised in order to provide for 
education programs that the Federal Government will no longer fund 
under these Republican proposals.
  I have said before that education is one of the priorities that the 
President and the Democrats in Congress have stressed should not be 
severely impacted during these constant budget battles on the floor. 
Yet once again we face the situation where the House passed a spending 
bill a few weeks ago for the remainder of this fiscal year that would 
severely cut, provide the largest cut in educational programs in the 
history of the Federal Government.
  This is basically amounting to a 13-percent reduction from the last 
fiscal year, a $3.3 billion cut in education programs. The Senate, 
fortunately, as I have mentioned before, when this bill went over to 
the Senate, tried to restore most of this, about $2.5 billion in 
education funds. However, the Senate bill will not prevail if Speaker 
Gingrich and the Republican extremists, the Republican leadership, do 
not go along with the Senate version. So we have to constantly push to 
say that the House version that makes all these cuts in education 
funding is not the way to go, and that we as Democrats support the 
Senate version and the President supports the Senate version to put 
back a lot of this education money.
  Now what does this all mean? A lot of times on the floor of the House 
we talk about money or about amounts of money or percentages, and some 
people wonder what does it mean to me locally back at home? Well, it 
means a lot. I think we have got a very good glimpse of that today, or 
I should say yesterday, in the New York Times. The New York Times had 
an article in yesterday's paper, ``Federal Budget Impasse Hits Home 
With the Threat of Layoffs in School Districts.''
  It takes us to a relatively small town in upstate New York, 
Schenectady. There they are starting to send out notices to the 
teachers to tell them they are going to be laid off because of the 
cutbacks in Federal funding. I just wanted to read some sections of 
this article, if I could, because I think it is so indicative of what 
the impact is of these House Republican cuts in education funding. It 
talks about Teresa McAnaney and her colleagues at the Pleasant Valley 
Elementary School in Schenectady who:

       . . . have tended to view the budget stalemate in 
     Washington as a distant drama that has mainly led to the 
     periodic closing of the nation's parks and museums and a 
     handful of Government agencies.
       But earlier this month, this faraway crisis hit home: the 
     superintendent's office notified Ms. McAnaney that she would 
     be among 16 teachers and aides in the city school district at 
     risk for layoffs in the fall because the district had no idea 
     how much money it would receive from the Federal or state 
     governments.

  She says that ``The uncertainty is the most frustrating part of this 
whole thing.''
  This is what we are talking about. This week, this Federal Government 
is operating with a stopgap funding measure that extends for 1 week. 
This Friday again the Government or certain agencies of the Government, 
including the Education Department, will close down if we do not pass 
another bill extending funding for another week or another month. The 
process has to stop, because with these stopgap measures and taking the 
education funding from week-to-week, which is what the Republican 
leadership has been doing, there is so much uncertainty back in our 
hometowns and throughout this country about education funding that they 
do not know what to do. What they have to do is essentially plan for 
the worst, lay off teachers, particularly those funded through title I 
for various programs, and tell them and assume they are not going to 
have the money for the next fiscal year. The only way that they can 
avoid that is if they go and take their local property taxes in order 
to keep some of these teachers and some of these programs going.
  I went on further in the article, I thought it was particularly 
interesting, because further on in this New York Times article they 
have another individual who is also from Schenectady, who talks about 
how Congress and  the Federal legislators are not paying attention to 
what is happening in the small towns. This gentleman is quoted as 
saying that ``I don't think those people realize how their fighting is 
hurting ordinary people like myself * * * Maybe they should come into a 
school to see the problems they are creating every day.''
  He says, ``It has reached the point that people cannot even plan.''
  Once again, I think that is the problem here. We keep talking about 
this Federal budget and the Republican leadership keeps saying that if 
we cut this money out of education programs, it will not matter. Let me 
tell you, it does matter. We are going to see more and more that it 
matters in coming weeks if the Republican leadership does not turn 
around and restore this education funding.

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