[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 46 (Friday, March 29, 1996)]
[House]
[Pages H3210-H3211]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




          THE REST OF THE STORY; PAYING MORE AND GETTING LESS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Gutknecht). Under a previous order of 
the House, the gentleman from Florida [Mr. Mica] is recognized for 5 
minutes.
  Mr. MICA. Mr. Speaker and my colleagues, I saw the President was in 
New York earlier this week. He was talking about improving education. 
Unfortunately, he really did not tell the rest of the story, as Paul 
Harvey would say. The President really did not take time to tell the 
American people about the U.S. Department of Education and the fact 
that it has 5,000 Federal bureaucrats who justify their existence 
primarily by pumping out

[[Page H3211]]

and churning out mindless regulations for our teachers and our States.
  President Clinton really did not tell the rest of the story when he 
did not tell the people that of those nearly 5,000 people in the U.S. 
Department of Education that three-quarters of them, about 3,500, are 
right down the street in Washington, DC, making over twice what our 
average classroom teacher is making in my district.
  President Clinton did not talk about ending welfare as we know it, 
welfare, really which has destroyed our family structure, any sense of 
values, self-discipline, and respect and really any hope for education. 
President Clinton really did not tell the rest of the story about his 
failed drug policy that has raised youth drug use to all-time levels 
and made juvenile crime epidemic in this country.
  You know, the debate going on, the debate today about funding the 
country, and we have just been in the process of passing a resolution 
to continue for 4 more weeks, a lot of people say, ``Why can you not 
decide this?''
  There are some fundamental differences about how we spend money on 
education, the environment, and these other issues. Most people would 
not know this. But, in fact, the Republicans have proposed from the 
beginning in their budget a vast increase in spending in education, $25 
billion more over the next 7 years.
  But the real debate is over how those dollars are spent, again, 
whether we finance bureaucrats in Washington, whether we pay to 
continue to support programs where students cannot read their own 
diplomas, where students continue to score lower in their tests and we 
spend more money. My community college has entrants of which over 50 
percent need remedial education. So the real question is how we spend 
our money.
  I wanted to also cite for the House and the Speaker here a story from 
the Orlando Sentinel that cites a report on State education and job 
training programs. It says State and Federal Governments spend about a 
billion dollars in Florida on vocational education programs. What is 
the result? And this is from the report: The programs fail to produce 
graduates or workers who can earn a decent salary. In fact, only about 
20 percent of those who enter these programs completed them, and then a 
small percentage, 19 percent, found a job after that, and then most of 
them got a low-paying job and were out of the job in a short period of 
time.
  Lawmakers in Florida were astonished, this report says, when they 
heard the findings.
  The report also indicated that money was wasted on duplicate 
programs. So this debate about education and environment is paying more 
and getting less, and that is what this is all about.
  People have to understand, because this is important, it is not just 
how much money you throw at the program, it is how you spend it and do 
we improve these programs, do we provide a better education, do our 
students come out with a diploma they can read and then get a job where 
they can earn a decent living and be a productive and capable, 
independent citizen in this great Nation?
  So that is what the debate is about, paying more and getting less.
  Mr. Speaker and my colleagues, again, as Paul Harvey would say, that 
is the rest of the story.

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