[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 48 (Tuesday, April 16, 1996)]
[House]
[Pages H3469-H3475]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
THE REPUBLICAN BUDGET
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the
gentleman from South Carolina [Mr. Graham] is recognized for 60
minutes.
Mr. GRAHAM. Mr. Speaker, I think probably a good lead-in to this
debate is the last comment of the gentleman from New York [Mr. Owens]
that every American should get involved with what is going on in
Congress, and I think compassion and understanding are very good guides
to have, and I think reality needs to be in there somewhere.
Let us talk about the budget real quickly, then we are going to get
into something near and dear to everyone's heart in this country, and
that is education. The Federal role in it, what we have tried to do at
the national level in this Congress, I think to improve education, and
to have an effective delivery system that recognizes the need to
educate our children, to balance the budget, and what role money should
play in all that, what role the Federal Government should play.
Mr. Speaker, I find it very interesting that we can balance the
budget and remove the deficit without affecting entitlements. That is
very curious. I need to read the article by Mr. Novak. As I understand
the dynamic that we are facing, two-thirds of the Federal budget that
we deal with is on auto pilot. Sixteen percent of the Federal budget is
interest payments. We paid more in 1997, will pay more in 1977 for
interest on the national debt than the entire Defense Department, over
$400 billion.
Forty cents of every individual income tax dollar collected in this
country goes to pay the interest element of the national debt. Over 50
percent, I believe it is 51 percent of the Federal budget consists of
entitlement spending, such as Medicare, Medicaid and welfare. Medicare
has gone up 2,200 percent since 1980.
When we look at the Federal deficit and the national debt, the
national debt is over $5 trillion, and I ask people at home what a
trillion is. It is a number, it is a term that really is beyond
imagination. I think a lot of people can relate to a million. They may
not have a million, I certainly do not. But they can relate to the
concept of a million dollars. If you spent a million dollars a day, Mr.
Speaker, it would take you 2700 years to spend 1 trillion. If you
collected $1 trillion in taxes from the American public, it is the
equivalent of $3,814 from every man, woman and child in America, and we
know that every man, woman, and child in America is not paying taxes.
So those of us that are are paying a lot.
Let us talk about the Federal budget now that we understand what 1
trillion is. The Republican budget that Mr. Owens criticized so harshly
and the President vetoed appropriated $12 trillion to run the Federal
Government over the next 7 years. That is right, the Republicans have
spent $12 trillion at the national level over the next 7 years compared
to the last 7 years. That is a 26-percent increase in Federal spending,
a 64-percent increase in Medicare alone over the next 7 years, from a
$4,800 per senior citizen expenditure this year, to the year 2002, it
will grow to $7,100. A tremendous amount of money is being spent on
welfare and Medicaid, an over 50-percent increase.
Student loans in the education area, we have increased student loan
funds by over 50 percent in the next 7 years. What the Republican
budget has done is tremendously increase spending over a 7 year period
20 percent, 6 percent across the board, tremendous increases in
entitlements, but less than the projected amounts, because the
projected amounts are going to be well above 50 percent, well above 63
percent. Those of us who say that we want to balance the budget, I
think we need to start being honest with each, and I know my colleague
from Florida has been a real champion in this cause. If Members really
want to balance the budget, I think it is time to address why we have
debt to begin with.
Why did America get into $5 trillion worth of debt? Was it because
Ronald Reagan increased military spending during the 1980's where the
deficit did grow? Well, the truth is that he did. I was in the Air
Force from 1982 to 1988. After the Carter years, the military was a
place that needed expenditures. Spare parts were in short supply. We
had squadrons of airplanes grounded.
[[Page H3470]]
The Navy could not sail ships because of lack of funding. So Ronald
Reagan decided to increase military spending during the 1980's, and
Congress allowed him to do so but they required an increase in social
spending.
The truth be known, it is not because Ronald Reagan wanted to
increase military spending. It is not because Tip O'Neill and Tom Foley
increased social spending at the rate of 3 to 1 during the 1980's. The
truth is that the national debt grew to such large proportions as it
exists today because during the 1980's, entitlement spending went
through the roof. One program, Medicare, increased 2200 percent since
1980.
{time} 2000
And all of the other entitlements, Medicare and Medicaid, have grown
tremendously. Medicaid is growing at 19 percent a year since 1990. So
if you want to blame anybody, I think you can blame both parties,
because we have sat back and we have watched entitlement spending go
through the roof to the point now it is over 50 percent of the Federal
budget.
If nothing changes in this country in the next 17 years, the Federal
budget, the Federal revenue collected from the taxpayers at the
national level, will be spent in two areas: entitlement spending and
interest payments on the national debt. It is already two-thirds of our
budget. In 17 years it will consume the entire revenue stream. There
will be no money left to fund the Defense Department, Education
Department, the Commerce Department, and environmental agencies that
exist at the Federal level. And that is not a Republican statement.
That comes from Senator Kerry, a Democratic Senator, who has been
involved in entitlement study and reform. And the facts are just what
they are, facts. Entitlement spending is out of control and it is going
to consume the entire revenue stream unless we do something about it.
We have tried to do something about it, and I think in a very
responsible manner. What we have done is we have allowed increased
spending in Medicare alone 2\1/2\ times the inflation per year, a 63
percent increase in a 7-year period, a tremendous amount of increase,
but we are going to create options available to senior citizens that
are more efficient than this 1965 fee-for-service Medicare model that
is full of fraud.
We are going to give people something they very rarely get from the
Federal Government, and that is a choice. A choice to pick a program
that may deliver more effective medicine, less bureaucratically, and a
better deal for the taxpayers. It is time to give people choices that
mirror private sector growth in health care.
The private sector programs are growing at 3 to 4 percent, the
government programs, like Medicare and Medicaid, are growing at 13 and
19 percent because they are very inefficient, they are full of fraud,
and they have the wrong incentives. It is hard to get preventive
medicine reimbursed under Medicare. The number one expenditure in
Medicare is diabetes, but you cannot get insulin paid for.
So it is a system that is really overdue for an overhaul. And we have
allowed private sector programs to be placed on the table and let
senior citizens make choices, and we are going to give them four to
five different options to Medicare as it exists today. But they have to
choose. And if they do not want to make a choice, they stay in Medicare
as it exists now. And that is just one example.
In Medicaid, we are going to allow the States to take the increased
spending at the Federal level and manage care the money. Right now our
Medicaid programs are growing at 19 percent. If you are a Medicaid
recipient and you go to the hospital and have a $300 visit for a cold,
something private insurance would not allow you to do, Medicaid
reimburses people for medical conditions four and five times the
expense that the private sector manages those same illnesses.
So it is time now to start allowing States to put into place managed
care programs for the Medicaid recipient that are good, that are
compassionate, but that have cost controls on them so it does not grow
at 19 percent.
If you want to improve education in my State of South Carolina, which
I do, and I think everybody who is listening to me in South Carolina
would like to see that happen, let us change Medicaid. Because when
Medicaid grows at 19 percent at the national level, that is the health
care for the disabled and the welfare recipient, when it is growing at
that rate for the State of South Carolina, to get any Medicaid money
from the Federal Government they have to put money on the table. It is
a matching formula.
So when the pot of money at the Federal level grows at 19 percent,
then for South Carolina to get its Medicaid money, its share grows at
the same rate, so you are robbing our State budget to get Medicaid
money from the Federal Government. And if we do not change, if we do
not change that dynamic, every State's budget is going to be consumed
by getting matching portions of Medicaid.
And as the gentleman from New York, Major Owens, indicated, the
Governors in this country, Republican and Democrat alike, have gotten
into a room and said: Enough. You are bankrupting our State. We are
having to spend most of our budget to get Medicaid dollars because the
pot of money at the Federal level is growing so large, the mandates are
so onerous, we have no flexibility. Please, give us a break. We can get
by on less money if you will give us flexibility to create programs
that mirror the private sector.
And unless we do that, ladies and gentlemen, you will not balance the
budget. If we do not address the reason Medicare grows at 22 percent
every 15 years, it does not matter if you spend less in 7 years to get
the numbers right, you are going to be back in debt. It does not matter
if you slow the growth of Medicaid down temporarily, as the President's
budget does. If you do not change the reason it grows at 19 percent,
you are not going to keep the budget balanced. And it does not matter
what you do in welfare reform if you do not address the reason people
stay on welfare 10\1/2\ years.
So what I am looking for is a budget that addresses the reason we got
in debt, a budget that addresses the underlying problem, which is
entitlement spending. Let us reform entitlements up here in a fair and
compassionate way so that we can deliver you a balanced budget that
will stay balanced. Let us create a welfare system so that the average
person does not stay on it a decade.
I believe most people want to get off welfare, go into the private
sector and live with dignity and not be dependent on the Federal
Government, but it is darn hard to do that. If you live together as man
and wife under our current system, we look at both incomes and deny
benefits. If you get a part-time job we will start taking benefits away
from you when you start moving up the economic ladder. We are trying to
keep your vote, but we are not allowing you to be free from government
control.
I am looking for a welfare system that helps people who need help,
that will give you training, give you educational assistance and will
allow you to get a job. And the way you create a job is not by me
talking about it on the floor of the House, it is by lowering taxes so
people have more money to invest and grow their businesses.
Capital gains tax reductions will be good for this country. It will
create jobs and bring in additional revenue to the Federal Government.
It did in the 1980's when we lowered capital gains tax rates, it will
in the 1990's if we can ever get it passed.
But the way you create a job is to change this model that currently
exists of where we are overtaxed, we overlitigate, and we overregulate.
And the ultimate hope of welfare reform is a system that allows
people to help themselves, that pushes them forward, that will not pay
them to have children they cannot afford, but will have a job waiting
on them. And to do that you need to change this bureaucratic model that
we have created for the last 40 years that is strangling American
business. I think that is compassionate.
I think that is the way to truly deal with the Nation's problems,
because the poor in this country want the same thing as anybody else
who is an American: the hope of having it better for themselves and
their children than the last generation, a chance to have a private
pension plan, a chance to have health care that they own and is now
given to them by the government. We all have the same values, we just
have a different belief on how to get there.
[[Page H3471]]
The special order topic really tonight is about education. And
nothing is going to change in this country until we provide an
educational system that brings the best out in our kids, and that is a
school environment where you can go to school and not worry about being
beaten up or having a drug deal occur under your nose.
The national role in education since 1979 has grown dramatically.
Test scores have gone down. Education quality is stagnant. We are not
moving forward by having more control at the national level. The
Department of Education's budget in 1979 was about $16 billion. It is
$32 billion now. Six percent of all education dollars spent in this
country comes from the Federal level. Ninety-four percent of education
funding comes from the State and local level.
When you talk about education reductions at the national level, it
has to be put in perspective of the total funding. The bad deal is that
50 percent of the mandates, how to spend the money at the local level,
comes from the Federal Government. We give you very few dollars, but we
put a lot of requirements on our local educators, our State and local
systems, and we are not getting a quality product.
The only model that will work, in my opinion, is to have parents and
teachers and the community leaders involved, and the current Federal
system does not allow that to happen. It is a wall between quality
education and the State and local community. I do believe that we have
an overly intrusive Federal role in education that is not bringing out
the best in our kids, and that we have programs on the books that are
very inefficient, all done in the name of compassion.
Title I, that Mr. Owens mentioned, is a program that started in the
1960's to help school districts that had a disproportionate number of
disadvantaged and poor students, to give them a leg up, a little extra
tutorial time. That program has grown now to almost where 80 percent of
school districts in this country receive title I money. It has become a
candy store.
Title I money is spent on disadvantaged students, and the definition
of disadvantaged has grown greatly. And the facts are that 80 percent
of the people who provide this extra tutorial time are not certified
teachers, they are teachers' aids. It is becoming an employment
opportunity for the major cities in this country.
The test scores of the children receiving title I assistance have not
moved up any. What we are doing is basically we are taking an average
of 10 minutes a day extra time for a title I student, getting no return
on our money, giving the money to someone who is not a professional
educator, trained as a teacher, taking them out of the class and
spending $6 billion a year doing that. That is not a good deal for the
taxpayer and we are not moving forward.
The gentleman from Florida is going to tell us a bit about Head Start
and how unsuccessful that program has been when measured by objective
criteria. It is a good idea. It is a compassionate idea, but eventually
you have to look to see if the idea is delivering a quality product.
Title I is not a good investment educationally or financially, and Head
Start, I believe, falls under that same category when you look at the
return for your money.
I would yield now to the gentleman from Florida to tell us a little
about title I, then we will talk about student loans.
Mr. MICA. I thank the gentleman from South Carolina for yielding, and
also I must take a minute and thank him and his other 72 colleagues of
the 73 new freshmen in the House of Representatives. How refreshing it
is to have people come from all walks of life. Not just attorneys, but
somewhere in the neighborhood of three-quarters of this class, this new
class of freshmen, come from business. Three-quarters of them have
never run for a political office or served in other political office.
And they took time from their lives and their family obligations and
business and professional obligations, and leaders like the gentleman
from South Carolina, Mr. Lindsey Graham, have come here and looked at
how our Government is operating. They brought a message from the people
in this last election that the people were not pleased with paying more
and getting less, as I often say.
I have only been here 37 months in Congress, so I consider myself
part of that new breed, but I commend the gentleman and his colleagues
for what they have brought to the Congress and their recommendations.
If you consider what we are doing tonight, Mr. Lindsey Graham from
South Carolina is doing tonight, he is here late at night talking about
education. He is a Republican, he is a member of the new majority, and
the Republicans and Mr. Graham and every one of my Republican
colleagues are very committed to good sound education, improving
education in this country. We cannot make any better investment. But
ask any American, ask any parent, ask any student, ask any teacher
about education in the United States today, and they are going to tell
you that education is in crises.
Republicans have always been strong supporters of education. Being
business men and women and professionals and people who are highly
educated, they know that education is really the key to the success of
the problems in this country. They know that if you go into the jails,
if you go into the unemployment lines in this Nation, if you go into
the homes of welfare recipients, you find that they did not have a good
education opportunity. But Americans and Republicans and Democrats and
independents and anyone who lives and pays taxes in this Nation must be
concerned about paying more for education and getting less.
Now, I always drive the other side of the aisle crazy and the
Democrats crazy, because I like to deal with facts, and sometimes they
come out here and say things and they do not base them on fact. But let
me tell you about where we are in education and the facts about paying
more and getting less. The fact is, and these are not my statistics,
these are published statistics, the fact is SAT scores dropped from a
total average of 937 in 1972 to 902 in 1994. The fact is we are
spending more and getting less.
The fact is 17-year-olds scored 11 points worse in science in 1970
than in 1994. The fact is reading of 17-year-olds, 17-year-olds who do
not read at a proficient level, their reading scores have fallen since
1992. Spending more, getting less.
The fact is, in math, United States students scored worse in math
than all other large countries except Spain. The fact is we are
spending more and getting less for education.
The fact is 30 percent of all college freshmen must take remedial
education, and in my district in central Florida, and I come from a
fairly prosperous and successful central Florida area, some of our
community colleges, one of the presidents told me over 50 percent of
his students entering community college need remedial education. And
then I was stunned to read that at another local community college, 71
percent of the entering freshmen need remedial education.
{time} 2015
This is the fact. These are the facts. We are paying more and we are
getting less in education. That is what this is about. It is not just
how much money we come here and spend, and the people just getting home
today and are working and yesterday paid their taxes. And they are
sending this incredible amount of their money here to Washington. This
is the result of your dollars.
We need to look at how; we came here to look at how effectively we
were spending those dollars. I looked at Head Start. Let me again deal
with some facts. Let us talk a little bit for a minute about the
history of Head Start.
Every Member of this Congress, Mr. Speaker, and every citizen of this
country should pay attention to this, because first of all they think
Republicans are cutting spending in these areas. The fact is, in
education we are proposing increasing expenditures of almost $25
billion over the next 7 years. I tell people that and they say, I
thought Republicans were cutting education. The fact is, for possibly
illegal aliens, you will not be getting education. That is part of what
this debate is about. You do not hear that talked about here. But let
us talk about one program that I took some time spending, spending some
of my staff work and my personal time in looking at a Head Start
program.
[[Page H3472]]
Back in the schools that I attended at the University of Florida, I
remember serving as the secretary of academic affairs and student
government. This is back in the early 1960s. I was committed to trying
to make a change and to do some positive things. I remember one of the
things we worked on was a project called Project Begin Here, because we
knew we had a university, the University of Florida, a great
institution, here we had a town, Gainesville, where students did not
have opportunities to learn. So we started this Project Begin Here to
take the resources of this great university school of education I was a
part of and bring it into the community and help give kids an
opportunity and an uplift.
We knew that was a key way back then. I supported Head Start Programs
back then in the early 1960s. I support Head Start Programs today. The
concept is basically good. The problem is look at what has happened.
Look at the time from 1990 to 1995. Head Start funding increased 128
percent. Washington spent over $31.2 billion on the Head Start Program.
Those are the types of increases. The House proposed, the House
proposed $3.39 billion for 1996, only a minimal reduction from $3.52
billion that was appropriated for 1995. Now, that is not a very big
difference. There is a reduction, and let me talk about the purpose for
the reduction in a minute. But the funding for this program has grown
almost five times as fast as the number of children served. The growth
has resulted in a sloppy, I mean disgusting management of the program.
This is not what I am saying. This is not a Republican report I am
going to detail here. And again, we must look at how we are spending
these dollars and what the effect is and what are we getting for the
program.
Now, these programs, and again, not Republican reports, and I only
want to deal with facts because, as I said, it drives the opposition
crazy, this report is the Office of Inspector General, Department of
Health and Human Services, evaluating Head Start expansion through the
performance indicators. These are 1993. This one is 1993, Head Start
expansion grantee experiences.
Let us talk about what we found here. Head Start is 30 years old, and
yet there is little evaluation of the program's effectiveness. This is
not what I am saying. What there is suggests that academic gains made
by kids in the program are in fact temporary. That is what we find. The
HHS report found that, one, children may not be fully immunized before
leaving the Head Start Program. I mean here we spend hundreds of
millions on immunization programs, a government program, and we cannot
even get our government program to cooperate with the administration's
program to immunize, so number one grade success.
Grantees frequently do not identify families social services needs,
another criticism of this, and wait until you hear how we spend the
money on trying to identify this.
Grantee's files and records are incomplete, inconsistent and
difficult to review. And wait until you hear how I detail what is
required as far as administration of this program in one small program
in my district.
The HHS report also found that there was no educationally meaningful
differences between Head Start children and nonHead Start children by
the end of the second year of grade school. Numerous independent
studies confirm that the present Head Start Program has only short-term
benefits for poor children.
This is not what I have said. This is the report of the inspector
general. These are the facts. So this is how they evaluated the
program.
So I was contacted by a parent who was a single mother, divorced, I
believe, situation with two children and she put her children into the
Head Start, had, I think, one or two children in Head Start Program.
And she was having a difficult time personally but wanted to give her
children every advantage. I commend her for her effort. But then she
came to me and said, Mr. Mica, she is a very intelligent woman, a very
educated woman. She said, I have had my children in this program and it
is a disaster. So I thought, well, I better look at what is going on.
So I went and I looked at the Head Start Program. Let me give you one
Head Start Program in one community, and there are some, there are
others that are not run in this fashion, but let me tell you what is
going on in my area of Florida.
Last year this one program that serves 378 children received over $2
million for the Federal Government, another $550,000 from the State,
that is over $2.5 million. The cost per student for a part-time
preschool program is $7,325. That is just the local administrative
cost, the figures I have, not including this huge bureaucracy they have
built in Washington, not including the bureaucracy that they have in
Atlanta. I could send the student to the best preschool program, a
stellar one in central Florida for this amount of money. And then with
the money that bureaucrats are wasting in administration, I would have
money left over, plenty of money left over. In addition, I know that
the program would be, first of all, longer in duration because this is
an abbreviated program. The teachers, there would be at least some
certified teachers in the program. And the child would have a much
better experience.
This program in central Florida has been found to be deficient by HHS
in serving children for the past two years. My attempts to try to
change it are totally useless because you have to deal with a
bureaucracy in Washington and Atlanta and all kinds of regulations. It
is amazing that they can run this.
Listen to the best part. This agency, again the local Head Start
Program, one program, 378 students, employs 25 teachers and 25
assistants. Now, that is not bad. But first of all, not one of the
teachers that I know of are certified. Not one of the assistants are
certified. They have come up with some cockamamie certification
program, but basically what you have is a minority employment program.
So then they gather all the minority children together in this
program with no certified teachers to basically provide day care
services. It is an incredibly expensive price tag. And are these
students getting a cultural advantage? Are they getting an educational
experience? The answer has to be no.
Now, you have not heard the most outrageous part of this entire
story. I asked for the budget for these 378 students. For the 25
teachers, there are nearly 25 administrators. Listen to this: One
director gets almost $40,000; an area coordinator gets almost $29,000;
another area coordinator, $29,000; an education coordinator, $26,000; a
family services coordinator, $26,000; a nutrition coordinator, almost
$26,000; mental health disability coordinator, $26,000; another health
coordinator, $26,000; personnel training coordinator, $19,000; an
educational specialist, $29,000; another educational specialist,
$24,000. It goes on and on, $20,000, they go on and on. Then you have
family services specialists. It is absolutely mind-boggling.
Then you get to the teachers, the teachers. Here is the teacher,
first teacher, $12,000 a year, $14,000 a year. We might even have a
teacher in here, there is one for $15,000. I do not have a certified
teacher. This is a national disgrace, Mr. Speaker, that my
disadvantaged students, 378 of them, that we have this bureaucracy.
Now, it would not be bad if you just had this bureaucracy for this
little program, but this incredible amount of money. Let us face it,
this is what the debate is all about, Mr. Speaker. I am chairman of the
House Civil Service Subcommittee that oversees the Federal employees.
So I asked the staff to tell me how many employees there are in the
Department of Education. There are 4,876. Now, of all of the
departments, I think they probably take the cake, but there are 3,322
just down the street from here, 3,322. I really think the Secretary of
Education, Mr. Riley, was taking great pride in how he had reduced the
number of people in the Department of Education from some other year.
So I ask our staff to also investigate, and they told me that there are
thousands upon thousands of contract employees that are not now counted
in these figures. But we have 3,322 bureaucrats here pumping out rules
and regulations and they pump them out to Tallahassee, my State
capital, and other State capitals. They pass then onto Atlanta, and
they must pass them on. So we have 25 administrators making twice the
amount of money anyone in the classroom made in this program, and we
wonder why our students cannot read and why there is this debate. But
it is all about spending more and getting less.
[[Page H3473]]
{time} 2030
Again, these are the facts. Anyone who would like copies of these,
any of my colleagues, this is how the programs are run. These are the
evaluations. These are not Republican evaluations.
Mr. Speaker, Members can see I get a little bit hot under the collar
when they accuse Republicans of cutting education. I have two children.
I am concerned about education.
I heard the gentleman from South Carolina talking about Title I. I do
not know a lot about it, but I know how important it is to have it as a
follow-up program. If you have Head Start and you do not have Title I,
we know if the kids cannot read by third grade, as my superintendent so
ably says in Seminole County, FL, the school superintendent, he says,
they are lost. They cannot read, they cannot write, they cannot do
basic math. If we are not spending the money in the classroom on the
students, in the programs that need it, for the teachers, we have a
problem.
A teacher just came up to me in a Title I Program and stated, ``Mr.
Mica, I want you to know, they told me I am going to lose my job, but
they are hiring another administrator.'' I almost got sick when I heard
that. Here is a teacher in a Title I Program, and Title I programs are
important. We need to make sure that for the students who need Title I,
that we have a consistent pattern of education; that we just do not do
minority grouping with minority employment and give these children a
disadvantage. They need an advantage, the very best advantage. Then we
need to follow up in first grade and second grade and third grade, so
they can read and write, and of course do basic skills.
Mr. Speaker, I want to talk, if I may, just for a minute more. If the
gentleman will continue to yield, when I get on these subjects, again,
as a former graduate of the University of Florida School of Education,
I just get so upset and concerned about the direction of education.
Mr. Speaker, if we take a minute and look at what we are doing to
employ students who need skills for real jobs, and I am not talking
about $5-an-hour-paying jobs. We know people have difficulty living on
minimum wage. But we are talking about jobs that give people an
opportunity to be self-sustaining, good-paying jobs. When we start to
look at what we are doing with our job training programs, the same
accusations, Republicans are cutting money for job training programs.
Again, Mr. Speaker, we must look at what we are doing. The American
people must stop, listen, and learn about what is going on with their
money. Here is one program for job education. I know this comes under
the Department of Labor. Here is an article that says, ``Audit faults
job training program.'' This is in Puerto Rico. We also pay for job
training there, but the same thing happens in the United States. This
report says, ``the department spent about $305,000 for each participant
placed in a job-related employment whose employment lasted over 90
days.
Mr. Speaker, this caught my eye just recently in the Washington Post,
but there was an article within the last month or so in the Orlando
Sentinel that absolutely was flabbergasting. It talked about the State
of Florida and job training and education programs. Get this. The State
of Florida, one State out of the 50 States, spends $1 billion in their
job trainings programs, $1 billion. This was a State audit of those
programs.
The State audit said basically that the programs were, almost every
one of them, a disaster. It said, in fact, that only 20 percent of the
students who entered these job training programs ever completed them,
20 percent who entered. Then, of those who completed the job training
program, only 37 percent got a job. Then, of the 37 percent, and
remember, that is of the 20 percent who have entered who got a job,
they got just above a minimum wage job. Then they found that within 6
months the people were out of a job.
One billion dollars that people spent yesterday in paying their
taxes, Floridians and other Americans, to send to Washington for
education programs that do not make sense, for job training programs
that do not make sense. Again, the reports go on and on.
I served on the committee that oversaw some of these programs, the
EPA and some of the others in the previous Congress. I would sit at the
hearings and just about fall off my chair to hear how taxpayer money
was wasted and abused. But this message is not getting out to the
Congress, Mr. Speaker, it is not getting out to the American people,
that they are paying more and getting less.
I know in their hearts and in their guts, the American people know
this is wrong. They know there is something wrong with the system, and
they are dedicated. People are interested in education. Everyone I have
met, whether it is someone working in a grocery store or someone who is
a high professional in my community, is interested in education. Every
Republican wants education. But what we do not want is this huge
bureaucracy, this huge ineffectiveness that has cast a spell across the
entire country.
What we want, too, are some other things that we may not be able to
legislate. We may begin to want to look at how we can restore some true
caring, some love, some spiritual values, some values, some discipline
in these schoolrooms. You talk to the teachers, I have talked to
teachers who have been struck twice. Instead of another art course or a
music class, as in where some of my children went, they are putting in
security guards. There are police people. We do not have new math
teachers or cultural teachers, we have more policepeople. We are
putting in metal detectors in our schools. There is something wrong.
There is something dramatically wrong. If this does not tell a little
bit of the picture, I do not know what does.
Mr. Speaker, I know there are other problems: the welfare system that
we have created over 40 years. When children go to school and they have
never seen a father, they come from a home that is in total disruption,
they have no sense of values, then we wonder why we get into these
situations. We are dealing with the problems that we have self-
generated in 40 years of decline of family values, of discipline in our
schools; of the professionism of education, rather than a 9 to 5 job:
If I can just make it through one more day and keep these kids under
some control, and keep the discipline to where they do not physically
abuse me during the day, I have made it through another day in my
classroom. It has to stop.
I just came here for a short time. I do not plan to stay forever. But
I am dedicated, and if the gentleman from South Carolina [Mr. Graham]
is not here next time or the other freshmen are not here, I know the
American people will send more people to get this job done, because
they are concerned, and we are concerned. We do not care about the next
election, we are concerned about the next generation. When we have to
take our children out of schools and we are paying taxes and seeing
this result, it is sad. It really is sad.
Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding to me. I get wound up
in these debates, but these are all things that I take personally. I am
a Republican who cares about education and does not like to have people
tell me that we are gutting or cutting education. We are trying to
improve, we are trying to re-examine education as it has been done and
correct these mistakes, and do a better job with taxpayers' very hard-
earned money. Again I thank the gentleman for yielding.
Mr. GRAHAM. Mr. Speaker, I thank very much the gentleman from Florida
for talking about facts, because sometimes facts get in the way of a
good story. Head Start is a good idea, but when you look at the facts
you described, you have to wonder if the program is working as
efficiently as the taxpayers deserve for it to work.
It is obvious that you care about education, that you have made it
your life's work, but you also care about the national debt, the $5
trillion debt, and the role that money plays in education and the debt
have to be examined. I would suggest to you that the education problems
in this country are not all about money. They go a lot deeper than
that. They are about the breakdown of the home, they are about relying
on someone else from far away to solve all your problems, just like a
lot of problems exist in America today, and we, the people, are
responsible.
You can blame Congress, it is a fashionable thing to do, and we do
deserve
[[Page H3474]]
to be blamed for allowing this Nation to get so far in debt. We should
be allowed to talk openly about improving the educational climate in
America and balancing the budget without having people throw rocks at
you, because you heard the gentleman from Florida, Mr. Mica, speak. I
hope you are convinced, I know I am, that he is sincere about providing
a quality education, but he has a responsibility to manage the
taxpayers' money wisely and to provide that quality education.
I would suggest that you are not getting a return on your investment,
as he has indicated. Let us talk abut student loans for a minute. You
have heard a lot of talk about student loans. I know the gentleman from
Florida has, and our Speaker is very knowledgeable about the student
loan situation in America.
I am the first person in my family to go to college. I am not a
country club anything in that regard. I am the first Republican in my
district in 120 years. They hung the other guy, so I think I am doing a
little bit better. But things are changing down South. It is a district
with an average per capita income is $13,200. It is not a wealthy
district. It is a very proud district where people want to pass on
their hopes and dreams and make it better for their children.
I received student loans. My parents died when I was a junior and
senior in college, and I had a 12-year-old sister who received student
loans. They worked very hard to give me an education, and I helped my
sister, and the Government helped us by allowing student loans, making
student loans available to us. That is going to continue, because most
of the people in my district who are qualified students to go to
college will go into a banker's office and say, I would like to go to
college, and the banker will say, what do you own? The student probably
owns very little, and sometimes the parents do not have the assets to
make a loan on the up and up, so the Federal Government comes in and
guarantees that loan. That will continue, as long as I am in Congress,
because that is a very much-needed dynamic in this country.
What will not continue is to lend money blindly, to waste money in
the name of compassion, and to take the hard-earned taxpayers' dollars
from two-thirds of the children, the kids who graduate high school and
go into the work force and never get a student loan. We have some
obligation to run the student loan program like a business.
Here are the facts. The Republican budget increased student loan
spending from $24 billion to $36 billion over the next 7 years, a 50
percent increase in the amount of money available for student loans.
The number of students eligible for a student loan has grown from $6.6
million to $7.1 million over the next year under the Republican plans.
We have increased Pell grants to the highest level ever. $2,440 will be
available for eligible students to receive a Pell grant, money that you
receive that you do not pay back.
My sister, when my parents died, was eligible to get a Pell grant.
That program continues and is fully funded. There is more money in the
program than in the history of the program. We are looking at the
number of people eligible, but trying to ratchet down the income
levels, so the money will go to the people who need it the most. You
cannot be everything to everybody and balance the budget. That is a bad
dynamic to create, even if we were not in debt.
The supplemental education opportunity grants program that helps
disadvantaged students is funded at the same level it was last year.
The college work-study program is fully funded at $617 million. The
Perkins loan program remains at $6 billion, just like the President
requested. The Trio program for minorities and disadvantaged students
is fully funded at $463 million. That is the Republican budget.
What we did try to do is we tried to look at the student loan program
and see if we could improve it and make savings to help balance the
budget, because I think we have a moral obligation to look at the way
we spend money and to craft programs that help people, but not overly
waste money for the two-thirds of the students that never borrow it to
go to college to begin with.
We were able to save $10 billion in about 2 days of talking.
Unfortunately, most of those savings will never go into effect, but I
am going to tell you, in just about 2 minutes, how you can save $10
billion and I believe not hurt a soul, help the taxpayer, and make this
student loan program more energetic.
Mr. Speaker, we were going to save $5 billion by doubling the risk
that the bank shares in the event of a default. Under the current
student loan program, when a bank lends the money the Federal
Government guarantees the loan, and if there is a default, the bank
gets 98 cents on a dollar. Do you think they spend a whole lot of time
chasing that loan down? That is not a good business deal for the
American taxpayer.
I want banks to make money. I think banks should be the primary
lender of student loans. They should be able to get into the student
loan business and make money, but the Federal Government needs to do a
better deal than 98 cents on the dollar. Under the Republican reform,
we double the risk the banks will accept in the event of a default.
They will still be able to make money, but there is less risk for the
taxpayer, there is more risk-sharing. That saved $5 billion, and had
nothing to do with anybody who is getting a student loan. It had to do
with the banks.
Mr. Speaker, we saved $1.2 billion by eliminating a program the
President is pushing called direct lending.
{time} 2045
The student loan guarantee program where we underwrite loans of the
private sector needs to be improved. It is not a good business deal for
the taxpayer. It is inefficient. The risk is not shared in a fair
amount. We are going to improve that. We are going to double the risk.
We are going to stop subsidizing the guaranteed agencies to the extent
that they are subsidized now. We are going to do a better business deal
for you, the American taxpayer, and still help students.
The President, who is critical of the guaranteed program, wants to go
the opposite direction. What he would like to have happen is the
Federal Government become the primary lender, become a bank. Can you
imagine the Department of Education becoming the third largest consumer
bank in America?
The bureaucrats that the gentleman from Florida [Mr. Mica] has
described would have a huge loan portfolio available to them. They
would replace the private sector. We would go borrow the money, the
Federal Government. We are broke, we do not have money, we would have
to borrow money. We would let the Department of Education become the
lender and the collection agency. It would be a disaster.
It may be easier to get the money, somewhat more efficient, they say.
That is not true. We would have a government bureaucracy at the
Department of Education with unlimited growth potential. They would be
the third largest consumer bank in America, and a bureaucratic
Department of Education gets paid whether they collect the loan or not.
It is not their money.
The banks are lending their money. They have a reason to go collect
the money. They are in a business. The Department of Education are not
bankers, they are not in the banking business, and the President wants
to replace private sector capital with public borrowed money, replace
bankers who are in the business of collecting money for a living with
bureaucrats.
That is the worst idea I have ever heard of in this Congress, and it
shows us how much he believes in big government. I will never ever
vote, I will never ever allow that to happen, to take a private sector
program that should and could be improved and replace it with a
dominated Federal program where the default rates are going through the
roof.
If we think there is a problem now with defaults, let the Federal
Government be the lender and the collection agency. They could care
less. They want your vote, not your money back, not the money back.
That would be a disaster, and it is not going to happen. It is not
going to happen if we control this place.
It will happen if the other party takes over, unfortunately, and
there are Members of the other party who think this is a bad idea.
Please do not allow the Federal Government to become the third largest
bank and replace private capital with government
[[Page H3475]]
borrowed money. That is a horrible idea.
The Congressional Budget Office has told us if we would get the
Federal Government out of the lending business in education, we would
save $1.2 billion. That shows us how big a bureaucracy has grown up
over a 10 percent share of the market, where direct lending has 10
percent of the student loan business now, there is a $1.2 billion
savings if we wiped it out. The President wants to do 100 percent
direct lending, but we save $1.2 billion in our budget by wiping it
out, $5 billion by doubling the risk of banks.
One thing we did do for students, that under the current program, Mr.
Mica, if you graduate from college, we forgive the interest payment of
your loan for a 6-month period when you graduate. We have proposed to
allow the interest element of your loan to continue to run. You do not
have to pay it if you do not have the money, but we are going to let
the interest continue to run, not forgive the interest for a 6-month
period. That would save $3.5 billion to the American taxpayer. It would
mean to the average student a $4 a month increase, but it would save
$3.5 billion for this Nation. I could tell you right now if we got to
the point where we cannot forgive the interest for a 6-month period and
that be devastating to education and a student cannot incur a $4 a
month charge, then something is wrong and we are never going to balance
the budget. That is not too much to ask. That is an appropriate thing
to do to save $3.5 billion for the American taxpayer, and that is part
of this package. We save $10 billion and I have just described to you,
we increase the interest rates for parents who are not eligible for the
guaranteed program to borrow the money at Treasury rates plus a
percent, we increase that 0.1 percent, that will result in about half a
billion dollars. We save $10 billion for the American taxpayers and the
only thing to happen to a student is that they would have to pay $4 a
month more because they are going to have to pay their interest for the
6-month period after they get out of college. We are not going to
forgive it. To me that was very reasonable and responsible. It helped
us balance the budget, and I think it improved the student loan program
that needs to be improved.
Those two-thirds of high school students who never go to college, who
never go on and receive a student loan, they deserve our time and
attention, too. Because they are the ones paying the bill and we can
have a quality student loan program. Access to education is a must. I
will always vote to ensure that money is available to help needy
students and families who cannot go it on their own have money
available to go to college. But as long as I am here, we are going to
run it more like a business, we are going to ask the private sector to
share the risk, we are going to improve the quality of the student loan
program, we are going to negotiate a better deal for the taxpayer and
we are going to save money in the process, and we are going to ask
those students who borrow the money to pay it back. We have reduced the
default rate by 50 percent and it has got nothing to do with direct
lending. It has got to do with a Congress who has finally gotten tough
and tells the school that has a 25 percent default rate, ``You're going
to get out of the program.'' There are schools in this program that
have 50 and 60 percent default rates. They should not be allowed to
participate. We are going to start asking people to pay the money back,
we are going to ask schools to get involved and run it more like a
business at their level. We are going to renegotiate a relationship
between the student loan program and the American taxpayer that will
ensure access to education, but we are going to save some money because
we are wasting money now and they are not contradictory principles. You
can have efficiencies in government and improve the quality of people's
lives, and that is the goal of this Congress, in education and every
other area. I am proud to have been a part of it. Instead of getting
criticized, I think we should be applauded for taking on programs that
have not been looked at since 1965.
Mr. MICA. If the gentleman will yield, I think the gentleman makes a
very good point and he has detailed this evening, Mr. Speaker, some of
the differences in the philosophy between the Republicans and Democrats
on this issue. Education is important but it is not just a question of
spending more money, it is how we spend that money. This is really the
fundamental debate in this entire Congress. It transcends not only
education but every other area. I spoke this afternoon on the floor
about the EPA and Superfund program. We spend more, we get less. We are
spending more in those programs and we are cleaning up fewer and fewer
of the sites, and we are not even cleaning up the sites that pose the
most risk to human health and safety. We have detailed tonight how just
in a few programs, student loans, title I, in Head Start and some of
the other programs the disaster that we have come across as new Members
of the Congress and found in my 37 or 38 months here and in Mr.
Graham's tenure, so each of those areas we have tried to look at how a
businessperson, how a parent, how a teacher, how someone interested in
education would make changes. Because if you just continue the way we
have, you have thrown more money at the problem, you are not really
addressing the fundamental changes that need to be made in the
programs. Again, whether it is education or environment or other areas,
these are the fundamental debates. As a parent, I want a good
education. As a parent, I want our children to be able to read their
diplomas and to stop the decrease in these scores, and to stop this
bureaucratic administration. Again 3,322 Federal Department of
Education employees in Washington, DC. Not in the classroom, not out
there teaching. But their job is to pass on rules and regulations and
that is why we have a big bureaucracy in Atlanta and other regional
offices, that is why you have a big bureaucracy in my State capital and
in other State capitals. That is why your school boards are required to
hire more administration people. That is why Head Start is top heavy
with administration. It all starts here. This may be the last
opportunity that this Congress has and the American people have a real
opportunity to make changes in these programs. And that is the
fundamental debate. Do we want to continue to pay more and get less? I
think it is time to reverse that trend. I think it is time to improve
education, improve the environment, improve the way taxpayer money that
again came here yesterday in incredible amounts and is deducted from
people's paychecks in incredible amounts. I thank the gentleman for his
leadership on this issue.
Mr. GRAHAM. I thank the gentleman from Florida for participating and
providing facts that I think show very clearly that the efficiencies in
government that we are seeking can be found without looking very
deeply. That if you had an opportunity to come up here yourself, the
ones listening to me tonight and look at these programs and spend a few
minutes analyzing how they are run, you could save $10 billion pretty
quickly, also. It is not that hard to do. The hard thing is to convince
people that when you are trying to improve the student loan program for
the two-thirds of the students who never get in it but pay the taxes
for it, that you are not being mean.
When you try to stop Medicare from growing at 2200 percent so you can
keep the budget balanced, that you are not being mean, because you can
provide quality health care from Medicare to seniors in this country
without allowing the program to grow 2200 percent every 15 years. The
amount of money and the efficiency do not relate. We are spending more
money than we need to. We can deliver a better quality program, a
better quality of life and save money in the process. That is not only
something we can do, it is something we must do. If you allow us, we
will do it.
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