[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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