[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 55 (Thursday, April 25, 1996)]
[House]
[Pages H3840-H3841]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




       AMERICANS ARE PAYING MORE AND GETTING LESS FOR EDUCATION, 
                ENVIRONMENTAL, AND JOB TRAINING PROGRAMS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Florida [Mr. Mica] is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. MICA. Mr. Speaker, in just a few hours the House of 
Representatives will probably decide one of the most important 
questions that has faced the Nation and this Congress. I have only been 
here for a little over 36 months, and there are some wonderful people 
in the House of Representatives that I have had the opportunity to 
serve with. I just wanted to give my observations of where we are at 
this moment as we decide on a budget, which is long overdue.
  Congress, in fact, has been bankrupting our Nation with good 
intentions from some very well-meaning and well-intended people. The 
debate over the past 4 months has really been the most important debate 
in, I think, the last 40 years.
  But we have found that in this debate, if we look at what has 
happened,

[[Page H3841]]

over those 40 years we have created scores and scores of programs, 
programs in education, programs in job training, programs 
in environment and so on. But this is what the debate has evolved down 
to.

  However, the fundamental question being asked today is how effective 
are those programs. That is what this new majority continues to ask and 
has pressured to find the questions and the answers to. Mr. Speaker, 
for a moment Congress and the American people must really ask today are 
we paying more and getting less. That really is what the budget debate 
has been about. Let me, if I can, Mr. Speaker, just give a few examples 
of what the debate is about and how the American taxpayer is paying 
more and getting less. I have talked on the floor about these items.
  First of all, Mr. Speaker, in education. The education battle is down 
to not just how much money we throw at education, but what the results 
are. Part of the debate is these 3,322 bureaucrats out of 4,876 in a 
Federal Department of Education, over 3,300 right down the street in 
Washington, earning more than most of our teachers, and most of them 
have never been in a classroom. This is what the debate is about, how 
big that bureaucracy is going to be.
  The debate is about why our children cannot read, why our scores are 
lower, the dumbing down of the standards in this country, which are on 
the front page of even our periodicals.
  There are Head Start Programs like in my community, where I have 25 
administrators and 25 uncertified teachers, and the administrators are 
making double what the teachers or the aides are making in our Head 
Start Program; about an AmeriCorps Program the President has proposed 
that is a volunteer program that pays more and better benefits than we 
are giving our veterans, and the GAO says their finances in a year for 
this $1 billion project, they are already in a shambles.
  Then we turn to job training, another question. Here is an article, a 
report from the State: $1 billion in job training in my State, and this 
evaluation in the last month says that we are spending $1 billion, and 
less than 20 percent of the students who enter these job training 
programs ever complete them and 19 percent ever get a job afterward. 
Then they get a low-paying minimal job; a total failure in job training 
programs. That is what this debate is about is changing these programs, 
improving them, so young people have an opportunity and a job.
  Finally, Mr. Speaker, about the environment: Paying more and getting 
less. We have heard about Superfund. We have heard the President talk 
about this. Superfund is a great example of a good program gone bad and 
that we are trying to change. It was a good idea to clean up hazardous 
wastesites, but it is not a good idea to spend 80 percent of the money 
on attorneys' fees and studies. It is not a good idea to let polluters 
off the hook and not have them pay. It is not a good idea to have very 
few sites cleaned up. Only a handful of the hundreds and hundreds of 
sites have been cleaned up.
  So these programs are failures. That is what this debate is about. It 
is a fundamental debate in this House, Mr. Speaker, that we clean up 
the act of government. We may not get another chance. Mr. Speaker, this 
is about paying more and getting less, whether it is in education, 
whether it is in the environment, or whether it is in job training. We 
should not pay more and get less.

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