[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 61 (Monday, May 6, 1996)]
[House]
[Pages H4427-H4428]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




    THE THING THAT WILL NOT DIE--REPUBLICANS' PLAN TO CUT EDUCATION

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentlewoman from Connecticut [Ms. De- 
Lauro] is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Ms. DeLAURO. Mr. Speaker, increasingly the extreme agenda of the 
gentleman from Georgia [Mr. Gingrich] and his leadership team reminds 
me of a bad 1950's B movie plot: The thing that would not die. They 
continue to resurrect bad ideas that have rightfully been shot down 
because in fact they have hurt working families in this country.
  The latest example of a bad idea that will not stay dead is the House 
Republicans' plan to cut education.
  It was only about 2 weeks ago when Speaker Gingrich and other 
congressional Republicans waved the white flag and surrendered their 
extreme position on cutting education. They proposed making the deepest 
cuts in the history of public education in this Nation, totaling $3.1 
billion, and it took the outrage of parents and teachers and students 
at the grassroots level in addition to the determination of the 
President, of the congressional Democrats, to force Republican 
leadership to stop this wrongheaded attitude and attack on our Nation's 
future.
  But let me say that parents do not rest easy. No sooner do we think 
that this bad idea is dead and buried, that then it finds new life.
  Yesterday House Majority Leader Dick Armey proposed cutting education 
to pay for the repeal of the gas tax. I quote:

       But the fact of the matter is, given our ability to contain 
     the cost of energy and give tax relief, maybe we ought to 
     take another look at the amount of money we are spending on 
     education.

  Direct quote: I watched the program.
  Now I support a cut in the gas tax and would vote for such a thing. 
But who is going to get the benefit of it? Is the consumer going to get 
the 4.3 cents, or is that money going to go into the pockets of big 
oil?
  That is what the danger is here, and what is going to get cut in 
order to pay for that tax cut? The last thing I want to see is a 
political game being played that does not really save the consumers any 
money in the end.
  Is it not funny that when the increase, when it goes up, when the 
stock market goes up in its price, and the gas prices go up at the 
pump, when that goes down, when the stock market goes down, is it not 
funny that the gas prices for consumers and for families grudgingly 
comes down and takes a very, very long time for it to do it?
  If we are going to cut the gas tax, then we should have the big oil 
companies pay for that gas tax cut and not education programs that 
serve working families in this country.
  The other thing that we ought to consider at the same time is how 
come the prices rose so quickly, how come all the prices went up at the 
exact same time with the exact amount of increase? Is not that strange?
  Let us take a look at and investigate that portion of this debate.
  Let me just say that instead of cutting corporate pork the gentleman 
from the big oil State of Texas proposes cutting education for our kids 
to

[[Page H4428]]

pay for a tax cut that will have resulted in a major windfall for the 
wealthy oil barons in this Nation.
  We all know that education holds the key to the American dream for 
the progress of working families in this country, yet the extreme 
agenda of the Republican revolution calls for devastating cuts in 
education. Their bill last year would have cut basic skills training, 
reading, writing, arithmetic by 17 percent.

  The Republican majority tried last year to cut safe and drug-free 
schools by 57 percent, which would have denied 23 million children in 
this country these common-sense protections.
  The extremists would have proposed killing President Bush's 
bipartisan Goals 2000 initiative which is helping 44 million children 
nationwide raise the standards of their educational performance, and in 
an age when tuition costs for college are going through the roof, the 
majority attempted to roll back direct student loans which would have 
denied 1,200 schools and 2.5 million students the opportunity to 
participate in this initiative that makes college more affordable for 
working families in this country.
  Mr. Speaker, I think the Republican leader's advisers must have been 
too close to the gas fumes when they told him to propose that one. 
Hard-working American families struggle and scrimp every simple day to 
provide educational opportunities for their kids. They know, no one 
knows better than them, that in today's economy what you earn depends 
on what you learn.
  So these middle-class folks take responsibility for their families, 
and maybe they do not take that vacation, and maybe they do not buy 
expensive clothes. We should honor their sacrifice. Let us help working 
families play by the rules. Help them get their kids a good education. 
Let us not give a tax break and pork to the special interests. Let us 
help working families and not cut education programs.

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