[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 4 (Tuesday, January 21, 1997)]
[Senate]
[Pages S131-S132]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                       COMMITMENT TO YOUNG PEOPLE

  Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, first of all, I rise to express 
appreciation to our leader, Senator Daschle, who has over the period of 
these recent weeks and months been working with many in our caucus and 
I know will be working closely, as well, with those on the other side 
of the aisle who are really interested in this Nation's commitment to 
the young people of this country in the field of education.
  I think all of us who have had the opportunity to travel through the 
country, certainly in my travels around Massachusetts over this last 
year--no matter where we traveled--heard the concerns that parents had 
about access and availability in areas of education as one of the 
paramount issues.
  The President has addressed those concerns by recommending a tax 
credit, also a $1,500 tax deduction, and some $10,000 that will be 
helpful to working families. Also included in the Daschle proposal are 
recommendations that we consider the interest on the debt for education 
in the same way that we would consider interest on the debt for 
machinery or the manufacturing industry assets, in being able to 
provide some deduction for those expenses as well.
  That effectively, Mr. President, is to respond to the President's 
commitment to the American people to make the next two grades beyond 
the 12th grade--13th and 14th, the first 2 years of college--accessible 
and available to the young people in this country, so that future 
generations will be able to say that we, as a nation, during this 
Congress, have committed this Nation to the next two grades in the area 
of education.
  I think this is a bold commitment. I think it is a dramatic 
enterprise. I think it will take the best judgment of all of us to 
achieve and accomplish this. But, nonetheless, as we understand it, the 
President's budget that will be submitted in the next 2-week period 
will demonstrate the funds that will be necessary to achieve it, and we 
will be able to say, in effect, when we actually legislate these 
proposals, that they are effectively paid and paid in full. That will 
be very, very important and a significant commitment to the young 
people of this country.
  Included in the education proposal, Mr. President, are a number of 
other items which I think all of us should be able to embrace and 
endorse, and these have been outlined by Senator Daschle, I have been 
informed, earlier during the course of the day.
  There will be commitments in terms of additional new technologies for 
our young people in schools across this country, to make sure they are 
going to be able to take advantage of the latest in technology and also 
resources to make sure we are going to be able to train teachers so 
that they will be able to be well-trained and able to impart to the 
younger people of this country the skills that young people will need 
to be able to use these technologies.
  It will be a modest program, but an important program, that follows 
the leadership of Carol Moseley-Braun, to try and give focus and 
attention to many of the schools in local communities across the 
country that are in very dilapidated conditions. That is true for most 
of the older cities of this country. It is true in my own city of 
Boston. It is true in many of the older communities of my State--
Lowell, Lawrence, New Bedford, Fall River, Springfield, Worcester, and 
many others. It is equally true in many of the large urban areas.
  This is a very modest program, but a very innovative and creative 
program about leveraging limited financial resources to address those 
particular needs in a modest way. Hopefully, we will be able to bring 
additional support for continuation of that program into the future.
  A very important continuing commitment to literacy and expanding the 
opportunity for children to read in our society so that we can achieve 
the goal that children who have reached the third grade will be able to 
read in a rather creative way is using the funding that will be 
allocated in the various competitive grants in ways that the young 
people of this country are going to be able to read and to really 
challenge the young people in our Nation, many who are going to schools 
and colleges, to help and assist with that undertaking, and to 
challenge American people, in general, to help and assist young 
children in this country.

  These are some of the elements of it. There are a number of others 
which are important, but I have summarized it, Mr. President. I hope 
that we will be able to move ahead in the area of education. It is 
extremely important.
  At the end of the last session, we did move forward in terms of 
funding various programs. We are going to have to find the funding for 
these programs and also for the increased number of children who will 
be going to high school. We are seeing an increase in total student 
enrollment, and we want to make sure that their particular needs are 
going to be attended to, as well. I think that is very important. That 
is something I know Senator Daschle has addressed, and I know that the 
President's program will address it.
  Hopefully, we will have broad, broad bipartisan support. For so many 
years in this body, the support for education was broad-based and 
bipartisan. It is bipartisan and broad-based in the country, and we 
should try and find ways to maintain that in the Congress and Senate.
  Second, Mr. President, is an area that I consider of enormous 
importance and that is to address the needs of 10\1/2\ million children 
who are uninsured today. Ten and a half million will be uninsured over 
the course of a particular year. The leader has outlined approaches to 
addressing this issue.
  There is a rather dramatic definition of who those children are, Mr. 
President. Children are the fastest growing segment of the uninsured 
population. It is a rather dramatic phenomenon. They are the ones who 
are being dropped from coverage in the current insurance system. Nine 
out of ten of the 10.5 million children who are uninsured have parents 
who are working.
  We have the Medicaid Program which addresses the poorest children in 
this country. I welcome the fact that the administration is going to 
try and be more creative and imaginative in terms of reaching many of 
those children who are eligible for Medicaid. These children are 
desperately in need of a healthy start and are not receiving it today. 
But we are talking about the next level; that is, the sons and 
daughters of working families. These are men and women who go to work 
every day, they play by the rules, 40 hours a week, 52 weeks of the 
year making America work. They are the backbone of so much of what is 
right in our society, but their children are being left out and being 
left behind.
  The figures and statistics are a fierce indictment of what is 
happening in our society. As one of the major industrial nations in the 
world, we still have one of the highest infant mortality rates. We are 
17th among the industrial nations of the world.
  More than half of all uninsured children with asthma never see a 
doctor, with all the implications that has, in terms of a child's 
future development and growth. As the father of a son who now happens 
to be a Congressman who had chronic asthma when he was a child, it is 
unbelievable to me the difficulties that he had in terms of coping with 
the problems of asthma. I do not know how he would have coped unless he 
had been able to get important medical attention.
  We know one out of three uninsured children who have recurring ear 
infections never see a doctor. There are significant increases in the 
number of ear infections and the number of children who are going deaf 
in our society from preventable diseases. And the list goes on.
  The final point that I want to make in this area, Mr. President, is 
that expanding coverage for children is wise economic policy.
  We are always going to have to come back to justify this from 
economic means. We all know for every dollar that is invested in 
immunization, the savings are $5 to $6. That is true in terms of the 
investment in children's health. It is true certainly in terms of 
providing the kind of prenatal care that would be included in this 
program

[[Page S132]]

for expectant mothers. That is an exceedingly wise investment.
  There are different ways of funding this proposal, Mr. President. My 
principal interest and I believe all of ours is to get the job done. I 
will introduce legislation that will ensure that all working families 
can afford to purchase private health insurance for their children. I 
support an increase in the tobacco tax to cover this cost because of 
the relationship between tobacco and children's health. A number of our 
States are moving forward in terms of addressing the issues of 
children's smoking and all of the implications that has as a gateway 
drug. The States know that curbing smoking among young people is a 
sound and wise way to proceed.
  But there are alternative ways to fund this program. I have every 
intention of working with our leader and those on the other side of the 
aisle to try and find alternatives.
  Our principal interest is getting the coverage for these children. If 
we achieve very little else in this Congress we should cover our 
children. We should move in those areas, and also move in the areas of 
coverage of pensions for working families. We need to make steps in the 
area of pensions when we realize that close to 60 percent of all 
working families do not have any pensions at all and that there is an 
increasing number of working families that do not have pensions.
  We are all thankful about Social Security. We know we have challenges 
that have to be addressed in the areas of ensuring its financial 
integrity over the period of the years but that is basically a program 
to prevent people from living in dire poverty. What we are talking 
about are those working families that have a standard of living who 
have been participants in our society, in so many instances served in 
the Armed Forces, want to be part of a pension system, and are not part 
of it because of various complications that have existed out there. We 
ought to make it easier for them to participate, encouraging employers 
as well as employees.
  I would say in this area, Mr. President, no one has a greater 
interest in this area of pension coverage than women in our society. 
They are the ones that often are the part-time workers. They enter and 
leave the work force to meet various family needs and family 
requirements. And they are the ones, if you identify any group, are the 
ones that are left out and left behind in terms of a national pension 
system.
  We have to be more responsive to their particular needs. And I 
commend the work that has been done on this by Senator Boxer and Carol 
Moseley-Braun and Dianne Feinstein, Patty Murray, Barbara Mikulski, and 
many in our caucus that have provided important leadership in this very 
important area.
  Finally, Mr. President, I want to mention one area that working 
families are very much concerned about. These themes are all related to 
security for working families. What is more important for working 
families than they are going to be able to make sure that their 
children are going to get covered? What is more important for working 
families than making sure that their children are going to be able to 
continue in the areas of education? What is more important for working 
families than if they are going to be able to look to the future with 
some degree of hope and opportunities and some degree of security with 
the pension reforms?
  I just mention, finally, unfinished business as part of our 
immigration law last year. We are working to ensure protection for 
American workers, for American jobs that are being replaced by foreign 
workers who are displacing those American workers, not being paid the 
adequate kind of salary, given the decency in terms of benefits. They 
are replacing an American worker in the first place and then because 
they are doing that at much less of a wage, much less benefits, being 
able to be competitive to the disadvantage of other Americans with whom 
they might be competing in producing widgets, for example, and 
therefore seeing other Americans that are going to lose their jobs.
  There are two basic and fundamental concepts that underlie our basic 
problems with the issues of immigration--one is addressing the needs at 
the border in terms of halting illegal immigrants that are coming here 
and, second, addressing the magnet of jobs--the magnet of jobs.
  If you look at the Jordan study, if you look at the Hesburgh study on 
what is the key issue in terms of attracting immigrants, illegal 
immigrants, immigrants that are going to abuse the immigration system, 
you will find out it is jobs. Unless we are going to make sure that 
Americans are not going to have important jobs, and we are talking 
about hundreds of thousands of jobs a year in many instances--we have 
really failed on the other extremely important effort in terms of 
immigration reform. We had important provisions in the immigration bill 
last year that Senator Simpson supported, many of us supported. Those 
were dropped in the conference. We will come back to that particular 
issue in this year.

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