[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 13 (Wednesday, February 5, 1997)]
[Senate]
[Pages S983-S985]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                               EDUCATION

  Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I rise today to speak a little bit about 
the issue of education, which was raised so aggressively by the 
President in his State of the Union Address last night. I congratulate 
him, once again, for focusing the country's attention on this critical 
concern. It is something that we, as a nation, have focused our 
energies on ever since we began, and many could argue that one of the 
really unique miracles of American society has been our educational 
system.
  With each generation, we have asked ourselves, is our system working 
well, is it working right, is it producing individuals who are trained 
and capable of participating in the issues which their generation will 
face? In many instances, the answer has regrettably come back, no, 
maybe we aren't or we are not doing quite enough.
  I, for example, remember that in 1980, we had the report of ``A 
Nation at Risk,'' and that report identified as a country, because of 
our educational failings, we were falling behind, falling behind our 
sister nations in the industrial world in the area of educating our 
students and their capacity to compete, especially in areas such as 
science and math. So a major initiative was undertaken as a result of 
that.
  Then when I was Governor of New Hampshire back in 1988, President 
Bush had just been elected, and he proclaimed that he would be the 
education President and gathered, for the first time, I believe--maybe 
it was the second time in history--all the Governors in one location 
for the purpose of taking on a one-item agenda. That was in 
Charlottesville, VA, and the issue was education.
  At that time, Governor Clinton from Arkansas was, I believe, the 
chairman of the Governors conference and played a major role in 
identifying five major policies which would be the goals to get us to 
the year 2000 to improve our educational system.
  One of those policies involved being a leader in the world by the 
year 2000, I believe it was--it might have been earlier--in the area of 
math and science education.
  Now we have President Clinton coming forward and saying, again, and 
accurately so, that our educational system is not accomplishing what we 
need as a nation. It is not educating our children to the level that is 
necessary for us, as a nation, to compete. And so we revisit the issue.
  The question is, how do we revisit the issue? Do we learn from our 
mistakes of the past, or do we simply go forward with another new set 
of initiatives which may or may not accomplish our goals or may not 
accomplish more than what was accomplished in the last efforts. This is 
what I want to discuss, because I think the President, for all his 
energy and his enthusiasm and his rightly directed purpose, which is to 
improve education, has, to some degree, missed the point.
  There are a lot of issues of education, but there are parts of 
education which work well, and one of the core parts of education that 
works well is the ability to keep the control over education at the 
local level. The essence of quality education, the formula for quality 
education is not a formula which says dollars equal better education. 
It is a formula that has variables in it, including dollars, including 
teachers, including principals, including school boards. But that 
formula doesn't necessarily have as a major function in it--we are 
talking now about secondary and elementary education--the Federal 
Government deciding the purposes, the roles, the curriculums of 
education. Rather, the essence of that formula is that the local 
community, the teachers, the parents, the principals, the school boards 
collaborate to produce quality education.
  So the Federal role in education is narrow, because there could be 
nothing more disruptive or, in my opinion, nothing that would undermine 
education more fundamentally than to move the decision process out of 
the hands of the parents, out of the hands of the teachers, out of the 
hands of the principals to Washington. We would end up with a 
bureaucratic structure which would not respond to the needs of better 
education.

  No, the Federal role is narrow. It should be focused, focused on 
places where it can make an impact, and that is what we tried to do or 
attempted to do. Sometimes we tried to go beyond that. Basically, that 
is what we tried to do. The Federal role has been, for example, in 
postsecondary education. The Federal role is significant, important, 
and appropriate in assisting students in being able to move on past 
their high school years to higher education, and the President's 
initiatives in this area are something that we want to look at because 
they could be a valuable addition.
  The Federal role in the secondary school level has been really 
limited and focused to a couple of specific areas where we felt the 
Federal Government could play a major part--chapter 1, Head Start, and 
special needs students.
  But now the President comes forward and lays out a whole brand new 
set of initiatives, new spending programs, $43 billion in new 
programmatic activity, not pursuing programs that are on the books, but 
setting off on brandnew programs, and you have to ask yourself:

[[Page S984]]

 First, how many of those programs are appropriate to the Federal 
Government and, second, and even more important, is that the best use 
of those dollars, because there is something that is missing here.
  At the local school level, the Federal Government has said you must 
educate the special needs child under Public Law 94-142. This was an 
excellent decision, that we require that the special needs child would 
be able to be educated in the least restrictive, most mainstreamed 
environment, and it has worked well. But when we passed that law, the 
Federal Government also said that we were going to be a partner in that 
education; that we, the Federal Government, because we were insisting 
that the local government undertake this role in the elementary and 
secondary schools, that we, the Federal Government, would pay for 40 
percent of the cost of special education in this country. Today, the 
Federal Government doesn't pay for 40 percent of the cost of special 
education, it pays for approximately 6 percent, and the impact on the 
local school systems of the Federal Government not stepping forward and 
doing what it said it would do to assist in educating special needs 
students has been dramatic.
  We have seen a shift in resources at the local level which has been 
arbitrarily created because of the Federal Government's failure to live 
up to its responsibility.
  In the local schools in my State, for example, the local property 
taxpayer bears the burden of education primarily, and this is true 
throughout New England to a large degree, and many other States, I am 
sure. What happens is that because the Federal Government is unwilling 
to pay the 40 percent it said it would pay for a special needs student, 
the local property taxpayer has to pick up that 40 percent, or the 
difference between what the Federal Government is paying and what it 
said it would pay, which is about 34 percent.
  That has meant that resources which might have been used for the 
average student, maybe to have an extra art class or an extra language 
class or an extra math class, or might have been used for the athletic 
program or for the cultural programs in the school system or might have 
simply been left with the local property taxpayers so that they could 
meet their mortgage payments more easily or their car payments more 
easily, that money is going to educate the special-needs student.
  What we have created is a conflict, an inappropriate, unfair 
conflict, especially to the special-needs student, because what has 
happened is that in many communities where you have children who need 
special assistance, that special assistance is extremely expensive, and 
the parents of the students who are not special-needs students look at 
the parents of the students who are special-needs students and say, 
``Why is your son or daughter getting $10,000, $20,000, $30,000 spent 
on their education annually when my son or daughter is only having 
$3,000 or $4,000 or $5,000 spent on him or her?'' ``It's just not 
fair,'' they are saying.
  So you have this conflict. And it is not right. There is no reason 
why that special-needs student should be separated out and find that 
they are looked upon in a jaundiced way by the community, by the other 
parents, and parents conflicting with parents, the school board 
conflicting with parents.
  The only reason it is occurring is because the Federal Government has 
failed to live up to its obligations on this special education. We said 
we would pay 40 percent of the cost of special education, and instead 
we are paying 6 percent. That has created this conflict at the local 
level, which has placed the special needs student in a really unfair 
and inappropriate position.
  You have to ask yourself, why do we do this? Why does the Federal 
Government do this? Well, it is called an unfunded mandate.
  The first act of the Republican Congress 2 years ago was to pass a 
bill, which I helped author but which was really energized and driven 
by the Senator from Idaho, Senator Kempthorne, which said we will not 
pass unfunded mandates any longer. Unfortunately, this one is already 
on the books. It is the largest unfunded mandate in the education 
arena; maybe outside of a couple of environmental unfunded mandates, 
the largest unfunded mandate in the country. It has had this really 
perverse effect, both of the tax burden on the local communities and 
the States, but, more importantly, the relationship between the 
students in a school system. And it is not right.
  What we have said is we are going to correct this. We said it in the 
unfunded mandate language that we passed. More recently we made a 
commitment, as a Republican Senate anyway, to try to redress this. As 
we closed out the last budget year, we passed the omnibus 
appropriations bill. In that appropriations bill, at my suggestion, but 
with Senator Lott's leadership, we put in $780 million more into 
special education over what had originally been planned. It does not 
get us up to 40 percent. Maybe it got us up to 7 percent from 6 percent 
or 8 percent from 6 percent, but it was a downpayment. For example, in 
New Hampshire an extra $3.5 million coming to special needs kids toward 
the Federal obligation. So we showed we were serious, as a Republican 
Congress.
  Then to confirm and dot the ``i'' and cross the ``t'' and put the 
exclamation point in, we have introduced Senate bill 1. Senate bill 1 
says that we, as a Republican Senate, commit ourselves to getting to 
full funding of the special education accounts in a 7-year period on a 
ramped-up basis, which means that this year we need to add additional 
moneys in the special education accounts.
  Why does this all relate to the President's speech? It relates to the 
President's speech for this one very obvious reason. The President has 
proposed $43 billion in new spending on education. We have not yet seen 
his budget to know where he is going to get this money. We do not know 
what accounts he is going to take the $43 billion from. We have heard 
him say he is going to do this in the context of reaching a balanced 
budget by the year 2002, which is our goal and our purpose.
  Taking that at face value, that he is going to have legitimate 
accounting mechanisms and have made hard decisions for the purposes of 
generating these dollars, it means that a large amount of new dollars 
is being reallocated from some other accounts into the education 
accounts.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator's time has expired.
  Mr. GREGG. I ask unanimous consent for an additional 3 minutes, Mr. 
President.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. GREGG. That means the President is saying, let us spend another 
$43 billion in education, new dollars on new programs. Well, how can he 
say that when we are not paying what we have already got on the books? 
That is the point.
  How can we go out and put on the books new programs for building 
construction, which clearly is not a Federal role to begin with, new 
programs for a variety of different initiatives in education which may 
be only marginally in the role of the Federal Government, brand new 
programs, when we are not paying the cost of special education, when we 
are pitting the special-education students and their parents against 
the average students and parents in a school system, when we have 
created this horrendous situation in the local communities where the 
local school dollars are being drained off to pay for a Federal 
obligation because the Federal Government is not willing to step up to 
the bar and make its payment?

  It is wrong. What we have done is wrong. Yet now we have the 
President suggesting a whole new group of expenditures in education.
  I suggest, before we step down this road of new education 
initiatives, before we start building schools for school districts--
something that is clearly not a Federal role--that we pay for what is a 
Federal role, and that we relieve this problem, and that we take out 
from over the head of the special-needs students the cloud that the 
Federal Government has failed to pay its fair share.
  So I am just putting the Senate on record that I am going to work 
with the Senate leadership and other Senators who I know feel this 
way--and there are a lot of us here who feel this way because S. 1 is a 
consensus bill amongst Republican Senators--to make sure that, before 
we begin any

[[Page S985]]

new education initiatives, we fund the one we have on the books, we 
fund the special-needs program, and we fund it appropriately.
  So every amendment, every proposal that comes to this floor for a new 
education initiative will have with it, I assure you, an amendment 
which will say, special ed is our first obligation, the special-needs 
child is our first obligation. Let us look to that before we start a 
new program. Let us fulfill our obligations, before we start a new 
program, to the special-needs students and to the local taxpayer.
  Mr. President, thank you for your courtesy and for the extra time. I 
yield back my time.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Thank you.
  Under the previous order, the Senator from Wyoming, [Mr. Thomas] or 
his designee, is recognized to speak for up to 60 minutes.
  Mr. THOMAS. Thank you, Mr. President. Let me assure you that I do not 
intend to talk for 60 minutes. However, we do intend to use some time 
as a special order today and will be doing this over a period of time 
to talk about issues that are important, I think, to the American 
people and that are important to this Congress, the issues that we now 
begin to deal with.

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