[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 14 (Thursday, February 6, 1997)]
[House]
[Pages H375-H382]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                            EDUCATION ISSUES

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 7, 1997, the gentleman from New York [Mr. Owens], is recognized 
for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
  Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, the State of the Union Address has come and 
gone, and there are a great deal of items in the State of the Union 
Address which we must consider carefully. I would like to point out 
that the one item that received the greatest amount of applause, a 
standing ovation from both sides of the aisle, was the President's 
proposals that we go forward and improve education in America on a 
bipartisan basis; that the partisanship should stop at the schoolhouse 
door. I am very optimistic that, if nothing else happens in this 105th 
Congress, we will go forward in a bipartisan team approach and we will 
improve education.

[[Page H376]]

  We stood up and we applauded the President, because the President 
offered a great deal of vision in this area. He offers a concrete 
program to follow up on that vision. The President should be applauded. 
We should not do what I hear some cynics doing on television. The 
commentators are dismissing the President's speech as having too much 
rhetoric. He calls on us to understand that we are an indispensable 
Nation and they call that high-blown rhetoric. But I think the 
President is to be applauded for the vision expressed in that 
statement, and for the fact that he is seeking to inspire the Nation. 
Inspiration is invaluable.
  We had a President who had problems with the vision thing, and this 
President has no problem with the vision thing. The vision thing will 
not get us there. The vision thing is not enough alone, but it is 
certainly a good place to begin. We are the indispensable Nation. We 
are the indispensable people on the face of the Earth. That should not 
be stated in a boasting manner, it should be stated with a great sense 
of humility and commitment. If America fails, then the cause of mankind 
on the planet earth also will fail. We should recognize that.
  We should applaud the President for his overall vision. He 
understands regarding the 21st century and he is inspired by that 
thought, that he will take us into the 21st century. We should follow 
that leadership.
  We should applaud the Members of Congress who stood up and applauded 
the President and signaled that they are ready. Democrats and 
Republicans are ready to follow the President. They are ready to take 
their own initiatives in the area of education.
  This has not always been the case. That has not always been the case. 
Certainly for the last 2 years in the 104th Congress Democrats and 
Republicans were going in different directions on education. Never 
before have the differences been so pronounced as they were 2 years ago 
when the Republican majority took over the House of Representatives.
  The differences were so pronounced that the Republican majority was 
demanding that the Department of Education be abolished. They made that 
demand, and they followed up by producing a budget and appropriations 
process in 1995 which gutted most of the education programs in America. 
We were going to have an almost $3.7 billion or just say $4 billion 
cut, in 1995 a $4 billion cut was proposed by the majority party. They 
know the American people forget these things quickly, and they are 
right. Despite the fact that there was a horrendous movement to wipe 
out the role of the Federal Government in education, we fought it to a 
standstill.
  They did not prevail in 1995. The Democratic Party leadership, the 
members of the Committee on Education and the Workforce who are 
Democrats waged all-out war for the minds of the voters of America. We 
went to the people. We appealed to the common sense of the American 
people. The polls were clearly showing all the time that education is 
consistently a high priority with the American people. It is a high 
priority with the voters.
  We let the voters know what was happening here in the Capitol, and 
the common sense of the American people has expressed itself. Not only 
did we not have a cut in 1995, they backed down and there were zero 
cuts in 1995. But a miracle happened in 1996. In the fall of 1996, 
during the appropriations process, and we applaud the Republican 
leadership and the Republican majority for this, they reversed 
themselves totally. Education received one of the largest increases 
that it has received in a long time, a $4 billion increase, almost a $4 
billion increase, instead of a $4 billion cut.
  Mr. Speaker, I applaud the common sense of the American people. I 
congratulate the Congress, especially the members of the majority, for 
listening. I applaud the Democrats for keeping the issue alive, for 
going to the American people and appealing to their common sense. I 
applaud the members of the Committee on Education and the Workforce, 
Democrats and Republicans. The members of the Committee on Education 
and the Workforce are not the most popular people in this Congress. Our 
status is generally very low. In the time that I have been here, for 
many years we have had to beg people to serve on the Committee on 
Education and the Workforce. There have been some Members who have 
consistently been there, both Republicans and Democrats. I want to 
applaud them for their consistency, I want to applaud them for their 
fortitude.
  The cynics told me when I got here almost 15 years ago, they told me, 
do not get on the Committee on Education and the Workforce. They tell 
freshmen that all the time. Do not get on the Committee on Education 
and the Workforce, it is not a money committee.
  You might say, why am I bringing this up, because everybody's mind is 
on campaign finance reform. Let us see the impact of campaign finance 
reform on the education issue. There are very good minds and very 
brilliant people who have refused to join the Committee on Education 
and the Workforce because in fact they are told you cannot raise any 
money. It is not a money committee.
  Children of America do not have any political action committees. The 
unions, the teachers unions, the education-represented unions, they 
have been blown up and made to appear to be bogeymen and monsters, but 
they are very small players when it comes to the financing of political 
campaigns. So there are some people who allowed themselves to be swayed 
and not join the Committee on Education and the Workforce because of 
the fact that it is not a money committee.
  I am upset because of the fact that we only have one New Yorker on 
the committee. I am the only New Yorker on the committee. For a long 
time I was the only New Yorker. Now I have been joined by the 
gentlewoman from Long Island [Mrs. McCarthy]. I want to welcome Mrs. 
McCarthy. And say now we have two New Yorkers on the committee. The 
people of New York should understand what I am saying. In the future, 
let us make certain that we have always a good representation on the 
Committee on Education and the Workforce. I applaud people who, like 
myself, have been there for years, and I applaud the newcomers, both 
Republicans and Democrats.
  I want to send a message in this statement that as we go forward to 
seriously improve education in America we do not want the barbarians to 
come in, the opportunists to come in and try to dictate what should be 
done. It is the people on the Committee on Education and the Workforce 
who have the experience and knowhow, they have been with this problem a 
long time. Let us at least be willing to follow the leadership in the 
Congress of the people on the Committee on Education and the Workforce.
  We applaud the Republicans for their sudden conversion last year. I 
am not here to make a great commentary today about the outcome of the 
election, but it was a stroke of genius, the gentleman from Georgia 
[Mr. Gingrich], whoever fashioned the reelection strategy of the 
Republicans, it was a stroke of genius to reverse themselves on 
education, to give a $4 billion increase, and to go out and campaign as 
the friends of education.
  They got the message that many of my Democratic leadership colleagues 
did not get. They got the message, and as we know, many of the contests 
for reelection were won or lost on the basis of 1 percentage point, 1 
percentage point.
  I am not going to stand here and claim that the education issue was 
the determining factor always in every election, but I will make the 
claim that in a number of those elections, the position or the 
understanding of the candidate about the issues prevailing in 
education, the ability to articulate it and communicate it to the 
voters, appealed to their common sense and they got votes, so it made a 
difference in many of those elections.
  I applaud the genius of the Republican majority for seeing that they 
had to make that 360-degree turn. Now I hope that we will play no more 
games. I hope it is clearly understood now that education is a high 
priority, that education is a national security issue. The voters with 
their common sense understand that, that when we consider the greatness 
of America, there is no component in our national effort as important 
as education. We have always understood this. This is not something 
new.

[[Page H377]]

  The people out there across America have always considered education 
important. They have always considered it a local matter only, that 
primarily the States and the localities should deal with it. Common 
sense dictates that it is not working; that as the world has become 
more complex, as society has become more complex, the national effort 
and what we do on a national basis in education becomes important.
  Those nations which have some kind of national guidance are producing 
students far superior to ours. We are not going to duplicate and 
imitate those nations because we do not necessarily want the kinds of 
emphases they have, but we should at least have the common sense to see 
that some central involvement is necessary.
  If we have maximum central involvement in America, it would still 
only be a small part of the whole situation. Right now the amount of 
money expended for education by the Federal Government is really less 
than 8 percent. The total amount of money spent on education by the 
Federal Government, the State governments, and the local governments, 
is close to $350 billion. If you consider higher education and all 
education efforts under one umbrella, the Federal Government is 
responsible for only 8 percent of that, less than 8 percent. Large 
amounts of that go into higher education, so local education in the 
elementary and secondary education area is minuscule. If we increased 
the Federal involvement and the expenditures by 25-percent, we are 
still only slightly involved, compared to the local and State 
governments.
  If you had 25 percent involvement of the Federal Government against 
75 percent involvement of the State and local governments, and if you 
translated the 25 percent involvement of the Federal Government into 
Federal control or attempts at Federal control, we would only have 25-
percent of the votes. If there was a vote being taken on education in 
any locality, and the Federal involvement versus the State and local 
involvement was a consideration, the State and local governments would 
have the decision-making power. So there is no threat. There is no 
threat that the Federal Government would ever take over education.
  There is a great need that we have a central area of resource 
division, a central place for research and development, a central place 
where we can come and collect statistics and share experiences, so that 
what is working in Oklahoma can be made to work in my district in 
Brooklyn; what is working in Florida can be made to work somewhere in 
Iowa. Iowa, by the way, they have a tremendous education system, and 
they use telecommunications. Some of the States like Iowa and Idaho are 
way ahead of places like New York State, especially New York City.
  We applaud the fact that there was a turnaround and an end to this 
hysteria which was going forward this time 2 years ago, a hysteria 
which called for the elimination of the Department of Education and a 
drastic reduction in Federal funds for education.
  I want to applaud particularly the chairman of the Committee on 
Education and the Workforce, although he is a member of the other 
party, because they were in control. The gentleman from Pennsylvania 
[Mr. Goodling], played a major role in this turnaround. He knew what 
had to be done when the time came, when the conversion within the 
Republican party, within the leadership, when it came.
  Suddenly they understood that they had to follow the common sense of 
the American people. They needed somebody there with the good sense to 
tell them how to do it. They needed somebody there to tell them where 
to make the increase. So the $4 billion of increase for education is 
not just money being thrown at the problem. Chairman Goodling and his 
colleagues who were there at the table made some wise decisions, and I 
applaud the work of Chairman Goodling at that moment, that magic moment 
in the history of the Republican positionmaking on education.

                              {time}  1045

  I applaud the National Education Association, I applaud the American 
Federation of Teachers, I applaud the United Federation of Teachers in 
New York City. They are making great contributions day to day in this 
whole policy debate.
  There is a healthy dynamism in America. The school boards, the 
associations, the various organizations that are going forward on 
education, they all ought to be applauded. We have averted a disaster. 
A major disaster in policymaking has been averted. We are at the brink, 
we were about to go over the cliff. You know, we had a serious 
situation.
  Two years ago at this time the former Secretary of Education, Mr. 
Lamar Alexander, and the former Secretary of Education, Mr. Bennett, 
Alexander and Bennett both, who were former Education Secretaries, they 
both came into a hearing before the Committee on Economic and 
Educational Opportunities and they both testified that we should 
abolish the Department of Education. We were that close to the brink. 
We were that close to the brink. The majority party said we should 
abolish the Department of Education.
  Now, we are at a stage where both parties rise in thunderous applause 
when the President says let us go forward without bipartisan obstacles 
in the area of our quest to improve education in America. So this is a 
day to celebrate. We should all be saying hallelujah. This is a time to 
celebrate. There is a dynamism out there among the American people. The 
common sense of the American voters has prevailed. Our system is 
working. We are going in the right direction.
  I hear the critics every day now. They say, well, the President's 
proposals on education, they are nickel and dime matters. And I agree 
with that. I am ready to do far more. But let us first catch our 
breath. Let us first understand how close we came to disaster and then 
let us go forward in the right direction.
  Now, we have a chance to resolve concrete problems. We have a chance 
to begin to correct the savage inequalities. There are savage 
inequalities in our education system. There are schools and school 
systems that are in a state of emergency.
  The New York City school system is in a state of emergency. The New 
York City school system at the opening of school in September 1996 did 
not have places for 91,000 children to sit. There were no adequate 
places, no desks, no places for 91,000 children to sit.
  You say, well, that was a state of crisis in September 1996. If you 
read the papers in New York, if you listen to the mayor of New York, 
you would think that the crisis is over, but we have never heard, where 
did they find seats for the 91,000 youngsters?
  For days now in the New York City papers there have been articles 
running about the mayor's plan to have 1,000 youngsters, 1,000 students 
moved from the public schools to the parochial schools. There is a 
great brouhaha. And I applaud this. I am not being negative about it.
  There is a great deal of discussion about financing. Private industry 
is coming forward, business is coming forward to finance the tuition 
for poor youngsters to go to these parochial and private schools, but 
it is only 1,000. One thousand. Any sophomore in high school would ask 
the obvious question: Where are the other 90,000? Where are the other 
90,000 going? If you had 91,000 that had no places to sit, what 
happened to the 90,000 if you are only dealing with 1,000? What are you 
doing at this point?
  Well, some of us know that they are sitting in bathrooms in some 
cases. They are sitting in closets, they are sitting in halls, they are 
sitting in the assembly auditoriums, they are sitting in cafeterias, 
cafeterias that are overworked because there are so many students in 
some schools in my district that they have three lunch periods.
  Can you imagine having lunch at 11 o'clock in the morning, 10:30, 11 
in the morning? Having lunch. You just had breakfast, but they have to 
have an early lunch for some kids because they have to have three lunch 
periods because there are so many youngsters in the school. And they 
are in a school that was not built for 2,000 youngsters. They were 
built for half that number.
  So where are they putting them all? They are putting them in places 
which make it difficult to learn. How can you learn if you are sitting 
in some cramped closet, if you are sitting in a bathroom, if you are 
sitting in a hallway, if you are in the general assembly

[[Page H378]]

room with several other classes, if you are in the cafeteria with 
several other classes? But this is the state of emergency that faces 
New York City at this point.
  So I am here to praise the President for his rhetoric and his vision. 
I am here to applaud the Congress for responding positively to that, 
but I am also here to praise the President for his concrete proposals 
that will address the emergencies in situations like this all across 
America.
  New York City is in trouble and most of the big city schools are in 
trouble. Most of the big city, inner city schools are in trouble. There 
is a correlation between the difficulties and the state of emergency in 
the big city, inner city schools and the racial composition. Racism in 
America is not dead, it is still very much a factor in decisionmaking.
  Decisions are made by people who are not the parents of the children 
in these inner city schools. The people who are making the decisions at 
the city council and the mayoral level in many cases are not reflective 
of the populations of the schools. Certainly the people who make the 
big decisions at the State level are not reflective.
  What you have across America in several big cities is still a rule 
which says you finance schools on the basis of the State gives aid, as 
they do in New York State, on the basis of attendance and not 
enrollment. State aid is given on the basis of the number of children 
attending school on a specific number of days where the schools are 
monitored.
  Now, that is a swindle, and every big State with big cities across 
the country, they tied into that swindle at one time, some States 
having changed it. It is a swindle.
  It is a way to take money away from inner city, urban schools which 
have large populations of children but they do not attend school 
regularly. If you catch them in the attendance game, and you have 
certain days where you test, you are going to find the attendance in 
the inner city, urban schools is not as great in relation to the number 
of youngsters who are eligible to attend; of the number of youngsters 
who are a certain school age, it is not as great as it is in the 
surrounding suburbs of the big cities. It is not as great as it is in 
the rural areas of the States.
  So for a long time cities like New York have been swindled out of 
their fair share of State aid. For a long time the expenditure per 
pupil in the big cities has been far less than State expenditures in 
the suburbs and in the surrounding rural areas. So it is not by 
accident that you have a state of emergency; that you do not have a 
building program which would keep up with the growth of the youthful 
population in New York City.
  The overall population of New York City has not jumped. It might have 
gone down slightly. Now it is on the roll, going up again. We fluctuate 
between 7\1/2\ and 8 million people in New York City as a whole.
  But we clearly understood the demographics in terms of age, and for 
some time now we have understood that there was a burgeoning youthful 
population. We understood that even before the impact of large numbers 
of immigrants. When we had the immigrants coming in with children and 
we looked at the statistics in terms of age, we knew for some time that 
New York City would have a space problem, a facility problem; that we 
would not be able to give a seat to the young people who were coming 
into the schools if we did not do something.
  We had a chancellor named Ramon Cortines. Ramon Cortines laid out a 
plan for a building and repair program over 5 to 10 years, and he had a 
price tag on that plan. And Ramon Cortines was run out of town by our 
mayor. Mayor Giuliano browbeat, harassed, and pushed Ramon Cortines 
until he finally left town. He said, ``I give up.''
  When he left town there was no more discussion of the plan to 
renovate, repair, and rebuild schools in New York City. And then in 
September 1996 the bomb fell. The bomb fell and we understood that we 
had a problem of 91,000 children.
  This is hard for most of America to comprehend. Most of the school 
districts across America do not have 91,000 children in the whole 
school district. Most school districts in America have trouble getting 
up to 25,000. So it is hard to comprehend.
  But stop and think about the fact that there are 8 million people 
approximately in New York City. There are a million youngsters in the 
school system of New York. We have 60,000 teachers, and most of the 
school districts across America do not have 60,000 pupils. We have 
60,000 teachers. We have a million young people. We have more than a 
thousand school buildings.
  So you can have a situation where 91,000 out of a million do not have 
a place to sit if you do not plan properly, if you play politics with 
education, if you drive the superintendent, the chancellor we call him 
there--it is a huge system. We have superintendents at the local level. 
We have 32 local school boards, 32 local superintendents, then we have 
the central board of education and we have the chancellor who presides 
over all of this. It is necessary in a complex city like New York.
  I am not here to criticize the structure. I am here to criticize the 
fact that at the local level, where it had to be first, the mayor of 
the City of New York blundered politically, mightily. The same 
mentality that was driving the majority here in the fall of 1995 drove 
the city hall Republicans to drive Ramon Cortines out of town.
  So here we are now in February. We had a crisis in September. What 
happened to the crisis? It has not been resolved. I want to applaud the 
United Federation of Teachers for going to court. They brought a 
lawsuit against the city and said, look, these crowded classrooms, too 
many students in one class, no proper place to sit others, it is 
against the negotiated contract where certain conditions are supposed 
to be provided. It is not safe for children.
  They mentioned very much that you are at the level where you are not 
just talking about an atmosphere that is not conducive to learning, you 
are at a level where you are talking about an atmosphere where it is 
unsafe for children. You are at a level where, if we really enforced 
the health code properly, you would probably have to close down some of 
the classrooms. There are too many bodies, too many youngsters in some 
of these schools.
  So when the President proposes some concrete proposal like his 
seventh proposal in his education proposal in his State of the Union 
message, ``We cannot expect our children to raise themselves up in 
schools that are literally falling down. With the student population at 
an all-time high and record numbers of school buildings falling into 
disrepair, this has now become a serious national concern,'' the 
schools need an emergency effort.
  ``Therefore,'' the President said, ``my budget includes a new 
initiative: $5 billion to help communities finance $20 billion of 
school construction over the next 4 years.'' He has a $5 billion 
program which deals with the immediate emergency and he has a larger 
program which deals with additional construction.
  I do not know the terms of this program. I suspect that the President 
and I may not agree on the terms. We need outright grants, Mr. 
President. We need outright grants. I want the whole Congress to know 
that we cannot have the meaning of the emergency be contingent upon the 
money available at the local level or the money available at the State 
level.
  If you have a crisis, you need the money. If you have a crisis, a 
disaster, you should react. New York is in a state of education crisis. 
When California has an earthquake, when California has mud slides or 
hurricanes, when Florida has hurricanes, when the Midwest has floods, 
we respond to them as disasters and we give the full amount. We do not 
say, ``We will give you 90 percent funding to cover the cost.''
  We gave California more than $8 billion to deal with the earthquake 
and related disasters. We gave the Midwest nearly $6 billion to deal 
with the flood and related disasters. We gave Florida nearly $6 billion 
to deal with the hurricane disaster. We deal with natural disasters. 
Why can we not deal with a disaster that has been made by blundering of 
elected officials and for whatever reason?
  The children should not suffer because we have had a crisis 
situation, exemplified by the fact that 91,000 youngsters had no place 
to sit on opening school day. If the leadership of New York City is not 
able to come to our rescue, if we do not have it there, then

[[Page H379]]

let us consider it the way we consider the emergencies in Haiti, 
Bosnia. We have a local leadership crisis. The leadership cannot rise 
to the occasion. They are not dealing with the emergency.

                              {time}  1100

  It is February now and they are still talking about the placement of 
1,000 youngsters in private schools and nobody is concerned about the 
other 90,000. Thank you, Mr. President, for your initiative on 
education construction, on construction, school construction. We look 
forward to working with you on that.
  As I said before, I want to applaud the fact that we are going in the 
right direction. I am talking about the education initiative of 
President Clinton as exemplified by his State of the Union Address, and 
I want to talk to all of the cynical voters out there in America who 
think, who say, and really believe that politicians do not really make 
a great contribution to our society on a systematic basis. That is 
sheer nonsense.
  We have term limits. Part of the philosophy behind term limits is 
that anybody can do this job. Anybody can be a politician. There is 
nothing serious at stake here. That is a dangerous, wrongheaded notion. 
Most dangerous. You do not ask for a surgeon who is new and fresh, you 
do not ask for a lawyer who is new and fresh, you do not ask for 
anybody in any responsible endeavor who is new. Newness is not a virtue 
anywhere else, except in politics suddenly. Suddenly you say, new 
people coming in once every 6 years and that is the answer to our 
political logjam, our gridlock, and corruption. It is not the answer.
  There is a need for continuity, and in the area of education, 
continuity, political wisdom, institutional memory, the participation 
of elected officials at every level, all of that has brought us to this 
moment in history where we have averted a major disaster in educational 
policy making and we have launched a new crusade for a bipartisan 
effort to improve education.
  This is a major, pivotal, landmark place that we stand in. We did not 
come here by accident. I am sure God had a lot to do with it, but we 
have step by step as individuals, as human beings, brought ourselves to 
this place. Republicans and Democrats have to be given the credit. If 
President Reagan had never launched the study of the crisis in American 
education and we did not come back with a study, ``A Nation at Risk,'' 
we would have never had President Bush launching America 2000. 
President Bush launched America 2000 where he set forth the goals that 
we should strive for in education.
  Those are the same goals that President Clinton is also espousing 
now. He has added a few, but those same six, the first six, are still 
there. President Bush launched this. He took it to the Governors' 
conference. Among those politicians, those Governors, who are 
politicians, was Bill Clinton. Bill Clinton endorsed the idea then. 
There has been a continuity. The Governor of Colorado, Governor Romer, 
has been one of the key factors all along in this process. The 
Governors made a decision about standards. All the way back under 
George Bush, we were talking about trying to move toward national 
standards; national standards, not Federal standards; national 
standards developed by the appropriate people, and no State would have 
to automatically participate in those national standards. The national 
curriculum and the national standards are voluntary, State by State. 
That has always been there, from Bush to Clinton, and it prevails right 
now.
  They called for national testing. It has always been there. Bush, 
Clinton. In Bush's America 2000 plan, it was there. It continues under 
Clinton. There has been a continuity under all the politicians. There 
have been some disagreements about the pace, there has been 
disagreement about the emphasis. Under Bush we had a greater emphasis 
on choice and vouchers, and it threw a lot of the other parts of his 
program off track. But the other parts were there.
  I was the chairman of the Subcommittee on Select Education at the 
time that President Bush launched America 2000. We were engaged in a 
reauthorization of the Office of Educational Research and Improvement. 
We prepared a report at that time which is entitled Education 2005, the 
Role of Research and Development in an Overwhelming Campaign for 
Education in America.
  This was issued in August 1991. The Role of Research and Development 
in an Overwhelming Campaign for Education in America. We called it 
Education 2005. That was 1991. We looked at the situation and said over 
a 15-year period, we should strive to achieve the goals set by America 
2000, and we talked about specific ways to implement those goals, and 
we talked about the role of educational research and improvement in 
those goals. The process of implementing them had to be buttressed by 
research and development.
  It is amazing how many of the things that are contained in this 
report, how many recommendations, have gone forward. It is amazing how 
the Congressional Black Caucus budget, which was put on the floor in 
1995 and met the requirement of being balanced by the year 2002, we met 
the requirement. We were told you cannot bring your budget to the floor 
unless the budget shows how you are going to have a balanced budget in 
2002, and they thought they had us stymied.
  How can the Congressional Black Caucus which wants to recommend more 
money for social programs, more money for education, Head Start, 
Medicare, Medicaid, how can they come to the floor with a balanced 
budget? We came to the floor with a balanced budget. We showed where 
you can get the revenue to do what you want to do. You can get the 
revenue by not taxing families in America. In fact, we called for a tax 
decrease, and I intend to push for an even greater call among the 
members of the Congressional Black Caucus and the members of the 
Democratic caucus for a tax decrease. The people in America, all of the 
families and individuals deserve a decrease in their taxes.
  The problem in America is that we have a situation where we did a 
topsy-turvy thing. In 1944 we reversed the way income taxes are 
collected proportionally. In 1944 we had a situation where only 27 
percent of the income taxes collected in America came from families and 
individuals, and almost 44 percent came from corporations. We reversed 
that.
  In 1983 under Ronald Reagan, the contribution of corporations to the 
income tax went down to 6 percent while the individual taxes leaped up 
to 44 percent of the total. So that reversal is the problem.
  What we need in America is a great cut in the taxes for individuals 
and families and an increase in the taxes on corporations, because 
corporations are where they are making the money. It is like Slick 
Willie Sutton said when asked, ``Why do you rob banks?'' His answer was 
an obvious one: ``That's where the money is.''
  The money is in the corporations that are going forward. Wall Street 
has the biggest boom in its history. We have 10 percent of the 
population of America who derive tremendous amounts of income from the 
corporations, making far more than they ever made in their lives.
  Now is the time for a tax cut for average American families and you 
can balance that off by getting rid of corporate welfare, some of the 
loopholes we have which give subsidies to corporations, and also 
raising corporate taxes. I am not here today to talk about that.
  But we balanced the budget. The Congressional Black Caucus balanced 
the budget. My point here is that the Congressional Black Caucus 
proposed in the spring of 1995 when the budget was introduced, we 
proposed in this budget that you increase the funds for education by 25 
percent. We showed how you can increase the funds for education by 25 
percent. We proposed those increases.
  The President's budget that is being offered here this week proposes 
to increase the funding for education by 20 percent. There are some 
people who are members of the Congressional Black Caucus who have said, 
this is a futile effort; why do we even prepare a budget and take it to 
the floor? There are some people out there among our constituents who 
say, why do you bother? You go to the floor, you get 57, 58 votes for 
the Congressional Black Caucus budget.

[[Page H380]]

  Here is the proof. We offered the vision. We offered a vision. It has 
happened over and over again, that what appears in a Congressional 
Black Caucus budget in one year, 5 years later is almost fully adopted.
  We are going at a faster pace now. What appeared in our budget in the 
spring of 1995, we had a tiny fraction of the adopting of that in the 
fall of 1996 by the Republican majority. Some of the increases that we 
asked for in the Congressional Black Caucus budget, the Republican 
majority gave them to us in 1996.
  Now we have a President who is calling for a 20 percent increase. 
Twenty percent. The Congressional Black Caucus budget called for 25 
percent. Twenty percent. Where are the increases going to go that the 
President proposes?
  Head Start. We called for full funding of Head Start. The President 
does not propose full funding by 2000 but he is proposing that we fund 
at least 1 million youngsters across the country by 2000. Okay, Mr. 
President, you are going in the right direction. You have accelerated 
your speed. We applaud that.
  We proposed that Pell grants be increased. The President is proposing 
an increase in Pell grants. I could go right down the line. We have it 
in the Congressional Black Caucus budget for 1995 and 1996. It is not a 
futile gesture.
  I hope that voters out there who are cynical about this whole process 
understand one of the reasons America is a great country is because 
that boiling that takes place, the contention, the debate, all of it 
does produce positive results.
  It takes a long time sometimes. But as long as you are moving in the 
right direction, do not abandon the process, do not give up. Our 
democracy is working. God moves in mysterious ways. I cannot figure out 
the mystery. I wish the Democrats would regain control of the House and 
less mystery. But the movement in mysterious ways should not stop us 
from going forward and being positive. On this one issue, we can 
demonstrate all together, both the voters and the Members of Congress, 
everybody at every decision making level, demonstrate that America can 
go forward and build the best school system in the world.
  Why bother to do that? If we are truly what the President says, the 
indispensable Nation, then one of the ways we are indispensable is by 
setting models, being the role model for the rest of the world.
  H. G. Wells talked about education; history is a race between 
education and catastrophe. It is still true. If we do not have 
education, if we do not go beyond technological education, which is 
very important because it improves ways to release people from having 
to struggle to make a living so their minds are free and you can get 
the opportunity for education, it generates the revenue.
  Capitalism and technology. Capitalism has shown, and we ought to end 
that debate. We ought to end the debate on what the best economic 
system is. For the Chinese and for the Americans, for the Australians 
and for the Russians, for everybody, capitalism is the best system, 
proven by experimentation. Proven. They say in social areas you cannot 
really prove anything, and I am using the word ``proof'' loosely. Only 
in science and math can you prove things conclusively. I think we have 
enough experience to say capitalism is the best system. It is the best 
system because it understands human nature, it understands the need for 
incentives, it understands the danger of bureaucracy, the danger of 
smugness, the danger of people who are very inspired and very 
enthusiastic but when they get in a certain situation, the lethargy 
sets in.
  You have got to have the ferment of capitalism, the push. But there 
are dangers in capitalism. Capitalism now must be accepted as the best 
economic system. We have to go forward to refine capitalism and make 
capitalism work in tandem with democracy.
  What is campaign finance reform all about? It is about keeping 
capitalism in check. Do not let the people who have the money take over 
the running of the Government through their campaign financing. It is 
as simple as that. We have laissez faire. We have always said leave 
business alone, leave the economic system to its own dynamic process, 
it will work itself out, working out the marketplace process.
  The marketplace has been left alone, very much so, in America. We 
have set an example for the rest of the world. Even China, with a 
Communist government, is building a capitalistic economic system. So 
they understand that.
  The problem is that laissez faire has to work both ways. You cannot 
have the capitalists, power accumulated, try to take over the 
Democratic processes. You have to have a balance. So checks and 
balances are necessary. Capitalism is king. We want to go forward and 
show the world that it is the best system.
  Education is a vital part of keeping both capitalism working and 
democracy working. In this complex society, the Nation which learns 
best how to educate human beings, the Nation which learns best how to 
develop its human resources and how to maximize its human potential, 
wasting nobody, allowing everybody to add value, every individual can 
add value by education. The mechanic who works on the airplane is as 
valuable as the pilot who flies it. I do not worry, when I fly, about 
the training that the pilot got. I know that the most expensive 
training in America is given to airline pilots. The cost of the 
training that they go through is the most expensive in America. I worry 
about the training that the mechanic got who put the nut in the right 
place. I worry about the training that the man who lubricated the thing 
got, that he used the right pump. I worry about him knowing his job.

                              {time}  1115

  Everybody in a complex society like ours has to know what they are 
doing. They add, you add value to them at every level and neglect 
nobody and therefore, you know, that is why the present system is so 
good. He talks about everybody being educated beyond high school, the 
opportunity for 2 more years, and I hope that we are going to be smart 
enough not to combine, you know, confine that to academic education; 
you know, the plumbers, the electricians, the computer specialists.
  There is a whole lot of people do not need to pass academic tests and 
who can do a great job, and we should not rule them out just because 
they cannot pass academic tests. We should not have these rigid rules 
which doom a certain portion of our population to unemployment and deny 
them the chance to earn a very good income.
  There are many people who are plumbers who, as you know, earn far 
higher salaries than teachers. There are many people who are plumbers 
and carpenters and contractors who never went to school, went to 
college, who know how to operate a business far better than college 
graduates. There are many geniuses that have developed in our times, 
the last 20, 30 years, who did not finish college. I do not know how 
far Bill Gates got. He had a lot of folks around him who did not 
finish. The guy who developed Federal Express in my hometown of 
Memphis, you know, his professors told him the idea would not work.
  We know in America that academic education is important, but let us 
not get you caught in the trap where we devalue the education.
  In New York City we have a problem with Apex Institute, came to me 
recently, said, ``Look, we got a situation now where they are setting 
some new criteria and people who used to come in because they have the 
aptitude in order do the job, they got to pass a written test now. They 
have to pass a written test. They can't get in here and take a one-year 
course or a 6-month course which will allow them to go out and get 
their license in refrigeration or get their license in auto mechanics 
work, you know.''
  So education adds value. The nation that learns how to educate the 
population, how to get the maximum development out of its population 
will be the nation that leads the world in the future.
  You might say, well, you know there is some people just cannot be 
educated. Well, the challenge is there. Everybody can be educated. Make 
the assumption. We have in America every kind of population you can 
imagine. We have in America every educational challenge that you can 
imagine. If you meet the challenges in America, you can go anywhere in 
the world and say: ``Look, we

[[Page H381]]

have the model. People have problems with language, the bilingual 
education problem. We have solved the problem and certainly gone a long 
ways toward dealing with the problem. We have the problem of low-income 
people who have no vision, no hope, who are beat down so until they 
need to be motivated, who have no previous history of education, the 
human capital that is in every college, every home where you have 
parents with college graduates.''
  What we take for granted, people who graduate from college, they 
bring to their home human capital that their children feed into long 
before the child ever goes to school, that even as they go to school 
they are also piggybacking off the knowledge and the culture of the 
parents. What if there are large numbers out there whose parents have 
never gone to college or never gone to high school? What about the 
descendents of slaves, who for 232 years had a deficit accumulating? 
Nobody got an education. States passed laws which forbade teaching 
reading to slaves.
  So you got a deficit of 232 years in the population of the 
descendents of slaves like myself. Not only do you have a deficit 
economically where we did not have a chance to accumulate any capital 
because our parents, our forefathers could not own property. So we 
cannot pass that down, and rich, you know wealth, in America, a large 
part of it is money that is passed on from one generation to another. 
We are a group of people, the descendants of slaves, who did not have 
the benefit of having that wealth passed on to us. So we are the least 
wealthy in terms of capital.
  Even the black middle class, by the way, which has closed the gap in 
terms of income, earning power, they have a great gap between black 
middle class and the white middle class in terms of wealth because 
wealth is defined in the terms of assets. They have property and stocks 
and bonds, et cetera. Many other people in America who have those 
assets, property, stocks and bonds, inherited, had a large portion of 
it passed on by parents.
  There have been a couple of books written about this; that is not on 
my topic for today.
  I want to close out back to education. What I am trying to say is 
that if you fully address the education problem in America, if you try 
to educate everybody, if you meet every challenge with every group, 
problems related to income, problems related to language, problems 
related to ethnic background, meet every problem, you will be in a 
position to offer solutions to the rest of the world. But more 
important than that, your population will be functioning fully because 
the future belongs to those who can master technology and also master 
political civility, law and order. You can have a nation which is 
advanced technologically which destroys itself because it has not 
mastered civility, political civility, law and order, democracy is not 
working.
  We have seen a great example, the great giant Soviet Union collapsed. 
In the great giant Soviet Union, now the parts of it, many people are 
beggars. It is pitiful to watch people with Ph.D.'s, people with high 
degrees, great deal of knowledge who cannot find jobs in the Soviet 
Union.
  The head of the Soviet Union nuclear program, the man in charge of 
all the nuclear programs in the Soviet Union, the man who helped as a 
young person to produce the hydrogen bomb, who caught up with American 
technology, that man recently committed suicide. You know why he 
committed suicide? Because the people in his institute had not been 
paid in many months, and finally when the Soviet Government sent the 
payment they only sent 1 month's pay. He gave up on the whole system. 
He took a gun to his head and he shot himself.
  That is where a great nation with great technological advances, the 
Soviets, put a space ship up there long before we did, the Soviets have 
the record in terms of longevity in space, they have marvelous kinds of 
inventions of many kinds. Our space and technology program now is using 
the Soviet program to improve itself. We are in contract with the 
Soviets on a lot of engines and various gadgets which improve the 
ability of our space program to perform.
  But that great advanced technological society has collapsed 
economically because first it collapsed politically. They had closed 
door, central command decision making, they lost touch with the people, 
common sense went out the window, folks sitting there saying destroy 
this and destroy that; look only to the expenditures for war, and they 
collapsed.
  Before the Soviet Union we had the German empire, Hitler's Third 
Reich which was as technologically advanced as any society ever in the 
history of the world. Not only did Hitler's Third Reich collapse, but 
before it collapsed it produced a horror never before seen on the face 
of the Earth.
  So we need education for technological improvements, we need 
education for national security, but if we do not educate our populace 
in ways which guarantee that they are able to handle the complexities 
of democracy then we are going to find ourselves, no matter how 
technologically advanced we are, going down to doom.
  If the people of America continue not to come out to vote, as they 
did in the last election where you had a decrease in the number of 
people who came out to vote--Presidential elections are the most 
important elections we hold. If we do not get people out on 
Presidential election, you know you are really in serious trouble. 
Well, we saw a decline in the number of people coming out to vote. The 
percentage went up.
  The only place where you had a pronounced increase in the number of 
people who came out to vote was in black male voters, and of course 
they had an easy jump because of so few before, but nevertheless they 
increased. They see a threat in the kinds of policies that are being 
promulgated. In the black community overall there was an increase, 
small percentage but there was an increase. It did not go down. They 
see a threat in the kinds of policies being promulgated.
  So the democracy is working. Will it work fast enough? And in the 
long run what about the problem of all of the people who are better off 
who did not bother to go out to vote? The great middle class, second to 
the middle class, did not vote, the working class did not vote. What is 
going to happen? Unless we have better education our system is going to 
fall apart. So we need education for that reason, too.
  Telecommunications can play a major role in this education process. 
The President has proposed that, among his proposals, we go forward and 
educate our population partially using telecommunications, educational 
technology.
  Why is it so difficult to understand that the Army, the Navy, the 
Marines, they have been using it for a long time. Government 
bureaucracy has been using it for a long time, simple use of videos. 
You do not have to get into computerized instruction, but there are a 
thousand ways being developed in industry, in the military, that we can 
apply in our school system, especially in areas where children have 
great difficulty and see an increase in education performance.
  I am going to close by again going back to my beginning, where I 
applauded the President and I did not applaud some people in my own 
district. We have a thing called Central Brooklyn NetWatch, which is 
going to wire the schools in our district. We are going to wire the 
schools because we had NetDay on September 21, and NetDay, which is a 
day where volunteers come out and wire the schools. There is a national 
pool where they buy the equipment and the supplies. You can get for 
$500 enough to wire the school, one school. The wiring definition is 
you wire five classrooms plus the library.
  Now, in New York City we did not have very many wires. The Governor 
of New York was in charge of the Net. He announced that 3,000 schools 
in the State were wired, but I could not find one in my district, and 
my district has 70 elementary and junior high schools and 10 high 
schools, and only one is wired. Then I looked for all New York City and 
very few were wired there.
  So we came up with NetWatch. This is a group who signed these to 
technology. We are trying to wire schools in our district on an ongoing 
basis in harmony with the President's program.
  But I want to conclude on a rhetorical note, you might say, or a 
poetic note. The poet who recited the poem at the President's 
inauguration was a tremendously profound man, was a profound poem, and 
I congratulate him.

[[Page H382]]

 But I was a little worried about the style of it, and I think that in 
the future Presidents ought to commission a whole group of poets in 
different styles, and one may be chosen of course but we ought to 
publish a book of different styles of celebrating America, and I choose 
to celebrate America in the following way:

                          Indispensable Nation

     Under God
     The indivisible indispensable Nation
     Guardian of the pivotal generation
     Most fortunate of all the lands
     For a brief moment
     The whole world we hold in our hands
     Internet sorcery computer magic
     Tiny spirits make opportunity tragic
     We are the indispensable Nation
     Guardian of the pivotal generation
     Millionaires must rise to see the need
     Or smother beneath their splendid greed
     Capitalism is king
     With potential to be Pope
     Banks hoard gold
     That would fertilize universal hope
     Jefferson, Lincoln, Roosevelt, King
     Make your star spangled the legacy sting
     Dispatch your ghosts
     To bring us global visions
     Indispensable leaders
     Need profound decisions
     Internet sorcery computer
     Tiny spirits make opportunity tragic
     We are the indispensable Nation
     Guardian of the pivotal generation
     With liberty and justice for the world
     Under God.

                          ____________________