[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 31 (Wednesday, March 12, 1997)]
[House]
[Pages H933-H939]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
THE CASE FOR SAVING AMERICA'S FAMILIES
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of
January 7, 1997, the gentleman from Michigan [Mr. Hoekstra] is
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, tonight I want to share with my colleagues
a project that we have been working on for a number of months. We call
it the Case for Saving America's Families.
In this project, we are attempting to build a case for government
that does only what government can and should do. Too often in
Washington we have begun to ask Washington, this city, to do things
that are better done at a State and local level and in many cases are
better done not by bureaucracies and bureaucrats in Washington but are
better done by families, by nonprofit faith-based institutions or by
the private enterprise system. We have asked this city to make too many
decisions that it is ill-equipped to make and that could be made much
better in other parts of America.
We have to look at this Washington bureaucracy. This street going
down over on the right side used to be called Independence Avenue but
if you take a look at the buildings that line that street, it is maybe
an appropriate time to rename that street Dependence Avenue, because it
demonstrates the dependency that the rest of America has developed on
Washington, a dependency where we ask bureaucrats to take a larger role
in raising our children, bureaucrats and bureaucracies taking a larger
role in building our communities, bureaucrats taking a larger role in
creating jobs. We have identified and we constantly are on the lookout
for specific examples where we can identify what the Washington
bureaucracy is doing, whether it is working or whether it is failing,
where it abuses power, where it wastes money, where it does things
which perhaps to the American citizen, the average citizen, actually
makes no sense.
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We have begun a project of collecting these real life examples. These
are things which the Washington bureaucracy actually do, and we compile
these on a monthly basis. These are in your office; we send them to
your office each and every month, and it is called, A Tale of Two
Visions. The newsletter features actual examples of real life stories
of what is happening in Washington and then compares and contrasts what
Washington is doing to what successful entrepreneurs, successful
individuals, and successful organizations are doing at the local level.
It highlights the struggle that many Americans have with the Washington
bureaucracy.
Let me just highlight some of the examples that we have in our
February issue, and again these are in your offices, where we highlight
some things that Washington believes it is best at deciding and it
believes that it is appropriate to use American taxpayer dollars to
fund these kind of activities.
As many of you know, we fund public housing projects around the
country, and when we fund these projects it is
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only appropriate that Washington attaches strings to those dollars to
make sure that the people who build those buildings build them to the
codes that we want established and the criteria that we have
established in Washington, that the people that manage those projects
manage them the way that we want them to manage them, that the people
who live in them live in them the way that we want them to live and
that the pets that are in those public housing projects are treated
with the dignity and respect that we want them to be treated with.
So in 1996 our Secretary of HUD decided that we had to protect the
pets in public housing because this was a national crisis and this is
something that Washington had to be involved with. We developed rules
regarding pet ownerships by elderly and disabled in public housing.
Included in this, and this is section 5.350, paragraph 2, actual
language from HUD, Washington saying people at the local level, an
individual, cannot make this decision, Washington has to help them, let
us write these rules and regulations, let us make sure they are aware
of them so that people can listen to this and that they can abide by
the rules and regulations that we have established.
Paragraph 2: ``In the case of cats and other pets using litter boxes
the pet rules may require the pet owner to change the litter,'' in
parentheses, ``but not more than twice each week, may require pet
owners to separate pet waste from litter, but not more than once each
day, then may prescribe methods for the disposal of pet waste and used
litter.''
Thank you, Secretary Cisneros. That is going to help us, and those
were Federal dollars well spent.
On a more serious note, back in 1996, we are facing a drug problem in
our country, and so what is the appropriate response? It is when a
product became available that would enable parents to better gauge and
understand if their kids were using illegal drugs, the FDA said, ``No,
it's not appropriate that we make this technology available to
parents.'' It is not that the tests were unsafe, it is not that they
were ineffective. The same tests are used routinely by hospitals,
employers and parole officers. It is not that they were too difficult
for a parent to understand how to use it correctly. The FDA was
fighting to keep this product off the shelves because the parents
cannot, and this is quote, ``be trusted to handle the results,'' end of
quote. They fear that these tests would have a harmful effect on the
parent-child relationships. After intense pressure, hallelujah, the FDA
later approved the tests.
We also now are carding 27-year-olds for the purchase of cigarettes.
We are taking a look at, and this is probably the most frustrating
thing, when we have wise bureaucrats in all of these buildings, and
they are good people, but when these people, one bureaucrat working in
one office decides what the right thing is to do, and then somebody in
another building decides that maybe they have got something that is a
little bit different--think about this. The National Institutes of
Health required one university to replace all of the school's rabbit
cages. This carried a pricetag of $250,000. That may have been the
right thing to do for the rabbits. However, less than a year later the
Agriculture Department declared that the cages were the wrong size and
the university had to once again replace the cages.
Now I kind of like rabbits, but I am not sure that we need two
agencies in Washington who are focused and believe that it is their
primary responsibility and purpose in life to design and define for
people at a local level what the appropriate size and design and
construction of a rabbit cage should be. This appears to be a little
bit of overkill.
Now let us take a look at the exciting things that are going on.
There are things that are going on in the private sector that really
indicate that people at the local level maybe actually have a higher
degree of common sense, have a higher degree of commitment to their
community and their neighbors, that they have a higher degree and sense
of responsibility than what we so frequently will give them or give
them credit for.
The case of a father, a Catholic priest, working on job training:
This is a case of Father Ronald Marino, and he took a look at what was
going on in his community and said, ``This isn't good enough.'' He took
a look at how government job training programs worked, and he found
that this was not working. So on his own he began teaching English to
immigrants, and once they had successfully mastered it he taught them a
skill with on-the-job training through an apprenticeship, the
participants either in pay and advancing from their salaries. They got
advances on their salaries. They were teaching them things that would
enable them to get a job, and this is an individual in the community
going out and taking a look at government programs and saying they do
not work, I can do better, and I have got a sense of commitment to my
community, I am going to improve my community.
A grandmother helped 70 kids after school, takes no Federal funds. A
57-year-old grandmother in southeast Washington, DC runs an afterschool
program which provides hot meals, homework help, computer instruction,
Bible study, and a safe place to play for at-risk children. Miss Hannah
Hawkins founded a nonprofit organization called Children of Mine after
her husband was murdered in 1970.
Margaret Alasky writes Hawkins insists that social progress comes not
when professionals take on needy children as clients, but when ordinary
people treat the semi-abandoned children of others as their own. People
have an intense concern and love for their community, and they
demonstrate it in much more effective ways than what we so often do
here in Washington.
These are just a few of the examples. We continue to build this
litany of examples of where Washington, well-intentioned, goes out and
tries to solve problems, but in many cases does not do it very
effectively, and when you take a look at the alternatives that are
available: local organizations, faith-based institutions, individuals,
the free enterprise system, it is kind of like why are we sucking
dollars out of the community and bringing them to Washington when if
they were left in the community we might be able to deliver better
results and have a better impact on solving some of these very
difficult problems if we just let communities have the resources for
themselves.
This is our vision. Our vision is of a government which costs less so
that families can survive on one income. Our vision is of a government
which does not compete with or attack parents or families but builds
them up. Our vision is of a stronger, more vibrant private sector which
is creating jobs free from the excesses of burden of taxation and
regulation.
I think it is time for us to step out here in the House and, as
Republicans, to more clearly articulate our vision for what we want
America to be, and one of the projects that we have been debating today
and one of the things that we have been talking about is the
President's budget, a President's budget which increases spending,
which does not reach balance, and we are talking about whether that is
good for America, whether that is good for our citizens, and whether
that is good for our kids.
But I think we ought to outline a vision about what we would like to
see in a budget.
The President has laid down a benchmark. I am not satisfied with it.
I do not believe it meets some criteria that are very important to me.
I believe that in the long run we should be working toward a Federal
Government, a budget, that can be funded by a one-wageearner family. We
have way too many families today where one person is working to support
the family and the other person is working to support the Federal
Government. We need to move back to the point where a two-wageearner
family is an option and not a requirement.
We have to have a budget that is in balance with and protects the
core institutions of our society: families, private enterprise and
faith-based and nonprivate institutions. We have to have a budget that
is based on the assumption that the dollars that come to Washington are
the American people's dollars and that they are best equipped to make
the choices about how to spend them. We have to have a budget that
respects the needs and the interests of today as well as future
generations.
We need a budget that protects our kids. We need a budget that
reflects a
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learning from the long 29-year experience of deficit spending, deficit
spending that developed out of an overexuberance about what people
believe government could do and what people believe government could do
better than what local institutions could do.
Do we really want to do for our kids in education what over the last
30 years we did for the needy and welfare and public housing? No, I
think we can do a whole lot better than that, and we need to do a whole
lot better than that.
Why does not the President's criteria, or why does not the
President's budget, meet this criteria? The President's budget does not
meet this criteria because what he wants to do is to continue to move
dollars and spending to Washington rather than leaving the money back
home.
This is not about a budget that is level, that gets to balance
because revenues are increasing. This is about a President who wants to
grow spending in one key category. Take a look at what happens to
discretionary spending. This President wants more money to fund
Washington bureaucrats and Washington bureaucracy. This is a $165
billion increase in discretionary spending between 1998 and the year
2002.
Now I just did a little figuring, and I come from a small- or medium-
sized town in west Michigan, and I am not used to numbers this big, and
I used to work for a company that finally, shortly after I left,
finally got to be a billion-dollar company. A billion dollars is a lot
of money, $100 million is a lot of money, but if you divide $168
billion by 5,000, which maybe is about the average tax that a family of
four pays each year, you divide that 5,000 into 168 billion; do that at
your own offices; and you find out that it is a lot of families who are
going to have to pay for this increased spending.
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If we run the numbers, and then if we divide it by the 5 years, it is
about, on average, to fund the increasing spending that this President
wants, about 6 million families each year, or 6 million more American
families are going to have to send about $5,000 to Washington.
Does that move us closer to a budget that could be funded by a one-
wage-earner family? I do not think so. I think asking for $165 billion
more of spending in Washington is going to create more two-wage-earner
families, not because of a choice, but out of necessity.
Does this protect our core institutions of our society, families,
private enterprise, faith-based and nonprofit institutions? No. This is
Washington sucking money away from those agencies.
Does this say we believe that the American people are best equipped
to make the choices that they would like to make? No. It says the
American people are not equipped to make choices; Washington can make
better choices of this $165 billion than what the American people can.
Does this respect the needs and the interests of today as well as for
our kids? Does this protect our kids? We could get to balance and
surplus a whole lot sooner for our kids.
Most of this money in increased spending we are going to have to
borrow. We are going to have to borrow it, so our kids are going to
have a higher debt that they are going to have to pay back. Each and
every year they are also going to have to pay interest on this. No,
this does not save our kids, it does not protect our kids, it puts a
bigger burden on our kids.
Does this learn the lessons of deficit spending? No, it continues the
over-exuberance of believing what Washington can and cannot do.
This is a bad budget for a number of reasons. It does not respect the
family, it does not clarify choices, and it does not reflect the
lessons that we should have learned. Those are the kinds of criteria
that we need to establish as we move forward and create a new budget.
As Republicans outline what we want, and what we want to do, it is a
matter of it is time to stop increasing spending; it is time to
recognize that the most important thing is to start developing a
surplus budget so that we can start protecting our kids, so that we can
start moving power and authority and control to the places where the
best solutions are, which is at the local level.
I now want to move on to another project that we have been working on
which we call Lessons in Education. We have been working, a number of
us, my colleagues, the gentleman from California [Mr. McKeon], and the
gentleman from California [Mr. Riggs], we are working on a project
which we call Education at a Crossroads. Education at a Crossroads:
What Works and What is Wasted.
The purpose of our effort is to really find out what is going on in
education today. The paper that we developed is lessons in education.
It is a series. What are we learning as we go through this process of
having hearings around the country, as we have parents, students,
teachers, principals, entrepreneurs, innovators, as they testify, what
have we learned about education?
We have learned, not surprisingly, although I sometimes think when we
try to develop programs here in Washington we forget some of these
basics. The first lesson we learned: Parents care the most about their
children's education. We go around to a charter school in Los Angeles
and a parent gets up and says, you know what I really like about this
school? We finally have been able to take back our school. The people
who are running this school no longer have to look to the L.A. unified
school district about what they can do.
One of the testimonies of the person running the school, she said:
``You know, when I ran this school and I was part of the L.A. unified
school district, I worried about the three Bs.''
You would think as a principal she would be worried about the three
Rs, but no, the three Bs. She said: ``I was always measured and the
people at headquarters did not ask me how well I was doing with my
kids. They wanted to know what was happening with busing, what was
happening with my budgets. And then I would always run into the third
B, which is the bucks.'' What do you mean, the bucks? She says: ``Every
time I had a good idea that I thought would benefit the kids in my
school and I would go to my rules and regulations and I would find out,
I cannot do that; but I wanted to do it because it is what I needed to
do for my kids.''
I would go to the headquarters of the L.A. unified school district
and I would say: This is what my kids need. This is what the parents of
my kids want. That is what we have jointly decided is best for the kids
in our school to make sure that they have the learning environment that
enables them to get the most effective learning.
I would go to headquarters, and the answer would be: Well, that is
not a bad idea, but you cannot do it, because this and that, or that.
Sometimes: It may be a good idea, but if we let you do that, we would
have to let everybody else do that too. We cannot have that happen.
Successful education, as we are struggling with education and the
educational issues around the country, let us not forget the fact that
the person who knows the kid's name and the person that named the child
probably cares the most about their education and about their future.
And they care more than the bureaucrat at the State bureaucracy or at
the Washington bureaucracy who do not even know the name of the child.
Let us not lose sight of that. Too often we are losing sight of the
fact that parents care most. We have also learned that good intentions
do not equal good policy.
Lesson No. 2: We care about kids in Washington. We care so much about
the education that our children receive in Washington that we have
created program after program after program after program so that the
end of 20 to 30 years of Washington having good intentions and
Washington caring about our children that we now have 760 different
programs running through 39 different agencies, spending $120 billion
per year, and the education system is in crisis.
Mr. Speaker, good intentions do not equal good policy. Just because
we care does not mean that the answer has to be a new program with a
nice sounding title and a few dollars associated with it, does not mean
that we are actually helping our children.
Lesson No. 3: More money or more does not always equal better; 760
programs probably is not better than 700 programs, and 600 programs
probably is not better than 5 hub programs. More money in a failed
system may sound good, but more money into a system
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that does not work does not do anybody any good and it does not help
our kids one bit.
Mr. Speaker, the interesting thing is we have developed 760 programs.
There is now a cottage industry, a cottage industry that you would
think would be going to schools and saying: Here is some of the
research that has just been done; and this is the most effective way
for kids to learn how to read; or these are some of the really
interesting new tools that we have developed to help teach children
math or science. Here is the latest technology that, as you get these
computers into your classroom, here is what you do with them.
No. The cottage industry is here: Here are two binders that tell you
about 500 different education programs; they tell you, these booklets
tell you what programs exist, who is eligible, and they tell you how to
write the grant to get the money.
They do not tell you how to write the grant to reflect and answer the
questions in a way that is honest and truthful; they tell you how to
write the grant so that you have the highest probability of getting the
money. So now we have school districts all around the country not
hiring instructional specialists, but they are hiring grant-writers to
kind of go through these 500 programs and to see if they can strike
gold by finding some grants that a local school district may qualify
for. Wrong priorities, wrong decisions, and a bad way to spend our
money.
Mr. Speaker, we have created such a maze of programs that we now have
to have specialists to go through this maze to figure out, this money
that we sent through the IRS, how that money can get back to the local
school district.
Do not worry about it, we do it very efficiently. When you send a
dollar to the IRS and when you send a dollar to Washington for
education, you can be sure that we get about 60 to 65 cents back to the
teacher and back to the classroom. That is not a bad investment.
The bureaucrats in Washington, the bureaucrats in your State
education association, they only steal 35 cents of that dollar from our
kids. They are sucking away 35 cents that could be used in the
classroom. The issue in education is not finding more money to spend in
a system that sucks 35 cents out. The question is, how do we get more
of that dollar that we send to Washington back to the classroom. It is
not about spending $1.10 so we can get 70 cents to the classroom. It is
about finding a way to get this dollar and getting 80 cents, 85 cents,
90 cents, 95 cents, back to what the purpose is of education. The
purpose of education is not to make and hire bureaucrats, it is to
educate kids.
Education needs to be child-centered, is the lesson that we are
working on now.
Mr. Speaker, there are too many programs today where the focus is on
the bureaucrat, it is on the bureaucracy, and it is not on the student.
The system today, the students way down there at the end, there is a
bureaucrat at the State level, there are some other bureaucrats through
this process that work at this bureaucracy in Washington, and the
student is not the focal point. The system today is about Government,
it is about bureaucrats, it is about bureaucracy.
The system really should be not the student at the end of the
process; the student needs to be the center of the process. The people
most influential on that student are the teachers in the classroom and
the parents. These are the people that know that student's name, they
know where they live, they know the problems and the concerns that this
student faces, the special problems. They care about them. These people
care.
The bureaucrats care, but do they really care and know if they cannot
give you the name of the student that they are trying to help? The
resources and the dollars have to be focused on the student. These
bureaucrats today, they are worried about writing the rules and the
regulations for 760 programs here, not all in one building. Seven
hundred sixty might be OK if they were all in one building in this
town, but think about it. Some of the programs are in a building called
the Education Department. Other programs come out of the Defense
Department. Other programs come out of HUD. Other programs come out of
the Agriculture Department. It is not one building, it is not 5
buildings, it is 39 different buildings, 39 different bureaucracies
spending $120 billion a year.
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We had a great hearing yesterday in the Committee on the Budget. I
asked Secretary Rubin, Secretary of the Treasury, I asked the
Secretary, who is the focal point? Who is the person that is setting
education strategy at the Washington level? Who is focused on
coordinating this effort and making sure that these different entities
come together? The answer was, the President.
I am sorry, Mr. Rubin, I do not believe that the President is
actually spending a whole lot of time trying to coordinate 760 programs
through 39 different agencies. I think he has a few other things to do.
I know education is important to him, but I believe that there are some
other things on his mind.
What has been the result of this ever-increasing bureaucracy? I look
at this, and coming from a business standpoint I think there is some
reason to be concerned about this. I do not really think this is the
best way to do it. But maybe in Washington this works. Maybe this
really works in Washington. It does not work in the business world, but
maybe in government all these pieces somehow magically come together.
What are the results? One-half of all adult Americans are
functionally illiterate. Fifty-six percent of all college freshmen
require remedial education. In California, we had a hearing and we had
some of the chief officers and the key people in higher education in
California come and testify. They said, please, please, as you are
taking a look at the budget, do not cut our funds for remedial
education.
We would say, explain that a little bit more. These are students that
you have accepted into your university. What kind of remedial education
are you looking for? What are these dollars exactly being used for?
Remedial seems like a pretty serious term.
The answer is, well, one out of four students entering higher
education in California, one out of four students cannot read or write
at an eighth grade level. Excuse me? One out of four students in
California entering higher ed, and this is not going into high school,
this is going into higher education, one out of four cannot read or
write at an eighth grade level? This is not remedial, this is a crisis.
This is a big problem. Why are you not going down to the high schools,
the middle schools, and the grade schools and talking to the teachers
there and taking a look at what is going on in the classroom?
Remember, these teachers are graduating from your universities. They
are now going into the classroom, and the children going through this
system are now coming to you and they cannot read or write at an eighth
grade level. Are you maybe failing the students that are going through
your college that are becoming teachers? Are we failing the kids who
are in grade school? Absolutely. They cannot read or write when they
get out. This is a big problem. Sixty-four percent of 12th graders do
not read at a proficient level. SAT scores have dropped by 60 points in
3 decades.
There are two ways to look at what we are going to do as a result, as
we face what I think are some disappointing results in education,
something we should all be concerned about. We can continue this
Washington-centered approach. We can continue saying, you know, just a
few more programs and a few more dollars, a few more bureaucrats and a
few more buildings and a few more bigger buildings and we will be all
right. We will solve this problem.
No, I do not think so. It is time to start maybe rethinking what is
going on in these buildings, but it is not a time to add more
buildings, more people, and more dollars.
We need to think in this way: How do we empower parents and teachers,
the people closest to the students, closest to the kids, how do we
empower them to make sure that this child gets the kind of results that
we need? It is about teachers, it is about students, and it is about
parents. It is not about bureaucracy and bureaucrats who have the
student at the end of the system.
We ought to take a look at what the President is proposing: $165
billion
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more spending. The President has not learned our lessons.
This assumes that we need more money in Washington and that
Washington bureaucrats care more about our children than parents do.
That is lesson one. This does not assume this. Much of this spending is
going for education, $55 billion more of spending for education over
the next 5 years in Washington. This does not demonstrate a lesson
learned; that parents care most. This also does not meet the criteria.
He did not learn lesson two. The President's programs are well-
intended, but come on, do we really think that 770 programs spending
$130 billion per year going through 30 or 40 agencies is going to work
better than 760 programs, spending $120 billion? I do not think so.
This does not recognize that more money in a failed system is not good
policy. This is pouring more money into the same bad system that we
have today.
The end result, if we pass what the President wants to do, if we give
him more spending, what will these bureaucracies and bureaucrats do for
our children?
Think about it. The President wants a building program, so it means
that bureaucrats in Washington will now do the building, they will
build our buildings at a local level. When we build in Washington, we
apply lots of rules and restrictions.
Think about just one thing. when we build buildings and we put
Federal dollars in construction projects, in Washington we apply a
little-known law called Davis-Bacon. People may recognize that as
prevailing wage, which means we have to pay probably higher wages. It
means bureaucrats at the local level, individuals at the local level,
have to come to Washington to find out the salaries they have to pay
their contractors, rather than through competitive bidding.
But another little-known feature of Davis-Bacon, and think about this
as we go through the process, Davis-Bacon prohibits the use of
volunteer labor. So if you are going to build your school or if you are
going to renovate your school, and you say, hey, this would be kind of
nice, maybe the government can buy the paint and some of the materials
and volunteers can paint our classrooms; if we are going to redo the
playground, maybe the government can buy some of the materials and the
parents can come and clean up the playground and do some of the
construction; sorry, they cannot do that anymore.
Davis-Bacon Federal building laws prohibit the use of volunteer labor
on these projects. Not a smart thing, especially when we consider some
of the other things the President wants to do.
But we will have bureaucrats who build our buildings. These
bureaucrats will then decide about what kind of technology goes in
because we are going to put in money for technology, so bureaucrats
will decide the technology that goes into the buildings. The President
wants to set standards at a national level, which means that he will
have a strong role in developing curriculum. He wants to do national
testing, so he will test our kids. He wants to certify our teachers, so
the bureaucrats in Washington will be certifying our teachers.
We already have programs that teach kids about safe sex, about
appropriate or inappropriate drug use. Bureaucrats in Washington are
going to continue doing those types of things. Bureaucrats in
Washington already decide what our kids can eat for breakfast, what our
kids can eat for lunch. We are going to have after-school programs. We
are going to have midnight basketball. But other than that, it is your
school.
We are going to build the buildings, put in the technology, develop
the curriculum, test your kids, certify your teachers, feed them
breakfast, feed them lunch, teach them about sex, teach them about
drugs, after-school programs, midnight basketball, but hey, other than
that, it is your school.
This is an approach that is Washington-centered, making these
buildings bigger and more powerful, and we are moving away from parents
and teachers and local control. Make no mistake about it, this is a
massive shift of power and control to a Washington bureaucracy, away
from parents, away from teachers, away from the students, and moving it
to people who could not even give you the names of the kids going to
the school.
I want to highlight just one other thing that happens here. Remember,
our kids cannot read. So rather than going into the classroom and
saying our kids are spending 7 to 8 hours in the classroom or 6 to 7
hours in the classroom per day and they cannot read, reading is kind of
a fundamental thing, let us take a look at what is going on in the
classroom. The student-centered approach would say let us take a look
at what is happening with this student, with that teacher in the
classroom, and why can this kid not learn to read? We would focus on
the classroom.
The Washington approach says, now, let us develop another Band-Aid.
Let us develop another program, and let us have tutors. Let us fund the
Corporation for National Service to the tune of an extra $200 million.
Let me get my pen out. That is $200 million per year. That is how many
families paying $5,000 in taxes? That is a family of four. For the next
5 years let us have 40,000 American families pay, not to improve what
is going on in the classroom, but to put a Band-Aid on a broken system
through the corporation, so they can develop and get what? So they can
find volunteers.
Wait a minute. Davis-Bacon and construction, we are going to
discourage volunteers; but now for reading, we are going to encourage
volunteers. Boy, Washington sure sends some mixed signals. Actually, we
are redefining the role of volunteers. We are now redefining volunteers
as people who make up to $27,000 per year. That is the Washington
bureaucratic definition of a volunteer.
Now, let us go one step further. We are not fixing the system, we are
applying a Band-Aid to a system. The only thing that I can say is the
President did get one thing right, maybe right in this process. The
President had to make a choice. If he believes in doing volunteers in
this approach, through a bureaucratic approach, he at least made the
right decision, that he was going to use the Corporation for National
Service to teach our kids reading. It may or may not work, but we know
that they cannot teach our kids math.
The Corporation for National Service, this bureaucracy in Washington
with these bureaucrats, the model organization a few months ago had an
independent auditing firm come in and say, you know, can your books be
audited? Can you tell us where roughly $500 million or $600 million per
year is spent, where it goes, how it is spent? It is kind of like the
auditors came back and said, sorry, Congress, sorry, oversight
subcommittee, asking the kinds of questions we should be asking about
where this money is spent, the Corporation for National Service, its
books are not auditable.
That is very frustrating, but the President has decided to pour $200
million more into that. We know they cannot teach our kids math. That
is a sad enough story as it can be, but we know how AmeriCorps works.
Students work, they get paid a stipend. Then they go to college,
because they have built up a reserve that says, you know, if you are
part of AmeriCorps we are going to set aside money for you to go to
college. That money is set aside in a trust fund. This is fairly
straightforward. You are part of AmeriCorps. We set aside money. You
work, you fill out and complete your time of service, you go to
college, AmeriCorps sends a check to the college to help pay your
tuition, a fairly straightforward transaction; started from scratch, no
new programs, nothing to corrupt the process, it started from scratch.
Bring in the accountants and say, okay, this program has now been
working for 3 years. What is the state of the trust account? Are the
trust funds auditable? Can you tell us with any sense of integrity who
the people are that worked, that actually fulfilled their obligation to
receive the college tuition grant, and have we set the money aside, and
do we know with any sense of surety that when these people ask for this
money, that the right people will be getting the money?
{time} 1845
This is not complex math. Fortune 500 companies, a small business
person, the little entrepreneur, all of their
[[Page H938]]
books have to be auditable each and every year. If they are not, I do
not think the IRS would be very happy with them. The Corporation for
National Service, not only are its regular books not auditable; the
fund that it started from scratch, the trust fund, is also not
auditable.
But you can be sure of a couple of things. Under this model, even
though it is absolutely miserable performance, where the books are not
auditable, it is a first level of integrity that you have to have in
any organization that, even though the books are not auditable, that
the trust funds are not auditable, you can be sure that the bureaucrats
will receive their salary, that the people who administer these
programs at a State and local level will receive their salaries. And
that is just a sad example that, even though when we do not get the
results at the level of the student through these 760 programs, we do
not get the level of performance or results that we need at a student
level, bureaucrats and bureaucracy will continue to be paid. And under
the current model that we have today, where people, some people believe
that more is better, not only for miserable performance but the
Corporation for National Service, when they cannot keep their own
books, is going to, the President wants a $200 million increase,
somewhere in the neighborhood of a 33- to 50-percent increase in their
annual funding. That is the reward for not meeting the basics. Think
about it. That is in Washington, that is the reward for doing a lousy
job. We go back and ask you to do more.
Mr. Speaker, it is about time that we rethought the model and went
back to parents and teachers. The difference here in Washington is when
we cannot keep the books on an $800 million program, now in my home
town the mayor invited my wife and I to a dinner. And we went to dinner
and saw that many of the other council members did not have their
spouses along.
After a few minutes I kind of asked him, I said, why is my wife here
and there is a couple of other wives, but why aren't some of the other
spouses here? The answer was, well, every dinner costs us $11 and we
really do not have it all in our budget.
At a local level, people are worrying about dollars, $10, $100,
$1,000; $1,000 is a lot to many people at the local level. In
Washington when a $400 million, $600 million agency cannot keep its
books, remember what that means. It means that we cannot tell where the
money is going or whether the money has been used for the intended
purpose that Congress allocated that money to that institution for.
When an organization in Washington says we cannot tell you where the
money went, our response is: Great job, we need your help, we are going
to expand your role, and we are going to give you $200 million more.
Mr. Speaker, that is why this system feeds bureaucracy, feeds
bureaucrats and has at the end of its system, way down at the end is a
student. That is why in Washington today, when the dollar comes into
Washington, the bureaucracy sucks up 35 to 40 cents of every dollar and
never lets us get it back to the student.
I just want to give one more anecdote about why we do not need a
million new tutors in Washington. It is already being done. The State
of Delaware had a hearing in Delaware, has one Congressman. There are
434 of us, 435 of us. In one congressional district, the State of
Delaware, they already have 5,000 volunteers. And do you know what? It
is because parents and teachers wanted to help students, and they made
the decision all on their own.
What we now have in Washington is saying, they cannot do that. They
need a bureaucracy to tell them. Let us spend $200 million doing that
and we do not. In my hometown, churches are embracing schools. They are
sending tutors in, professionals are going in and helping children. It
is already happening. We do not need to move $200 million. We do not
need to move $5,000 from 40,000 American families to Washington to get
tutors to our kids. It is already happening.
Mr. Speaker, if we take a look at some of the other things that we
learned about what the President is proposing from our hearing in
Delaware, Delaware had some problems with education. They are making a
turnaround. The Governor talked about and many other witnesses talked
about what is enabling Delaware to make a difference. Now no, it is not
more Federal programs. Like I said, with tutoring they made the
difference on their own without any Federal help. Local ownership is
what enabled them to produce excellent standards. They worked on
developing standards.
They do not need a Federal mandate. They do not want national
standards. Federal standards, the President wants to establish
standards and work on curriculum and wants to do it in a Washington
bureaucracy. What did we learn about standards? Think about what a
standard is. A standard is what we are going to tell and teach this
student in a classroom. It is one of the most important things that we
have in education.
What do we expect this student to learn during this period of time in
the classroom, working with that teacher and this parent? There are
some that believe that we can develop these standards in Washington,
funnel them through some bureaucrats and put it to the student. Sorry.
Delaware's experience says, this is a very important issue. When you
are talking about this student, when you are talking about this parent
who knows the name of this student and that teacher who cares about
that student, they are not real interested in a standard coming from
Washington. They want to be an active participant in designing the
standards for what that student will learn. They may want some help
from outside agencies talking about what other people are doing, but
they want to work through that process.
Mr. Speaker, in Delaware they went through it. They took 3 years to
develop standards. But at the end of that 3-year process, parents,
students, and teachers are brought in and agree with much of what was
developed because they were involved in the process. A parent
understands why there are certain criteria. They understand what is
going on be taught and how it is going to be taught. It is a difficult
process, but when you are dealing with education and you try to cut the
corners and when you try to cut out parents and when you try to cut out
teachers, it just does not work.
There is no way a Federal mandated standard will ever work, and, if
the Federal mandated standard does not work, Federal testing will never
work because what parent is going to feel good about a national test
based on a national standard that they do not buy into. We need parents
involved in this process, and we cannot short-circuit this process
through a bureaucracy.
Mr. Ferguson, the acting State superintendent, said, regarding their
standards, the important thing about these standards is that they are
our standards. They are the standards of this community. They are the
standards of this State. They are the standards of this parent and
these teachers, and they were not given to us, they have a sense of
ownership.
We have gone around the country. We have taken a look at all
different kinds of innovations. We have seen that the wonderful thing
about working on this project is on a national basis you hear some of
the horror stories about what is going on in education and we are
concerned about that.
The other thing that we are seeing is whether you are in New York
City, whether you are in LA, whether you are in Phoenix, whether you
are in Chicago in a public housing project, whether you are in
Cleveland or whether you are in Milwaukee or Detroit, or whether you
are in west Michigan, we are seeing some great schools. The thing about
these great schools is that in most cases, if not all cases, in those
communities parents, students and teachers have been given the
flexibility to design the school and the system that works for them.
Mr. Speaker, they are not facing a mandate. This is the kind of
school that you need to have. They are working on designing things
because in each of those areas the schools need to be different because
the needs of the students in each community are different. Not the need
for what they are going to learn, they need to learn the same kinds or
similar things, but where they come from, the environment that they
come from, and so each school has different challenges. Each school has
different opportunities and communities need the flexibility.
That is why you see charters. And the charters in Delaware are
different
[[Page H939]]
than the charters in Delaware, which are different than the charter
schools in Phoenix and these choices in local communities. The choice
in Delaware allows full public school choice so a parent can choose the
program and the school and the curriculum that best meets the needs of
their child. It is enabling parents to become consumers of education.
It is empowering parents. It is empowering students and it is
empowering teachers.
One of the most exciting things that is happening is that the
National Education Association, the National Education Association, the
organization that represents teachers, they are going to get involved
in the charter school effort. They are going to start I believe four
charter schools in different parts of the country. If anybody should be
establishing charter schools, I want our teachers to do it. They should
be more knowledgeable and better equipped about what needs to go on in
the classroom than almost anybody else in our society, those front-line
teachers. I am excited about the opportunity and the learning that we
can achieve when the National Education Association sets up its charter
schools and how that may be a catalyst for learning and for change that
can just go throughout our entire public school system, unleashing
teachers from the rules and the regulations and the bureaucrats and the
bureaucracies that have been defining for them what they need to do,
rather than empowering them to do what they want to do and how they can
best help their kids.
Can you imagine empowered teachers working with consumers of
education, parents, all focused on what the student needs? What a
wonderful opportunity to improve education in America and what a much
better picture and what a much more optimistic picture that is for
America and American education than one which focuses on bureaucracy
and bureaucrats.
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