[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.

                              {time}  1800

  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

[[Page H934]]

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

[[Page H935]]

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.

                              {time}  1615

  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

[[Page H936]]

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.

                              {time}  1830

  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

[[Page H937]]

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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