[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 54 (Wednesday, April 30, 1997)]
[House]
[Pages H2068-H2075]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                          EDUCATION EXCELLENCE

  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 am joined by a number of my 
colleagues to talk about what my other colleagues were talking about in 
the previous hour, and that is education. And rather than going through 
a long introduction, I want to start right off with a quote that the 
President of the United States made on March 27, 1996. This was in a 
response to the Governors Summit on Education: Education Excellence. 
And the President said, and I cannot agree with him more, ``We cannot 
ask the American people to spend more on education until we do a better 
job with the money we have got now.''
  This is the President of the United States about a year ago. That 
remark, along with some of the debate in Congress in 1996, led the 
committee that I chair, the Subcommittee on Oversight and 
Investigations, to begin a project, which we call education at a 
crossroads, to ask and to find out what are we accomplishing and 
achieving with the money that we are spending today.
  We started with a very basic question. We said, how many education 
programs are there?

                              {time}  1745

  Went to the Education Department because, of course, in Washington we 
coordinate all of the education programs through one department. Wrong. 
We found out that they go through 39 different agencies. We have over 
760 different programs, and we are spending over or in the neighborhood 
of $100 billion per year on education today.
  That is a very appropriate question to ask. It is the question that 
we must answer before we expand the 760. Actually, I think as we have 
worked on this, it is now over 780 programs, we now have to take a look 
at the 780 programs, the $100 billion that we are spending, the 39 
different agencies that this money is flowing through, because the 
focus here should not be on an education bureaucracy. Our focus needs 
to be on the kids. Before we have 10 new programs with $50 billion of 
more spending, we need to take a look at whether and where this money 
is going and whether we are having an impact with it or not. We do not 
want to pour $50 billion through a broken system.
  Mr. Speaker, I have got some of my colleagues with me tonight to talk 
about this very issue. I would like to have one of my colleagues from 
Pennsylvania just briefly explain to us, we will have a dialogue, more 
of a dialogue tonight so that we can build off each other's comments 
about what is going on in education because we all have our own 
perspectives and our own learning about what is going on and we have 
got six of us here tonight. We will be able to share perspectives and 
learn from each other.
  Tomorrow my colleague from Pennsylvania is going to be introducing or 
announcing a resolution that I think gets at the very issue about doing 
some important work to find out the kind of impact that we are having 
with the dollars today.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Pitts].
  Mr. PITTS. Mr. Speaker, I would like to speak really on behalf of 
millions of students, teachers, administrators and many Members of 
Congress to discuss one of the most important components of our 
American society, and that is our education system. I would like to 
talk about what can and should become an American initiative, sending 
more dollars to our Nation's classrooms.
  Every citizen of this Nation agrees that children deserve an 
opportunity to excel. But this opportunity is inhibited when teachers 
and administrators are hampered by paperwork, time constraints and 
financial hindrances just to apply for Federal education grants. 
Tomorrow, as my colleague said, I will introduce a resolution entitled 
the dollars to the classroom resolution, calling for the Department of 
Education to provide more elementary and secondary dollars to the 
classrooms of our Nation's children.
  My resolution calls for a change in the way we spend our Federal 
education dollars. For too long, Americans' hard-earned tax dollars 
have gone to bureaucracy and have churned through the Washington 
labyrinth instead of rightfully being placed into the classrooms, into 
the hands of someone who knows the name of your child.
  Of the $15.4 billion which goes to elementary and secondary programs, 
in the Federal Department of Education, the classroom may be lucky to 
see 65 percent. That means about $5.4 billion is lost in the abyss of 
department studies, publications and grant administration.
  To apply for a Department of Education grant, it takes nearly 216 
steps, an average of 21 weeks. That is over 5 months of work for 
someone on the local level just to apply for a Federal grant.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, is that 21 weeks before they may ever get 
an answer from the Education Department as to whether they are going to 
receive a grant?
  Mr. PITTS. Mr. Speaker, that is correct.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, it is my understanding that the Education 
Department very recently highlighted this as a significant 
accomplishment, getting it down to 21 weeks and 216 steps. I think 
until the Vice President became involved in this process, it took 26 
weeks and over 400 steps. But this is what the Education Department 
calls significant progress and moving towards education excellence by 
shortening the process of finding out whether a school district is 
actually going to have a grant accepted after they go through 216 steps 
and after 21 weeks.
  Mr. PITTS. That is correct.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, that is improvement. It may be 
improvement, but it is still not very good.
  Mr. PITTS. As a former classroom teacher myself, I know that it would 
not be very encouraging to me to have to spend hours upon hours to 
apply for something that I had no guarantee of receiving.
  But I think Americans would rather see their tax dollars at work 
providing more teachers, teacher aides, purchasing materials, supplies, 
updated software, calculators, textbooks, and even seeing the American 
classroom connected to the Internet brought into the new information 
age. The classroom is where the action is. The classroom is where 
knowledge grows and learning takes place.
  This dollars to the classroom initiative would call upon the Federal 
Department of Education and State and local agencies to see that 95 
cents of every Federal dollar would get to the local school district. 
And of those Federal dollars that get to the local school district, 95 
cents of every Federal dollar would get into the classroom, into the 
hands of someone that knows your child's name. If this actually 
happened, roughly $1,800 more could be available in each classroom 
across the United States.
  We heard the quote from President Clinton that we cannot ask 
Americans to spend more on education until we do a better job with the 
money that we have got now. And for $10 to purchase flash cards, a 
student could practice her timetables with a friend. For $50 for a 
globe or a set of maps, children improve their geography, their 
knowledge of nations across the seas. For $1,500, we can buy a computer 
with enough desk top space and Internet access to allow every student 
access to a vast amount of information available at their fingertips.
  So this really is about kids, about practical ways to see that they 
benefit from Federal education tax dollars. I think for the sake of our 
Nation's kids, we should all put our children first.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, the gentleman has taken kind of a 
revolutionary approach. He is focusing getting dollars to the 
classroom, getting them to the kids, getting them to the teachers, to 
the local administration where they can actually make an impact.
  The other visual that we use frequently here, this is a picture of 
Washington, DC. I know my colleague is a freshman but I know that he is 
very well aware that when we walk across this street over here and we 
walk to the Capitol to vote, we call it Independence Avenue. That is 
what the

[[Page H2069]]

street is called. But along this road are what, all of the 
bureaucracies that now are controlling so much of what goes on in our 
local neighborhoods. We think we ought to rename the street Dependence 
Avenue until we change that culture.
  What would the gentleman's legislation, what kind of impact would it 
have on the people that work here on Dependence Avenue?
  Mr. PITTS. Mr. Speaker, it would limit the amount of money they could 
take of our Federal education dollars that we put in the budget and 
consume on the bureaucracy. As we know, most funding for our local 
schools comes from the State and local levels, only about 7 percent 
comes from the Federal Government. But we need to be more efficient as 
to how we utilize those Federal dollars. This would in effect drive 
those dollars through the bureaucracy, Federal, State bureaucracy into 
the classroom. It would deny them access to that.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. I think what many of us have seen as we have met with 
school administrators and around in our districts, we constantly hear 
that these buildings and these people here in Washington, all with good 
intentions but who control about 7 percent of the flow of the dollars 
to our local classrooms, generate 50 percent of the paperwork. For 
every dollar that we give them, they keep somewhere in the neighborhood 
of 30 to 40 cents and they send 60 to 70 cents to our kids.
  What we are saying is we agree with the President. We ought to take a 
look at where the dollars are going, and before we pour another dollar 
into this building and only get 60 cents out, we ought to see exactly 
the bang that we are getting. If we can get that up to 90 cents, we do 
not have to increase taxes, the tax burden; we will just be helping our 
kids.
  I know that my colleague from Kentucky would like to participate, and 
I yield to the gentlewoman from Kentucky [Mrs. Northup].
  Mrs. NORTHUP. Mr. Speaker, I would. I have been very interested in 
education myself as a mother of six children, as a member of the 
Kentucky State legislature, on the education and the Committee on 
Appropriations. I have had a long-standing involvement with the 
education. Kentucky had the courage and worked very hard in 1990, 
enacted in fact one of the largest taxes in their history in order to 
fund their schools. It is often pointed to as the example of school 
reform that we ought to look to on the Federal level.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, the gentlewoman actually believes school 
reform can happen at the local and the State level better than at the 
Federal level.
  Mrs. NORTHUP. Actually the whole key to Kentucky's education reform 
act is that children learn one child at a time, one classroom at a 
time, one school at a time, and one district at a time. The closer the 
effective education occurs and the decisions are made to that child and 
that teacher and that classroom, the more effective schools will be and 
the more effective the learning decisions that are made will be.
  Mr. Speaker, I particularly was interested in the President's America 
Reads program. First of all, one of the first weeks of the Committee on 
Appropriations on education, we had before us the National Institutes 
of Health. This is the research arm that the Federal Government spends 
so many billions of dollars on. They have done a great deal of research 
in the last couple of years on how children read and what the problems 
are with reading. They have come to the conclusion that children who 
have trouble learning to read, there are some children that will learn 
in any system, but children who have trouble need intensive phonics 
instruction. And yet this America Reads, one of the problems is we have 
so many teachers who have not come through a phonics-based system. So 
retraining them is a big issue.
  This America Reads program is almost as though the people that 
originated this idea did not read our own government's research. It is 
out of context of any phonics. It is out of context of understanding 
that very structured phonics is the way these children can best learn.
  They, in particular, found that if you mix it with whole language or 
not stylized instruction that it confuses the child so we are not only 
wasting money we are chancing that we are going to undo the very thing 
that our research shows is the most effective way of teaching children 
to read.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, we have also had the opportunity to go 
around the country and have hearings. One of the first hearings we had 
was in California, where we had a number of the chief administrators 
from a lot of the colleges in California come and testify.
  What they told us is, do not cut remedial education. You are sitting 
there and you are thinking, this is higher ed, what are we teaching 
remedial education at higher ed for?
  And so we asked and we said, what are you teaching? They said, well, 
25 percent of the students that we get coming into our universities, 25 
percent, one out of four, cannot read or write at an eighth grade 
level.
  It is kind of like, the President is proposing America Reads, which 
is the tutors and all of that, and the, you take, you peal away a 
little bit in California and what you found is they left phonics, they 
went to whole language. Did not work. Got a generation of kids now that 
are scoring some of the lowest scores in the country. Nobody is taking 
a look at what is going on in the classroom where the kids are spending 
6 to 8 hours per day, and we should be focusing on them.
  The message of the college administrators was, get back into the 
classroom. Do not ask for more remedial education money. Your job is to 
get back into the classroom and find out why those teachers that you 
have trained are giving such disappointing results with the kids that 
they are teaching all day. It is kind of like, get to the basics, get 
dollars in the classroom and local control.
  Mrs. NORTHUP. I think it goes back to the theme, Mr. Speaker, that 
the gentleman talked about, about why spend more of our tax dollars if 
we cannot make effective the tax dollars we already spend on education.
  Mr. Speaker, I believe that Americans are committed to education, and 
I believe that they care deeply about children learning, particularly 
learning to read. So let us look at the proven ways. Let us leave 
education where it can be changed, according to the research, and that 
is with local control and local efforts.
  Let us not add a program that is unproven, untested, where the 
research shows there essentially would be no effect on kids learning.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. Let us listen to the President and understand what 
works and what does not before we add any new programs and ask the 
American taxpayer to spend more money.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Georgia [Mr. Norwood] who 
may have a comment.
  Mr. NORWOOD. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman.
  We are in the process of a lot of things going on at once and there 
are a couple of things that I felt would be important for me to say to 
the gentleman.
  Number one, I am very pleased with the gentleman's Crossroads at 
Education program, because I know that the gentleman is trying to find 
out and we are as a committee trying to find out what works and what 
does not.
  Secondly, I would like to thank the gentleman for providing us the 
opportunity to have a hearing on this just last week in Milledgeville, 
GA. I know that the gentleman could not be there because of a death in 
his family, but I wanted to come, on behalf of the people of Georgia, 
and my colleague, the gentleman from Georgia [Mr. Deal], who was also 
there, and say that people I talked to in Georgia said thanks.

                              {time}  1800

  This is the first time in their memory or their knowledge that 
Congress has ever had an education hearing in Georgia. It is the first 
time they know of, that anybody from Congress ever came and asked them 
what they think.
  We were talking to some people who are very, very involved in 
education in Georgia, and I wanted to come and tell the gentleman a few 
things they have said during the hearing so that the gentleman is able 
to respond to them.
  Our superintendent, our State superintendent of schools, for example, 
said, and I quote, ``The most frequent message I have heard is that no 
one can

[[Page H2070]]

make better decisions about local education than parents, teachers, and 
students in the local communities.'' Now this is our State school 
superintendent.
  She goes on to say, and I quote, ``Administrators in Washington will 
never meet the needs of individual children. I cast my vote for 
returning as many dollars directly to the local schools as we are able 
to do.''
  Now, I think what we are doing is trying to have an adult 
conversation about improving education. Everybody in the 10th District 
of Georgia believes in that. We all believe that that is the future for 
the 21st century, but we all do not necessarily agree on how to get 
there.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. If the gentleman will yield, I think the gentleman 
clearly points out that we all do care about education.
  We have developed a kind of a monthly brochure or briefer here which 
we call A Tale of Two Visions, because there are at least two very 
different beliefs on how to move education forward in our country. I 
think we believe that moving decision-making and dollars back to the 
children, back to the parents, and back to the teachers is the way to 
go.
  There is another whole group of people here in Washington that 
believe in moving more power, authority, money into the buildings here 
in Washington, so that they can issue rules and regulations on ``how 
to'' to the local levels, and saying that parents and teachers and 
principals can be good teachers and good principals and good parents by 
reading manuals and saying this is what Washington wants you to do.
  That is not the vision that we have in mind, and I do not think that 
is the vision the gentleman heard in Georgia.
  Mr. NORWOOD. No, I did not. But we are in the discovery process. We 
are trying to hear from all sides and everybody to determine what kind 
of recommendations we might make to Congress.
  In the 104th Congress, or certainly in 1996, we basically did not 
reform education. We are still number 13 on the planet in math. We will 
not win in the 21st century if we continue to do that. We still have at 
least 50 percent of the children who are graduating with a high school 
degree that are illiterate or cannot read their diploma. We will not 
win with China if we continue to do that.
  It does not help, in this time when we are trying to discover what to 
do and hear all sides, when groups of people stand up and politicize 
and demagogue the issue. That is why nothing happened in the last 
Congress.
  Let me just point out that during our hearing, the very time we were 
having a hearing trying to discover what works and what does not, we 
had a gentleman from Texas sending news releases down into our district 
saying, ``Oh, we cannot do any of that because they want to simply shut 
down the Department of Education.'' That does not lead to an 
intelligent dialogue that will lead to solutions where we can reform 
education and improve our lot in this country.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. I thank the gentleman for his comments. He points out 
some statistics that tell us we need a meaningful dialogue on education 
because our kids are not getting the kind of results that we would like 
them to be achieving and the kind of results that we need for them to 
be able to be successful in a world economy.
  I think my colleague from Colorado had a few statistics of his own, 
and we will get to our colleague from North Carolina, because I know 
what he wants to talk about and we will get there. But I think my 
colleague from Colorado had some statistics, again, that talk about the 
less than satisfactory results we are getting out of our educational 
system today.
  Mr. BOB SCHAFFER of Colorado. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman. 
The gentleman from Georgia mentioned where we rank nationally with 
respect to mathematics. Actually, that number has been upgraded, or 
renewed. I should not say upgraded, because it was not like that at 
all.
  The Third International Mathematics and Science Study came out 
recently. This is a comparison of how our students here in the United 
States compare with 41 other industrialized countries. This is the same 
report our President, right up here at the top podium during the State 
of the Union address, referred to and spoke of our great need to 
improve by it.
  I want to tell my colleagues what this says because it is quite 
disturbing, and I do not think many Americans have any idea where we 
are headed as a country.
  In this international comparison, again this is the third time this 
has been done, 41 industrialized countries, out of those 41 countries 
in mathematics we rank 28th. In science we do a little better. In 
science the United States ranks 17th.
  Now, let me just read some of the names of the countries that 
outperform us in math and science. First, there is Denmark, Norway; 
there is Sweden, Israel, Thailand, Belgium, Australia, Russia, Hungary. 
Hungary is at No. 14. Remember, we are at No. 28. Bulgaria, Austria, 
Slovenia outperform us in math. Slovakia. The Czech Republic is No. 6 
in math. Again, we are at 28 out of 41 countries. Belgium, Hong Kong, 
Japan, South Korea. The No. one country performing in mathematics for 
their elementary aged students is Singapore.
  In science, again I mentioned we are a little bit better. Slovakia is 
still better than us. Belgium is better than us. Hungary, Austria, 
Slovenia, Bulgaria, South Korea, Japan, Czech Republic. And again 
number one in science is Singapore. Of course, this is the land of 
caning, which I do not know if there is any correlation between one and 
the other, but it seems with respect to academic performance caning may 
work.
  I do want to, in all seriousness, though, talk about what Secretary 
Riley, the Secretary of Education, had said when he observed this 
report. Very similar to what our President had mentioned as well. He 
says the content of U.S. 8th grade mathematics classes is not as 
challenging as that of other countries and topic coverage is not as 
focused.
  He also observed one explanation for our poor performance 
internationally may be that most U.S. mathematics teachers report 
familiarity with reform recommendations, although only a few apply the 
key points in their classrooms.
  And the final point the Secretary mentioned, and again I quote from 
his observations on this report, evidence suggests that the United 
States teachers do not receive as much practical training and daily 
support as their colleagues in Japan and Germany and other countries as 
well.

  I tend to agree, frankly, with the gentlewoman from Kentucky in her 
observation that if we want to be serious about improving these 
numbers, the last place we want to look is to Washington, DC and to our 
Government here in Washington to try to do something about these 
numbers.
  We should do something in support of our States, and that is focus on 
the freedom to teach and the liberty to learn. I have to tell my 
colleagues that when my State board of education members came to visit 
me just a few weeks ago and came to my office, their No. 1 plea to me 
as a Member of Congress was for the Federal Government to leave 
Colorado alone, to let Colorado educate their children on their own 
terms, to let Colorado begin to design programs that try to turn these 
numbers around.
  We have this picture up here that the gentleman showed earlier. If 
one wants to see what happens when the Federal Government takes over an 
educational system, look right there. Because in only one spot in this 
country does the Federal Government have direct and constitutional 
authority to manage the education system in a community, and it is 
Washington, DC, which I would submit and challenge anyone to defy the 
real result that this is one of the worst places in the country when it 
comes to educating children.
  Children are trapped in this city, Washington, DC, in an educational 
system that treats every child as though they are identically the same. 
This is the city that many of us, if we read the newspapers just a 
couple weeks ago, we saw the headline stories of the teacher who put 
nine 4th grade children in a room off to the side of a classroom where 
these children, unobserved and uncontrolled by the teacher, forgotten 
there for all intents and purposes for over a half-hour, began playing 
some kind of game where they disrobed and began to have sex. These are 
4th grade children.
  I would again suggest that if we want to see this activity taking 
place

[[Page H2071]]

throughout the country, just put the Federal Government in control of 
school districts. But the advice I get from the people who really care 
about children, who really know what works, they say that the Federal 
Government needs to play less and less of a role in how we manage our 
local schools. We need to focus on the freedom to teach and the liberty 
to learn, and treating teachers like professionals and parents like 
customers, and that is how we will turn these appalling numbers around 
and improve these statistics internationally.
  Mr. NORWOOD. Mr. Chairman, if the gentleman will show the other 
poster, please. We know we have about 760 educational programs spread 
over 39 agencies in Washington that spend over $100 billion a year on 
education. Yet the gentleman has just read out some statistics in math 
and science and reading that frankly scare me to death.
  Now, does my colleague agree with the President that we cannot ask 
the American people to spend more money on education?
  Mr. BOB SCHAFFER of Colorado. I am sorry, Mr. Chairman, can the 
gentleman repeat his question?
  Mr. NORWOOD. The question is, does the gentleman agree with the 
President when he says since we do spend $120 billion a year over 760 
programs, over 39 different agencies of Government, does the gentleman 
agree with the President that we cannot ask the American people to 
spend more money on education, in view of the numbers and statistics 
that the gentleman just read a few minutes ago?
  Mr. BOB SCHAFFER of Colorado. I would agree wholeheartedly. In fact, 
the other portion of that report has another graph showing that the 
amount of money we spend in the United States has no bearing whatsoever 
on our ability to teach better; that, in fact, the more and more we 
spend, the worse we seem to do when compared to national standards.
  Here is the quote from the report. We spend, on average, about $6,500 
per pupil. That is nationally. Only one country spends more than we do, 
and that is Switzerland. Yet these countries that outperform us, 
Hungary, the Czech Republic, South Korea, Japan, England, France, 
Denmark, Germany, and so on, all spend fewer dollars per pupil than we 
do here in the United States, yet we rank so poorly in comparison with 
those countries.
  Mr. NORWOOD. Well, how should we rank before we start saying that the 
American people should spend more money on education? Should we come in 
second in math before we do the rest of what the President says?
  We are not going to ask the American people to spend more money on 
education until we do better with the money we are spending now. So 
should we be second in math or third in math around the globe? Where 
should the cutoff point be?
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. If the gentleman will yield, I do not think anybody in 
this Chamber will be satisfied until we score No. 1. The evidence our 
colleague from Colorado has pointed out shows the issue is not money. 
We are spending more than most people around the globe and we are 
getting mediocre, unacceptable results.
  So the answer is not to pour more money into the system, but it is 
taking a look at where the money is going and taking a look at the 
system and how we make the system more effective.
  I want to yield to my other colleague from Georgia, and I appreciate 
his being here. This is wonderful tonight.
  Mr. DEAL of Georgia. First of all I want to join with my colleague 
from Georgia, Mr. Norwood, in his compliments to the gentleman from 
Michigan, Mr. Hoekstra, for holding the hearing in Georgia. We do 
regret the gentleman was unable to be there with us, but we appreciate 
his scheduling this Special Order.
  I want to share with my colleagues some of the comments, as my 
colleague from Georgia began doing a few minutes ago, as we listen to 
people at every level of the delivery system in our State.
  Even though we have a lot of progress to be made in Georgia, there 
are many things we are indeed proud of. One is we have a HOPE 
scholarship program. And unlike the fact that the President is 
borrowing and adopting the name of it for his proposal, the uniqueness 
of ours is that we have a funding source that is separate and distinct 
from the taxpayers' normal revenue stream. The lottery proceeds from 
our State fund it and it is a very successful program. Would it not be 
nice if there could be an alternative funding source to fund the 
President's proposal?
  I want to say to the gentleman that both my parents were public 
school teachers. They were classroom teachers. My wife is presently a 
6th grade middle school teacher in our home county. So I have a genetic 
as well as a spousal bias toward where I think education dollars should 
flow, and that is to the classroom.
  There are three things that stood out in my mind as to what we heard 
last week. The first is that our schools are faced with greater social 
problems than they have ever been faced with before, and in order to 
overcome those social problems we need greater parental support as well 
as parental participation.
  The second thing was that discipline is a major problem in our school 
system, and all of us want to do what will help rather than what will 
hurt. As the gentleman knows, we are considering in the reauthorization 
of the IDEA program the issue of removing some of the Federal 
impediments to discipline that have put mandates and restraints that 
interfere with teachers and administrators in terms of discipline.
  Third is the flexibility in the use of Federal funds, the ability to 
design programs that meet local needs rather than having to meet a 
Federal mandate.

                              {time}  1815

  Let me share just a few quotes with the gentleman of people who have 
made some observations about it. One was from Dr. Craig Dowling, a 
principal of an elementary school down in Valdosta, GA, when he said, 
``Federal programs come with guidelines and strings that choke school 
improvement. Guidelines for a program such as Title I may help a school 
in Atlanta or Washington, DC, and totally disturb a school in south 
Georgia or the central plains.''
  In terms of flexibility, I think the chairman of our State school 
board said it best, Mr. Johnny Isakson. He said this: ``There are far 
too many dollars scattered in far too many programs managed by far too 
many agencies.''
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. Does the gentleman mean 39 agencies dealing with 
education is too many in Washington?
  Mr. DEAL of Georgia. I am afraid so. Mr. Isakson is a businessman and 
he looks at it from that point of view. He said, if the dollars spent 
could be concentrated, there would be less disturbance and that more of 
the money would actually flow into education and out of administration.
  Let me give a classic example that we heard from, from a lady who was 
a director of an adult literacy services center in Dublin, GA. She said 
this, speaking of the grant process. In other words, when applying for 
a Federal grant for education, this is what she observed: ``The process 
is cumbersome and labor intensive. Writing the 1997 proposal consumed 
nearly two months of the literacy director's time. Measuring 
accountability in terms of performance rather than volume of paperwork 
is the best solution to the problem.''
  We heard some very common sense, practical observations from people 
who have hands-on daily experience in delivering education to children 
in the classroom.
  Once again, I thank the gentleman for affording us this opportunity, 
and I thank the gentleman for allowing me to share these comments 
today.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. I thank my colleague from Georgia. I do express my 
regrets that I was unable to be at the hearing. I think the gentleman 
has got some wonderful testimony. I find it interesting. It has been 
one of the most exciting projects I have worked on because we have been 
able to go around the country. We have been in California, we have been 
in Arizona, we were in Georgia, we are going to New York, we have done 
some things in Michigan, Milwaukee, Chicago, and we are learning about 
what is working on education. From what my colleague has told me, I did 
not catch the full impact, there are some that are blasting or taking 
some pot shots at a discovery process, finding out what is working when 
we obviously know that what we are doing today is not working, but 
there are some that are taking a real critical look at that.

[[Page H2072]]

  Mr. NORWOOD. If the gentleman will yield, if we do not stop doing 
that, if we do not stop politicizing this issue, we are never going to 
get to the point where we can resolve the problem. I would point out 
that the gentleman from Georgia [Mr. Deal] mentioned a constituent of 
mine in Dublin, GA. She is from my district and I was very proud of her 
for her commentary, but I also want to remind the gentleman that Dr. 
Dowling from Valdosta, GA, yes, he is a principal of a school but he is 
also a father of five or six children, and one of his quotes that has 
stuck with me since the day we were down there is that he said, and I 
quote, ``I firmly believe that school improvement can only be achieved 
in the classroom.''
  I think many of us come to this discovery process with that bias. It 
is true. I believe that we ought to send back the responsibility for 
education, not just the classroom but the parents and the teachers. I 
will conclude to go to another meeting, Mr. Speaker, but one of the 
very fine things that was said in our hearing was said by Mr. Kelly 
McCutchen, executive director of the Georgia Public Policy Foundation. 
I think he almost sums the whole thing up in this quote: ``Education in 
America is the constitutional responsibility of the States, the social 
responsibility of communities, and the moral responsibility of families 
and except when the civil rights of individuals are menaced, the 
Federal Government should never impede the capacity of families, 
communities and States to decide how best to provide education for 
their children.''
  I do not know of a better statement that sums up exactly how I feel 
about it.

Quotations for Special Orders, April 30 From Georgia Crossroads Hearing


                               quotations

       Dr. Linda Shrenko, State Superintendent: ``The most 
     frequent message I have heard is that no one can make better 
     decisions about local education than the parents, teachers, 
     and students in those local communities.''
       Dr. Linda Shrenko, State Superintendent: ``Administrators 
     from Washington will never meet the needs of individual 
     children * * * I cast my vote for returning as many dollars 
     directly to local schools as we are able. * * *''
       Mr. Kelly McCutchen, Executive Director, Georgia Public 
     Policy Foundation: (quoting Chester Finn) ``Education in 
     America is the `constitutional responsibility of the states, 
     the social responsibility of communities, and the moral 
     responsibility of families' and `except when the civil rights 
     of individuals are menaced * * * [the federal government 
     should] never impede the capacity of families, communities 
     and states to decide how best to provide education to their 
     children.' ''
       Dr. Craig Dowling, Principal, West Gordon Elementary 
     School, Valdosta, GA: ``I firmly believe that school 
     improvement can only be achieved in the classroom.''
       Dr. Craig Dowling, Principal, West Gordon Elementary 
     School, Valdosta, GA: ``[Federal programs] come with 
     guidelines and strings that choke school improvement * * * 
     Guidelines for a program such as Title I may help a school in 
     Atlanta or Washington, D.C., and totally disturb a school in 
     south Georgia or the central plains.''
       Dr. Craig Dowling, Principal, West Gordon Elementary 
     School, Valdosta, GA: ``Welfare sets up a downward spiral of 
     hopelessness and despair where children rarely see an adult 
     working * * * social issues can not be resolved through our 
     schools.''
       Dr. Laura Frederick, Assistant Professor, Georgia State 
     University: ``What's wasted in schools is time, money, and a 
     great deal of student potential when we adopt unproven 
     instructional programs because they should good, because the 
     publisher is offering free supplementary materials with 
     the purchase of the programs, or because the sales 
     representatives are wining and dining the textbook 
     selection committee.''
       Mr. Johnny Isakson, Chairman, State Board of Education: 
     ``There are far too many dollars scattered in far too many 
     programs managed by far too many agencies. If the dollars 
     spent could be concentrated, the management less disbursed, 
     then more of the money would actually flow into education and 
     out of administration.''
       Mr. Johnny Isakson, Chairman of the State Board of 
     Education: (speaking about Mr. Clinton's suggestion of 
     increased federal funding of school construction) ``While 
     this is a laudable recommendation, it really should be the 
     responsibility of local boards of education and their 
     taxpayers to fund and pay for the school facilities 
     improvements they want . . . On March 17th, 63 Georgia public 
     school systems ratified local option sales taxes which, over 
     the next five years, will raise $3.5 billion for school 
     construction.''
       Ms. Dahlia Wren, Director, Adult Literacy Services, Heart 
     of Georgia Technical Institute, Dublin, GA: (speaking of the 
     federal grant process) ``The process is cumbersome and labor 
     intensive. . . Writing the [1997] proposal consumed nearly 
     two months of the literacy director's time . . . measuring 
     accountability in terms of performance rather than volume of 
     paperwork is the best solution to the problem.''


                               anecdotes

       Dr. Linda Schrenko, Georgia State Superintendent of 
     Schools: Dr. Shrenko reported that Georgia taxpayers send 35 
     billion dollars to Washington. They receive back 454 million 
     dollars for education. This is less than a 1.3% return on 
     their tax dollar for education.
       Mr. John Roddy, Director of Federal Programs for Georgia: 
     Mr. Roddy reported a conversation he had with a researcher 
     who had done a study evaluating the effectiveness of the Safe 
     and Drug-Free Schools federal program. According to Mr. 
     Roddy, the researcher reported that children who had not 
     received the Safe and Drug-Free Schools training actually had 
     a lower incidence of drug use than the children who did 
     receive the training.
       Dr. Elizabeth Lyons, Principal, C.W. Hill Elementary 
     School, Atlanta, GA: Dr. Lyons described a reading program, 
     ``Readaerobics,'' that she and her staff developed in 
     response to their students' poor achievements in reading. The 
     program is conducted on Saturday mornings to teach basic 
     phonics skills in a fun way. Parents are required to donate 
     one Saturday morning each month in order for their children 
     to participate, so parental involvement is mandatory. J.C. 
     Penney's has taken note of the program and is offering its 
     financial support to the Readaerobics program.
       Mr. Buster Evans, Superintendent, Bleckley County School 
     District, Cochran, GA: Mr. Evans told of a school system that 
     turned around its students' poor reading achievements with 
     the implementation of two complimentary reading programs.

  Mr. HOEKSTRA. I thank the vice chairman of the subcommittee for 
participating and sharing those comments with me and chairing the 
hearing in Georgia last week.
  Mr. THUNE. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. I yield to the gentleman from South Dakota.
  Mr. THUNE. I thank my friend from Michigan for addressing what in my 
view is a critical subject to many of us in this body. One of our 
Founding Fathers, James Madison, once said that knowledge shall forever 
govern ignorance. I do not think there are many of us who are more 
concerned or there is any subject that is more of a priority for many 
of the Members of this body than coming up with a system that provides 
the absolute highest quality education at the least possible cost. I 
commend my friend for the great work that he has done in drawing 
attention to this important issue all over our country.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. I am not sure that we are even talking about the lowest 
possible cost. I think everybody here is willing to take a look. If we 
were getting exemplary results, we would not go through a cost 
reduction effort, and that is not the focus here, is saving a penny. 
The problem that we are facing today is the results that our kids are 
getting is not good enough and that is the number one priority.
  Mr. THUNE. The gentleman is exactly right. I think that is the thing 
that sometimes gets lost in all this discussion because it becomes a 
discussion about dollars and cents. Ultimately I think what we are 
talking about here is quality. Are we getting results? Are we getting 
the best possible bang for the dollars that we are investing?
  I would submit that in my State of South Dakota, and I grew up in a 
small town, went to a small school, and am the product of the 
investment, the energies that a lot of people, teachers and 
administrators poured into me that were very dedicated and very 
committed, and I would look to our State and my two little girls, who 
are 10 and 7, who were attending a public school system in South Dakota 
as well. We are getting a wonderful education there. We now have them 
in a public school system out here.
  I have a very personal concern in this issue and where we are going 
with it. I would say that if we look at the statistics around the 
country and the dollars that are put into per pupil cost in different 
States and the performance that we get, and my State of South Dakota I 
think is a good example because we rank 45th in the amount of per pupil 
spending and yet on SAT performance we rank seventh in the country. 
There are a number of other states, Utah again is a good case in point, 
the numbers that I have in front of me, which is 50th in terms of total 
cost and yet ranks second in SAT performance. I think when we talk 
about this issue, we cannot talk about it in terms of

[[Page H2073]]

necessarily an equation between more money and better quality. That 
clearly is the case.
  What I would suggest is that I have observed the education of my two 
little girls, that there is no better laboratory I think to instill 
knowledge and to instill values in our kids today, but one of the 
things, missing ingredients is that we have along the way, I think, 
tried to become so conscious of the governmental involvement that the 
parents have stepped out of the equation in many cases, and we do need 
in my judgement to put more controls in the hands of parents, school 
boards, administrators and teachers, and we will get a better quality 
product if we are willing to do that.
  As I was growing up in a small school system, I on occasion, my third 
grade teacher daily used to read to us Laura Ingalls Wilder books, I do 
not know whether the gentleman is familiar with her or not but she is 
someone who grew up on the prairies of the Midwest and spent much of 
her growing-up years in South Dakota. My 9-year-old, 10-year-old now, 
is currently reading those same books. One evening as she was reading 
it I mentioned to her, ``Brittany, did you know that Laura Ingalls 
Wilder spent a great deal of her growing up time right in the State of 
South Dakota, in your home State?''
  She said, ``I know, Dad, she was a conservative, committed to smaller 
government and a better future.''
  I thought, they are also very impressionable. It is clear to me she 
had listened to some of the speeches I had made along the way. The 
point being that when Laurel Ingalls Wilder was growing up, it was a 
time at which we had a pioneer spirit, we were an independent self-
sufficient people and we did not look to big government for solutions 
to a lot of our problems.
  I think at the heart of this debate and this issue is the fact that 
we need to focus that attention back on what we can do to put that 
power, that control, that authority, that decision-making in the hands 
of people at the local level. If in fact we will shift that model in 
that direction, we will get the kind of results and the quality and the 
performance that I think the gentleman has talked about and have drawn 
attention to throughout this country.
  I thank the gentleman for his good work and look forward to being a 
part of this dialogue in what we can do to make ours the model and 
really the example around the world of the highest quality education 
that we can possibly have.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. I thank the gentleman for his comments. We really are 
going through a process where we are identifying what is working. We 
actually have developed what we call lessons in education. Some of the 
lessons we have learned as we have had hearings around the country are: 
Parents care the most about their children's education. They actually 
know the name of the teacher like the student does versus the 
bureaucrat that may be here in Washington.
  Good intentions do not equal good policy. We have seen that in 
Washington. Every time there appears to be a problem, we create a new 
program. The end result is 760 programs, 39 agencies.
  More does not always equal better. More money through the same failed 
system is not going to improve results.
  Education must be child-centered.
  Lesson number 5. When we spend more, we create more tax burden. 
Somebody has to come up with the dollars. It is our responsibility to 
make sure that we are getting the kind of results that we need.
  Mr. Speaker, I am going to move to my colleague from North Carolina. 
I cannot imagine what he wants to talk about, but he has been sitting 
there so patiently. I believe he may want to talk about one of the 
President's proposals.
  Mr. BALLENGER. The gentleman and I attended a hearing in Oklahoma. 
What I wanted to bring up, and we have discussed it here in one way or 
another, but the idea of spending money wisely. I am here to express a 
concern which our Democrat friends mentioned earlier on the condition 
of the public schools today.
  A recent ``Prime Time Live'' segment by Diane Sawyer documented the 
deteriorating buildings and inadequate structures used to house our 
children. To combat this appalling situation, President Clinton has 
proposed a $5 billion mandatory appropriation to guarantee the interest 
payments for the construction and renovation of elementary and 
secondary schools.

  That sounds like motherhood, apple pie, and the greatest thing since 
sliced bread. But one of the problems that the gentleman and I both 
know is that once the first dollar of Federal money is accepted, then 
there is a little thing called the Davis-Bacon law that goes into 
effect. What is the Davis-Bacon law? What it does is it mandates that 
you pay higher wages for construction.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. My colleague from Kentucky may want to jump in. The 
gentleman may want to just explain the hearing that we went to in 
Oklahoma.
  Mr. BALLENGER. Strangely enough, we had heard that there were strange 
things going on in Oklahoma. Luckily for us, the Secretary of Labor out 
there had investigated the actual operation of the Davis-Bacon law as 
far as Oklahoma was concerned.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. What does Davis-Bacon do? Maybe our colleague from 
Kentucky can explain exactly what Davis-Bacon does because it is 
important that people understand this concept. Then we can go back into 
what we found about paving machines doing concrete and all of these 
kinds of things.
  Mrs. NORTHUP. It is important, and it is important because I think 
the American people would be interested in how their tax dollars are 
spent.
  What the Federal Government says is that any school that is built 
with a dollar of Federal money, that certain provisions in the bidding 
process have to take place. One of those provisions is that 
extraordinarily high wages have to be paid, higher wages than most of 
the taxpayers will ever earn. What this does is push up the cost of 
construction 11 to 20 percent.
  This makes no sense. We are talking about the desperate need to build 
more schools. What you do is you give the schools the opportunity to 
help offset some of their interest payments, but by doing that, they 
incur 11 to 20 percent higher costs in building every single school.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. My colleague from North Carolina can explain exactly 
how this happens. The process is we try here in Washington, some 
people, the gentleman and I have been to the building, I am not sure I 
can find it on here, but I think it is somewhere in this neighborhood 
over here. There is a person in a building over here, and a group of 
about 60, 80 people that are trying to determine pay rates for 40, 50 
job categories in every county in America.
  What did we find in Oklahoma?
  Mr. BALLENGER. For instance, a wage survey submitted to the 
Department of Labor, this is in Oklahoma, showed a $20 million 
renovation occurred at the University of Oklahoma football stadium 
involving 28 workers. In reality no work was done on the football 
stadium. Twenty million dollars sent in in the report to say they had 
done this work and it never happened.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. The report was sent in, so on the report they outlined 
the wage scales that are paid or were paid to these workers on this 
project and for any Federal project or any project that had Federal 
dollars on it, these were going to be the wages that were going to be 
paid.
  So this was bogus information coming into Washington from the State 
of Oklahoma, and for any project now being constructed in Oklahoma that 
is the wage rate that was going to have to be paid. They tried to do 
the same thing in Kentucky.
  Mr. BALLENGER. Let me give another one. The case showed that 7 
asphalt machines, extremely large machines, as big as trucks, were used 
to pave a parking lot for an Internal Revenue Service building in 
Oklahoma. Workers supposedly were paid $15 an hour. In reality, the 
parking lot had only room for 30 cars and it was made of concrete. 
There was no way that you could use asphalt paving on it. The 
Department of Labor said that the wages instead of being $15 an hour 
should have been $8 an hour if it had occurred. But it did not happen.

                              {time}  1830

  Mr. HOEKSTRA. So with the process the gentleman from North Carolina 
has outlined, fraudulent data coming in is

[[Page H2074]]

what can lead to excessive costs for further Federal projects.
  Mrs. NORTHUP. Actually there are two problems here. One is the 
fraudulent data. When you have a building in Washington, DC that is 
trying to determine construction projects and costs in Oklahoma, what 
you are doing is removing the two so far apart that you make fraud a 
very easy, very easily an occurrence. But furthermore, even if you have 
no fraud, what you have are extraordinarily high wage rates in places 
like Kentucky, places where if you were an individual, if you were a 
taxpayer, if you were going to construct something, you would never pay 
those construction wages. You would never pay those same level of 
construction wages.
  I might say that in Kentucky, when I looked over those wage scales, 
there were $28 an hour, $26 an hour. We are a poor State. You know, we 
have people that are working for minimum wage, that are working as 
hairdressers, that are working in gas stations, that are driving school 
buses, that are working on the assembly line at Ford Motor Co. None of 
those people make $28 an hour. And for them to pay their taxes and have 
their taxes pay people to build schools for their children at 
extraordinarily high wage rates is an absolute abuse of their tax 
dollars.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. The gentleman from North Carolina will explain why that 
will happen with the school construction now.
  I thought we were helping the schools to get more bang for their 
buck.
  Mr. BALLENGER. Well, the truth of the matter is you know as well as I 
do that if you add this additional labor cost--I mean suppose the 
President is going to guarantee your interest rate on your bonds that 
you have. North Carolina sold a billion, $200 million worth of bonds. 
My own county sold $50 million worth of bonds. Thank goodness I think 
they are in such financial shape that they will not be desiring of 
using this thing, but if they were, and those bonds cost 6 percent, and 
the labor costs were 10 percent higher, you have lost 4 percent because 
you use Federal assistance.
  It is unbelievable.
  Mrs. NORTHUP. I want to just remind you though that even though North 
Carolina may not incur the higher school costs and may not borrow out 
of this $5 billion, this $5 billion represents the tax dollars they 
have paid to Washington, and they are just going to lose it for some 
State that does not have the foresight to be able to afford this.
  Mr. BALLENGER. If I might, I would like to quote from the Wall Street 
Journal one statement here. An inspector general's report has blown 
this whistle on the Davis-Bacon Act, and that 1931 law by which the 
Labor Department drives up the cost of federally subsidized 
construction by requiring what are in effect union wages. A Federal 
audit of 800 wage survey forms used to calculate the local prevailing 
or union wage found that nearly two out of three forms contained 
significant errors and that deliberate misreporting activity may exist.
  It is an ideal situation for fraud and abuse, and there is an 
indictment out in Oklahoma for one of the fellows that our hearing 
brought to the light of the law enforcement.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. If any of my colleagues could maybe answer the 
question. I mean if Washington does not set the wages for these 
projects, how would we actually find out the wages?
  Mrs. NORTHUP. The best way to build a school for our children is for 
each school district to do it as they do it right now. They say, what 
do we need? We need this many classrooms, we need these certain 
specifications, and they put it out for an open bid process, and then 
all the companies that build can bid on those bid processes, and the 
taxpayers know they get the best price for the school they are going to 
build. That is what they deserve for the sacrifice they pay in their 
taxes, and that is the best way, close to home, to make sure that each 
school is built in accordance to specifications and at the cheapest 
price.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. It is kind of interesting what the woman has outlined. 
It is that would make the people in this building feel very 
uncomfortable because they do not believe that competitive bidding 
actually works in the construction industry. Even though we build huge 
buildings, construction projects, and we use it every day, for some 
reason the Federal Government does not believe that competitive bidding 
would work for us.
  Mrs. NORTHUP. Mr. Speaker, I would just like to challenge the 
Department of Education and the President to rethink their proposal. 
Since they believe that schools construction is so important, since 
they believe the need is so great that we cannot afford it, I am going 
to ask them to resubmit their proposal and take out the Davis-Bacon 
provision, say that they will be excepted from this so that those 
projects that they say we need so badly will be built, there will be an 
opportunity for more schools for our children, and they can prove how 
dedicated they are to our kids by removing this very costly provision.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. If we put in the prevailing wage provision without the 
people here in Washington determining the wages, we will lose, I say to 
the gentleman from North Carolina [Mr. Ballenger], anywhere from 10 to 
20 percent, maybe more of the purchasing power. So this $5 billion, and 
it is going--I mean we will lose more than that because this is just a 
partial contribution to these projects, but the whole project will then 
be subject to Davis or to the prevailing wage law.
  My colleague from Colorado.
  Mr. BOB SCHAFFER of Colorado. That is the perfect point that I think 
the American people need to understand in this particular proposal 
because what the $5 billion that the Clinton administration wants us to 
believe is going to go toward school construction is only a fraction of 
the total cost of the project.
  What I mean by that is that $5 billion is targeted toward buying down 
the interest that a school district would incur in financing a 
construction project. But even though a tiny fraction of the dollars 
that would be available to those school districts seems small, the fact 
that it is Federal funds and has a Davis-Bacon Act attached to them, 
when those funds are commingled with the State or local dollars that 
are involved in a project, it really spoils the buying power of all of 
the dollars that should be going toward bricks and mortar to build 
viable schools and schools that promote learning for our children.
  But instead what the Clinton administration design is, is to have a 
greater portion, the 11, 20, 30 percent I have heard in many cases 
depending on what area of the country; to have that percentage of the 
dollars go away from construction, away from children, and toward some 
other purpose.
  Now that other purpose may be useful to some people, but it is not 
useful to children. It is not useful to our goals to try to educate 
children, and this is the real conflict and vision, I think, 
between our Republican vision for schooling and the Democrat vision of 
schooling where we really want to get those dollars to kids. We really 
want to put them toward learning, not toward some union satisfaction 
that is a payback on a political promise.

  Mr. BALLENGER. The saddest thing of all is the only people that will 
have to use this are the poorest school districts in the country. In 
other words, they do not have the taxing power to back up the bond 
issues they could sell, so they are going to have to use this 5 percent 
underwriting of their interest to sell the bonds which means the 
poorest people in the country will get the worst deal on building 
schools.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. The poorest districts in the country will end up paying 
a premium for all of their construction costs and will actually end up, 
may end up, getting less bang for their dollar than if they had never 
gotten involved with the Federal Government in the first place. But 
sometimes the stuff looks just so enticing, and it makes great 
rhetoric.
  I think the gentleman from Colorado is absolutely right. We are not 
talking about the quality of education. We are talking about designing 
the best system of getting the financial resources to the child and to 
the classroom and the school construction program, and as with many of 
the other programs, one of our colleagues pointed out earlier, some of 
these programs take 21 weeks, not some, most of them on the average 
take 21 weeks, 216 steps, and even then you get an inflated price.

[[Page H2075]]

  Mrs. NORTHUP. Mr. Speaker, I think it is important to realize that 
there will be a lot of rhetoric about this. I know that I have heard 
the debate that what you get is more efficiency when you use higher-
price labor, but the true effect is if you got more efficiency, those 
companies that used the $28-an-hour workers would be able to bid on the 
job and get it without prevailing wage. If you actually save money by 
using higher price labor, then you could come in with lower bids, you 
would win the bid contract. So I think that you are going to hear some 
misinformation.
  The other question is that if you do not set those wages high, that 
you are going to take advantage of people who are very poor. The truth 
is the people who are very poor, the people who have modest incomes, 
middle-income America, are going to subsidize with their tax dollars 
extraordinarily high pay rates for those people that work on the 
schools. It is not the workers who are talking advantage of on the 
schools, but all the other workers in our States and across this 
country that are going to pay higher taxes in order to get school 
projects they could get at a cheaper price.
  Mr. BALLENGER. Suppose all the money they could save went into buying 
computers. This is capital outlay, the same deal. In other words, the 
money that they have to spend on higher construction costs could go 
into computers, all kinds of equipment that would make the school a 
better place.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. This is all about using the taxpayers' dollars more 
effectively.
  Mr. BALLENGER. Right.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. My colleague from Colorado.
  Mr. BOB SCHAFFER of Colorado. I wanted to just give you one more 
example on this Davis-Bacon Act and what the impact is on public 
projects and construction projects.
  I returned from a couple weeks in, over the Easter break, doing town 
meetings throughout eastern Colorado; I went to a town called Trinidad 
which is in the southern part of Colorado, and the mayor, a Democrat I 
might add, came to me, and he talked about the Davis-Bacon Act as the 
No. 1 problem they are facing in Trinidad, CO. And they want to repair 
their library there, repair the library, not replace it, just repair 
it. In the process of repairing their town library they accepted 
$17,500 of Federal funds that they received in a rural redevelopment 
and construction grant, which was a small portion of the overall costs 
of this repair project. They concluded that by the time they calculated 
the cost of accepting $17,000 of Federal funds, costs attributable 
directly to the Davis-Bacon Act, that they would have been better off 
to replace the entire building than to make the small repairs that they 
had in mind.
  Now I ask you to think about that when President Clinton and the 
Democrats come here and talk about this $5 billion as though it somehow 
is going to help our children and help our schools, and I assure you it 
will not. Before we came here tonight, one of our friends on the other 
side of the aisle, Democrat side of the aisle, said would it not be 
trying to paint a bleak picture for our children, said would it not be 
a shame if the children and the teachers returned this fall to 
crumbling schools.
  Let me ask a more direct question: Would it not be a shame if those 
children and teachers returned in the fall to crumbling schools that 
are still crumbling, even after spending $5 billion of Federal funds? 
Our States, as a matter of fact, are better off unencumbered by Federal 
intrusion in the efforts of trying to repair schools and taking care of 
children. That is where our confidence ought to be placed, not here in 
Washington.
  Mr. BALLENGER. We thank the kind gentleman. I would like to 
congratulate you on first of all your hearings throughout the country, 
but second of all, bringing this to, I hope, our TV audience to let 
them better understand what this is all about.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. I thank my colleagues for participating tonight. We are 
going to continue this dialogue on education. It is a very important 
one. We are going to continue hearings. This President in many cases 
has the same vision of quality education for our children, the best 
educated kids in the world. We share that vision. I think where we 
separate and go down different paths is he believes the answer perhaps 
too often lies here in Washington where we believe the answer lies with 
parents, with teachers and a local classroom.
  I thank my colleagues for being here tonight.

                          ____________________