[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 68 (Wednesday, May 21, 1997)]
[House]
[Pages H3162-H3168]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                    THE DEMOCRATS' EDUCATION AGENDA

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 7, 1997, the gentleman from New Jersey [Mr. Pallone] is 
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
  Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, tonight I want to talk about the Democrats' 
education agenda. As many Americans know by now late last night the 
House passed a budget agreement that would balance the Federal budget 
by the year 2002, and this agreement was very much a compromise between 
Democrats and Republicans. Like any compromise, it does not have 
everything that both sides wanted, and while I voted for the agreement 
and I am pleased that it addresses some of the country's most pressing 
education needs, I want to stress that I believe strongly that there is 
a lot more work that needs to be done.

                              {time}  1900

  As I said, however, there are a number of positive developments in 
this budget agreement with respect to education. The President's 
America Reads Program was included; this $2.75 billion program aims to 
teach every child in the country to be able to read independently by 
the end of the third grade.
  Other elements of the Democrats' education agenda that are a part of 
this budget agreement include an expansion of Head Start. One million 
children will be covered in Head Start by the year 2002.
  The President's technology literacy challenge fund will also will be 
fully funded. It will play an invaluable part in preparing our children 
for the future by teaching them how to use computer and other 
technologies and giving them the resources on which to learn. Every 
classroom in America will be connected to the information superhighway, 
every teacher will receive the needed training, and all students and 
teachers will have access to the needed technology.
  For higher education, which is obviously very important, the budget 
agreement includes $35 billion in targeted tax cuts. This $35 billion 
includes cuts consistent with the Democrats' family first agenda and 
the President's HOPE scholarship and tuition tax deduction proposals.
  These tax cuts have been a major part of an education agenda the 
Democrats have been pursuing for some 2 years, and they are an 
important component of our larger plan to make everyday life more 
affordable for the average working American family.
  The agreement, I should say, Mr. Speaker, also includes a $300 
increase in the Pell grant award and that increase brings the maximum 
Pell grant award to $3,000.
  Mr. Speaker, I want to stress again that the inclusion of these items 
in the balanced budget agreement is without question a vindication for 
Democrats. President Clinton and congressional Democrats place 
education at the very top of the country's priority list, and we have 
been successful in getting some, and again I will stress some, of our 
goals accomplished.
  I have alluded a number of times to this notion that there is still 
work to be done with respect to education, and I can use the Pell Grant 
Program, I think, as an excellent example of that. While the $300 
increase in the budget represents the largest such increase in over two 
decades, the fact of the matter is that a much larger increase is 
needed.
  I know that there are many students in this country that depend upon 
the Pell grant, and the Pell grant is essentially the cornerstone of 
all of our student aid programs. It is a means through which millions 
of students who would otherwise have been unable to attend college have 
been able to attend college. But a lack of adequate increase in the 
program over the years has resulted in a substantial decrease in the 
real value of Pell grants.
  It is very easy to understand. Basically what we are saying is that 
even though the amount available for the Pell grant has increased, 
inflation has been much higher than the amount of the increase that the 
Federal Government has been providing. So if you look to a January 1997 
report from the Congressional Research Service, it says that although 
the maximum grant level increased by 34 percent from 1980 to 1997, 
after you adjust that for inflation, the real value actually decreased 
by 13 percent. Increases, again, in the Pell grant funds have not kept 
up with inflation.
  This has obviously made it very difficult for students dependent on 
such grants to meet the cost of college. At a New Jersey State 
university, Rutgers, which is in my home district, 8,498 of the 
approximately 20,000 students receiving Federal aid received a Pell 
grant during the last academic year. However, these students as well as 
millions like them in schools across the country would obviously have 
had an easier time paying for college if we could simply keep the Pell 
grant funding levels even with inflation. We can see, of 20,000 
students at Rutgers, this is really almost getting close to 50 percent 
that depend on the Pell grant and have found that they cannot keep up 
with inflation with the grant that they are getting.
  Now, another issue that I am concerned about is the potential 
inability of tax benefits to help those on the lowest end of the income 
scale. In other words, I, for one, am very much in favor of the 
education tax cuts that have been promised as part of this budget 
resolution, but the problem always is that tax cuts or even tax credits 
are not that helpful if one is not paying taxes. So again, as valuable 
as they are, they are not addressing those on the lowest end of the 
income scale.
  What we are saying then is we need to look beyond, if you will, and 
target more, if we can, to lower-income people who no longer have any 
tax liability to pay for college.
  Still another important element of our education agenda that was not 
included in the budget agreement was school construction. Those of us 
of the

[[Page H3163]]

American public who listened to the debate during the budget resolution 
last night noted that many of the speakers lamented the fact that the 
school construction component of the President's budget proposal was 
not included in this agreement.
  According to the General Accounting Office, one-third of our Nation's 
school are in need of major repair or complete replacement. While I am 
glad that the budget agreement includes money to hook every classroom 
up to the information superhighway, as I mentioned, I think we should 
not have put the horse before the cart. Before we begin equipping our 
schools with technology for the 21st century, we should make sure the 
physical structures of the schools themselves are in proper condition; 
otherwise, it is very difficult for children to learn.
  During consideration of the budget yesterday, I did support the 
substitute proposal of the gentleman from Massachusetts [Mr. Kennedy] 
that would have included $5 billion for school construction. The 
proposal would also have set the maximum Pell grant award at $3,700, 
$700 higher than in the agreement that eventually passed. Not only 
would it have balanced the budget, but it would have produced a $2.5 
billion surplus in that year as well.
  Now, I mention this again because I think it is an important point 
that the Kennedy budget substitute illustrates that we can increase 
funding for education even beyond what has been proposed and still 
balance the budget. In other words, it shows that in providing ample 
funding for education, what we are really doing is deciding where our 
priorities are going to be. One can devote more money in this budget to 
education if one makes changes and cuts somewhere else.
  That is why I am here today, to urge all of my Democratic colleagues 
to join me in building on the momentum for education that we have 
established in the budget resolution.
  Now, I should point out, I am not a member, but there is a Democratic 
education task force that has been working now for some time, trying to 
put together, looking at the President's proposals, looking at 
the budget agreement, and basically trying to put together a Democratic 
proposal or series of proposals, if you will, to address education 
needs.

  Mr. Speaker, one of the cochairmen is here tonight, and I would like 
to have the gentleman from North Carolina [Mr. Etheridge] join me, if I 
could yield to him at this time, and maybe he could give us some 
information about what they have been doing and comment further on some 
of these issues. I am pleased to see my colleague here tonight.
  Mr. ETHERIDGE. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my friend from New 
Jersey, Mr. Pallone, for organizing this special order on education 
this evening. Yes, we have been doing a lot of things.
  This Congress has been doing a lot. Let me touch on a couple of 
things. A lot of the dialogue over the last week has been about the 
balanced budget, as it should be, and I supported it, as did most of 
the Members of this House, but we cannot lose sight of the important 
responsibility we have in this body this year to expand the educational 
opportunities for middle-class families in this country, but also for 
those families who have their hopes and dreams set on becoming part of 
the middle class.
  As the gentleman knows and Members of this body know and many people 
across this country, given the challenges of the 21st century, 
education is the one thing that is going to open that door of 
opportunity for so many people, and it has really been true through the 
ages, but now it is more important.
  As our task force has worked, and I want to commend the Members of 
the task force that was set up by the leadership, we have had excellent 
attendance. Of all of the task forces I have served on, I think more 
people have been in attendance and have had more input, and it seems 
that at every meeting we get more new ideas and hopefully we will be 
able to roll those out pretty soon.
  As I said to the gentleman on this House floor back on February 25, 
when it comes to education, as we talk about it, there seems to be many 
times a whole lot more talk than there is action. That is true of a lot 
of bodies. But I believe this year, with the focus that our party has 
had historically on education, with the focus that the President has 
placed on it, and with the framework that is now being put together and 
was provided for in the balanced budget agreement that passed last 
evening, not everything we would like to have had, of course, as the 
gentleman indicated, but that does not and should not stop us from 
looking at those broader needs outside the budget agreement; because if 
the economy continues to grow, as we think it will, and the 
conservative numbers are as they are, and the economy grows, there will 
be resources to do some things.
  As I look across this country, and our task force heard from a number 
of folks, and in the original proposals there was about $5 billion to 
use as leverage money to help some of the most hard-pressed cities and 
counties across this country meet some of their facility needs, and I 
have often said when I was State superintendent in North Carolina, and 
I have a number of cartoons to prove it, that it is important for 
children to go to school.
  As important as it is to have prisons, to lock up the people who are 
violent criminals and have broken the law, it is unacceptable in a 
society that has the resources that we have in America that we have 
prisons that are nicer than some of the schools we send our children 
to. Unfortunately, that is true today. It should not be. A child should 
not ride by a new $20 million prison to go to a rundown school where 
the water fountains do not work the way they should, the bathrooms will 
not flush, the rooms are not air-conditioned; and when we talk of 
technology, as important as it is in every classroom, the Internet, 
that unfortunately, for many of the teachers in that school, there are 
not even telephones available for them to use to call parents when they 
have a need.
  So these are some of the infrastructure needs that we have to 
address. There are those who would say that that is the responsibility 
of the local units of government, and I would agree, but so are a lot 
of other things in this country. We did not ask those questions and do 
not necessarily ask them when it comes time to make grants on law and 
order, which I have strongly supported in this House and at the State 
level. It has been my experience that children do not normally ask who 
provides the resources for their education. Usually, their parents do 
not ask. They just want to make sure they are there.
  I have often said that children do not know what they need, they only 
know what they get. It is our responsibility to make sure what they get 
as students is the very best we can provide. Not that money is the only 
answer, but the gentleman may have heard me say this, not on this 
floor, but I have said it at civic clubs and I have said this to my 
friends at civic clubs; if buildings are not important, when our 
industrial hunters in our Chamber of Commerce invite the new 
industrialists to town, take them down and show them the rundown 
warehouses and say, this is where we want you to open your new 
business. Because the facility really does not make any difference, it 
is the quality that you have inside.
  Mr. Speaker, we say that to our schools many times, and the quality 
inside is very important. I would not want anyone to mistake that. It 
is important. But the quality of what we have on the outside says what 
we value, and I think that is important as we look at facilities.
  I trust that as this process moves along, we will have time to draw 
attention to that. I think it is important, because if we are going to 
have excellence, as we must have for our children to compete, and 
provide for them that opportunity, that gives them a chance to not only 
get a high school diploma that is so important, but to get a diploma 
that really does mean something.
  I happen to believe that our schools are doing a far better job today 
than they are getting credit for, because we have some of the best 
people in the classrooms teaching today than we have ever had.

                              {time}  1915

  Our students are coming out better prepared. That having been said, 
we have not reached the level that we need to reach in this country. I 
think anyone would say that.
  But I think we do have to acknowledge the successes that we have had,

[[Page H3164]]

because unless we are willing to acknowledge the successes, then it is 
very easy for people to get discouraged, and once discouraged, it is 
hard to get it going again.
  Mr. Speaker, if we look at the National Assessment of Education 
Progress, which is one of the measures that roughly 42 States in this 
country ascribe to for fourth and eighth graders in math, and in 
reading, that report just came out in the last 2 months showing 
substantial growth across the country. Some States showed far more 
growth than others.
  I was very pleased that my home State over the last 4 years showed 
the largest growth of any State in the Nation, a real tribute to the 
teachers and to the students, but that did not happen in 2 years or 3 
years. It has been about a 10-year process.
  I only mention that because I think it is important, as we think of 
education. It is a process and it is a journey, it is not a 
destination, as the gentleman spoke earlier about the opportunity for 
providing that door of opportunity for our middle-income young people 
and parents to make sure their children have a chance to go to college.
  We are now recognizing that it is no longer acceptable for 20, 25 
percent to go on to the university. Everyone needs to get an education 
beyond high school. The reason for that is because of where the jobs 
are going to be in the 21st century.
  On our task force, as we began to look at it, and we listened to some 
of the speakers who came and talked with us about where the jobs are 
going to be, in the high-technology industry, and the responsibility, 
they triggered on several areas in the country. I will only use my home 
State as one of those, only for an example this evening.
  As we think of North Carolina, having been a rural State over the 
years, and the Research Triangle being there and the growth that has 
taken place, high-technology is now the second largest industry in the 
State of North Carolina, larger than furniture, larger than agriculture 
in terms of the number of people directly employed. If you take 
agriculture and take the secondary benefit, then it would be different. 
But over 100,000 people in our State are now employed in high-
technology.
  In 1995, the average salary, the average salary of a person employed 
in high-tech is $42,166. These are some of the best jobs around, when 
we look at the average across the country. That is roughly about 
$24,000. So the gentleman can see that is important, but those jobs are 
going to people who have education beyond high school. Of the jobs that 
will be created over the next 5 to 6 years, it will require at least 2 
years beyond high school.
  When we talk about investing in children and getting them ready to 
learn, according to a Rutgers University study, every dollar that we 
invest in early childhood education, this is before that student gets 
to elementary school, he is not thinking about high school, before they 
get there, for every dollar we invest in early childhood education we 
save the taxpayers of this country, State, local, and Federal, $7. That 
is a pretty significant return. Those are not my figures, those are 
independent figures that were done.
  If that is true, and we think in terms of the standards of excellence 
in math and reading that are part of that core responsibility we put on 
education, then if we will deal with that crumbling infrastructure, we 
provide teachers with the resources they need, not only just in 
technology but in the support they need on a daily basis, and we get 
children to school ready to learn.
  It is easy to talk about it, but we are unwilling to put the dollars. 
Yes, it does cost money. It is an investment. If we are going to save 
the dollars on the back side, for a period of time jointly, Federal, 
State, and local, we have to do both. We have to get children ready for 
school and ready to learn, and we have to get them to education beyond 
high school, because depending on where you are in the United States, 
depending on the level of incarceration, the expenditure for 
incarceration for those people that do not make it, and roughly, 
depending on where you are, anywhere from 75 to 80 percent of the 
people who are incarcerated in this country were high school dropouts, 
it tells us there is a relationship between success in the schools and 
the problems people encounter later.
  I have often said as I traveled at the State level, if you really 
want to see the stark reality, go into the courtrooms. Go into the 
criminal justice side. You will really see the reality of the people 
who did not make it at the public school level, for a variety of 
reasons.
  If you go over on the civil side you may see other people suing one 
another. They tend to have much better educations. But on the criminal 
side, you really see the stark reality of the problems we face, and we 
have to work together. It is not an issue that we can transfer to 
someone else, and we cannot say, This is the Federal part, this is the 
State part. We all have to realize our resources are limited.
  For those areas that are so difficult, as the gentleman touched on 
earlier, as it relates to infrastructure, facilities, there would be 
those that would say to us, and I have heard it said, the buildings are 
not the difference.
  I disagree with them. If they really believe that, if they truly 
believe that, then I cite them the example of a business. But more 
importantly, I would ask them if facilities are not important, then why 
do businesses continue to build new facilities? Why do we want to move 
into nicer and nicer homes? Because it says a lot about us, it says a 
lot about what we value.
  If you move children into a nice new building, and I have seen it 
happen time and time again, as I have spoken on a number of occasions, 
you go in that building several years later and it is still in good 
shape. It is amazing what happens to the attendance rate. It goes up, 
in many instances. People feel better about themselves. Dropout rates 
tend to go down. Academics improve, as long as you have a good 
instructional program. All of these things do work together.
  Some have said that it costs us in this country roughly seven times 
as much, and that will vary some from State to State, but almost seven 
times as much to keep a person incarcerated as we spend on education in 
Federal, State and local funds.
  That is not to say that we should not have some people incarcerated. 
There are some who need to be there and they need to stay there. But my 
point in making that is that when we think in terms of education and 
our responsibility, we need to look at education as an investment. It 
is not an expenditure, it is an investment. As a businessman for 20 
years I understand what it means to invest and get a good return. If we 
will invest in education and in those opportunities for young people, 
they come back many times over.

  As we talk about this leveraging, the gentleman mentioned it earlier, 
and I do trust that before this Congress goes home we will find a way 
to work together to come up with a one-time $5 billion infrastructure 
piece, because that will leverage roughly $20 billion in investment 
across the country in some much-needed infrastructure.
  But if the gentleman is looking at it beyond education, as just a 
purely business investment, it employs people. It will return dividends 
down the road in terms of dollars paid, and pay itself back many times.
  The gentleman touched on the technology piece, because it is 
important. Let me share with the gentleman very briefly, and then I 
will see, the gentleman may want to ask a question.
  I was in a school 2 weeks ago tomorrow back in my home district where 
we were hooked up on the Internet. One of the schools was in England. 
The other school was in Belgium. The other school was in Massachusetts. 
I was with a fourth grade class right outside Raleigh, NC.
  Those students, each class had done a project from each school. They 
shared the project, how they developed it, why they developed it. One 
was on the lighthouses on the coast that were in danger of falling in 
the ocean, and one was in England who had a project on the Common 
Market, and each one had explained to the other three schools their 
project. Then they were able to ask questions.
  I only share this when the gentleman touches the technology piece, 
because this is an example of what we will see, I think, in the very 
near future, because this is a joint partnership, as the gentleman 
remembers. Many of us in this body signed a letter and sent it to the 
Federal Communications Commission. They in turn issued an order for

[[Page H3165]]

lower rates, roughly as much as 90 percent, for Internet access to 
schools and libraries all across the country, not unlike what happened 
in the 1930's in this country when the Commission issued an order that 
we would have universal access to telephones, or the rates would be 
varied so we could have it.
  I think the next few years are going to be very exciting in schools, 
but it is going to take a partnership and cooperation; as someone said 
one time, a lot less heat with a lot more light on the part of those of 
us who are setting policy, to make sure that children in this country 
get the opportunity to compete in an economy that is daily becoming 
more and more globalized in terms of our resources.
  With that, let me ask the gentleman a question, because he has 
followed this very closely, as we talk about education being a journey 
and really not a destination. If I may refer back to the gentleman, my 
good friend, on this whole issue of the HOPE scholarship and the 
opportunity for providing resources for the middle class, there is a 
dialogue on that about whether or not it would be refundable, so you 
would reach down for the Pell grants and others.
  I hope the gentleman would touch on that briefly, and maybe we could 
have a little dialog on it.
  Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate what the gentleman has stated. 
Obviously, he has a lot of expertise on a number of these education 
issues. That is why it is good to have him here talking about these 
issues on the floor, as the co-chair of the Democratic Task Force.
  My understanding is that the HOPE scholarship is an up to $1,500 
amount per student for tuition and fees. It can be claimed in 2 tax 
years for any student who has not finished the 13th and 14th years of 
education, and it is expected to help about 4.2 million students. It is 
a nonrefundable tax credit, and of course in order to receive it a 
second time, the student has to have at least a B-minus grade-point 
average. This is what the President has proposed.
  The problem is that, as with any tax cut or any tax deduction, if you 
are not paying taxes at a certain level you are not really going to be 
able to take advantage of it. The theory, I understand, and one of the 
things that a number of the Democrats have talked about, is to simply 
make that available as essentially a grant, to the extent that you 
cannot take advantage of it as a tax credit.
  Again, I think, and I do not want to take away from what we have done 
in the budget agreement and what the President proposed, because I do 
think that middle-class people, and I define middle class very broadly, 
are having a much more difficult time these days paying for higher 
education. It is primarily because of what we said before, which is 
that these various scholarships, tax credits, work study, whatever it 
is, direct student loans, have not kept up with inflation over the last 
20 years.
  But the problem is that if everything we do or if most of what we do 
is strictly oriented toward people or parents that are paying taxes, 
then you are not going to really help the lower-income students that 
much. Although there is an increase in the Pell grant, a very 
significant one in this budget agreement, that in itself will not make 
up for the difference.
  So the idea is to perhaps provide this, this $1,500, as an additional 
source of funding, even if you are not eligible for the tax credit. I 
think that makes sense.
  Mr. ETHERIDGE. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will continue to yield, 
one of the areas we have talked about, and I hope we can roll it out in 
the not-too-distant future, is for that to be refundable. That way it 
would serve the same purpose as if it were part of the Pell grant funds 
for those in need.
  Mr. PALLONE. I think that makes a lot of sense.
  Mr. ETHERIDGE. That is a very debatable item right now. I think most 
of the people on the committee feel very strongly that is the way it 
should be.

                              {time}  1930

  Mr. PALLONE. Maybe one of the things that we should mention, I know 
myself and a number of people mentioned it during the budget debate 
yesterday and leading up to the budget debate, I think it needs to be 
stressed even more. I am assuming that tomorrow the budget, some sort 
of budget conference between the House and the Senate will be adopted. 
I guess that is still questionable depending on what the other body 
does. But if it does happen, we will be going back to our districts 
during the Memorial Day break. And as much as this is a historic 
agreement because it does lead to a balanced budget, this is just a 
preliminary work.
  As we know, a budget resolution in the House, I often compare it to 
the budget in your house. It is not like a municipal budget or a State 
budget. It is more like the budget in your house. It is not binding on 
anyone. It is just a plan of action. Of course the spending bills or 
the appropriation bills and the reconciliation and the tax cuts, all 
that has to follow. We have to make sure that we keep not only our 
colleagues but I think primarily the Republican leadership in line over 
the next few months to make sure that we make good and that they make 
good on these commitments to make sure that these education tax credits 
are there, that this Pell grant money is there and that these various 
education programs that we talked about tonight are included in the 
final package.
  In addition to that, Mr. Speaker, because it is essentially 
recommendatory, there is no reason why we could not have a refundable 
tax credit or we could not include the $5 billion for the school 
construction program. I have been here long enough to see those things 
change dramatically from when the budget resolution is passed to when 
we do the budget reconciliation.
  I think we need to stress that over the next few months, many of the 
things that maybe we were not discussed or not specifically laid out in 
this budget resolution can still be implemented. I would like to see 
the school construction component included, and I would like to see the 
refundable tax credit, the way the gentleman outlined.
  Mr. ETHERIDGE. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will continue to yield, 
one of the pieces that, having served as the State level before, I came 
here and been superintendent when we talked about budgets there, I 
think this is something the public does have a difficult time 
understanding; when you talked about a budget, you had already 
appropriated your funding. You had set the spending levels. And when 
you passed the budget, that was it. And in effect, here when you do a 
budget resolution, that is not the end of the process. It is just the 
beginning of the process, which is the very reverse, because at the 
State levels and local levels when you do a budget, you work at your 
priorities. You determine what your revenue is and then you fit what 
you can spend within those parameters.
  Here once we pass the budget resolution, as we have just previously 
stated, that begins the process through real hard decisions when we put 
the appropriations bill out or those number of bills we run in each 
category. You must fit them, the parameters of the overall budget, and 
then reconciliation comes when all of them fit within the numbers.
  Mr. Speaker, my colleague is absolutely correct, that is where the 
heavy lifting is going to come over the next few months. I think that 
gives us the opportunity to really set the agenda. One of the points 
just made that is so important as we go home for the Memorial Day 
weekend, I plan to spend some of my time, as I know many of our 
colleagues do on the Democratic side, and I trust the other side as 
well, going into our schools because I do on a regular basis and 
actually teach a class. You do not have to be a teacher to do it. And 
this may be the last month we get a chance unless you have a year-round 
school because they will be taking the break for the summer.
  It is amazing what you learn. You find out how bright some of the 
young people are, some of the conditions of some of our buildings and 
the needs they have. But at the same time you find out from young 
people how hungry they are to learn from officials, to know something 
about their government and how it really works. I know you do that from 
time to time. I trust that we can encourage more of our colleagues to 
do the same thing. Go in and really give a teacher a break over the 
next few weeks.

[[Page H3166]]

  Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, when my colleague was talking about new 
schools and how much a difference they make, renovations to schools, 
that is so true. Just to focus a minute on the school construction and 
modernization proposal, because it is not in the budget agreement now, 
and I think it should be included as we work down the road, first of 
all, I think that it should be known, and you already stated, that the 
issue of school construction modernization is not just for core city 
areas or rural areas. It runs the whole gamut. My district is primarily 
suburban. I do not think we have any real rural areas. We have some 
areas that would qualify as urban areas, but the bottom line is whether 
you go to the most suburban school and the wealthiest school or the 
poorest in my district, every day or in most cases they have school 
construction and renovation needs.
  It was very interesting because one of the urban areas that I 
represent is Asbury Park. I had the opportunity a couple of weeks ago 
to go to a brand-new school which they had a hard time building because 
of limited resources. Their tax base is very difficult to generate 
moneys for new construction or renovation with their tax base. It was 
amazing. The school was maybe a year old, maybe not even, and it was 
just amazing to see the difference on the kids' faces and the attitude 
being in a new school.
  I actually was there because we had gotten some books from the 
Library of Congress for their library. It was just wonderful to be in 
the new library and to see how much they had progressed. I think that 
that is, if you listen to a lot of our colleagues, I think many of us 
were surprised today to see that this school construction initiative 
was not in the budget because it really is something that cuts into 
every district and has an impact.
  All we are really doing is leveraging money. We are not really 
providing money for construction, we are making it easier for towns 
based on the interest rates or bond issues that they would have to 
provide. But that can make a difference because a lot of these towns 
simply do not have the tax base or the authorization to provide the 
funding or the bonding to do the new construction. So it would make a 
difference.
  Mr. Speaker, the other thing I wanted to say, too, because I think it 
is so important, is that, I know we have seen it with the education 
task force. I think right now many people are having a hard time 
getting their kids through college that we forget how far the President 
really has brought us forward over the last 4 or 5 years.
  Really until President Clinton made it a priority at the Federal 
level, education really was not, and we still really are not there, but 
it really was not seen as a Federal priority. I have to say that he, 
more than anyone else, has stressed that the Federal Government needs 
to get involved.

  Just in the first administration, the first 4 years, we had the 
change of the student loan program to a direct loan program. That has 
made a big difference at Rutgers University. I know you cited your 
study of Rutgers. At Rutgers they have been really able to expand the 
national student loan program because they give the loans out directly 
and bypass the bank.
  The other thing is the, I call it AmeriCorps, or the volunteer 
program where students, their opportunities for loans have been 
expanded now because they work their way, work to pay the loan back or 
do voluntary work in the community.
  I have to say that that AmeriCorps program has been very helpful in 
my district and provides another way for students to get some money to 
pay for college. There has been a lot that has already happened in 
addition to what the President is putting forward and even in addition 
to the things that the task force says, and I agree we need to go 
beyond.
  Mr. ETHERIDGE. Mr. Speaker, as you mentioned, having been at the 
State level and, of course, I had the privilege of serving as 
superintendent of schools for the State really at the time that the 
current President was Governor, so we got to work with him some there, 
but his commitment to public education is really deep seated. And I 
think he has a deep understanding for it.
  He brought with him to Washington that deep commitment, I think, that 
is very healthy, and I am very pleased to see the highest office in the 
land talk about the commitment to education. And just by talking about 
it, it has raised the level of commitment. And talking about raising 
the standards for all of our students and for all of our schools I 
think is a laudable commitment. It is already starting to happen.
  It is amazing what happens when you talk to other teachers and school 
officers, as I have had a chance to do and I had the chance to meet 
with someone today. As we look at this whole issue of education and we 
see that more young people are in public school in the United States 
this year than we have ever had in history, and that number continues 
to grow, you get a sense as to why the facilities are so cramped.
  The problems continue to grow in terms of need not only for facility 
but for having quality teachers to go in those classrooms, for having 
leadership at every level to meet the needs and just having the 
resources to do it.
  I could not help, when you were talking about the school in your 
district, in and around the Research Triangle we have schools just 
literally exploding. Last fall we had so many trailers in the State I 
had to travel the State, talk about it a lot, as many would do and as I 
should have done in my role. We passed a $1.8 billion bond issue last 
November in North Carolina, the largest bond issue in the history of 
our State by over 60 percent, the largest margin we had ever passed any 
bond issue.
  But as large as that bond issue is, the need was identified as over 
$5 billion just in our State. If you take that number and put it across 
the country in 51 States, certainly you would not multiply it by 50 
because there are fewer States because we only have about 10 percent of 
the students in North Carolina, but it is a substantial number in terms 
of need. Some States may be even greater. So facility does have an 
impact.
  As we see the growth coming in student enrollment, and that is 
projected to continue, certainly in our State and in most States that 
are growing all across the country, over the next 8 to 10 years, that 
will have a significant impact on the resources, I think, of this 
Congress or should at the State levels and at the local level, how we 
set our priorities.
  If we really and truly follow what the President has said, and I 
think he is right, that if we are going to compete in the 21st century, 
it will be with a much better educated work force, who are more 
productive, who are highly motivated to meet those challenges. And as 
we train young people, we have to make our schools fit that mold. And 
to fit that mold, we have to have the facilities, the tools to get the 
job done and the people to help train them.
  Certainly as we work together in the task force with what the 
President has laid out, and he has provided, I think, the kind of 
leadership over the last several years to get us where we are, now we 
have a long way to go to finish the job, because it is one of those 
jobs that you do not really finish. You just improve on it and 
hopefully you leave it a little bit better when someone else comes to 
occupy your seat, whatever that seat may be. I think that is the 
challenge that we face.
  Mr. PALLONE. I appreciate what the gentleman said. And the other 
thing I was thinking, too, with the President, President Clinton, is 
that I think he has not only focused attention on the need for us to 
prioritize education at the Federal level, including higher education, 
but also the whole philosophy of a lot of these changes and new 
initiatives is very good.
  In other words, the philosophy that you should be working, in other 
words, with the Americorps, that you actually put in time, you work to 
pay back your loan, the idea with the HOPE scholarships, that you have 
to maintain a certain grade point average and you cannot be on drugs, 
he is linking--I was worried, if I could sort of digress, I remember a 
few years ago when the President was first elected, and I was having 
some town meetings. I was talking about the need to expand some of 
these higher education programs.
  And most people, I think particularly because Rutgers is in my 
district and so there is a lot of people associated with Rutgers who 
were very receptive to the idea. But I had a few people in the audience 
who sort of harked back to what I call an earlier day, an earlier

[[Page H3167]]

America, because I do not think what they are saying is realistic 
anymore.
  We are saying, the students should simply work, if they have to work 
5 or 10 or 20 years in order to save, and then they can pay to go to 
college or to graduate school, we should not have loan programs or work 
study or other programs available to them. And the idea of some of 
these people, that we are saying, that this is, somehow a handout, that 
these programs that we have on the higher education level are a 
handout, I think that to the extent that the President has stressed the 
work aspect, the maintenance of a certain grade point average, being 
drug free, they have taken away from the notion that somehow these 
Federal programs are handouts.
  I do not think they are. I think we would be in very bad shape, 
certainly on a competitive basis with other countries, if we told 
everybody they had to work in a low paying job until they were 40 and 
then go to college because then their productive years would be behind 
them in many ways.

                              {time}  1945

  But it is important to stress the philosophy, I think, that many of 
these things do involve work. Work study. AmeriCorps. All these things. 
And to put sort of an incentive on it that the President has done. I 
know many of the things we have talked about in Congress have been the 
same way.
  I yield to the gentleman.
  Mr. ETHERIDGE. If the gentleman thinks about this, the President 
talked about it like the GI bill. We figured that the young men and 
women who fought previously in World War II and the Korean war and even 
in Vietnam had earned a certain stipend and we allowed them to use that 
to get an education.
  It turned out a generation, a couple of generations of some of the 
best educated people that America had ever seen, and it fueled our 
economy with tremendous growth. And he talked about the AmeriCorps as 
one of those things.
  In North Carolina, I hate to keep using that, but I think it is 
important when the gentleman mentioned this issue of working in return, 
giving something back, in 1985 we passed legislation to provide for 400 
scholarships per year for high school students who would commit to 
going to college and coming out and teaching in an area that we had 
great need in in the public schools, be it science, mathematics, 
whatever the area may be.
  They were chosen based on their academic standing, and then we broke 
it up obviously by congressional districts so we could have balance in 
the State. And in all fairness to the taxpayers, we wanted to make sure 
we had balance in the ethnic background, so we tried to make that fit.
  But the point was each one of those students received a $5,000 
unrestricted scholarship. They had to teach for 4 years in the State of 
North Carolina after they received the scholarship. The requirement 
was, obviously, they had to have a high academic standing even to get 
in because it was very competitive. And we do that with several other 
scholarships we do in the State.
  But to retain that scholarship, they had to have a 2.2 out of a 4.0 
their first semester, and to retain it after their sophomore year they 
had to retain a 2.5 out of a 4.0. And it was amazing what happened, as 
now we are obviously 12 years or 11 years down the road, with about 7 
years of those young people having gone into public schools. They have 
absolutely started changing the chemistry of our teaching profession, 
because after the fourth year we start getting 400 students a year in 
the system.
  The challenge I think we face as we get more energized and focused is 
keeping the young people in the profession. How do we pay them? How do 
we keep them and make sure we keep the brightest and best teaching the 
next generation? Because that is the commitment of America. That is the 
responsibility. If we are going to have a well-educated citizenry in 
the 21st century, we do it by having some of the best people in the 
classroom.
  That was our challenge and our goal. The challenge we are facing in 
North Carolina, I think, is the same challenge we face all across 
America. When I talk with others, after that fourth and fifth year, how 
do we make it attractive enough, not necessarily with pay, though that 
is part of it, obviously, people have to be paid, but it gets back to 
the gentleman's first point, the reason I am bringing this up, the 
facility in which they work, the surroundings we ask them to work in, 
where young people go to learn.
  As I tell my 17-year-old son, that is his work, that is his job every 
day when he goes to school. And that is true of all our children. We 
certainly do not want it to be drudgery, but it does need to be a good 
environment. A good place to learn, a good environment. And if it is a 
good environment to learn it will be a good place for our professionals 
to teach.
  One of the things we have not talked about that I think is so 
important in all of this is how we get those volunteers. The very thing 
the President and all the former Presidents have come together with 
General Powell to talk about all across this country is this whole 
issue of voluntarism. We need them in the public schools and in our 
public sector so that we can encourage parents once again not only to 
read to their children before they get to school but be a part of that 
process once they get there.
  I as a parent found that as one of the real challenges I face, having 
time, as busy as we are, and all of us in public life encouraging 
others, but we need to take our own advice and spend the time with our 
children's teachers and with our children.
  With that, when we talk about the estimate of the cost, I would refer 
back to the gentleman as he started talking about this whole 
infrastructure. One of the things I have used many times, one of the 
few places that we continue to use temporary buildings and turn them 
into public buildings are in our public schools, that public sector. 
Very few other places do we do that.
  It gets back to the point that the gentleman made so eloquently early 
on. It has to be a higher priority, recognizing that we do not have the 
first responsibility for it, but we do have a responsibility to say it 
is a high priority for our children. And they all are our children, 
whether they are directly linked to us or not. We have a responsibility 
to invest.
  Mr. PALLONE. I agree. I think we are almost out of time, but I just 
wanted to say that, obviously, this is the beginning. The budget passed 
at least in the House and presumably in both Houses by tomorrow, but 
this is really the beginning of our effort. And I stress again the 
Democrats because we have been really talking about this as part of our 
family first agenda for at least a year now.
  I know the gentleman does, and I certainly do and everybody within 
the task force wants to make sure that these Democratic priorities in 
terms of making sure that these tax credits and deductions go to help 
working families pay for education programs, and that we do have the 
priorities as far as education programs, including things like the 
school construction fund, are ultimately included.
  So I want to commend the gentleman again for his efforts with the 
task force, and unless the gentleman wants to add anything, we will 
yield back.
  Mr. ETHERIDGE. I want to close by thanking the gentleman for setting 
up this special order and hope I get a chance on several more occasions 
to thank the members of the task force and the Democratic Members of 
this Congress who have really given the support and the leadership.
  As the gentleman has indicated, we have just started this process. It 
will be long. There will be some times when we will be discouraged, but 
we should never, ever give up because it is too important and the 
investment will pay far greater dividends than anything we can invest 
on Wall Street.
  Mr. PALLONE. Exactly. I see that my colleague here, my neighbor from 
New Jersey is now in the Speaker's chair, so I will gladly yield back 
the balance of my time, Mr. Speaker.
  Mr. KENNEDY of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to join my 
colleagues in expressing grave concerns about the state of Federal 
support for education.
  Just today, in the early hours of the morning the House of 
Representatives failed to pass the budget resolution that I offered 
that would have provided an additional $25 billion for education in the 
United States. My plan, which would balance the budget by 2002, also 
provided $5 billion for school construction, $11

[[Page H3168]]

billion to expand the Pell Grant Program, and another $9 billion for 
other educational programs such as title I and IDEA.
  Instead, the House passed a budget resolution, over my objections, 
that provides tax cuts for the people who need them the least. Instead 
of letting the rich of this country get huge tax breaks, we should be 
helping local communities repair schools, build new ones, bring up the 
standards of our children's education, and help train the future 
workers of this Nation.
  I am concerned that the plan passed in the budget resolution will 
cause great problems in the future, not next year or in the year 2002, 
but further out. The revenue losses expand greatly when these tax cuts 
are scored in the outlying years. With these losses in revenues, I 
believe that the programs which benefit the poor, the elderly, and the 
young will suffer far more than the programs that provide subsidies to 
the liquor industry, the mining industry, or the timber industry.
  Mr. Speaker, the Federal Government has a very good track record when 
it comes to education. The GI bill provided tens of thousands of 
veterans with the opportunity to attend college which is, I believe, in 
part responsible for the great economic boom of the 1950's. The Federal 
Government has also helped ensure the educational opportunities of the 
disabled and provided worker retraining for displaced workers. All with 
great success.
  Unfortunately, my colleagues on the other side of the aisle don't see 
it that way. Many of them believe the Federal Government should have no 
role in educating our citizens.
  I believe they are wrong.
  The Democratic Party and the President have made it clear that we 
know the top priority of our people--ensuring that our children have 
access to the best quality education in the world.
  I want to thank my colleague from North Carolina, Congressman Bob 
Etheridge, for his work on the Task Force and my colleague from New 
Jersey, Congressman Frank Pallone, for organizing this special order.


                             General Leave

  Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members 
may have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend their 
remarks on subject of this special order.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the 
gentleman from New Jersey?
  There was no objection.

                          ____________________