[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 111 (Thursday, July 31, 1997)]
[House]
[Pages H6689-H6694]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         DEFICIT AND THE BUDGET

  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 come to the floor to celebrate 
the accomplishments that this House, in a bipartisan way, working along 
with the other body and working with the President, have accomplished 
really working over a period of the last 6 months, but really beginning 
the dialog after the last election, recognizing that we wanted to work 
together, that we wanted to make progress, that we wanted to address 
some major problems facing this country, and that we also wanted to get 
the deficit under control.
  Today we passed the second piece of our major legislative package, 
the tax portion, which, combined with the spending portion, has moved 
us now, hopefully, the final steps towards getting to a surplus budget 
when the numbers come out. In the middle of August, I think we will see 
good news that the deficit for 1997 is going to be somewhere less than 
$50 billion, which is still a very large number.
  As we start taking the look out at where we are going to be in 1998, 
the real possibility that we will move to a surplus budget in 1998, 
maybe 1999, but perhaps much sooner than the year 2002, which the 
bipartisan agreement set as its outside target.

                              {time}  1845

  We have made significant progress. The exciting thing about reaching 
these milestones, saving Medicare, reducing taxes, moving forward, 
getting to a surplus budget, is that it really now does open us up to 
consider a number of other issues that we can talk about and we can 
talk about in the context of saying we have got a surplus budget, now 
let us talk about some longer range perspectives. We have gotten rid of 
that nagging problem.
  We have shown to the American people that we are serious about 
getting our House in order, we are serious about making the tough 
decisions that this country needs to make and hopefully tomorrow, we 
were supposed to have it ready today to share with Members, we have 
compiled what we call a journal of ideas. I put this together and I 
developed this with my former colleague here in the House, Mr. 
Brownback, but this is a journal of ideas.
  It is intended to be a thought-provoking document, a journal that 
raises some of the issues and some of the topics that I believe we can 
now talk about in a very constructive way, talking about we have 
reduced taxes but we have not really done what we want to do with taxes 
which is, sure, more tax reductions, but we want to move forward now 
with an overhaul of the tax system. We need tax reform. I do not know 
whether it is a flat tax, whether it is a national sales tax, but we 
need something that is fairer and less complex and less intrusive on 
the American people than the current Tax Code and the current IRS.
  This provides us with an opportunity to think about Social Security 
in new and different ways, to make sure that Social Security is solvent 
much longer than 2029 which it is currently projected at. We now have 
the opportunity to go back and take a look at ending corporate welfare. 
We can now make attempts to have serious discussions about real budget 
process reform, regulatory reform, campaign finance reform.
  The journal of ideas also has some documents in here for some things 
that I really want to talk about and that I can have the opportunity to 
work on, which are education reform and workplace reform. These two 
items are tied very, very closely together. But as I take a look at 
education, earlier this year we began a process which we call Education 
at a Crossroads. We have really in that process agreed with our 
President, when the President said in 1996 that we cannot ask the 
American people to spend more on education until we do a better job 
with the money that we have got now or the money that we are spending 
now.
  We have had a number of hearings around the country. We have been in 
New York, we have been in Milwaukee, Chicago, L.A., Phoenix, 
Louisville, Cincinnati, Little Rock. We have been around the country, 
along with hearings in Washington to ask some basic questions:
  What is working in education today? What is not working? What Federal 
programs are working in education? Which ones are not? Our Federal 
education initiatives, are they fostering the type of change and 
creativity that we need at the local level, or are they barriers to 
helping our children get the kind of education that they need? The 
dollars that we send to Washington, are they helping our kids get the 
education that they need or are they being sucked up by a bureaucracy 
in Washington?
  We know that as a Nation we are not achieving the kind of results 
that we would like to be getting. Some of our first hearings that we 
had in California in January of this year highlighted some of the 
problems.
  We met with some college educators. People are interested in the 
young people who are graduating from our K through 12 system because 
they are receiving these children into higher education. When we met 
with them, the first thing they said to us is, ``Make sure you don't 
reduce or cut your remedial education dollars, your remedial education 
programs, the dollars that you are sending to higher education.''
  And we kind of sat back and said, well, this is kind of interesting. 
These are kids who are getting into college, they have graduated from 
high school, and they are signing up for remedial education? In 
California it was 26 percent. We went to Arizona the next day

[[Page H6690]]

and I said well, that is not bad, in Arizona it is 27 percent. These 
are kids getting into college.
  We say, why do we need remedial education? These kids have been 
accepted and they are going to college. Twenty-six percent, 27 percent 
of them are functionally illiterate. What does functionally illiterate 
mean? It means that they cannot read and write at an eighth grade 
level.
  I think we may be asking the wrong kind of question here, or perhaps 
proposing the wrong kind of solution. The solution here is not to 
provide more dollars for remedial education in high school or in 
college. The issue here is finding out what is going on in K through 
12, why these kids are not getting the kind of education that they 
should be. Why are they not learning in K through 12?
  Let us not put a Band-Aid on the system. As a matter of fact, let us 
not give an incentive to the colleges by saying the more remedial 
students they get, the more money they get. Let us go back and fix the 
problem.
  Sixty-four percent of 12th graders do not read at a proficient level. 
SAT scores have dropped nearly 60 points in the past 3 decades. What 
other things do we see going on? Almost 20 percent of Americans, this 
is including adults, almost 20 percent of Americans are considered 
functionally illiterate. Thirteen percent are considered totally 
illiterate, reading and writing below the fourth grade level.
  Between 1992 and 1994 our NAPE reading scores have not improved by 
more than 2 points. In 1992 United States 14-year-olds scored an 
average of 535 on a reading literacy test. Eight other countries 
achieved higher scores. Sixty percent of our 12th graders cannot read 
at a proficient level. The same thing for math, science and history. 
These are real problems and real issues that we are facing.
  We have had hearings on literacy. As the experts come in and talk 
about the impact of Federal programs, and there is debate about what 
works and what does not work, there is one consistent message that 
comes out. If we do not improve our educational system, if we do not 
improve what we are doing and how we educate our children, we will face 
a crisis because we have too many of our children who cannot read, who 
cannot write. We do know that in today's workplace, in today's 
environment, if you cannot read, if you cannot write, if you are 
functionally illiterate, we will lose you as an individual, which is a 
tragic situation for the individual, but we will also lose you as a 
contributor to helping America be a better place.
  That is what we are here to talk about. That is what we have been 
working on in our subcommittee. We want to talk about education, we 
want to talk about education at a crossroads, because we have to pick a 
path on which way we are going to go.
  We are also going to talk about a new project which our oversight 
subcommittee is beginning, which is talking about the relationship 
between, if this is what is happening in education, how does that 
impact our future workforce, a workforce at an opportunity in the 
global economy where we should be more excited about the opportunities 
for American workers to maintain and achieve the highest standard of 
living of any workers in the world. But how do we face that, and what 
issues do we need to address? And how do we take the changes, the 
changes in technology, the changes in the type of skilled workers we 
need, the labor law that we have in place, Federal spending on job 
training and other job programs, how do we address that to make sure 
that we will continue to be and have the most productive workers in the 
world?

  Our purpose in education, our purpose in the workforce is to really 
find out what is going on, where we are, where we are going, and 
outline a perspective of the types of policy changes that we need to 
have. This is an ongoing process. We are in the middle of the education 
process and we are in the beginning phases of the workforce project.
  Let me outline some of the lessons we have already learned as we have 
gone through this process, and have gone around the country and have 
heard from parents and teachers and administrators at the local level. 
Some of this, much of it, is not that complex. As some of people listen 
to this, they will say, ``Wow, we know that,'' and it is kind of like, 
``Yeah, I thought everybody here in Washington would understand that as 
well,'' but I am not sure. Just today in one of our committee hearings 
on literacy, we heard the need for more Washington involvement, more 
Federal Government involvement, perhaps even more Washington rules and 
regulations.
  So there is a real contrast and a real conflict and a real contest of 
ideas here in Washington about how to improve education, whether we 
move forward in one way by increasing the control that Washington has 
on our local schools, or by saying perhaps that system does not work 
and we need a child-centered, I call it a child-centered approach 
versus a Washington bureaucracy approach. I think there are certain 
things that lead us to a child-centered approach.
  Lesson one that we have learned from our site visits, not complex, 
parents care the most about their children's education. But there are 
those here in Washington that would argue with that point. We heard it 
today. They would say, no, it is more important, they may not say it 
that clearly, but they are implying that it is more important and that 
a bureaucrat perhaps cares more about a child's education than what a 
parent would. Parents care the most about their children's education.
  In Los Angeles, we traveled to the Vaughn Learning Center where Dr. 
Yvonne Chan has blazed a bold new charter school. Here is a woman who 
was a principal in a public school, and she was frustrated by the 
process.
  ``As a public school principal,'' she said, ``I had to worry about 
the 3 Bs.'' In the hearing we asked, what are the 3 Bs? We know about 
the 3 Rs, but what are the 3 Bs? She said, ``As a public school 
principal, I had to worry about busing, budgets and buts.''
  We understood the busing part, we understood the importance of 
meeting budgets, but we did not know what she meant by the buts. She 
said, ``Well, whenever I focus on my kids in my school and I see 
something that I think my kids need, and my kids may be a little bit 
different than the school down the street and my needs may be a little 
bit different, but I would go to the L.A. unified school district and I 
would say this is what I would like to do for my kids,'' because I am 
focused on my kids and I am focused on my kids learning. She said, 
``Sometimes I would get the response that it is a good idea, Ms. Chan, 
but page 15, paragraph C, section 3 says you cannot do that, we cannot 
let you do it.''
  Or it would be, ``That is a good idea, but if we let you do it, we 
would have to let everybody else do it. And then what would happen?''
  And it was clear that when she was talking about educating and 
focusing on her children, the children in the school and what was best 
for them, she ran into another approach which was the bureaucratic 
approach, which was not focused on the kids but was focused on the 
rules and the regulations.
  We saw the same kind of thing when we went to Phoenix. We saw the 
ATOP Academy, it is another charter school, serves mostly African-
American students in an inner city area. It focuses on college prep 
courses, personal discipline. How do they go into this in a very tough 
environment and how do they make a difference with these kids?
  For the kids to get into this school, parents are asked to agree to 
the following basic 5 points: Curtail the children's television viewing 
during the week. Secondly, spend 15 to 20 minutes on school nights 
reading to their children. Attend all parent-teacher conferences. 
Attend parental involvement monthly committee meetings. Participate in 
their children's classroom activities. The parents are required to have 
an up-front commitment and involvement in their children's education.
  It is not only in Los Angeles, it is not only in Phoenix, but we have 
gone around and we have seen great programs in so many different 
cities, and it is very interesting what we hear when we ask teachers, 
parents, students, what is making this school successful? I have yet to 
hear it is Program ``A'' from Washington, or that what really made this 
school excel is when Washington came out with this program and told us 
what to do.

[[Page H6691]]

                              {time}  1900

  Now it is when parents and administrators and teachers were given the 
freedom, the opportunity, to put kids first and not bureaucracy.
  Awhile back we saw another initiative come forward from the White 
House. Lesson two is that good intentions do not equal good policies. 
Too often we see a problem, we create a program, put a nice name on it, 
give it some money and say, yes, we have fixed the problem. No, we have 
not. All we have done is created a program, gave it some money, gave it 
a nice name, and we have not necessarily fixed anything.
  The Washington approach of good intentions not equaling good 
policies; this is the chart of good intentions. This is also the chart 
that demonstrates that we probably are not going to get results. What 
is this chart? This chart is the Washington response of good intentions 
trying to solve a very complex problem. What do all these lines and 
boxes and circles and different colors symbolize in these little boxes 
in here with numbers? Twenty-one programs, 3, 17, 2, 42, 15. What this 
is, is a compilation of the 760 Washington programs designed to help 
education.
  And you say, boy, am I glad that we have an Education Department 
because when we have an Education Department, we can take these 760 
programs and we know that they are going through one agency and they 
are going to be streamlined and coordinated, compliment each other, 
streamlined to the school districts and the States so that very easily 
this money flows from Washington, flows to the schools, flows to the 
classroom, and we really leverage where we need the money to be, which 
is in the classroom and with the teacher.
  Wrong. We do not have one agency where 760 programs go through. We do 
not have 10 agencies. We have 39 different agencies that develop 
education programs, that develop criteria, they develop ideas, not 
always coordinated; most of the time they are not. As a matter of fact, 
as we had hearings in the Committee on the Budget, we asked different 
people in the administration as to where is the focal point for 
bringing these 760 programs together, to bring these 39 agencies 
together, and by the way, $100 billion? Where is the focal point for 
this? Is it Secretary Riley at the Education Department? Is it somebody 
else at another agency? And the answer came back, well, the focal point 
for 39 different agencies is exactly where you would think it would be. 
It would be at the President, the presidential level.
  Now I think the President is a pretty bright guy, but I do not 
believe that with all of his responsibilities that he in the Executive 
Branch at that level can coordinate 760 different programs, and I do 
not necessarily think that we should ask him at that level to 
coordinate those programs.
  So good intentions do not always equal good policies. I would argue, 
in fact, that too often good intentions in Washington equal bad policy. 
We have had so many good intentions, we have got a hundred programs in 
here that are not even funded. So we keep passing good ideas, we do not 
have the money or do not know how to get the money down to a classroom, 
but this is a bureaucracy that has gone out of whack. It just is not 
working.
  As we take a look at this, the Washington mentality now says we know 
that we are not getting the kind of results that we want to get in the 
classroom, we need to fix this. If you believe the lesson of good 
intentions does not necessarily equal good policy, but that is the myth 
in Washington, that if we have got a problem, create another program, 
our kids are not learning, we are not satisfied with the results, what 
would you expect the response to be? The response would be, well, we 
must need more. If our kids are not learning, let us have a few more 
literacy programs.
  We talk about the literacy issue. We now have some more suggestions 
about how to have literacy, spending perhaps up to $1 billion more for 
tutors. So let us put another agency in place, Corporation for National 
Service, put another program in place so we got 761, 40 different 
agencies, and put another billion dollars with it, and we got $101 
billion. We have not asked the basic question as to why this $100 
billion is not enabling our kids to read and learn what they should 
learn in the classroom, we will just say we will put tutors out there 
to help them after school.
  And think about this process. Kids are not learning, so we need 
another program, we need another bureaucracy, we need to come up with 
another set of rules and regulations about what to happen in the 
classroom. Of course, we need $100 billion. So the taxpayers are going 
to have to work a little harder to send a little bit more money to 
Washington and to get a little bit more money and to keep their heads 
above water. Maybe we are going to have some more parents and some more 
families that are going to say, wow, we are getting stretched here, 
Washington needs some more money, maybe one of us ought to take a 
second job or ought to work a little bit longer, meaning that instead 
of a parent tutoring their child this parent is going to take a second 
job so that a tutor can come and take care of their child after school. 
More is not always better.
  The fourth lesson that we have learned so far is education must be 
child centered. Too often we find that the education and the process is 
not focused on the child, but it is focused on the bureaucracy and the 
bureaucrats.
  I shared with you this story about Mrs. Chan worrying about the 
``buts,'' trying to do what she wanted and thought was necessary for 
the children and her school, but constantly running into the 
bureaucracy that said no, a bureaucracy that was not focused on the 
children and what needed to be done and recognize that for 
understanding what needed to go on in that school and what needed to 
happen with these children probably was best understood by the 
principal, by the teachers and by the parents associated with the kids 
in that school.
  Fifth lesson, new spending equals new tax burden. Just talked about 
that a little bit. Every time we come up with a new program it equals 
new tax burden. The disappointing thing about our tax burden is I would 
love to believe that when we send, and tell you, that when we send a 
dollar to Washington for taxes that 98, 95, 93 cents made it back to 
the classroom, made it back to the teacher, made it back to the 
student. But that is not where it goes. The dollar goes through a whole 
series of different cycles. To get that dollar local school districts 
need to spend money to get that dollar back. We estimate that when you 
send a dollar to Washington, in that process of actually getting it 
back into a classroom and getting it back to a student, we probably 
lose about 30 to 40 cents. We do not know the exact number, but 
somewhere in the neighborhood of 30 to 40 cents of every dollar that 
comes to Washington, only about 60 to 70 cents of it ever makes it back 
into a classroom.
  We think that is a problem. We think that that whole system, the 
whole system of 760 programs, 39 different agencies and a hundred 
billion dollars of spending means that when we walk across the street 
and we walk back to our offices we like to think that we are walking 
and crossing Independence Avenue. But when you have got 39 agencies 
involved in educating our children, 39 education agencies that are 
based in Washington, that really do not know the difference between 
what the needs are in my congressional district back in west Michigan 
versus the differences in New York City versus the differences in 
Miami, and when you have got 39 agencies in Washington doling out 
money, when you have got 39 agencies in Washington that are sending out 
rules and regulations, when you have got 39 agencies that are requiring 
paperwork and accountability back from local schools, that really what 
we have done is the street that we cross is called Independence Avenue.

  But more appropriately, as we are talking about education, it is 
Dependence Avenue, that local school districts, local parents, State 
agencies are dependent on what happens in Washington rather than being 
independent to create and develop and solve the problems locally, 
learning from what other people are doing, understanding their needs 
and their own area and developing the solutions that work best for 
them.
  Too often at the local level people who are involved in educating our 
children have been reduced to filling out

[[Page H6692]]

paperwork, being and reporting back to Washington rather than back to 
parents. It is a problem that we need to work on, and you know, it 
really does get to be this is another which we prepared; we call it the 
Tale of Two Visions, and it very much applies to this issue of 
education. Is our vision a vision of Washington; we call it the vision 
of bureaucracy, or are we more attuned to what we believe is most 
appropriate, which is called a Vision of Opportunity?
  We have gone around the country, and we have seen schools that are 
excelling, and it is not because of the bureaucratic vision, the 
bureaucratic vision that is symbolized by this photo of Washington, DC, 
but the vision of opportunity which we see as we have gone around the 
country, the vision of opportunity of parents, of teachers and 
administrators at the local level saying give me the opportunity and 
the freedom to educate these kids. I know their names, I know their 
needs, and I care more about them than anybody else in this country. I 
want them to excel. Give me the resources, but also give me the freedom 
to enable me to achieve the kind of results that every American child 
is entitled to. Do not take the money from my community, do not send 
the money to the IRS, do not send it into a bureaucracy that is going 
to suck up 35 to 40 cents of every precious dollar, taking it away from 
my children and feeding it into a bureaucracy.
  That approach puts the Washington bureaucracy first and puts the 
child second. We need to flip that equation. We need the child Senate 
approach first asking why are not children learning before we propose 
new Washington solutions.
  Recognize that perhaps some of the Washington solutions are part of 
the problem. Parents I do not think want to hear about a million new 
tutors. I think parents want to ask that basic question: if my kids in 
school 5\1/2\-6\1/2\ hours every day, why are they not learning in the 
classroom? Do not put an over lay Band-Aid on there. Help us solve the 
problem in the classroom. Take a look at why your federal programs are 
not working, and take a look at what we need to do to make the local 
system work and not the bureaucratic system.
  Mr. Speaker, what we need and what we know in education is that it is 
time to act more wisely. We need to be smart. We cannot afford to lose 
our kids, we cannot afford to spend or send a dollar to Washington and 
only get 60 cents back to our children.

                              {time}  1915

  I was with the Speaker last night and taking a look at a picture he 
has of Eisenhower looking at Utah Beach, and in 1945 we mobilized, we 
mobilized and we retook Europe.
  What we need to do now is we need to put a major emphasis on saving 
our educational system, because we need to go out and we need to take 
and ensure that every child has the opportunity to learn and that we as 
a Nation cannot afford to lose a single child, which means we have to 
go back and we have to rethink some of the Washington assumptions.
  We really have to rethink the issue about who cares most about our 
kids. Is it bureaucrats, or is it parents? If it is bureaucrats that 
care the most about our children, then let us empower bureaucrats. If 
it is parents, let us empower parents. Let us evaluate the assumption 
of good intentions. We have 20 years or more of good intentions in 
Washington and we have not seen improvement. We need to take a look at 
whether 760 programs going through 39 different agencies, spending $100 
billion based in Washington is the best way to help our kids learn. We 
have to take a look at that assumption, and when we do that, we are 
going to have to make the decision.
  If we believe this works and we still have problems, then the answer 
is very clear. If this is the way we go, we need more. We need more 
money, we need more programs and we need more agencies. Or, if we 
believe that maybe this does not work, we need to streamline this 
process and move power and authority and responsibility back to the 
local level, back to parents, and back to the States. We need to 
analyze the assumption as to whether education, to be successful, can 
be developed in a manual that says, here is the how-to; we can develop 
a bureaucratic approach, a bureaucratic how-to manual to help our kids, 
and if we go to the manual and if we understand the manual and if we 
follow the rules and the regulations of the manual, we will be able to 
teach our kids and our kids will learn. This manual will apply to 
Johnny and Sara and Billy and Brian and Aaron. Or, does every child 
need a personal development plan, recognizing that they have their own 
individual needs, individual skills, and there has to be a level of 
flexibility around that child about how the teachers and the parents 
and the administrators meet the needs of that child.
  We spend more almost than any other industrialized country and we are 
getting disappointing results. We need to reevaluate this model of 
education.
  What are the implications as we move forward? As we talked about this 
as a committee, we said, we have responsibility for education; we also 
have responsibility for work force development. What are the 
implications as we move forward and we recognize we have this growing 
group of people, kids coming through the system, who do not have the 
necessary basic skills perhaps to function in our economy. As a matter 
of fact, let us take a look at what the economy is, and that is what we 
said. We need to now go take a look at what the work force requirements 
are going to be in the year 2000 and beyond. What kind of economy are 
we moving into? Do we have an economy where kids who are functionally 
illiterate that they can move into and they can get good paying jobs, 
where they will be successful. We need to really examine that. The 
answer, as I think we all know, is no. Take a look at it.
  Technology. We are in a rapidly changing environment where technology 
is just growing. That should be an opportunity for this country. We 
should not view that as a problem. It is an opportunity that we need to 
get our young people ready for; it should not be, well, we have these 
unskilled kids coming in, we better find a way so that they can deal 
with technology. No, it is a huge opportunity for them and for us as a 
Nation.
  We need to take a look at what happens in terms of global 
competition. What is the impact of unskilled workers coming in? Will we 
have the ability to compete on a global basis? I sure hope so. Because 
the opportunities are tremendous. Markets are opening up around the 
world, and our workers right now are the most productive in the world, 
and that is where we want to keep them. So the new project which we 
have is we call it the American Worker at a Crossroad, building off of 
education at a crossroads, because we want to take a look at what their 
skill level needs to be, what the world market opportunities are going 
to be. Some of the labor law that we have today was developed in the 
1930's and the 1940's. Is it still the appropriate model for labor law 
in the year 2000 and beyond.
  We need to take a look at the Federal spending. We give the Labor 
Department $30 billion to $40 billion each year. We need to take a look 
at how they spend their money. How do Federal programs on job training 
work? Federal job training dollars work in such a way that we give 
people dollars after they lose their job. That might be okay when 
people are in one job for a long period of time, perhaps only one job 
their entire career, but in the new economy where perhaps people are 
going to be going through two, three, four job changes, significant 
career changes, where their skills need to change, it does not make 
sense anymore to have a Federal job training system in place that 
empowers people to learn after they lose a job. I think we maybe need 
to step back and take a look at how do we encourage and help people 
continually upgrade their skill levels as they are working so that they 
can move and evolve into new jobs.
  We want education and workplace policies which will create the 
environment where the American workers can be the most productive, 
highest paid, and enjoy the highest standard of living of any worker in 
the world. I am excited about being able to combine the education with 
the work force project, because even though on education we need to be 
making changes soon, the work force project allows us a little bit of 
time to step back and to really take a longer range perspective

[[Page H6693]]

on this and say, where do we want to be by the year 2010, and what 
types of changes do we need to be putting in place over the next 2, 4, 
6 years, so that we can gracefully move to the changes and the 
environment that we want to have.
  We know that the American education system is not the benchmark; we 
know that we need to improve that. We are creating a generation of 
American workers who are not equipped. We need to fix that problem. 
What we do know is that if we do not fix that, we are going to have 
some severe problems. But we are going to work on that and we are going 
to reassess all of these assumptions.
  This also leads us to consider where we are going to go on the work 
force policy side. The changes need to be made. I flew here a couple of 
weeks ago and picked up a Detroit Free Press. The front page: Detroit 
is going to create, over the next 5 to 7 years, 133,000 new jobs, high 
tech, high quality jobs. Being from the State of Michigan, that is 
exciting. That should be a great story. It should be a great lead. It 
should be a great close: 133,000 Michiganites getting high pay, high 
quality jobs.
  There is one problem. The thrust of the story was that we may not 
have the workers with the skills to fill those jobs. If we do not get 
those workers and develop their skills to be able to fill those jobs, 
what happens? That work will have to be done, and there is a good 
potential that those jobs will move somewhere else. They may not move 
somewhere else in Michigan; they may not move somewhere else in 
America, they may move somewhere else.

  The job opportunities that we see evolving and developing in Detroit 
may not be filled by people from Detroit, they may not be filled by 
people from Michigan, they may not be filled by people from this 
country. If we do not develop the skills, we do not develop the people, 
those jobs may move and they may move overseas, and that is a problem.
  So we need to create a climate where our young people are learning 
and where our workers who are working are upgrading their skills and 
are provided with the opportunity to constantly upgrade their skills.
  I also want to talk just a little bit about what I think the new 
workplace may evolve into and what it may look like. I think we have to 
look very positively at the future for the American worker. We have to 
have an optimistic view and a vision of an empowered American worker. 
They are knowledge workers. They are going to have a great amount of 
skill and knowledge. They are going to be knowledgeable, responsive, 
and I think capable of helping their companies compete in a global 
economy. They will have unprecedented opportunities for personal 
growth. They will increasingly understand their responsibilities to 
their jobs, their corporations, to themselves and to their families, 
and I think they will have and recognize the need to constantly be 
upgrading their skills to take advantage of the opportunities of an 
ever-growing economy.
  The empowered American worker will see global markets and global 
competition as an opportunity and a threat, recognizing that in 1997 
the American workers are the most productive workers in the world, and 
that by the year 2010, rather than seeing that gap closing, we should 
see that gap widening. As we bring in technology, as we increase the 
knowledge and education of the American workers, as we invest capital 
and bring the appropriate equipment and machinery into place, as we 
invest in capital and human capital, we can increase the difference in 
productivity. As we increase that differential in productivity, it 
means that our workers will be more valuable and we can pay them more 
and they will have a higher standard of living.
  I think the empowered worker who takes care of and sees 
responsibility for increasing their knowledge, who sees responsibility 
and opportunity and helping their companies grow and to meet the 
challenges of foreign competition, who sees global markets as an 
opportunity rather than global competition as a threat also need to 
create an opportunity where workers and management can come together.
  As we have taken a look, those roles are very much less defined in 
1997 than they were in 1947. There has been a coming together of 
management and employees and so often it is difficult now to tell the 
differences, so that we have to evolve and change labor law that 
enables them to work in a partnership and enables them to work in tame 
environments to meet the objectives of the corporations and of the 
individuals that are part of those corporations.

                              {time}  1930

  We need to empower employees in very different working environments 
and work styles, some who are part time, some working at home, some 
where both parents or both individuals in the family are working, to 
recognize that they ought to have a whole series of opportunities to 
choose the work arrangements that they would like to have, the benefits 
that they would like to have so they can tailor their benefits and 
their work times and their work schedules to meet their needs and their 
family needs and their personal needs rather than the needs of the 
corporation.
  It is one of the interesting things in today's society, today's work 
force, one of the most important ingredients and one of the things that 
they now measure leisure by, and one of the most important commodities 
to workers is the amount of leisure time that they get; how much time 
do they need to spend working to be able to meet their needs, to meet 
the requirements for their families.
  What we have seen, we have seen that increasing. Families are under 
tremendous stress. Individuals are under tremendous stress because of 
the work requirements we put on them. We need to increase their skills 
and give them more flexibility and allow them to change their job 
arrangements so they have the opportunity to get more leisure time and 
spend more time with their families.
  There is one other way to do that, which is what we did today. We 
lowered their taxes, which says rather than now spending some of your 
time to work for the Government, or actually spending a lot of time to 
work for the Government, we are going to lessen the amount of time that 
you work for the Government, and you can then decide to take that as 
perhaps more personal income. Or you can say rather than spending this 
time working for the Government, I am just going to have some more 
leisure time.
  These are the kinds of issues that we are going to be studying and 
taking a look at over the coming months, continuing to aggressively 
pursue the education agenda, continuing to aggressively pursue an 
agenda which empowers parents, not bureaucracies; which drives toward 
focusing on the child; which gets dollars into the classroom, not into 
bureaucrats; focuses on the basics, the reading, the writing, and the 
math, not all the other extraneous things that go on in education 
today, but giving the kids the basic skills in K through 12; really 
putting them into a safe school, dealing with the basics.
  We are going to challenge some of the Washington assumptions about 
what is good for education and what is good for kids. But it is a 
struggle, it is a debate. It is a wonderful debate, because as we go on 
through this process, whether we are in Little Rock, whether we are in 
Cincinnati, whether we are in the Bronx, we have seen kids in every 
part of society be able to learn. That is exciting. We see kids 
everywhere over this country who are empowered and are having the 
opportunity to learn.
  It is kind of like when adults and when the bureaucrats and when 
Washington gets out of the way, man, watch these kids go. Watch these 
parents and watch these schools excel. When Washington gets in the way, 
whoa, watch out and see how things start to change focus.
  We are going to focus on education. We are also going to do the same 
kind of thing in the work force, examining where we are, what the 
changes are, what opportunities the changes in our economy are going to 
bring, are going to appear, and how Washington at that point in many 
cases needs to step back and get out of the way so American workers, 
American companies can employ the skills and the energies that make 
America such a wonderful place, perhaps the most creative people on the 
globe, willing to take more risks,

[[Page H6694]]

willing to take that creativity and that risk and to work hard. That is 
why we are the most productive.
  So in some of these areas, we need to remove the barriers and let 
American workers and American companies excel. We are setting the 
standard today. We need to make sure that we recognize what our skills 
are, what makes us different, so we can step out of the way and let 
those skills and those differences bloom, so we can continue to lead 
the world because of the quality of American workers.
  Those are the kinds of challenges we will take up when we come back 
in September. Those are the kinds of challenges that we can now get our 
hands around and have a constructive dialogue and debate, as we have 
kind of changed the shift. We are moving power back to the American 
people with the bills we have passed today, the bills from today and 
yesterday, by reducing taxes, by getting the deficit under control and 
hopefully being at a surplus budget within the next year or two.
  We have turned the ship around by saying we are not going to keep 
moving more power to Washington and getting in the way. We recognize 
that there is a limit to the kinds of solutions and the extent of the 
solutions that Washington can bring, and we have come back to recognize 
the real beauty of America, which is individuals and freedom and 
opportunity and creativity and entrepreneurship.
  We are going to get Washington out of the way, and we are going to go 
after some of these chronic problems. We are going to move forward. We 
are going to reassess some of the assumptions that we have had for the 
last 30 years of moving power to Washington as the way to solve the 
problems and saying maybe we have gone too far, and it is time to 
continue to move some of that power back to parents, to school 
districts, to move it back to workers and management at a local level, 
providing some wonderful opportunities.
  That is why I think that the balance of this Congress and future 
Congresses, because we have that monkey off our back of the deficit, 
perhaps we have the monkey off our back of partisan politics, that we 
have now found a way to work in a bipartisan way, that we are going to 
have some great days in front of us. We are going to be able to pass 
some legislation and some new initiatives that really will start to 
address some serious, nagging problems.
  If we do not address them, it will create some huge problems for us 
in the future. But if we address them, and we no longer have 30 percent 
of our kids going into college needing remedial education, just think, 
in 4 years if we went down from 30 percent needing remedial education, 
think about it; I do not even know how we as a society accept that 
today, K through 12 turning out 30 to 40 percent of our kids who are 
illiterate. How do we accept that? Just think, if in 5 years and 8 
years we move that down to 5 percent, it is still too high, but boy, we 
will have come a long way.
  Think of the energy, the positive energy and the positive influence 
that that will bring into our whole economy and our whole society if we 
raise the threshold from 70 percent literacy to 95, 98 percent 
literacy, and the positive benefits that we will all receive from those 
kinds of changes.

                          ____________________