[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 113 (Tuesday, September 2, 1997)]
[Senate]
[Pages S8650-S8651]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




  DEPARTMENTS OF LABOR, HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES, AND EDUCATION, AND 
               RELATED AGENCIES APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 1998

  The Senate continued with the consideration of the bill.


                           Amendment No. 1056

  Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I ask whether or not the amendment we 
are on right now is the Kyl amendment; is that correct?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator is correct.
  Mr. WELLSTONE. I thank the Chair.
  Mr. President, I do not know whether or not my colleague, Senator Kyl 
from Arizona, will be back today or whether we will come back to his 
amendment tomorrow, but I want to just very briefly comment on his 
amendment.
  The Kyl amendment, as I understand it--I have the amendment before 
me--amounts essentially to over a $500 million rescission, if you will, 
in funding for what is called LIHEAP, the low-income energy assistance 
program. We have seen cuts over the years in this low-income energy 
assistance program. It is really now under a billion dollars total. So 
in many ways we would essentially, if this amendment passes, be dealing 
with the end of the program.
  Mr. President, I actually would come to the floor and have an 
amendment which would call for an increase in funding for low-income 
energy assistance. And the reason I do not is that we have been sort of 
going through the same drill every year, which is that come the cold 
winter months--this happens in Minnesota; it happens in many of our 
cold-weather States--what happens is, because we do not have enough by 
way of appropriations, because the vast majority of these families are 
families with incomes under $7,000 or $8,000 a year, because about half 
the people helped are children, because close to 50 percent of these 
families are working poor families, they work 52 weeks a year, 40 hours 
a week, and because, Mr. President, these grants, this assistance, 
represents a kind of lifeline for people so they are not faced with the 
choice of ``Do I pay for my heat? Then I can't afford prescription 
drugs or I can't afford food,'' we have been supportive of this.
  What happens, though not as supportive as we should be, the 
administration provides additional emergency funds because, you know, 
whether it be in Minnesota or Indiana, I suppose, as well, what happens 
is that at the county level where the people live, at the grassroots 
level, we get calls. And these are desperation calls. So we actually 
provide a supplement to what we have in the bill by way of emergency 
funding. But for a State like Minnesota or Indiana it is a bit of a 
nightmare to plan. People never know. They never know.
  So now we have an amendment which would really just make this 
situation, which is not great--we do not have the funding that we 
should have for a program that helps people so they do not go cold. 
That is a kind of minimal standard of decency. It certainly is 
important to a cold-weather State like Minnesota. But now if this 
amendment was to pass--I do not think it will; I hope we will have a 
strong vote against it--it would be a nightmare.
  I just want to say to my colleague, whom I enjoy, that the part of 
the amendment which deals with expanding funding for the Pell grant I 
am all for. I think one of the things that was overlooked in the budget 
agreement--I think there was a bit too much exaggeration about how we 
were going to make sure that higher education was affordable for all 
our students because, to repeat one more time, the tax credit which 
goes to the HOPE scholarship program is not refundable. So if you come 
from a family below $27,000 a year, you may not be eligible, and

[[Page S8651]]

many of the community college students in Minnesota are not.
  We also expanded the Pell grant a little bit, but if you talk to the 
financial aid officers around the country, I think all of them will 
tell you that the most effective, efficient way of providing the 
necessary support for young or not such young students--many of our 
students are older--to be able to afford higher education is the Pell 
grants.
  So I say to my colleague, it is a laudable goal. I will have an 
amendment on the floor to provide some additional funding for the Pell 
grants in this country. But you cannot do that on the backs of some of 
the poorest, most vulnerable citizens in the United States of America. 
I mean, you cannot take away energy assistance from people who, if they 
do not receive this emergency assistance during cold winters, could 
very well go cold or maybe pay for heat but then not have enough to 
eat. This is just an unacceptable trade-off.

  I am disappointed we have to go through this whole fight again, but, 
you know, all of us do what we think is right. I know my colleague from 
Arizona is doing this because he thinks it is the right thing to do. 
But we have had very strong bipartisan support over the LIHEAP Program. 
I think we all know already that it is minimum funding. We all know 
already it is not enough. We all know already that we end up every 
winter having to provide additional emergency funding. So the last 
thing we want to do is essentially gut this program.
  So, again, I share part of the goal of this because indeed I will 
have an amendment that will talk about expanding Pell grant funding. 
But you do not take the funding from some of the poorest, most 
vulnerable families in America.
  I am speaking as a Senator from a cold-weather State, Minnesota, but 
I think the vast majority of my colleagues share this sentiment as 
well. So when we come back to this, there will be a pretty strong 
debate. I hope we will have an overwhelmingly strong vote in opposition 
to this amendment.
  I also want to say, Mr. President--I will say it very briefly--that I 
look forward to starting tomorrow. I do intend to introduce an 
amendment to expand funding for Head Start. I have been doing some 
really interesting traveling and learned so much from people when I was 
in eastern Kentucky.
  I, by the way, would like to say to the Chair, not in sort of a 
syrupy, senatorial courtesy, if you will, but at my wife's family 
reunion, the Isom family in eastern Kentucky, about half the people 
were from Indiana. I had an opportunity to tell them I really enjoyed 
working with Senator Coats from Indiana. It was kind of nice. Most of 
them are Republicans. I did not change their view, but they are 
wonderful people. They think a great deal of the Chair. I think they 
are disappointed he is in fact not going to be continuing in the 
Senate. I say that to the Chair.
  One of the things you learn, especially as you visit Head Start, is 
that now that we are talking more about the very early years, I mean 
the funding, when it comes to really trying to help with families where 
children are 1 or 2, under the age of 3, we have practically no funding 
at all.
  I tell you, I met some wonderful people in eastern Kentucky. One 
woman who has been with Head Start, I don't know, from the very 
beginning, her husband died of black lung, and she has not had a high 
school degree. With the help of Head Start, she went back and got her 
high school degree, went on and got a college education and has been a 
Head Start teacher for 30 years. I asked her, ``Why do you do this? You 
can't get wealthy. You don't make very much money at all.'' She talked 
about her love of children. You could just feel it.
  So I want to have an amendment that talks about expanding some 
funding for Head Start. I certainly want to have an amendment that 
deals with the Pell grant program. I will have one other amendment that 
will deal with this whole issue of what are we going to do about 
rebuilding crumbling schools.
  I heard my colleague, Senator Kennedy from Massachusetts, in a very 
eloquent way say there is agreement on this except we do not seem to 
match our words with resources. I am seeing, as I travel around the 
country, some of these crumbling schools. It is sort of like when we 
talk about family values. We have to make ``values'' a verb. It cannot 
just be a noun. We have to sort of live it, do it.
  If we value these children, we just cannot have children going to 
schools that are crumbling. You cannot have children walking into 
schools where the ceilings are falling--I have seen these conditions--
or when the stench of urine is in the hallway or toilets are decrepit 
and you cannot even wash your hands after you go to the bathroom.
  As Senator Kennedy said earlier, we are saying to these kids --no 
matter what we think we are saying--what we are saying is that we do 
not value you much. We have to figure out a way as a nation to do 
something about this.
  I was at a gathering with a top urban educator. I so appreciated her 
remarks because what she said is: Look, you all can debate whether 
there should be tests or standards or how you measure accountability 
and all the rest of it, and it is all debatable, but, she said, some 
things are simple. Just invest some money in infrastructure. Help 
rebuild these crumbling schools.
  She is right. I will have another amendment that will deal with that. 
But I do hope when we come back--I want my colleague from Arizona to 
know there will be a very fierce debate about this. I mean, for the 
last several years I have come out here. Senator Kennedy has joined me. 
Senator Harkin, Senator Specter, a number of different Senators have 
been very strong on this. Senator Jeffords has been a very strong 
leader on this. And we have had to fight every year for this low-income 
energy assistance. I do not think we should have to fight so hard for 
it because it is really just a basic lifeline program.
  My colleague from Arizona, whether he intends to do so or not, is 
essentially gutting this program, ending it. We cannot do that. We 
cannot do that.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. COCHRAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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