[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 124 (Wednesday, September 17, 1997)]
[House]
[Pages H7488-H7494]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




           EDUCATION SHOULD BE AMERICA'S NUMBER ONE PRIORITY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 7, 1997, the gentleman from Massachusetts [Mr. McGovern] is 
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
  Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Speaker, as a Democrat who believes strongly that 
education should be this Nation's and this Congress' number one 
priority, I have found the past week's debate most disturbing and 
frustrating.
  What could be more important to our children's future than providing 
them with a world-class education? Nothing. So why does the majority 
party continue to cut and cut and cut the education budget? Why do they 
continue to block old and positive initiatives aimed at improving the 
quality of education for all our kids?

                              {time}  1715

  In the Third Congressional District of Massachusetts, the district 
that I represent, we have children going to classes in buildings in 
desperate need of repair. There are school buildings in my district 
that were built when Ulysses S. Grant was President of the United 
States.
  Now, Democrats applauded President Clinton earlier this year when he 
proposed $5 billion for school construction that would help local 
communities leverage up to $20 billion for school construction and 
repairs. One-third of American schools need extensive repair, and I bet 
they are not all in Democratic districts. But what happened to that 
proposal? Why did that proposal not become law? Well, the Republican 
majority killed it in the budget deal.
  So let us talk about priorities for a moment. What are the priorities 
of the Republican majority in this Congress? Well, the Republicans said 
that $5 billion for school construction was too much money to spend on 
education. We just do not have that kind of money, they said; and yet 
many of us were absolutely outraged to learn that those same Members, 
in the very dead of night, secretly inserted into the budget

[[Page H7489]]

bill a $50 billion tax break for the tobacco industry.
  What message can that possibly send to our children; that they are 
not worth the $5 billion it takes to repair the leaky roofs and the 
crumbling walls of your schools, but the wealthy and powerful tobacco 
lobby deserves a tax break of 10 times that amount? How insulting, Mr. 
Speaker. Tobacco tax breaks rather than investing in education. Talk 
about getting our national priorities out of whack.
  The overcrowding of schools has become a national issue and a local 
crisis in towns and cities all across America. School enrollment in the 
United States is breaking all previous records. A new Department of 
Education report found that more than 52 million children just enrolled 
in schools this last fall. The fastest growing group is high school 
students, with high school enrollment expected to grow by 13 percent 
over the next 10 years. In Massachusetts, that growth is projected to 
be 23 percent.
  So while Republicans are giving tax breaks to executives in corporate 
palaces, our children are being shoved into overcrowded classrooms with 
too many students for even our best teachers to provide them with a 
quality education. For shame, Mr. Speaker. For shame.
  During the budget debate it was the Republican majority that tried to 
punish graduate students who are serving in our Nation's colleges and 
universities as teaching and research assistants by stripping away 
their tuition tax waivers. It was the Republicans who sought to punish 
the clerks, the secretaries, the janitors and the speech professors at 
community colleges and other academic staff and faculty by taking away 
tuition waivers for their children.
  But Democrats fought back and saved these provisions for students and 
workers who dedicate their lives to making sure that our children 
receive a good education. It was the Democrats who fought for the 
$1,500 HOPE scholarship. It was the Democrats who made the Taxpayer 
Relief Act one that promotes lifelong learning and helps families 
across the country find financial relief from the burden of higher 
education costs.
  Mr. Speaker, many of us read in the newspaper about the 200-page 
guide that a Republican political consultant has been circulating among 
party members. It contains some suggested language for how Republicans 
can make themselves seem less unfriendly toward education. Well, let us 
take a closer look at how the Republican majority really feels about 
education.
  It has been the goal of the Republican majority, ever since they took 
control of this House, to destroy the Department of Education. In the 
last session the Democrats said no, that is not what the American 
people want; people want the President's Cabinet meetings to include an 
advocate for American education. And Americans from across the land 
also sent a resounding message of no, eliminating the Department of 
Education is not the way to improve the quality of American education.
  So the Republicans were defeated in their plans to destroy funding 
for education. And this year they have attempted to dismantle Federal 
funding programs for a number of important education programs. In fact, 
we have seen attacks on the very programs that work the best, Safe and 
Drug Free Schools, School to Work, Educational Technology Challenge 
Grants, Goals 2000, a program initiated by President George Bush, 
Bilingual and Immigrant Education, and the Eisenhower Teacher Training 
Grants.
  In school districts across this country these grants and moneys are 
being used for the most effective and innovative education programs. 
They supply computers and link classrooms together on the Internet. 
They support businesses, employers, and school-to-work closely together 
in promoting education curriculum and job creation. They hold schools 
accountable to high academic standards, and they help school districts 
provide professional development for teachers and upgrade their 
training.
  Why do the Republicans want to break apart the very programs that are 
working best? Now, I understand that there can be legitimate 
differences of opinion and priorities between Republicans and 
Democrats, but I cannot understand why anyone would hold hostage the 
future of America's children and the Nation.
  Democrats will fight to improve our country's schools and our 
children's education. I have decided to make education my No. 1 
priority as a Member of Congress, and Democrats, I am proud to say, 
have fought hard to stem the education cutting frenzy that too many of 
my Republican colleagues continue to incite.
  I call upon my Republican colleagues to abandon their education 
slashing ways and to join Democrats in our efforts to offer an 
affordable quality education to every American who wants one.
  Mr. Speaker, at this time I wish to yield to my colleague and friend 
from Massachusetts, John Tierney, who is a very eloquent advocate on 
behalf of education.
  Mr. TIERNEY. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding to me. I 
was struck by the gentleman's remarks on education. I want to commend 
the gentleman for his work he has done on the floor in the last several 
weeks along with the gentleman from Wisconsin [Mr. Obey], the ranking 
member of the Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services and 
Education.
  When we dealt with the education matters, we did come up against a 
barrage of measures, all incidently from the Republican side of the 
House, but not all Republicans participating in that, that seemed to 
attack the very foundation of the Federal role in the educational 
system.
  I, as does my colleague, go home every weekend, Friday, Saturday, 
Sunday, and Monday, and when we have in-district weeks, and we take 
that time to go from school district to school district, visiting the 
high schools, the junior high schools, and some of the elementary 
schools; going to the businesses, talking to the people that work in 
those businesses as well as the people that run those businesses, to 
find out what their thoughts are on the work force, on their own 
children, their own communities, and their own schools. I have yet, in 
the entire 6th District of Massachusetts, heard anyone telling me they 
are in favor of slashing the Federal role, which is already somewhat 
minimal in terms of what we provide for resources in education.

  I think it is notable that the school-to-work program, which the 
gentleman just mentioned, which was targeted to be wiped out 
completely, except for the matter that the Member figured, I think, 
that he did not have the support and finally withdrew his motion, it 
was targeted to be wiped out completely, and every business in my 
district is supportive of that program, every community is supportive 
of that program. The Chambers of Commerce, the individual businesses, 
the people that work either unionized or nonunionized that participate 
as mentors for high school students, helping them acclimate to the 
adjustment that it will be going from school to work or school to work 
plus going back to college or junior college. These are important 
programs that are working that are showing success.
  Two weeks ago I spent time with 14 students from the Lynn, 
Massachusetts High School that had been working with NYNEX, now known 
as Bell Atlantic, and basically they have been on that school-to-work 
program and they have been getting mentored by people that work within 
the company. And the business itself would put management people into 
work with that program.
  The students were so impressed with what they were learning, when it 
came time at the end of that summer to get a week's vacation, all of 
them have opted not to take the week off but to stay in the program 
right up to the time they went back to school and asked the company if 
they could not work something out to do part-time, because they were 
learning valuable skills. They were learning valuable behaviors about 
the workplace and also learning what they had to know further in order 
to do very well in the workplace; what other schooling behind high 
schooling they might need, whereas before they were not everyone 
anything in that direction. So that is important.
  Literacy in our district. We have 15,000 people in Massachusetts that 
are waiting in line to get into an adult literacy program; that want to 
help their children with mathematics skills and

[[Page H7490]]

with reading; that want to be able to encourage their children to go to 
school and do better. They want to be able to get a job of their own 
that earns more money for their family and gives them a better quality 
of life, yet they are waiting in line. Programs like that were targeted 
to be eliminated, when the ones that we have are working and can be 
made to work better.
  For the first time in our district we got all of the literacy 
programs, public and private together, introduced them to each other, 
told them how the system works, how the funding works down, and got 
them to work cooperatively so that there was not a contest to sort of 
pull the funds away from each other but to maximize their use, to work 
with one another so that the programs would dovetail and more people 
could participate and benefit.
  I could go on and on, but I suspect the gentleman has comments he can 
make of his own.
  Mr. McGOVERN. Well, Mr. Speaker, I think my colleague is absolutely 
right and he realizes, as I do, and as the President of the United 
States does, that education is really everything. It is the most 
important priority we can have in this Congress.
  We talk about competing in the global economy, we talk about being 
the economic superpower of the world, but that is not going to continue 
if we do not have a well educated work force, if we do not invest in 
our young kids now. I would suggest that we need to invest starting at 
age zero, and we need to also focus some attention on the very 
important issue of early childhood development.
  Mr. TIERNEY. If the gentleman would further yield, one of the more 
insidious aspects of this debate that happened over the last couple of 
weeks was the intention and the repetition that we do not want National 
Government to get involved with education. We do not want to 
nationalize education. We do not want the Federal Government doing 
education programs.
  Nothing could be further from the truth in the programs that have 
been created over the last 15 years, and the resources for which are 
provided to States and local communities. And the superintendents and 
the school committees, the principals and the teachers and the parents 
all recognize that these resources otherwise would not be available.
  These programs came into being because local communities and States 
either were not purposely doing things that they should have been doing 
or did not have the resources to work on these programs and to give 
these opportunities, particularly in areas or communities where money 
is hard to come by, where the tax rate may already be stretching the 
limits and the base is not big enough to expand.
  The programs were designed for participation. One of the programs 
that people attacked on the other side of the aisle repeatedly was the 
whole school concept. We have debated that for several days and 
eventually we passed it, I am happy to say. We needed only to change 
the language so that others on the other side of the aisle could 
perhaps feel more comfortable that their efforts had gone for 
something. Now I believe it is known as the comprehensive school 
concept.
  But to show how it was really not the idea of nationalizing education 
that they were attacking, that what they were attacking was education 
and the Department of Education, the project that they eventually ended 
up working with us to pass takes the resources and brings them down to 
the community. There is nothing in that package that says the Federal 
Government instructs them to take any particular action.
  What it says is that we go down to a local community and we have to 
have that community working together to support the concept of building 
a mission and a foundation for that school or school district. Parents 
get together, teachers come back to the table to negotiate what changes 
have to be made, administrators get into the program, businesses in the 
community and colleges in the community. And they work together and get 
the kind of effort that identifies what that school's goals are going 
to be, what are the standards of achievement that are going to exist 
for those children to live up to. What are the tools that will work, in 
terms of curriculum and materials to provide those children. How many 
hours a day will they go and how many days a week in a year will they 
attend school.
  This was a program that was put together, and there are 1200 programs 
across the country and it has worked.
  Mr. McGOVERN. My colleague raised an important point. Some of our 
friends on the other side of the aisle accuse us of trying to take the 
decision-making aspects with regard to education out of the hands of 
local communities. That is not the truth. What we are advocating here 
is the Federal Government to support some of the great efforts that are 
going on in our cities and towns all throughout this country. They need 
help.
  When we go to a town that has a crumbling school, the cost of 
rebuilding that schooling is phenomenal. It can break the budget of a 
town. We need to provide the Federal resources to help those towns 
build the very best schools that are available.
  The programs that the gentleman has outlined here today all deserve 
the support of the Federal Government. Nobody is advocating taking the 
decisionmaking role away from the local communities. I think that is an 
important point. But what we are advocating here in Washington, and I 
think it is appropriate, and I commend the President for doing this, is 
we are advocating higher standards. We are urging people to aim high 
and nothing could be more important.
  Mr. TIERNEY. If I can interject for a second, all of the business 
community in my area is very, very focused on having the product of our 
public school system and our private school systems get up to a level 
where they can hire these people and put them to work and do the fine-
tune finish training for their particular product or service.
  But all of them expect that the school system, through the elementary 
and secondary level, is going to prepare these people either for a 
community college or college and/or work, so that they can come in and 
contribute and make us a productive society and make those businesses 
be able to perform.
  In my area of Massachusetts, which the gentleman also represents a 
part of, we are going to need millions of jobs in the next decade. 
Somebody has to fill them. All these jobs will require a lot more in 
terms of skill and education than we have known in the past, and 
businesses understand that. That is why they support the school-to-work 
program. That is why they generally get involved in each one of these 
local efforts to try to make sure these schools have higher standards 
and the students have the bar lifted for them to meet.
  One of the more inane exercises around here in the last few days was 
the Republicans arguing against testing on a national level and saying 
they do not want it, and then arguing, in fact, they want the States to 
set the standards, in the same breath fighting against Goals 2000, 
which in fact provides resources so that States can do just that, 
establish achievement standards and have their students meet those 
levels.

                              {time}  1730

  So a lot of times we get into the rhetoric of the debate. It is more 
about politics. It is more about trying to establish who wants 
bureaucracy in government versus who wants to bring the money to the 
classroom, and it gets obstructed that way.
  One of the debates before the amendment was withdrawn, an amendment 
that sought to block grant all the programs and throw them down to the 
State, talked about wanting to take government bureaucracy out. The 
fact of the matter was that under the block grant up to 15 percent of 
the money could be spent on State bureaucracy to implement the 
programs, whereas if they were left alone, virtually every one of the 
programs required that 90 percent, usually 95 percent of the money get 
to the student and not be absorbed through bureaucracy or 
administration.
  It also implies the fact that some administration is necessary. There 
is no program that is going to work by going out and handing a check to 
a kid in the 5th grade. The fact of the matter is that somebody has to 
construct a program and make sure that it works and that that child 
deserves and gets the benefits of it.
  So to bring the debate to that level and to try to make it that clear 
is to

[[Page H7491]]

sort of distract the issue when we try to work on that basis. I think 
we have to get back down to sensible discussions about what works and 
what does not. And that is fine. We can disagree on that and have the 
debate on that level.
  Mr. McGOVERN. Reclaiming my time, let me just raise one other aspect 
with regard to education that I think is important, and I think 
Democrats can take some pride in having fought for some real 
accomplishments, and that is making college education more accessible 
to so many young people in this country.
  This tax cut bill that eventually passed this House in the end was a 
much better bill because Democrats fought for over $35 billion in tax 
cuts for education that are in that bill. There is not a day that goes 
by when I am home in Massachusetts, when I do not bump into a family 
who complains about the high cost of a college education, who wonders 
how they are going to finance the college education of their daughter 
or son, and who are looking for help. One way to help them is through 
the tax cut system, and we have done that, I think, to a certain extent 
in this tax cut bill. But we need to do much more.
  My first bill that I introduced in this Congress was a bill to 
increase the maximum amount of Pell grants from $2,700 to $5,000, which 
is where it should be if we kept on adjusting Pell grants for 
inflation. We need to make the dream of a college education not just a 
dream. Anybody in this country who wants a college education should be 
able to get one. People should not be told they cannot get a college 
education because they do not have the economic resources to do so.
  Mr. TIERNEY. If the gentleman would continue to yield, John Kenneth 
Galbraith, who lives in our State and is well-known by everyone, wrote 
a book recently called ``The Good Society.'' Is not a difficult book to 
read. It is not long. He has an excellent small chapter on education.
  He talks with an historical perspective about colleges being very 
private in nature at first because, obviously, wealthy families wanted 
the best for their children and society thought that education was the 
important instrument to obtain that. So they moved in that direction 
and they provided college education for their children. And at some 
point society woke up and decided this was a good thing for society, to 
have a large number of people, in fact the more people as possible, who 
could be trained and educated to increase our productivity and to make 
it a better place to live, to be better participants in the Government, 
and simply to raise the quality and standard of life for each 
individual.
  So we created a public higher education system, and most States 
started with a State college and university system and community 
college system, and that works basically through a fee system also. But 
then we started to decide, as the economy got tougher, that we had to 
find other ways to encourage people and enable them to get their 
families and children on to college. That is the Pell Grant Program 
that you started, that you did not start but that you enhanced. But the 
basic Pell grant was an effort to give the children and families the 
opportunity to get that entry into college and to go.
  As school became more and more expensive and there were not enough 
public college slots for people, we also tried to help people get into 
those institutions through scholarships and loans. Now the situation in 
front of the Subcommittee on Higher Education will be to look and see 
how, if at all, we can constrain the rising costs that are rising 
disproportionate to other rising costs, and how we can further enable 
families to make sure that their children get the opportunity. Because, 
in essence, we are helping our businesses and we are helping everybody 
in society.
  Mr. McGOVERN. Reclaiming my time, as the gentleman from Massachusetts 
[Mr. Tierney] knows, it is not just young people who are concerned 
about the cost of college education, it is people mid-career.
  The Department of Labor tells us that the average person who enters 
the workforce today may have 7 or 8 jobs in his or her lifetime. There 
may be a point in that person's career where they may need to get 
additional education. And again, it is in our interest as a Nation to 
make sure that that education is available and affordable for that 
person. I mean, that should be a priority of this Congress. That should 
be a more urgent priority than it is right now.
  Mr. TIERNEY. If the gentleman will yield further, I think that we are 
going to find that education is not an issue that is going to go away 
with the American public. I think that the polling that my colleague 
referenced that was done for the Republican party is going to have to 
move beyond linguistics, going to have to move beyond the idea of 
semantics as to what language to use. We are going to have to move in 
the direction of doing something substantive.
  Vouchers, where you run away from the public school system, where you 
try to abandon it and take a few people with you on the way out, it 
clearly is not going to work on its face. It does not seem to make 
sense or reason. What we need to do is work within the public school 
system to improve them so that there is equal opportunity for every 
family and every child to go on. When we do that at the secondary level 
and at the elementary level, then we will also be improving the people 
that go into our college level and we will be able to move forward in 
that direction.
  Mr. McGOVERN. Reclaiming my time, let me say one thing about the 
public school education in this country. I spent a lot of time during 
my visits back home in Massachusetts touring schools. My district 
almost goes across the entire State, from Princeton to Dartmouth, in 
Massachusetts. I have visited countless schools, and I have to tell my 
colleagues that I am very impressed by the quality of teachers that I 
have encountered, by the curiosity of the students, by the eagerness to 
constantly challenge those students and to try to basically provide 
them the very best education.
  I think what we need to do here in Washington is to support our 
teachers back home, to support our school districts, to make sure that 
they have the funding, to make sure that they are teaching in a 
classroom that is adequate, that provides the right environment so kids 
can learn, so there is not this problem of overcrowding, so they have 
the best textbooks that are available, so they have all the tools that 
are available, making sure that every classroom in this country is 
hooked up to the information super highway.
  All of those things are vitally important. And we here in Washington 
can play a vital role in supporting some of those initiatives.
  Mr. TIERNEY. If the gentleman will continue to yield, one of the 
important things we need to do is to focus the debate where it belongs. 
In order for a voucher program to get support, not only for the 
abandonment of public schools to get support, I think the polling that 
we referenced earlier of the other party shows that first they have to 
denigrate the system so badly that people want to walk away. They have 
to disparage it. They have to say all schools are bad, all teaching 
systems are bad, all participants are not performing.
  And that simply cannot be done. My colleague knows from the tour of 
his schools, and I can see that we have with us a former superintendent 
of schools in his State, that the fact of the matter is a number of 
public schools are performing and performing well; a number of pilot 
programs are working and working extraordinarily well; that teachers 
are trying very hard; that, given the tools, they do perform to an 
extraordinary degree; that we have teacher involvement programs, the 
Eisenhower program being one; that we have technology programs 
available which allow teachers to have the technology in their 
classrooms and enable them be able to use them effectively in teaching 
students. So that the whole entire public education system is not 
broken.
  I like to use, instead of the word ``reform,'' the word 
``improvement.'' We need to improve those systems that need 
improvement. We need to build better schools when that is the issue. We 
need to have smaller classrooms where that is the issue. We need to 
have better materials, more teacher improvement. We need to have 
community involvement and parent involvement.

[[Page H7492]]

  We have all the tools for that in the various programs that we have 
implemented here as a small part of the Federal budget spent on 
education. But it is a major impetus for communities to be able to 
embark on those avenues that will give them hope and equal opportunity 
for every public school student.
  I think that block granting is the first step for the Republican 
party trying to eliminate education as a Federal part of the agenda, 
and I think we ought to move away from that.
  I thank the gentleman from Massachusetts for allowing me to 
participate.
  Mr. McGOVERN. I thank the gentleman from Massachusetts [Mr. Tierney] 
for his remarks, and I think he has made very clear that the priority 
of this Congress should be education, education, education.
  I would like to yield to my colleague, the gentleman from New Jersey 
[Mr. Pallone], who has spoken many times on this issue.
  Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the gentleman from 
Massachusetts [Mr. McGovern]. I was listening to some of his comments 
before I came down on the floor. Obviously, both gentlemen from 
Massachusetts are very concerned about where we were going with the 
education system and want to do whatever they can to improve public 
education here in the United States. I know they have got some very 
good ideas which they articulated about how to go about that.
  One of the things that I am very proud of is that our party, the 
Democratic party, for the last few years and historically, but the last 
few years particularly, has stressed the need to upgrade education, not 
only at the higher education level in terms of providing finance 
assistance, loans, grants, work study programs, which we did as part of 
the balanced budget agreement, and we insisted that there be more money 
available for assistance programs to students so that they would have 
access to college and university education, but also now particularly 
we feel as Democrats that it is important to try to improve and provide 
additional resources for public schools, for secondary schools.
  We talked in the last few weeks on the floor about the need to 
upgrade infrastructure because schools are overcrowded, that we need to 
provide a program to provide funds to local boards of education so that 
they can fix up crumbling schools, address the concerns of 
overcrowding, because there are so many schools that need repair.
  We also talked about standards. One of the major aspects of the 
Democrats' program for education is to upgrade standards and provide 
for national standards and provide for ways to help the local boards of 
education to improve standards.
  One of the things that I think that we stress as Democrats is that 
this needs to be a partnership with the Federal Government. We all know 
that primarily States and local communities and local governments are 
the ones that have the primary responsibility for public schools. But 
there is no reason why the Federal Government cannot be a partner in 
that, particularly with regard to resources.
  I just want to say, one of the things that has been upsetting me a 
great deal in this appropriations bill, the Labor, Health, Education 
bill that we have been dealing with in the past few weeks here in 
Congress, here in the House, is that the Republicans repeatedly put up 
amendments which seek to attack and I think ultimately reduce resources 
that are available for public education.
  Today there was an amendment that would basically provide a block 
grant and eliminate Safe and Drug-Free Schools, School-to-Work, Goals 
2000, teacher training programs. And I know that the Republicans who 
are sponsoring that amendment will say, ``Well, we are going to give 
the money back to the schools but we are not going to tell them what to 
do with it, so that is okay, they are still going to get the same 
amount of money.''
  The bottom line is that Federal policy should, in my opinion, be 
based on what the needs are. We need safe schools. And Goals 2000 has 
been a very effective program, and the whole School-to-Work program. 
All these things have been very effective.
  I just want to give my colleagues an idea. In New Jersey when we talk 
about Goals 2000, which the Republicans also tried to eliminate last 
year, last year, in the 104th Congress, they had a whole series of cuts 
in elementary and secondary education which included significant cuts 
in Goals 2000. Goals 2000 is basically a way for the Federal Government 
to help individual States with their educational programs.
  Just to give my colleagues an idea, in New Jersey, with a relatively 
small amount of money, I do not know if I have the figure here or how 
important the figure ultimately is in terms of how much New Jersey got, 
but it was in the millions. It was several million dollars. And 
basically what they did was to use the money that came from the Federal 
Government to provide for schools to be safe from violence.

  We in New Jersey launched a multifaceted safe school initiative in 
December of 1994. And reported findings, as a result of that program, 
indicate a reduction in the number of reported incidents of vandalism 
and violence in New Jersey public schools for the 1995-96 school year. 
I can give you the specifics about how crime declined. This was as a 
direct result of Federal funding coming down through Goals 2000.
  I will give my colleagues some of the others, but I see my friend, 
the gentleman from North Carolina [Mr. Etheridge] would like to 
comment, and I would certainly yield to him at this time with your 
permission.
  Mr. ETHERIDGE. I thank the gentleman from New Jersey [Mr. Pallone] 
and the others who have organized this evening.
  The point my colleague made earlier I think is so important for us to 
understand as we are talking about block grants and education. I do not 
know why it is just block grant education we want to deal with. We are 
not talking about block granting funds to the Department of Defense. We 
do not talk about block granting materials to other things.
  As my colleague just indicated, it is important to have a priority; 
and if there is an issue we want to deal with, what we are talking 
about is reducing the funds. I cannot imagine this body ever, or any 
other body who has to report to people, turning over the funds without 
asking for accountability.
  The truth is that is a good way to put it out and do away with it. 
That is really the bottom line. I remember revenue sharing a long time 
ago when I was a county commissioner. And when revenue sharing came, I 
said to the folks, ``We do not spend any of this money in programs, 
because I guarantee you it is going to be cut out because we are 
getting it without any strings.''

                              {time}  1745

  Guess what happened to it? It got cut out. If you block grant it 
without the people who are in your appropriations process understanding 
what is happening and having feedback directly from what is happening, 
it is going to be cut out.
  The last thing we need to do at a time when this country is growing 
and expanding and we are dealing in a global economy, we are asking our 
young people to change and the whole economy to change for that matter 
in a way like we have never had, we do not need to be pulling away the 
needed resources for our schools. Six to 7 percent, depending on the 
State, where they are, is about all the Federal Government is putting 
in. By and large those dollars are going to specific programs. Most of 
it goes to chapter 1 and other programs that are for children who have 
special needs, and that really helps with reading and with math, some 
of it in very targeted areas for children who are the poorest among our 
poor children in this country. That does not go equally to States. It 
really is divided up among the States who have the greatest population 
of those students and with the greatest needs.
  As the gentleman indicated, funds for safe and drug-free schools, 
that is based on a student population. But if it is sent down and it 
does not have some direction, I can assure the gentleman, I have been 
in the Department, I know what will happen. There will be competition 
for those dollars, and unless there is a requirement to go to certain 
areas, they may not get there, because the last time I checked, there 
were those who will stand up and tell us there are too many dollars in 
education, that we are spending too much money.

[[Page H7493]]

  If that is true, if that is true as a premise, then why does almost 
every school in this country have a PTA, and every night on TV we have 
parents complaining about children retailing to get funds into schools 
to buy paper and books and all the other things? It is nothing more 
than a half truth at best and an outright sham at worse. It is not 
true. It is absolutely not true. It may be true in some communities, 
but in the bulk of the communities in my State, it is absolutely not 
true. Otherwise we would not have parents from PTA's selling all these 
things and doing things and having kids to sell them.
  There are not enough resources. We have allowed our schools, as the 
gentleman indicated, almost half of them in this country have need of 
some attention, either plumbing, electrical or overcrowding, for a 
variety of reasons.
  What we care about in our communities are what we pay attention to. 
If you ride through a community, the last thing that is really held in 
communities in this country right now, in my opinion, that is still 
intact is that public school where children go. The families are having 
problems. There are a lot of problems in a lot of institutions, and the 
school may be the last thing that is holding the community together. 
The last thing we need to do as a Nation is to pull the underpinnings 
out from under the one thing that is helping hold this country 
together.
  I would be the first to say if every family was intact, and we had 
two-parent households and they were there, man, things would be great. 
It is great to wish that. It is just not true. It is not true in this 
country today.
  We need to give children a safe haven if we can and an opportunity to 
learn and participate in this great adventure we call America and we 
call democracy. Education is the one way that we allow those children, 
whether they come from a Hispanic household, an African-American 
household, wherever they may come from, as they come to the shores of 
this country, or if they have been here for 10 generations, they have 
an opportunity to share in the American dream. If we take away that 
opportunity for education, and their parents cannot afford to send them 
to a private school, we have guaranteed them and the next generation 
that they will not have the opportunity to participate in it. We should 
never let that happen as long as this Congress meets in Washington, DC.
  Mr. PALLONE. I just wanted to say very briefly, I am not going to go 
into the rest of these things that outline what New Jersey is doing 
with its Goals 2000 money. We can go into it more. It is very 
effective. But I just want to say, the gentleman is so much on point. 
He talks about the public schools being the basis for the community. I 
think that is totally true.
  What I find is that it is true that my constituents talk to me about 
the need to improve the public schools. They recognize that there are 
problems. They recognize that the schools can do better, but they want 
them to do better. They want us as their elected officials to help in 
that regard. They do not want us to go for voucher systems which are 
basically going to drain the resources of the public schools and make 
it so that more and more people go to private school, whatever those 
schools happen to be, because the bottom line is that public schools 
historically have brought people together. They have been the 
equalizer, so to speak. They have been the vehicle for equal 
opportunity. We just cannot give up. Our constituents do not want us to 
give up.
  I think those who argue for vouchers and encourage voucher-type 
programs, they have basically given up on the public schools. They are 
telling us, oh, if we do the vouchers, that that somehow is going to 
benefit the public schools, and they are going to get better. Not true. 
It is the people who have given up on the public schools that want to 
go to a voucher system. That is not what the majority of our 
constituents want. They want us to do what we can do to improve the 
public schools and to provide them with adequate resources.
  Mr. ETHERIDGE. I could not agree more. I think the American people do 
believe in the institution of public schools because most of them came 
through it. The truth is that will be where they will be in the future. 
We need to strengthen every institution we have, and we can define any 
number in America today. Those institutions are changing. Whether it be 
financial, whether it be legal, whether it be medical, whatever that 
institution is, it is changing. The public schools are changing. If we 
are defining the public schools as some do as they ride by and see the 
same building they have seen, they do not go inside and they do not 
talk, they do not see what is happening in those classrooms.
  I have had occasion to do that, as the gentleman has. You will see 
they are changing. But it takes time, and it takes resources, and it 
takes commitment, and as the gentleman indicated earlier, it takes 
support. It is awful hard to ask an institution to change when all you 
do is throw rocks because you are too busy ducking. I served in the 
military. There is one thing you learn to do is keep your head down 
when you are in a fire storm. When you have got your head down, it is 
kind of hard to be moving forward.
  We need to as an institution, Democrats and Republicans, stop 
throwing rocks and start giving a helping hand. Stop the rhetoric. Quit 
being rhetoric makers and become help makers. The teachers would 
applaud us, the children will appreciate it, and I can assure my 
colleagues their parents would welcome it. That is what it is about.
  That is one reason I ran for this people's House, because I want us 
to have a positive voice in Washington, talking about there are good 
things happening. Are there problems? Absolutely, as everyone has said 
already. There are problems in every institution. But we ought to help 
correct those problems and not just try to destroy the institution. 
That is so important to the foundations of our democracy, because if we 
destroy it, I can assure my colleagues our democracy will shortly 
follow.
  Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Speaker, I for one am glad that the gentleman ran 
and got elected to this Congress because he has been one of the most 
passionate and eloquent defenders of education. I think this Congress 
is absolutely in need of more voices like his.
  I would also say that he is right on target when he says that we 
should stop throwing rocks. That means, I think, we should stop blaming 
everything on the teachers. I have two sisters, Wendy Talcott and Kelly 
Tuttle, who are teachers in the Worcester Public School System, where I 
am from. I do not know of two people who work harder, who care more 
about the well-being of those children than they. They are not unique. 
In every school that I visit throughout my congressional district and 
throughout Massachusetts, I encounter teachers who are thoroughly 
dedicated to those kids. It is inspiring. They need support. Instead, 
what they are getting too much of is they are being blamed for 
everything. Not that every teacher is perfect, but the vast majority 
are good, and we need to give them the support.

  Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from Connecticut [Ms. 
DeLauro].
  Ms. DeLAURO. I am delighted to once again join this discussion about 
education. I think we can approach the situation from a couple of 
points of view. I think everybody has acknowledged that we know and we 
understand that there are difficulties in the public school system. But 
we can approach it in two ways.
  We can say, OK, we are going to end this, move on to something else; 
or we can say, OK, this has been a provider of excellence in the past. 
It has, as my colleague from New Jersey pointed out, been truly the 
great equalizer in education for youngsters from every walk of life, 
from every social strata, from every economic strata, and the 
opportunity for people to succeed according to their God-given talent. 
It has proven its mettle and its worth in those areas in the past. That 
is something that we should applaud, and we ought to say, where are the 
difficulties, and how can we make this a better system, and how can we 
change what patterns there are here that are helping to bring down the 
system? That is, I think what we are suggesting that it is 
fundamentally a good system, and that what we need to be doing is 
focusing in on how to make it a better place to be.
  I find it just strange when we do have so many people on the other 
side of the aisle who will say that the system is

[[Page H7494]]

bad, that it is not producing youngsters who can read or write, that it 
is a dangerous place, their schools are dangerous places to be, that 
they are not being run properly, and, therefore, one change that could 
be made, which was the amendment that was offered today by some of our 
friends on the other side of the aisle which was to take billions of 
dollars from the Department of Education and giving it to, in fact, the 
places that are responsible for a poorly run system.
  The Federal Government is only about 6 or 7 percent of the Federal 
budget that is engaged in the public school system. It is a small 
amount of money. The Federal Government is not running the education 
system in the United States. In fact, most of the emphasis is in States 
with local school boards. Yet there are people here who would like to 
talk about how bad the institution is on the one hand and yet want to 
take the billions of dollars from the Federal Government and send it to 
those who would continue a failing system. It seems wrongheaded, which 
seems to me to be, as I said, crazy.
  Parents today want to make sure that their kids have the best 
possible education, that there are standards, particularly because 
parents are not home after school every single day in the way that that 
used to be the case. They just cannot be. It is economically not 
feasible.
  I used to volunteer my time at the community school in my 
neighborhood. I had one of the best experiences of my life. I used to 
teach at that time. I used to go from school to school and teach 
calligraphy as an afterschool program, a writing program. No one would 
believe that today, but I was a volunteer in the public school system. 
I was a substitute schoolteacher in the public school system. I watched 
community schools, which we took money away from years ago, I watched 
them open at 7 o'clock in the morning, close at 9 or 10 o'clock at 
night, and see youngsters and middle school kids and high school kids 
playing basketball, grandmothers coming in for a program, parents 
coming in for programs, and this was in an inner city, in the city of 
New Haven. But we ended that. We did not think that that was such a hot 
idea.
  Now we have got, as I said, mothers and fathers and aunts and uncles 
in the workplace, and we do not have community schools where kids can 
go to. Instead of focusing our time and our effort and our resources at 
making this existing system a better place, we are spending our time 
denigrating it and trying to put an end to it.
  There has been an attempt by some on the other side of the aisle to 
try to eliminate the Department of Education. I think the American 
people spoke loud and clear about that, and they said no. I think that 
we are seeing trying not to go at decimating the Department of 
Education in one fell swoop, but looking at it piece by piece. As I 
mentioned the amendment today, which, thank God, was ultimately 
withdrawn, that amendment would have eliminated Federal initiatives 
that do work, safe and drug-free schools, school-to-work program, and a 
whole variety of other programs that are working.
  Mr. McGOVERN. I want to thank the gentlewoman from Connecticut for 
her remarks. I also want to commend her for her leadership in another 
area of education which is vitally important, and that is on the issue 
of early childhood development. She has been a leader, and it is 
something that this Congress needs to focus more attention on.

                          ____________________