[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 130 (Thursday, September 25, 1997)]
[Senate]
[Pages S9914-S9925]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




             DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 1998

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the Senate will now 
resume consideration of S. 1156, which the clerk will report.
  The bill clerk read as follows:

       A bill (S. 1156) making appropriations for the government 
     of the District of Columbia and other activities chargeable 
     in whole or in part against the revenues of said District for 
     the fiscal year ending September 30, 1998, and for other 
     purposes.

  The Senate resumed consideration of the bill.
  Pending:

       Coats amendment No. 1249, to provide scholarship assistance 
     for District of Columbia elementary and secondary school 
     students.
       Wyden amendment No. 1250, to establish that it is the 
     standing order of the Senate that a Senator who objects to a 
     motion or matter shall disclose the objection in the 
     Congressional Record.


                           Amendment No. 1249

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the Senate will now 
proceed to the consideration of amendment No. 1249 with the time until 
5 p.m. equally divided and controlled in the usual form.
  Mr. COATS addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Indiana.
  Mr. COATS. Mr. President, we will now for about the next 5 hours be 
discussing an issue that I believe is important to every Member of the 
U.S. Senate and important to this country and important to the future 
of education.
  The amendment is titled the ``District of Columbia Student 
Opportunity Scholarship'' amendment. It is being offered by myself and 
Senator Lieberman from Connecticut. We will be presenting the case for 
this amendment to our colleagues who we trust they will be listening 
carefully to what is said, and I think the important debate that will 
ensue as a result of our offering this amendment.
  The amendment is fairly basic. It provides opportunity scholarships 
for children in grades K through 12 for District of Columbia residents 
whose family incomes are below 185 percent of the

[[Page S9915]]

poverty level. Scholarships may be used to pay tuition costs at a 
public or private school in the District of Columbia and in adjacent 
counties in Maryland and Virginia.
  Scholarships are also available under this amendment for tutoring 
assistance for students who attend public schools within the District.
  We establish a District of Columbia scholarship corporation that will 
determine how the money is distributed.
  Student eligibility goes to those, as I said, whose family incomes 
are 185 percent or below of the poverty line. For those at or below the 
poverty line, these scholarships can total $3,200. For those who are 
between the poverty line and 185 percent of that, they can receive the 
lesser of 75 percent of the cost of tuition and monetary funds and 
transportation to attend an eligible institution of up to $2,400. The 
tuition scholarship is also available for tutoring in amounts up to 
$500 for students who stay in D.C. public schools.
  The election process is designed to not discriminate in any way. All 
eligible applicants will be considered. If there are more applicants 
than scholarships available selection will be on a random basis.
  The funding in no way takes one penny out of funds available for D.C. 
public schools. In fact, the $7 million in spending for fiscal year 
1998 comes out of the Federal contribution to the District of Columbia 
that is earmarked for deficit reduction. That total contribution--$30 
million more than the President requested--we will deduct $7 million 
out of that. So no, the District is not denied any funds, schools are 
not denied any funds. This is taken out of a fund that was added by 
Congress in addition to the President's budget.
  Mr. President, there is one unavoidable fact at the center of the 
school choice debate. When education collapses, it is generally not the 
middle-class children who suffer the most. Their parents, in response 
to that collapse, have already chosen other private schools, other 
public schools or moved to the suburbs or away from that particular 
school, leaving only the low-income, often minority children, in these 
dysfunctional, often drug- and crime-infested institutions, with little 
pretense of learning or educational opportunity.
  We have seen this happen in large cities across our country--in 
Philadelphia, New York, Detroit, and others. We have seen it happen 
around us. Every day as we meet here in the Capitol, every day 
surrounding us in the District of Columbia, our Capital City, we see 
this happening with tragic results.
  The D.C. public school system spends more money per pupil than any 
other district in America. I am going to be repeating that phrase. The 
District of Columbia public school system spends more money per pupil 
than any other school district in America.
  In 1996, 12 percent of the classrooms in the District of Columbia did 
not have textbooks at the beginning of the year and 20 percent lacked 
adequate supplies. The D.C. public school system spends more money per 
pupil than any other district in America, and yet 65 percent of all 
D.C. public schoolchildren test below their grade level. And 56 percent 
who take the Armed Forces qualification test--one of the few ways out 
of poverty in America for low-income students--56 percent who take the 
Armed Forces qualification test fail.
  The D.C. public school system spends more money per pupil than any 
other district in America, yet only about 50 percent of education 
spending--that money that is available in the District of Columbia--
goes toward instruction.
  The system has 1 administrator for every 16 teachers while the 
national average is 1 administrator for every 42 teachers. That fact 
alone gives us an explanation as to one of the primary reasons for the 
failure of D.C. students, mostly minority students, to learn in the 
D.C. school system--a bureaucracy which consumes an extraordinary 
amount of money, over 50 percent of education funding in the District.
  The D.C. public school system spends more money per pupil than any 
other district in America, and two-thirds of the teachers report that 
violent student behavior is a serious obstacle to teaching. And 16 
percent of students report carrying a weapon to school. Over 1 in 10 
avoid school because they fear for their safety.
  It is safe to say, Mr. President, that if these results were found in 
suburban schools, the education reform movement would more closely 
resemble the French Revolution. But because these children are 
powerless and distant from our experience, because of the color of 
their skin and the size of their parents' bank accounts, we seem 
content to debate and delay help for those students.
  We are content to promise reforms that never arrive. There is a price 
for our patience, a cost to our inertia, measured in squandered 
potential and stolen hope, measured by the advance of rage or retreat 
into apathy.


                         Privilege Of The Floor

  Mr. President, at this point I would like to offer a UC that I 
omitted to offer earlier. I ask unanimous consent that Brent Orrell, my 
legislative director, who has been very instrumental in putting all 
this together be granted floor privileges.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. COATS. Mr. President, Gen. Julius Becton has been charged with 
reforming education in the District. He deserves our support. But by 
his own estimates, it will take 5 or 10 years to test his approaches. 
Similar changes have been promised by five new superintendents in the 
last 15 years.
  I suspect that many District parents are skeptical. I believe they 
have every right to be. Put yourself for a moment into their shoes. 
What good does it do a parent who fears for the current safety and 
future prospects of their 13-year-old child to wait 10 more years for 
the results of public school reform? By admitting that public school 
reform in the District will be accomplished in decades, we are saying 
that the sacrifice of a generation of students is unavoidable.
  But what if that child were our child? What if that child was the 
child or the grandchild of a Member of this body who was assigned to a 
school where physical attacks and robberies and drug sales are rampant, 
where education is failing, where the one opportunity they have to 
escape the poverty that they are living in, a decent education, is 
unavailable to them? Would we be content to sit back and let the 
bureaucrats tell us it will take a decade to reform these schools? 
Would those of us who have a 10- or 12- or 13-year-old be content for 
one moment to allow that situation to exist if there was anything we 
could do about it?
  We are asking poor inner-city children and their parents to tolerate 
circumstances for years that most middle-class and affluent Americans 
would not tolerate for a moment. And we expect them to be satisfied and 
gratified with tinkering changes and symbolic votes on funding which 
have shown no history of results at all--nothing but failure, endlessly 
repeated, mindlessly accepted.

  This city should be ashamed of its incompetence. And we in Congress 
should be ashamed of our failure to deliver some hope, some measure of 
improvement for these children. This is not an issue of whether or not 
local or State governments have a right to control education.
  We in the Federal Government have the responsibility for this Federal 
city. We have a responsibility for the conduct of affairs in this city 
and in particular for the educational system in this city. That 
educational system has failed. It is time we offered some remedies.
  With this bill we have set out to turn this justified embarrassment 
and shame into something productive, something immediately helpful, 
something hopeful, not something 10 years down the line, but something 
that can be hopeful immediately to children caught in this tragic 
situation.
  The argument in favor of low-income school choice comes down to a 
single question which I hope every Member of this body will seriously 
ponder. Is it just, is it fair, is it compassionate to insist on the 
coercive assignment of poor children to failed schools?
  It is a question which answers itself. No, it is not just, it is not 
fair, it is not compassionate, if there are alternatives that work, 
that can provide hope to these students, that can provide opportunity 
for these students to escape the failed education system that they 
currently are forced to comply with, alternatives that teach care and 
discipline.
  Right now in the District of Columbia these alternatives exist but 
they

[[Page S9916]]

are rationed by cost, distributed by wealth. And that is not just, that 
is not fair, and that is not compassionate. Yet we can do something 
about it, at least in the District for at least some of the District's 
children.
  Mr. President, I am entirely confident about two things in this 
debate, two facts that I think are beyond dispute. First of all, the 
children of our cities, even from broken homes in desolate 
neighborhoods, are capable of educational achievement. This should not 
be necessary to say because it is obvious to so many of us, but it is 
not obvious to the educational establishment.
  The educational establishment argues exactly the opposite. They claim 
that schools fail because parents and students are failures themselves, 
complicating the work of educators with personal problems. I am sure 
you have heard this excuse that the jobs of teachers are impossible 
because families and communities refuse to help.
  But, Mr. President, we know this is not true. We know that 
disadvantaged children are not educational failures by birth or 
circumstance or destiny. We know this as a matter of hard social 
science. We know this because of the success of nonpublic schools, 
primarily Catholic schools, that admit the same pool of urban students.
  The late James Coleman of the University of Chicago found lower 
dropout rates and higher test scores among disadvantaged Catholic 
school students than their public school peers. William Evans and 
Robert Schwab, of the University of Maryland, came to similar 
conclusions, recording disproportionate gains by disadvantaged kids in 
Catholic schools. Other studies reveal that Catholic schools are more 
racially integrated than their public counterparts and succeed at about 
half the cost.

  I want to repeat, studies have indicated that the Catholic schools 
are more racially integrated than urban public schools and they succeed 
where public schools fail, at half the cost of public schools.
  These efforts succeed--with the same group of at-risk children--
because Catholic education begins with an entirely different premise 
than the educational establishment: that every student can succeed if 
properly guided, and that 8 hours a day is a significant, even 
decisive, intervention in a child's life. This is not skimming. This is 
not creaming. This is faith and tenacity.
  I pointed to Catholic urban schools because they have done such a 
remarkable job in our inner cities. There are other non-Catholic but 
religious schools and private schools that are secular schools that 
have demonstrated an ability to take the same students from the same 
areas, at half the cost or less, and do a better job in preparing those 
students for educational opportunities for the future or for employment 
opportunities for the future--an astoundingly better job.
  So this argument that what can you do with these kids, ``After all, 
look at the families they are from, look at the disadvantages that they 
have, there is nothing that we can do except provide some kind of a 
baby-sitting service during daylight hours,'' that is untrue. We have 
side by side with these failing public schools in our urban areas, side 
by side, schools that are accomplishing success and not reaping 
failure, that are taking the same students and providing that success 
at less than half the cost of our public schools.
  The second fact I am sure about is that low-income, inner city 
parents support school choice in growing and overwhelming numbers--75 
percent in Philadelphia, 95 percent in Milwaukee. The Milwaukee and 
Cleveland school choice programs, the only ones of their kind, were not 
started by Republicans. They were started by parents fed up with their 
schools that their children were compelled to attend. They were 
sponsored and supported by an emerging element of African American 
leadership. Councilwoman Fannie Lewis of Cleveland, Annette ``Polly'' 
Williams of Milwaukee, Anyam Palmer of Los Angeles, State 
Representative Glenn Lewis of Ft. Worth, State Representative Dwight 
Evans of Philadelphia--these are not black Republican conservatives; 
they are activist Democrats who view school choice as a matter of 
equity. They are men and women who have come to resent a nanny state in 
which the nanny has grown surly and arrogant and abusive and 
unresponsive.
  Alveda King, niece of Martin Luther King, Jr., in this Capitol just 2 
weeks ago, referred to school choice as a matter of civil rights. She 
says:

       In the name of civil rights, some oppose relief for 
     religious parents who want their children to attend a 
     religious school. In the name of helping poor and minority 
     children, opponents of ``opportunity scholarships'' want to 
     continue business as usual in the Washington schools. . . . 
     U.S. citizenship guarantees all parents an education for 
     their children. This is a true civil right. Yet some children 
     receive a better education than others, due to their parents' 
     abilities to pay for benefits that are often missing in 
     public schools. This inequity is a violation of the civil 
     rights of the parents and children who are so afflicted by 
     lack of income and by the mismanagement endemic to so many of 
     the country's public school systems.

  Ms. King concludes:

       The District of Columbia Student Opportunity Scholarship 
     Act was designed specifically to alleviate this inequality--
     to restore parents' and children's civil rights.

  To Alveda King and to many African-Americans today, this is a civil 
right, the opportunity for equality of opportunity in the education of 
their children.

  In July of this year, the Labor and Human Resources Committee, on 
which I proudly serve, held a hearing on the school choice issue. It 
was particularly instructive. One witness was Howard Fuller, former 
superintendent of Milwaukee public schools--former superintendent of 
Milwaukee public schools, an outside-the-box thinker on education. He 
began by asking a fundamental question: What makes a school public? 
This is the answer he gave:

       What makes a school public is that it functions in the 
     public interest.

  That interest involves high standards, consistently met--not the 
provision of services by one group or another. The public interest is 
to ensure that this happens, through whatever mix of public policies 
which make it happen.
  He goes on to say:

       Although there must continue to be strong support for 
     public education, it is, in the final analysis, not the 
     system that is important; it is the students and their 
     families who must be primary. We must ask the question, what 
     is the best interests of the children, not in the best 
     interests of the system. And in my professional opinion, the 
     interests of poor students are best served if they are truly 
     given choice which permits them to pursue a variety of 
     successful options, public and private.

  Fuller testified that the most basic problem with the current system 
is a structure of power relationships that leads to inertia:

       If you do not somehow change the existing power 
     relationships, the existing configurations, no matter how 
     deeply you might feel about making change, it is not going to 
     occur, because the dynamics of the system are a curb to the 
     kind of change you want to make. If you leave it intact, and 
     you operate under its current form, we are not going to make 
     the difference that we want to make for all of the children. 
     But this need not be the end of public education.

  I want to repeat that for my colleagues, the former superintendent of 
the Milwaukee Public School System, who is talking about the need to 
change the structure of public education so that it truly can begin the 
real process of reform, this man says that it need not mean the end of 
the public school system.
  Opponents of this opportunity scholarship program say, ``You really 
want to do away with the public school system.'' Not at all. We 
absolutely need a public school system in this country to begin to 
touch and educate the millions of children who live in this country, 
but we need a system that will provide them with equal opportunities 
for education, and they are not getting that now, particularly in many 
urban areas, and particularly among our minority children.
  As Howard Fuller says:

       This need not be the end of public education. It is 
     redefining what is a public educational system in 1997--not 
     what it was in 1960, but what it should look like in 1997, 
     1998, the year 2000--[and beyond].

  This shift in power and philosophy that Dr. Fuller describes involves 
a mix of approaches: strengthened public schools, low-income 
scholarships and charter schools. I am a supporter of all of those 
things. They are not mutually exclusive. Senator Lieberman and I are 
not here today to say undo the public system and replace it with 
choice. We are saying we support a mix of things. They are not mutually 
exclusive. In fact, they are necessary to one another.

[[Page S9917]]

  Dr. Fuller concludes:

       I think you have to have a series of options for parents. I 
     support charter schools. I support site-based management. I 
     support anything that changes the options for parents. But I 
     am here to say that if one of those options is not choice 
     that gives poor parents a way to leave, the kind of pressure 
     that you need internally is simply not going to occur.

  Dr. Fuller, who supports a range of choice for parents, says if one 
of those options is not choice then poor parents have no way to leave 
the system and apply the kind of pressure that has to be applied 
internally if any major change is going to occur.

  His points were buttressed by several inner-city parents who 
telephoned. Listen to Pam Ballard of Cleveland:

       After being in the Cleveland public schools and having a 
     child who attended Cleveland public schools, my daughter was 
     listed a behavior problem. She was listed a ``D'' or ``F'' 
     student in all subjects. She did not want to go to school. 
     She had no interest in school. The students would hit her, 
     kick her, mistreat her.

  But Pam Ballard got a scholarship for her child at Hope Central 
Academy:

       It made a difference. I see that difference every time I 
     watch my daughters at play, studying, reading, learning. . . 
     Please keep the scholarship and tutoring programs alive. It 
     is a beginning, and we all need new beginnings. It has helped 
     keep me and my daughters alive.

  Listen to Barbara Lewis from Indianapolis, who got similar help for 
her child:

       My son began to struggle in school. He was not getting the 
     attention he needed. At no time did a teacher ever try to set 
     up a parent-teacher conference to see what we could come up 
     with to help my child. I requested extra credit work, and I 
     tried to set up meetings with the teacher, to no avail. I 
     began to lose hope. I felt that my child's gifts were being 
     wasted.

  Then an individual provided Ms. Lewis with a scholarship that the 
Indiana State Legislature failed to provide:

       The values I was teaching him at home were finally 
     reinforced at school. My son blossomed into an honor roll 
     student, a student council leader, and a football standout.
       School choice is not a new issue. People of financial means 
     have always had this choice of where they would send their 
     children, to what school. They could afford to move where 
     they wanted, and they could afford the tuition for private 
     schools, while lower-income families with the same hopes and 
     dreams for their children and their children's futures are 
     denied the choice, and they should not be.

  Mr. President, it is my hope that the Senate will listen to these 
quiet voices rather than the strident voices of the education unions--
voices of hyperbole and hypocrisy. The hyperbole comes in the 
accusation that we are destroying public education in the District with 
this measure. On the contrary, we are not even touching it. These 
scholarships are not deducted from District education funds. They 
represent entirely new money. The only challenge to public education in 
the District that they provide is the challenge of example--the example 
of at-risk students succeeding and private and religious schools where 
they have not succeed in public schools.
  The hypocrisy is equally clear. While education unions oppose school 
choice, many inner-city public school teachers send their children to 
schools other than those which they teach. They are, in fact, two to 
three times more likely than other parents to send their children to 
private schools. In Milwaukee and Cleveland, for example, more than 50 
percent of public school teachers send their own children to private 
schools. In the District, that figure is 28 percent, still twice the 
national average. I don't blame them. They are doing what is in the 
best interests of their own child. But I do blame education unions for 
actively denying that choice to others. The hypocrisy of the 
educational unions and the hypocrisy of those who say we must maintain 
the public school system and not allow opportunities for low-income 
people when they, themselves, send their children away from the public 
schools that they teach in so that they can get a better education at a 
private school.
  We are not talking about sending children to St. Alban's or Sidwell-
Friends. We are talking about sending young, fragile kids to schools 
with a little order, a little sanity, a little discipline, a little 
individual attention, a little love--schools like St. Thomas More in 
Anacostia, or the Nanny Hellen Burroughs School in Northeast, islands 
of nurture and learning.

  I visited those schools. Senator Lieberman and I have taken the 
opportunity to visit those schools. What a remarkable, remarkable 
difference at a fraction of the cost of the public schools. We cannot 
even begin to imagine the fears of a mother in the District who is 
forced to send her child through barbed wire and metal detectors, into 
a combat zone masquerading as an education institution. If we do not 
take the side of that mother with immediate, practical help, we will 
betray her yet again. I, for one, intend to take the side of these 
parents without hesitation or without apology and without delay. I urge 
my colleagues to do the same.
  I yield the floor but reserve the remainder of my time.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from California
  Mrs. BOXER. Mr. President, this is a very important debate. Yesterday 
when we opened debate on the D.C. appropriations, I urged colleagues on 
both sides not to come forward with controversial amendments because I 
feel, particularly in light of the situation in the District of 
Columbia, we need to move on with this bill. But such is not the case 
and every Senator has every right to bring an issue to the floor at any 
time, and that is what has happened here. We do have a long, extensive 
debate on the issue of vouchers.
  Mr. President, as I said yesterday, I don't think this is about 
anything but our children. I don't think it is about strong voices. I 
don't think it is about quiet voices.
  I don't think it is about passionate voices. I think it is about our 
children. How can we help our children? I think there is complete 
agreement that one way to help our children is to make sure they have 
the best education in the world. I don't think that is the question. So 
what I think it is about is not about us, it is about the children. It 
is about how we help them get the best education possible. As someone 
who believes in a free public education, as someone who attended public 
schools all the way from kindergarten to college, and as someone who 
sent my children to public schools, and as someone who represents a 
State that has rejected private school vouchers with taxpayer funds 
twice overwhelmingly, I think I stand here with some credibility on the 
subject.
  It really amazes me, in a year when the District of Columbia students 
started their school year late because many of their school buildings 
were not safe, that we are voting on amendments that essentially gives 
money to private schools. What I said yesterday when I alluded to this 
amendment is that it would be very hard for many of us to support an 
amendment that helps 3 percent of the students--or purports to help 3 
percent of the students, while leaving 97 percent without any 
additional help.
  I want to make the point with a chart that I am going to just leave 
up here. I think that what we need is a 100-percent solution, which is 
quality public schools for all the children. That is what we need. As I 
go around my State, I have an ``Excellence in Education'' award that I 
give out to parents, to teachers, to principals, to business leaders, 
who are all helping get to quality public schools for all. Yes, we have 
problem public schools in our State. We also have some great public 
schools in our State. I think what we need to do, rather than give 
money to the private schools when we know we don't have extra funding, 
is to ensure that we taxpayers don't divert the money into private 
schools, but instead, make sure that it is diverted where it belongs, 
to all the children. So we are faced here with private school vouchers 
for a few--for 3 percent, a couple thousand of the kids in the District 
of Columbia while there are 78,000 who absolutely are going to lose by 
this. And so I hope people will support the 100 percent solution that 
many of us are supporting, rather than a 3-percent solution.
  Now, what do I mean by a 100-percent solution? I mean that we should 
do things that help all of our children. What are some of those things? 
We know that our colleague, Senator Carol Moseley-Braun, has pointed 
out that many of our schools are crumbling, that there are serious 
problems with them. It certainly was brought home not only here in the 
District of Columbia, but in other parts of the country, as other 
schools also opened late because they were dealing with

[[Page S9918]]

these repairs. So here we go, some want to give $7 million--$7 
million--to private schools. By the way, allowing a lot off the top for 
administration--and I will get into that--and that whole new 
bureaucracy that is set up in this amendment is extraordinary. I am 
going to read you the amendment, about the bureaucracy it sets up. The 
schools need help in terms of the facilities. We could have mentoring 
programs for these children, academic assistance, bringing in the 
business community, recreational activities, technology training. As 
the President has said, every child should know how to log onto a 
computer in our schools.
  There are other viable school activities, drug, alcohol and gang 
prevention, health and nutrition counseling, and job skills 
preparation. Mr. President, if you look at the rate of crime committed 
by juveniles, it would amaze you to see the spike-up between the hours 
of 3 and 6 p.m. It seems to me that since we do have a great desire 
here to help the kids of the District of Columbia, we ought to be 
helping all of them from a menu of things that we could do for the $7 
million that, if this amendment passes, will be diverted away from all 
the children.
  Now, I want to point out that, under this amendment, the District of 
Columbia would be used as a guinea pig. It is a scheme that many States 
have rejected. I talked about my own State of California. Recent 
voucher proposals in Washington State and Colorado and California have 
lost by over 2-to-1 margins. A recent Gallup poll said that 71 percent 
of Americans believe the focus of improvement efforts should be on 
reforming the existing public school system rather than on finding an 
alternative system. Congress should not enact what the American people 
reject.

  Funds should not go to private schools when the District of Columbia 
has such stark needs. Their needs are $2.1 billion to repair the 
schools, and 41 percent don't have enough power outlets and electrical 
wiring to accommodate computers and multimedia equipment. So we are 
taking $7 million and giving it to the private schools, many of which 
have endowments. And 66 percent of D.C. schools have inadequate 
heating, ventilation, and air conditioning. So we are taking 3 percent 
of the kids out of there and leaving 97 percent of the kids in a 
situation where they don't even have basic heating and air 
conditioning. Public dollars should not be routed to private schools 
before public school students in the District of Columbia get what they 
need.
  Now, I want to point this out because the Senator from Indiana quoted 
a number of people from the District of Columbia and called them the 
``quiet voices.'' Let me add to some of the voices from a press 
conference that was held on September 17, with 11 ministers and the 
D.C. Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton. Representative Eleanor Holmes 
Norton, who worked so very hard on this underlying bill, so very hard 
with Republicans and Democrats alike, talks about this proposal that 
would divert $7 million to private schools and leave 97 percent of the 
kids without any improvement. She says: ``Virtually the entire city is 
speaking out against vouchers. The voucher movement is trying to use 
the children of the District of Columbia as stepping-stones. We know 
what we want, and it's not vouchers. Hear the people: We can't waste 
money in this District.''
  The Reverend Graylan Ellis-Hagler from the Plymouth Congregational 
UCC Church says: ``[Sterling] Tucker's letter sent to D.C. clergy was 
deceptive at best--it never even used the word 'voucher'. The voice of 
the people has been ignored. We are having vouchers rammed down our 
throats.''
  The Reverend Vernor Clay, Lincoln United Methodist Church: ``We have 
voted down vouchers in the past. Our voice will not be undermined. Put 
money into the infrastructure of our schools if you're going to put it 
anywhere. [Put it] into our public students.'' He said, ``I'm ashamed I 
signed my name to Tucker's letter. I was misled my him and his hired 
lobbyist.''
  Reverend Dr. Earl Trent from the Florida Avenue Baptist Church: ``I 
am outraged that Congress has stepped on our rights. We want nothing to 
do with vouchers. It is going to harm a majority of our schools. Let 
the Congressmen try vouchers in their own States.''
  Well, of course, in my State, it was voted down twice.
  Rev. Anthony Moore, Carolina Missionary Baptist Church: ``We all [the 
ministers] stand united against vouchers. If you want to help our 
schools, give them money for repairs and supplies, not foolish 
programs.''
  Rev. Willie Wilson, Union Temple Baptist Church: ``This has been a 
very undemocratic process. The Government should be by and for the 
people. As a community, we voted vouchers out, but now they're being 
forced on us. I was lied to by Rep. Tucker and his lobbyist. The letter 
was designed to rob the District of Columbia.''
  Rev. Jennifer Knutson, Foundry United Methodist Church: ``Vouchers 
are not the answer. Public money should be spent on our public 
schools.''
  So here are some religious voices that are speaking out pretty 
unified. Eleanor Holmes Norton, who is a tremendous representative of 
the people here and works so hard on these bills, is adamant on this 
point because she represents all the children, not just 3 percent of 
the children. She doesn't want a 3 percent solution, she wants a 100 
percent solution. It is such an abandonment of the children to go this 
route. That is why voters in California, which is on the cutting edge 
of change, rejected this idea. We should not give up on our children.

  Now, here is an interesting point. The Senator from Indiana has very 
eloquent, heartfelt remarks and, believe me, I greatly respect them. He 
talked a lot about the bureaucracy of the D.C. schools. He took 
probably several moments of his introduction to go after them. I don't 
defend any bureaucracy. I never have and I never will. But I have to 
tell you, he talked about the ``nanny'' State. If ever there was an 
example of bureaucracy, it is the way this program is going to be 
administered. I am not going to put my own spin on it, I say to my 
colleagues, I am going to read the bill. I am going to read the bill, 
starting on page 7 and ending--I have to get the right page number 
here--on page 34. That is how long it takes to explain how this thing 
is going to work.

     DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA SCHOLARSHIP CORPORATION.

       General requirements.--

  This is the bill, folks, this is the amendment we are being asked to 
vote on that will address 3 percent of the kids. This is the 
bureaucracy that is going to address a couple of thousand kids. This is 
the bureaucracy that is going to be created that is political when you 
hear how the appointments are made. It sticks politics right in the 
middle of these children. This is the bureaucracy that is the answer to 
what my colleague calls the ``nanny State.''
  Let me read it to you:

       There is authorized to be established a private, nonprofit 
     corporation, to be known as the ``District of Columbia 
     Scholarship Corporation,'' which is neither an agency nor 
     establishment of the United States Government or the District 
     of Columbia government.
       (2) Duties.--The Corporation shall have the responsibility 
     and authority to administer, publicize, and evaluate the 
     scholarship program in accordance with this title, and to 
     determine student and school eligibility for participation in 
     such program.
       (3) Consultation.--The Corporation shall exercise its 
     authority--
       (A) in a manner consistent with maximizing educational 
     opportunities for the maximum number of interested families; 
     and
       (B) in consultation with the District of Columbia Board of 
     Education or entity exercising administrative jurisdiction 
     over the District of Columbia Public Schools, the 
     Superintendent of the District of Columbia Public Schools, 
     and other school scholarship programs in the District of 
     Columbia.
       (4) Application of provisions.--The Corporation shall be 
     subject to the provisions of this title, and, to the extent 
     consistent with this title, to the District of Columbia 
     Nonprofit Corporation Act (D.C. Code, sec. 29-501 et seq.).
       (5) Residence.--The Corporation shall have its place of 
     business in the District of Columbia and shall be considered, 
     for purposes of venue in civil actions, to be a resident of 
     the District of Columbia.
       (6) Fund.--There is established in the Treasury a fund that 
     shall be known as the District of Columbia Scholarship Fund, 
     to be administered by the Secretary of the Treasury.
       (7) Disbursement.--The Secretary of the Treasury shall make 
     available and disburse to the Corporation, before October 15 
     of each fiscal year or not later than 15 days after the date 
     of enactment of an Act making appropriations for the District 
     of Columbia for such year, whichever occurs later, such funds 
     as have been appropriated to the District of Columbia 
     Scholarship Fund for the fiscal year in which such 
     disbursement is made.
       (8) Availability.--Funds authorized to be appropriated 
     under this title shall remain available until expended.

[[Page S9919]]

       (9) Uses.--Funds authorized to be appropriated under this 
     title shall be used by the Corporation in a prudent and 
     financially responsible manner, solely for scholarships, 
     contracts, and administrative costs.
       (10) Authorization.--
       (A) In general.--There are authorized to be appropriated to 
     the District of Columbia Scholarship Fund--
       (i) $7,000,000 for fiscal year 1998;
       (ii) $8,000,000 for fiscal year 1999; and
       (iii) $10,000,000 for each of fiscal years 2000 through 
     2002.
       (B) Limitation.--Not more than 7.5 percent of the amount 
     appropriated to carry out this title for any fiscal year may 
     be used by the Corporation for salaries and administrative 
     costs.
       (b) Organization and Management; Board of Directors.--
       (1) Board of directors; membership.--
       (A) In general.--The Corporation shall have a Board of 
     Directors (referred to in this title as the ``Board''), 
     comprised of 7 members with 6 members of the Board appointed 
     by the President not later than 30 days after receipt of 
     nominations from the Speaker of the House of Representatives 
     and the Majority Leader of the Senate.

  So Newt Gingrich and Trent Lott will recommend these to the 
President.

       (B) House nominations.--The President shall appoint 3 of 
     the members from a list of 9 individuals nominated by the 
     Speaker of the House of Representatives in consultation with 
     the Minority Leader of the House of Representatives.
       (C) Senate nominations.--The President shall appoint 3 
     members from a list of 9 individuals nominated by the 
     Majority Leader of the Senate in consultation with the 
     Minority Leader of the Senate.
       (D) Deadline.--The Speaker of the House of Representatives 
     and Majority Leader of the Senate shall submit their 
     nominations to the President not later than 30 days after the 
     date of the enactment of this Act.
       (E) Appointee of mayor.--The Mayor shall appoint 1 member 
     of the Board not later than 60 days after the date of the 
     enactment of this Act.
       (F) Possible interim members.--If the President does not 
     appoint the 6 members of the Board in the 30-day period 
     described in subparagraph (A), then the Speaker of the House 
     of Representatives and the Majority Leader of the Senate 
     shall each appoint 2 members of the Board, and the Minority 
     Leader of the House of Representatives and the Minority 
     Leader of the Senate shall each appoint 1 member of the 
     Board, from among the individuals nominated pursuant to 
     subparagraphs (A) and (B), as the case may be. The appointees 
     under the preceding sentence together with the appointee of 
     the Mayor, shall serve as an interim Board with all the 
     powers and other duties of the Board described in this title, 
     until the President makes the appointments as described in 
     this subsection.
       (2) Powers.--All powers of the Corporation shall vest in 
     and be exercised under the authority of the Board.
       (3) Elections.--Members of the Board annually shall elect 1 
     of the members of the Board to be the Chairperson of the 
     Board.
       (4) Residency.--All members appointed to the Board shall be 
     residents of the District of Columbia at the time of 
     appointment and while serving on the Board.
       (5) Nonemployee.--No member of the Board may be an employee 
     of the United States Government or the District of Columbia 
     Government when appointed to or during tenure on the Board, 
     unless the individual is on a leave of absence from such a 
     position while serving on the Board.

  My colleagues know that this is not one of the most inspiring 
speeches that I have ever made. But I think it is important that we 
read this entire amendment because it deals with setting up a whole 
other bureaucracy for 2,000 children in the District of Columbia--just 
3 percent of the children--and enables this bureaucracy to take 7.5 
percent off the top of the $7 million. I think it is important that we 
see what we are creating here.
       (6) Incorporation.--The members of the initial Board shall 
     serve as incorporators and shall take whatever steps are 
     necessary to establish the Corporation under the District of 
     Columbia Nonprofit Corporation Act (D.C. Code, sec. 29-501 et 
     seq.).
       (7) General term.--The term of office of each member of the 
     Board shall be 5 years, except that any member appointed to 
     fill a vacancy occurring prior to the expiration of the term 
     for which the predecessor was appointed shall be appointed 
     for the remainder of such term.
       (8) Consecutive term.--No member of the Board shall be 
     eligible to serve in excess of 2 consecutive terms of 5 years 
     each. A partial term shall be considered as 1 full term. Any 
     vacancy on the Board shall not affect the Board's power, but 
     shall be filled in a manner consistent with this title.
       (9) No benefit.--No part of the income or assets of the 
     Corporation shall inure to the benefit of any Director, 
     officer, or employee of the Corporation, except as salary or 
     reasonable compensation for services.
       (10) Political activity.--The Corporation may not 
     contribute to or otherwise support any political party or 
     candidate for elective public office.
       (11) No officers or employees.--The members of the Board 
     shall not, by reason of such membership, be considered to be 
     officers or employees of the United States Government or of 
     the District of Columbia Government.
       (12) Stipends.--The members of the Board, while attending 
     meetings of the Board or while engaged in duties related to 
     such meetings or other activities of the Board pursuant to 
     this title, shall be provided a stipend. Such stipend shall 
     be at the rate of $150 per day for which the member of the 
     Board is officially recorded as having worked, except that no 
     member may be paid a total stipend amount in any calendar 
     year in excess of $5,000.
       (c) Officers and Staff.--

  So members of the board can be paid $5,000 and they are helping 3 
percent of the kids in the District of Columbia.

       (1) Executive Director.--The Corporation shall have an 
     Executive Director, and such other staff, as may be appointed 
     by the Board for terms and at rates of compensation, not to 
     exceed level EG-16 of the Educational Service of the District 
     of Columbia, to be fixed by the Board.
       (2) Staff.--With the approval of the Board, the Executive 
     Director may appoint and fix the salary of such additional 
     personnel as the Executive Director considers appropriate.
  So we have a board where members can have a stipend not to exceed 
$5,000. We have an executive director, and he or she can appoint and 
fix the salary of such additional personnel as the executive director 
considers appropriate, all to help 3 percent of the kids while 97 
percent of the kids get no benefit from this.
       (3) Annual rate.--No staff of the Corporation may be 
     compensated by the Corporation at an annual rate of pay 
     greater than the annual rate of pay of the Executive 
     Director.
       (4) Service.--All officers and employees of the Corporation 
     shall serve at the pleasure of the Board.
       (5) Qualification.--No political test or qualification may 
     be used in selecting, appointing, promoting, or taking other 
     personnel actions with respect to officers, agents, or 
     employees of the Corporation.
       (d) Powers of the Corporation.--
       (1) Generally.--The Corporation is authorized to obtain 
     grants from, and make contracts with, individuals and with 
     private, State, and Federal agencies, organizations, and 
     institutions.
       (2) Hiring authority.--The Corporation may hire, or accept 
     the voluntary services of, consultants, experts, advisory 
     boards, and panels to aid the Corporation in carrying out 
     this title.
       (e) Financial Management and Records.--
       (1) Audits.--The financial statements of the Corporation 
     shall be--
       (A) maintained in accordance with generally accepted 
     accounting principles for nonprofit corporations; and
       (B) audited annually by independent certified public 
     accountants.
       (2) Report.--The report for each such audit shall be 
     included in the annual report to Congress required by section 
       11(c).

  We are only on page 16 and we have to go to page 32. But I think we 
are learning by reading this what a bureaucracy we are about to embark 
upon.

       (f) Administrative Responsibilities.--
       (1) Scholarship application schedule and procedures.--Not 
     later than 30 days after the initial Board is appointed and 
     the first Executive Director of the Corporation is hired 
     under this title, the Corporation shall implement a schedule 
     and procedures for processing applications for, and awarding, 
     student scholarships under this title. The schedule and 
     procedures shall include establishing a list of certified 
     eligible institutions, distributing scholarship information 
     to parents and the general public (including through a 
     newspaper of general circulation), and establishing deadlines 
     for steps in the scholarship application and award process.
       (2) Institutional applications and eligibility.--
       (A) In general.--An eligible institution that desires to 
     participate in the scholarship program under this title shall 
     file an application with the Corporation for certification 
     for participation in the scholarship program under this title 
     that shall--
       (i) demonstrate that the eligible institution has operated 
     with not less than 25 students during the 3 years preceding 
     the year for which the determination is made unless the 
     eligible institution is applying for certification as a new 
     eligible institution under subparagraph (C);
  So, if you hear that, schools can be created that have no track 
record and pop up and get this taxpayer dollar. There it is on page 17.
  Two, contain insurance that the eligible institution will comply with 
all of the applicable requirements, three contain an annual statement 
of the eligible institutions budget, four, describe the eligible 
institutions proposed program including personnel qualifications and 
fees.

       (ii) contain an assurance that the eligible institution 
     will comply with all applicable requirements of this title;
       (iii) contain an annual statement of the eligible 
     institution's budget; and

[[Page S9920]]

       (iv) describe the eligible institution's proposed program, 
     including personnel qualifications and fees.

  So, it is possible under this bill to create a brandnew institution 
just to get this publicized.

       (B) Certification.--
       (i) In general.--Except as provided in subparagraph (C), 
     not later than 60 days after receipt of an application in 
     accordance with subparagraph (A), the Corporation shall 
     certify an eligible institution to participate in the 
     scholarship program under this title.
       (ii) Continuation.--An eligible institution's certification 
     to participate in the scholarship program shall continue 
     unless such eligible institution's certification is revoked 
     in accordance with subparagraph (D).
       (C) New eligible institutions.--
       (i) In general.--An eligible institution that did not 
     operate with at least 25 students in the 3 years preceding 
     the year for which the determination is made may apply for a 
     1-year provisional certification to participate in the 
     scholarship program under this title for a single year by 
     providing to the Corporation not later than July 1 of the 
     year preceding the year for which the determination is made--
       (I) a list of the eligible institution's board of 
     directors;
       (II) letters of support from not less than 10 members of 
     the community served by such eligible institution;
       (III) a business plan;
       (IV) an intended course of study;
       (V) assurances that the eligible institution will begin 
     operations with not less than 25 students;
       (VI) assurances that the eligible institution will comply 
     with all applicable requirements of this title; and
       (VII) a statement that satisfies the requirements of 
     clauses (ii) and (iv) of subparagraph (A).
       (ii) Certification.--Not later than 60 days after the date 
     of receipt of an application described in clause (i), the 
     Corporation shall certify in writing the eligible 
     institution's provisional certification to participate in the 
     scholarship program under this title unless the Corporation 
     determines that good cause exists to deny certification.

  So, here we have it, folks. The Senator from Indiana talked about the 
great private schools, and, yet, under this you can just spring up with 
a new one, and bring in those tax dollars for 2,000 kids, and you leave 
behind 97 percent of the children. There are 78,000 children in D.C. 
schools. You are setting up in this amendment and a bureaucracy that is 
extraordinary allowing new schools to pop up, and scholarships are 
going to be made available to 2,000 children. And the stipend that goes 
to the board of directors exceeds the amount of the scholarship, and 
the executive director can hire anyone he or she wants. They have a cap 
on overall administration, but do whatever he or she wants as long as 
they are not paid more than he gets paid or she gets paid. But I am 
only on page 20.
  There I pause.

       (iii) Renewal of provisional certification.--After receipt 
     of an application under clause (i) from an eligible 
     institution that includes a statement of the eligible 
     institution's budget completed not earlier than 12 months 
     before the date such application is filed, the Corporation 
     shall renew an eligible institution's provisional 
     certification for the second and third years of the school's 
     participation in the scholarship program under this title 
     unless the Corporation finds--
       (I) good cause to deny the renewal, including a finding of 
     a pattern of violation of requirements described in paragraph 
     (3)(A); or
       (II) consistent failure of 25 percent or more of the 
     students receiving scholarships under this title and 
     attending such school to make appropriate progress (as 
     determined by the Corporation) in academic achievement.
       (iv) Denial of certification.--If provisional certification 
     or renewal of provisional certification under this subsection 
     is denied, then the Corporation shall provide a written 
     explanation to the eligible institution of the reasons for 
     such denial.
       (D) Revocation of eligibility.--
       (i) In general.--The Corporation, after notice and hearing, 
     may revoke an eligible institution's certification to 
     participate in the scholarship program under this title for a 
     year succeeding the year for which the determination is made 
     for--
       (I) good cause, including a finding of a pattern of 
     violation of program requirements described in paragraph 
     (3)(A); or
       (II) consistent failure of 25 percent or more of the 
     students receiving scholarships under this title and 
     attending such school to make appropriate progress (as 
     determined by the Corporation) in academic achievement.
       (ii) Explanation.--If the certification of an eligible 
     institution is revoked, the Corporation shall provide a 
     written explanation of the Corporation's decision to such 
     eligible institution and require a pro rata refund of the 
     proceeds of the scholarship funds received under this title.
       (3) Participation requirements for eligible institutions.--
       (A) Requirements.--Each eligible institution participating 
     in the scholarship program under this title shall--
       (i) provide to the Corporation not later than June 30 of 
     each year the most recent annual statement of the eligible 
     institution's budget; and
       (ii) charge a student that receives a scholarship under 
     this title not more than the cost of tuition and mandatory 
     fees for, and transportation to attend, such eligible 
     institution as other students who are residents of the 
     District of Columbia and enrolled in such eligible 
     institution.
       (B) Compliance.--The Corporation may require documentation 
     of compliance with the requirements of subparagraph (A), but 
     neither the Corporation nor any governmental entity may 
     impose requirements upon an eligible institution as a 
     condition for participation in the scholarship program under 
     this title, other than requirements established under this 
     title.

     SEC. ____04. SCHOLARSHIPS AUTHORIZED.

       (a) Eligible Students.--The Corporation is authorized to 
     award tuition scholarships under subsection (c)(1) and 
     enhanced achievement scholarships under subsection (c)(2) to 
     students in kindergarten through grade 12----
       (1) who are residents of the District of Columbia; and
       (2) whose family income does not exceed 185 percent of the 
     poverty line.
       (b) Scholarship Priority.--
       (1) First.--The Corporation first shall award scholarships 
     to students described in subsection (a) who----
       (A) are enrolled in a District of Columbia public school or 
     preparing to enter a District of Columbia public 
     kindergarten, except that this subparagraph shall apply only 
     for academic years 1997-1998, 1998-1999, and 1999-2000; or
       (B) have received a scholarship from the Corporation for 
     the academic year preceding the academic year for which the 
     scholarship is awarded.

  I see the Senator from Rhode Island is here. I know the Senator from 
Connecticut is waiting to be heard. But I think it is very important 
that we read this amendment because one of the criticisms about schools 
in general is that they are bureaucratic and you can't get more 
bureaucratic in my mind than this.
  I want to point out that 7.5 percent of $7 million for administration 
and reimbursement to this board of directors is $525,000. That is over 
half a million dollars for a brand new bureaucracy--just what we do not 
need, frankly, at this point.
  Now, I am going to skip some of this in the interest of time, but I 
am going to read some of it.

       (3) Lottery selection.--The Corporation shall award 
     scholarships to students under this subsection using a 
     lottery selection process whenever the amount made available 
     to carry out this title for a fiscal year is insufficient to 
     award a scholarship to each student who is eligible to 
     receive a scholarship under this title for the fiscal year.

  So we are helping 3 percent of the kids, and sometimes it will be a 
lottery.
  And so as to save time, I am going to go to a very interesting part 
here. It goes on and on and on. There is a subsection on civil rights 
and a very important part in here.

       An eligible institution participating in the scholarship 
     program under this title shall not discriminate on the basis 
     of race, color, national origin, or sex in carrying out the 
     provisions of this title.

  It is very important that that be in here.

       Applicability and Construction with respect to 
     Discrimination on the Basis of Sex.--
       With respect to discrimination on the basis of sex, 
     subsection (a) shall not apply to an eligible institution 
     that is controlled by a religious organization if the 
     application of subsection (a) is inconsistent with the 
     religious tenets of the eligible institution.

  Now, this goes on and talks about single-sex schools, classes or 
activities, revocations, and then there is actually a part in this 
amendment that I saw that deals with abortion.
  OK, on page 29 of this bill that sets up scholarships for children, 
we say here:

       With respect to discrimination on the basis of sex nothing 
     in subsection (a) shall be construed to require any person, 
     or public or private entity to provide or pay, or to prohibit 
     any such person or entity from providing or paying, for any 
     benefit or service, including the use of facilities, related 
     to an abortion.

  Now, I just have to say we are talking about a scholarship program 
for kids aged from kindergarten until about age 12, and we have a 
section in here on abortion.
  I say to anybody reading this--and I have slowed it down in deference 
to my colleagues who are on the other side of the issue who want to be 
heard on this--I say that anybody reading this would have to agree, how 
you can stand up here and fight against bureaucracy and the nanny state 
and then defend an

[[Page S9921]]

amendment like this which sets up an entire new bureaucracy, which sets 
up a board of directors that can be paid as much as $5,000 a year, more 
than the scholarships you are giving, which sets up a situation that a 
brand new school can pop up, I suppose as long as they get through the 
board of directors. Maybe they have some clout because who is 
appointing the board of directors? Politicians--politicians--the 
majority leader, in consultation with the minority leader, the Speaker 
in consultation with the Democratic leader over there.
  What is this? For a scholarship program that at best will serve 2,000 
students and leaving 76,000 students with nothing, and a half-million 
dollars off the top for administrative costs, and that is just now.
  I was on the board of directors once of a preschool center when my 
kids were little. It was wonderful. It was nonsectarian, but it 
actually happened to be a community that used a church facility. We had 
a tremendous scholarship program. And I have to tell you, it was a 
great scholarship program--a private institution, nonprofit--and we did 
not need to have all of this. If the private sector wants to help the 
kids, they can put forward some scholarships on their own. We do not 
need to set up a new, massive bureaucracy. That is what I call it. 
Because you read this--I am sure everyone who might have been listening 
to it fell asleep--going through pages and pages of regulations, you 
find out that in fact members of the board can be paid more than an 
individual gets who gets the scholarship; you find out in fact it is 
the Speaker of the House and majority leader, and in this case the 
Democratic minority, who have input into who sits on this board of 
directors. The President gets to appoint them on recommendation from at 
this point Trent Lott and Newt Gingrich after consultation with their 
counterparts.
  This is not the end of the nanny state. This is the beginning of the 
political state in the middle of our children's lives.

  I look forward to working with my colleagues on both sides of the 
aisle to putting forward something that is going to help 100 percent of 
the kids. We know after-school programs are needed by these children. 
We know that after-school programs work. I say to my colleagues who are 
for this, let me show you LA's Best, an after-school program for LA's 
kids. Boy, those kids are so successful. They are doing 75 percent 
better than the kids that do not go to that after-school program.
  Let's get new textbooks. This amendment provides $7 million. For $1 
million, we can get new textbooks for every third, fourth and fifth 
grader in the D.C. schools. I remember when I was a kid opening the 
books and smelling the new school books. We all remember those days. 
And today our kids get textbooks that are falling apart. For $1 million 
of the $7 million we can do this. For $3.5 million we can have 70 
after-school programs so our kids are not home alone and they have 
somebody to say ``yes'' to. We could get new boilers for the schools. 
It costs $19,000 per boiler to keep those kids warm. We could fix many 
of the problems in our D.C. schools for 100-percent of the children.
  I hope as Members consider how to vote on this they will go for a 100 
percent solution, not the 3 percent solution which is so unfair to the 
children and sets up a bureaucracy that steals money right off the 
top--a half-million dollars to go to boards of directors and executive 
directors and all of those things I read to you. And so I thank my 
colleagues for their patience and I yield the floor but retain the 
remainder of our time on this side.
  Mr. COATS addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Thomas). The Senator from Indiana.
  Mr. COATS. Mr. President, I would like to yield as much time as the 
Senator from Connecticut, coauthor of this provision and partner with 
me in this effort, may consume. I appreciate his support and help in 
this effort.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Connecticut.
  Mr. LIEBERMAN. I thank the Chair. I thank my friend and colleague 
from Indiana. I thank him particularly for his consistent leadership in 
this effort. I am proud to be his cosponsor along with Senator 
Brownback, a Republican Senator, colleague, and friend from Kansas, 
and--and I mention this with some pleasure--Senator Landrieu, our new 
colleague, Democratic Senator from Louisiana, is also a cosponsor.
  Mr. President, before I get to laying out the reasons why I am for 
this measure, I just want to respond to something our colleague from 
California said.
  The Senator from California kept stressing over and over again this 
foundation, this nonprofit board that we are setting up to administer 
these scholarships and talked about the enormous amount of money that 
it was going to spend--bureaucracy, overhead. In the amendment, which 
we are putting in to create this program, the noninstructional, the 
administrative costs are capped to 7.5 percent. It does come to a 
little bit over a half-million dollars. But take a look at the budget 
of the District of Columbia Public School System. Noninstructional 
central administration and overhead, 33 percent. Only two-thirds of the 
money we give--and we give well over half a billion of public money to 
the District of Columbia--two-thirds of that gets spent on instruction, 
one-third on central administration.
  The amendment Senator Coats and I are putting in caps central 
administration for this scholarship program at 7.5 percent. So I do not 
think that is a very good argument to oppose our amendment. In fact, 
our amendment is pretty tightly drawn where 92.5 percent of the money 
we give will go to the kids and the parents. Let them decide where they 
want it to go for their education.
  Mr. President, this is a very important amendment. There is a certain 
way in which a lot of us--and I am guilty of this some myself--are kind 
of predisposed. We go by momentum. We judge, well, which group of my 
friends, which interest is on which side, which interest group is on 
the other side. I appeal to people, our colleagues here and, frankly, 
particularly directly to those in my own party, to take a look at this 
amendment. Senator Boxer read from the amendment.
  After you read the amendment, read this: ``Children in Crisis, a 
Report on the Failure of D.C.'s Public Schools, November 1996,'' 
written on behalf of the District of Columbia Financial Responsibility 
and Management Assistance Authority, the control board we created.
  What is the conclusion? It is documented in painful--if I had a child 
in this system I would say infuriating, heartbreaking--detail. I quote:

       The deplorable record of the District's public schools by 
     every important educational and management measure has left 
     one of the city's most important public responsibilities in a 
     state of crisis, creating an emergency which can no longer be 
     ignored or excused. The District of Columbia Public School 
     [System] is failing in its mission to educate the children of 
     the District of Columbia. In virtually every area and for 
     every grade level, the system has failed to provide our 
     children with a quality education and a safe environment in 
     which to learn.

  I stress the word ``emergency'' because I am going to come back to 
that word. There is an emergency in the District of Columbia Public 
School System and we are devoting a lot of effort--as I said before, 
over $500 million, $564 million in this bill, going from the Federal 
taxpayers to the District of Columbia Public School System. We are 
doing everything we can to try to make it better. What is wrong with 
taking $7 million, compared to the $564 million, and saying in this 
state of emergency, good God, let's give 2,000 kids and their parents a 
chance to get out of the emergency and better their own lives, better 
their education so they can provide for themselves?
  That is what this is about. It would do nothing more than offer 2,000 
children from low-income homes the opportunity to attend a better 
school. Incidentally, we often don't mention it, but there is another 
part of it. It would offer 2,000 additional disadvantaged children of 
the District of Columbia, who go to the public schools and want to stay 
there, the opportunity for a $500 scholarship to use for exactly the 
kind of program Senator Boxer talked about: After-school tutoring, 
enrichment, the kind of program that will help that child have a better 
prospect of doing better, even within the tough circumstances in the 
District of Columbia system. That is all this is about.
  People talk about this as if, I don't know, it is un-American. It is 
actually

[[Page S9922]]

fundamentally American, because it deals with equal opportunity, making 
it real for kids who are trapped in a school system in which, no matter 
how much most of them work, and their parents hope for them, they are 
not going to have an equal opportunity. They are not going to have the 
same opportunity that those many in the District of Columbia, the 
richer ones, who send their kids to private schools and other schools, 
are going to have.
  Listen to some of the critics of this amendment and you would think 
we were going to cause the sky to fall down on public education. Just 
over the last week a number of organizations that I consider to be 
well-intentioned have flooded the Hill with shrill letters proclaiming 
that this bill is discriminatory, that it is unconstitutional; 
possibly, from what you read, the single greatest threat to American 
education since I don't know what. Even Secretary of Education Richard 
Riley, a man I admire so much, went so far as to suggest this week that 
our bill would ``undermine a 200-year American commitment to the common 
school.''
  Mr. Secretary, respectfully, that is just not so. Those of us 
sponsoring this amendment are having a hard time reconciling the 
exaggerated rhetoric of our critics with the actual details of our 
plan. Let me repeat. We are talking about spending $7 million next year 
to fund this program, compared to the $564 million we are giving to the 
public schools in the District. That is about two-tenths of 1 percent 
for this test, for this pilot program, for this lifeline to a couple of 
thousand disadvantaged kids in the District. We don't take one dime 
away from the D.C. public schools with this amendment. And this small, 
experimental program is purely voluntary. No people who are satisfied 
with their current public school will be forced to make any other 
choice.
  The only explanation I can come up with, after the years of listening 
to the wild allegations that have accompanied the school choice debate, 
is, if I may put it this way, that love is blind, even in public policy 
circles. Our critics are so committed to the noble mission of public 
education that they have shut their eyes to the egregious failures in 
so many of our public schools and insisted on defending the 
indefensible; insisted on blocking children in a situation that the 
D.C. control board describes as an emergency from getting out of that 
emergency. So they are conditioned to believe that any departure from 
their orthodoxy is tantamount to the death of their cause. They refuse 
to even concede the possibility that offering children this kind of 
choice would give them a chance at a better life while we are investing 
so much and working so hard nationally and here in the District to 
repair and reform our public schools.
  Of course our public schools will always be our priority concern when 
it comes to educating our children. But what about the ones who are--
this is as if a child was in the middle of a fire and somebody was 
offering a lifeline out and somebody says, ``Oh, no, no, no, the 
building they are in is a historic building. That is not fair to the 
child.''
  Listen to the complaints of some of the critics and you will see, I 
am afraid, that they have concocted a flexible fiction that allows them 
to believe this fight, their fight, is right, no matter what the facts 
say. In the alternative universe of the critics, money is the solution 
to problems that, in fact, are often created by wasteful bureaucracies. 
Private schools to which many choice critics themselves send their kids 
are not right, somehow, for children of the poor, seems to be the 
implication in the criticism, and giving a poor parent the same choices 
that heretofore have been reserved for those who can afford them 
amounts, somehow, to an act of discrimination instead of what it is, an 
act of empowerment.
  Nowhere have the myths been stretched further than in the case of 
this D.C. scholarship amendment. I just want to spend a few moments to 
recite for my colleagues some of the more spurious charges that have 
been made, and to respond to them. I think it is important to do so 
because I want to make every effort I can to make sure that Members of 
the Senate have accurate information about this amendment before they 
make up their minds on how to vote. I also hope to demonstrate the 
extraordinary lengths to which our critics have gone to attack this 
plan and uphold what I feel is a failed dogma, which is irrelevant to 
and insensitive to the trap in which thousands of D.C. students and 
their parents find themselves today: Unsafe schools--unsafe 
structurally and unsafe in terms of crime--where too many teachers are 
not actually educating the children.
  I am going to talk about some myths.
  Myth No. 1: This amendment would drain desperately needed resources 
from D.C. public schools. I think I have talked a bit about that, but, 
very briefly, the funding for our program comes from the Federal 
payment to the city. It would have no impact on the D.C. school budget. 
Put it another way, if this amendment fails, the D.C. schools will not 
get one additional penny. This criticism is based on the misguided 
notion that throwing more money at the D.C. public schools will solve 
the crisis they are experiencing. The truth is that the Washington Post 
did not label the D.C. public school system a well-financed failure for 
nothing.
  The Senator from California said, ``Why not take the $7 million and 
give it to 100 percent of the children? Give it to the school system.'' 
For what? To better finance the failure that too many of them are 
struggling to get an education and build a life for themselves under?
  I refer my colleagues briefly to this chart which was taken directly 
from that D.C. control board study that I referenced earlier. The 
District of Columbia Public School System in fact has one of the 
highest per-pupil expenditures in the country, spending an average of 
$1,100 more per child than cities of comparable size. Here is the 
District of Columbia. It spends $7,655. These are per-pupil, from 1994 
and 1995--$7,655. The national average is $6,084. And look at 
neighboring districts, districts around the District of Columbia: 
$6,552. They spend slightly more than $1,000 less than the D.C. school 
systems spend. You can go on. The chart speaks for itself. Only Newark 
spends more than the District of Columbia per child.
  So it is not money here, it is the way the money is being spent. Put 
$7 million to 100 percent of the kids, what are you going to get? If I 
may build on the Washington Post conclusion, a better financed failure. 
Take the $7 million, give it to these 2,000--4,000 students, you are 
going to give them a chance at a better education and a better life. I 
will readily concede that the $7 million could be tacked onto the 
public school budget. But we have to ask ourselves, will that really 
help the kids who are there now, spreading the money on top of a 
bureaucracy that is still having trouble counting how many students it 
has--which is what this Control Board report tells us? Or putting it 
directly into the hands of 2,000 families so they can attend a school 
they are confident can educate their child. If we are asking what is 
best for the students and not what is best for the system, there is no 
question what will do more good right away, in this coming year, and 
that is the scholarship program.
  Myth No. 2, often heard about school choice and heard about this 
program. The scholarship is too low to pay for private school and there 
is no space at private schools for these kids, so it is kind of a sham. 
Wrong. Our critics seem to have a dated image of the universe of 
private and faith-based schools, one that assumes that every school is 
Saint Alban's or Sidwell Friends. There are 88 private and parochial 
schools inside the beltway that cost less than $4,000 per student, 
including 60 that cost less than the $3,200 scholarship our amendment 
would provide. There are at least 2,200 spots now open in schools with 
tuition less than $4,000, and that is according to just a partial 
survey of the schools inside the beltway.
  A related complaint we hear is the scholarships will not do much good 
because private and religious schools can and do discriminate. 
Certainly not discrimination based on race. This charge ignores what is 
happening today at private and parochial schools here and in other 
urban areas around this country. Studies show that Catholic schools, as 
an example, in New York and Chicago and in my own capital city of 
Hartford, are serving overwhelmingly minority populations. And that is 
more than true here in the District. This chart, I

[[Page S9923]]

think, is a startling one. The student population of the District's 16 
center-city Catholic schools is 93 percent African American. Center-
city Catholic, 93 percent African-American, actually 5 percent higher 
than the 88 percent African-American enrollment in the public schools 
of the District of Columbia. Catholic schools are hardly an exception. 
For example, Senator Coats and I have been to visit the Nannie Helen 
Burroughs School, an elementary school run by the National Baptist 
Convention here in Washington. It is in an area in the northeast 
section. It has 100-percent African-American school population. We 
talked to the principal. She said literally they have an open-door 
policy. She said to Senator Coats and me, ``We will accept anyone who 
comes to the door--anyone who comes to the door.'' So much for the 
charge of discrimination.
  Members of the Senate should also know that this amendment contains 
explicit civil rights protections that would prohibit schools 
participating in this program from discrimination based on race, color, 
gender, national origin, and it references the District of Columbia 
Human Rights Act, which actually has a broader series of 
antidiscrimination protections.

  Myth No. 3: The voters of the District have already rejected choice. 
That is what the critics say. They will continue to cite the results of 
a referendum held--when?--17 years ago on a tuition tax credit plan 
totally different from the scholarship amendment Senators Coats, 
Brownback, Landrieu, and I are proposing here.
  A much more recent, May 1997, poll and a more relevant poll, found 
that 62 percent of low-income parents in the District, the people this 
program is designed to serve, thought a scholarship plan was an 
excellent or good idea.
  Mr. President, the fascinating part of that poll--I don't have the 
exact number in front of me--is that the more white and higher income 
the group polled, the more likely they were to oppose this proposal, 
the more likely also that their children were in private or faith-based 
schools. The people that this scholarship program is aimed at helping 
desperately want this kind of lifeline.
  Later in the debate I will cite a study done among African-Americans 
nationally that a joint center, distinguished think tank, in town shows 
remarkable rising support for school choice programs, vouchers, 
particularly among younger African-Americans. I wonder why, sadly, too 
many African American children are suffering from a lack of real 
opportunity in school systems like the one in the District of Columbia.
  Myth No. 4: There is no evidence, the critics say, that scholarships 
will improve academic performance. Well, just a few days ago, a 
research team from Harvard released a study showing that students 
participating in the Cleveland choice program made significant gains in 
their first year. Math test scores rose an average 15 percent in 1 year 
for kids involved in the choice program there; reading tests 5 
percent--just 1 year after leaving public schools.
  That data builds on several convincing studies demonstrating that 
low-income students attending center-city Catholic schools have 
achieved far higher scores than their peer groups in the local public 
schools. Comparable populations in each case, two different settings, 
kids in the center-city Catholic schools doing much better.
  A 1990 Rand Corp. comparison of schools in New York City, for 
instance, found that the Catholic schools graduated 95 percent of their 
students annually, while the comparable public schools graduated 
slightly more than 50 percent. These are numbers, but behind these 
numbers are thousands of children--thousands of children--who, when 
they don't finish school, are generally confined to a life without real 
opportunity.
  Look at the difference: 95 percent of the kids in the Catholic 
schools graduate; slightly more than 50 percent in the comparable 
public schools.
  The Rand Corp. report also showed that the Catholic school students 
outperformed their counterparts in the public schools and--again, this 
is in New York City--on the SAT exam by an average of 160 points.
  A study released earlier this year by Derek Neal of the University of 
Chicago found that low-income Catholic school students were twice as 
likely to graduate from college as their public school counterparts. 
What a story. It shows what we all know; it shows it so powerfully.
  The problem here is not the kids. Put the kids in an environment 
where they have a real chance to learn, where they are going to be 
taught in a way that is focused on them, and they will blossom, they 
will rise, they will soar, with twice as many graduating from college. 
Not surprising, then, that Paul Vallas, the man charged with rebuilding 
the decrepit Chicago Public School System, and doing a great job from 
all reports, is working closely with educators in the schools of the 
Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago to learn what has made these faith-
based schools succeed where the public schools have failed. It is 
surprising, though, that few other urban administrators have been 
willing to do the same thing.
  Myth No. 5, another false allegation: This amendment is part of a 
Republican-only agenda. It is a sad fact that most of the choice 
proponents in Congress are members of the Republican Party, although I 
am proud to say that Senator Landrieu and I are cosponsors of this 
amendment, and in the House, Congressman Floyd Flake of New York and 
Congressman Bill Lipinski of Chicago have joined in cosponsoring this 
bill.
  But you have to go beyond that. To write this effort off as a 
partisan effort is to ignore the growing demand for programs that give 
parents greater educational choice, a demand that cuts across partisan, 
racial, class, and ideological lines.
  Take a look at who is driving the choice movement at the grassroots 
level around the country. Mothers like Zakiya Courtney in Milwaukee and 
Barbara Lewis in Indianapolis. Educators like Howard Fuller, the former 
Milwaukee superintendent of schools. Legislators like Glenn Lewis from 
Texas. Civil rights leaders like Alveda King from Atlanta, Dolores 
Fridge, the Minnesota Commissioner of Human Rights. All happen to be 
African-Americans. To the best of my knowledge, most of them are 
Democrats.

  They are not moved by politics. What moves them is love for their 
children and frustration and anger that their children are being denied 
a chance at the American dream because they are being forced, for 
reasons of income, to attend chronically dysfunctional public schools.
  These activists have been joined by thoughtful thinkers, independents 
like Bill Raspberry and Democrats like Bill Galston, former domestic 
policy adviser to President Clinton, who have both endorsed the program 
that we are proposing in this amendment today.
  Consider the fact that polls routinely show that support for just the 
kind of program we are proposing is growing into a majority. For 
example, just this week, the Center for Education Reform released a 
survey showing that 82 percent of American adults favored giving 
parents greater educational choice, and 72 percent approve of using 
taxpayer funds to allow poor parents to choose a better school for 
their child--72 percent on a poll released just this week.
  This is not partisan. Unfortunately, the vote in Congress too often 
has been divided along party lines, but that is not the reality out 
across America. Why? Because the American people are fair, they are 
realistic, they are practical. They see what is happening to too many 
of the children in too many of our public school systems. While we are 
working feverishly to repair those school systems, they think some of 
the kids are trapped in them, not because they are less able, but only 
because their parents don't have the money to take them out of those 
school systems that aren't working for them.
  The parents and activists and local political leaders who are 
demanding choices are not out to destroy the public schools, as so 
often is alleged. Senator Coats and I, Senator Brownback, Senator 
Landrieu--none of us are out to destroy the public schools. I am the 
proud product of a public school. I received a great education. I know 
the role that the public school has played in America as a blender, a 
meeting ground for people of all kinds who come to the public schools. 
But the reality is, in too many of our schools today, that is not 
happening.
  Mr. President, I can't think of a public school education support 
proposal

[[Page S9924]]

that I haven't supported in the 8\1/2\ years I have been in the Senate 
of the United States. IDEA, special education funding, School to Work 
Act, the President's national testing initiative, charter school 
programs, funding, more and more funding for the public schools. What 
the critics fail to realize is that you can support this scholarship 
program and support public education. This is not an either/or 
equation.
  In fact, Senator Brownback and I, particularly as the Chair and 
ranking member of the Senate D.C. oversight committee, are working 
constantly with General Becton, now the head of the D.C. Public School 
System, to give him real support in meeting the overwhelming challenge 
he has of resuscitating the D.C. school system.
  I repeat, again, the very bill on which we are aiming to attach this 
amendment provides $564 million, over one-half billion dollars of money 
from the taxpayers of the United States for the D.C. Public School 
System. General Becton himself concedes that the D.C. public schools--
he said this before our committee--will not get better really to where 
he wants them to be for at least 5 or 10 years. They are going to get 
better along the way. He said, ``Don't expect an overnight miracle 
here. I am not going to reach what you want to make of the school 
system for another 5 or 10 years.''
  What do we tell the children who are in the school system in the 
meantime, and what do we tell their parents? That in the name of some 
ideology, for some reason of history, to protect the ideal of the 
public school system as some of us experienced it that doesn't have any 
realistic relationship to what is happening every day for thousands of 
kids in the District of Columbia, in the name of preserving public 
education, that we as adults are willing to sacrifice children's 
futures, the kids who are there now, in a system described by the 
control board as in a state of emergency? We are willing to sacrifice 
them for the sake of a process, an idea that is not real in their 
lives? Go into the District school system, go into the schools and see 
what kids face. It is not acceptable, and that is why we are pushing so 
hard to establish this scholarship program.
  Senator Coats and I and the other cosponsors are not suggesting that 
this is the cure-all for the city's educational woes, but it will give 
4,000 kids from disadvantaged families, not kids who are not able, kids 
who have the same God-given ability as any other group of kids, it will 
give them the opportunity to realize that ability and a better life. It 
will make a statement that we are not going to tolerate the 
unacceptable status quo any longer.
  In the long run, it will, hopefully, increase the positive pressure 
on the public schools to become more accountable, to raise their 
standards, to win back the public's confidence. Mr. President, later in 
the debate, if there is time, I am going to read from an affidavit 
filed by a member of the Milwaukee school system in a school choice 
case where that member testified to the positive competitive effect 
that the school choice program in Milwaukee had on the public schools.
  For all this, Senator Coats and the other cosponsors and I are 
accused of leaving behind or abandoning the 76,000 children who would 
not have access to the scholarship program. The irony, of course, is 
that just the opposite is true. Too many of these children have already 
been abandoned by a school system that has been driven into the ground 
by too much incompetence, too much indifference to the best interests 
of the city's families, a system that is so bad that the control board 
report that I mentioned earlier concludes something that I had to look 
at two or three times to understand:

       The longer students stay in the District's Public School 
     System, the less likely they are to succeed educationally.

  I couldn't believe that. ``The longer students stay in the District's 
Public School System, the less likely they are to succeed 
educationally.'' I went back. What does that mean? It means as the 
grade levels go up, the District school kids fall further and further 
below the national average on standardized tests. To continue to do 
nothing, other than to call for more money, while these children suffer 
is unfair to these children.

  That is why the onus should not be on us to defend our plan or 
alternative, our scholarships, but on those who oppose doing anything 
that does not fit inside the box of status quo public education which 
is failing thousands of children here in the District of Columbia.
  We have to ask, what are you willing to do to change things right 
now? What are we willing to do to rescue these kids who must go to 
schools that have more metal detectors than computers? To continue to 
do nothing out of fear of being divisive or offending one or another 
group is irresponsible. And, you know, that is a major argument against 
this amendment, that it is divisive. Those who opposed the civil rights 
laws when they were first proposed also liked to complain that those 
being proposed were going to be divisive and thereby damaging to the 
country. It was an unconvincing argument then just as it is now.
  Mr. President, it is a remarkable twist of fate that we stand 
debating this amendment, as I am sure my colleagues have seen in the 
news today, on the 40th anniversary of the desegregation of a Little 
Rock high school, Central High School. President Clinton will be down 
there this weekend to commemorate that historic event. Of course, that 
school was desegregated and other schools were saved from legal 
segregation.
  But what is the reality today? Too many schools are still effectively 
segregated, but really more fundamentally to the point, too many 
children are being denied the equal opportunity for an education that 
the desegregation movement, that Brown versus Board of Education, that 
all the tumult that followed it was all about.
  The kids in the District school system do not have a real equal 
opportunity to an education. And that is what our amendment is all 
about.
  Mr. President, finally, I want to make a plea to the Members of my 
own party. If I may be partisan in this sense, this Democratic Party of 
ours in its modern expression was built on a central principle, equal 
opportunity, building on the bedrock insight that the Declaration of 
Independence and the Constitution have, that everybody is created 
equal, and that these are inalienable rights that we have, incidentally 
not given to us by the founders of the country or by Congress or any 
other group but given to us by our Creator.
  The Democratic Party in the modern history of this country has 
focused on making this ideal of equal opportunity real. At our best we 
have been the party of upward mobility, we have been the party that 
welcomed people to this country, immigrants to this country. We have 
stood for giving everybody a fair chance to go up. Getting a decent 
education was at the heart of that.
  That ultimately is what is at the heart of this debate--basic 
fairness, equal opportunity. The reality is that we already have de 
facto educational choice in this country. It is just limited to those 
who can pay for it. The question we now face is, whether we make that 
kind of choice available to the children who really need it most or 
whether we continue to deny them the opportunity out of some fear of 
upsetting the status quo or some interest groups who support the status 
quo.
  I urge my Democratic colleagues to think about why they became 
Democrats, what the party is all about, and how, when we think about 
that, how they can oppose scholarships for 4,000 poor children. Nothing 
mandatory. Parents have the right to apply for this. Where have we come 
when we end up in that position that we are denying a lifeline to 4,000 
poor children in the District of Columbia?
  I urge my colleagues to take a look at the final chart I am going to 
show, which is this one. Ward 3 in the District, the upper northwest 
part of the District; 65 percent of the families send their children to 
private schools. So 65 percent of the families send their children to 
private schools; the poverty rate is 6 percent. Well, look. That is the 
most, of course, of any ward in the city.
  Look at Ward 1, a poverty rate of 17 percent; only 11 percent can 
send their kids to private school. Ward 7, the poverty rate is 18 
percent; only 7 percent can send their kids to private school. It is 
clear what is going on here. And 65 percent of the families from Ward 3 
sending their kids to private school is

[[Page S9925]]

six times the national average. Probably some Members of this Senate 
are in that statistic in Ward 3.
  We have to ask ourselves, is it fair, given the factual indictment of 
the status quo of the D.C. public schools--which, as I said, over and 
over again today, we are spending a half a billion dollars and working 
with General Becton in all sorts of ways to fix it--is it fair for us 
to force the disenfranchised, not by reason of law, not by reason of 
the God-given potential of each and every one of their children, are we 
going to force them to go to schools that we ourselves, and in fact 
that statistics show that most D.C. public schoolteachers, will not 
risk sending their own children to?
  I say to my colleagues, as you wrestle with that question, I want to 
leave you with the wisdom of a Nigerian proverb that I saw on the wall 
of a D.C. school that I visited recently. It said, ``To not know is 
bad; to not want to know is worse.'' We can no longer profess not to 
know about what is happening to thousands of children in the D.C. 
public school system today who the superintendent of the school system 
says are in a school system that will not be what we want it to be for 
5 or 10 years.

  We cannot profess any longer not to know this reality. Therefore, for 
us not to act now, frankly, is not to want to know. And the terror of 
that is that for that willful ignorance, it is these children who are 
going to pay the price. So I have spoken strongly here today because I 
feel strongly about this.
  Mr. President, this is about kids, this is about their future, this 
is about the reality of the American dream for those who have the 
hardest time of reaching for it. This is a small program--$7 million--
to try it out.
  Hey, can anybody say that things are so good in the District of 
Columbia Public School System that it is not worth experimenting with 
an alternative for a couple of years? No. I hope my colleagues will 
think about this and will face the reality and will give this 
scholarship program a chance, which is to say, that they will give 
4,000 children in the District of Columbia a chance that they will 
otherwise not have.
  I thank the Chair and yield the floor.
  Mr. COATS addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Inhofe). The Senator from Indiana.
  Mr. COATS. I have three unanimous-consent requests the leader has 
requested. And I know the Senator from Minnesota has been very patient. 
And if I could just get these in I would appreciate it.

                          ____________________