[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 157 (Sunday, November 9, 1997)]
[Senate]
[Pages S12271-S12272]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




    DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA STUDENT OPPORTUNITY SCHOLARSHIP ACT OF 1997

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the clerk will 
report S. 1502.
  The assistant legislative clerk read as follows:

       A bill (S. 1502) entitled ``District of Columbia Student 
     Opportunity Scholarship Act of 1997.''

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection to the immediate 
consideration of the bill?
  There being no objection, the Senate proceeded to consider the bill.
  Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I strongly oppose the D.C. voucher bill 
because it is unacceptable and unconstitutional.
  We all want to help the children of the District of Columbia get a 
good education. But this voucher provision is not the way to do it. 
Public funds should be used for public schools, not to pay for a small 
number of students to attend private and religious schools.
  Earlier this week, the House of Representatives soundly defeated a 
similar bill. It was Congress' first vote on a free-standing private 
school voucher bill. It's clear that private school vouchers are not 
the panacea that voucher proponents would like them to be. Americans do 
not want vouchers--they want to improve public education, not undermine 
it.
  President Clinton is a strong leader on education. In fact, President 
Clinton is the education President. He is leading the battle for 
education reform. The country is proud of his leadership, and our 
Republican colleagues don't know what to do.
  They keep shooting themselves in the foot in their repeated attempts 
to devise a Republican alternative that will satisfy their right wing 
hostility to public education and still have the support of the 
American people. It can't be done. First they tried to abolish the U.S. 
Department of Education. Then they tried to make deep cuts in funds for 
public schools. They even shut down the Government when they couldn't 
get their way. Now they are trying the same trick through the back 
door, using public funds to subsidize private schools. It won't work, 
and they shouldn't try.
  It is clear that President Clinton will veto the D.C. voucher bill, 
and he is right to veto it.
  The current debate involves schools in the District of Columbia. But 
the use of Federal funds for private schools is a national issue that 
Congress has addressed and rejected many times before. And so have many 
States.
  Now, voucher proponents are attempting to make the D.C. public 
schools a guinea pig for a scheme that voters in D.C. have soundly 
rejected, and so have voters across the country.
  Recent voucher proposals in Washington, Colorado, and California lost 
by over 2-to-1 margins. In 1981, D.C. voters defeated a voucher 
initiative by a ratio of 8 to 1, and the concept has never been brought 
up on the ballot again because it has so little support. Clearly, 
Congress should not impose on the District of Columbia what the people 
of D.C. and voters across the country reject.

[[Page S12272]]

  Representative Eleanor Holmes Norton, and D.C. parents, ministers, 
and other local leaders have made it clear that they do not want 
vouchers in the District of Columbia. Members of Congress who can't get 
to first base with this issue in their own States should not turn 
around and impose it on the people of the District.
  Vouchers would undermine D.C. school reforms already underway. Last 
year, Congress created a Control Board and all but eliminated the 
locally elected school board. This bill would create yet another 
bureaucracy in the form of a federally appointed corporation to run the 
voucher program. Six of the seven corporation members would be 
nominated by the Federal Government, and those nominations are 
controlled by the Republican Congress. Only one representative of D.C. 
would serve on the corporation. This is precisely the kind of Federal 
takeover of a local school system that Republican Senators oppose for 
any other community in America.
  Public funds should not go to private schools when District of 
Columbia public schools have urgent needs of their own. Roof repairs 
still need to be made; 65 percent of the schools have faulty plumbing; 
41 percent of the schools don't have enough power outlets and 
electrical wiring to accommodate computers and other needed technology; 
66 percent of the schools have inadequate heating, ventilation, and air 
conditioning. Funding these repairs should be our top priority, not 
conducting a foolish ideological experiment on school vouchers.
  Another serious problem with private school vouchers is the 
exclusionary policies of private schools. Scarce Federal dollars should 
not go to schools that can exclude children. There is no requirement in 
the bill that schools receiving vouchers must accept minority students, 
or students with limited English proficiency, or students with 
disabilities, or homeless students, or students with discipline 
problems.
  Public schools are open to all children. Public schools don't have 
the luxury of closing their doors to students who pose difficult 
challenges.
  Voucher proponents argue that vouchers increase choice for parents. 
But choice for parents is a mirage. Private schools apply different 
rules than public schools. Unlike public schools, which must accept all 
children, private schools can decide whether to accept a child or not. 
The real choice goes to the schools, not the parents. The better the 
private school, the more selective it is, and the more students are 
turned away. In Cleveland, nearly half of the public school students 
who received vouchers could not find a private school that would accept 
them.
  Vouchers will not help the overwhelming majority of children who need 
help. The current voucher scheme will, at most, enable 2,000 D.C. 
children to attend private schools, out of the 78,000 children who 
attend D.C. public schools. This proposal would provide vouchers for 3 
percent of D.C. children--and do nothing for the other 97 percent. This 
is no way to spend federal dollars. We should invest in strategies that 
help all children, not just a few.

  As I have said before, instead of supporting local efforts to 
revitalize the schools, voucher proponents are attempting to make the 
D.C. public schools a guinea pig for an ideological experiment in 
education that voters in D.C. have soundly rejected, and that voters 
across the country have soundly rejected too. Our Republican colleagues 
have clearly been unable to generate any significant support for 
vouchers in their own States. It is a travesty of responsible action 
for them to attempt to foist their discredited idea on the long-
suffering people and long-suffering public schools of the District of 
Columbia. If vouchers are a bad idea for the public schools in all 50 
States, they are a bad idea for the public schools of the District of 
Columbia too.
  Many of us in Congress favor D.C. home rule. Many of us in Congress 
believe that the people of the District of Columbia should be entitled 
to have voting representation in the Senate and the House, like the 
people in every State. It is an embarrassment to our democracy that the 
most powerful democracy on Earth denies the most basic right of any 
democracy--the right to vote--to the citizens of the Nation's Capital.
  D.C. is not a test tube for misguided Republican ideological 
experiments on education. Above all, D.C. is not a slave plantation. 
Republicans in Congress should stop acting like plantation masters, and 
start treating the people of D.C. with the respect they deserve.
  General Becton, local leaders, and D.C. parents are working hard to 
improve all D.C. public schools for all children. Congress should give 
them its support, not undermine them.
  Another serious objection to this voucher scheme is its 
unconstitutionality. The vast majority of private schools that charge 
tuition less than the $3,200 available for a voucher are religious 
schools. Providing vouchers to religious schools violates the 
establishment clause of the first amendment of the U.S. Constitution. 
It's a Federal subsidy for sectarian schools. In many States, voucher 
schemes would violate the State constitution, too.
  Last January, a Wisconsin lower court held that the expansion of the 
Milwaukee voucher program to include religious schools was 
unconstitutional and violated the Wisconsin Constitution. The court 
stated that ``We do not object to the existence of parochial schools or 
that they attempt to spread their beliefs through their schools. They 
just cannot do it with State tax dollars.''

  Last August, the Wisconsin State Court of Appeals affirmed that 
decision, holding that the expansion of the State voucher program to 
include religious schools was unconstitutional under the Wisconsin 
Constitution.
  Last May, an Ohio appellate court reversed a trial court's decision 
to allow public money to be paid to religious schools. The appeals 
court held that the voucher program violated the principle of 
separation of church and state under both the United States 
Constitution and the Ohio Constitution. The court ruled that the 
voucher program ``steers aid to sectarian schools, resulting in what 
amounts to a direct government subsidy.''
  Last June, a Vermont State Superior Court held that the use of 
vouchers to pay tuition at private religious schools violates both the 
U.S. Constitution and the Vermont Constitution.
  As these cases demonstrate, the courts are clear that vouchers for 
religious schools are unconstitutional, and Congress should abide by 
their rulings.
  Last month, in a keynote address to the Conference of the Council of 
Great City Schools, Coretta Scott King said,

       I don't have a lot of sympathy with those who would further 
     diminish the resources available to urban public schools with 
     a voucher system . . . The debate over vouchers takes the 
     focus away from where it really needs to be--on how we can 
     increase funding and resources, so that every public school 
     can provide the best possible education for all students.

  Coretta King is right. Instead of subsidizing private schools, we 
need to support ways to improve and reform the public schools--not in a 
few schools, but in all schools; not for a few students, but for all 
students.
  Subsidies for a few children at the expense of the many divides 
communities. The federal government should help bring communities 
together, not divide them. We should make investments that help all 
children in all neighborhood schools to get a good, safe education. I 
oppose the D.C. voucher bill as unwise, unacceptable, and 
unconstitutional.
  Private school vouchers are not the answer to the problems facing the 
nation's schools. It is a mistake and a misuse of tax dollars to send 
children to private schools at public expense.

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