Congressional Record, Volume 144 Issue 30 (Wednesday, March 18, 1998)

[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 30 (Wednesday, March 18, 1998)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2172-S2176]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

EDUCATION SAVINGS ACT FOR PUBLIC AND PRIVATE SCHOOLS

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I want to briefly speak about this
vote.
What has just happened on the floor--and I do take exception to this,
especially with the majority leader--is we had the Coverdell bill--I
said to Senator Coverdell yesterday that I do not necessarily agree
with the bill, but I said to him, ``Paul, I look forward to the debate.
I am really ready for this debate. I have a lot of amendments; other
Senators have prepared amendments. I think this is probably the most
important thing we can do in the U.S. Senate is to have a really
substantive debate about education.''
What has now happened is the majority leader filed cloture and said
we are not going to have an opportunity over the next 2 days to offer
any amendments. The proposal, as I understand it, was that if we would
accept some kind of an arrangement where we could offer germane
amendments, that would be acceptable, but not necessarily relevant
amendments. It is just an outrageous proposition, because the test of
germaneness is, if you offer an amendment on the education bill that
expands education, expands educational opportunities for children, it
is relevant.
The Presiding Officer has had some very interesting hearings--I have
been at those--dealing with early childhood development. If we want to
come out with amendments and make the connection between early
childhood development and education for children, that would not be
viewed as germane.
I have said to people in Minnesota, based on meetings with community
college students and people in my State, ``Yes, I will come out here
and try to make sure this Hope tax credit will be refundable,'' because
right now if you come from a family with an income under $27,000 or
$28,000 a year, it doesn't help you at all. The very students who need
the help in being able to afford higher education--the Coverdell bill
was about how to afford either

[[Page S2173]]

K through 12 or higher education. Many students in Minnesota from
working families cannot afford it. That would not meet the germaneness
test.
I have an amendment that deals with this awful problem--I think I can
get good support--that too many welfare mothers are not able to
complete their 2 years of college. They are told they have to leave
school. They are on the path to self-sufficiency. It is a big mistake.
It deals with the parent and child. Children do well in school when
their parents are able to do well.
My point is that what has happened, I think, on the floor really is a
bit outrageous. We wanted to have a debate on education. I am ready to
debate education with my colleagues, Democrats and Republicans alike. I
had amendments; other Senators had amendments. We were ready to bring
those amendments out here. From my point of view, I would have agreed
to time limits on these amendments. Instead, what has happened is the
majority leader has come out, filed cloture, basically is saying he is
not going to let us offer any amendments that are relevant and
important to children's lives in America.
Instead, he now moves to NATO. This vote on NATO--I asked for the
yeas and nays, the minority leader asked for the yeas and nays--is not
about what our position is on NATO. It is about saying we thought we
were going to have a debate on education. We thought we were going to
have an opportunity as Senators to speak to perhaps the most important
issue or set of issues in our States, which has to do with expanding
educational opportunities for children and for young people in America.
That is what we thought this was about.
Now what we have seen happen on the floor of the Senate is the
majority leader basically comes out, files for cloture and says, ``I
will only entertain the amendments that are germane.'' Do you know
what? No one Senator, not even the majority leader, gets to decide
before we have the debate what amendments are relevant and important
when it comes to expanding educational opportunities for children. I
would love to debate the majority leader, I would love to debate
members of the Republican Party and Democratic Party on this. It looks
right now like we won't have that debate.
On the Democratic side--I am not the minority leader; he can speak
better for Democrats--I think we are going to have unanimity on this
and we are going to keep coming back and we are, I say to my colleague
from North Dakota, going to insist on a debate. In order to be
responsible Senators, in order for the U.S. Senate to be responsible,
we should have a substantive, thoughtful, important debate about what
we need to do to expand educational opportunities for all of our
children. That is what this should be about.

Now we move away from the bill. The idea is, the majority leader
says, we will only take the amendments that are germane. That is it.
That is not acceptable. That is not acceptable. We will come back over
and over and over again and we will have a debate on the Coverdell
bill. We should have that debate. I said that to Senator Coverdell
yesterday. And it should be a good debate.
I yield the floor.
Mr. DORGAN addressed the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from North Dakota.
Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, let me say that I agree with much of the
comments just offered by the Senator from Minnesota. While I am not a
supporter of the Coverdell bill, I think it is an interesting proposal
to bring to the floor of the Senate only because we will be debating
the subject that ought to be one of the priorities of this country, and
that is the subject of education. While I was not prepared to support
the underlying bill, there are a number of amendments I was prepared to
support that I think address the central questions that confront us in
the area of education.
I noticed that the New York Times this morning describes where we are
in the Senate and why we are where we are. I guess that now should be
amended by the last hour or so of action on the floor of the Senate.
But here is the Times description yesterday:

A dispute over Federal judgeships and the threat of a
Democratic filibuster had halted floor action on a
Republican-sponsored education bill, leaving Mr. Lott casting
about for something to fill the time until the tangle could
be sorted out. The NATO resolution was available.

That was as of this morning. Since that time, of course, the
education bill has been brought to the floor of the Senate, and, as I
understand, with no debate, two cloture motions were filed, which is
rather unusual before debate even begins. The proposition of cloture is
that we are deciding to cut off debate? And as a result, because our
side did not agree to limit amendments, the bill is pulled, and now we
go to NATO expansion?
Let me just offer a couple of comments about our priorities. Those
who are in charge have the opportunity to decide what is on the floor
of the Senate. The power of scheduling goes to those who control the
Senate. I understand that, and I do not quarrel with that. I do think,
however, that education was the right subject, and I regret very much
that we are not now on the Coverdell bill, which is the bill we
expected to be debated this afternoon and the bill that many of us
wanted to offer amendments to in order to have a debate about the
central elements of education policy that we want to address.
Almost everyone in this country is concerned about some central
issues in their lives. When they sit around the dinner table, they talk
about things like: Do we have an opportunity for a decent job with good
benefits? Does our job pay well? Do we have job security? Do our kids
have the opportunity to go to good schools? Do our grandparents have
the opportunity to get decent health care? Are our children able to
access decent health care? Are our neighborhoods safe? Those are the
range of questions that affect people's everyday lives. At least the
center part of those concerns, among which is education, is what we
ought to, in my judgment, be debating on the floor of the Senate. And I
had expected that would be the case this afternoon.
One of the amendments that we intended to offer, that apparently some
do not want us to offer, is an amendment addressing the issue of the
modernizing of the infrastructure in our schools and whether we can try
through Federal policy to provide some help and some incentive for
local governments to deal with the infrastructure problems in their
schools.
Mr. COVERDELL. Will the Senator yield?
Mr. DORGAN. I will be happy to yield.
Mr. COVERDELL. I say to the Senator, just for clarification--I know
you are concerned; I understand it--but I do want to make it clear that
at this point the difference relates to an order and an orderly
procedure.

The majority leader has offered to the minority leader the suggestion
that the other side offer its package to stand against the one that has
come through the Finance Committee. There are already another four
proposals in the Finance Committee offered, three of which are from
colleagues on your side of the aisle: Senator Moynihan of New York,
Senator Breaux of Louisiana, and Senator Graham of Florida.
So there were still other issues on the other side. So the suggestion
was, well, you put your package together, which could include the
proposal you just mentioned, or any others, and we will let the two
stand against each other. That was not accepted.
The second suggestion was that we arrive at a certain number of
amendments on each side and that they be germane. As I understand it,
that has not been accepted so far. But the proposal you just mentioned,
there was not an attempt to keep that from being in debate. There is an
attempt to keep the debate on education matters and not others. It is a
tax bill; everybody understands that. It invites a lot of attention.
But there is an attempt to keep it on the focus of education. I just
wanted to make that comment.
Several Senators have mentioned the proposal from the Senator from
Illinois. I don't think there has been an attempt to block that from
being in the debate. It did not succeed in the Finance Committee;
another school construction program from your side, Senator Graham's,
has.
I yield the floor.
Mr. DORGAN. I was happy to yield because the Senator from Georgia is
a thoughtful Member of this body and offers an interesting proposal. It
is one

[[Page S2174]]

that I do not support, but certainly I respect his views on this issue.
I had hoped we would be discussing the central portion of the Coverdell
bill and amendments to it.
But I say to the Senator from Georgia that the majority leader has
run for the Senate in only one State, and other Members of the Senate
who are elected to this body from their States have a right to offer
amendments on legislation brought to the floor of the Senate.
My understanding is that the reason we are now on NATO expansion is
because, when the Coverdell bill was brought to the floor of the
Senate, the majority leader wanted people on this side of the aisle to
agree not to offer a certain number of amendments, to package them only
the way the majority leader wants them packaged, and to offer them for
a vote, up or down. If that is the way he wants to run the Senate, I
say fine, but we have the right to offer amendments and intend to offer
amendments, not just on the issue of school modernization, or the size
of classrooms or the addition of 100,000 new teachers to limit class
size, but also on a range of other issues that we think are important
in the area of education.
It is a fact that today we were told that, unless we agree to
dramatically reduce our proposals on education, we were not going to be
debating education on the floor of the Senate. The clear message is: we
either do it the way the majority leader wants to do this bill or we do
not do it at all.
Well, that is not the way the Senate works. Fortunately, the Senate
rules allow us, when someone brings a bill to the floor of the Senate
to say, you have an idea, and we have some ideas as well. And here are
our ideas. Let us vote on them. There might be two, four, six or eight
ideas, but we want to have the opportunity for Members of the Senate to
offer them, to debate them, and to have a vote on them. That is the way
the Senate works.
It is interesting to me that, for several months now, every piece of
legislation that has come to the Senate floor that would be amendable
somehow comes has been manacled in some way so that no one else can
offer amendments because we are afraid of having a debate on other
amendments. In this case it was not so much a case of tying it up as it
was deciding, if these people are going to offer amendments, then we
are going to pull the bill off the floor. My point is very simple: I
think education is the subject we ought to discuss. I believe the
Senator from Georgia feels the same. I do not believe that, with scarce
federal resources, we ought to embrace the recommendations of the
Senator from Georgia. I believe that with scarce resources, you start
at the critical level of need and work up.

Let me describe just for a moment that critical level of need. This
afternoon, as I speak, down at the elementary school in Cannon Ball,
ND, there are Indian children being educated in old, dilapidated
classrooms. One of these rooms is a choir room next to an area where
the smell and the gases from the backlogged sewer system are so strong
that the kids need to be removed from class. You would keep your
children in that room for 1 hour before pulling them out. Children go
to that school.
Or if not the Cannon Ball school, how about the Ojibwa school on the
Turtle Mountain Indian Reservation, where kids go to school in trailers
and have to walk outside in the bitter cold to get to class. All those
kids have names. All those kids have hopes. They want a future. They
want to get educated. They have dreams. But they do not have the
opportunity to go to the kind of schools that we went to. This country
has an obligation to decide those kids matter. So, in terms of my
notion about education, let us start at the critical end of the scale
of need and say to those kids, your lives matter. We are going to do
something to try to help you.
So when we debate education, I demand an opportunity--and, in fact,
the rules of this Senate guarantee me the opportunity--to offer an
amendment when a bill is brought up. And I can offer an amendment that
says to that child, sitting in a classroom with sewer gases seeping in,
that we can do something for you.
This is not a problem that requires rocket science to solve. This is
a problem we can solve if we just have the will.
We can talk about more Indian schools. On, the Standing Rock
Reservation, where the Cannon Ball school is located, 48 teenage kids
over the last 9 months have attempted suicides--47 kids. Six of them
have been successful. I was on the phone yesterday with the Centers for
Disease Control in Atlanta trying to get suicide prevention teams sent
to the Reservation.
Yesterday, when we wrote the supplemental appropriations bill, I also
included some resources there to help address this tragic problem. We
need to get to that reservation, to those children and say to them:
your life matters to us, you make a difference, and suicide is the
wrong answer. Suicide is never the right answer.
My point is that we have such desperate needs that exist in this
country. I just mention that one because I have been working on it in
recent days. We have such critical problems affecting these young
lives, especially with respect to education, because school is where
these young kids spend most of their days.
And on the Standing Rock Reservation, guess what? We have PCB, a
known carcinogen, leaking out of light fixtures. They have had to
evacuate kids from their school for over a month now and move them
around to half a dozen other locations. Six classes are meeting in the
gymnasium.
So, yes, let us talk about education right now, right here in the
Senate. Let us bring the bill of the Senator from Georgia to the floor
right now and let us not be afraid of any amendment. Maybe the idea of
the Senator from Georgia is the best idea, and perhaps at the end of
the day he has sufficient votes to advance it. That is the way the
system works. I take my hat off to him if he does.
But maybe there are others of us who have some very good ideas as
well that address the bull's-eye, the central education needs, of this
country, that address the needs of schools and kids that are not
functioning very well, and that says to those who are hopeless and
helpless, there is hope and help. Those of us in the Senate who worry
about the education system and have some ideas to help want to be able
to advance those ideas. That is all we are asking.
It is just not acceptable to me to not be able to offer education
amendments to a bill we have on education. And, incidentally, the
Senator from Georgia did say, and he is correct, that this is more than
an education bill. It is also a revenue bill.
I am not going to offer revenue amendments to the Senator's bill, but
I am tempted. As he indicated in his statement, this is very tempting
because you get so few revenue bills through here that when a revenue
bill comes up, you ought to offer a revenue amendment in order to get
it done.
I will give you an example. Nearly 70 percent of all the foreign
corporations doing business in America pay zero in Federal income
taxes--not 1 percent, not 5 percent, but zero in Federal income taxes.
And the names of these corporations are ones you will recognize.
Look at the brand names on your appliances at home and ask yourself,
might these be the names of companies from abroad that are doing
business in the United States? And what do they pay in Federal taxes?
Do they pay what our businesses pay? Do they pay what our constituents
pay? No; I am sorry. Most of them pay zero. We should fix that. I have
been trying to. I would love to offer that amendment again. We had a
vote on it once in the Senate, and I lost. I would love to offer that
amendment again because there is no excuse in this country to have a
Tax Code that says, if you want to do $5 billion worth of business in
the United States from abroad, then you can go do that. You can earn
lots of money, and by the way, you can pay zero in Federal income
taxes. Nobody in this country gets to do that.

So, I am sorely tempted to say, yes, this is a revenue bill. I would
love to offer an amendment. What we are asking for is the ability to
offer amendments directly related to the subject --there are a couple
of others, but not many--directly related to education. There is no
reason--none--why anyone in the majority or minority can come

[[Page S2175]]

to the floor of the Senate and say, ``By the way, we are going to
change the way the Senate works. We will allow our proposal to get a
vote, and you package up all of the ideas you have into one amendment
with one vote, and that is the way we will dispatch your interest.''
This is not something we will accept. It is not something we should
accept. It is not something you would accept in a million years if you
were standing here.
So, we now are debating NATO. I suppose at some point, after lengthy
and wonderful statements by the majority and minority leaders on this
issue, I will come to the Senate floor also and speak about NATO. All
of us have views about NATO expansion. But I regret we are here,
because we should be on the Coverdell bill, and we should be debating
amendments that focus on the education agenda in this country.
Our amendments are very simple. We believe we can improve education
by investing in 100,000 new teachers and reducing class size. We
believe we can invest in school infrastructure by helping State and
local governments on the interest costs of modernizing our schools. Too
many schools in this country are 50, 70, and 80 years old and crumbling
and in need of repair.
We believe we can address those issues and a half a dozen other
issues that represent the right initiatives for this country. But we
can't do that if we are told, ``You add up those amendments, stick them
in one package, and we will give you one vote on the package. If you
can't carry the entire package, you lose everything, and that is the
way we will run the Senate.'' That is not the way we will allow the
Senate to be run on measures brought to the floor that can be
amendable. We will continue to insist on the right to offer amendments,
and I will be here again and again to do that.
Let me say again to the Senator from Nebraska, who I believe will
manage this bill, I regret I have taken the time to speak on this issue
on your time, but I think it is necessary to describe where we are and
how we got here. I also apologize to the Senator from Delaware for the
same purpose.
Mr. BIDEN. Will the Senator yield?
Mr. DORGAN. I am happy to yield to the Senator.
Mr. BIDEN. The Senator does not owe the Senator from Delaware any
apology at all. I think the case he makes is the correct case.
I am particularly concerned that the most important foreign policy
debate we have had maybe in the 25 years that I have been here is being
used as a filler. That bothers me. It bothers me in the sense it lends
an air of credibility to the unfair criticism that we have not
adequately and fully and seriously taken into consideration the pros
and cons relating to expansion. It just reinforces, in my view, that
false argument.
I happen to support the position of Senator Coverdell on the
procedural aspects of the issue. There is no question the Senator from
North Dakota, in my view, is correct.
I have been here 25 years. We have just begun, in the last couple of
years, deciding new and innovative ways to avoid the opportunity for
people to be able to get a vote on issues on this floor. For the first
23 years I was here, I don't ever recall us being in a circumstance
where the minority was presented with the proposition that you put up
your package, we will put up our package, we each get one vote, and
that is it. That is not the way the rules were intended to work, in my
view. I am not suggesting that the majority leader is violating the
letter of the Senate rules, but I think the spirit is being violated.
I have a secondary problem that is almost as bothersome to me. I
have, along with the Republican manager of this bill and the chairman
of the full committee, Senator Helms, and others, devoted hundreds and
hundreds of hours to this issue of NATO expansion, taken the issue very
seriously, and now it is kind of like, well, yesterday we had extra
hours so, boom, let's go ahead and throw in NATO. By the way, we don't
know what else to do. Today we hit a logjam, the Democrats wouldn't
swallow the, in my view, heavy-handed tactics employed here on the
education bill; so, what do we get? There must be something out there--
grab NATO.

So it will reinforce the notion that somehow we are not taking this
incredibly important foreign policy consideration seriously. This
should be set aside to have one solid, continuous debate, whether it
takes 2 hours or 2 weeks--and it is closer to 2 weeks, and appropriate,
than 2 hours--in order for the public to be educated about what we are
doing. I believe no foreign policy can be sustained or should be
sustained without the informed consent of the American people. This a
gigantic issue which, understandably, and historically, they are not
interested in, in the day-to-day sense, in that they are more concerned
about the classroom the Senator described in his own State or whether
or not their company is downsizing and they will lose their job or
whether or not they will be able to get their child to college.
I am not critical of the American people. The only time we have an
opportunity to get their attention--and when we do, they pay attention,
they understand, they fully grasp what we are about--is if we say,
``And now we are about to debate a major foreign policy issue.
Basically, tune in, and we will have a coherent debate.'' This place is
capable of coherent and intelligent debate. This, in a sense, demeans
the process and demeans the issue.
The Senator owes me no apology. Now that we are on NATO, I hope we
don't get off NATO; I hope we continue. Let's pick a course here. If we
are going to debate this issue, debate it fully and resolve it and put
everything else aside until we do it. I really hope the majority leader
will refrain from using NATO as sort of a filler here, because it is so
much more important, and we all know that the way in which the process
treats an issue reflects, at least in the mind of the press and the
public at large, what value we place on the issue, how important we
think it is.
I don't mean to be personally critical of the leader. I think he
grabbed whatever was available procedurally to be able to be brought up
and this was here. I am really sorry that we have gotten to this point.
Again, let me conclude my comments relative to this by saying to the
Senator from North Dakota, he owes me no apology. He is protecting not
only his rights but he is protecting the rights of the Senator from
Delaware, majority and minority Members. I have been here long enough
to realize that there is no such thing as a permanent majority. I have
been in the majority, I was then in the minority, I was back in the
majority, and I am now in the minority, and I look forward to being in
the majority again. This kind of precedence sets a tone that puts the
majority--whichever party that may be--into the position of ratcheting
up the way in which they attempt to have their way on the floor. I
think it is not prudent.
Mr. DORGAN. The Senator from Delaware is correct. I did not address
the question of NATO expansion and the way this bill got to the Senate.
I didn't read the rest of the New York Times article that I found so
interesting: ``It is always difficult to predict the schedule in the
Senate which can turn on the dime or on the whim of the majority leader
and it is not uncommon for the opening debate on major bills to be
slow. But even longtime Senators express bewilderment how the NATO
resolution appeared to have shoehorned into the Senate schedule,'' and,
in fact, shoehorned in yesterday and again today.
I agree with the Senator from Delaware. NATO expansion, however one
might feel about the issue, is a legislative main course. It is a
significant foreign policy issue that one would hope--having read the
history of the Senate written by Senator Byrd--that the chapter of
Senate history on our debate today on NATO expansion would be described
as a thoughtful debate. I hope that our debate will be viewed as one in
which most of the Senators were here and listened to wonderful
presentations about the impact of NATO expansion, the pros and the
cons, the impact on this country's foreign policy and its relationships
with Europe and Russia, and on a whole range of other issues that are
very, very important. In many instances, the effect of these kinds of
policies won't be understood or fully known for a decade or perhaps for
a quarter of a century or more.

When the Senator from Delaware--and I know the Senator from Nebraska

[[Page S2176]]

also feels this way--describes the importance of this NATO expansion
debate, it is hard to describe its importance in terms that are too
strong. It is enormously important. I hope it will not be just
legislative filler here. There must be a significant debate. I will
come at some point and engage in that discussion and share some of my
feelings about it.
The point I was making earlier is that I hoped very much that, as we
were told last week, we were going to be on the subject of education. I
know the Senator from Delaware and I disagree on the underlying bill of
the Senator from Georgia, but I expect we will not disagree on a range
of other amendments that will be offered. These amendments represent
the only opportunity for those of us who have ideas about how to
address some of the central problems in education to bring those to the
floor.
If you are not in a position where you are the one who determines how
this Senate schedules its business, the only opportunity you have if
you have an idea--and everyone here has ideas, and some of them are
wonderful and some not so wonderful --depends upon a set of Senate
rules that say the last Senator has the opportunity to seek the floor
and offer an amendment. Every other Senator can vote against it if they
think it is not a very good amendment, but you have the right to take
these ideas and turn them into proposals and ask your colleagues to
weigh in on them after a debate.
That is why I worry a little bit. We have gotten to the point where,
over several months, anything that is amendable somehow becomes a
nuisance. Gee, if somebody is going to be down here and actually wants
to offer ideas, what kind of nut is that? What a nuisance that is for
the legislative process. I say, that is not a nuisance, that is the way
the system works. Is it efficient? No, not very efficient. Is it
effective? Name one other chamber or one other country that equals
this. There aren't any and never have been.
My complaint today was that we are not on the subject that we
expected to be on, that I want us to be on, that represents the central
issues concerning our country. Is NATO important? Sure. I hope it is
scheduled at some point when there is a significant block of time, with
the best thinkers in this Chamber standing up and telling us what they
know and what they have seen and what they understand about the foreign
policy relationships and the impact of those relationships. That is
what I hope we will do.
I don't run this place and probably never will. But I hope that the
relationship that we have--and I think a lot of the majority leader; I
think he is an awfully good majority leader, although I hope some day
soon he will be the minority leader--will allow everyone to understand
that we all have rights. We all have our issues that compel us to run
for public office, and one of those for a lot of us on this side of the
aisle is education. I regret very much that the bill of the Senator
from Georgia was pulled, and we hope it is back soon.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Delaware.

____________________