[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 65 (Wednesday, May 20, 1998)]
[House]
[Pages H3616-H3622]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[[Page H3616]]
       COMMONSENSE MANDATE FOR ACTION ON EDUCATION BEING IGNORED

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Lucas of Oklahoma). Under the Speaker's 
announced policy of January 7, 1997, the gentleman from New York (Mr. 
Owens) is recognized for 60 minutes.
  Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, I want to talk about the fact that the 
commonsense mandate for action on education is being ignored here in 
Washington. We have an attempt to divert the attention of the American 
people from what is one of our most important issues.
  In discussing this very important issue of education and the fact 
that there is an attempt to make us forget how important it is and 
forget that there is nothing but inaction being proposed about it here 
in Washington, I think we ought to discuss a few seemingly unrelated 
issues.
  The fact that India has just exploded a nuclear device is important 
to today's topic. The fact that the CIA failed to detect the test 
preparation is important. The fact that the Senate passed today 
something called the American Competitiveness Act, which calls for 
making America competitive by bringing in foreigners, foreign 
professionals in the information technology industry.
  The American Competitiveness Act is an example of outrageous language 
being used here in Washington, ridiculous language. It is called the 
American Competitiveness Act, and yet at the heart of the act is the 
provision which requires an increase in the quotas for visas for 
information technology professionals from foreign countries, so they 
can come in and meet our needs in this critical area of information 
technology workers.
  American Competitiveness Act for that kind of piece of legislation is 
about as ridiculous as the Paycheck Protection Act which my colleagues 
were talking about before.
  The Paycheck Protection Act is an act whereby they are going to try 
to censor unions in this country. Unions represent maybe 15 to 16 
million people. They should be censored in terms of their voice in the 
political arena. Yet, the people who give the most money to the 
political process, corporations, millions of Americans have their stock 
in corporations, there is nothing in the legislation, no discussion at 
all about how corporate stockholders, people who own shares in 
corporations should be able to also have protection.
  I do not think protection is warranted in either case. It is an 
attempt to curb the debate and silence one segment of the American 
electorate.
  But how does this relate to education? Let us go back to India. India 
exploded a nuclear device. The CIA failed to detect a test. We had a 
discussion just a few days ago on the floor of this House about the 
CIA's budget. We are not sure what it is, because it is secret, but we 
have a good idea. We proposed to cut the CIA budget by 5 percent. We 
have begun to compromise. In previous years we have asked for 10 
percent, but this year we went down to 5 percent.
  We calculated a 5 percent cut would be about $1.3 billion. We 
calculated that with $1.3 billion we can build a junior high school or 
high school which costs about $10 million to build. They may cost a 
little more in New York, but most parts of the country, you can build a 
substantial school. For $10 million, we calculated 130 schools.
  We are talking about cutting the waste out of the CIA budget in order 
to build schools. So there was a link we made to education. But we had 
an overwhelming vote against our amendment to cut the CIA in order to 
use the money for better purposes.
  I agree with the gentlemen over here before. The gentlemen were 
talking about the bigness of American government. The government spends 
too much money. The taxes are too high. The taxes are certainly much 
too high for people at the lower end of the scale, and we should move 
to try to cut taxes.
  You cannot cut taxes if you are going to continue to insist that the 
CIA operate at a budget between $27 billion and $30 billion. But the 
CIA had to be funded at the same level because the people on the floor 
who were members of the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence said 
they need this money, and one of the reasons they need this money is 
because they must fight nuclear proliferation.
  As the last superpower in the world, we are the only power that has 
the capability of detecting nuclear tests or preparation for nuclear 
tests. We can monitor nuclear tests throughout the world.
  One of the great dangers throughout this world is nuclear 
proliferation. I agree, nuclear proliferation is one of the great 
dangers of this world. It is an international matter. It is of 
international concern. I am proud of the fact that the CIA says they 
have the capability to monitor nuclear proliferation. That is one of 
their major priorities, one of the highest priorities.
  If that is the highest priority, and if the overwhelming majority of 
the Members of the House voted, as they have in previous years, to 
maintain the CIA budget at the same level it was during the Cold War, 
and to do that because of its vital function in detecting nuclear 
proliferation, why did they fail to detect the test preparation in 
India?
  Why did we hear it on CNN? CNN told the American people that India 
had exploded a nuclear device, nuclear weapon, whatever; a nuclear 
explosion had taken place. We got it on CNN. Would it be cheaper to 
contract part of the function of the CIA to CNN and save that money 
that we were talking about, $1.3 billion, to build 130 schools?
  The explanation of the CIA is that India did not play fair, you know. 
We are monitoring nuclear activity all over the globe, but India did 
not play fair. The people in India made preparations, a highly visible 
amount of activity at another site where they launched rockets. So the 
CIA thought India was prepared to launch a rocket, so that they focused 
their cameras, their monitoring, whatever, on that site, and they 
overlooked the Indian preparation for a nuclear test.
  The CIA, which has almost $30 billion for a budget, and part of this 
money is for the satellites, reconnaissance satellites that we maintain 
in the sky, why did they miss it? Because the Indians did not play 
fair. The explanation we get is they did not play fair. They sneaked 
and exploded their device, prepared while we were looking somewhere 
else, at another possible explosion.
  Why is our sophisticated CIA, absorbing almost $30 billion, unable to 
play the game that we used to play when we were kids? We played cops 
and robbers and cowboys and Indians or played war. You take a big rock 
and throw it over there. The guys looking for you will go over there, 
while you can come in behind them and attack them. This is the oldest 
game in the world, a diversionary tactic, the kind the Indians used on 
the CIA.
  Why am I talking about that if I want to alert the American people to 
the fact that education, one of our highest priorities, is being 
ignored? Because our money is being wasted in this direction.
  There is another linkage, also. India now is proud of the fact that 
they are reasserting their nuclear power status. The people of India 
danced in the street to celebrate the nuclear explosion.

                              {time}  2115

  Overwhelmingly the party in power has received approval from the 
people, and some political pundits are estimating that this party will 
finally consolidate power in India. India has had a lot of turmoil 
politically, and now this party now in power, because of their nuclear 
explosion, will consolidate their power and remain in power for a long 
time. You have another set of demagogues using something like war or 
something close to war and the preparation for war to unite the nation 
behind them.
  What is the impact going to be across the world? If India is going to 
show their nuclear muscle, then right next to it is Pakistan. They want 
to do their test. How can you argue morally that Iran should not go 
ahead and do their testing and have nuclear weapons? Saddam Hussein is 
waiting for us to get tired of monitoring his country so he can go back 
to building his nuclear capacity.
  There are many other nations in the world that would like to buy 
technology and get into the game. So nuclear proliferation, which, by 
the way, the dangers of it might have nothing to do with war. Maybe 
they will not start

[[Page H3617]]

a war, but the fact that the bombs or devices are exploding means that 
the radioactive debris is being thrown into the atmosphere, being 
thrown into the oceans. And if El Nino taught us anything, it taught us 
that the world is very small, and ocean currents in one part of the 
world, when they get out of whack, they are affecting other parts of 
the world. They throw off the weather patterns.
  The volcanoes recently have taught us how volcanoes in one part of 
the world darken the sky for long periods of time, as if we did not 
know it from studies of ancient catastrophes, in the last four or five 
years they have changed the weather patterns.
  So nuclear tests, which produce radioactivity, are a concern to all 
of us. We lived under the threat of a bomb for a long time, that one 
nuclear power, the Soviet Union, might attack the United States, or 
vice versa, and we would be thrown into a nuclear holocaust. We did not 
want that, and it affected the psychology of a whole lot of people of 
my generation and a lot of people for a long time. We were happy to see 
that come to an end, the threat of the two great superpowers going to 
war and what that would do in terms of the devastation of the earth.
  Now we are going to have slow poisoning by nuclear proliferation, as 
one nation after another joins the club. India, the home of Gandhi. If 
India, the home of Gandhi, passive resistance, the place where Martin 
Luther King got his inspiration, and numerous other leaders of the 
world, including Nelson Mandela, if India now is going to beat its 
chest as a nuclear power and the people of India are going to dance in 
the streets to celebrate the politicians who have made them a nuclear 
power, then where can we look to in the world for hope? China will 
certainly increase their explosions, and on and on it goes.
  India is important for another reason. I just mentioned the passage 
of the American Competitiveness Act by the Senate, that outrageous name 
they used, ``American Competitiveness Act.''
  What is it? It is to increase the quota of foreign workers, 
professionals in information technology, who can come into the country 
and get us out of a jam because we have inadequate education. Our 
educational system has not produced enough information technology 
workers. We now have a crisis. So American competitiveness is all tied 
up with foreign professionals who are coming in.
  By the way, as they increase the quotas for foreign professionals to 
come in, they are going to decrease the quota in other areas, so people 
who are waiting for their families, to reunite families, and other 
areas of immigration are going to be hurt.
  But this great act of improving American competitiveness is going to 
benefit India primarily. The largest number of information technology 
workers now in this country from a foreign country are from India, and 
the largest number who will come in under this new increase in the 
number who can come in, I think 30,000, the quota is being increased by 
30,000, and over the next few years it will be brought down back to 
20,000, but for a long period of time you can have 20,000 per year. To 
jump it off you are going to have 30,000 more than already. Most of 
them come from India, and it is likely that, in the future, that same 
ratio is going to be there.
  India is the place which has seen fit, wisely so, to educate a large 
segment of their population for the age of computers. Computer science, 
all of the things related to computers and information technology, 
India has seen fit, they saw the need, and they have a large body of 
human capital to spread throughout the world, certainly the English-
speaking world.
  Indians speak English, and that gives them an edge over the 
information technology professionals that might come from the former 
Soviet Union or from other parts of central Europe. They speak English. 
We need English-speaking professionals in the information technology 
sector. So India will send to America more and more information 
technology workers.
  Do you discern a circle here? They will be in our top industries. 
They will acquire more know-how. They will be able to take that know-
how back to India. If India's nuclear capability is rather primitive 
now in comparison to the United States's nuclear capability or the 
Soviet Union's nuclear capability, then certainly when we get through 
importing Indian information technology workers, high-tech workers, 
when we finish with that process, then we will have trained all that 
they need.
  So the Indian government now in power, which wants to stay in power 
as a major militaristic nuclear power and is going to consolidate its 
hold on the government, is following a pattern not too dissimilar from 
the pattern of Saddam Hussein. Saddam Hussein made a dramatic attempt, 
in a very short period of time, to acquire the most modern kinds of 
weapons available, and now India is staking its future politically on 
being able to say it is a great military power. And we are going to 
help train them. We are going to call the training process the American 
Competitiveness Act, that was passed by the Senate today, and they 
expect it to pass the House of Representatives also.
  Why not, instead of importing workers for information technology, why 
not train them here in this country? Why not improve our own school 
system here in this country so that we are able to first allow young 
people coming out of our schools to be able to get very good jobs, that 
are also beneficial for the overall American economy, and also 
beneficial for any national security items that we are concerned with? 
Why not do that instead?
  The common sense mandate for action on education is being ignored. 
The American people think it makes a lot of sense to have more 
attention paid to our education system. The American people repeatedly 
show in the polls, in the focus groups, that they are concerned about 
education.
  Why are the leaders of the Republican majority, who are in control of 
the Congress, why are they ignoring the mandate of the people? Why are 
they failing to honor the results of the polls? They read the same 
polls that the Democrats read. Republicans and Democrats both know that 
education is very high on the agenda of the American people. Why are we 
ignoring it?

  Why are we turning away from a great window of opportunity at this 
point in history? Not only are the American people concerned about 
education and clearly show this is a popular concern, but we now have 
the resources, we now have the revenue, to address some of these 
critical problems in education.
  Why do we not address the problem of school construction that the 
President has proposed we address? He proposed a very meager program, 
$22 billion, but it is not going to come from the Treasury. All of it, 
in fact, the $22 billion construction program, is a program where the 
private sector would provide the money and the government would provide 
tax credits to compensate the private sector for the interest.
  So it is not a great amount of money that is going to be taken out of 
the Treasury immediately; it is over a long period of time, paying back 
the interest as the local education groups, agencies and the States 
borrow from this pool, where they pay no interest. They get the money 
with no interest. The interest will be paid through a tax credit 
vehicle.
  Very clever, Mr. President. I would like to see more money directly 
appropriated for education, so the whole question of borrowing by the 
local school districts and the states will not have to be an obstacle 
to action. But in this atmosphere, we will take your $22 billion 
borrowing program. The Republican majority says no; they refuse to 
consider it. They turned away from this window of opportunity.
  We could go further and not have to borrow the money because we have 
a surplus. Yes, Mr. Speaker, I want to talk about another secret that 
nobody wants to discuss here. They do not want to discuss the CIA's 
failure to detect the Indian nuclear tests. Also they do not want to 
discuss the fact that we have a budget surplus, more revenue than 
expenditures anticipated of between $50 and $60 billion in the coming 
budget year.
  No less than $50 billion will be available because it is not needed 
in the current budget scheme. There will be a surplus, revenue greater 
than expenditure, of at least $50 billion.
  Why can we not at this point address the compelling problems of our 
schools

[[Page H3618]]

with some of that money? Nobody wants to talk about it here. It is 
amazing how quiet the Members of my party are about it.
  The President in his State of the Union address said any surplus 
should be dedicated, first of all, to Social Security. I agree with the 
President. He was anticipating a $8 billion surplus at that time. That 
was what the budget office was telling us, $8 billion.
  Whether it is $8 billion or more, I think Social Security should get 
a high priority. But since you have a window of opportunity to do 
something about the critical problems of education with some of this 
money, I would like to offer a concrete proposal to both parties, my 
party and the Republican majority.
  The budget surplus is a golden opportunity. The common sense mandate 
for use of this surplus should be one-fourth for Social Security, one-
fourth for our Social Security contingency fund. That is what I think 
the President and other leaders have in mind. Social Security does not 
need any help for a long time to come. We are talking about 20 to 30 
years before the calculations show that Social Security may be in 
trouble.
  Well, let us start getting ready for the trouble. Let us set aside a 
contingency fund, or whatever else they have in mind, to guarantee that 
Social Security never has a problem. Let us take one-fourth of the 
surplus for Social Security.
  Let us take one-fourth of the surplus for a tax cut for families 
earning less than $30,000. You want a tax cut? Give the tax cut where 
it is needed most. Families earning less than $30,000 should be given 
priority. If you are going to give tax cuts to others, start at $30,000 
and come on up.
  I think we would all agree that the American people deserve some type 
of tax cut. You could even have a tax cut without the surplus, because 
most of our income taxes come from what you call earned income, the 
earned income of families that are working families.
  We have a whole pot of money that is not taxed very much, and that is 
the unearned income. These are not my terms. ``Earned income,'' 
``unearned income'' were invented many years ago. It is not a socialist 
term or the term of a New York liberal. It is a general economic term.
  Earned income is what you receive as a result of working for wages, 
what you get in a paycheck and what you get as a consultant fee. I even 
think that the millions of dollars that a boxer earned in the ring is 
earned income. The millions of dollars that the sports figures on the 
football, baseball or basketball field earn, that is earned income. 
They sweat for it. I guess it goes back to the Bible and the mandate 
that we earn our living by the sweat of our brow. That is a certain 
category of money.
  Unearned income, and I think the term originally had some kind of 
undesirable feature, unearned income is what people get through 
investments and various other machinations that produce money. Not 
machinations, various other devices that produce money without them 
working for it on a daily basis, a weekly basis, out there on the ball 
field, et cetera.
  So unearned income on investments, primarily the money earned on the 
stock market is the best example of unearned income, the stock market, 
bonds, it is well-known where unearned income comes from.
  If you start looking closely at unearned income, you will find only a 
tiny portion of unearned income is taxed. Most of it escapes taxes. So 
if you really want to look for a place to give a tax cut to families 
earning $50,000 or less, $30,000, then increase the amount of taxes on 
the unearned income and greatly decrease the amount on the earned 
income.
  But I am not here to discuss that tonight. I just want to make the 
point we could have a tax cut. We could satisfy the top agenda items of 
both parties. Social Security, a tax cut, one-fourth to Social 
Security, one-fourth for a tax cut, and the final two-fourths, there 
are four fourths, you know, the final two-fourths for education 
initiatives, such as the construction initiative of the President, such 
as smaller class sizes than that have been proposed by the President, 
such as the reading initiative proposed by the President, such as an 
increase for increasing funds for technology in the schools, wiring the 
schools.

                              {time}  2130

  School construction is vital. There is a lot of discussion about 
improving education and the Republicans are locked in on their own 
approach with vouchers, and other people talk about phonics versus 
other methods of teaching reading. The Committee on Appropriations 
passed a bill that called for the whole school approach a couple of 
years ago, and there are a lot of approaches, initiatives, innovations, 
and most of them might have merit, but at the heart of providing an 
education for young people should be the provision of a safe place to 
sit and study, a safe place for the teacher and student to get 
together, a safe place for students to look forward to when they leave 
home in the morning, and certainly in the poorest areas, the school 
ought to be a great improvement over the home environment of the 
poorest youngsters.
  We should not go to school and find we are crowded into rooms 
unreasonably. We should not have 45, 50 children in one room. We should 
not have to go to school and find that there are no rooms for some 
classes, and classes have to be conducted in the hallway or in the 
portion of the bathroom, the restroom. We should not go to school and 
find ourselves being put in a situation where one has to eat lunch at 
10 o'clock in the morning.
  There are a large number of schools in New York City where the 
students have to eat lunch at 10 o'clock in the morning because the 
lunch room was not built to accommodate the large numbers of children 
in that school, a school built for 500 has 1,000 pupils. The lunch room 
can only accommodate a certain number, so they have to go in shifts, 
and in order to get them all in, the shift process has to start at 10 
o'clock in the morning. That is child abuse, to make a child eat lunch 
at 10 o'clock in the morning. I think that should directly affect the 
physiology and the health of a child. They had breakfast at home or at 
school and they have to eat their lunch at 10 o'clock in the morning. I 
think the children on the other end, if we have to spread that over 
cycles, so that the last group is eating at 1:30 or 2 o'clock, they are 
being abused. They are hungry, starving by the time they get to 1:30 or 
2 o'clock.
  We are doing these kinds of things, we are sending children to 
schools that have asbestos problems, we are sending children to schools 
that have lead pipe problems, we are sending children to schools that 
are 100 years old in New York, we are sending children to schools that 
have leaky roofs, we are sending children to schools in New York and 
other places that have coal-burning furnaces, coal-burning furnaces, 
still. Mr. Speaker, if a school has a coal-burning furnace, it is 
probably a very old school.
  I brought this subject up with the head of the Environmental 
Protection Agency here in Washington and she was appalled that there 
are still coal-burning furnaces in schools. Well, we only have about 
285 coal-burning schools in New York, out of the 1,100 about 285 are 
still burning coal in furnaces, which means that the lungs of the 
children are directly affected, because if one has ever been in a place 
that is burning coal, when I first bought my first house it had a coal 
burning furnace, I had to go down and stoke up the fire, we put in all 
kinds of filters to keep the thing clean, filters at the furnace level 
and filters at the level of the register, but the coal dust gets 
through anyhow.
  If a child sits in a school all year long during the winter season 
while the furnace is burning coal, they are going to get coal dust in 
their lungs. If a child has to spend 6 years in school from the 1st 
grade to the 6th grade, or the 6th grade to the 12th grade, they are 
going to get plenty of coal dust in their lungs and they are going to 
have difficulties with health later on that nobody is going to quite 
understand. The child does not smoke, but the coal dust is going to be 
there creating a problem.
  We have concrete evidence of what is happening right now, because the 
high asthma rate in New York City is unparalleled to other big cities 
who have problems I am sure with coal burning schools also.
  The other pollution in the air now, as it grows greater, the coal-
burning furnaces and that kind of pollution has an

[[Page H3619]]

even greater affect, concentrated at places where children are 
gathered. So construction, if we do not do anything about a safe place 
to study, if we do not get rid of dangerous situations, then do not 
talk about the phonics method versus some other method of teaching 
reading. Do not think that we are going to solve the problem if we come 
in with a mandate that there will be no more social promotion if we 
mandate testing nationally or locally.
  The problem will not be solved with these kinds of actions, although 
some of them may be highly desirable. First, we have to make a 
commitment to have every child in America in a safe place to study, a 
place conducive to study, and then we have to move to a place which is 
enhanced with technology, with equipment for a science lab, with books 
that are not 30, 40 years old. These basic needs are still not being 
met.
  Now, in 1996, 1994 to 1996, the Republican majority argued that if we 
have the government take some initiatives to help education in some 
meaningful way, then we are going to bankrupt the country or we are 
going to put our grandchildren and our great grandchildren into debt. 
They made it appear that any actions by the Department of Education 
were an immediate threat to the economy of the United States.
  Mr. Speaker, with a $50 billion surplus, we cannot tell that lie 
anymore. With a $50 billion surplus, we cannot say that money is the 
problem. With a $50 billion surplus, the question is, why do we not 
want all the children of America to have a decent place to study, a 
decent place to have teachers teach them? Why do we not want all the 
children of America to have the opportunity to learn? We may talk about 
increasing the testing, but that is putting the burden on the backs of 
the students. We may talk about standardized curriculums and more 
challenging curriculums, but again, that is putting the burden on the 
students, and those are challenges that students ought to meet.
  They ought to meet the more challenging curriculum standards and they 
ought to be able to pass the tests. I am not against national testing 
forever. Somewhere down the line I would support national testing if we 
first deal with opportunity to learn standards. If we first say to 
every State and every local school board, every child should have these 
opportunities to learn. First, they should have a facility, a school 
which is safe, which is conducive to study, which has the necessary 
equipment and books, which has modern technology which really prepares 
them for the world they are going to be living in in the 21st century; 
all of these things are doable. It does not require magic. The money is 
there. All we need is two-fourths: One-fourth for education initiatives 
such as smaller class sizes, education for technology, et cetera, and 
another fourth for school construction. This is assuming we are going 
to have $50 billion or more.
  Mr. Speaker, if it were only $8 billion, as the President anticipated 
when he made the State of the Union address, then I would say let us 
give it all to Social Security, but it is far more than $8 billion, so 
here is a concrete proposal. The mandate for the surplus is to meet the 
needs as reflected by the polls and the focus groups, and Americans 
think Social Security is very important, they are worried about it. We 
have made them worry even more because we have made statements about 
the need to change things and privatize Social Security and do things 
which would erode the credibility of Social Security for the future. 
Let us address one-fourth of whatever the surplus is to Social 
Security, one-fourth to a tax cut on the earned income of families 
earning less than $30,000, start with them and go up; one-fourth for 
education initiatives such as smaller class sizes and education 
technology, and one-fourth for school construction.

  Voters of America, do not let this session of Congress end without 
some action on education in this direction. There is no reason why we 
should not have decent schools for all children in America.
  For us to have the revenue available, to have the resources and 
refuse to use them is a savage act. It is savage behavior for the 
responsible leaders who make decisions about how the resources of this 
country are going to be used for them to turn away from the needs of 
these students and children in America who are attending coal-burning 
schools, 100-year-old schools, schools that are not safe, schools that 
are not conducive to learning, schools that have no decent science 
labs, et cetera. It is a savage act.
  Jonathan Kozol wrote a book some time ago called Savage Inequalities. 
It is a book about the inequalities of the school systems in New York 
City. Savage Inequalities. In the same city, a public school in one 
part of the city had all of the modern conveniences, decent facilities, 
et cetera, et cetera. Not too far away, in the same borough, there were 
schools and in some other cities around the country the schools 
actually had to be closed down because when it rained. East Saint Louis 
was one of the examples he gave. When it rained, they literally had the 
rain pouring into the schools, a flood of rain pouring into the 
schools, and these kinds of conditions still exists, not only in rural 
schools and in inner city schools, but there are some suburban schools 
that are grossly in need of improvement and repair, and in some cases, 
they need to build new ones.
  It would be savage for the American power structure, Members of 
Congress, the executive branch, the private sector leaders, to allow 
this to continue at a time when we have the revenue, we have the 
resources. Instead of looking at the obvious needs for more school 
construction and more resources for smaller class sizes, the Republican 
majority is locked into an irrational, illogical, dogmatic policy 
related to vouchers and privatization. They are dogmatic about it. It 
is like a superstition that one cannot touch. They refuse to deal with 
reality. They are swimming against public opinion. They are swimming 
against the tide of public opinion in their own district.
  I have often approached my Republican colleagues on the Committee on 
Education and the Workforce and said, look, you are advocating vouchers 
as the only solution to the improvement of the American public schools. 
You want to make the public schools not public anymore; you want to 
make the people of America not focus their attention on improving their 
public schools, but you want to use vouchers and take them somewhere 
else. Why do you not propose that for your district? And I make the 
challenge here. Every Republican who proposes vouchers, why do you not 
propose that in your district where you run for office? Why do you not 
push vouchers there?

                              {time}  2145

  What I have learned is that in the majority of the districts 
represented by the members of the Committee on Education and the 
Workforce, their constituents have said to them, we are not interested 
in vouchers. We were not interested in vouchers. We have good public 
schools, or we have schools that need improvement, and we are willing 
to work to improve our public schools.
  Some of them confess to me, I have good schools in my district, they 
say. I do not need vouchers. My answer to that, my response to that, is 
if you have good schools and you do not need vouchers, then let me have 
good schools in my district. Let us have good schools everywhere so 
nobody will need vouchers. Let us take the steps necessary to create 
opportunities to learn for all children everywhere. Let us improve the 
public schools and stop the voucher dogma.
  I think the Republican majority suffers from something similar to 
what Lysenko pushed in the Soviet Union. Lysenko was a biologist who 
insisted that the environment is almost totally the determining factor 
of what happens to living organisms. Lysenko was a geneticist, an 
agronomist from the Ukraine. He developed a doctrine compounded of 
Darwinism and the work of Michurin, that heredity can be changed by 
good husbandry.
  As director of the Institute of Genetics of the Soviet Academy of 
Sciences, he declared the accepted Mendelian theory was erroneous, and 
he ruthlessly silenced any Soviet geneticist who opposed him. He 
endured on the Soviet science scene and was a major dictator of science 
theory until Nikita Krushchev came to power in 1965.
  In the whole Stalinist era, they wrecked the agriculture of the 
Soviet Union by insisting that Lysenko was right and everybody had to 
follow

[[Page H3620]]

Lysenko. The rest of the world's scientists were giving due 
consideration to heredity as a factor in the way living organisms 
developed so they could improve the plants and the animal stocks. And 
agriculture prospered, of course, in this country, because science was 
free and they followed where science went. But Lysenko said no, and 
they had scientists who were put in jail for challenging Lysenko.
  The Republican Party is suffering from Lysenkoism when it comes to 
the public schools. When it comes to improving schools in America, they 
will not look to the right or to the left. They insist vouchers and 
privatization are the only answer.
  They have forced vouchers down the throats of the citizens of the 
District of Columbia. People here in Washington, in the District of 
Columbia, they took a vote. They had a referendum on the question of 
whether they wanted vouchers or not. They overwhelmingly voted no, they 
did not want vouchers. They were willing to entertain another 
experiment to make the public schools more competitive and to get some 
innovation into the bureaucratic structure.
  They wanted to challenge the structure by having charter schools, 
some public schools that would be run by a group of individuals who 
would make policy for the school and determine how the school is run, 
in accordance with certain principles and standards that the District 
of Columbia sets.
  That is a movement that is in effect across the country in at least 
25 States. New York does not have it yet, but charter schools were 
accepted by the people of Washington as a way to experiment and to 
encourage improvement of our public schools.
  Ninety-five percent of the children of America will go to public 
schools in the next 10 years. No matter what is done, even if you had 
an implementation of the voucher program on a large scale, you could 
not do it in the next 10 to 20 years to any great degree, so 90 to 95 
percent of our children are going to go to public schools. Let us 
improve the public schools.
  My colleague in the Congress who now has retired, Floyd Flake, is an 
advocate for vouchers all over the country. He will tell us that polls 
show that large numbers of African American parents favor vouchers. Why 
do they favor vouchers? Because they are fed up, overwhelmed, they do 
not think they can improve public schools, and they are the ones who 
say, I will take anything, I will try anything.
  Let us lay aside my problem with vouchers and say, okay, what if you 
decided to implement vouchers tomorrow in Floyd Flake's school 
district? Congressman Flake is a minister, has a big cathedral, does a 
very good job of taking care of his parishioners. They have a school. 
The school already has a long waiting list.
  If we give him vouchers, if we give students in that area vouchers 
and say, go to Congressman Flake, go to his school, he cannot take any 
more. Or suppose we give him the authority to expand outside of his 
school, all the vouchers you need. You have a system that the parents 
believe in. Whatever you are doing is working. Go to it. What would 
happen? Pastor Flake would have to create a bureaucracy. He would have 
to set up a personnel system. He would have to set up a custodian 
system. He would have to do all the things that a local education 
agency does. He would run into the same problems. He would have to 
recruit large numbers of teachers. He could not personally interview 
them all. He could not get the same quality that he gets in his church 
school.
  There are a number of problems that have to be solved by public 
policy action, and if we turn the system over to the private sector, to 
the church, whoever, they are going to have the same problems. What 
they do now is skim across the top and get the best students, in many 
cases, but certainly a select number of students. That cannot solve the 
problem.
  I have said these things many times here. I hate to go on and on. But 
I think it would be savage for this Congress to go on doing the 
outrageous kinds of things we have been doing. We have just passed a 
bill where we are going to make America competitive by going outside. 
Instead of developing the brain power here, we want to go outside.
  It is not just the public schools, but we are attacking our own 
higher education institutions. We passed the Higher Education 
Assistance Act 2 weeks ago, and it had no new initiatives in it to deal 
with the problem that America needs more and more people who are 
college-educated. Instead, we are playing with affirmative action, 
trying to destroy diversity in the universities. For some kind of 
irrational reasons, we are attacking the higher education system to 
make it smaller instead of larger.
  In New York City, they are not attacking affirmative action, they do 
not use the term ``affirmative action,'' but there is a broad-scale 
attack on the country's oldest public university, City University of 
New York. It is the oldest public university, and there is a sustained 
attack to try to downsize and gut that institution. That is what the 
board of trustees is being forced to do right now. Massive political 
intervention has taken place, and people on the board of trustees are 
carrying out orders from above. In the interests of saving money, they 
say, they want to greatly downsize the City University of New York.
  How are they going to do it? Set new standards for all the senior 
colleges. You cannot get in if you need remediation. You can get into 
Yale, Harvard, and a few other colleges across the country if you need 
some remediation. Remediation, 80 percent of the schools in the United 
States have some form of remediation, because by now we know in this 
world that people do not come packaged perfectly. They do not have an 
excellent student in science and math, an excellent student in verbal 
reasoning, an excellent student in languages. Lots of students have 
some deficiencies, or they cannot excel in all three of those. That is 
recognized.

  In this kind of high-tech economy, we do not want to cut off our nose 
to spite our face. Why get rid of talented people because they have one 
thing missing? We need the creativity of students, no matter what their 
forte may be, no matter how strong they are in one area versus another, 
if they are creative. What makes the American economy go, what makes 
the high-tech industry go, is creativity.
  Bill Gates and his fellow entrepreneurs were not people who would 
pass all the tests for assessment as they went into college. They were 
not people who necessarily would score highest on the highest tests. 
They were people who had imagination, and the Bill Gates of today is 
not using his math and science skills to build one of the world's 
largest businesses, or probably the largest, most profitable business 
in the world. He is now not using algebra, trigonometry, calculus, 
differential equations. That has nothing to do with his ability to 
maneuver this system, to organize large numbers of people and focus 
them on various tasks, that has now led to him being accused of 
monopolizing and threatening certain segments of the economy.
  These are creative people from many walks of life. That is what makes 
America go. We do not score as high across the world on a lot of these 
tests that are given. I think we should not take that lightly. Our 
students should score higher on math and science, and they should 
compete with other students throughout the rest of the world, but what 
they cannot measure is creativity, creativity. Our students are 
probably the most creative in the world. That is how our economy, with 
its flexibility, is able to keep growing when other economies are 
having great difficulty.
  So City College, City University of New York, the trustees are also 
going to be guilty of savage behavior. It will be a savage policy to 
shut out large numbers of students by saying that they cannot enter any 
one of the senior colleges if they need remediation.
  They have gone further to say the 2-year colleges, you can only have 
remediation for a little while, or the proposal is being pushed by the 
mayor that says the colleges should not have remediation programs at 
all. There should be institutes that provide remediation. They should 
be summer institutes. You have a young person who comes out of high 
school who may be creative, have talent, which is what the City 
University has shown.
  Eighty percent of the students do graduate. A large number have 
deficiencies when they come in as freshmen, but the new atmosphere of 
the

[[Page H3621]]

college campus is a new beginning for the student. Their latent 
talents, creativity, energy, is changed by being there on a college 
campus.
  If you say to the student when he comes out of high school, you 
cannot get into college, you cannot set foot on the campus until you 
spend the summer in an institute to make certain that you pass the 
assessment tests in math, writing, languages, whatever, reading, you 
will turn off large numbers.
  The California policy of anti-affirmative action, anti-diversity, has 
cut away large numbers of minority students, Hispanic and African 
American students. City University will chop off the head of 
opportunity for even more with this remediation policy.
  I spoke to the Board of Trustees of City University on April 20. I am 
a Congressman. I have been on the Committee on Education and the Work 
Force for 16 years. I thought they might give me a little more than 3 
minutes, especially since I chided them for not bothering to come to 
Washington all during the time when we were considering the Higher 
Education Assistance Act.
  In previous years, and we consider the Higher Education Assistance 
Act every 5 years, in the previous 2 times we have reauthorized the 
Act, we have had representatives from the City University of New York, 
the State University of New York. New York was very much absent this 
time in the consideration of the most important piece of higher 
education legislation. They were not there.
  I chided them for not coming to us, but here I was in front of them. 
I hoped they would give me more than 3 minutes, but they did not. I 
think the chairman did give me an extra minute, so I had 4 minutes to 
speak. The bureaucratic secretary sat there and nearly had a heart 
attack because the chairman was allowing the Congressman who sits on 
the Education Committee in Washington to speak for 1 more minute. Just 
one more piece of ridiculous behavior.
  At any rate, I am going to read some portions of the statement, 
because I want to sum up tonight my concern that the commonsense 
mandate for action on education is being ignored here in Washington, 
education at every level. We are ignoring education at the elementary 
and secondary level. We are not providing the kind of national 
assistance.
  This garbage about local control is garbage. With local control, we 
were almost unprepared to fight World War II. Local control meant no 
programs for health for the masses of the population. We had unhealthy, 
emaciated bodies reporting to the draft. Local control is probably some 
of the worst government in the country at the local level. I hear the 
majority keep glorifying local control, State control. Some of the 
greatest amount of corruption, ineptness, and mismanagement is at the 
local level in our government and at the State level.

                              {time}  2200

  So there is no magic here. Local control of education has led us to 
where we are now. We are in trouble.
  The Federal Government is only responsible for about 8 percent, 
between 7 and 8 percent of the budget for education in this country. 
With all the money spent on education, the Federal Government is 
responsible for only 7 or 8 percent. Most of that goes to higher 
education so a very tiny amount of the Federal budget goes to 
elementary and secondary education.
  We have very little voice. They keep saying that mandates from the 
Federal Government do this. It really is a very small amount of policy 
interference that takes place as a result of requiring local 
governments to meet certain conditions in order to receive Federal 
money. This is all garbage. If we gave the schools of America, the 
local education agencies in the States 25 percent of the funding 
instead of 8 percent, we could only have 25 percent of the controls 
still. I mean, we could increase the amount of resources from the 
Federal Government from 8 to 25 percent and still the local governments 
and the States would have 75 percent control, 75 percent of the 
responsibility for funding, 75 percent of the control.
  We ought to move toward the goal of 25 percent Federal funding for 
our education system. Education is the primary ingredient and component 
of national security. The greatness of the Nation, the economy of the 
Nation, it all is dependent on an educated populace. It all falls back 
on this American competitiveness. To have our competitiveness now 
linked to foreign professionals coming in to take care of our needs is 
ridiculous. We are going in just the wrong direction. We are making 
some stupid decisions and certainly making some savage decisions.
  In the case of City University, instead of exploring the 
vulnerabilities of City University, the board of trustees and all the 
leaders of the city should be approaching the weaknesses creatively and 
try to transform the shortcomings of City University into 
opportunities. All over the world, the education of masses of youth 
emerging from educationally-deprived backgrounds is a vital challenge 
to the process of building a new global society with abundant supplies 
of indigenous leadership.
  Mr. Speaker, I will submit my entire statement of testimony to the 
board of trustees of the City University of New York on April 30, 1998. 
I want the entire statement to be included in the Record so that those 
who did not have a chance to hear it will be able to read it.
  I want to conclude by saying that City University is the oldest 
public university in the country. The bulk of the students, great 
majority of the students, now more than ever, 80 to 90 percent come out 
of the public schools of New York City. So the public schools of New 
York City, for all that they have had to go through all these many 
years, have produced products that were able to go through the higher 
education process and emerge.
  There are numerous Nobel Prize winners that have come out of City 
University. Some people say, well, that was a long time ago. No. There 
are people who graduated very recently who also are Nobel Prize 
winners. Nobel Prizes for medicine, Nobel Prizes for physics, Nobel 
Prizes for economics, Nobel Prizes for a whole range of items that have 
come out of City University. Their graduates are teaching and have 
higher positions in universities all across the country. They have been 
sort of missionaries to the higher education community throughout the 
whole country.
  Why now are leaders without vision attempting to wipe out the 
effective City University? Two hundred thousand students go to City 
University on a regular basis and more than 100,000 go in the evening. 
It is a massive educational undertaking. It would be savage, stupid and 
savage to destroy that institution.
  It would be stupid and savage for the Congress of the United States 
to ignore education this year, not to fund a construction initiative, 
not to fund an initiative which would bring down class sizes, not to 
fund an initiative which would meet the information technology needs of 
this country with students in this country, with workers that come from 
the families in this country.
  Why go outside to India or any other place to bring in information 
technology workers and say that they are necessary to save America? Why 
define American competitiveness by the use of foreign brainpower? Why 
not develop our own brainpower? Why continue down this absurd road of 
Lysenkoism, of superstition, of dogma which says that only vouchers and 
only privatization is important and ignore the fact that the President 
has put before us a sensible agenda, $22 billion program for school 
construction, a program to lower class sizes, a program to increase 
reading readiness, a program to improve schools by increasing the 
amount of funds available for technology in the schools?
  All of this is relevant, and it all relates to where we are in the 
world today. Our national security and our economy is directly 
dependent on our education system. The American people know this. 
Common sense tells them this. That is why education is a high priority. 
We should not let this session end without responding to the common 
sense mandate for action on education.
  Mr. Speaker, I include for the Record the testimony to which I 
referred:

    Testimony to be Presented to the Board of Trustees of the City 
   University of New York by Congressman Major Owens, April 20, 1998

       Instead of exploiting the vulnerabilities of CUNY, we 
     should approach the weaknesses

[[Page H3622]]

     creatively and we must transform shortcomings into 
     opportunities.
       All over the world the education of masses of youth 
     emerging from educationally deprived backgrounds is a vital 
     challenge to the process of building a new global society 
     with abundant supplies of indigenous leadership. If we meet 
     this challenge of educating those who arrive in our college 
     classrooms with inadequate preparation here in New York, in 
     CUNY; if we can take freshmen from impoverished backgrounds 
     with enormous skills deficits but who have normal brains and 
     great potential; if we can take this kind of raw material and 
     create productive and independent citizens able to take care 
     of themselves and also serve as leaders; if we can seize the 
     situation which presently confronts us; then we will have a 
     system that produces a priceless global product. Using New 
     York's great and enormously diverse population we will have 
     developed a blueprint, a model for higher education which 
     would be applicable anywhere in the world. The world market 
     for such a service is almost unlimited; it would be a product 
     of the highest value.
       What is happening here in New York at CUNY is a tragedy. At 
     a pivotal point in the life of this city, as we approach the 
     dawn of the 21st century, there are confused but powerful 
     forces in this city which are turning a time for triumph into 
     a time for tears.
       President Clinton has rightfully referred to America as the 
     indispensable nation. It is not exaggerating to state that in 
     this indispensable nation, New York is the indispensable 
     City. In order for this City to maintain its rightful place 
     and fully realize its destiny an open, thriving, creative 
     CUNY is an indispensable institution. CUNY is the jewel in 
     the crown of our unique urban civilization.
       This is the moment at which we must rally our better 
     instincts, our common sense; we must rally our cultivated 
     logic and receptivity to the evidence provided by well-known 
     studies. Such studies show that the record of CUNY is a 
     laudable one. Consider the fact that the cost to educate a 
     single student at Harvard is about $30,000 per year; the cost 
     at taxpayer supported West Point is more than $120,000 per 
     year. Despite its shoestring budgets and repeated fiscal 
     harassments, CUNY has endured over many years, CUNY still 
     stands in the ranks of the greatest in its production of 
     outstanding scholars, scientists and international prize 
     winners.
       Oh what a tragedy indeed it would be if the enterprising 
     citizens of New York would stand idly by and allow the 
     destruction of this great monument to the genius of ordinary 
     people. As silent intimidated sheep we can not allow the 
     mutilation of this oldest and most magnificent system for the 
     promotion of maximum educational opportunity for the greatest 
     number. What a tragedy it would be if those with blurred 
     visions and tiny spirits are allowed to oppress this greatest 
     vehicle for insuring progress and economic justice in our 
     city.
       Open enrollment is not our enemy. Remediation is not a 
     terrorist tactic. If education is the way out of welfare then 
     why are powerful forces rushing to close the doors of 
     educational opportunity. The trumpet has sounded for 
     leadership from within CUNY. Board of trustees; faculty 
     senates; presidents, and full-time and adjunct faculties; 
     student governments; student bodies; all together you 
     comprise an aggregate more than 215,000 strong. You 
     collectively represent the best educated and most aspiring 
     among us. You have the capacity to utilize an Athenian style 
     democracy not driven by the uninformed and the philistines. 
     CUNY must refined its own mission; CUNY must confront its 
     pockets of internal corruption; CUNY must arouse itself from 
     snugness and complacency; CUNY must accept the continuing 
     challenge that the founders envisioned.
       Following the principle that education adds value to each 
     individual, we must seek ways to provide more and better 
     education for all of our citizens. As our society grows more 
     complex higher education becomes not a luxury but an obvious 
     necessity. We should not shrink from the obligation to 
     educate and add value to students at the lowest possible 
     cost. Education at CUNY is still a bargain for our taxpayers; 
     it is far cheaper than incarceration and still cheaper than 
     welfare dependency. New York City alone will need thousands 
     of new teachers over the next 10 years. The nation will need 
     more than a million new Information Technology workers over 
     this same decade. Let's educate and claim our rightful share 
     of these new positions. CUNY enrollments should not be 
     restricted. CUNY enrollments must be expanded.
       In closing let me summarize my recommendations as follows.
       1. To address the problem of excessive student remediation 
     time and to make reasonable adjustments in admissions 
     procedures, the campus presidents and faculty senates as well 
     as other relevant higher education policy-making entities 
     must be given no less than 6 months to prepare and present a 
     comprehensive plan to the CUNY Board of Trustees.
       2. To allow CUNY to appropriately address the problems of 
     remediation and the maintenance of standards of excellence as 
     well as the problems of gross infrastructure inadequacies and 
     student-teacher ratios. The Board of Trustees must unite 
     with the presidents; faculties and students, and the 
     elected officials to present a full assessment of CUNY's 
     needs as compared to similar public institutions in other 
     states. This assessment shall serve as a blueprint for an 
     immediate infusion of federal, state and city capital and 
     operating funds to achieve the overhaul necessary for the 
     building of a greater CUNY.
       3. The CUNY Board of Trustees shall assume the 
     responsibility for the issuance of an annual CUNY Report to 
     the Citizens of New York detailing its progress on overcoming 
     weaknesses and its short-term and long-term plans for the 
     future. Open public hearing fully covered by the CUNY Cable 
     Television Channel 75 must be held following the issuance of 
     this annual report.
       4. That the CUNY Board of Trustees immediately order that a 
     minimum of two regularly scheduled hours of time be set aside 
     each week on the CUNY Channel 75 for the presentation of a 
     cross-section of viewpoints on the present CUNY restructuring 
     discussions and on CUNY policies in general.
       5. That the CUNY Board of Trustees also support the 
     following two initiatives presented in attachments to this 
     statement.
       A. An amendment to the Higher Education Assistance Act 
     which proposes the establishment of partnerships between 
     higher education institutions and community based 
     organizations to sponsor store front computer and 
     telecommunications training centers.
       B. A proposal for greater CUNY involvement in promoting the 
     immediate and long-term fiscal stability and prosperity of 
     New York City.
       CUNY must not allow itself to be invaded and oppressed by 
     barbarians. Outsiders of any kind should not be allowed to 
     stampede CUNY into destructive restructuring. CUNY must be 
     held accountable by citizens and public officials but CUNY 
     should never be invaded; it should never be conquered and it 
     should never be occupied by political and philistine forces.
       At CUNY we need scholarly expertise combined with the 
     wisdom of the best and most experienced leadership in this 
     city to correct, redesign, and refine that which exists 
     already. At CUNY we need giant minds and extraordinary 
     spirits to usher and lift a good university to a new level of 
     greatness in the 21st century. New York is the nation's 
     indispensable city. In this indispensable city, the 
     institution that is most clearly indispensable for a 
     prosperous future is CUNY.


 Fiscal Future Challenges for New York City Institutions for Colleges 
                            and Universities

       Economic Development and Revenue.
       Each institution should have a tourism promotion program to 
     facilitate bringing in visitors for conferences, conventions, 
     seminars, etc.
       Each should forge linkages with ``sister colleges'' 
     throughout the Nation and the world.
       Each institution should have one or several in-depth 
     cultural and language institutes and/or collections related 
     to a nationality, ethnic, or religious group. It should 
     declare itself a ``world center'' for that group.
       Each institution should be related to the development of 
     some museum or annual exhibition or festival with linkages to 
     some recurring tourism events.
       Each institution should organize and support an enhanced 
     sports and game program in recognition of the rapidly 
     expanding dollar value of all aspects of the sports and game 
     industries.
       Each institution should develop an organized program for 
     promoting on-campus student entrepreneurs and industries 
     located in the vicinity of the campus which employ students. 
     Industries utilizing faculty knowledge and expertise should 
     share profits with the colleges.
       Each institution should have an organized and highly 
     visible volunteer corps available to assist with city 
     emergencies and special projects showing the taxpayers that 
     students are an integral part of the life of the city while 
     enhancing the compassion image of the city.

                          ____________________