[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 84 (Wednesday, June 24, 1998)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6918-S6935]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




   EDUCATIONAL SAVINGS AND SCHOOL EXCELLENCE ACT OF 1996--CONFERENCE 
                                 REPORT

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the Senate will now 
resume consideration of the conference report accompanying H.R. 2646, 
which the clerk will report.
  The assistant legislative clerk read as follows:

       Conference Report on H.R. 2646 to amend the Internal 
     Revenue Code of 1986 to allow tax-free expenditures from 
     education individual retirement accounts for elementary and 
     secondary school expenses, to increase the maximum annual 
     amount of contributions to such accounts, and for other 
     purposes.

  The Senate resumed consideration of the conference report.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Massachusetts, Mr. Kerry, is 
recognized to speak up to 10 minutes.
  Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, it is my understanding I have available 
some leadership time, so I yield myself additional time, if necessary, 
under the leadership time.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I just heard the majority leader call this 
one of the most important bills for education that the Senate could 
pass, and he hoped that the President would sign it. I regret that I 
must disagree with the judgment of the majority leader. This could have 
been one of the most important bills that we pass. We had an 
opportunity in the Senate to be able to really deal with the broad 
issue of education reform and the education needs of our Nation, but 
this bill does not do it. What it does do, it does in a way that winds 
up being a perpetuation of the divisions in our country between those 
who have and those who do not, and a division between our school 
communities in what is available to our children to be able to get the 
best education in our country.
  So I would not only say to the President don't sign it, I would say 
veto it. This is a bill that, in its current form, deserves to be 
vetoed. Why? The bill is definitely better than the bill that left the 
floor of the Senate. It is better because the Gorton amendment, which 
put all of our education assistance into a block grant, is gone. It is 
gone for good reason, because it would be an enormous mistake to make 
that judgment in the country where education is in such enormous need 
of help. Education now, obviously, is the most important focus of the 
Nation in terms of revitalizing our democracy, making a skilled labor 
pool available to all facets of our high value-added job base, to the 
technology future we know is coming, and to the management of 
information, all of which requires a first-rate elementary and 
secondary school system. This bill, regrettably, through the Gorton 
amendment, would have diminished our ability to achieve that.
  The bill, also, in its current form, doesn't do any of that--and I 
will speak to that in a moment.
  The second reason why it is better in its current form is that the 
bill no longer has a prohibition on the ability of people to implement 
testing standards. Obviously, at a time when our schools are struggling 
to be able to produce a verifiable and accountable product, it is 
critical for us not to deprive those schools of the ability to adhere 
to some kind of national measurement of what we are and are not 
achieving. Parents all across this Nation want to know that their 
children are, indeed, learning something. So it is important that we 
now have empowered the schools to be able to conduct some kind of a 
test that measures that, on a voluntary basis. It allows them to say, 
``Here is what they are accomplishing in California, here is what they 
are doing in Massachusetts, here is what they are doing in Georgia. Is 
there something that we are not doing in our State that maybe we ought 
to that would allow us to be able to do a better job?''
  So that is why it is better. The answer to the question why this 
particular bill still deserves to be vetoed is very simple. I am in 
favor of a savings program for our parents to be able to send their 
kids to school, and particularly to a school of choice. This bill, in 
wisdom, says: Private, parochial, public--you choose. That is good. 
That is part of what this country is. But the basic choice that it is 
giving to those parents is, in my judgment--I say this respectfully 
to my friends who support it--fundamentally flawed because, according 
to the Treasury Department, 70 percent of the benefit of the savings 
account given in this bill will go to the top 20 percent income earners 
in America.

  I know my colleague will try to refute that, but the facts are the 
facts. If you earn $45,000 or less in this country, the tax benefit to 
you through this bill is $2.50, on average. But if you are in the 
higher income-earning area, because of the benefit of a tax credit, you 
will get upwards of $96 or so. So what this bill does is comfort the 
comfortable and do very little to assist the problems of those who are 
in the most challenged areas of our school system in this Nation. And 
that is wrong.
  I asked my colleagues how they can come to the floor of the U.S. 
Senate for the last 3\1/2\ weeks--the Senator from Texas, Senator 
Gramm, the Senator from Missouri, Senator Ashcroft--with this 
extraordinary concern for the working poor of America. By God, we 
weren't going to pass a tax bill in this Senate that somehow fell 
disproportionately on blue-collar, working-class people who went out 
and bought a pack of cigarettes. For weeks the Senate was subjected to 
the notion that our friends on the other side of the aisle really do 
care about working people and the burden that they bear. And the first 
bill to come along after that debate turns around and offers a classic 
Republican giveaway to those who are already earning the most in 
America.

[[Page S6919]]

  The second reason why this bill, I think, deserves to be rejected is 
it really does not deal with the problems of our school system today. 
It just does not deal with them. It is all well and good to say to a 
parent: ``We are going to give you this tiny little bit of savings. If 
you earn less than $45,000 a year, you are going to get $2.50.'' That 
is amazing. You are not going to be able to do much with that. And if 
you are even in the upper end, let's look at what they get. On an 
annual basis maybe in the $90 range, somewhere like that--$96.
  What is lacking in our schools is far more profound than what this 
bill is ever going to address. All across this country we have 
secondary and elementary schools that are failing. We also have some 
extraordinarily successful public schools in the country. We designate 
some of them annually as blue ribbon schools, and the Department of 
Education singles them out and gives them an award for being a very 
special school.
  I have taken some time to go into those schools to try to find out 
why is one school a blue ribbon school and another school, maybe 10 
blocks away or two districts away, is failing. Almost invariably you 
will find in the school that is a success a hybrid relationship that 
has been built up between the school committee and the school board and 
the teachers and the principal. And absolutely without fail, in the 
school that is very successful you will find a principal who is 
extraordinarily capable, energized, very skilled in leadership 
capacity, who has worked out a very special relationship with the 
school board so they can move teachers who need to be moved who are not 
performing correctly, who has brought parents into the school, and who 
has created a dynamic in that school that makes it special.
  In effect, what has happened is that in those successful schools, you 
have effectively created a kind of charter school. What I proposed last 
week in some public comments is the notion that what we really ought to 
be doing, if we are going to talk about education reform, is figure out 
how we stop talking past each other in the U.S. Senate, how we stop 
bringing these sort of Band-Aid, stop-gap measures to the floor, 
pretending that we are dealing with education reform in America with 
$2.50 to $96, when the real issue of education reform is how do you 
create accountability in a system that is imploding on itself? How do 
you create a system where teachers can be brought in, even from the 
liberal arts, rather than just from the education monopoly that we have 
created? How do you create a system where we are going to attract a 
whole new wave of principals with the capacity to offer the kind of 
leadership I have talked about? How do you create a system where you 
can move those teachers out of the system who are burnt out, or who are 
unwilling to improve sufficiently to raise our kids to the standards 
that we want? These are the real issues of education reform.
  We are going to lose 2 million teachers in America in the next 10 
years. We have to hire an additional 2 million teachers. If we are 
reduced to hiring from the current pool that is available, a pool where 
we know the SAT scores and the ACT scores are universally lower than in 
any other discipline that tests in the United States--that is the 
pool--and that we lose 40 percent of those teachers in the first 4 
years, we are asking ourselves a set of very serious questions that are 
not being asked on the floor of the U.S. Senate. You cannot attract 
teachers out of most of the colleges that I represent in Massachusetts, 
whether it is the University of Massachusetts or BU or MIT or Boston 
College or any number of schools--Clark University, you name it. We 
have 136 of them in our State, one of the best networks of universities 
and colleges in America.

  But when I go to those campuses, and I turn to the kids, and I say, 
``Are you thinking of teaching?'' I might get one hand raised out of 
150. And one of the primary reasons for that is, you cannot tell a kid 
who has $20,000 to $50,000 to $100,000 worth of student loans that it 
is of value to them to go teach when they are going to be fundamentally 
indentured servants for the rest of their lives. If they get a master's 
degree and maybe even a Ph.D., they can eke their way up into the high 
forties, fifties, sixties in some school systems, but their peers are 
going to be earning a lot more than that.
  We do not value teaching in America. We pretend we do, but we do not 
value it. We have left our schools in a state of chaos, where they are 
competing with districts that have a lot more money, a lot more 
security, a lot more capacity to make ends meet. And then we wonder why 
things are imploding. This bill does not do anything to really help 
that, except, I might add, to encourage the flight from the school 
system that is already in trouble.
  Mr. President, I have news for my friends in the U.S. Senate. There 
are not enough vouchers, there are not enough savings programs to go 
around to save the public school system, which is the place where 90 
percent of the children of America go to school. So you give a few 
vouchers and you give a few savings plans, and a few kids are going to 
opt to go to a parochial school or somewhere else, but, meanwhile, what 
is happening to pull that other system back from the brink?
  I have heard people make the argument, it is immoral to leave 1,000 
kids in the Washington, DC system, for instance. And the answer is, 
yes, it is. But it is even more immoral to say that we are satisfied, 
as the richest Nation on the face of the Earth, to simply save the 
1,000 and not do something for the other 4,000 that are left behind.
  That is essentially what this bill says. It says that it is OK to 
come along and offer the wealthiest people in America, who already have 
the best school systems, a little more help to take their kids out of 
the system that most needs help today.
  I think we ought to find ourselves in a middle ground. I believe the 
whole teacher certification process needs change. If we are going to 
attract 2 million new teachers of the quality that we want, we need 
desperately to change the way in which we have created this education 
monopoly within the teacher certification process. We need to be able 
to attract even liberal arts graduates, people out of government, 
people out of corporations, and bring them into the system and let them 
teach.
  We need to liberate our principals from the layers of bureaucracy 
that are literally snuffing out creativity in too many of our schools. 
We need to encourage the capacity of teachers who have burnt out or do 
not want to pursue further skills and raise the standards of the 
schools. We need to find ways to encourage them, decently and in a 
humane way, to move to some other discipline or at least to raise the 
standard within that school. And we clearly need to provide principals 
the ability to be able to manage locally and make things work.
  You look at what is happening out in Chicago with Mayor Daley who has 
instituted a tough system. If kids fail a class during the year, they 
take summer school. And if they fail the summer school, they repeat the 
grade. And the way he did it was by breaking through bureaucracy and 
breaking through the system and making certain that he was going to be 
able to institute that as the mayor, regardless of where the politics 
of the school board and everybody else were.
  I believe that that is the kind of effort that the U.S. Senate ought 
to be encouraging broadly across this country. That is the kind of real 
reform that is going to make a difference in teacher tenure, which 
needs to be changed. Teacher certification needs to be changed. Teacher 
pay needs to be changed. Principals and accountability need to be 
changed. Recruiting of teachers across the country needs to be changed.
  How much time have I used?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator has used 5 minutes.
  Mr. KERRY. I have used--
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. You have used 5 minutes of leader time.
  Mr. KERRY. So I used all the time available?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. That is correct.
  Mr. KERRY. I simply say to my friend from Georgia, I hope the time 
will come that we will get both sides of the fence here talking about 
real, broad, systemic reform that will save the public school system of 
this country.
  Mr. COVERDELL. Mr. President, I am going to yield 5 minutes to the 
distinguished Senator from Connecticut.

[[Page S6920]]

  Before the Senator from Massachusetts leaves, I just have to make 
this point, that the families who are eligible to participate in these 
savings accounts are identical, the very same families and same 
criteria designed by the President for his savings accounts that we 
passed last year and celebrated on the White House lawn. There is not 
one comma different. We cannot celebrate it on the one hand, the 
President's savings accounts, and say this one is just for the wealthy. 
They are the same.
  I yield 5 minutes to the Senator from Connecticut.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Connecticut.
  Mr. LIEBERMAN. I thank the President and thank my friend from 
Georgia.
  Mr. President, as the remarks from my friend from Massachusetts 
indicate, there is a broad and shared concern about the quality of 
education in our country today that is felt by every Member of this 
Senate. And I think the question is, What do we do about it? Can we go 
from that concern to making something happen that will improve the 
future of our children?
  There is no cure-all here. The way to begin is with a simple, small, 
but potentially significant idea such as that involved in these 
education savings accounts. The question is, Will we break out of our 
own sense that our idea is the only idea that will work and listen to 
those who have a different idea or get together on common ground to 
allow 1,000 flowers to blossom, to allow doors to open up, to allow a 
host of reform ideas across this country to be tried?

  That is exactly the spirit of the education savings account bill 
before us. This is not a bill that comforts the comforted. This is a 
bill that lightens the burden on the overburdened middle class families 
of this country who are struggling to enable their children to realize 
their dream of a better education and therefore a better life ahead of 
them.
  As the Senator from Georgia says, the income limits in this bill are 
exactly what they were in the bill that we all voted for. It had strong 
bipartisan support last year. The Joint Tax Committee analysis of this 
bill says that 70 percent of the tax benefit from these expanded 
savings accounts will go to families with annual incomes of less than 
$75,000. That is the middle class--working, struggling, trying to find 
a way to get their kids to rise on the ladder of American life, and 
knowing that the way to do that is with a better education.
  Mr. President, it is true, there are very few poor families who are 
going to be able to afford to take advantage of this bill. Some will. 
But I say to my colleagues who want to help the poorest families, 
support the school choice voucher scholarship bill that Senator Coats 
and I have put before this Senate and that we will offer as an 
amendment within the next month or two.
  This is a small step forward to encourage parents to do exactly what 
the President and the Secretary of Education have asked them to do, 
which is to get more involved in the education of their children, to 
save--most of the benefit of this bill will be used by parents of kids 
in public schools. And the truth is, because the benefits of this bill 
go right on through college and graduate school, most of the savings 
will be used for college and graduate school.
  Mr. President, I know the President of the United States has 
indicated that he will veto this bill. I appeal to him to reconsider 
that statement. This is a good bill that ought to be the basis of a 
broader agreement on how to give the parents and children and teachers 
and school administrators of our country some room to innovate reform 
and improve the quality of public education.
  I urge the President not to use that veto pen, but instead to ask my 
colleague from Georgia and others who support this bill to come up to 
the White House. Let us sit down and reason together and see whether we 
can use this bill as the basis of a broader agreement on education 
improvement in our country.
  The conference committee, the majority of whom were members of the 
Republican Party, took some steps in the direction of accommodation. 
They removed the school block grant and the testing amendments which 
were objectionable to most Democrats. That creates a spirit of 
compromise. I urge the President to respond to that by moving toward 
the sponsors of this bill and seeing if we can attach to it, in some 
fashion here legislatively, some of the school construction and 
reduction of school size proposals that are good proposals that the 
President has made.
  The point is, this conference report offers us an opportunity. Let's 
not respond to it defensively and rigidly. Let's keep in mind not the 
status quo, those with a vested interest in the status quo of our 
education system, but the millions of our children who are not 
receiving a good education in our schools today. Let's give them the 
opportunity to dream and realize their dreams.
  I thank my colleagues. I urge a vote for this conference report.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Kempthorne). The Senator from Idaho.
  Mr. COVERDELL. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Connecticut 
for his arduous efforts on behalf of education reform. I yield up to 10 
minutes to the distinguished Senator from California.
  Mrs. FEINSTEIN. I thank the Chair and I thank the Senator from 
Georgia.
  Mr. President, when this bill was last before this body, I voted 
against it. I voted against it because it had some amendments to which 
I could not agree. Those amendments have been removed by the conference 
committee. I am very pleased to announce my support for this bill.
  To some, this bill will not be politically correct. For me, it is 
time to try new initiatives in education and to be guided in the future 
not necessarily by what is politically correct, but by what works in 
the homes, in the families and in the schools all across this great 
country.
  If this bill encourages savings for education, our country will be 
better for it. If it encourages parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles 
to help their families' children become educated, this will be a major 
achievement. I believe this bill will help. I am happy to support it. 
I, too, urge the President of the United States reconsider and to not 
veto it.
  I have heard this bill called many things, but let's analyze for a 
moment what this bill does do. It increases the limit of contributions 
from $500 to $2,000 for an education savings account which is currently 
available for postsecondary education. Thus, families will be able to 
quadruple the annual contributions they can now make into education 
savings accounts. It allows families to spend the money from these 
accounts on elementary and secondary education, both public and 
private.
  Of course, there is the rub. Some feel we should not provide anything 
for private education. I disagree. The bill enables people other than 
parents--grandparents, aunts, uncles--to contribute to a niece, nephew, 
or grandchild's education and to get a small tax deduction for so 
doing. It provides grants to States to implement teacher testing and 
merit pay programs at a time when everyone is concerned about education 
and sees that teaching is one of the most productive investments we can 
make to improve learning. It allows schools to use existing state 
school innovation funds (ESEA Title IV) funds to reward schools with 
grants when they demonstrate high achievement. It allows weapons 
brought to school to be admitted as evidence in any internal school 
disciplinary proceeding, the bill I introduced with Senator Byron 
Dorgan.
  Now, the key feature of this bill is that it creates incentives for 
people to save for education. Some have said this bill benefits the 
rich. I disagree. These accounts would be available to couples earning 
under $150,000 a year and to single people earning under $95,000 a 
year. This will help many Americans.
  A major reason I support this bill is that Americans are not good 
savers. Our current savings rate has dropped from 4.3 percent in 1996 
to 3.8 percent in 1997. Americans today save at one-third the rate that 
people save in Germany, at one-third the rate they save in France, and 
at one-third the rate they save in Italy.
  If this bill encourages people to save for the education of their 
children--whether they use that in public education, in private 
education, in religious education--I am all for it. The point is, let's 
encourage America's families to save for education. If we

[[Page S6921]]

fail to save for education, if we fail to place a value on education, 
we will sink as a first-class society. That is what I think is the 
overwhelming message of this bill--we value education.

  As has been said, the Joint Tax Committee has estimated that 58 
percent--that is nearly 60 percent--of the tax benefit would accrue to 
those taxpayers filing 10.8 million returns with children in public 
schools. In California, out of 13 million tax returns filed, 10.4 
million or 78 percent of tax returns reflect earnings under $50,000. 
The average per capita income in California in 1998 is $28,500. One out 
of every four students lives with a single parent. This bill could, in 
fact, help many Californians.
  Let's take the example of a family that earns less than $30,000 a 
year. And if you have a grandparent who could save and contribute, an 
aunt who could save and contribute, an uncle who could save and 
contribute, this bill gives them an incentive to save for their 
grandchild or niece or nephew. Plus, we are saying we value this kind 
of savings. After all, if we can authorize it for postsecondary 
education, why don't we authorize it for primary education? The reason 
is simple: Some people here say you shouldn't provide anything for 
private schooling. I say if a family can accumulate savings and thus 
have a choice of whatever school they want their youngster to go to, as 
long as that youngster receives a good education, is that not really 
what government is all about?
  Mr. President, I am very happy to support this bill. I want to make 
one other comment. I am particularly pleased that the conferees 
accepted the Safer Schools Act of 1998. This provision is based upon a 
bill which Senator Dorgan and I introduced. It ensures that if a 
student brings a gun to school, the gun will be admissible as evidence 
in any school disciplinary hearing. As we are all acutely aware, we 
have seen a wave of tragedy in recent months involving students 
shooting other students. It goes without saying that schools should be 
safe places. Schools should be for books and learning, not guns and 
shooting. So I hope we will take comprehensive action to reduce these 
tragedies in the coming months. I would like to work with those who 
want to help do just that.
  In the meantime, I am pleased that we are taking this common-sense 
step today to reduce the risk by ensuring that our schools can safely 
expel students who bring guns into their school.
  In summary, again, to some this bill is simply not politically 
correct. To me, it encourages American families to save for what is the 
most vital aspect of American life and that is giving our youngsters a 
good education. People can put their money into an IRA and they can 
then use this money based on their own choice for public education, for 
tutoring, for books and tuition, for private education or for religious 
education. I believe the time has come to try new initiatives.
  I thank Senator Coverdell, Senator Torricelli, and those who have 
proposed and supported this legislation. I am happy to join with them.

  I thank the Chair and I yield the floor.
  Mr. BINGAMAN addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Who yields time?
  Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, I yield myself 5 minutes from the 
leader's time.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Mexico is recognized.
  Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, I will oppose the Coverdell education 
IRA bill. In my view, it provides precious little help to parents and 
even less help to schools. The IRA provisions of the bill do not 
provide any real opportunity for schools to improve themselves. In the 
debate we had here in the Senate, it was clear that most of the efforts 
to improve the bill and get to what I would refer to as core 
educational issues were rejected. And one key provision that was 
accepted has, of course, now been stripped out of the bill by the 
conference committee; that is, a provision that tries to address the 
very serious dropout crisis that we have in our schools.
  I believe that a failure to give attention to this crisis is perhaps 
the best example of the limitations of this bill. Each day that there 
is school in this country, we have an average of 3,000 students between 
grades 7 and 12 who leave school and leave permanently before 
graduating. In many schools, the graduating class is half the size of 
the entering freshman class of 4 years before.
  Unfortunately, a disproportionate number of the students who are 
dropping out are Hispanic. We see that problem in real terms in my home 
State where our Hispanic population is large. Those students often 
attend the most overcrowded and least well-equipped schools in the 
Nation. The vast majority of our dropouts are not Hispanic, though, and 
they are Anglo students--students from all ethnic and racial 
backgrounds who are bothered with watered-down classes. They are 
alienated from large schools where nobody seems to care about the work 
they do.
  To address this problem, I proposed an amendment, along with Senator 
Reed, which was the dropout prevention provision of the bill. The 
Senate adopted this proposal to provide $150 million in dropout 
prevention funds to authorize that funding by a vote of 74-26. So, 
clearly, there was strong support here in the Senate for this 
initiative.
  With this $150 million, we could have provided funding to help 
schools that have the highest dropout rates, to reduce those dropout 
rates and transform their educational programs so that students would 
stay. With the $150 million, we could have taken the first concrete 
steps toward meeting the bipartisan goal that President Bush and the 50 
Governors agreed to back in 1989 when they met in Charlottesville. The 
goal was that at least 90 percent of our students would complete high 
school. Despite the obvious need for this dropout prevention effort and 
the overwhelming support that we had here in the Senate for this 
amendment, the provision has been dropped from the bill that is before 
us today.
  I believe that the House and Senate need to address these core 
educational issues. I hope very much that there is an opportunity in 
the appropriations bills that we consider to have a serious debate and 
hopefully do better to get the Federal Government on the side of 
addressing core educational issues.
  This conference report that we are going to vote on does little, but 
it promises much. In that regard, I think the people of the country are 
being misled about the extent of the effort and extent of the 
accomplishment that we are talking about today. I was very proud to be 
with Senator Reed, Congressman Hinojosa, and well-known actress/
entertainer Rita Moreno yesterday at a press conference where we talked 
about the importance of the dropout problem and the importance of 
getting Federal support to deal with that. I am disappointed that the 
conference report on this Coverdell bill does not include any provision 
to help address the crisis.
  I intend to vote against the bill.
  Mr. COVERDELL addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Georgia.
  Mr. COVERDELL. Mr. President, I yield 5 minutes to the Senator from 
Louisiana off our side's time.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Louisiana is recognized.
  Mr. BREAUX. I thank the Senator.
  Mr. President, I congratulate Senator Coverdell for his work and 
Senator Torricelli, on our side, who has contributed so much to this 
debate. It gets down to basics: Are we interested in helping kids and 
families or helping buildings? I think the clear argument is that we 
should be helping students and helping families educate their children, 
wherever they attend school.
  One of the arguments against this bill I have heard is that, well, it 
gives some type of Government assistance to private or parochial 
schools. I want to address that issue because I think it is not a 
legitimate concern. I have a book here that is put out by the 
Department of Education, our Federal department here in Washington. It 
is a book of all the programs that exist currently where Federal tax 
dollars are used to help students regardless of where they go to 
school, as long as it is a legitimate school. This book is full of 
programs. It has about 70 pages of Federal programs that go to 
children. If you are poor, if you are disadvantaged, or if you have a 
disability, you can use that assistance to go to the school you want to 
go to.
  Now, the largest program we have in the Federal Government is Title I 
of

[[Page S6922]]

the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. It has been federal law 
since 1965. Let me read where Title I funds go:

       Elementary and secondary education as originally passed by 
     Congress in 1965. Under this legislation, private school 
     students, private school teachers, private school other 
     personnel are included in the program.

  We do that already. We have done it since 1965. One in four schools 
in the country happen to be private or parochial. We are talking about 
helping the child get a better education, which is in the national 
interest. Yet, people say we are breaking a tradition of not helping 
private or parochial schools. We have bookloads of programs that do 
exactly that. This bill is consistent with that--completely and 
totally.
  In addition to Title I, which goes to students, like this education 
savings account goes to the families and students, we have other 
programs in the book. I will mention one or two. Child nutrition 
programs--do we not help private/parochial students with child 
nutrition programs? Of course, we do. It is important. Students with 
disabilities also get help.
  What about students who are not disadvantaged and do not have a 
disability? Are we going to ignore them? That is the largest group of 
people out there. I suggest this makes a great deal of sense.
  Talk about consistent. Just last year, this Congress, this body, most 
Democrats, and Republicans as well, voted for the $500 IRA savings 
account for higher education. It has the same limits on income as this 
proposal. The only thing we have done is make this for students in K 
through 12, and parents can set aside a little private money to help 
the child go to the school that is in their best interest to go to. We 
are not talking about a voucher; we are talking about a family taking 
their own money and putting their own money in their own savings 
account to help educate their child.
  It was very clear that the Taxpayer Relief Act of 1997--the President 
signed it and I congratulate him for participating and signing it--is 
the same program. It is just that it was for higher education. If you 
went to Saint Michael's College, you got a $500 savings account. Nobody 
thought that was an infringement on trying to give Federal aid to 
private/parochial schools. We all applauded that.
  Let's do the same thing for the same families, with the same income 
limits. Let them, for K through 12, set aside a private savings account 
and draw interest on it and use it for school expenses for the child. 
All of a sudden, this is something that is novel, something we have 
never done before. Of course, we have. We did it last year. We have 
been aiding those students since 1965 with the largest Federal 
education in program, Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education 
Act.
  Students in Louisiana, when they are in a private or parochial 
school, get the same dollars, the same money, the same program 
benefits, the same child nutrition programs, and the same education for 
disabilities assistance. That is part of what our country is about--
trying to help educate children. We are not talking about vouchers. We 
are not talking about doing anything other than help families help 
their children.
  Why do we always ignore middle-income working families? If you are 
poor, we have a program. If you have a disability, we have a program. 
If you have other problems and special education needs, you have a 
program. But if you are middle income and struggling to make it and 
raise a family and keep the family together, we say no, that is an 
infringement.
  It is time to encourage working middle-income Americans who are 
struggling, to help them to have more savings to invest in their 
children's education. Let's not encourage families to say, ``I have no 
interest in it; let the government do it.'' We are saying let's create 
an incentive for families, middle-income working families, to help 
their children K through 12, and not be, I think, arguing that somehow 
we are breaking new ground, and saying ``My God, what are we going to 
do?'' We are doing what we have done consistently since the government 
has been involved in trying to help many families and help counties and 
parishes in my State improve the educational systems in their 
respective.
  I commend this bill for our support.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Who yields time?
  Mrs. MURRAY addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Washington.
  Mrs. MURRAY. Thank you, Mr. President. I yield myself 5 minutes of 
leader time.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection.
  Mrs. MURRAY. Thank you, Mr. President.
  Mr. President, I am delighted that we are here today again to discuss 
education. It is probably the most critical issue that we have before 
us in this country. Parents know it. Community leaders know it. Our 
families across this country want all of us to address the important 
issues of education so that every child in America, no matter where 
they come from, have the opportunity to get the American dream in 
today's society.
  Unfortunately, the bill before us--the Coverdell A+ bill, will only 
help those people who can afford to put away $2,000 a year. 
Unfortunately, that will not be a lot for parents out there who are 
worried about their child's education, or the children in our 
neighborhoods who we all worry about and whether or not they will get 
the skills they need to go out in the job market and to succeed.
  Mr. President, there are ways that we can help every child in America 
get a good education. I have been on the floor many times to talk about 
the issue of class size, and how too many children are in overcrowded 
classrooms today and don't get the individual attention that they need 
in order to succeed. I have had many young people tell me that when 
they are in a math class with 35 students, they don't get the 
opportunity to ask their teacher for individual help when they don't 
understand. Yet, we sit on this floor and decry the fact that too many 
of our young children today don't get the skills they need in math and 
science, so they can go on and be competitive in tomorrow's world. We 
can make a difference if we reduce class size.
  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to send a bill to the desk for 
purposes of introduction today that will address the fact of class 
size.
  Mr. COVERDELL. Reserving the right to object, is the Senator sending 
a bill to the desk?
  Mrs. MURRAY. Just for introduction.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mrs. MURRAY. I thank the Chair.
  Mr. President, the bill I sent to the desk on behalf of myself, 
Senator Daschle and many other Members, will add 100,000 teachers to 
our workforce across this country so that we can begin the process of 
making sure that every student has a well-qualified teacher in a class 
that has a number of students to whom that teacher can pay attention.
  Mr. President, this is a beginning step that will make a difference 
for average children across our country. I think it is essential we 
address many of the issues I have heard my colleagues talk about.
  Senator Feinstein spoke for a moment about violence in school. I have 
had teachers tell me, I have had police officers tell me there are so 
many kids in our classes today that they don't get individual 
instructions. They feel anonymous in our neighborhoods and in our 
classrooms. And, as a result, we are seeing some of the impacts in our 
schools today, and we are reading about some of the headlines that we 
are seeing when violence hits our schools. Reducing class size so that 
children have individual attention when they need it so they don't feel 
anonymous makes a difference in addressing those issues.
  I heard Senator Bingaman talk about dropout prevention. He has done 
an outstanding job. He has been a leader in our Nation in addressing 
this critical issue of class size reduction so that children get the 
attention they need, the help they need which will make a difference in 
dropout prevention.
  Mr. President, I urge my colleagues today to reject the bill in front 
of us. It does little; it promises a lot. If we really focus on the 
issues that parents and students and teachers know will make a 
difference, we can change what is happening in our country today. We 
have a responsibility to do that.
  Thank you, Mr. President.

[[Page S6923]]

  I retain the balance of my time.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Who yields time?
  Mr. COVERDELL. Mr. President, I yield up to 10 minutes to the Senator 
from Texas.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Texas is recognized.
  Mrs. HUTCHISON. Thank you, Mr. President.
  I thank Senator Coverdell for bringing some creativity into our 
public education system.
  If you talk to parents and teachers in America, it is clear that many 
of them are frustrated, because they are not satisfied with the 
education children are getting in our public schools. So we can take 
one of two approaches to address this problem.
  We can take the approach that we will continue to just go along as we 
have been year after year after year while the money spent on education 
goes up and up at the same time that test scores go down and our 
nation's children are increasingly unable to compete. We can do that. 
But we don't have to.
  We have today an opportunity to bring some innovation into our public 
school system. We can give parents and their children more options and 
more opportunity at success. That is what the Coverdell bill does, and 
I thank the senator for his leadership in shepherding this bill through 
Congress.
  This bill adds options--options for parents to give their kids a 
better chance at success. Under the Coverdell A+ bill, parents will be 
able to save after-tax dollars and use those funds on a tax-free basis 
for a whole variety of K-through-college education expenses. Even 
grandparents can contribute to these education savings accounts. As the 
cost of college in particular continues to climb, this added savings 
tool for parents will become essential for more and more American 
families. But in addition to enhancing the ability of families to save 
for college, the bill also addresses the need all parents have of 
supporting their children's elementary and high school education.
  I heard Senator Bingaman talk about the dropout rate among Hispanics. 
I am alarmed at that statistic. But I don't understand, knowing that we 
have this problem, why we can't go forward and say what will take 
innovative steps to help make our kids more motivated and more able to 
succeed in school. What can we do?
  The Coverdell bill gives families options they do not presently have. 
It allows parents to set aside an extra amount of money, up to $2,000 
each year, to enhance their elementary and secondary education 
opportunities for their children. One option they will have is to then 
use that money, tax-free, for private or parochial school, if they feel 
that is the atmosphere that will be best for their children.
  Parents would also have the option of adding tools to enhance their 
child's education in public school, like buying the child a computer. 
That would be allowed in the Coverdell bill, and buying a child extra 
books so that the child can go beyond just what is in the classroom and 
enhance his or her knowledge; even buying band uniforms, because we 
know that children who participate in extracurricular activities are 
the ones most likely to stay in school, to be interested and to do 
better in school. In fact, we have seen that children who have arts 
classes do better in the other classes as well. So buying school-
related art supplies would be another option that is conceivably 
allowed under the Coverdell bill.
  So as we witness the continued underperformance of our public school 
system, we are offering through this bill originality and creativity 
that will save children who might otherwise be lost in the present 
system.
  I am particularly pleased that the conference committee kept my 
amendment that passed on the Senate floor by a 69 to 29 vote to allow 
the option of public, single-sex schools and classrooms.
  This is not a mandate, of course. But many parents try to send their 
children to single-sex private schools because they think they will 
have a better chance in that environment. In fact, many studies show 
that for some children, single-sex education is their best chance at 
academic and life-long success. In a single-sex environment, hundreds 
of thousands of America's children have reported that they are allowed 
to excel, flourish, and grow, because they are not hampered by the 
distractions and disruptions that are found in many coed environments.
  I am pleased that we have in our education budget an innovative 
education reform program. It is called title VI. Title VI funds a wide 
variety of education reform projects, almost anything a school, 
community, or state feels will be in the best interests of their 
children and will help improve students' academic performance. And the 
Department of Education can give grants for these innovative programs.
  What my amendment and this bill will do is specifically include 
single-sex schools and classrooms as one of the innovative education 
approaches that can be funded under Title VI.
  We have an example that has gotten wide notoriety of late. It is the 
Young Women's Leadership School in East Harlem, in the New York City 
public schools. This is an elementary school. This school has a 90-
percent attendance rate, one of the highest in the New York City public 
schools. They are well above the average in test scores in both math 
and English. When interviewed, the girls who go to this school say they 
love going to school; they feel safe there. And they are excelling. 
This is a success story.
  However, the bad news is the ACLU and the National Organization of 
Women are suing to close this school, and have filed a complaint with 
the U.S. Education Department to cut off all the school's federal 
funding. They say the school violates the constitutional equal 
protection clause and Title IX of the 1972 Education Amendments Act. In 
addition to the obvious question of why in the world anyone would want 
to close this school down when it does so much good for the young girls 
who attend it, these groups' legal arguments are absolutely wrong. 
Title IX and the equal protection clause were intended to be protection 
against discrimination, not against educational enhancements for 
students who choose to learn in an environment where they can excel. In 
fact, in the amendment that is in the bill before us, it specifically 
states that one can offer options of single-sex classes or schools only 
if comparable opportunities are given for the other sex. That standard 
is fair, and that standard will protect against any possible 
discrimination against one sex or the other. In fact, that is why the 
state of Virginia lost in its defense of the previously all-male 
Virginia Military Institute, because the state did not offer a 
comparable educational opportunity for women. Time after time we have 
seen the courts uphold single-sex schools.
  What we want is for every parent in our country to have the same 
option that a parent who can afford a private school has. The parent 
who can afford a private school can choose among all the options--
single-sex private schools, single-sex parochial schools, coeducation 
at parochial schools or private schools. They have these options. 
Parents of public school students do not. This bill and my amendment 
will allow every family to make these choices and do what is best for 
their children.
  Mr. President, I am very proud that I am a product of public 
education. I think free, public education is what makes this country 
different from every other country in the world, because we open our 
educational system to every child. Why not offer even more opportunity 
to every child and thereby improve every child's chance to achieve the 
American dream?
  That is what the bill before us does, and that is why I strongly 
support this bill. I hope it will pass by an overwhelming margin, and I 
hope the President will see that the bill's benefits to America's 
families are so great that he could not possibly veto this legislation 
and halt this historic opportunity to give parents and their children 
more and better education options.
  I thank the Chair. I thank Senator Coverdell.
  Mr. TORRICELLI addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the Senator from New 
Jersey is recognized to speak up to 15 minutes.
  Mr. TORRICELLI. I thank the Chair.
  Mr. President, first let me say at the end of this long road how 
pleased I have been to work with the Senator from Georgia. He has 
reached across

[[Page S6924]]

the aisle to Senator Feinstein, Senator Breaux, Senator Graham, Senator 
Lieberman, and others in making this a genuine bipartisan effort. I 
admire his leadership and appreciate very much his extended hand that 
has brought us to this day.
  Mr. President, I want at the outset to begin, even at a moment of 
some personal satisfaction, by stating some considerable 
disappointment. The 105th Congress was to be the ``Congress of 
education,'' the time in which America was going to finally face the 
reality that the great variable in American life is the quality of the 
education we are affording our children. Recognizing that with a 
quality education accorded to our children everything--at a time of 
global competition and rising technological standards--is possible and 
without it everything is in peril, the President challenged Congress to 
take leadership in the rebuilding of our schools, the raising of 
standards through voluntary testing, and the hiring of new teachers to 
reduce class size. Perhaps this was done because the President, like 
all of us, recognized that it is late. Forty percent of American fourth 
graders are failing to attain a basic level in reading; 40 percent of 
eighth graders are failing basic tests in mathematics. In math and 
science, America ranks 19th of 21 industrial nations.
  Thomas Edison once noted that ``discontent is the necessity of 
progress.'' Every Member of this Senate should feel discontent because 
in the year of education, the Congress that was to take up all of these 
challenges has failed in all but this one last chance.
  The Senator from Georgia, Mr. Coverdell, has worked in the last year 
to bring before this Congress a simple, a modest but nevertheless an 
important addition in the fabric of American education, the A+ savings 
account. This provision returns to the Senate floor from a conference 
committee without any of the objectionable amendments that I and my 
Democratic colleagues rightfully found both disconcerting and, indeed, 
contrary to the efforts to improve educational quality in America. All 
that remains is the simple and bipartisan effort to provide for working 
American families the chance to save their own money to educate their 
own children in the school of their choice.
  It is simple, it is direct, but nevertheless it is important. Taken 
in its most basic form, this is an invitation for $12 billion of new 
money to enter American education. My colleagues, that cannot be bad. 
At a time when American schools struggle to pay teachers, to repair 
themselves, to improve curriculum, new money--without a dollar of 
taxpayers' contribution--all given voluntarily by American families, 
cannot be bad, and yet there are objections.
  It is claimed that this will be, as you will hear on this floor in 
the debate to follow, a diversion of public resources, a threat to the 
public schools. My colleagues, not a dollar, not a dime of public money 
is being taken from the public schools--nothing. It is all private 
money. Whatever the public schools got yesterday, after this bill 
becomes law, they will get tomorrow.
  Then it is argued, well, it may not be a diversion from the public 
schools, but it will help a privileged few.
  Mr. President, on the contrary, this Senate last year argued, in 
establishing almost identical accounts to educate college students, 
that we should put a cap on this tax benefit--$90,000 for a single 
parent, $150,000 for a married couple. Under this proposal by the 
Senator from Georgia, we have adopted the identical income caps--not 
for the privileged few but for working-class families who want to 
contribute to the education of their own children.
  Like the Senator from Louisiana, Mr. Breaux, I make no apologies. How 
many Members of this Senate line up on the Senate floor to either have 
programs designed for the poor or the privileged few, tax benefits for 
the rich, or Government programs for the poor? Finally, there is a 
chance to stand on the floor of this Senate Chamber to help the 
education of working middle-income, middle-class Americans. And that 
cannot be bad.
  Then it will be said, ``Perhaps it doesn't help the privileged few, 
and perhaps it doesn't divert money from public education, but it 
doesn't help everybody.'' If Senators come to the floor to object to 
every piece of legislation because it doesn't help everybody, they will 
have a frustrating experience in this Senate. I learned a long time ago 
never to make the perfect the enemy of the good. We help as many people 
as we can in each instance when we can, and that is exactly what the 
Coverdell legislation does.
  Mr. President, 70 percent of the families who will benefit from these 
tax-free savings accounts will be families who earn under $75,000 a 
year--70 percent. That is the vast majority of the American people. 
Does it include everybody? No. But the vast majority of Americans will 
have an opportunity to save under these A+ savings accounts.
  Who are these families? And how will it help? In one of the great 
ironies of this legislation, 75 percent of those families who will 
benefit now have their students, their own children, in public schools. 
The greatest beneficiaries are public school students, simply because 
the overwhelming majority of American students go to the public 
schools. Under our legislation, the money in these savings accounts can 
go to buy a home computer, school uniform, and afterschool activity, a 
school band instrument, books, or--most important, in my judgment--the 
hiring of a public school teacher after school to be a tutor to a 
public school student struggling in math or science.
  There was an article in the Washington Post a few weeks ago, quoting 
a young woman, Tiffany Johnson, a high-school senior in Maryland, who 
said, ``It's totally impossible to function [in school] without a 
computer. . . . It's a big handicap not to have one at home.''
  Mr. President, 61 percent of all public school students in America 
today are doing their homework and their school work with no computer--
unless they are a minority student. If they are black or Hispanic, 85 
percent have no access to a home computer, creating a new stratum in 
American education that is potentially dangerous economically, 
educationally, and socially. It is not simply that the A+ savings 
accounts are the best idea to get computers in the hands of these 
students, it is not they are the best idea, it is the only such idea 
before this Congress, because these accounts will allow public school 
students to purchase that new tool of education.
  Then there are those 10 percent of Americans who choose to send their 
children to private schools. There is a benefit here for them, too, in 
helping to ease the burden of tuition. In the great cities of America, 
from New York to Los Angeles to Chicago to Newark and Miami, the 
parochial private schools in America today almost uniformly are 
designed to help the working poor. Mr. President, 65 percent of the 
students in Newark and Camden in parochial schools are black and 
Hispanic. Their tuition is $1,500, $1,600, $1,800 a year. It cannot be 
bad that these middle-income, working-class families, struggling to pay 
these tuitions in these cities, who want an alternative to the public 
schools, get a chance to save their own money tax-free to pay that 
tuition.
  It is no coincidence, in my judgment, in the last few years in the 
House of Representatives, the principal Democratic sponsor of this 
legislation was former Congressman Floyd Flake who, in the heart of 
Queens, took an African American church, built a school based on 
people's own savings in a struggling working-class neighborhood, and 
now says that this, and this singularly, could help those families pay 
this tuition bill. This is a community that asked for nothing from the 
Federal Government but to rebuild itself with its own resources. Mr. 
President, I come here today with the same belief--$12 billion in 
resources from working families to educate their own children, public 
and private.
  But there is one more thing that is, to me, as exciting as any of 
these statistics, impacting any of these neighborhoods or communities, 
and it is this. I remember a time in America where the education of a 
child was a family responsibility. Communities rushed to choose school 
board members; parents came after school; grandparents were involved in 
the grades and the homework. Somehow, in the last generation of 
America, we decided that education was now the province of bureaucrats 
and unions and everybody but parents and families themselves.

[[Page S6925]]

  Senator Coverdell and I, I hope, if we create nothing else with this 
legislation, we have provided an invitation to get them back involved 
in American education, because from the birth of a child these savings 
accounts are available to grandparents at birthdays, aunts, uncles, 
churches, unions, employers, to put money in these accounts where 
everyone is involved, again, in preparing for a child's future. If that 
money is not used in high school or grade school, every dollar of it 
can be rolled into a savings account for college that we established 
last year in the Senate under the leadership of President Clinton.
  I believe it is a compelling case. It is not a perfect answer. It 
does not solve every educational problem in America. But it is an 
important, if modest, beginning in a great debate.
  I have a great hope for this Senate, a great hope, that in the next 
decade, Democrats, Republicans, liberals, and conservatives will be 
involved in a fierce competition for who has the best ideas to rebuild 
American education; who can challenge the American people to do the 
most for rising standards, greater access to opportunity; who can reach 
into the heart of our cities and challenge parents that I, and I alone, 
have the best idea for your child.
  This is the beginning of that debate. From here, we can go to school 
construction, lowering class size, national testing, a host of ideas. 
And, in spite of my alliance with the Senator from Georgia on this 
issue so that we have made this bipartisan, I want my party to win that 
fight. And I believe we can. I think we have the most ideas. I think we 
have the best ideas. But this idea, nevertheless, is a good idea and it 
is a beginning. I hope when we vote in a short period of time, we can 
act together.
  Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. once said ``. . . the greatest thing in 
this world is not so much where we stand, as in what direction we are 
moving.'' This legislation, A+ savings accounts, has America moving, if 
modestly, in the right direction. I am enormously proud to have been 
part of this effort. I am grateful to the Senator from Georgia for his 
leadership and to my Democratic colleagues for participating in what 
has become this bipartisan effort. I urge my colleagues, by an 
overwhelming vote, to give their approval to the conference report.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. GRAHAM addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Florida. Under the previous 
order, the Senator from Florida is recognized for up to 20 minutes.


                         Privilege Of The Floor

  Mr. GRAHAM. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent, first, that Mr. 
Mark Williams, a congressional fellow in my office, be allowed floor 
privileges for the balance of the debate on this conference report.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. GRAHAM. Second, I ask unanimous consent that any of the time 
which I have been allocated but which will be unused will be returned 
to the minority floor leader of this legislation.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection? Without objection, it is 
so ordered.
  Mr. GRAHAM. Thank you, Mr. President.
  Mr. President, I supported this bill when it passed the Senate 
several weeks ago. And I regretfully rise to oppose this conference 
report. As has been said by several of the speakers, there are many 
positive elements in this legislation. I am particularly supportive of 
those, for instance, which will make it easier for families to plan and 
prepare for the college/university education of their children and 
family members through things like the education savings account and 
the prepaid college tuition plans which Florida and several other 
States have established. Those are all positives.
  When I face legislation at the final vote, there are two questions 
that I ask of myself. One is, Is this legislation better than the 
status quo? And, second, If it is better than the status quo, is it 
sufficiently an improvement to justify the investment of public 
attention, political energy, and the likelihood that, should this 
become law, it will be considered this Congress' final statement on 
this subject?
  I find this bill, as it returned from the conference committee, to 
fail to meet that test. I think this bill is too minimalist in terms of 
its capacity to identify those major challenges that face this Nation, 
in terms of education, and to construct an appropriate Federal policy 
to move us forward in an area that will probably, more than any other, 
determine our Nation's status into the 21st century--the education of 
our people.
  I believe that this legislation in the conference committee lost its 
focus. It did not return with the balance that it had when it left this 
Chamber. I am particularly concerned about the issue of school 
construction.
  Admittedly, I come from a State which has experienced a dramatic 
increase both in new students entering our school system--40,000 to 
50,000 new students every year entering the public schools of Florida--
and a State which is reaching a point of maturity where many of its 
older schools are requiring substantial rehabilitation. And almost all 
of our schools require the new technologies to bring them up to current 
standards of educational modernity.
  In this legislation, as it left the Senate several weeks ago, there 
was what I thought was a creative provision, which received broad 
support in the Senate, which would have encouraged public-private 
partnerships in the construction and rehabilitation of schools. It 
would have used a financing technique, called private facility bonds, 
which has been used effectively in areas such as water and sewer, 
transportation, and housing for public school construction.

  Ironically, a provision almost identical in final impact to what was 
contained in the Senate version is now being used for private 
elementary and secondary construction. But for reasons which are 
inexplicable to me, the conference dropped that provision and therefore 
will deny, through the Federal Tax Code incentives, the opportunity for 
many school districts that are facing enormous pressures to be able to 
utilize that technique as a means of building and rehabilitating 
schools.
  I hope that when we come back to this issue--and that hope is that we 
will return before this Congress adjourns--that the central role of 
adequate school facilities in achieving adequate education, and the 
role which the Federal Government can play creatively in helping us 
provide those adequate physical facilities, will be reexamined.
  I am also concerned, Mr. President, as to a provision which was 
dropped at the front door but seems to have reentered at the back door 
relative to block grants for Federal education.
  Since the 1960s, the Federal Government has focused its attention on 
education in three primary areas: One, civil rights; two, the at-risk 
student, whether that was a handicapped student, a student from a 
disadvantaged background, or other factors which made that student a 
greater educational risk and generally a more expensive student to 
educate than the general student population; and, third, access to 
higher education through a variety of Federal grants and loans.
  There was a provision which many of us objected to which would have 
provided that those carefully crafted, long-standing pillars of Federal 
education policy would be collapsed into block grants. I am pleased 
that that attack through the front door was dropped. But I am concerned 
that there still is in this legislation an attack through the back 
door.
  I bring your attention to page 12 of the report which outlines the 
legislation. And under the category of ``State Incentives For Teacher 
Testing And Merit Pay,'' the first section talks about State incentives 
through a grant program for teacher testing and merit pay.
  I would like to say, as an aside, personally, while I was a member of 
the Florida State legislature, and later as Governor, I supported 
concepts of teacher testing, both upon entry into the profession and 
while in the profession. And we established what we called a career 
ladder, which was a form of recognition of the superior teacher. So I 
am, as a matter of policy, inclined to support the principles.
  But what concerns me is a provision that says, under paragraph (e), 
``Notwithstanding any other provision of law, a State may use Federal 
education

[[Page S6926]]

funds--to carry out [these two purposes of teacher testing and 
establishing a merit pay program for teachers].''
  As I read this, what we are saying is that we have returned to this 
concept of a block grant by saying that a State, without any other 
constraints, because ``notwithstanding any other provision of law''--it 
is not limited to elementary, secondary funds, but all education 
funds--vocational funds, higher education funds, elementary, secondary 
funds, maybe even funds for specialized programs such as veterans 
educational benefits--that a State can collapse all of those funds into 
a block grant for the purposes of teacher testing and establishment of 
a merit pay plan. I think that is a very bad educational policy and, in 
and of itself, makes this conference report unacceptable.
  So, Mr. President, I reluctantly will oppose this legislation. I do 
so in the hope that when the President has exercised his stated 
intention to veto this legislation, and we are back to ground zero with 
what should the Congress do relative to a Federal role in enhancing our 
Nation's educational opportunities for its children and for its adults, 
that we will come back to this task with a new spirit of 
bipartisanship, with a commitment to a clear diagnosis of what are the 
principal shortfalls in our education system, and what the Federal role 
should be in attempting to overcome those deficiencies.
  There is no task more important to our Nation, as we face a new 
century, than a renewed commitment to education. It will be the key to 
our ability, in an increasingly globalized economy, to be able to 
maintain the American standard of living while we are also competitive 
in the world economy.
  The only means by which we will do so will be to assure that each 
American is as fully prepared to be as productive and as contributing 
towards our total economy and our total society as they can be because 
we have given them the opportunity of the best possible education.
  Mr. President, again, I regret that we are not able to move forward 
with this legislation today, but I commend the Senator from Georgia for 
his very genuine interest and his leadership in this area, and hope 
that leadership will soon be rewarded. Thank you.
  Several Senators addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Georgia.
  Mr. COVERDELL. Mr. President, I am sorry to hear that the Senator has 
come to the conclusion he cannot vote for it. As he knows, I did agree 
with him on the school construction component and was outvoted. I 
thought the Senator made a good contribution to the legislation. I 
yield up to 5 minutes from our side to the distinguished Senator from 
New York.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New York is recognized.
  Mr. D'AMATO. Mr. President, I rise today in strong support of the 
Education Savings and School Excellency Act that is embodied in the 
conference report which is before the Senate today. I take the 
opportunity to congratulate and commend Senator Coverdell for his 
leadership and, indeed, a bipartisan leadership of Democrats and 
Republicans attempting to deal with the most important area that we 
face as a Nation, and that is improving the educational opportunities 
for our children. That is critical. This bill makes a great 
contribution to education in a number of areas.
  First, it gets parents more involved in educational decisions by 
increasing the annual contribution limits into a child's education 
savings account. I can't think of anything better. There are some 
people who don't want to do that. I don't know why. Why wouldn't you 
want to give people of modest means the ability to provide for the 
educational choice that they decide is best for their child?
  It increases those accounts from $500 to $2,000, and the bill allows 
a parent or a grandparent to really make an impact on a child's 
education. More parental involvement is an absolute critical piece of 
the educational puzzle. We must do everything we can to give parents 
more power in education, and that is what this bill does, because when 
parents have input into educational decisions, the children are 
winners. It seems all too often that we are worried about everybody but 
the children. That is what it comes down to. This bill helps parents 
and children.
  In addition to more parental involvement, another critical education 
reform relates to teachers. We simply must make sure that all teachers 
are competent in the subjects they teach. Most teachers are, and, 
indeed, we have dedicated, great teachers who make magic in the 
classroom. That is why there are particular important provisions in 
this bill that give to States and will give to local school districts 
the ability to reward the great and the outstanding educators in the 
classroom by making merit pay available.
  Why not give to the best and the brightest? And why not allow local 
school districts, working with their teachers, working with their local 
school boards the opportunity to design programs to do exactly that? 
Give the best and the brightest the compensation they are entitled to; 
reward them with merit pay.

  Secondarily, why shouldn't we see to it that every teacher who 
teaches our children is competent and proficient in the subject matters 
that they are teaching? We can't pay the great teachers enough, but we 
should attempt to find a system that does reward them. In addition to 
that, outstanding performances should be recognized.
  I am pleased to see that the conference included the merit amendment 
that Senator Mack and I offered. Indeed, one of our colleagues spoke to 
it just recently and indicated, wouldn't it be terrible if local school 
districts could actually draw revenues from other areas for this 
purpose. I think it is great. Why shouldn't they be able to make that 
decision? Why shouldn't they set up a system that rewards the competent 
teachers? Why shouldn't they set up a system where there is regular 
testing every 3 to 5 years to ascertain who is the best and who is the 
brightest and who is doing the work for our children?
  When we look at reforming our public schools, one thing must always 
be kept foremost in our efforts: We must put our children first. Our 
children are the best and the brightest, and they are our most precious 
resource. A fight to reform our education system is a fight for 
America's future.
  Our children are depending on us, and it is clear that parental 
involvement, merit pay, teacher competency testing are necessary if we 
are going to give the children the education they need. The time for 
talk is over; the time for action is now.
  Again, I commend Senator Coverdell for his outstanding leadership and 
his dedication to this process, because that is what this bill begins. 
It is not going to solve all the problems, but it really begins to make 
a difference and begins to address the area of increasing parental 
responsibility, giving them the opportunity to make resources 
available, and to also local districts and States, giving them the 
opportunity to provide those great teachers with the merit pay to which 
they are entitled. I yield the floor.
  Mr. ROBB addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Grams). The Senator from Virginia.
  Mr. ROBB. Mr. President, I yield myself 3\1/2\ minutes off time 
chargeable to the minority leader.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. ROBB. Mr. President, I rise in opposition to the conference 
report, but let me say to the distinguished Senator from Georgia and 
others that I appreciate the bipartisan effort and spirit that has gone 
into it in an attempt to formulate a bill that could receive bipartisan 
support. Indeed, it is evident on the floor today that it has some 
bipartisan support and will pass by a significant margin.
  Let me say also, I agree with the concerns mentioned by the Senator 
from Florida with respect to some changes that took place in the 
conference. The Senator from Florida and I served as Governors of our 
respective States in the early eighties, along with the current 
President, the current Secretary of Education and others, and all of us 
had education as the very top priority in terms of things that we were 
doing.
  Let me say with respect to this bill, though, it is, again, about 
priorities. It is not that this bill does bad things. I continue to 
support many of the things, and certainly encouraging parents to save 
for education, but if you only have $1.6 billion to spend in terms

[[Page S6927]]

of the Federal participation, it seems to me it makes more sense than 
to spend it on a tax cut that would be about $7 per family to those who 
are in the public schools and $37 a family in private schools, to spend 
it where it is most needed.
  If 90 percent of our public schools are either in need of repair or 
overcrowded, we ought to spend that money in terms of building or 
repairing schools. We ought to spend that money to hire more teachers, 
and if technology is as important in the world economy today as we know 
it to be--indeed, as we speak, the World Congress on Information 
Technology is concluding just across the river with nations throughout 
the world that are here to discuss information technology--we ought to 
be spending the money to try to assist schools in connecting to that 
information technology that is going to be so critical to their future.
  I believe if we want to continue to support public education, which I 
believe is our principal responsibility, then we ought to spend it on 
those most critical needs, notwithstanding the fact that this bill, as 
it currently exists, does some good things for education, but it 
doesn't do the kind of things that, if we only have $1.6 billion to 
spend, I believe we ought to do.
  With that, Mr. President, I yield whatever time I have remaining to 
the distinguished Senator from California.
  Mrs. BOXER addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from California.
  Mrs. BOXER. Mr. President, if I could ask a question, it is my 
understanding that Senator Kennedy has 10 minutes of his own time.
  Mr. KENNEDY. I will take 8 minutes.
  Mrs. BOXER. I think I have 4 minutes.
  Mr. KENNEDY. I will be glad to yield; if I could have 8 minutes, I 
yield the other 2 minutes.
  Mrs. BOXER. That would be wonderful.
  Would the Senator from Massachusetts like to go next?
  Mr. KENNEDY. I am happy to have the Senator speak.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senators have 12 minutes collectively.
  Mrs. BOXER. Senator Daschle gave me 3 minutes of his leader time, so 
I have 3 minutes from him, the time remaining of the Senator from 
Virginia, and 2 minutes from the Senator from Massachusetts; what might 
that add up to?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator is recognized for up to 7 minutes.
  Mrs. BOXER. Thank you very much.
  Mr. President, we had such a golden moment in history here in the 
Senate to do something for our children. Finally, after both parties 
talked about how much we care about our kids, we had a chance to pass a 
bill that did something to help them. We had the opportunity to pass an 
education bill that addressed the real issues that face parents and 
children every single day. We know what those are.
  Kids have nothing to do after school. They sometimes go home to an 
empty home. We know afterschool programs are critical for these 
children. We know they lift up those children. We know it improves 
their scores when they have afterschool programs. The police tell us it 
keeps them out of trouble at a time when the juvenile crime rate soars. 
So we did nothing about that. I offered an afterschool amendment on 
that on the Coverdell bill. We lost by two votes. The people on the 
other side who today say they are doing so much for education couldn't 
support afterschool for our kids.
  We also know class sizes are too large. We could lower those class 
sizes. We had such an amendment to the Coverdell bill; down it went. 
And the amendments that did pass on school construction and dropout 
prevention, which were offered by people on our side of the aisle, were 
dropped in conference like a hot potato.
  So what comes back to us today? A $7-a-year tax cut for people who 
send their kids to public school, a $37 tax cut for people who send 
their kids to private school. This leaves unaddressed issues that face 
parents and children.
  I didn't come to the Senate to be able to go home and say I voted for 
an education bill just for the sake of saying I voted for an education 
bill. There is not anything to this bill. ``There is no `there, there,' 
'' as someone once said. We can go home and claim we did something, but 
I wouldn't do that. I don't want to squander money on things that don't 
really make a difference in the lives of the people who I represent.
  We need to fix up our schools. To hear my superintendent of public 
instruction back home talk about it, these kids are learning about 
gravity because the ceiling is falling down on their desk. They are not 
learning about it from a textbook. But we do nothing. We walk away.

  I heard my friend from New Jersey, who is supporting this bill, talk 
about these issues. He made the best speech I ever heard on education, 
except nothing that he said is in this bill. What is the point in 
voting for a bill that takes over $1 billion away from funds we could 
use for education and gives so little benefit? It really seems to me it 
is a poor excuse for an education policy.
  I am not going to vote for this bill today just to say I voted for 
something. Education is the No. 1 issue in my State. I came here to 
make a difference in the lives of the people of my State. If we are 
going to spend $1.6 billion; it better be on something that helps those 
children.
  In the end I think the President is not going to support this bill. 
The President has been a very strong leader for really doing something 
for our children. He calls for tough national standards. That is not in 
this bill. He calls for afterschool programs. They are not in this 
bill. He calls for school construction. That is not in this bill. He 
calls for putting 100,000 new teachers in the classrooms. That is not 
in this bill.
  Some say this is bipartisan. To some narrow extent, it may be but 
those supporting this bill did not really reach out and sit down with 
our President. When he was Governor, education was his No. 1 issue, and 
he tried some good things. We could have had a bill before us that he 
supported, that we supported, that could have become a good law. We 
could have had a bill where I could go home and look at kids' eyes in 
my State and say, ``I just did something to make your life better, to 
give you a good quality education.'' I cannot do that today. I am 
extremely disappointed, extremely disappointed.
  I hope I live to see the day that we have an action plan for our 
schools, an action plan for our families, an action plan for our 
children so I can go home and be proud that I really did something 
about education.
  Mr. MOYNIHAN. Mr. President, President Clinton long ago announced his 
intention to veto the Education Savings and School Excellence Act. For 
reasons I will describe in a moment, I oppose this bill and agree with 
the President's decision to veto it.
  However, apart from the merits of the legislation, I do want to thank 
Chairman Roth for insisting that the appropriate place for initial 
consideration of the Coverdell legislation was in the Finance 
Committee, not on the floor. This legislation was reported by the 
Committee on February 10, 1998, by a vote of 11-8.
  This is one of those infrequent occasions in which Chairman Roth and 
I disagree on a policy matter. The good intentions of the proponents of 
expanding the availability of education individual retirement accounts 
are clear. However, in my view the proposed changes to the education 
IRA provisions, passed just last July and effective on January 1 of 
this year, are fraught with serious policy and technical defects. 
Secretaries Rubin and Riley have expressed strong opposition to the 
education IRA provisions in this bill, and President Clinton agrees 
with their recommendation that he veto this conference agreement.
  In a letter to members of the Finance Committee dated February 9, 
1998, the Secretaries of the Treasury and Education stated that the 
education IRA provisions in this bill would disproportionately benefit 
the most affluent families and provide little or no benefit to lower 
and middle-income families. In addition, they indicated that the 
provisions ``would create significant compliance problems.'' In a 
letter to Speaker Gingrich dated June 16, 1998, President Clinton 
states ``If the conference report on H.R. 2646 is presented to me, I 
will veto it because the A+ accounts that it would authorize are bad 
education policy and bad tax policy.''
  Treasury Department analyses conclude that 70 percent of the tax 
benefits from this provision would go to the top 20 percent of all 
income earners. In

[[Page S6928]]

a memorandum of March 2, 1998, the staff of the Joint Committee on 
Taxation estimates that 52 percent of the tax benefits of the enhanced 
education IRA provision would to 7 percent of taxpayers: those with 
dependents already enrolled in private primary or secondary schools. 
The Joint Committee memorandum indicates that the per tax return 
benefit for taxpayers with children in private schools will be five 
times greater than the benefit to taxpayers with children in public 
schools.
  This bill will not result in greater opportunity for middle and lower 
income families to send children to private schools, as supporters 
contend. Instead, it will merely provide new tax breaks to families 
already able to afford private schools for their children. If the 
proponents are truly concerned about the middle class, the tax benefits 
should be targeted there. In order to accomplish this, the income 
limits would have to lowered, and the ability to circumvent those 
limits would have to be prevented.
  Nor will this legislation result in an increase in national savings. 
The expansion of the education IRA will provide further incentives for 
taxpayers to shift money to tax-favored accounts, and to spend funds 
that would otherwise be used for retirement.
  Further, the additional complexity these new provisions would add to 
the Internal Revenue Code is of real concern. Taxpayers are just 
beginning to become aware of the hundreds of changes made in the 1997 
tax bill. And now we are considering additional changes to a provision 
that became effective on January 1, 1998. More confusion for taxpayers; 
a boon for H&R Block.
  A week after a vote in the House to terminate the Internal Revenue 
Code for among other things its mind-numbing complexity, we have before 
us a bill that would create a maze of rules in attempting to define 
what constitutes as ``qualified elementary and secondary education 
expense.'' For example, the bill defines such expenses to include 
computers and related software and services, but how is the IRS to 
monitor whether a computer (or the use of the Internet) is used by a 
child for educational purposes or for entertainment, or by the child's 
parents for unrelated purposes?
  Under this bill, the ability to contribute up to $2,000 per year in 
an account for elementary and secondary education expenses would sunset 
after 2002. However, money contributed through 2002 could still be used 
for such expenses. There will be different rules depending on whether 
contributions were made in 1998, 1999 to 2002, or post-2002. It will be 
up to the taxpayer to track--and the IRS to examine--when funds were 
contributed, the earnings on those funds, and whether they can be used 
for only higher education, or both elementary and secondary education 
and higher education. Who will understand these rules?
  Mr. President, we are already spending enough on IRAs and other tax-
advantaged savings vehicles. At a cost of $40 billion over 10 years, 
the Taxpayer Relief Act of 1997 created the Education IRA and the Roth 
IRA, and significantly expanded existing IRAs and the tax benefits of 
State-sponsored prepaid college tuition plans.
  Having said all of that, I must also express continued bewilderment 
at the opposition by the House of applying the income exclusion for 
employer-provided educational assistance, which is section 127 of the 
Internal Revenue Code, to graduate students. The conference agreement 
extends the income exclusion for undergraduates, but once again fails 
to restore such treatment for graduate studies.
  Section 127 is one of the most successful Federal education policies 
we have. A million persons per year are provided tax-free higher 
education by their employers; about a quarter of those are students 
enrolled in graduate-level education courses.
  In a world of continuing education, section 127 permits an employer 
to send an employee to school to learn something new, get a degree, and 
bring the skills back into the workplace. The employee gets more 
income, and the Federal Treasury gets more tax revenue. This is a 
program that works, and it administers itself.
  This is a repeat of what took place last year. The Senate version of 
the Taxpayer Relief Act of 1997 would have made this absolutely easy; 
it made section 127 permanent for both undergraduate and graduate 
study. For reasons I will never understand, the Senate language was 
dropped in conference.
  Finally, I appreciate Chairman Roth's good faith efforts in working 
with members on both sides to try and come up with measures designed to 
address the issue of school infrastructure. Last year, Senators Carol 
Moseley-Braun and Bob Graham brought the issue of crumbling schools to 
our attention, and they continue to be the leaders in the effort to 
address this serious problem. Most of use would prefer not to address 
this issue via the Tax Code, but previous attempts at more direct 
solutions have been opposed. I am afraid that such opposition has 
resulted in the nominal tax provision we find in this bill to address a 
problem that is estimated to cost at least $112 billion--a figure that 
does not include the cost of building new schools.
  Mr. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, I rise to speak in favor of the 
conference report on the Education Savings and School Excellence Act.
  Mr. President, whenever I return to Alaska, the one issue I 
consistently hear about is the state of public education. I think it is 
fair to say that Alaskans and all of the American people are extremely 
concerned that despite annually spending hundreds of billions of 
dollars at the federal, state and local level, our educational system 
is failing. The simple fact that 78 percent of all two and four-year 
colleges offer remedial courses in math, reading and writing, suggests 
that many high school students are being short-changed in their 
academic preparation for adulthood.
  The conference report before us raises the amount that parents and 
grandparents can contribute to education savings accounts from $500 to 
$2,000. Most importantly, it allows parents to make the choice to 
withdraw these funds tax-free for use either in college or in grades K 
through 12.
  Although modest in scope, these education savings accounts will give 
real choices to lower and middle income families who believe their 
children's best chance for the future lies in gaining an education in a 
private school.
  Income limits insure that the benefit of these education savings 
accounts are focused on middle income families. Wealthy families most 
often do not need to use these education accounts because they can 
easily afford the cost of private K-12 tuition and because the tax base 
in wealthy communities often provides the best possible public 
education in the country.
  But middle and lower income families don't have the same choices that 
the wealthy have when it comes to education because they don't have 
adequate resources to pay private tuition. Allowing these families the 
choice of using funds in an education savings account for K though 12 
schooling, could enable families with modest incomes to send their 
children to the school where they believe their child will get the best 
preparation for college.
  What's wrong with that, Mr. President? If educational savings 
accounts can be justified for college tuition, shouldn't they also be 
allowed for the education expenses that give a child the opportunity to 
apply to college?
  Mr. President, this conference report contains an important provision 
that will benefit many families in Alaska. Under this measure, 
distributions from qualified state tuition programs, like Alaska's will 
be tax exempt if the proceeds are used for college or graduate school 
expenses.
  Finally, Mr. President, I am pleased the bill extends until 2002 the 
$5,250 per year exclusion for employer-provided educational expenses. 
However, I would have preferred that this exclusion would have also 
applied to graduate student expenses.
  Mr. President, I would hope that this win-win education bill will be 
signed by the President. It promotes greater choice for families in 
selecting their educational options for their children at a time when 
families are demanding greater accountability from all of their 
educational institutions.
  Mr. KOHL. Mr. President, I rise today to express my intention to vote 
in favor of the conference report to the Coverdell education savings 
accounts legislation. I do not believe that this alone will save our 
nation's education

[[Page S6929]]

system, and I realize that this bill will only provide limited help to 
a very small percentage of students. But I believe it is one small step 
we can take to help improve education in this country, and that it will 
open the door for a discussion of other new approaches.
  Let me state unequivocally that I strongly support our public school 
system. I believe we should be doing much more to help States and local 
school districts address the challenges they face in improving public 
schools. Over 90% of our nation's children are educated in public 
schools, and we must not abandon our efforts to help educators, parents 
and communities provide the best education possible.
  Unfortunately, it is becoming apparent that despite our best efforts, 
we are not doing the best we can for our children right now. Too many 
of our children are falling behind and performing below their 
potential. Too many schools are in need of repair or modernization. Too 
many students are bringing guns and drugs to school. Too few classrooms 
have access to technology, and too few teachers have the training 
necessary to help students succeed in an increasingly global, 
technology-based economy.
  Clearly, it is time that we take a look at some new approaches to 
improving education. The status quo is unacceptable and we owe it to 
our children to do better. I initially opposed the Coverdell 
legislation in part because it included two amendments that I strongly 
oppose. Both amendments --one that would block grant one-third of 
Federal education programs, and another that prohibits the development 
of voluntary national tests--were dropped in conference. I am pleased 
that the conferees decided to omit these amendments, which I believe 
would have seriously undermined our commitment to public school 
students.
  Now that these two troubling amendments have been dropped, I have 
decided to support the Coverdell legislation. While this legislation 
will not solve all of the problems in public schools, it provides 
limited assistance to families that choose to use their own money to 
decide what type of education their children receive. I realize that it 
will only help a small number of families, but limited doses of 
competition could help encourage all schools to strive to do a better 
job. In addition, this legislation sunsets after five years. If, at 
that time, it is clear that this approach has not worked or has harmed 
public education, Congress can decide not to reauthorize this program. 
But I believe that there are benefits to trying this new approach now 
to see if it might contribute to the overall improvement of education 
in our country.
  We certainly do not want to abandon public education, and I believe 
there are better ways to help public schools address the many problems 
and challenges they face. During the course of this debate, I voted for 
many alternative education proposals that I felt would do a better job 
at improving public education. I am still hopeful that the Senate will 
make other education reform proposals a top priority during the 
remaining months of this session. But so far, our nation's education 
system has failed too many of our children--we cannot ignore that fact. 
It is time to look to new and innovative strategies to improve 
educational opportunties in America. The Coverdell legislation could be 
a small part of that effort, but it is certainly not the only step we 
should take. I will continue to support a strong investment in our 
nation's public school system, and I look forward to working with my 
colleagues to make sure that happens.
  Mr. KERREY. Mr. President, I rise in opposition to this conference 
report for the same reasons that I objected to the legislation when we 
debated it here on the Senate floor in March. But I do not take this 
vote lightly. How we educate our kids better is a serious issue. I know 
that in regard to the legislation proposed by Senator Coverdell, I have 
a different opinion than my Catholic schools friends in Nebraska, Jim 
Cunningham of the Nebraska Catholic Conference and Sister Pat Mulcahey, 
superintendent of the Omaha Archdiocese. But when it comes to the core 
issue of whether we want to provide a better education for America's 
young people, Jim, Sister Pat, and I are always on the same side: Yes, 
we do.
  First of all, let me say that I am deeply appreciative and respectful 
of the mission of parochial schools in Nebraska and throughout the 
nation. But I am also, and always have been, a strong supporter of 
public schools. I would support legislation that truly helped the vast 
majority of public school and parochial school parents improve 
educational opportunities for their children. I do not believe that 
this legislation accomplishes that goal.
  Granted, this legislation looks better than it did when it was 
originally passed in the Senate. But I believe it is still flawed. This 
education IRA bill for K-12 expenses will add significantly to the 
nearly $75 billion annually paid by taxpayers in an effort to comply 
with the tax code. It is also an example of how Congress passes tax law 
without considering the cost of administering this new tax law and its 
real impact on the American taxpayers it is supposed to help.
  Furthermore, it makes no real investment in those areas of education 
that are crucial to the success of our young people as they prepare to 
enter the workforce. In order to help more of our children achieve the 
American Dream, we have to equip them with the skills to do so. 
Technology programs, Title 1, and vocational education are where we 
need to focus our efforts.
  And so I would urge my colleagues, if we truly want to help America's 
children get a better education, let's invest in programs that produce 
results, and let's make sure all of our students have the opportunity 
to benefit from them.
  Mr. DODD. Mr. President, I rise today to oppose the conference report 
for H.R. 2646, the Education Savings Account bill.
  I regret that I cannot support this legislation because it contains 
several provisions that I do, in fact, support. In particular, I 
support the provision which would expand the tax benefits of qualified 
state-sponsored prepaid tuition plans to include tax-free withdrawals 
for qualified educational expenses. In fact, the Conference Agreement 
goes beyond the Senate bill, and would allow private educational 
institutions to establish tax-favored prepaid tuition plans beginning 
in 2006.
  I was also pleased that the Conference Report extends by 30 months 
Section 127 of the tax code to allow the income exclusion for employer-
provided educational assistance for undergraduates until December 31, 
2002. This measure is critically important to improving the knowledge 
and skills of our work force.
  These particular provisions were adopted in a spirit of 
bipartisanship and with an understanding that they would provide clear 
benefits to college-bound students. Unfortunately, these provisions are 
just a small part of a much larger package which marks a step in the 
wrong direction for federal education policy.
  At the heart of this bill is a proposal to provide tax-free savings 
accounts, funds from which can be used to meet the educational needs of 
elementary and secondary school students. Under the guise of 
``increased choice,'' this proposal turns its back on our nation's 
long-standing commitment to our public schools.
  These so-called education savings accounts would cost taxpayers $1.5 
billion over ten years. In return for this significant expenditure, 
families will receive very little benefit. Families whose children 
attend public schools--which is to say 90 percent of all students--
would receive just $7 annually. Families whose children attend private 
schools would receive just $37 per year.
  Let me put that into context. In the Washington area, on average, one 
year of private school costs between $10,000 and $14,000. At those 
costs, this legislation provides very little assistance to the parents 
who would choose these schools for their children.
  Clearly, we are in need of education reforms in this country that 
will create better educational opportunities for more children. But I 
don't believe that draining resources away from our public schools will 
advance the cause of reform one bit.
  As we consider this legislation, I think that there is one important 
question that each member of this body should ask themselves. Aren't 
there better ways to spend $1.5 billion for our children's education 
than providing seven dollars a year to public school students? I 
believe that there are.
  We could use that money to help hire new teachers and reduce class 
sizes

[[Page S6930]]

across the country. If a teacher has 25, 30, or 35 students in his or 
her class, those students are not going to learn as well as they could 
in a class with a lower student-teacher ratio. If we can make these 
classes smaller, we can greatly increase the learning potential of our 
children. The Democratic leadership has proposed committing resources 
to help hire 100,000 new teachers for kindergarten through third grade. 
If we made this investment, it is estimated that every K through 3 
classroom in this country would have no more than 18 students. 
Unfortunately, the conference report we consider today does absolutely 
nothing to help hire these teachers and significantly reduce class 
sizes in this country.
  We could use this money to help local communities meet the rising 
costs of special education. In fact, I introduced an amendment during 
the Senate debate on this bill to redirect its $1.5 billion cost to 
help state and local school districts meet the costs of special 
education. When Congress passed the Individuals with Disabilities 
Education Act in 1975, the federal government committed to state and 
local school districts that it would contribute 40 percent of the funds 
needed for special education. However, the federal contribution has 
never risen above 10 percent. It is estimated that states now provide 
56 percent of the financial support for special education programs and 
services, 36 percent comes from local sources, and only eight percent 
comes from the federal government. The burden on local taxpayers is 
increasing dramatically with each passing day, and it will continue to 
increase as long as we continue failing to meet the federal commitment 
to fairly share these costs. I have spoken with many mayors, school 
superintendents, and other local officials seeking relief and 
assistance in meeting the expenses associated with providing the 
valuable services required by children who have special needs. 
Unfortunately, my amendment was defeated and these local officials are 
still in search of relief.
  We could, additionally, invest the resources used by this legislation 
in school construction so children who currently attend schools in 
dilapidated and sometimes unsafe buildings could have a quality 
learning environment. In the richest nation in the world, we have 
schools that are literally falling apart. We have schools with broken 
heaters, bursting pipes, and leaky roofs. And beyond basic repairs, 
schools are also lacking electrical and telephone capabilities 
necessary to install computers in our classrooms.
  One-third of all students in this country go to school in buildings 
that are considered structurally inadequate, and 60 percent of American 
students attend school in buildings that are in need of repair. In 
fact, the General Accounting Office has estimated that more than $110 
billion is needed to repair our schools. Clearly, this is an issue that 
should be addressed.
  This legislation is little more than a policy sleight of hand. It 
creates the illusion of reform without its essence. It offers a hollow 
promise of greater choice, and it delivers negligible benefits to 
American parents. The bottom line is that this bill is bad education 
policy, and it is also bad tax policy.
  I realize that this conference report will likely be adopted by this 
body and by the House of Representatives. But it is my hope that it 
will be vetoed. I appreciate that my colleagues are working to find 
solutions to create better educational opportunities for our children. 
Unfortunately, I believe that the proposal before us is a misguided one 
that creates false hopes instead of real opportunities. This 
legislation would have a devastating impact on our public schools, upon 
which 90 percent of American children rely on for their education, and 
it would mark a missed opportunity to seriously address the education 
needs of this nation. I hope that this conference report does not mark 
the end of our efforts this year to improve education in this country, 
and that the Senate will be willing to work in a bipartisan spirit to 
develop more substantial and innovative education reform policies that 
support our public schools.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Massachusetts.
  Mr. KENNEDY. I believe with the leader's time and the time available 
I have 10 minutes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator has 11 minutes 20 seconds.
  Mr. KENNEDY. I yield myself 10 minutes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, in just a few moments we will be voting 
on the Coverdell conference report. The President of the United States 
has indicated that he will veto this measure, and he is entirely wise 
to do so and to call on us, the House of Representatives and the Senate 
of the United States, to act on the sound recommendations that he has 
made to improve public schools. But these recommendations are not just 
ones from the President of the United States, but from educators across 
the country. They have said that these recommendations outlined by the 
Senator from California are absolutely essential if we are going to 
strengthen academic achievement and accomplishment for the young people 
of this country.
  Now, you cannot isolate what we are doing here on the floor of the 
U.S. Senate this morning from what our Republican friends did yesterday 
in the House of Representatives on education. You can't just separate 
these. We have the House and the Senate, combined; we are dealing with 
education policy and we are together addressing the issue of education 
in our society.
  Now, today we are discussing legislation will spend $1.6 billion over 
a 10-year period to help private schools. We have gone through 
repeatedly, and the Joint Tax Committee has pointed out, that 7 percent 
of the American families send their children to private schools, and 93 
percent send their children to the public schools. The benefit of this 
program will go where? It will go primarily to the private schools.
  Now, let us look at what happened yesterday in the House 
Appropriations subcommittee on education matters. While we are being 
asked here to demonstrate our great interest in the cause of improving 
education for the nation's young people today, yesterday in the House 
of Representatives, Republicans zeroed out the summer jobs program for 
youth across this country--zeroed it out; $871 million, gone. Find me 
an educator in this country who does not believe that funding those 
summer jobs is light-years more important than the Coverdell program 
that is about a potential savings that will go primarily to private 
schools. Find me a single educator who says knock out the summer jobs 
program. But that is what our Republican friends did just yesterday, 
just yesterday, in the House of Representatives. They will deny 530,000 
teenagers the opportunity to gain valuable work experience during the 
summer months.
  What else did they do? Did we not hear last night and this morning 
about the importance of helping American students learn math and 
science? What did Republicans do yesterday? They cut back significantly 
the Eisenhower Math and Science Program. What does that program do? It 
upgrades the skills of math and science teachers. Upgrading the skills 
of teachers in the public schools is one of the most important 
investments we can make to improve student learning. What did the 
Republicans do? Slashed the program, the tried and true Eisenhower 
program, named after an important President of this country.
  What else did they do? They cut the title I program by $400 million 
below the President's level. By not investing in Title I, the 
Republicans are denying help for those needy children who are having 
difficulty in school and are falling behind. It is an enormously 
successful program. While we are over here on the U.S. Senate floor, 
saying how we are going to have a breakthrough new program that is 
going to provide these brilliant new ideas in education, Republicans in 
the House are cutting back on the title I program that has been a 
mainstay for needy children in this country, which has had bipartisan 
support, and they didn't stop there, Mr. President. They cut $137 
million from the President's request for educational technology 
programs to try to help the public schools that are crying out for 
computers and computer training. There are few high schools in this 
country that are up to speed and on the Information Super Highway. And 
by denying extra support for training teachers so they can use those 
computers and tie them into the curriculum, we are saying to the young

[[Page S6931]]

people that preparing for the modern workplace is not important

  Mr. President, in these programs alone, Republicans slashed $1.8 
billion yesterday of investment on tested, worthwhile programs. And 
Republicans today in the U.S. Senate are saying, ``We are doing the 
most revolutionary thing that we can for our public school students. We 
are going to provide $160 million a year in tax breaks for families.'' 
Which families? The Joint Tax Committee says it is families who are 
sending their kids to private schools. Mr. President, if the President 
is ever-wise and ever-conscious about the importance of vetoing a piece 
of legislation, this is it.
  I was here last night and I listened to Senators that rose in support 
of the Coverdell legislation and talked about the great study that was 
done under the Reagan administration in 1983 called, ``A Nation At 
Risk,'' In listening to our colleagues who are supporting this 
legislation talk about ``A Nation At Risk,'' I wondered what the Nation 
At Risk report recommended? The fact is that the Nation At Risk 
commission recommended raising standards for student performance, 
devoting more time to learning, improving the quality of teachers, 
holding educators and elected officials responsible for providing 
leadership necessary to implement these reforms, and strengthening 
graduation requirements.
  Under the leadership of President Clinton in 1994, we took those 
recommendations and made them central to the hallmark Goals 2000 
legislation. Under Goals 2000, over 90 percent of the funds go to the 
local community to implement standards-based reforms. What happened 
yesterday in the House of Representatives Appropriations Committee? 
They gutted the Goals 2000 program that is helping local schools 
implement the recommendations of ``A Nation at Risk,'' that our 
colleagues have hailed as a call to action in education.
  What hypocrisy, Mr. President. Over here, we are talking about how we 
are going to save our public school children, and over in the House of 
Representatives, the Education Appropriations Committee is gutting the 
essential programs that make a difference for schoolchildren.
  Mr. President, we ought to see the Coverdell bill go to the President 
of the United States as rapidly as possible. He ought to veto it as 
fast as he can. He ought to go to the American people and say, if you 
are really interested and concerned about education, let us go ahead in 
a bipartisan way and strengthen public schools. Let's not just reject 
out of hand, as our Republican colleagues have done, every one of the 
recommendations of the President. One of the most important 
recommendations the President has championed came from the Senator from 
Illinois, Carol Moseley-Braun, who understands the importance of having 
school facilities and buildings that are going to be worthy of teaching 
our children in.
  Senator Moseley-Braun is here on the floor at the present time. She 
can speak to this issue. When we send our children to dilapidated 
schools, we are sending them a very important message: Education 
doesn't really count. We're saying that we don't really care if young 
people go to dilapidated schools because we grownups are not prepared 
to put the resources toward modernizing school facilities.
  So, Mr. President, this is an absolute sham. The Coverdell bill is an 
absolute sham. People cannot in this body, given what has happened in 
the House of Representatives yesterday, stand up and say that this bill 
will really help solve our education problems and strengthen our public 
schools.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. I remind the Senator that he has used 10 
minutes of his time.
  Mr. KENNEDY. I yield myself 15 seconds more. They might have some 
credibility if they stood up and said we deplore that the President's 
proposals have been rejected, but we also want to fight for this one 
and we will fight to restore those funds. But there has been absolute 
silence on that.
  Mr. President, I think this measure should be defeated. We don't have 
the votes to defeat it, but I certainly hope we try. Our goal should be 
to strengthen public schools, not abandon them.
  I yield whatever time we have to the Senator from Illinois.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. One minute 20 seconds remain.
  The Senator from Illinois.
  Ms. MOSELEY-BRAUN. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from 
Massachusetts for his gracious remarks, as well as for yielding me this 
time.
  The Federal Government funds less than 7 percent of the cost of 
elementary and secondary education. Most of the funding for it comes 
from your local property taxes or from your State. Now, the fact is 
that we are debating what to do with our paltry 7-percent contribution, 
and whether or not we can spread it out as Senator Kennedy and others 
have discussed, or whether we should focus our resources on behalf of 
rebuilding schools, providing concrete assistance to help relieve 
property taxes. It is illogical to suggest that too few Federal dollars 
can be divided even further, and yet somehow produce greater results. 
The fable of the loaves and fishes is not a model for funding public 
education.
  What we need to have is a partnership in which the Federal, State, 
and local governments come together to relieve the property-tax burden, 
to engage State support so that all of us, working together, can 
provide every child in this country with an opportunity for a quality 
education. This should not be a fight; this should not be finger 
pointing, and this should not be dissipating what little we have. We 
should bring our resources together so we can provide quality 
education. This legislation doesn't do it. I am happy that the 
President is going to veto this bill. I hope we can fix this problem 
here in the U.S. Congress.
  So, Mr. President, I oppose this conference report. I hope all my 
colleagues will join me in opposition to this bad legislation, but I 
know that the future of this bill has already been determined. I have 
no doubt that this bill will pass the Senate on a near-party line vote, 
just as it passed the House last Thursday on a near-party line vote. I 
also have no doubt that President Clinton will follow through on his 
pledge to veto this bill as soon as it reaches his desk. I have a 
letter, in fact, from President Clinton, that begins, ``If the 
conference report on H.R. 2646 is presented to me, I will veto it . . 
.''
  Once that happens, we will be right back where we started. Our 
schools will be in no better shape than they were at the beginning of 
this Congress. Our children will have no greater opportunities than 
they did at the beginning of this Congress. Our country will be in no 
better position to compete in the 21st century economy that it was at 
the beginning of this Congress.
  Perhaps the only thing we will accomplish is the further erosion of 
the confidence of the American people in our ability to address 
important issues. No issue is more important to our future--and no 
issue is more important to the American people, as they tell us in poll 
after poll after poll--than education. We ought to be ashamed of 
ourselves as a legislative body that this bill was the best effort we 
could muster.
  We also ought to be ashamed of the process that was used to write 
this bill. I was supposed to be a member of the House/Senate conference 
committee that developed this final bill. I can tell you, Mr. 
President, that being a member of this conference committee meant 
nothing. There was no opportunity to help shape this legislation. There 
was no attempt made to bridge the ideological gap that has stalled any 
serious federal efforts to help our schools. It seems the sponsors of 
the bill are more interested in the political gain they expect to reap 
when the bill is vetoed than they are in trying to put together a 
bipartisan initiative to improve our schools.
  I think the sponsors of this bill have made a mistake in 
underestimating the acuity of the American people in matters relating 
to their children's education. This bill is a truly bad idea, and I do 
not think most Americans will be fooled by the sponsors' rhetoric once 
they see the reality of the legislation.
  The bill allows families to put up to $2,000 a year into special 
education IRAs, and withdraw the funds to meet the costs of attending 
public, private, or religious elementary and secondary schools. 
Contributions into these accounts would not be tax deductible, but 
interest income on the accounts would be tax free.

[[Page S6932]]

  The bill represents bad savings policy. The purpose of IRAs--
individual retirement accounts--is to encourage long-term savings. The 
benefits derived from IRAs are directly related to the length of time 
the funds remain in the accounts. By allowing withdrawals only a few 
years after contributions have started, this bill actually discourages 
long-term savings.
  This bill is a waste of taxpayers' dollars. The benefits are so small 
as to make them irrelevant as a means of improving education. The 
average benefit to a family with a child in a public school would be 
only $7 per year, and only $37 per year for a family with a child in 
private school. Even though the benefits to families are so small, the 
scheme still manages to cost taxpayers $1.5 billion over a 10 year 
period, funds that could be used for real educational improvements.

  The bill is bad education policy. Instead of addressing the real 
needs of our nation's schools, it drains support from public education 
in America. According to the Joint Committee on Taxation, more than 
half the benefits realized under this bill would flow to the seven 
percent of families whose children already attend private schools. 
Ensuring that all children have access to a high-quality education 
should be a priority for every American. Education is more than just a 
tool to improve the quality of life for individual students. It is a 
public good as well, as we all benefit from a well-educated citizenry. 
If some public schools are not up to the challenge of educating our 
children, then it is our responsibility to fix them, not abandon them.
  Mr. President, we can do better than this bill. We must do better if 
we expect to retain our competitive edge in the 21st century economy. 
Earlier this year, the grades were posted on a set of international 
math and science tests. The results were profoundly disturbing. 
American students placed at or near the bottom on every one of the math 
and science tests offered--below counties like Cyprus, Slovenia, and 
Iceland. These results should serve as a clarion call to every 
policymaker at every level that we need to do more for our children's 
education. We need a new partnership to increase the educational 
opportunities available to all our children.
  When this bill was being considered on the Senate floor, I offered an 
amendment that would have created such a partnership. The amendment 
would have provided tax credits to investors in school bonds, helping 
states and communities rebuild and modernize their crumbling school 
infrastructure. The amendment would have helped them modernize 
classrooms so that no child misses out on the information age. It would 
have helped them ease overcrowding, so that no child is forced to learn 
the principles of geometry in a gymnasium. It would have helped them 
patch leaky roofs, fix broken plumbing, and strengthen the facilities 
that provide the foundation for our children's education.
  In his veto letter, President Clinton wrote, ``The need for school 
construction and renovation has never been more compelling. . . . If we 
want our children to be prepared for the 21st century, they ought to 
have 21st century schools.'' Commenting on the ISTEA reauthorization 
bill he just signed, the President continued, ``I have just signed into 
law major legislation that will provide more than $200 billion over six 
years to help build and repair our nation's highways, bridges, and 
other transportation infrastructure. Similarly, we have an obligation 
to invest in the infrastructure needs of our public schools. H.R. 2646 
ignores that obligation.''
  Once this bill has been vetoed, I intend to again bring up my 
proposal to help states and communities rebuild and modernize our 
schools for the 21st century. Maybe by then the message that the 
American people have been sending to us--that they want us to work 
together, put our partisan differences aside, and pass real school 
improvement legislation--will have gotten through.
  Mr. COVERDELL addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Georgia is recognized.
  Mr. COVERDELL. Mr. President, how much time remains on our side?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Georgia controls 24 minutes. 
The other side is out of time.
  Mr. COVERDELL. Mr. President, I yield up to 10 minutes to my 
colleague, the Senator from Missouri.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Missouri is recognized for up 
to 10 minutes.
  Mr. ASHCROFT. Mr. President, I rise today to express my 
disappointment that the conference report which accompanies H.R. 2646, 
the Education Savings and School Excellency Act, does not contain the 
provisions banning Federal funding for the President's federalized, 
individualized testing proposal. This provision, which I authored, has 
been removed in conference because of the clearly communicated concern 
that the President would veto the legislation based on this issue.
  The Senate and House have repeatedly given the administration a 
failing grade on respecting the role of parents, on local control of 
what is taught and how it is taught. The President has insisted on 
trying to promote federalized control of education. Federal testing 
would lead to a Federal curriculum.
  This administration has a lamentable record of harming the interests 
of American schoolchildren.
  For example, on school choice, the President wants to incarcerate 
America's most disadvantaged youngsters in dangerous, dysfunctional 
schools, rather than give them a choice of schools.
  On block grants, he wants to keep plowing taxpayer money into the 
bureaucracy, instead of investing more in our classrooms.
  Now, on school testing, he wants to cut the rug out from under the 
role of parents and communities--the most important factors in how well 
children do in schools.
  The more Members of this body have learned about the President's 
national testing proposal, the less they have liked it. Over the past 
year, the number of Senators opposing national testing has grown to a 
majority.
  When we first visited this issue last fall during debate on the 
Labor, HHS and educational appropriations bill, only 13 Senators voted 
against allowing the President's national testing proposal.
  Only one month later, 36 other Senators joined with me to threaten to 
filibuster the Labor, HHS, and Education appropriations bill unless 
there was a ban on FY 1998 federal funding for the President's national 
testing proposal.
  In April of this year, when I offered my testing ban as an amendment 
to the Coverdell A+ bill, the Senate passed the provision by a vote of 
52-47.
  Over in the House, Congressman Bill Goodling, Chairman of the House 
Education and the Workforce Committee, has continued to provide 
leadership in the fight against national testing. His bill to prohibit 
funds for national testing passed by a vote of 242-174 in February of 
this year.
  So it is clear that both Chambers of this Congress agree that 
national testing should be rejected. And the President of the United 
States wants to promote national testing, and does so, I believe, in an 
effort that would begin to nationalize the school system. Local control 
of schools is fundamentally important and should be protected. It is 
reflected in the understanding of the House and the Senate.
  The Senate Majority Leader and the Speaker of the House have provided 
to Chairman Goodling and me a written commitment that they will ensure 
that the text of the Labor/HHS/Education appropriations bill for 1999, 
and any supplemental or any other such legislation, will not leave 
Congress without a testing provision that Chairman Goodling and I find 
to be satisfactory. That, of course, would be a provision allowing no 
funds to develop national tests. If the appropriations bill does not 
make it to the President's desk, they say, then every effort will be 
made to include this in a continuing resolution or any other must-pass 
legislation.
  I appreciate this assurance from our leadership in both the House and 
Senate, and my colleagues can be sure that I will do everything in my 
power to hold them to their commitment.
  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the letter 
from the Major Leader and the Speaker to Chairman Goodling and me 
containing these assurances be printed in the Record after my remarks.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

[[Page S6933]]

  (See Exhibit 1.)
  Mr. ASHCROFT. Why am I opposed to national testing? Mr. President, we 
must remember that any movement toward national control of education 
savages principles that we as Americans hold dear: parental authority 
and control, teachers who are free to teach core subject matter and 
school boards that are responsive to their communities, not held 
captive by distant bureaucrats.
  President Clinton's proposal for national testing of our children is 
an example of such an attempt at a federal power grab. The President 
wants to move power out of the hands of parents and school boards and 
into the hands of Washington bureaucrats.
  America resists that for a number of important reasons, and these are 
the reasons to oppose federalized national tests.
  Parental involvement is the most important factor in a child's 
educational success, and national tests would undermine the ability of 
parents to play a meaningful role in the educational decisions of their 
children.
  During my time as Governor of Missouri, and through my work with the 
Education Commission of the States, learned that the single most 
operative condition in student educational achievement is the 
involvement of parents. Study after study has proven the significance 
of parental involvement in their child's education.
  We should not disengage parents with a federalized national testing 
system. Experience has shown that local control is a key factor in 
educational success.
  Experience has shown that local control is a key factor in 
educational success. As a former Governor who made education a top 
policy priority, I learned first-hand that local control is needed to 
create educational programs that respond to the needs of local 
communities and that stimulate success.
  National tests will lead to a national curriculum. There is wide 
consensus among teachers, administrators, and education experts that 
``what gets tested is what gets taught.''
  So, if you determine a test, you determine the curriculum.
  A national curriculum is detrimental because it eliminates the 
participation of parents and local schools--the key elements of 
success. It would do so inevitably. As a result, they key elements of 
success--parents, schoolteachers, and local decision-making--would be 
missing in our educational systems throughout the country.
  Lynne Cheney, former Chairperson of the National Endowment for the 
Humanities, reminds us that previous attempts at federal standards have 
been disastrous.
  She points to the politically correct federal history standards which 
were unanimously rejected in the Senate.
  Cheney also points to the English/language arts standards, which were 
such an ill-considered muddle that even the Clinton Department of 
Education cut off funding for them after having invested more than $1 
million.
  The final exam on the Clinton plan for federally controlled testing 
will come on the Labor/OHS/Education appropriations bill. This 
Congress--and more importantly, the American people--will be watching 
very carefully to see how the Administration performs on this issue 
that affects the future of our children. I will do everything in my 
power to protect the ability of parents, teachers, and local schools to 
be involved in the education of their children by participating in the 
development of school curriculum, standards, and testing.
  So I commend this bill to the President. This is an important bill. 
It would advance substantially the interests of our students. I thank 
the sponsors for their outstanding work.
  I look forward to sending to the President an appropriations bill 
which would curtail the potential of any money being wasted at the 
Federal level by imposing inappropriate federalized tests upon local 
school districts. These tests would curtail the ability of local 
officials to make the kinds of decisions that are necessary for us to 
have the kind of school quality that we need in order to survive in the 
next century.
  With that in mind, I thank the sponsor of this legislation and 
commend him for the outstanding work he has done by stepping forward 
for America's schoolchildren, and I look forward to the opportunity of 
working together again to make sure that as we protect the options of 
parents and local officials to educate their children, we best serve 
this great land and future generations.
  I thank the Chair.

                               Exhibit 1


                                Congress of the United States,

                                     Washington, DC, June 5, 1998.
     Hon. Bill Goodling,
     Chairman, Committee on Education and the Workforce, House of 
         Representatives, Washington, DC.

     Hon. John Ashcroft,
     U.S. Senate, Washington, DC.
       Gentlemen: We are grateful to the two of you for taking the 
     lead on requiring that testing of students remain at the 
     state and local level. The administration's proposal to 
     control student testing at the federal level necessarily 
     would result in government control of the curriculum. 
     Stopping this central government control of student testing 
     is a very important part of our Republican plan to return our 
     schools to the control of the parents and teachers at the 
     local level.
       We have worked with you and voted with you to pass a 
     federal testing prohibition bill in the House and to add an 
     amendment to H.R. 2646, the Education Savings Act for Public 
     and Private Schools. Obviously, since this bill is under the 
     threat of a veto by the administration and a filibuster by 
     Senate Democrats, it does not serve our interests to pursue 
     the ban on federal testing in this bill.
       Therefore, in order to ensure that Congress will pass and 
     send to the President a ban on federal testing, you have our 
     commitment to support inclusion of your testing prohibition 
     language (H.R. 2846/Amendment 2300 to H.R. 2646) in the base 
     test of the FY 1999 Labor, Health and Human Services, and 
     Education Appropriations bill. This language will be 
     maintained through floor action and the conference committee 
     process. You have our commitment that this bill will not 
     leave the Congress without a testing provision that you find 
     to be satisfactory.
       If for some reason the Labor/HHS/Education Appropriations 
     bill does not make it to the President's desk, then we will 
     support efforts to include this provision in any Continuing 
     Resolution(s), or other ``must pass'' legislation in both 
     bodies. We appreciate your leadership over the past months on 
     this most important issue and look forward to continuing to 
     work closely with you.
           Sincerely,
     Trent Lott.
     Newt Gingrich.

  Mr. COVERDELL addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Georgia.
  Mr. COVERDELL. I thank my colleague from Missouri for the 
contribution he has made in this debate and for the work he has 
expended on behalf of this legislation, and for his remarks.
  Mr. President, many, many years ago, in my home city of Atlanta, and 
in campaigns, I met a woman who worked and still works in our inner 
city with many of the inner-city problems. She is now the chairperson 
of the City Wide Advisory Council on Public Housing. Her name is Louise 
Watley.
  She recently wrote a letter to me and my colleague, Senator Cleland 
from Georgia, and she said:

       As a resident of the Carver Homes Public Housing Community 
     since 1955, I have witnessed generations of young African 
     Americans grow up in one our Nation's poorest neighborhoods. 
     In the 1980s, I fought the epidemic of crack cocaine among 
     our youth by working to kick drug dealers out of our 
     community. In the 1990s, I find myself fighting the epidemic 
     of hopelessness that has resulted from the increasing failure 
     of our public schools to educate poor, urban children, As the 
     Chairperson of the City Wide Advisory Council on Public 
     Housing (``CWAC'') and on behalf of the thousands of Atlanta 
     public housing residents the Council represents, I ask you to 
     provide us with hope for improving the K-12 education of our 
     children.
       By way of this letter, I urge both of you to continue this 
     important trend of granting parents greater choice in the 
     education of their children. Please avoid the temptation of 
     sacrificing the poorest children in America in order to 
     protect an education bureaucracy that seems to care more 
     about money and job security than it does about helping 
     children to read, to write and to recognize right from wrong.
       Please support the passage of the A+ Accounts for Public 
     and Private Schools Act as well as stronger federal charter 
     school legislation and demonstration public and private 
     school choice projects.

  I have not seen Louise in many, many years. But I am encouraged that 
she is still at work on behalf of our community.
  I think she has in this letter crystallized the very severe problem 
we are having all across the country, for we are graduating students 
from all too many schools who do not have the basic skills to enjoy the 
full benefits of citizenship.

[[Page S6934]]

  Earlier in the debate, the Senator from Virginia, who, while kind to 
this legislation, indicated he would vote against it on its scoring 
priorities, said this bill, or the education savings account, spends 
$1.5 billion in tax relief for families to open these savings accounts 
and that if we are going to spend $1.5 billion, we ought to do it on 
higher priorities.
  The math doesn't work. The education savings account creates $1.5 
billion of tax relief on the interest built up on savings that families 
put into savings accounts if they use it for education.
  It does not spend $1.5 billion; it leaves $1.5 billion in those 
checking accounts of those families. And what do they do? They save $12 
billion. So what we have done is, we have taken $1.5 billion, we have 
left it home all across the country, and we have built a resource eight 
times that size. So instead of looking at it as if it is $1.5 billion 
we did not ratchet out of somebody's checking account, you ought to 
look at it as if we have encouraged Americans to save $12 billion that 
would come to the aid of education. Where else can you invest $1.5 
billion and store up $12 billion that would come to the support of 
children all across the land.
  It is a plus. We are causing billions of new dollars to come to the 
aid of educators and education. It is just amazing; I heard several 
Senators on the other side view this as an expenditure because we left 
some money in the checking accounts of American families. It has always 
been amazing to me how little incentive it takes to make Americans do 
huge things. Boy, wouldn't we love it if every billion we invested here 
could generate $12 billion of value. It would be a remarkable 
achievement. So this is not setting $1.5 billion aside for building 
schools or doing something else. This is leaving $1.5 billion in 
checking accounts, and it causes them to pull together $12 billion. And 
that is the minimal estimate. I think it will be much more.
  I think it is good in the closing minutes here to remind the Senate 
and anybody listening that this legislation has an enormous reach. 
Sometimes we forget to analyze or take a look at the total value. I 
just said this legislation will cause Americans to save at a minimum 
$12 billion. If nothing else, helping that would be great, considering 
the fact we have one of the lowest savings rates in the industrialized 
world. But this bill will make beneficiaries of half the school 
population wherever they go to school--public, private, or home--in the 
United States. Fourteen million families will open a savings account. 
We don't know how many million sponsors--grandparents, companies, 
unions and churches--will come to the aid of those accounts, because it 
allows sponsors, but 14 million families parenting over 20 million 
children--that is half the school population--will be beneficiaries if 
this bill passes and is signed by the President. One million students 
entering higher education will have a better chance of financing it 
because it gives tax relief to the 21 States that have prepaid tuition 
plans, and 17 new States are considering it.
  Fourteen million families, 20 million children, 1 million students in 
higher education, 1 million employees seeking to improve their 
continuing education will be helped by the legislation. In other words, 
Mr. President, the reach of the bill that is before us, the bipartisan 
bill, is enormous and will have the effect of causing millions of 
families and millions of students across this land to enter into a new 
consciousness about improving their education, and it will be the 
smartest money that was ever accumulated because it will be guided like 
a missile system by the parents and relatives and friends of that child 
to the most urgent needs that child faces. If they have special 
education problems or health problems, if they have a deficiency in 
math or reading, it will end up paying for it, or a computer or tutor. 
And I might point out that over 80 percent of the students in inner-
city schools do not have a computer. This can begin to take care of it.
  Mr. President, this legislation reaches into every community at every 
level, and while it is not a cure-all it gives lots of people lots of 
new tools to go to work on turning this situation around in America. 
And if you want the next century to be an American century, you better 
be focused on grades kindergarten through high school. We need to get 
that job done.

  Mr. President, how much time is remaining?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Georgia has 6 minutes 5 
seconds.
  Mr. COVERDELL. Mr. President, I yield 3 minutes to the Senator from 
Washington.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Washington is recognized for 
3 minutes.
  Mr. GORTON. Mr. President, I am here to speak as eloquently as I 
possibly can in favor of this proposal. The genius and the persistence 
of the Senator from Georgia in bringing this major educational reform 
this far is to be commended highly.
  I feel a particular attachment to this bill because with the help of 
the Senator from Georgia, while it was being debated before the Senate, 
there was added to it my own triple option, an opportunity to let each 
State decide whether or not it would continue to get its Federal aid to 
education in the present fashion, as a block grant to the State without 
Federal regulations, or as a block grant directly to school districts 
without either State or Federal regulations, trusting the people who 
provide education to their children--teachers, principals and elected 
school board members.
  Because that is a relatively new idea and highly controversial, its 
inclusion in this bill would have frustrated our ability to pass this 
bill and send it to the President. It was, therefore, with my reluctant 
consent, dropped from the bill that is before us at the present time.
  But the perfect should not ever be the enemy of the good, and the 
work that has gone into this proposal, the fact that it is highly 
bipartisan, the fact that there is a real opportunity that it should 
become law makes it one of the most important bills and the most 
important debates that we have engaged in in the State so far this 
year.
  So I thank my friend from Georgia, congratulate him on his good work 
and commend to all of my colleagues, both Democrats and Republicans, 
this important educational reform.
  Mr. COVERDELL addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Georgia.
  Mr. COVERDELL. I very much thank the Senator from Washington for his 
remarks.
  I yield 1 minute to the Senator from South Carolina.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from South Carolina.
  Mr. THURMOND. Mr. President, I commend the able Senator from Georgia 
for the manner in which he has handled this bill. There is nothing more 
important than education. I started out my career as a schoolteacher. I 
taught school for 6 years in Edgefield and McCormick Counties and then 
went to the State senate and spent most of my time in the State senate 
on education matters. I believe we should do more in the field of 
education; that is the hope of the future. And I hope the Congress will 
pass this bill and do it promptly.
  Mr. COVERDELL addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Georgia.
  Mr. COVERDELL. I thank the Senator from South Carolina.
  I yield up to 2 minutes to my distinguished colleague from Delaware.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Delaware.
  Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, I will, believe it or not, take only 1 
minute.
  I compliment the Senator from Georgia. I am going to vote with him. I 
told him when he first introduced this legislation I would support it. 
In the meantime, it picked up some other amendments, Gorton and 
Ashcroft, and I announced at the time I voted against it with Ashcroft 
and Gorton as part of it, that if it came out of conference as it was 
originally constructed, I could support it.
  I thank him for his fairness, the way he has dealt with this, the 
openness in the way he has dealt with this, and I compliment him on 
bringing back to this body a piece of legislation that I and I believe 
probably another half dozen or more Democrats will be able to support.
  So I thank him very much for his courtesy.

[[Page S6935]]

  Mr. COVERDELL. Mr. President, I thank my colleague from Delaware for 
his interest in this legislation and the fairness with which he has 
approached it. I appreciate very much his decision to vote for the 
legislation.
  In closing, I thank the majority leader for his tenacity, all my 
cosponsors who worked so long and hard, nearly 2 years, and the 
conference committee for the extended work to reach out in a bipartisan 
effort.
  At this time, I yield whatever remaining time there is.
  Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?
  There is a sufficient second.
  The yeas and nays were ordered.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. All time has expired or has been yielded back.
  The question now occurs on adoption of the conference report to 
accompany H.R. 2646, the Educational Savings and School Excellence Act 
of 1998.
  The yeas and nays have been ordered.
  The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk called the roll.
  Mr. NICKLES. I announce that the Senator from New Mexico (Mr. 
Domenici) is necessarily absent.
  I also announce that the Senator from Pennsylvania (Mr. Specter) is 
absent because of illness.
  Mr. FORD. I announce that the Senator from Hawaii (Mr. Akaka), the 
Senator from Montana (Mr. Baucus), and the Senator from West Virginia 
(Mr. Rockefeller) are necessarily absent.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Burns). Are there any other Senators in 
the Chamber who desire to vote?
  The result was announced--yeas 59, nays 36, as follows:

                      [Rollcall Vote No. 169 Leg.]

                                YEAS--59

     Abraham
     Allard
     Ashcroft
     Bennett
     Biden
     Bond
     Breaux
     Brownback
     Burns
     Byrd
     Campbell
     Cleland
     Coats
     Cochran
     Collins
     Coverdell
     Craig
     D'Amato
     DeWine
     Enzi
     Faircloth
     Feinstein
     Frist
     Gorton
     Gramm
     Grams
     Grassley
     Gregg
     Hagel
     Hatch
     Helms
     Hutchinson
     Hutchison
     Inhofe
     Kempthorne
     Kohl
     Kyl
     Lieberman
     Lott
     Lugar
     Mack
     McCain
     McConnell
     Murkowski
     Nickles
     Roberts
     Roth
     Santorum
     Sessions
     Shelby
     Smith (NH)
     Smith (OR)
     Snowe
     Stevens
     Thomas
     Thompson
     Thurmond
     Torricelli
     Warner

                                NAYS--36

     Bingaman
     Boxer
     Bryan
     Bumpers
     Chafee
     Conrad
     Daschle
     Dodd
     Dorgan
     Durbin
     Feingold
     Ford
     Glenn
     Graham
     Harkin
     Hollings
     Inouye
     Jeffords
     Johnson
     Kennedy
     Kerrey
     Kerry
     Landrieu
     Lautenberg
     Leahy
     Levin
     Mikulski
     Moseley-Braun
     Moynihan
     Murray
     Reed
     Reid
     Robb
     Sarbanes
     Wellstone
     Wyden

                             NOT VOTING--5

     Akaka
     Baucus
     Domenici
     Rockefeller
     Specter
  The conference report was agreed to.

                          ____________________