[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 124 (Thursday, September 17, 1998)]
[House]
[Pages H8025-H8032]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                        DOLLARS TO THE CLASSROOM

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 7, 1997, the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Hoekstra) is 
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, tonight we want to begin a dialogue that 
we hope sets the framework for tomorrow. Tomorrow, there is going to be 
limited debate on a bill that is coming to the floor. It is called 
``Dollars to the Classroom.''
  This piece of legislation, which was authored by a colleague of mine 
from Pennsylvania, builds on a previous resolution that this House has 
passed. What that resolution said was that when we send a dollar to 
Washington for education, instead of getting 60 to 70 cents of that 
dollar back to the classroom, back to the local level, we are going to 
strive to get that up to 90 to 95 cents of every education dollar 
getting back to a local classroom.
  Before I do that, and before I begin that discussion on education, I 
want to set the framework. A while back, we did a proposal out of my 
office, or we did kind of an analysis, and we started addressing an 
issue which I think is very important. The question was: Why is it that 
everyone has so much faith in Washington?

                              {time}  2200

  Why is it that people believe that if they send their money to 
Washington, Washington is better at building their roads, Washington is 
better at educating their children, Washington is better at creating 
jobs than if we left that money at the State or local level or if we 
left that money in the pockets of the American citizens?
  We identified a phenomenon which we call ``the myth of the magical 
bureaucracy.'' What we said is, we really should ask some questions. Do 
we really believe that a bureaucrat in Washington can raise our 
children? Do we really believe that this magical bureaucracy here in 
Washington can build and strengthen our communities, that it can create 
economic growth, that it can create economic opportunity and that it 
can prepare America for the information age?
  It is kind of interesting, my colleague from Colorado and I today had 
the opportunity to ask that question, not can the magical bureaucracy 
here in Washington prepare America for the information age, but the 
question that we asked today is whether the magical bureaucracy, not 
whether it can lead us into the information age but whether this 
magical bureaucracy here in Washington, in the two departments we had 
testify today, the Education and Labor Departments, whether they are 
even prepared to move into the information age and whether they are 
prepared to deal with the year 2000 issue. And the answers that we got 
were fairly frightening.
  The Education Department, this is a group that sends out money to our 
schools; it does Pell grants. It does the direct student loan program. 
In reality, the Education Department is perhaps one of the largest 
banks in the country. Its loan portfolio or the loans that it manages 
are close to $150 billion. It has roughly 93 million customers, 93 
million people who have loans with the Education Department.
  In a recent scoring or a grading, which I think is very appropriate 
for the Education Department, one of my colleagues from another 
committee in the House of Representatives said that they, the Education 
Department, deserved an F. They are not ready for the year 2000. It 
means that we are not quite sure what happens to the $150 billion of 
loans that are outstanding. We are not quite sure what will happen to 
our students who in 1999 begin applying for loans or start going to 
school and believe they are approved for loans and start actually 
looking for the money and do not receive their checks.
  It is kind of scary what is going to happen potentially with the 
Education

[[Page H8026]]

Department. It was heartening to see that on a bipartisan basis my 
colleague from Hawaii, who is the ranking member, indicated her serious 
concerns about where the Education Department was and what they could 
do.
  It is not about whether they can lead us into the information age. I 
am not sure if the gentleman from Colorado would have anything to say 
about his observations on the hearings today, but when we talk about 
the myth of the magical bureaucracy, we really saw a myth today, the 
myth that this organization that we think is educating our kids cannot 
even deal with the information age.
  I yield to the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Bob Schaffer).


                             General Leave

  Mr. BOB SCHAFFER of Colorado. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent 
that all Members may have 5 legislative days within which to revise and 
extend their remarks on the subject of our special order tonight.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Snowbarger). Is there objection to the 
request of the gentleman from Colorado?
  There was no objection.
  Mr. BOB SCHAFFER of Colorado. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for 
yielding to me.
  You are precisely right. We got a distinct impression in the 
Education Committee today that the United States Department of 
Education is woefully unprepared for the technology problems that they 
will be confronting with the Y2K or the year 2000 computer problem that 
is likely to exist in the year 2000.
  We went through a program-by-program analysis of where the Department 
of Education thinks it is today. As you properly pointed out and 
mentioned, the U.S. Department of Education is part education agency, 
part legislative bureaucracy that implements various regulations and 
legislation, and it is part financial institution. In fact, the amount 
of finances that that agency controls with respect to college loans, 
not just the direct student loan program or the program where the 
government is the banker that loans directly to students around the 
country, but the private student loan programs that are also managed 
under the department, both of those programs and several others are 
placing the future of education opportunity for millions and millions 
of Americans at great risk as a result of their failure to properly and 
effectively apply modern technology today and be able to take us into 
the next century.
  I asked the specific question, what if you are not ready to go in the 
year 2000. First of all, what makes us think that we are today? They 
were unable to answer that question with any certainty that they will 
be prepared for the Y2K computer problem. I asked specifically, what 
would happen if there is a 3-month delay, there are barriers to the 
communication and the interrelationship between other financial 
institutions and financial institutions that are central to the college 
lending program. And there was no answer, really. The answer was, well, 
we will work on it when we get there. We will try to fix it then.
  The second question I asked, what if there are some kinds of barriers 
to the interrelationship with the telecommunications industry, our 
ability to communicate with schools, institutions and other associated 
agencies that work with the Department of Education. Again, the answer 
was rather startling. They really had not thought through to that point 
yet. We will work on it, they said, when we get to that point into the 
future, and we will fix it as swiftly as we can.
  Well, I realize these are difficult times that every Federal agency 
is going through, every private agency, anyone who relies on technology 
for computer and data storage. But with respect to the Department of 
Education, they have placed the interests of the American people at a 
financial level and an accounting level and at an administrative level 
and at a regulatory level so completely into the hands of technological 
attempts at the Department of Education at which they are incapable of 
properly and effectively managing.
  These individuals, citizens, taxpayers and anybody who proposes at 
some point in time to achieve a higher education or to participate in 
any way with the Department of Education really is at great risk and 
great jeopardy as a result of what I consider to be a lax level of 
commitment and approach to managing the technology of education today.
  The real answer is not to look to Washington any longer or any 
further for additional leadership and guidance in the management of 
colleges and universities or local school districts, for that matter, 
or any education institution. We are finding, through the example that 
was exposed today in your committee, that the real academic and 
educational salvation for the country is in a decentralized approach to 
schooling, public schooling and private schooling, and moving authority 
back to the States, back to local communities, back to the homes and 
back to the neighborhoods where education, once again, is held in the 
hands of those who truly care most about the children that are relying 
on the availability of a strong and viable education system. Those 
people, of course, who care the most are, of course, parents, not 
bureaucrats. That is the message I think we need to convey not only 
tonight, but that is the message I think we conveyed in committee and 
consistently try to convey.

  It really is at the basis of most of the Republican reforms and 
proposals that we have put forward here in this Congress to try to 
restore the greatness of the American education system.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. Reclaiming my time, Mr. Speaker, just to set this in a 
context again, there is a difference between the bureaucratic mentality 
that we see in a lot of institutions here in Washington and the free 
market actions and energy that we see. Actually, just for my 
colleagues, on a monthly basis my office publishes what we call a 
``Tale of Two Visions.'' What a tale of two visions does is it really 
portrays the two different visions for America, one of which is the 
vision of bureaucracy. The IRS admits to taxpayer abuse. That is a 
vision of bureaucracy. No kids at a 2.4 million day care center. 
Government creates private company windfall. Start time will improve 
education, legislators claim. Another strange IRS determination, but 
that is a vision of bureaucracy.
  We contrast that to what we think is a vision of opportunity, where 
we do what my colleague from Colorado said, we move authority and 
responsibility either back into the free market system or we move it 
back to local and State government, the levels of government that are 
available to the people. We do this on a monthly basis.
  Other tales of two visions. A vision of bureaucracy. Remember the 
$600 toilet seats? Now they are $75 screws. A vision of bureaucracy. 
Billions missing Federal audit, another expensive Federal building 
project.
  Contrast that with the vision of opportunity. A parent goes the extra 
mile to help children read. Volunteers help the poor save on tax bills. 
Private group offers educational opportunities for low income kids. 
Program provides alternatives to gangs.
  What we do is we highlight those each and every month, the difference 
between the bureaucratic vision, which is, when they ask this question, 
they say, can this bureaucracy substitute for a loving home? The 
bureaucratic vision says yes. We say no.
  Does spending money in this building and a building in Washington 
equal positive results for America? Bureaucrats and the bureaucratic 
vision says us spending money in Washington is a positive thing. The 
opportunity vision says, spending at the local level through parents 
and the free market works better.
  The bureaucratic vision says, can a one-size-fits-all program run out 
of this building solve every problem? The bureaucratic vision says yes. 
It says that we can develop a program that works in my district in West 
Michigan and we expect to it work in Colorado. And as much as I liked 
Colorado when I went out to visit your district and we had a great 
hearing out there, the needs and the opportunities in your district are 
very different than mine.
  I just wanted to let my colleagues know that if they are interested, 
we have this tale of two visions as well as journal of ideas, talking 
about how from an opportunity vision standpoint we can change the arts, 
we can change education, we can change regulatory and tax reform and 
campaign finance reform, there are alternative visions to

[[Page H8027]]

the bureaucratic vision in America. And the journal of ideas and the 
tale of two visions, these are all available on my web page. For my 
colleagues, if they are interested, they can just go to WWW.HOUSE.GOV/
HOEKSTRA/WELCOME.HTML, and they can have access to a tale of two 
visions and they can have access to the journal of ideas and other 
information that really contrasts a bureaucratic vision of America, 
which I think is the myth, and the real strength of America, which is 
the private sector.
  Mr. BOB SCHAFFER of Colorado. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will 
continue to yield, if anyone doubts the sincerity of the current 
administration and the bureaucrats over in the White House and the 
Department of Education to construct a bureaucratic model of 
centralized control and authority with respect to public education in 
America, I would suggest that they peruse this letter that I am about 
to reference and will submit.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. Reclaiming my time, Mr. Speaker, this letter that you 
showed me tonight as we were preparing is unbelievable. It clearly 
points out the difference between a bureaucratic vision of America, 
where control is moved to Washington, where we believe that this little 
bureaucrat in this building here in Washington does all kinds of good 
things, and the more power we can move to this bureaucrat and to this 
building in Washington, the better off we will be.
  Mr. BOB SCHAFFER of Colorado. We can trace the origin of this 
particular mentality directly to November 11, 1992. What is remarkable 
about that date is that November 11, 1992 was, of course, the day after 
the 1992 presidential election, the day when President Clinton became 
the nominee for or became the President-elect of the United States of 
America.
  What I hold here in my hands is a copy of a letter from a gentleman 
named Mark S. Tucker, who is the President of the National Center on 
Education and the Economy. As I say, I will, under the unanimous 
consent request that I had asked for and was granted just a few minutes 
ago, I will submit this in its entirety for the record tomorrow or 
request that it be submitted.

                              {time}  2215

  But I want to tell my colleague that this letter was written not to 
the President but to the President's spouse, Hillary Clinton, at the 
Governor's mansion in Little Rock, Arkansas. And it is a blueprint, 
effectively, for a consolidation of education authority right here in 
Washington, D.C. Not just kindergarten through 12th grade education 
throughout the country, but higher education, and even beyond to work 
force training.
  Let me tell my colleague just a couple of provisions in here that I 
will go ahead and read right now.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. Reclaiming my time for a minute, and I will let the 
gentleman get back to that, but I want to set the context for this, 
because some of the things the gentleman is going to talk about have 
not come out in concrete proposals that have come from the White House.
  What I want to do is lay out for the gentleman a litany of what the 
administration has proposed. And this goes to what the gentleman has in 
his hands, but goes a little further.
  Washington has been involved in training teachers, we have been 
involved in providing breakfast, we have been involved in teaching our 
kids about sex, we have been involved in teaching our kids about the 
arts, providing lunch, teaching them about drugs, teaching them about 
violence, providing after-school snacks, and providing after-school 
activities.
  These are all things that the Federal Government has gotten involved 
in in education. But let me just point out the specific types of 
programs that this administration has already proposed and the types of 
things that they want to move from the local level and the State level. 
They say, no, it is the responsibility of a building in Washington and 
a bureaucrat in Washington; that they can make these decisions better 
than what can be done at a local level.
  What have they proposed? They have proposed building our schools, 
they have proposed hiring teachers, they have proposed developing 
curriculum, they have proposed installing technology, they have 
proposed developing Federal tests and Federal standards for our kids.
  Remember the debate and the fight that we had last year so that we 
would not have national testing? They want to test our children. They 
want to make midnight basketball available. All from Washington.
  It does not mean these things are not important. They are all very 
important. But the myth of the magical bureaucrat says we think those 
decisions should be made by a bureaucrat in Washington rather than at 
the State and, most importantly, at the local level.
  The bottom line is, what do they want to do? Here is the litany when 
we put it all together:
  They want to build our schools, hire our teachers, train our 
teachers, develop the curriculum, install technology, develop Federal 
tests and standards, test our children, provide breakfast, teach them 
about sex teach them about the arts, provide them lunch, teach them 
about drugs, teach them about violence, provide an after-school snack, 
provide after-school activities, and make midnight basketball 
available.
  Other than that, it is the local school. These are Washington 
responsibilities, but other than that they really believe in local 
education.
  I yield back and the gentleman can talk about the other things that 
they have had on their mind and where they would be going next if they 
got this whole agenda.
  Mr. BOB SCHAFFER of Colorado. Once again I want to encourage all 
Members and any other observer to look for this letter that I am about 
to go through. I just want to mention a couple of paragraphs. The 
gentleman will get the idea without my having to actually read quite a 
lot of this. But this will be submitted in the Congressional Record. I 
will seek the approval of the body to allow that to occur and people 
will be able to see that in the Congressional Record in the days 
following.
  This really is a blueprint. It is a letter, again, from Mark Tucker 
to Hillary Clinton dated November 11, 1992, just shortly after, very, 
very shortly after the President took over. It was evident that the 
President became the victor on election night in 1992.
  And it starts out, ``Dear Hillary, I still cannot believe you won, 
but utter delight that you did pervades all the circles in which I 
move. I met last Wednesday in David Rockefeller's office with him,'' 
and others, and it goes through the names here. It talks about the 
subject that they were discussing at this little roundtable was, ``. . 
. what you and Bill should do now about education, training and labor 
market policy.''
  I will stop there to point out that this is not just a blueprint that 
affects only K through 12 education. It involves education, training 
and labor market policy. Really, a consolidation of a broad approach 
utilizing the U.S. Department of Education, the Department of Labor, 
and also, potentially, the Small Business Administration and others.
  I want to jump right to a paragraph that just alarmed me when I first 
read it. It is about the levy grant system, as it is called. ``We 
propose that Bill,'' meaning the President, ``take a leaf out of the 
German book'', it says. ``One of the most important reasons that large 
German employers offer apprenticeship slots to German youngsters is 
that they fear, with good reason, that if they don't volunteer to do 
so, the law will require it.''
  He says here, now listen to this, and listen to this very carefully, 
``Bill should gather a group of leading executives and business 
organization leaders and tell them straight out that he will hold back 
on submitting legislation to require a training levy provided that they 
commit themselves to a drive to get employers to get their average 
expenditures on front-line employee training up to 2 percent of front-
line employee salaries and wages within 2 years.''
  Let me restate that in different words and tell my colleagues what 
this says specifically. It talks previously in the letter about a new 
tax called a levy on employers for training.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. Reclaiming my time for just a second. It is interesting 
that, once again, they will not use the

[[Page H8028]]

word of what it really is. They come up with another word.
  Mr. BOB SCHAFFER of Colorado. It is a tax.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. It is a tax, and they call it a levy.
  Mr. BOB SCHAFFER of Colorado. A training levy, which would be 2 
percent of the front-line employee salaries and wages within 2 years, 
is what they said. Now, here it says, ``If they have not done so within 
that time, then he will expect,'' he being the President, ``expect 
their support when he submits legislation requiring the training 
levy.''
  So envision the conversation. The President sits down with a group of 
business executives, leading business executives and organization 
leaders, and says, ``You know, fellas, I have had in the back of my 
mind the idea of imposing a 2 percent training levy on all employers 
across the country. But I will hold back on that if you will 
voluntarily increase your investment in front-line employee training, 
at a level that would approximate 2 percent of salaries and wages, and 
if you get to that point within 2 years.''

  Now, this, in any other circle, is called blackmail. Or bribery, 
perhaps. It goes on here. It says, and I will pick up with a quote 
here, ``If they have not done so within that time, then he will expect 
their support when he submits this legislation requiring the training 
levy.'' So he is going to get their support one way or another, 
according to the plan. ``He could do the same thing with respect to 
slots for structured on-the-job training.''
  It goes on a little further and talks next about college loan and 
public service programs. Listen to this. This is an effort described 
here to try to get students across the country to become part of a 
federally-managed credentialing program for general education. And 
those students who get credentialed under the general education 
credential, the Federal standard, this Federal credential, will be 
entitled to a free year of higher education. And that would be 
accomplished through a combination of Federal and State funds, and that 
will have a decided impact on the calculations of costs for college 
loan public service programs.
  So what we really have here is a blueprint for a German model of 
education that would be forced upon the people of America, and 
employers in this case, either through force, or the threat of force, 
and done so in a way to redistribute the public wealth, the strength of 
the Federal budget, to those students who voluntarily submit themselves 
to the new Federal credentialing standard for K through 12 education.
  Now, again, I point this out, and I will submit it for the 
Congressional Record, but the reason I used this example, and there are 
plenty more horrendous examples in the letter that I will spare the 
body for the moment, is that this really is a document that describes 
the mentality of the White House the day after the 1992 presidential 
election. And it shows how this country made a dramatic departure away 
from the tradition that the gentleman and I would like to get back to: 
That tradition that suggests local control, local authority, treating 
teachers like professionals and administrators at the local level like 
professional administrators.
  This blueprint departs from that model and, instead, moves the 
country toward a government-managed, government-owned centralized 
education system from kindergarten past college, actually, into the job 
training stage. And it really is the conflict in visions that defines 
the differences between Republicans and Democrats typically.
  This is an accurate description of precisely what is at stake and 
what was at stake not only in the 1992 election but in the 1996 
election, and the election coming up within 7 weeks, the 1998 election. 
This huge difference of opinion about whether education authority ought 
to be consolidated, as the President would believe, in Washington, 
D.C., or our vision, as a Republican majority, that says we should 
trust parents, we should trust teachers, we should trust local 
administrators, local school districts, local school boards and, above 
all, State legislators in all 50 States.
  That is the difference and that is the distinction. And I believe 
that our answer offers greater hope and greater promise for the 
children of the future. Greater hope and greater promise in allowing 
for a whole menu of education alternatives, education approaches, 
education philosophies throughout the country based on local values, 
based on local priorities, based on the local needs of children to 
match local job markets, whether it is agriculture, or maybe it is an 
urban setting in a large city over on the East Coast.
  But to take into account these different settings and objectives and 
values and priorities and local communities, that is the real answer, 
in my mind, to education success that will restore America's greatness 
as the preeminent country throughout the world for educating youngsters 
and turning them into future leaders, not only in the political realm 
but in the religious realm and also in the area of business and 
commerce.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. Reclaiming my time, the gentleman has opened himself up 
to perhaps some criticism; to someone saying, look, we have never seen 
those proposals. What is outlined in that memo has never come to the 
House. That is not what was going on at the other end of Pennsylvania 
Avenue. But then we take a look and say, no, the gentleman is right. 
The gentleman has clearly outlined the vision, because steps moving us 
in that direction have come from the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue.
  Mr. BOB SCHAFFER of Colorado. We can track this blueprint and the 
programs that the gentleman has outlined that have been implemented by 
the current administration. The school to Work Program would be one, 
Goals 2000 would be another. It just goes on and on and on, right on 
down to midnight basketball, which is consistent with the blueprint 
outlined in this letter from a group called the National Center on 
Education and the Economy.
  These are friends of the Clintons. And I am sure they were pretty 
excited and thrilled when there was a changeover in the White House, 
because it finally meant that a liberal perspective on centralizing and 
managing education around the country was finally possible. And that is 
the direction that they have moved this country.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. Reclaiming my time, I think the clearest example of 
that is the debate that we had last year, and the fight on the floor of 
this House and the fight that we had with the administration about 
testing our children, recognizing that if we develop national tests we 
open the door to Federal tests and Federal standards. And if all of our 
kids are to be tested on a national basis, it really moves into 
developing curriculum, which means we want to train our teachers.
  And so we saw the first steps of that. And I think we have been 
effective in stopping that and moving towards our vision, which says 
let us not consolidate more power here in Washington, in these 
buildings here with these bureaucrats, who are very knowledgeable and 
very talented people, but they do not know Colorado and they do not 
know the State of Michigan.
  Let us go back, and we will go through a little bit of what we did 
with Education at a Crossroads, but before that, and I know some will 
say, oh, there they go again, they want to get rid of the Department of 
Education. That is not the debate. The debate is how do we take a 
Department of Education and make it more effective; and, also, what is 
working in America in education today.
  I have some quotes here about what people said about the Department 
of Education when it was created in 1979, and we can benchmark what 
people expected in 1979 when they voted for a Department of Education 
and what we now have almost 20 years later. Twenty years later do we 
have what we thought we were going to get?
  This is a benchmark; this is what we need to measure against. Mr. 
Brooks said, September 27, 1979, ``It creates a cabinet level 
Department of Education to provide more efficient administration of the 
wide variety of education program now scattered throughout the Federal 
Government.''
  I yield to the gentleman from Colorado if he can tell me how many 
Federal agencies today administer education programs? Have we seen 
consolidation?
  Mr. BOB SCHAFFER of Colorado. We have seen a huge growth and an 
explosion in Federal agencies that have their hands in our local 
schools.

[[Page H8029]]

  Mr. HOEKSTRA. Reclaiming my time. Maybe you remember the numbers. It 
is 39 different agencies with over 760 programs. In 1979 they 
recognized that they had a problem. We have too many programs and we 
have too many agencies dealing with education. We need to consolidate 
it in a Department of Education so that we really get a focus on 
education.
  I have another quote here. Secretary Rubin testified before the 
Committee on the Budget on March 11, 1997. At that hearing, I asked him 
who the point person is for education strategy in the administration.
  Mr. Rubin replied, ``I would say the President, who is enormously 
knowledgeable.''
  So the President is the point person on education. He must be the 
point person on defense, foreign policy, welfare reform. The benchmark 
was consolidation and streamlining in 1979 and efficiency.
  In reality, we have continued to create more programs. We have 
continued to create and allow more agencies to deal with education and 
we have never consolidated the strategy at the Department of Education 
level.
  The creation of this new department will reduce the size of the 
bureaucracy. In reality, the Washington bureaucracy here, the Education 
Department is one of the smaller bureaucracies. It has somewhere in the 
neighborhood of 4,000 to 5,000 employees, which I think is still a 
pretty good size bureaucracy. It has three times that many people who 
are on State payrolls enforcing Federal regulations. So we did not 
streamline the bureaucracies.
  Mr. Bayh said, ``The individual appointed to the position of 
Secretary of Education will coordinate all educational activities for 
the Federal Government.''
  Mr. Rubin has already said that has not happened.
  Mr. Levin said, ``I believe that the creation of the department can 
have a streamlining effect on the multitude of Federal education 
programs currently spread out through various departments within the 
Federal Government.'' It has not happened.
  Mr. BOB SCHAFFER of Colorado. If I could interject for a moment, the 
extent of the bureaucracy in the U.S. Department of Education and the 
corresponding inefficiency, red tape and regulation that goes along 
with that cannot be measured exclusively on the number of Federal 
employees that are on the Federal payroll and assigned to the U.S. 
Department of Education, because with the rules and regulations and 
reporting requirements created by those roughly 4,000 to 5,000 
employees comes implementation requirements that get passed on to the 
State level and to the local level.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. Let us do a little process here. Let me represent the 
bureaucrat and the bureaucracy in Washington and the gentleman will 
represent the school district. Let us go through this process of what 
happens.
  Mr. BOB SCHAFFER of Colorado. Sure.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. I collect the taxes so the taxpayer who is over there 
has sent the dollars to Washington and I now work with the Congress or 
I am instructed by the Congress and I have created these 760 programs. 
So I need to communicate this to the local school district and say, all 
right, I have 760 programs. I need to communicate to you and tell you 
what they are. What do you need to do at that point?
  Mr. BOB SCHAFFER of Colorado. At a local level, how do I receive the 
760 programs?
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. You then need to go through a process, and do what, and 
find which programs that you might qualify and then what does the 
gentleman have to do?
  Mr. BOB SCHAFFER of Colorado. First of all, on behalf of my 
constituents at the local level, I would want to know as fully and 
completely as possible what kinds of programs my school district is 
eligible for. So I would do a survey of all of those 760 programs and 
determine which ones I ought to be applying for to receive funding so I 
can bring the greatest value back home to the constituents that I 
represent.
  First of all, it takes a huge effort just to have somebody in my 
organization at the local level begin to look at all of those programs 
and hold them up to the particular characteristics of my school 
district.
  The next thing I need to do is then begin to apply for them and apply 
for them usually on an annual basis. That means having more staff and 
more individuals who sit down and fill out the forms, send them back, 
perhaps have them rejected, make the fine-tuning details that need to 
be done so I can reapply and maybe receive the funds, and then if I am 
successful at receiving the funds.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. Reclaiming my time, the gentleman has now applied to 
Washington, to me.
  Mr. BOB SCHAFFER of Colorado. That is right.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. The gentleman has presented a proposal. So your people 
have done the screening, they have had the dialogue with the department 
in the different agencies and we tell you you might qualify. So you 
send your application to Washington, and I am looking at it and saying, 
I have got about $30 billion but you are not the only one that has 
applied. I have all of the rest of the country that has now applied for 
this.
  So I now need to hire people to go through the screening process, 
because I have gotten more requests for dollars than what I have funds 
for. So I now need to go through and say, you qualify, you qualify, you 
qualify, you do not, you do not; I am sorry. So the people that do not 
qualify have put in all of this work, they have done all the surveying, 
they have put in the work and writing the grant application and they do 
not get any money. You now get some programs so I now notify you that 
you have won the award, you get the money and you are getting a check.

  What do you do next?
  Mr. BOB SCHAFFER of Colorado. Well, in order to continue receiving 
these funds, I have to behave in a way, as a school district, that 
satisfies the red tape and rules that come with those dollars from the 
Federal Government. I have to answer to bureaucrats maybe in the region 
that my State would be in, or I have to answer directly to people in 
Washington, D.C. to prove to them that I am using those dollars 
efficiently and effectively, meeting the expectations of somebody in 
the far off city of Washington, D.C. and achieving all of the 
objectives that these bureaucrats want to see.
  If I get the idea that I might not be achieving those objectives, I 
might ask to the bureaucrat in Washington, well, what is it exactly 
that you want to see on the report?
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. That is correct.
  Mr. BOB SCHAFFER of Colorado. I will then go to work manipulating the 
numbers and the statistics and the variables and the reports from my 
school district to make it appear as though I am meeting the objectives 
of the Federal Government perfectly and as fully as I possibly can, 
doing all of these accounting gymnastics and stretching the actual 
definitions of the law, simply to make sure that we continue to receive 
this wonderful cash from Washington, D.C.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. Reclaiming my time, what the gentleman has said is you 
have received the dollars and you implement the program and I know that 
you are not going to spend the money the way that I told you to.
  So you have to send me a bunch of reports saying, I did what you told 
me to do.
  Mr. BOB SCHAFFER of Colorado. That is right.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. Here is the evidence. Here are the reports.
  Mr. BOB SCHAFFER of Colorado. Endless accountability. The reason is 
because there is going to be politicians back here in Washington, D.C. 
who are demanding of these bureaucrats, you said the money was going to 
be spent to accomplish X, Y and Z goals. Now what proof do you have 
that you met them?
  The bureaucrat will say, well, I have all of these reports, because 
we require them from all of these districts all across the country, and 
you have reports and reports and reports that should assure you, Mr. 
Congressman, that the money is being spent well and you can go home and 
sleep well at night and maybe you will even get reelected.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. I go through all of these reports in Washington, all 
the reports that go into this building, and people read them, they do 
not really know where your district is in Colorado, they do not know 
why my district is in Michigan, but they read my

[[Page H8030]]

reports, is that the end of the saga? I do not think so, because I kind 
of believe that maybe some of the people that have gotten some of this 
$30 billion have not quite spent it the way that I wanted them to. So I 
have another department here in Washington. They are called auditors.
  So I send them around the country and send them to you and say, I 
know you sent me the report but prove it. I want to see your paperwork 
that says that you spent the money exactly the way that I told you to. 
So I send the auditor to you and you go through another process.
  Mr. BOB SCHAFFER of Colorado. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. I yield to the gentleman from Colorado.
  Mr. BOB SCHAFFER of Colorado. Not only will I go through that 
process, I will go pick the auditors up at the airport, I will go pick 
them up at the airport and drive them to my school and the doors will 
be open for them. I will offer them maybe a cup of coffee and give them 
a room all to themselves so they can sit down and go through my 
carefully prepared reports and documents and let them see just how 
fully compliant we are. They can have free reign in the school. They 
can open up all the school rooms they want. They can sit in. They can 
interview the kids, parents, the principal. They can do an audit of the 
school.
  We will also, in order to continue receiving this Federal cash, we 
will stop everything else we were doing that we thought was important 
until today, like teaching children and supervising the children. We 
will make sure that the secretaries and the accountants and the 
bookkeepers stop what they are doing and help you make sure that we are 
fully complying with this little grant that we have.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. Just a couple of points, because as we have gone 
through education with the Crossroads Project, our subcommittee, we 
have gone to 15 States, we have had 22 different hearings and we have 
heard this over and over and over from I think over 220 witnesses in 15 
states and the message is consistent, because they outlined this 
process for us; they said this is exactly what we go through.
  Mr. BOB SCHAFFER of Colorado. Absolutely.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. It is not just in Colorado, it is not in Michigan, it 
is in New York, it is in Cleveland, it is in Milwaukee, it is in 
Georgia, it is in L.A., it is in San Jose. We have been there. We have 
been in Iowa. You know we have been around the country and the story is 
always the same. The message comes back and says, it is bureaucratic.
  You notice that almost this whole dialogue was between the school 
administrator and Washington. The dialogue that is most important which 
is between the school administrator and the parent, who is paying for 
the taxes, gets lost in the process.
  We have also identified that when we go through this process of 
taking that tax dollar and then you and I going through this exchange 
of, I got the money, you get it, you send it to me, I verify, you send 
in reports, I audit, that when you go through that whole process, we 
lose about 30 to 40 cents of every educational dollar that came from 
that taxpayer, we lose 30 to 40 cents in the work that you do in your 
local school district, and the work that bureaucrats need to do here in 
Washington. So we lose 30 to 40 percent of the money.
  The other thing that we have found, one of the key findings and that 
we are going to be working on tomorrow, on dollars to the classroom, is 
that the leverage point for education spending, as much as I would like 
to say this bureaucrat and this bureaucracy are adding a lot of value 
to the education of our kids, what did we find? We found that the 
leverage point for educational spending is getting the resources to a 
teacher, to a principal, to a classroom. When we are losing 35 to 40 
cents of every dollar, we are hurting our kids. We are not helping them 
learn.
  Tomorrow we are setting up the objective that for 31 programs, that 
is roughly $3 billion of spending, instead of getting 65 to 70 cents of 
every dollar to the classroom, we want to get 90 to 95 cents of every 
Federal education dollar into the classroom out of those 31 programs, 
which I believe will give every classroom something like, what, $400 
and $425 more.
  That is leverage. That is not spending more on education. That is not 
asking the taxpayer to send us more money. That is just saying, with 
the money that you are sending us, we are going to spend a little less 
time talking to each other, or, you know the school administrators in 
Washington are going to spend a little less time talking to each other, 
a lot fewer rules and regulations, a lot less paperwork and we are 
going to open it up because we are going to say, if these four programs 
are the most important to you for what your kids need, spend the money 
on those four programs. Do not worry about the other 27, because the 4 
programs that you maybe need to do in Colorado are very different than 
probably what he saw in the Bronx and what the kids in the Bronx need, 
and it is very different from what we saw in Louisville, Kentucky or 
what we saw in West Michigan, because the needs are different. We need 
to empower the local administrators and the parents and the teachers to 
spend that money. We need to get more money in their hands and we 
really believe that as much as we like these bureaucrats in Washington, 
they cannot substitute for a loving home; they cannot substitute for a 
parent and they cannot substitute for a teacher or a principal at a 
local level who knows what their kids need.
  Mr. BOB SCHAFFER of Colorado. This is all about putting children 
first, putting children ahead of the bureaucrats, putting the needs and 
interests of children and educating them for the future ahead of the 
comfort of bureaucrats who are interested in usually only one thing, 
and that is preserving the status quo and preserving the positions of 
authority that they have secured for themselves here in Washington, 
D.C. and in other government centers throughout the country.

                              {time}  2245

  Mr. HOEKSTRA. What this really does and what we are going to try to 
do tomorrow is we are going to try to implement the vision for the 
Education Department that a lot of these people in 1979 said the 
Education Department should be; that we should streamline the 
bureaucracy, we should get dollars into the classroom, and we should 
consolidate Federal education programs.
  So the vision was right in 1979. The implementation was terrible. So 
the Education Department in and of itself was not a bad thing because 
it was addressing, it was supposed to address the right kinds of 
problems; but what you and I have found as we have gone around the 
country is that rather than implementing a Department of Education that 
empowered parents, empowered the local level, streamlined the process 
and got dollars to the local level, this bureaucracy took on a life of 
its own and created more programs and more rules and more regulations.
  One of the things that we found was that the first time that you sent 
me, the first time that you sent an application to this bureaucracy to 
process a grant request, it had to go through 487 different steps that 
took 26 weeks to complete. Think of how many people that request 
touched, how long it was in every in-box and then in every out-box, and 
how many different offices it would go through in this building before 
you ever found out back at a local level whether you were going to get 
a dollar or not.
  Mr. BOB SCHAFFER of Colorado. The bigger travesty is to consider all 
of the children who are robbed of an education opportunity, who are 
robbed of precious resources that could have gone toward furthering 
their academic progress by a bureaucracy that cares more about its 
paperwork and red tape and strings than the future of children 
throughout the country.
  That is what we are trying to turn around, put the interests of 
children ahead of bureaucrats. But you know, I would like to try to 
anticipate tomorrow's debate a little bit because this seems so simple. 
This seems like for those who are considering the whole path of a 
dollar that is earned by a local wage earner in some far-off community, 
and confiscated by the Internal Revenue Service, sent to Washington, 
D.C., divvied up by politicians, spent by bureaucrats under the rules 
that they have written for themselves, and finally in the end sometimes 
less than 60 percent of it actually ends up helping anyone.

[[Page H8031]]

  This seems like a problem that we could all agree on, a problem that 
we could agree needs to be resolved, it needs to be fixed and fixed 
quickly. It seems to be a solution that we are proposing tomorrow in 
the Dollars to the Classrooms bill that is very, very simple, very, 
very commonsense-oriented, yet we are going to have a fight on our 
hands.
  Putting children first, as the Republicans will propose tomorrow, is 
not an easy thing to do in this Chamber because there are many other 
forces that come to play.
  And let me just suggest where I believe some of this opposition will 
come from. You see, all of these bureaucrats, they like their jobs, 
they want to keep them, and so they form associations, they form 
interest groups to preserve and protect their little empire. And then 
you have all kinds of administrators at the State and local level who 
actually enjoy the details of working through the red tape. It empowers 
some of these folks, and so they form groups and associations, and they 
hire lobbyists, and they collect dues, and they get involved in 
political campaigns and contribute to campaign coffers, usually on the 
other side of the aisle, and they remind people of that when it comes 
to these fights on the floor.
  And so you will have all of these groups and associations who want to 
keep the system confusing. They want to keep the bureaucracy receiving, 
in a position where it receives 40 to 50 percent of the off-the-top 
value of every dollar that is spent on education. They like the system 
as it is.
  And we are going to have a real fight on our hands. It is hard to 
believe with the millions and millions of children around the United 
States of America, whose education future is at stake with tomorrow's 
debate, it is hard to believe that those millions of children will take 
a back seat to the arguments that we will hear from some on the other 
side of the aisle, the Democrat side of the aisle, tomorrow, who will 
suggest that spending more dollars at the classroom level is somehow 
harmful to the country and for the education process.
  Confirm for me, if you will, do you expect this kind of fight 
tomorrow?
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. Reclaiming my time, absolutely. It will be a spirited 
debate, and there are, you know there will be spirited communications 
from these interest groups because what we are going to try to do 
tomorrow is take 31 programs and put them into a single educational 
opportunity grant to local school districts. Well, for each one of 
these 31 programs right now, there is a constituency where people have 
applied for and, you know, where this 35 to 40 cents of every education 
dollar just does not vanish into thin air. There are people who are 
taking that money and who are benefiting from it, and they are not 
going to want to give that up for the sake of efficiency and 
streamlining.
  But you know it is going to be a very spirited debate, and we will be 
accused of hurting kids. We are accused of that with the food lunch 
program when we said we want to streamline it. You are going to hurt 
kids. And it is kind of like, no. There are going to be people who are 
not going to benefit from this, but they are in these buildings, and 
the bureaucrats I met are talented and they are good people, but they 
are located at the wrong place to be making these kinds of decisions. 
It is going to be the people in these buildings, and it is going to be 
these bureaucrats, and it is going to be those people that believe in 
the vision that was highlighted in that memo that said Washington 
bureaucrats and Washington politicians know more about educating our 
children in Colorado and Michigan than what parents and teachers and 
school administrators do at the local level.
  That is the debate.
  Mr. BOB SCHAFFER of Colorado. Before our colleagues walk on this 
floor tomorrow and engage in this debate, I would urge them to do a 
couple things that they still have doubts about the importance and 
significance of this bill tomorrow, the Dollars to the Classroom bill. 
I would urge them to make a phone call back home in the morning before 
they come to the floor. Call your local school principal at the local 
elementary school or junior high school. Then ask the question: Do you 
think you can spend the money on a program designed to help the 
children you are responsible for better or worse than a Federal 
bureaucrat here in Washington, D.C.?
  Call your child's teacher tomorrow. Call the teacher and ask them: If 
you had more money in your classroom, do you think you could make the 
decisions that would result in a better education for the children in 
your charge than somebody in Washington, D.C. designing the rules and 
regulations and all the accountability measures with those dollars? Who 
can make the better decision?

  I will guarantee you that every Member of Congress placing those 
kinds of phone calls, asking those very simple questions, will hear the 
exact same response that you and I heard as we traveled around the 
country with the Education at a Crossroads project when we asked that 
question. When we asked that question of teachers and of 
superintendents and of school board members and of principals, those 
education professionals told us almost to the last one of them, cut the 
red tape, get the Federal Government out of my hair, give me the 
resources to do the job that I am trained to do and that I know to do, 
and get these people out of my way, Washington, D.C. They do not 
understand my neighborhood, they do not understand the children I am 
responsible for, they do not understand the issues that we have to deal 
with at our school, and they do not know how to spend the money in a 
way that is actually going to work. Get this bureaucracy out of my way 
and sit back and watch us improve dramatically the way we educate 
children in America.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. Reclaiming my time, I believe the other thing that we 
learned and why you and I are so confident of this alternative vision, 
a vision that returns power back to the local level that focuses on 
parents, that focuses basically on academics, that focuses on getting 
dollars back into the classroom is the wonderful success stories that 
we saw wherever we went whether we were in L.A. and we saw Yvonne Chan 
in her charter school, whether we were in San Jose and saw the 
technology school, whether we were at the school that we saw in 
Colorado or the one in Nillageville, there are tremendous success 
stories and there are tremendous people involved in education at the 
local level who are doing phenomenal things with our kids each and 
every day, and what they are asking for is they are asking for a little 
bit more freedom from Washington so that they can do what they know 
they want to do for their kids versus what Washington is telling them 
they have to do, and they are saying:
  I will do what you tell me to do, but, boy, if I had the freedom, 
there are some other things that I really would like to do in my 
school, and when you take a look at the success stories and what the 
commitment of the teachers and the administrators and the parents at 
the local level, it is: let them go, give them the freedom, they are 
accountable. Teachers and administrators at the local level, they are 
not accountable to bureaucrats in Washington, they do not even know 
their name. They are accountable to the parents, and the kids and the 
school. Let us make that accountability, the one that we are really 
focusing on, and that is what this will start in enabling us to do.
  Mr. BOB SCHAFFER of Colorado. You know freedom is the operative word 
here, and you hit the nail right on the head, the freedom to teach and 
the liberty to learn.
  Let me tell you what freedom means with respect to the Dollars to the 
Classroom bill. It means that without appropriating a single additional 
dollar out of the education budget we will free up $2.7 billion that 
can then be spent on classrooms.
  Let me state that again. It does not mean that we are going to spend 
more money in Washington, D.C., in the education budget, but it does 
mean that through efficiency mechanisms that you will find in the 
Dollars to the Classroom bill $2.7 billion will be freed up to help 
children instead of being wasted on bureaucrats. That is what we are 
going to vote on tomorrow, $2.7 billion that will be liberated, freed 
from this bureaucratic nightmare in Washington and released upon the 
States in a way that those teachers, those administrators, those 
principals at the local level can utilize to do what they do best, and 
that is to help children.

[[Page H8032]]

  Mr. HOEKSTRA. I thank the gentleman, and I think it is about time to 
wrap up this debate, although we have not had much of a debate. But we 
ought to also remember and say, you know, why did we do this discussion 
tonight?
  We did this discussion tonight, number one, to prepare our colleagues 
for the debate that we are going to have tomorrow and also because we 
know it is going to be a vigorous debate because talking to the 
chairman of the full committee, Mr. Goodling, and asking him, you know, 
do we have time to talk about all of the points that we want to talk 
about on Dollars to the Classroom tomorrow, and he said, boy. He said I 
already got 30 to 40 people who are asking to speak on this bill 
tomorrow, and you know there may not be enough time to get all of the 
points in, and so we have had an opportunity, I think tonight, to 
prepare our colleagues for this debate and to lay the framework about 
the alternative visions for education, the bureaucratic vision which 
says move accountability to Washington, move standards and testing to 
Washington, you know move dollars to Washington, move almost everything 
to Washington. And that is the debate. Or are we going to be in the 
debate on opportunity and freedom?
  So we have had the opportunity tonight to lay the groundwork for that 
debate, to get that information on to the record and to prepare our 
colleagues for this debate which is going to be so critical tomorrow on 
a very important issue, a very important issue.
  I will yield.
  Mr. BOB SCHAFFER of Colorado. The interest groups that will be 
represented by some of our Democrat colleagues on the other side of the 
aisle is the National Teachers Union, the administrators associations. 
Those are the groups that will have real champions that they will find 
on the Democrat side of the aisle fighting very strenuously to prevent 
us from turning $2.7 billion back to the States and back to the 
children.
  The children have no lobbyists, they have no children's association, 
they do not pay dues to an organization that hires professional 
lobbyists to represent them here on the House floor. Those children are 
counting on you and I and others like us who will come to this floor 
tomorrow and will fight as passionately as we possibly can to make sure 
that that $2.7 billion is pried from this quagmire of bureaucratic red 
tape here in Washington and is redirected to those children who are 
counting on us back home. That is what real freedom to teach entails, 
that is what real liberty to learn is all about, that is what Dollars 
to the Classroom bill is, what it represents, and that the real 
opportunity, the real opportunity that we have tomorrow, to place out 
for the American people real hope, real education reform and a program 
that is really going to make a difference for the children of America 
and allow them an opportunity to thrive academically and professionally 
eventually.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. Reclaiming my time, we will be able to start moving 
towards the vision that many of their colleagues in 1979 had for the 
Department of Education. It is a vision Mr. Dodd had, it is a vision 
that Mr. Bayh had, it is the vision that Mr. Levin had.
  This is an opportunity to focus on kids, not on bureaucracy and to 
get dollars to our children and to their classroom.
  I thank the gentleman from Colorado for not only participating in 
this special order this evening but for the help that you have been in 
the last 18 months as we have gone around the country and as we have 
studied this issue, as we have had the 22 or 23 different hearings, and 
being there to go through a learning process with us to find out what 
is working and what is not working in education in America today.

                              {time}  2258

  It has been a tremendous process. There has been tremendous learning, 
some great things and some frustrations, but we are making progress, 
and I think we can move this education bureaucracy in the right 
direction to really help kids.
  I thank the gentleman for being here tonight.

                          ____________________