[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 143 (Sunday, October 11, 1998)]
[House]
[Pages H10532-H10533]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




               THE FEDERAL ROLE IN FUNDING FOR EDUCATION

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Ballenger) is recognized for 5 
minutes.
  Mr. BALLENGER. Mr. Speaker, I think everybody has heard that great 
and wonderful quotation about ``We are from the Federal Government and 
we are here to help you.''
  I don't know how many are old enough to remember the good old days 
before the Federal Government got into funding the education program 
that we all have throughout our country. I think, unless I am mistaken, 
since they got in there and we were taking test scores and things like 
that, the grades have gone down.
  The Federal Government's assistance has been fabulous. They come up 
and say, we are going to give you 6 percent of all your funding. That 
is what they have done so far. Six percent is all the Federal 
Government gives us in funding education at the local level, but they 
give us 100 percent of the rules and regulations by which we have to 
operate.
  I know at this particular time, back in the 1960s, I kept trying to 
tell people, do not accept Federal money because it will come with 
strings, and you will not have the slightest idea what they are going 
to tell you to do the next day. But they did.
  It was not too long ago, I think about 6 or 8 months ago, or maybe 
when we first came in and got control of Congress, we decided that 
somebody, somewhere, ought to come up with the idea of preventing 
unfunded mandates.
  Let me give Members an idea of unfunded mandates. Unfunded mandates 
are what the Federal Government says you have to do if you accept their 
money. So here we are, accepting 6 percent of the money from the 
Federal Government, and they come up with new ideas. One of the ones 
they came up with, and I am not saying that this particular idea was 
terribly wrong, it is called IDEA. It is the Individuals with 
Disabilities Education Act.
  Basically, what it was is children with disabilities were not getting 
a proper education, so the Federal Government, being thoughtful and 
thinking of what was right and what was wrong, decided we are going to 
mandate to you folks back home in your school system, we are going to 
mandate that you take this special education pot and take care of these 
children.
  So they did. They mandated that we do it, and guaranteed, let me just 
tell the Members, they guaranteed that they would fund up to 40 percent 
of this total amount of money that was going to be given to run this 
special education program.
  So far, and I have been here in Congress 12 years now, under the 
Democrats they never raised anything. They got up to 7 percent and that 
is where they stopped. They never got any higher. They were supposed to 
come up with 40, and promised us in blood, we will give you 40 percent 
of the costs, but they never did. They never got up over 7 percent. 
Really, we took control 4 years ago, and we have increased it to 11 
percent. But stop and talk about a mandate, this program is underfunded 
by $10 billion.
  The President has come along with a great and wonderful idea, 100,000 
new teachers. Can Members imagine how they are going to fund these 
teachers? Why in the world, if they are coming up with all these 
brilliant ideas, do we not fund programs that we have already brought 
up?
  The fact of unfunded mandates is one of the major things. I was a 
county commissioner for 8 years. We spent time after time trying to 
figure out, if we took the Federal money, what were the strings they 
were going to put on it and make us do? If we wanted money for a sewer 
but we had to apply for water, we could not use it for whatever is 
necessary. At one time under President Nixon, they decided to open it 
up and let them take Federal money and do with it what they thought 
they really needed, but that is not the way it operates still.
  We passed that program several years ago, just a couple years ago, 
about unfunded mandates. Let me say, they are coming along now and 
telling us how much they are going to help us with construction of 
schools. The Federal Government is going to step into this and help get 
school construction started.
  I do not know if Members have ever heard of a thing called the Davis-
Bacon Act. The Davis-Bacon Act says if there is a dollar's worth of 
Federal money in any construction, they must pay what is a little 
higher than union wages. In an area like mine in the South, and we are 
a right-to-work State, if we accepted a dollar's worth of Federal money 
to construct schools in our State, it would cost us 30 percent more.
  In other words, if we wanted to build a $1 million school and we 
accepted the Federal money, because of the additional labor costs, it 
would cost us $1,300,000, a complete loss of $300,000 worth of local 
money because we accepted something from the Federal Government.
  All of these great and wonderful things about the 100,000 teachers, 
and helping us with schools, all of this is

[[Page H10533]]

going to cost money from somewhere, yet the Democrats and the President 
have promised, they have guaranteed the elderly, and I happen to be one 
that collects Social Security, they guaranteed us that they are going 
to protect Social Security come hell or high water. They are going to 
take care and make sure that it is untouched. Yet, just in the 
education programs alone, they have to be spending billions and 
billions of dollars that we do not have.
  So where do they get the money? The money obviously has to come from 
the surplus. There is, everybody knows, no surplus. It belongs to 
Social Security, so anything we do is basically Social Security money 
being used by the Democrats to fund their favorite dream.

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