[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 143 (Sunday, October 11, 1998)]
[House]
[Pages H10533-H10540]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




  CONGRESS ACHIEVES LITTLE, WHILE EDUCATION NEEDS IN AMERICA ARE GREAT

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 7, 1997, the gentlewoman from Connecticut (Ms. DeLauro) is 
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
  Ms. DeLAURO. Mr. Speaker, let me just make one comment, to start off 
with. First of all, let me just thank my colleagues who are here this 
late afternoon on a Sunday. There has been a lot said on the other side 
of the aisle about wanting to be home with family, and

[[Page H10534]]

that we are here working. We all would love to be home with our 
families today and yesterday, and for a holiday tomorrow, but let us 
put this in the context of what we are talking about, the reason that 
we are not home.
  The reason is very simple, that this is a Republican-controlled 
Congress that in fact has failed to get done the very basics in terms 
of legislation and process that our Federal Government relies on. Do 
not take my word for it. The statistics are all there. This is a 
Congress that has worked the least number of days in decades, 108. It 
has been said that regular people, real people, over 250 days they have 
worked, hard work every single day.
  They have enacted the least number of bills in decades. They have not 
even passed a budget, and that is the first time. I do not keep the 
records. They have not passed the budget, and that is the first time 
since the budget process in the United States was created. Think about 
that, Mr. Speaker. They have failed to pass even routine spending bills 
on time.
  I want to make one more comment before I yield to my colleagues who 
are here. It has also been said on the other side of the aisle that the 
President has not been engaged in the process. I want to send to my 
Republican colleagues a very simple book that is called ``How Bills 
Become Law'' in this country. Every child in our school understands the 
process. That is that the House and the Senate must determine what gets 
done in a piece of legislation before the President signs that piece of 
legislation.

                              {time}  1630

  I will tell my colleagues that this Republican-controlled Congress 
has not brought the bills together so that, in fact, the President 
could act on it. So he is waiting for this crowd to get its act 
together.
  One more point, I will say that there are Democrats and Republicans 
in this body. What we need to know and understand is that, in fact, 
yes, the majority party controls. When there is that control, that 
means that they have charge of the calendar; that is what bills come 
up, what bills do not come up. They are in charge of the schedule of 
when we do what we do. The long and the short of it, they are in 
charge. They are responsible for legislation that gets accomplished or 
not accomplished in this body.
  Do not let them get away with saying that it is other people's fault.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield to my colleague, the gentleman from California 
(Mr. Miller).
  Mr. MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for 
yielding and for the points that she has made.
  It might seem unusual to our visitors in the gallery that, on a 
Sunday afternoon, they would see Members of Congress on the floor of 
the House, or to people who are watching C-SPAN, it would be unusual 
for live C-SPAN covering the House on a Sunday afternoon.
  But the fact of the matter is is that Congress is stuck in 
Washington, D.C. because the Republican Congress has failed to finish 
its work for the year. They have failed in the grossest fashion 
possible.
  They were supposed to have a budget on October 1. There is no budget. 
They were supposed to have finished the appropriations bills to run the 
government of the United States and conduct our obligations. Only six 
of the appropriations bills have been passed. The major ones have not. 
They have, so far, been unable to get them to the President of the 
United States.
  As the gentlewoman Connecticut has pointed out, this is a Congress 
that has only worked 108 days so far this year. The average American 
have worked somewhere around 250 days to this day. Many people in my 
district and others working, out of the 283 days, sometimes working 
almost the full 283 days as so many people work Saturdays and Sundays 
along with the 5-day week.
  But this Congress decided that it could come in on Tuesday at 5 
o'clock most weeks, Monday at 5 o'clock, and it can leave on Thursday. 
It can leave on Wednesday. It would not come in at the end of the 
August break. It would stay out an extra week. The result is they 
simply have not done their work.
  They have not done their work for another reason also, and that is 
pointed out in the Washington post this morning in their lead editorial 
where they simply say that the Republicans had no agenda for this year.
  The Republicans were coming to town just to manage the Congress to 
try to keep the numbers that they have so that they can retain the 
power in the Congress, but they really had no agenda for the American 
public.
  The tragedy is that the American public had an agenda for this 
Congress. The American public had an agenda of improving public 
education, of asking the Congress to help local school districts 
rebuild crumbling schools to make them technologically competent, to 
deal with the education of our children, to make them safe for our 
children, to go and to repair the falling ceilings and repair the 
roofs, to try to help out the local communities.
  Local communities are doing this. But many communities need 
additional help. They are just simply too poor to do that. The American 
public had an agenda to try to help get HMO reform, to get a Patients' 
Bill of Rights so that patients and doctors would once again be in 
control of their health care so that, when the doctor says you need an 
MRI or the doctor says you need a prescription of a certain drug, you 
get that because your doctor who has been trained in medicine knows 
best for you. He knows your care. He has watched you as a patient. He 
understands your problems.
  What do we have today? We have doctors getting on the phone and 
calling bureaucracies, calling 800 numbers, pleading so that they can 
have their parents have an MRI so that they can diagnose whether or not 
they might have a tumor or not have a tumor or so that they can do 
surgery or not do surgery.
  They are constantly told by the HMO bureaucracies, wait 30 days, let 
us see if it cures itself. Rarely, ladies and gentlemen, do tumors cure 
themselves. Rarely do these kinds of things happen. But the HMO is 
trying to save money.
  So the American public was asking the Congress, help us put doctors 
and patients back in the control of health care. That was not done.
  Campaign finance reform. The American public was astonished 2 years 
ago at the campaign finance scandals, the amount of special interest 
money coming into our campaigns. The Congress refused to act on that 
agenda.
  Tobacco legislation to try to stop teenage smoking to try to recover 
health care costs that we spent with people who received cancer from 
smoking. The Republican Congress failed on that to protect the 
environment.
  Again, as the Washington Post said, that no serious problems were 
addressed, and no serious environmental problems either. In fact, they 
said the great success of this Congress was doing damage control 
against the Republican agenda to eviscerate the environmental laws of 
this country.
  So that is why my colleagues and myself are on the floor here on a 
Sunday afternoon, because the Congress, the Republican Congress, I 
should say, we have had this agenda. We have proposed legislation. The 
Democrats have proposed all this legislation. The Republicans have 
refused to enact it. They refuse to the work.
  So now we find ourselves here on a Sunday afternoon, we find 
ourselves with no budget the first time since 1974, and with many of 
the important appropriations bills not passed and an important agenda 
dealing with problems in this country not addressed by this Congress.
  Ms. DeLAURO. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from California 
(Mr. Farr).
  Mr. FARR of California. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from 
Connecticut (Ms. DeLauro) very much. She has really brought us 
together.
  It is interesting today. We have the Congress Member, the gentlewoman 
from Connecticut (Ms. DeLauro) and the gentleman from Connecticut (Mr. 
Gejdenson), the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Pallone). Congress 
Members from the West coast, obviously we could not get home this 
weekend, those of us from California, Oregon and Washington.
  We are here to talk about that this year is the 105th session of 
Congress. We should have been home, adjourned sine die, all the 
business done. If this were a school year or business year, we would be 
over, and everything would be done.

[[Page H10535]]

  Here we are on a Sunday afternoon talking about the failures of this 
Congress and particularly the failures in education. If the story is 
going to be written about education and the GOP leadership on 
education, I think the headlines would say ``Republicans: 
Underachievers and proud of it,'' because they have never been able to 
put together a substantive program for education to really address the 
needs that have been unmet: the unmet needs of school buildings that 
need money for construction and repair, the unmet needs for new 
teachers, the unmet needs for educational opportunities, zones to 
provide in those hardest of areas sort of an involvement to really deal 
with the root causes of people unable to get a good education, 
expanding the access to after-school learning, and expanding access to 
educational technology.
  They have all been the bills that the President asked us. As the 
gentlewoman pointed out, the President comes here and addresses the 
Nation every year and, in that speech, outlines what the goals for this 
Nation should be. He proposes to this Congress.
  We are supposed to dispose. The only way we can dispose is to put our 
cards in that slot right there and around this room and get the 
majority vote of 218 votes.
  Here today we hear the Republicans attacking the President of the 
United States for traveling, traveling on international business. I 
mean, he has had incredible successes in China, incredible successes in 
Europe, incredible successes in Latin America, and he is being 
criticized for it. He does not have to be here in this room to get his 
business done.
  Members of Congress have to be here. Where are they? They are not 
getting the business done. So the leadership of this House, the 
Republican leadership of this House should be ashamed of the fact that 
we are here overtime without a budget, underbudgeted for education, and 
not meeting the felt needs, the desires of the men and women who have 
sent us here to provide what is essentially the only thing that the 
Federal Government can do, and that is that safety net for education.
  We hear the debate here on the floor that we do not want safety nets 
anymore. We want to just privatize education. When the schools of the 
District of Columbia came up for funding, Congress did not approve that 
funding and turned around and said we want to privatize this education.
  What my colleagues are saying is this voucher system. It did not work 
in California. It was rejected there. They want to ram it down our 
throats and say, ``Californians, you were wrong. We are going to give 
you vouchers whether you like it or not.''
  It is time that we, the United States Congress, go back to the basics 
of this country, go back to what supports the domestic tranquility. We 
cannot have peace around the world until we have peace at home. We 
cannot have peace at home until every father and mother, every parent 
of every child in this country has satisfaction that the schools they 
are sending their children to are safe, sound, and excellent centers 
for learning. We get there from here unless we adopt what the President 
of the United States asked this Congress to do.
  Mr. Speaker, I commend the gentlewoman for allowing us to have this 
time to discuss that.
  Ms. DeLAURO. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the gentleman from 
California (Mr. Farr).
  Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. DeFazio).
  Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding to me.
  Mr. Speaker, Congress is still in Washington, and we are here on a 
Sunday because the Republican leadership has simply failed to do their 
job. It is quite simple. For the first time in a quarter of a century, 
since the adoption of the Budget Act, Congress has failed to adopt even 
a first budget resolution.
  The leaders of the House, otherwise known as the flatterer society, 
and the leaders of the Senate, perhaps a slightly more progressive 
group recognizing the shape of the earth, have failed to agree on the 
basics of a budget.
  The leaders of the House want to have a huge tax cut raided from the 
Social Security trust funds. The leaders from the Senate somewhat 
prudently have not decided to do that.
  But, then again, the leaders in the House, when confronted with anger 
across America from people being denied essential care for themselves 
and their loved ones, and physicians even rising in anger when they are 
being denied tests and care that they know that their patients want, 
with all that pressure, the insurance industry, which pretty much 
sponsors the other side of the aisle at election time, could not be 
fully protected.
  So they passed, better than not, but not much of a patient and 
providers bill here in the House, an HMO bill. But even that was too 
much for the leaders in the Senate because it might jeopardize their 
fund-raising with the insurance industry in a year when they hope to 
make big gains in the Senate.
  Of course tobacco, well, that did not go anywhere on either side with 
the Republican leaders, despite the fact that the American people are 
appalled to see the rise in teenage smoking and what that will yield 10 
and 15 and 20 years down the road.
  So here the Congress has no budget, many major bills denied. But at 
least we could salvage something. We could salvage the President's 
education initiative, something that all Members of Congress, no matter 
what side of the aisle they come from should be able to agree upon.
  They should be able to go home to their own districts and see the 
fact that the schools are crumbling and overcrowded, and there are 
trailers parked on what used to be the playground because there are too 
many kids to fit in the school.
  If they went inside the school, the public schools, they would find 
that the classes were about twice what they were when they were kids 
when they went to public school. A lot of people on the other side of 
the aisle did not. They would see that the teachers are carrying more 
classes and working harder. There is no counselors anymore in most of 
the schools. They would support the President's initiative to help add 
teachers to the schools, reduce class size, and rebuild our crumbling 
schools and make them safe for our kids.
  But they tell us there is no money to do that. There is no money to 
do that. Wait a minute. Was it not the same leadership here on the 
House side just a couple of weeks ago who jammed through tax cuts that 
were paid for by raiding the Social Security Trust Fund, otherwise 
known as the budget surplus?

                              {time}  1645

  They could find money to do that. They could find money to cut taxes 
in an election year favoring the usual suspects. But no, there is no 
money for the schools and the kids and the teachers. They say there is 
no money.
  Look at the Department of Defense appropriation this year. It adds 
$4.1 billion, not million, billion dollars of pork projects that were 
not requested by the Pentagon. This is the same Pentagon that has now 
come up to the hill and said, we need more money, we need gas for the 
tanks, the soldiers do not have ammunition, the housing is crumbling 
for the enlisted ranks. I want to take care of those things, but guess 
what, the Republican majority already spent that money. They spent it 
on pork projects that the Pentagon did not ask for. But they tell us 
there is no money for the kids and the schools and the teachers.
  Now, somehow they can find money for the mythical space station that 
we are building with the former Soviet Union. This thing is only about 
2,000, 3,000 percent over budget, 10 years behind schedule. We keep 
pretending that they are going to build parts of it over there. Now we 
have to pay them to build parts of it over there, in addition to 
building the parts over here, but pretending they are building them 
over there. It has no mission. There is $40 billion over the next 10 
years. But there is no money for the schools and the kids and the 
teachers. What is wrong with these people? What is wrong with them? 
Where are their priorities?
  Well, they do have some priorities when it comes to education. 
Eliminate the Department of Education, priority number one. Divert 
billions of dollars from public school funding to private school 
vouchers. That is their answer to the crumbling public schools. And

[[Page H10536]]

the large class sizes and the lack of public funding, take that money 
and give it to the private schools. Cut school lunches for poor kids 
and end equal opportunity for higher education. Cut student loans, give 
higher subsidies to the banks so they will give some student loans.
  Mr. GEJDENSON. Mr. Speaker, I just think that it is interesting where 
the priorities are, as the gentleman points out. I am sorry I offended 
the gentleman earlier today about the intensity of my statement. 
Frankly, when I find friends and relatives and constituents losing 
their health care, dying because of bad health care, it does bring out 
an emotional response. It is infuriating and frustrating. But then when 
you look where they are putting their efforts, instead of trying to 
deal with HMO reform, trying to make sure that seniors do not get 
bumped out of their managed care health care, they are trying to get 
oil companies extra breaks in the royalties they owe the taxpayers of 
this country.
  They came to this Congress saying they wanted to run it like a 
business. You tell me what business takes the family assets, the family 
owned oil reserves and says, let Exxon walk away with a little more of 
it. They spent time here, when they could not get any of the education 
product done, they got a $50 billion tax break for the tobacco 
companies, snuck it in a bill, lo and behold, when we found out even 
they were unable to keep it there so we repealed that tax break. They 
gave, again, a $50 billion tax break to tobacco companies.
  On health care, they spent more time trying to make sure that 
unmarried couples in San Francisco could not get health care provided 
by their community than they did in trying to protect the health care 
of the rest of us. And if you go to education, the President seems to 
be able to figure things out in a way that works and a way the American 
people understand.
  In the area of crime, the President said one of the things we need is 
more people on the street. That is how we all grew up. There was a cop 
on the corner. You got to know them. They knew what was going on. The 
President says, we want 100,000 cops. They say, that is terrible. They 
were against the 100,000 cops. It took them 3 years. The public was on 
board. Every first selectman and mayor was on board. The police chiefs 
knew it worked. The Republicans were still swinging around with guys 
who were against the crime bill. Then they figured that one out.
  I do not know when they are going to figure out the education one. 
Let me tell you something, the United States is in a very competitive 
international market. It is in chaos now. We will now compete with 
countries that instead of paying 15 cents for every dollar an American 
makes, we will be competing with countries that make 2 and 3 and 4 
cents for every dollar an American makes. Our workers have to be better 
trained and better educated. And if we do not invest in education, we 
are not going to have the kind of future that we want for all of our 
children.
  We need to make sure that we are here working on things for the 
people.
  The Speaker has a new club. He got in enough trouble with his last 
set of clubs. This new club is the Speaker's people call you up and 
they tell you you have just been appointed to a panel. You are on an 
advisory panel for the Speaker of the House. Then they want you to send 
in, $1000, $2000, $3000.
  They talk about the President fund-raising. What they do not tell 
anybody is they have a several hundred million dollar advantage in 
almost every account.
  At the end of the day, the people know what this fight is about. They 
are trying to make sure we do not focus on health care, on education, 
and retirement security. They would rather have us talk about anything 
than the things that affect the people. Time enough to give big tobacco 
a tax break. Time enough to give oil companies some of their royalties 
that they should have paid us. Not enough time for average citizens. 
That is what is wrong with this Republican Congress.
  Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, the gentleman forgot a couple highlights of 
things they did propose. They did propose elimination of the School to 
Work program for high school students. I suppose somehow in their world 
that is going to better prepare our students for employment after 
school and to compete in the world economy. Beyond me. I wish they 
would come down here and explain that. I thought it was a pretty good 
thing to have school to work opportunities for high school kids. In 
fact, my State has embarked statewide on a program to bring that about.
  They have also eliminated in school interest subsidy for student 
loans. I borrowed a bunch of money to go to college. I thought it was a 
lot of money when I graduated. I owed about $12,000 when I got out. I 
am talking to kids now getting out with bachelor's degrees from higher 
education with $25- and $30,000.
  Mr. MILLER of California. The gentleman raised the point of student 
loans. The President just signed the higher, reauthorization of the 
Higher Education Act. The tragedy of that bill is that the Republicans 
fought us for the last 2 years at every turn where we had the ability 
to make it less expensive for students who graduated from college to 
consolidate their loans, to save hundreds and hundreds of dollars in 
interest costs, to refinance those loans at lower rates. They fought 
that effort even when the administration tried to do it again this 
year, the Republicans came down on them like a ton of bricks.

  Then when we tried to lower the cost of student loans, the 
Republicans fought us the whole way, finally agreed to lower the cost 
of student loans just a little bit so that they could say they lowered 
the cost. The fact of the matter is, this whole year, I serve on the 
Committee on Education and the Workforce, this whole year they have 
fought on behalf of the banks to retain the ability of the banks to 
suck money out of the student loan program, to take it out in fees, to 
take it out in higher interest rates. And what does that do? That just 
means for more students they have to work more hours or they cannot go 
to college or they have to defer it or take fewer units, costing their 
families more and more money.
  So it is just incredible that they would spend 2 years, at a time 
when we had a chance to dramatically lower the cost of student loans, 
they fought us at every turn. They fought us at every effort we made 
either to consolidate loans or to reduce the interest rates on loans. 
They just fought for the banks. It is what they have spent their time 
doing in this session, as you pointed out. They have fought in this 
session for every special interest.
  But they missed a really very simple agenda for the American public. 
Take care of our health care. Make sure our doctor can prescribe what 
we need, provide a minimum wage so that families can support 
themselves, get rid of the teen smoking and recover the money that 
tobacco companies have taken from this country because of cancer and 
tobacco. Give our children a chance to get a world class education in a 
safe school by reducing class sizes, by repairing the buildings, by 
having high standards for our teachers, high standards for our students 
and accountability for the school districts back to the parents.
  I had a provision in one of the bills and they fought me on it. I 
said, parents ought to know the qualifications of the teachers that 
teach their students. Is this teacher qualified to teach your student 
history or mathematics or biology? They fought that effort.
  This is not a complicated agenda that the President brought to this 
Congress, that the Democrats have brought to this Congress, but more 
importantly, that the American people have brought to this Congress. 
Because the gentleman from Oregon points out, most of their time has 
been spent here on these efforts on behalf of special interests trying 
to protect little nuances and tax breaks and special deals that allow 
them to go around the public interest. I appreciate the gentleman 
raising those points.
  Mr. DeFAZIO. To go back to the student loans for a moment, because 
that is something that I am pretty exercised about, there was an 
absolutely Titanic struggle here on behalf of the banks to say, the 
bankers actually came in to me and I said, I always thought the theory 
of interest was that there was risk. With these student loans, the 
government guarantees that you get 100 percent back no matter what 
happens, plus your interest, no matter what happens. The student dies, 
goes bankrupt,

[[Page H10537]]

leaves the country, you will get it back. So why are the interest rates 
so high?
  Their eyes got big and they looked at me and said, well, very 
profitable. Yes. Guess what? We can charge the students 8, 9 percent 
interest for loans that are guaranteed by the Federal Government. So 
after much pressure from our side and from the parents and the families 
and the kids, the Republicans had to lower the interest rate just a 
little bit for the kids, but they gave an additional subsidy to the 
banks. So the banks are still going to get a guaranty of 100 percent 
repayment. They are still getting obscenely high interest rates. 
Interest rates are falling through the floor and the banks are getting 
an increase in the interest rates and the kids are not getting the 
loans.
  Direct student loans, take out the middlemen. What do we need the 
banks in the middle for? Why should we guarantee the loans and give 
them a subsidy and give them those high interest rates and take the 
money out of the kids' pockets? If we had direct student loans through 
the institutions, through the kids, like I got when I was in college, 
another 600,000 kids could get student loans of $4000 or $5000 this 
year, if we just took out the banks' profits.
  They say, that is too complicated. They said we tried to do an 
experiment. It did not work. Ross Perot was running the program.
  But it can work, and that can be a much better way of doing this. And 
you can give more kids a higher education.
  I just want to make one other point before I have to leave. The 
gentleman touched on this. From what they have not done, by not 
reforming HMOs and the insurance industry, from what they have not done 
in terms of dealing with teenage smoking, from what they have not done 
in terms of raising the minimum wage or protecting the environment, 
they have gotten some very rich and powerful friends. And those rich 
and powerful friends are rewarding them handsomely. That is why they 
are in a hurry to get out of Washington, D.C. now, not because they 
want to do a good job or get the job done or leave with the job done. 
They want to get home and start spending the obscene amounts of 
campaign cash that they have piled up.
  I would just ask the people that are watching television today, when 
they watch those ads come piling out in October and up in the first few 
days of November, when they see them four and five to one, as a 
Democrat, I would like them to think, where did all that money come 
from? Where did all that money come from? It came from the HMOs.


                Announcement by the Speaker Pro Tempore

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Hayworth). The Chair would remind 
Members that it is improper to address the television audience. Members 
should address their comments to the Chair.
  Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, I said the people watching. I did not say 
you, the people watching. I did not attempt to garner their attention 
directly.
  In any case, the point is made.
  Ms. DeLAURO. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Oregon, and I 
yield to the gentleman from Washington (Mr. McDermott).
  Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from Connecticut, 
who is doing a real public service in coming out here and organizing 
this effort to talk about education.
  As I listen to this education business about loans, I think about my 
own circumstance, my own family. My sister told me that she will be 54 
years old when she gets through paying off her loans. These are loans 
that were for a PhD at the University of Chicago in the 1970s. She is 
going to be paying until another 6 or 7 years.
  When interest rates have fallen, all of us who have a house, we go 
out and we refinance our loan. We drop our interest rate. I bought a 
house at 8 percent. I am now down at 6 percent. And I save myself all 
kinds of money.
  A student cannot do that. You cannot refinance a student loan. If 
they really cared about children in the middle class, they would make 
it possible for you to refinance the loan. You can do it if you have a 
house. You go in and you get a home improvement loan and you use that 
home improvement money to pay off your college loan. Then you pay at 6 
percent and you get tax deductibility. That is how they make people 
work around the law and put the students out there and let the banks 
squeeze them endlessly.
  As I was sitting here thinking about this whole education thing, I 
was thinking about what is a democracy based on? A democracy is based 
on an educated electorate. If you do not have people who are educated 
and can understand and participate, you lose the democracy. And we have 
done some things here in this last couple weeks which are, if you think 
about them in that context, are very destructive.
  We had a big debate out here about how many H-1B visas we are going 
to give. Now, most people do not what an H-1B visa is because our 
grandparents or our great grandparents came and they just kind of 
walked in here. But now if you come to the United States, you have to 
have some kind of a visa, and it either has to be a work visa or you 
are coming here because your family has been here and you are unifying 
the family or maybe there is so many could come in from each country.

                              {time}  1700

  But we have a special category. It is called an H-1B visa. This is a 
visa that we give to people who have a special skill somewhere in the 
world. We say, we need that skill in the United States, so we will give 
you one of those visas, come on in and work here. You can't stay, but 
we will use you, we can pay you as little as possible, give you no 
benefit, but if you are willing to come here, we will take you in on 
that basis.
  Last year we passed the bill and we said we need 60,000 of those 
people in the United States next year. Lo and behold, industry in this 
country was so desperate for trained people that we had used those 
60,000 visas by the 1st of July. So in come the Republicans and say, we 
need 150,000 more. We have to go out into Poland and Czechoslovakia and 
Germany and India and Cambodia and we have got to find these 150,000 
people and let them come in here.
  If you think about that, what that says is we are not training enough 
people in this country to fill the jobs that are available. These are 
not $5 an hour jobs flipping hamburgers in some fast food joint. These 
are in my district at Microsoft where we pay 30, 40, 50, $60,000 to 
these people, and they cannot find an American who qualifies for that 
job, so they have to go to India, or the Ukraine, or Uganda or 
somewhere and find them.
  So when the President says that the focus of this country and this 
Congress ought to be developing an educational system that prepares our 
kids for the jobs of the 21st century, he is talking about making 
Americans available for those H-1B visas. The problem in politics is 
that a lot of times we always think in 2-year terms or maybe 4. We do 
not think about the fact that we are really sewing the seeds for 20 
years from now if we don't educate our kids, if in those first 3 years 
we do not learn to read. Then they are not going to know how to read a 
computer, ma'am, when they get an opportunity to work as a computer 
operator, or as a programmer.
  If they do not learn basic math--my daughter teaches in the Seattle 
schools. She teaches sophomore remedial math. She said to me, dad, you 
can't believe how many kids don't know how to use a ruler. She has to 
take them out in the parking lot and say, all right, now here is what a 
ruler is about. How big a parking space, so they measure out the 
parking space. Then she says to them, why is that parking space this 
size. The kids finally say oh, so the car will fit in. So they measure 
the car. Lo and behold, a parking space is a little bit larger than an 
automobile, a standard automobile.
  Now when you are taking 15 and 16-year-old kids who come through our 
system and they do not have the capacity to make the logical 
connections between a ruler and a parking space, you have got serious 
difficulties in our educational system. So when the President says we 
need 100,000 new teachers to get those kids in the first 3 years where 
they learn to add and subtract and do fractions and they learn to read 
and write. That is what that is all about. It is not about somehow the 
Federal Government taking over education. It is supplementing those 
school districts in this country, and Seattle has not got a bad school 
system. But we still have kids who are not making it, who are

[[Page H10538]]

not getting it, because the schools are too big or too whatever, and we 
need to add this kind of thing.
  Now, the other thing is this whole business about school buildings. 
My daughter is in a school building that was built before the Second 
World War. When they try and wire for computers, God help you. You have 
to have Rube Goldberg come in to put together the wiring to work inside 
a building that was built 50 years ago. That is not the oldest building 
in Seattle. There are a lot of buildings, and all over this country, 
and we say to our kids, well, we want to get you ready for a job. But 
we do not give them the opportunity to deal with the very things that 
they are going to have to do when they go out into the world. To me, it 
is a tragedy.
  There was an editorial in this morning's newspaper which I think is 
the one that just stops me sort of sometimes. When we look at what we 
have spent our time and energy in here, Bob Herbert in the New York 
Times said, having been handed the gift of Monica Lewinsky, the 
Republicans are running with her. She conceals their real agenda. If 
they can parlay the Monica madness into substantial increased 
majorities in the House and Senate, they can renew their conservative 
assault on government and on their subversion of the interests of 
ordinary working people and the poor.
  You cannot say it any clearer. If the poor, if the lower classes in 
our country, in the middle class in our country, if we do not come up 
with ways to give them an education, this democracy will lead to 
fascism. You will have to have the government with a soldier on every 
corner like they do in half the countries of the world. The reason we 
have a democracy is because people are educated. If we do not educate 
them, we will have turmoil in this country that we are not prepared 
for. That is why what the President is saying is that this is a long-
term plan in the best interests of all Americans.
  I congratulate the two of you for putting this together.
  Ms. WOOLSEY. I would like to have a little dialogue with the 
gentleman about workers and H1-B visas, because something else that is 
totally missing is some incentive, an encouragement for businesses to 
retrain their current workforce. Technology is growing so fast and 
beyond the workforce. Employers are hesitating or refusing to train 
their existing workers. That must be something we do. That is why we 
need H-1B visas. One, we do not teach our young people, and, two, we do 
not retrain our existing workforce.
  Mr. McDERMOTT. Some of us are really worried that the H-1B visa is a 
way around taking your existing workforce and raising them up to the 
level that you need them, rather, go get somebody somewhere else who 
you can hire for $10,000, $20,000 less, do not have to pay for a 
pension, do not have to pay for health care or anything else and put 
them in the job rather than taking an existing worker. There is a lot 
of concern among many people who look at the workforce and say that the 
issue of retraining is one of the most fundamental issues to labor 
peace in this country. You cannot go and get somebody from somewhere 
else and stick them in a job when there is somebody standing there that 
could be trained to do that.
  Ms. WOOLSEY. That is right. The other connect there is that person is 
being laid off because they are not trained, quite often is a very 
senior worker, needing Social Security. And what are we saying? We are 
raising the age of Social Security. That is the threat. In order to 
save it, privatize it, raise the age, give less. But certainly do not 
train workers so they can stay on the job. They need that Social 
Security at the time they will be laid off and it will not be available 
to them.
  Ms. DeLAURO. Let me just make a comment before I recognize the 
gentlewoman from California. The theme that both of our colleagues were 
talking about, education in this country has been the great equalizer. 
I think it is true to talk about the fundamental part of our democracy. 
What I mean by education being the great equalizer is that youngsters 
have the opportunity to succeed despite their gender, their religion, 
their socioeconomic status, political party affiliation. It says that 
your God-given talent is what is in fact that which allows for your 
success in our society. That has truly been the premise of public 
education.

  I will just take myself for example. I am the daughter of a garment 
worker. My mom worked in the sweatshops. My dad sold insurance. They 
killed themselves literally to make sure that I had a good education, 
so that in fact that I could have opportunities that they never had. 
That is the same with probably the majority of people who serve in this 
body.
  Ms. WOOLSEY. If you will yield, I will tell you my story.
  Ms. DeLAURO. Which is so frightening in terms of what is at stake 
when we are talking about public education and what this institution 
and the majority party in this institution has refused to recognize.
  Just one more point. I got the finest education in the same way that 
any corporate executive or any scientist or any academic could get and 
was allowed to be able to have the honor and the privilege of serving 
in this body. So it is a precious, precious gift, if you will, that we 
need to preserve this ability. It is values. It is what we prize and 
what we value in our society is this ability for education.
  Ms. WOOLSEY. If the gentlewoman will yield on this thought, then 
later I have more words. Thirty years ago my children and I were 
abandoned by their father. My children were 1, 3 and 5 years old. I 
went to work immediately. I had good job skills fortunately. I was a 
very healthy young woman. My children were healthy. We were really 
fortunate. But the most fortunate part of that horrible situation was 
that I had a good education. I had 2 years of college. I quit college 
so that I could help my children's father finish school. But I had 
enough education to get job opportunities and make those job 
opportunities work for my family and myself while I continued to finish 
my college education. Without that education, I do not know where we 
would be today, because it made all the difference in the world in my 
self-esteem, and in my ability to go forward.
  Mr. PALLONE. If the gentlewoman will yield, I am going to join in by 
pointing out my background as well. My father, who probably is 
listening because today is Columbus Day and he told me he might listen 
to us.
  Ms. DeLAURO. We were supposed to be marching in parades today, in the 
heart of the Italian-American community.
  Mr. PALLONE. In New Jersey. That is right. My father was a policeman 
for about 25, 30 years and is retired now from the police force. The 
same is true. We grew up, we never had to worry about anything, but we 
were middle class, went to public school and basically the quality of 
the education in the public school was, I think, as good as it gets. 
That is all we are saying. But if I have to go back to that same school 
or other schools in my district today, you will find that many of them 
do not have the money to keep up with the plant, as I would say.
  When we talk about this money that we are looking to see for 
modernization of the schools, which really is sort of the main object, 
if you will, of what we are asking the Republicans to do before we get 
out of here, is that we would like to get this modernization fund 
available for the local communities. It is not so much that a lot of 
communities need additional schools or need to build additions to their 
schools, which is true. A lot of them are overcrowded now and they need 
new schools and this money that we are asking for that be appropriated 
could be used for that purpose. But I find that many of the school 
districts just cannot afford to keep up with technology anymore. In 
other words, they need to be rewired for computers, they need to have 
things done so that they can keep up with the high tech age, so to 
speak. It is very different today than it might have been 20, 30 years 
ago, or even 10 years ago, where the local community of course never 
had an easy time raising the funds to build the school or renovate the 
school but they did not have all the problems that are associated now 
with all the changes that occur in technology every day. I have found 
that when I go back and I talk to some of the school districts, they 
are just looking for some additional help just to make the changeover, 
if you will, to the high technology age. Now, of course there are 
others that have crumbling roofs. I have some in my own district that 
are

[[Page H10539]]

in pretty bad shape where I have been in the auditoriums and I have 
seen the water leak through. So there are some that are very decrepit. 
But you will not find a single school district in this country now, I 
do not think, that does not need some kind of assistance because of all 
the demands that exist now on the physical plant of the school 
building.
  Again, I know I hear my Republican colleagues say, well, you know, 
schools should be local, everything should be done locally. We are not 
arguing that the curriculum should not be decided by the local school 
board, that the local school board should not decide who to hire or 
what to do on a daily basis. We are just talking about the money that 
they need, because local property taxes are so high, it is very 
difficult for them to get along. So all we are saying is give us a 
little down payment here. Do not rush out of this place immediately 
without having done your job. Address the education needs, address the 
need to modernize the schools. If they would just do that, I will be 
honest with you, all the other things that I would like to see done 
here, but if they would just do that, I would be happy.
  Ms. WOOLSEY. The gentleman is right on target. If the school needs 
upgrading and wiring, that is what they need.

                              {time}  1715

  If a school needs roofs, paint, that is what they need, and, if we do 
not invest in those children, in their schools, what are we saying to 
them? We are telling those children you do not matter. We want you to 
get an education, but we do not want it to be the best it could be. And 
we are not saying, take our Federal tax dollars and wire that plug or 
that particular room; we are just saying, use those tax dollars to 
benefit our children because we know they all need a good education. 
And public education makes that possible, and we want to invest in 
them.
  Ms. DeLAURO. Well, interestingly enough, you know, to further talk 
about this a bit, is that 90 percent of our youngsters are in public 
schools.
  Now, we do have problems with the public school system. No one is 
suggesting that we cannot make improvements, which is what precisely we 
are talking about, and in terms of the modernizing, again the piece 
that is, it is not just about the bricks and the mortar. It is in fact 
about providing that opportunity for youngsters to be able to have a 
learning environment which is a secure one and at the same time have a 
learning environment which, in fact, plugs them into an Internet to 
utilize advanced technology.
  I did a survey, a modernization survey, in my district. I visited the 
Orange Avenue School for a tour. We had a round table discussion with 
superintendents about school modernization needs. There were 71 schools 
who responded, and this is what I found in my own district.
  The average age of the elementary school buildings is 50 years old. 
More than half of the elementary schools regularly hold classes in 
areas not designed to be classrooms, including cafeterias, hallways, 
mobile or temporary rooms and storage areas, literally closets being 
turned into classrooms. The average class size was still 23 students, 
even with the makeshift facilities, which is why we have been talking 
about reducing classroom size to 18 in the grades from 1 to 3.
  All of the schools that responded said that they had some computers 
for students to use. More than 50 percent of the schools have no 
computer lab or a room where there are computers. The majority of the 
schools have no computers designated for teachers' use, nor is there 
programing to teach teachers as to how to teach our kids to use 
computers, and many schools do not have computers in every classroom. I 
would venture to say that today computers are becoming like textbooks; 
where you have a text book for every child, you have to have computers 
for every child.
  Let me just make one more point about modernization because our 
colleagues on the other side of the aisle will say the Federal 
Government wants to get involved in construction of schools. Not true. 
Very simply what we are talking about here is that what the President's 
initiative, what the Democratic initiative is, and what we like to have 
accomplished before we leave here, it is to help with Federal tax 
credits to pay interest on $22 billion in bonds to build or to 
modernize public schools. That helps the local community float the 
bonds that they need to construct the school. We do not want to be 
building schools and have the Federal Government pay for the building 
of these schools, but we want to try to provide that local government 
with the opportunity of getting some relief on their taxes with regard 
to the bonds.
  What does that do for the local community? You know what it does for 
the local community? It lowers their tax obligation. That is what we 
are talking about. And it is very simple, it can be done, and we truly 
do have the obligation to make sure that we do this. That is what we 
are calling for: Do this before we get out of Washington, D.C.
  Ms. WOOLSEY. You know in California, our very conservative Republican 
Governor put into place the decrease in class sizes for grades K 
through 3. Well, guess what we found out? We did not have enough 
certified teachers, we did not have classrooms, and good that the idea 
was, yes, reduce the class size. We did not have the infrastructure or 
the trained teachers to support even what this very conservative 
Republican Governor wanted.
  Ms. DeLAURO. I yield to the gentleman from New Jersey.
  Mr. PALLONE. As I said, I think that the school modernization is 
probably the most important aspect of this education agenda that we 
have been trying to push, but I also think that this proposal, which 
originally came from President Clinton to hire a hundred thousand 
additional teachers, is equally important. And again it is modeled in 
many ways on the COPS grant program where the President has basically 
instituted a program, and we approved it in Congress, to hire a hundred 
thousand additional policemen. Let me say that that COPS grant program, 
because I heard some of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle 
criticize it earlier, and I was shocked to hear some of the Republicans 
criticize that program because I know how effective it has been in my 
district. We have had, almost every community has been able to hire 
additional police because of that COPS grant, and it is a community 
program. In other words, the policemen have to be put on the beat in 
the community, in many cases tied into recreation and other programs 
that they work on during the evening or during off hours. It has been 
terribly successful. I have had so many people in my hometown, in Long 
Branch, where I was supposed to be at the Columbus Day parade today, 
tell me how it has made a difference in terms of the crime rate has 
gone down significantly as a result of this.
  Now we are saying we want to model that in the same way. We want to 
give those towns money so that they can hire additional teachers and 
bring class size down. I think it is either 1 to 3 or K to 3 in the 
lower grades.
  Now we know that anybody who has been involved in education, I know 
both of my colleagues who are here with me today have been, have talked 
about this in the past, know in the last few years all kinds of 
research has come out to point out that early childhood development is 
so crucial, even down to like 6 months or a few months, zero. And so 
what we are saying is that we want to make sure at that early level, 
and I mean it is not even that early because we are talking 
kindergarten or first grade, but whatever, that when these kids start 
in the public schools that they have those small class sizes.
  And again, you know, you could talk to people who say, well, I went 
to a one-room schoolhouse and there were 30 kids in the class. Well, 
again, things are different today. In many ways I wish that they were 
like they used to be, but they are not. A lot of these kids come to 
school already with some major problems, and they cannot have a class 
that has 30 kids in it because they are not going to learn anything. 
So, if you combine the fact that we are trying to reach these kids at a 
young age, that we have a lot of problems that need to be addressed 
today at that young age, you have to bring classes down. I think this 
would actually bring it down to 18 or so, the average in the classroom 
and the country. And I cannot stress how important that is, and do not 
let anybody on the other side tell you that the COPS grant program

[[Page H10540]]

was a failure. If we can build on that, we will have another very 
successful program, and, I will say, for not a lot of money.

  Ms. DeLAURO. I would just say that, you know, when we talk about 
reduced class size, again like modernization is not bricks and mortar, 
lower class size says the following: I am a teacher, I can give more 
individual attention to each of the youngsters I have in a classroom. 
Better learning, better standards, more accountability. And you know 
what else? More discipline in the classroom. Parents today want to make 
sure that their youngsters are in schools that are safe, in a learning 
environment with a teacher who has time to devote attention to them.
  And you are absolutely right about we have a very successful model on 
which to base this program, and it is one that universally school 
officials and administrators and parents and teachers are clamoring 
for.
  I think it is important to note, because we are going to be out of 
time in a few minutes here, that our colleagues will talk about their 
accomplishments in education, but I do not think that we ought to be 
fooled by their commentary.
  Child literacy program, America Reads, zero funding. Summer jobs, 
zero funding. Out of school youth, zero funding. School modernization, 
zero funding. Class size reduction, zero. New teachers, zero. 
Shortchanging Head Start programs, Goals 2000. When they talk about 
taking the money, Dollars to the Classroom, that eliminates Goals 2000, 
the Eisenhower training program that trains our teachers, several other 
critical programs that provide for basic skills for our young people.
  We have an obligation. We serve here because the people who we 
represent trust us, and they trust us with their children.
  Let us take the remaining days of this session and do something to 
improve public education in this country. We can do it. There is 
support for doing it. We need to do it. That is what we should be 
about.
  I yield to either of my colleagues for any final comments.
  Ms. WOOLSEY. Well, I have a comment. When our colleague, Mr. Pallone, 
talked about small one-room school houses, those schools were 
homogeneous. Everybody in that class looked the same, came from the 
same kind of background and environment. Now we are talking about 
classrooms with as many as 17 different languages in one classroom. 
Tell me that these young children do not need one-on-one attention from 
their instructor.
  Mr. PALLONE. If the gentlewoman will yield, I would just say that 
again, one of the things that really has been bothering me about this 
Republican Congress is that, you know, they will pay lip service to 
education, but they wasted so much time trying to take money away from 
public education by instituting voucher programs that basically take 
public dollars and give it to private schools, and we had to go on for 
weeks and months fighting those proposals. If they had just not wasted 
that time, we would not be in the situation we are in today.
  You know some of our colleagues have said, well, you know, it is time 
to go home, we got to get out of here quickly. They wasted so much time 
trying to attack the public school system. We heard talk again about 
abolishing the Department of Education. You know, again, how can we 
have any kind of standards or have any kind of supervision of what goes 
on out there if we do not have a Department of Education?
  So, you know, I honestly believe that in many ways what the 
Republican leadership has been trying to do here is to basically break 
down or even destroy in some ways public education. I mean, if they are 
going to spend all their time and say we are going to take these 
dollars from public education and give it to private schools, we are 
never going to get to the initiatives that we are talking about.
  That is why I get very annoyed when I hear them say, well, we care 
about education because we know that their whole history for the last 2 
years and even for the 4 years that they have been in the majority is 
to try to break down the system and not allow dollars to go to public 
education.
  Ms. DeLAURO. The one thing they want to do is to return education to 
the limited few and the rich instead of using education as that great 
equalizer that allowed us our success to be able to come here.

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