[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 144 (Monday, October 12, 1998)]
[Senate]
[Pages S12365-S12368]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                    EDUCATION AND THE BUDGET DEBATE

  Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, I wanted, today, to come over and talk 
about education. I have come back to town to help in some of these 
negotiations to try to complete the session, but upon hearing Senator 
Kennedy this morning, I felt compelled to come over and speak. I have 
several ideas I want to talk about. I would like to first talk about 
why we are talking about education. Here we are, 2 days before the 
session ends. In fact, as of last Friday, in the budget negotiations, 
no one at the White House had brought up education at all. Why suddenly 
do we have the focus on education?
  I would like to explain why this focus has come about and what I 
think it is trying to hide. I would like to talk about Senator 
Kennedy's education proposals. I would like to talk about the budget 
debate we have before us. I

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would like to talk about the failure of our current system. And then I 
would like to talk about how we ought to change it. That is an awful 
lot of subjects, but having listened to Senator Kennedy, I feel 
compelled to speak a little on this subject.
  I would say this is a subject I know something about. I taught for 12 
years at Texas A&M prior to coming to Congress. In fact, I often say 
that I taught economics for 12 years at Texas A&M and I have been 
teaching it in Washington, now, for 20 years. You will not be surprised 
to hear me say my students at Texas A&M were a lot smarter than the 
students I have now. And, also, they were a lot more interested in 
learning. I say that partially in jest.
  So when I talk about education, it is something I know something 
about, because I have had the great experience of people calling me 
``Teacher.'' I don't know of any title--maybe ``Rabbi,'' maybe 
``Preacher,'' maybe ``Mr. President''--but there are not many titles 
that are more important than being called ``Teacher.''
  First of all, I want to remind everybody, we were busy negotiating on 
the budget all last week and up through Friday nobody raised the 
education issue. And why should they? The President, in his fiscal year 
1999 education appropriation, requested $32 billion. In the spending 
bill that we currently have pending in the Senate, we provide $32 
billion. So it was not surprising that after a week's negotiation in 
trying to come together on this budget, there had been relatively 
little discussion about education, because the President had proposed 
$32 billion of spending, we had provided $32 billion, and while I am 
going to talk a little bit about the differences of how we provide it, 
the basic point was, this was not a budget issue.
  But over the weekend, in his radio show, and then as his 
representatives appeared on television on Sunday, suddenly the 
administration has opened a massive new education front. They are 
saying this Congress has not done enough for education, they are 
unhappy about what the Congress has done in education, and they want 
more. Why is this happening? Sadly, I am here to tell you that it is a 
smokescreen to cover up a robbery. There is a robbery underway on 
Capitol Hill right now. The working men and women of America are in 
danger of having $25 billion stolen from them this year and in the last 
week of Congress.
  I have to say, in a city which is marked by cynicism, it is one of 
the most cynical acts that I have ever observed. I want to be 
especially critical of the President of the United States on this 
issue, something I have not made a habit of doing.
  The President, in his State of the Union Address--the Presiding 
Officer was there, and I am sure if the American people remember 
anything any political figure has said about anything other than 
scandal this year, they will remember that the President, in his State 
of the Union Address--I ask unanimous consent for 25 additional 
minutes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Burns). Is there objection?
  Mr. DORGAN. Reserving the right to object, the Senator from Illinois 
is waiting to speak. I, by consent, am waiting to speak as well. That 
brings it to 30 minutes the total requested by the Senator from Texas?
  Mr. GRAMM. Excuse me, I didn't hear, Mr. President.
  Mr. DORGAN. Will that bring to 30 minutes the time requested by the 
Senator from Texas?
  Mr. GRAMM. I didn't request any time. I don't know where the 5 
minutes came from.
  Mr. DORGAN. I thought I heard the Senator request 25 additional 
minutes.
  Mr. GRAMM. I was told by the Chair there was 5 additional minutes. I 
don't know if the world comes to an end--
  Mr. DORGAN. I have no objection. I thought he asked for 25 additional 
minutes. I have no objection to 5 additional minutes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. GRAMM. Going back to my robbery occurring on Capitol Hill, the 
reason it seems to me we are suddenly discussing something that was not 
an issue all last week is because there is a real issue now that the 
White House doesn't want to talk about, and that real issue is that we 
are in the process of seeing a demand from the White House that the 
Congress spend $25 billion that was never in the President's budget.
  Many of you will remember in the State of the Union Address when the 
President stood up and said, ``Save Social Security first; save every 
penny of the surplus; don't spend any of it; don't give any of it back 
in tax cuts; save Social Security first.'' Quite frankly, Mr. 
President, I thought it was a good idea.
  I have opposed efforts by some in my own party to go ahead and cut 
taxes now rather than waiting until next year when we can fix Social 
Security, I believe, permanently and then debate a tax cut. But what 
happened is that in January, February, March and all through the 
spring, the President said, don't increase spending and don't cut 
taxes. Then suddenly during the summer, his message started to change, 
which was the first giveaway. The message suddenly became: Don't cut 
taxes, and he stopped talking about spending.
  Now the President is demanding in the final days of this session that 
we spend an additional $20 billion to $25 billion, every penny of which 
would come out of the surplus, and every penny of which would come out 
of Social Security. So a President who threatened to veto a tax cut 
that would have taken $6.6 billion away from the surplus is now 
demanding that Congress, as a price to be able to finish business and 
adjourn, spend an additional $25 billion.
  We had a surplus for the first time since 1969 as of October 1. Today 
is October 12, and so far, if the President's requests are met, we are 
spending an additional $2 billion a day. In other words, this is going 
to be the shortest recorded surplus in American history, and I am 
concerned about it.
  Let me talk a little bit about education, since the President has 
raised the subject. First of all, in Senator Kennedy's remarks today, 
we heard the same old song that people have sung in Washington since 
1960. That basic siren song is: If we just had a little more money, we 
could make it work; that the only thing wrong with education in America 
is we don't have enough money, and if we spent more money and we let 
Washington tell you how to spend it, everything would be great.
  Let me just review a few facts and figures in response to Senator 
Kennedy.
  First of all, in 1969, we spent $68.5 billion on education in 
America. Today, we are spending $564.2 billion on public education, K 
through 12.
  What has happened during that period? As spending has grown almost 
1,000 percent, SAT scores have stagnated, reading scores have declined 
and American students have moved from the top of the list in math and 
science to either the bottom or near the bottom in both math and 
science. Today, American students on international tests rank last in 
physics; they rank next to last in mathematics.
  When you look at those scores you say, ``Well, if we just had more 
money, we could change that.'' But I remind my colleagues, we have 
increased spending during the period where these scores have plummeted 
from $68.5 billion to $564.2 billion.
  One of our problems is we spend the money so inefficiently. Listen to 
these numbers: For every dollar we spend on education in Washington, 
DC, 15 cents never gets out of Washington; 15 cents stays here in our 
massive Federal bureaucracy; 48 cents ends up going to bureaucrats 
between here and the classroom; and 37 cents out of every dollar we 
spend in the name of education in Washington, DC, actually gets to the 
classroom for actual instruction, providing facilities, or providing 
that teacher in that classroom.
  No wonder that we rank last in physics and next to last in 
mathematics when our current program, which Senator Kennedy helped 
build and which he loves, gets 37 cents out of every dollar we spend in 
Washington into the classroom.
  We are hearing today that what we really need to do is we need to do 
something about class size.
  First of all, I think it is obvious to anybody that you would rather 
your child be in a small class than a big class. But if you can see 
this chart, what has happened since 1960 is that class sizes have gone 
down dramatically.

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  The pupil-teacher ratio for public K through 12 education was 25.8 to 
1 in 1960 when SAT scores were close to their maximum they ever 
achieved. In 1996, there was 17.1 to 1 or, in other words, a 51-percent 
decrease compared to today s level.
  I think lowering the class size is a wonderful thing, but I simply 
point out that contrary to all the rhetoric about how perfect the world 
would be if it were lowered, we have lowered it by 51 percent in the 
last 36 years, and the net result has been a dramatic decline.
  Is the Senator telling me that my 25 minutes is up?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Five minutes.
  Mr. GRAMM. I asked for 25 minutes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, it was limited to 5 
minutes.
  Mr. GRAMM. I ask unanimous consent that I may have an additional 10 
minutes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection? Without objection, it is 
so ordered.
  Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, my point is that while declining pupil-
teacher ratio is a wonderful thing, and we would all like to have our 
own children given the maximum instruction in the most intense way, the 
plain truth is that in the last 36 years, we have had a dramatic 
decline in the ratio of pupils to teacher while results have declined.
  This gets me to what the real debate is on education. Obviously, the 
real debate is not money. The President requested $32 billion; the 
Senate bill provides $32 billion. The debate is about who is going to 
spend the money. Republicans have proposed something that sounds 
revolutionary in Washington, but in America it sounds eminently 
reasonable; and that is, except for that money which is targeted to 
things like special education, we want to give the bulk of the money 
directly to school systems so that local teachers, local administrators 
and local school boards can set priorities for using money, so that if 
in my hometown of College Station we think the answer is a lower pupil-
teacher ratio, we can use the money for that purpose; if we think the 
answer is something else, we can use it for that purpose.
  Another thing we are hearing about is building schools. I know our 
dear colleague who is presiding said that a bad idea never dies, that 
you can't kill an idea with facts. And I understand this will not kill 
that idea. We will be talking about it for the next 10 years. But I 
want to point out something which shows, I think clearly, why the 
Federal Government should not be setting policy where we have Members 
of the Senate voting for education policy in schools we have never put 
our foot in, children we have never personally met, families where we 
do not know their situation.
  What I have here is the population of enrollment in K through 12. I 
do not want to draw on this chart which I got from somebody else, but I 
want you to look right here where we are in 1998. We have just come off 
a very rapid increase in students, but we are now in a period where the 
population of students in K through 12 is flattening out.
  Doesn't it strike you as interesting that we are talking about the 
Federal Government mandating that local communities spend more of our 
money and theirs on schools at the very time where it is clear that in 
the past 10 years our problem has been school construction, but as we 
look at the future it is obvious that the population of students is 
beginning to flatten out? That is typical of the Federal Government. 
That is what happens when you have people in Washington setting 
education policy for students in College Station--when only two Members 
of the Senate have ever been in a school in College Station, and they 
are the two Senators from Texas.
  What is the difference between what the President wants to do and 
what the Congress wants to do? The biggest difference is, the Congress 
wants to spend the same $32 billion but let local school boards, local 
parents, local teachers decide--do they want to build more schools, do 
they want to do something about the pupil-teacher ratio, do they want 
to buy computers. We want them to decide.
  Finally, let me put this chart up here and just remind anyone who is 
interested in this debate that this Congress has been very active on 
education matters, that, first of all, we have the $32 billion 
appropriation bill--the same amount the President asked for; it is just 
spent differently. More of it is spent locally and not in Washington. 
We happen to believe that is better. The President thinks it is not 
better.
  But rather than debating us on the issue--because I am sure someone 
at the White House has done a poll or focus group and they have 
discovered what we know, and that is, parents in College Station think 
they know a little bit more about their children's needs than we know 
in Washington--so rather than debate those, the President is now saying 
that we are shortchanging education.
  The truth is, we have provided every penny the President asked for, 
roughly $32 billion--both the request and appropriation--it is just 
that we are letting local school boards and local teachers spend it. 
The President would spend it here in Washington.
  But finally, before my time runs out again, I remind my colleagues 
that we have done quite a bit on education in this Congress. First of 
all, we passed a bill that provided education savings accounts which 
let parents set aside up to $2,000 a year which they could use for 
tutors, they could use to send their children to summer school 
enrichment programs, they could use for afterschool programs; and, yes, 
if they chose to send their children to parochial or private schools, 
they could do it. And what happened? Vetoed by the President. It did 
not represent the teachers union agenda and so the President vetoed it.
  We provided literacy funding. The President vetoed it.
  We had a merit pay system for teachers. Can you imagine paying good 
teachers better than we pay bad teachers? Can you imagine having a 
system where you would actually pay a teacher more if they did a better 
job of teaching? Well, we could imagine it, but the President and the 
teachers union could not imagine it, nor could they tolerate it, so the 
President vetoed it.
  We provided a school choice system for low-income families so that 
working families in cities like Washington could do what President 
Clinton did, and that is, they could choose to send their children to 
private schools if they chose to. But the President vetoed it.
  We provided tax relief for parents whose kids used a State prepaid 
tuition plan. This is one of the most exciting new developments around 
the country where if you want your child to go to Texas A&M--that is 
your dream--you have to do two things: One, you set up a program and 
you pay in advance and pay off the tuition, and, obviously, you get a 
big discount if you start when your child is 6 months old or before 
they are born; and the second thing they have to do is get in. But we 
had a system to make it easier for working parents who had the big 
dream to realize it. The President vetoed it.
  We had a system for tax relief for employer-provided education 
assistance. Employers all over the country are saying, ``Our kids do 
not have the skills we need.'' So we had a better idea in Congress. We 
said, OK, if you want to send your employees back to school, to junior 
college or technical school, or to the University of Missouri, or 
anywhere, you can do it on a tax-free basis because you are investing 
in the future of America. And guess what? The President vetoed it.
  And finally, our major initiative of this Congress--for the first 
time since I have been in Congress, we have been successful in doing 
something that I came to Congress to try to do, and that is, to get the 
Federal Government out of the business of dictating education policy to 
local school boards. We, for the first time ever, passed a provision 
that would allow local school boards to take the money and spend it as 
they believed to be in the interest of their children.
  Maybe people in Washington know better about what children should do 
and take; but it is interesting, when you ask them, ``Well, if you know 
so much about kids in the elementary school at College Hills in College 
Station in the first grade class, tell us their names,'' they don't 
know them. But they think they know an awful lot about what should be 
done.
  We believe that local people should set priorities. We passed a bill 
to do

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that. The President threatened to veto it.
  So my final message is, Mr. President, first of all, your 
administration did not even raise education until Friday. We have been 
negotiating for a week. This is a ruse to cover up an effort by this 
administration to bust its own budget and to spend Social Security 
money. That is what this is about.
  Secondly, the President proposed $32 billion for educational 
appropriations. We have provided $32 billion for education, but we have 
provided it so that local school districts make more decisions and 
Washington makes fewer.
  So if the President wants to debate, let's debate about the real 
issue. The real issue is not how much money is spent, it is who is 
doing the spending.
  I thank the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from North Dakota.
  Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, am I correct in assuming I am recognized 
under the previous unanimous consent order?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator is recognized for 15 minutes.

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