[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 144 (Monday, October 12, 1998)]
[Senate]
[Pages S12379-S12382]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




           DEBATE DURING THE FINAL DAYS OF THE 105TH CONGRESS

  Mr. GRAMS. Mr. President, I want to talk a little bit about some of 
the impending debate going on right now to try to close out these final 
days of this Congress. As you know, most of the talk is centered around 
the issue of education. While I was sitting here listening, I thought 
really that most Members of Congress that are up for election were back 
home campaigning. But I guess they are not, because some have been here 
this afternoon campaigning on the floor of the Senate. I heard today 
some of the outlines of what was basically their very liberal agenda, 
which did not pass some very radical proposals that this Congress did 
not accept.
  They talked about delays and about the lack of work in this session, 
but they didn't mention that this Congress has required more cloture 
motions just to try to get issues onto the floor. We have also heard, I 
think, some real tall tales of revision of the history of budget 
negotiations, et cetera, talking about how much credit should go to 
this President for the current economic benefits that we are reaping. 
But somehow they forget a lot of the work done during the 1980s, like 
the tax cut, deregulation of many industries, the productivity of 
workers and companies that have basically produced more revenue for 
this Government to allow us to balance the budget. It really hasn't 
been anything that this President has done to balance the budget.
  If you talked about this big budget plan offered in 1993--which I am 
proud to say not one Republican supported because the centerpiece of 
that plan was just like every other Democratic proposal over the last 
40 years--that was to raise taxes on the American people in order to 
try to solve what they saw as a crisis or problem, but the real intent 
was to enlarge and expand the size and scope of Government, to bring 
more control to Washington. This plan raised $263 billion in new 
taxes--the largest tax increase in history in this country--which has 
now taken the average American family to the highest levels of taxation 
in history, with over 42 percent for the average American going to 
taxes. That means you work just about as much time to support 
Government as you are allowed to work to raise your family, to support 
your family--health care, educational needs, food, clothing, shelter, 
et cetera.
  I have to say that if it was such a great idea to raise taxes and 
that solves the problems, I don't know why we don't simply say let's 
raise taxes to

[[Page S12380]]

100 percent of what you make so the Government can be real sure that it 
takes care of every need that you have, and we can be on the floor here 
bragging next year, or the year after and the year after how great 
Washington has done.
  When you see some of the waste, fraud and abuse in this Government, 
the bureaucracy--and we can sit here and say that Washington can handle 
problems better than the American family. Mr. President, that kind of 
baffles the mind. Some people think raising taxes and sending more 
money to Washington is a godsend, and it has somehow taken care of all 
the problems in this country, when I don't think too many people out 
there would want Washington to be their own financial adviser when they 
can't even count on Social Security to be there. I wanted to express 
more concern and basically disappointment over what appears to be an 
eleventh-hour attempt now by the President to force straitjacket 
education policy on our Nation's schools and children.
  The President brought this up a year ago in his State of the Union 
Address. There has been no legislation or ideas brought to the floor on 
increasing the size or putting more teachers into the classroom. 
Everybody can agree that education is probably one of the most 
important things that we need in this country. Again, I don't know if 
people want to give that control over to Washington and have them 
hiring teachers, telling us who we can hire and fire in the classroom. 
They would go from there to what the curriculum is going to be. Then 
they would tell us what to teach the children and what books to read.
  When you talk about revision of history and what we have heard here 
on the budget issues alone, can you imagine what our textbooks are 
going to be like when we hear some apologizing for Christopher 
Columbus? Can you imagine the difference in the wealth and lifestyle of 
this great country? In some of our textbooks, Christopher Columbus is 
being viewed as somebody who did things wrong. Sure, there were 
problems back then, and there were new diseases brought to this 
continent. But to say now that we should be apologizing for what 
Christopher Columbus did, or maybe apologize for how this country ended 
World War II--nobody wanted to use the bomb, but to rewrite the stories 
of the Enola Gay and say America was somehow responsible for World War 
II, we didn't start the war. We had to find a way to end it. It was not 
a pleasant way to do it, but it did save lives from the day-to-day 
fighting. There would not have only been thousands more American 
soldiers who would have died, in addition to the thousands who died in 
World War II, but thousands more Japanese civilians would have been 
killed as well.

  Mr. President, President Clinton and others in Congress have decided 
to renew their one-size-fits-all argument that they know how best to 
spend education dollars for each and every student, in each and every 
school in the country, from the inner city to rural classrooms.
  Education for all is a top priority, as I mentioned. All of us have 
the top priority of education for our children and grandchildren. That 
politicians are using it today as a last-ditch political coverup, I 
believe, is beneath contempt. The central charge being made is that the 
Republican-led Congress hasn't met the demands for increases in 
education spending. This simply is not the case.
  According to the Senate Budget Committee, in the last three budget 
cycles during which Republicans have controlled Congress, this Congress 
has provided $79 billion, or 97 percent of the President's education 
requests.
  In other words, in 5 of the last 6 years, there has been less than a 
3-percent difference between the President's request for education 
outlays and what Congress has provided. And to suggest otherwise is 
nothing but pure politics.
  As we have seen time and time again in Washington, it is very easy to 
just go out there and try to up the ante. When I say that, what they 
are trying to do out here is bribe the American people with your money. 
In other words, they just want to take a little bit more of our money 
to Washington, raise your taxes, erode your tax bases, take more money 
away from your tax base to support your own local schools so they can 
up the ante out here in Washington, because Washington can't give you 
anything. It can't enrich your school districts until it takes 
something from you. So it has to take money from you to bring it to 
Washington and promise you something that they are going to give back, 
but with a lot of strings--and by the way, a lot less money, because by 
the time you support the buildings and bureaucracy here in Washington, 
you are only getting pennies on the dollar back.
  Somehow, they promise you something, but they don't tell you who is 
going to pay for it. Sure, some might be getting more money back than 
they paid, but most Americans are going to pay more in taxes to get 
this type of help from Washington. When you give that control to 
Washington, you as parents lose control at home over what decisions are 
going to be made, whether it is over teachers, curriculum, et cetera.
  So upping the ante here, its easy for somebody to try to outbid the 
other, saying let's do $3 billion or $5 billion or $7 billion--it is 
all your money. So it is easy to up the ante so as to be able to 
complain that Congress isn't spending enough. We have seen this 
painfully played out, for example, in making emergency moneys available 
for our Nation's farmers.
  One tell-tale sign that the administration's proposals are for 
``show'' only is that they cannot be met without breaking the budget. I 
heard here a while ago that the spending bidding wars the President is 
talking about right now is not going to break the budget, that it is 
all offset. I don't know where it is coming from. I haven't seen the 
offsets. The only offset I have seen is that it is going to come out of 
the budget surplus.
  Something in the neighborhood of $20 billion of surplus money is 
already being spent by this administration. He is trying to twist the 
arms of the Republican Congress to go along with this looming threat of 
a possible Government shutdown, or saying we don't care about 
education, or we don't care about the American farmer. But somehow 
Republicans wanted to give a tax break because some of the surplus 
money is from larger revenues due to income growth. We say, if we are 
overbilling the American people, maybe we should give some money back. 
They say, you can't do that, and they say they think about Social 
Security first. That tax cut would have been about $7 billion in the 
year 1999. That was too much money to give $7 billion back, which would 
amount to basically less than $1 a month per person in this country.

  That is a huge tax cut--less than $1 a month--$7 billion? They 
couldn't do that. But yet $20 billion of that surplus can be spent. And 
they are saying, ``Well, we are not taking this out of the surplus; we 
are going to offset it.'' I would like to know where they are 
offsetting it, and, if they are offsetting it in some programs, I would 
like to know where those programs are going to be able to get along 
with less money, after all of this year trying to work out budgets 
through our committees. The President knows this.
  The only offset proposal has been through increased tobacco taxes. 
That is what we heard earlier this year. That is how the President was 
going to pay for 100,000 new teachers. That is how the President was 
going to pay for rebuilding new schools. And that, by the way, is the 
prerogative, the responsibility, the opportunity, of the local school 
boards and school districts. They should be doing this--not the Federal 
Government, because the Federal Government then has to make money from 
them to give back to them. But, in the meantime, they lose a lot of 
control and authority. But when there was no tobacco bill this year--
again, this is one of the radical liberal agendas that did not pass 
this Congress that we have heard complaints about. Again, I am very 
proud to have voted against that piece of legislation. But there is no 
money there.
  So, if there is no money from the tobacco legislation, now the 
President is saying we are going to have to dip into something else. 
But it is going to come out of the surplus, and that is the extra money 
that you have worked for, which Washington now has and won't give back. 
Congress has rejected that plan. The President has now proposed an 
alternative method of financing his proposal.

[[Page S12381]]

  Another giveaway as to the political nature of this last-minute 
demagoguing is the plain fact that simply spending more money in 
Washington for the sake of spending more money does nothing to solve 
the education problems in this country. I think the President should 
pay attention to the fact that it is going to take a little more time 
and a little more effort to solve these problems than he has been 
willing to devote in the past.
  If this is such an important issue, which I think it is, I think we 
need to have Congress to bring it before our committee. Let's sit down 
and debate it and lay it all out and see where the advantages are, how 
much it is going to cost and where the money is going to come from, 
rather than the President trying to again break arms and jam it into an 
omnibus budget bill. In fact, spending money blindly may ultimately do 
more harm than good.
  According to a recent article in the Washington Post,

       The nation's largest study examining the use of computers 
     in schools has concluded that the $5 billion being spent each 
     year on educational technology is actually hurting children 
     in many cases because the computers aren't being put to good 
     use.

  While I support teaching out kids to use technology, and computers 
are an important part of this, I do not believe high-tech classrooms 
are the only priority.
  And, while spending great sums of money on technology-education is 
feel-good politics for those who spend the money, it can come, as we've 
seen, at the expense of our kids.
  Last year, the American Management Association found that two-thirds 
of managers said new employees had strong computer skills, but that 
only 29 percent said the employees could write competently.
  I am always reminded of a story, because I think it suggests some 
very serious education problems in this country: A small school 
district in northern Minnesota was being given an award because their 
students had ranked among the top in the scores that year. In the test 
scores out there, their students had ranked among the top. Somebody 
came up, and while they were going through some of the records, they 
noticed that this school district had some of the lowest costs per 
pupil in the State. So the question was asked: ``How can you account 
for having higher test scores when you have had some of the lowest 
spending per pupil year?'' The principal said, ``I don't know how to 
explain it.'' He said, ``All we can basically do is offer our kids the 
basics.''
  In other words, they were teaching them to read, to write, and to do 
arithmetic rather than the ``feel good'' diversity type programs that 
we see teachers now hamstrung with today. They can spend less than half 
of their costs on the basics, because the Government dictates today 
already preclude them from teaching their kids the basics.
  When they talk about money in this country, that we are not spending 
enough money--we spend more on education; it is only second to health 
care. About $450 billion a year goes to education. That is more than 
any country in the world spends per student per year. In fact, if you 
look at the numbers, the United States spends nearly twice as much per 
student per year as any country in the world. Yet we rank 14 out of 14 
of the industrialized nations in the world in test scores when it comes 
to math and sciences and the ability to write.
  So, if other countries can spend less and get more, where is the 
problem? The problem isn't the amount of money that we are spending on 
education, it is how that money is being used. And now, to say if we 
could only come back and throw some more money at it--I will give you 
an example. Back in the 1950s, if we adjusted to inflation today, the 
States were spending an average of about $600 per student per year in 
education. Today, 1998, we are spending well over $6,000 per student 
per year--from $600 in 1950 to over $6,000 today.
  The District of Columbia spends over $10,000. In Minnesota, the city 
of Minneapolis spends over $10,000 per student and yet has some of the 
lowest test scores in the State.
  So, again, is it the money? Or is it some of the ways that we are 
teaching our children, or some of the programs, or the time that our 
kids are being given to study the basics in order to learn?
  I think the ones who really come out on the short end of this are the 
students. While we are up here debating all of this, saying that we 
need all this curriculum, that we need all this money, that we need all 
this stuff, our kids are graduating with some of the lowest test scores 
around the world, without the ability to compete in the next 
generation. They are the ones being shortchanged while a lot of this 
debate is going on here. I think those problems show that our students 
are not learning the basics despite our spending efforts.
  Over the last 30 years, as I have mentioned, we have increasingly 
spent more of the Nation's money on education. Nominal spending has 
risen eightfold since 1969.
  Furthermore, a recent Wall Street Journal article reports that in the 
past 45 years the average pupil-teacher ratio in this country has 
already fallen by 35 percent. In the past 45 years, the student-teacher 
ratio has fallen 35 percent. Yet, our test scores have fallen with it. 
The SAT scores have stagnated, and the international tests have put 
them at the bottom.
  In Math and Science General Knowledge tests, United States students 
ranked 16th out of 21 in science, behind Russia and Slovenia but ahead 
of Cyprus.
  In math, United States students ranked 19th out of 21 countries, 
behind Russia, Slovenia, Hungary, and Lithuania. America already 
outspends every other country per child on education, and ranked among 
the bottom of all.
  Clearly, simply spending more money is not the answer to better 
learning. If it were, we certainly wouldn't have these sorts of test 
scores to show for it.
  The answers to our education problems do not lie in ``wired 
classrooms.'' No computer can take the place of a good teacher. 
Instead, I believe that the answers to learning are found in each and 
every teacher-child relationship, in each and every classroom.
  There is no amount of money that can replace a teacher who cares and 
wants to reach kids, and has the freedom to do so.
  This freedom comes with the authority to make decisions based on 
local needs--not dictates from Washington, not more control from 
Washington, not more strings attached to the classrooms from 
Washington. I have continually supported plans which would return money 
and also return control from Washington to parents, to teachers, and to 
local school districts. After all, I think they know best how to spend 
their education dollars.
  Plans such as the Education Savings and School Excellence Act would 
have been an important step toward accomplishing this.
  This bipartisan education reform legislation would have allowed low- 
and middle-income families to open education savings accounts to pay 
for the particular education needs of their children--from textbooks to 
tutoring to tuition.
  Unfortunately, for families and students, President Clinton vetoed 
this legislation. There has been an agenda dealing with education in 
this Congress this year. It has gone nowhere, because the President and 
those Members on that side of the aisle --the Democrats--have disagreed 
and have stalled the efforts, or have vetoed it with the President's 
plan, claiming that it would divert resources from public education. 
This is false. The Education Savings and School Excellence Act would 
not have touched 1 cent of Federal spending for education--would not 
have touched 1 cent of the surplus either. It would have come from 
parents being able to set aside more of their own money so that they 
could decide how they wanted to spend it for their children's 
education--whether they needed additional tutoring, or tuition to go to 
a private or parochial school, or whatever the parent decided they 
needed. But they vetoed that plan.
  The reason the President vetoed this legislation--and I will be 
generous with this inference--is because he thinks he knows what is 
best for each and every student if America.
  But I would ask my colleagues to reflect on this for just a moment 
and to see if they aren't forced to come to the same conclusion: To 
think that the U.S. Government should impose a rigid

[[Page S12382]]

generic formula on day-to-day decisions for all students is nothing 
short of frightening.
  So, Mr. President, I thank you very much for the time, and I hope we 
can work out these questions in the remaining days. Some of the 
questions now do not relate to the amount of money being spent on 
education but is being narrowed down to who is spending it, who 
controls it. I think the Republicans have made it very clear that if 
the money is to be spent, it should go to local school districts so 
that the parents and the teachers and local officials can decide how 
that money should be spent, not Washington. But on the other side, they 
would rather have the money come here to Washington so they can 
disperse it, so they can tell parents, teachers, local school districts 
and local officials how those dollars should be spent. I think 
Americans would rather have those local options left to themselves 
because this is incrementalism at its best. If you let Washington get 
its foot in the door, the camel's nose under the tent, it is only going 
to be a matter of time before they want more and more control over 
education in this country.
  I thank the Chair. I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Burns). The Senator from Vermont is 
recognized.

                          ____________________