[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 146 (Wednesday, October 14, 1998)]
[House]
[Pages H10910-H10915]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                        CLARIFICATION OF ISSUES

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 7, 1997, the gentlewoman from New York (Mrs. Lowey) is 
recognized for 60 minutes.
  Ms. LOWEY. Mr. Speaker, I am delighted to be here this evening to 
clarify some of the issues that we have been working on. I was just in 
my office when my good friend the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Kingston) 
and the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Bob Schaffer) were speaking.
  I was working with my staff on some of the key educational issues, 
and I heard some of the comments. I thought, well, I better get down to 
that floor and clarify some of these issues.
  Yesterday, I was in Maryland with the President of the United States, 
with leaders in the House and leaders in the Senate, and we had an 
opportunity to visit a school which has wonderful children, a great 
principal. We met the superintendent. We were there with the Governor 
of Maryland.
  We talked to some of the teachers. We talked to the students. They 
are working so hard to give those children the very best education they 
could. Yet, I was shocked to see three or four trailers outside in 
which the children were learning.
  This is the United States of America. This is not a Third World 
Nation. In a middle class community in Maryland, the children were 
forced to have classes in trailers because the community was not able 
to get school construction bond issues through their local communities.
  I have worked on the issue of school modernization a long time and 
let me tell my colleagues why. A couple of years ago, I did a survey of 
the schools in the metropolitan New York region, and I was shocked.
  I grew up in Bronx, New York. I raised my children in Queens. Now I 
live in Westchester County. So I am very interested in what is 
happening in the entire metropolitan region.
  In this survey, it showed that one out of four, one out of four 
schools have children learning in classrooms that were meant to be 
locker rooms, meant to be bathrooms. This in the United States of 
America.
  Two-thirds of these schools have boilers, have roofs, have other 
areas that have to be fixed. Around the country, there is $112 billion 
worth of improvements that have to be made in these schools.
  A couple years ago, Carol Moseley-Braun in the Senate and I 
introduced a bill. We introduced it again with our good friend the 
gentleman from New York (Mr. Rangel) that would do something about this 
problem. I do not think we should be talking about liberals, 
conservatives, right wing, left wing.
  I am a mother. In fact, I am a grandmother. I bet Jillie is watching 
this program. Because we want to be sure that our youngsters, like my 
grandchildren, are going to go to schools that are going to give them 
the best education they could get.
  I am shocked to think that my colleagues on the other side of the 
aisle would say only bureaucracies want to do this. Let me make it very 
clear what the school modernization proposal that our President is 
talking about and has been so forceful about, what our leader, the 
gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Gephardt), is talking about, what Tom 
Daschle in the Senate is talking about, this is a proposal that allows 
local communities to make the decision. The Federal Government's role 
is to pay the interest on those bonds. But it is the local community 
that has to float the bonds.
  Do my colleagues know what? My good friends on the other side of the 
aisle are talking about cutting taxes. What this proposal will do is 
help lower property taxes, because unless the Federal Government is a 
partner with local school districts, the local school districts will 
have to assume this burden.
  Just a couple of weeks ago, I toured a school in my district in 
Westchester County. This district has about $8 million in repairs. They 
cannot go out with a bond issue of $8 million because this middle class 
community has so many responsibilities that it will be voted down. So 
they go out with bond issues of $35,000 and $45,000.
  My colleagues and I know when we have repairs in the House, whether 
we are fixing a bathroom or some leaky pipes, if we go out piecemeal, 
we do not get as good a price as if we put it all together.
  So by the Federal Government paying the interest, giving a tax credit 
to these bonds, and the local government going out and floating these 
bonds, the Federal Government is not making the decision. So all this 
talk about bureaucracies is kind of a joke. It is the local communities 
that make a difference.
  My friends and all of the good people, the hardworking people who are 
watching us tonight have to understand that there is a real difference 
in views about school modernization. My colleagues, my friends on the 
other side of the aisle and I would love this to be a bipartisan issue, 
because, again, this is the United States of America. But my colleagues 
on the other side of the aisle do not feel that the Federal Government 
should be a partner in modernizing our schools. The Democrats on this 
side of the aisle feel strongly, passionately that the Federal 
Government has

[[Page H10911]]

responsibility to help local governments in modernizing the schools.

                              {time}  2000

  How can we in this Congress, Democrat or Republican? Because many of 
us, most of us voted for it, vote to make the Federal Government be a 
partner in rebuilding our roads, our highways, our bridges and yet not 
be a partner in rebuilding our schools and modernizing our schools? 
That does not make any sense.
  How can we on both sides of the aisle, Democrat and Republican, vote, 
and I vote that way, to make the Federal Government a partner in 
building prisons and yet say to local taxpayers, you have to bear the 
burden of modernizing our schools. The Federal Government is not going 
to be a partner. It does not make any sense.
  I want to clarify that. Local governments will have the control over 
the decisions of how they are going to float these bonds, which 
responsibilities they want to assume, but we would tell them, you will 
lower your local tax burden because the Federal Government is reaching 
out the hand to be a partner.
  So let us clarify. The Republicans do not want to be a partner in 
modernizing our schools. The Democrats are saying, we want to help you 
lower your property taxes and be a partner in modernizing our schools. 
That is the difference.
  I have visited schools, not only in Westchester County but in Queens 
County, in New York City where the plaster is falling down because of 
leaks on the roof and they have sheets of plastic holding up the 
ceiling, not in a third world nation, in the United States of America. 
Locker rooms that are damp are now places for classrooms. Bathrooms are 
classrooms. This in the United States of America? How can we say that 
school modernization is not our responsibility if we are saying that we 
have to prepare our youngsters for the future, that education is the 
key to the future? How can we say there should be a computer in every 
classroom, that there should be computers for every youngster when many 
of the schools do not have the wiring, they do not have the 
infrastructure to support these computers? I visited one school and it 
would be hard for my colleagues to believe this, where they were wiring 
the schools outside of the window because the school could not have the 
infrastructure that would support the computers. Does this make sense? 
No, I think the majority of families, the hardworking families who are 
listening to us tonight, who send their kids to local schools where 
there are trailers because there are too many kids for those classrooms 
that are existing, who send their kids to local schools where the 
boilers are old, where they need to refurbish, where they want their 
children to have computers would say, ``Help us, be a partner, reach 
out to us,'' they are not going to say, ``You bureaucrats in 
Washington, don't help us modernize our schools.'' This does not make 
sense.
  They are also saying, stop all this labeling. I am tired of people 
being referred to as liberal and conservative, Republican and Democrat. 
All of us should join hands across the aisle and help our parents, our 
hardworking families give their youngsters the very best education they 
can. That is what this proposal is all about. My colleagues are saying 
that there are a lot of arguments from, they said Democratic opponents. 
I do not think we are opponents in this effort. We should be working 
together. But yes, the Democrats are fighting for school modernization 
because we feel it is in the interest of our youngsters.
  I want to make another point in response to my colleagues. This 
President, because of bold actions in 1993 and actions following up, 
has balanced this budget. Now my colleagues are saying that we should 
be giving away some of this money. Do you know what the money in the 
surplus really is? The money in the surplus belongs to the Social 
Security trust fund. These are FICA taxes that are in that trust fund. 
We should not be using that money other than frankly preserving Social 
Security and Medicare. This is what our constituents want.
  I want to make a couple of other points. My colleagues on the other 
side of the aisle, my good friends on the other side of the aisle 
talked about the issues, and they talked about what they have 
accomplished. I want to remind our listeners that they bottled up 
campaign finance reform. They did not do anything about preserving 
Social Security and Medicare. What happened to the patient bill of 
rights? What happened to reforming HMOs? What happened to the 
environmental progress that we are trying to make that they are trying 
to roll back? So it is not just that they are saying no school 
modernization. They have not taken action to preserve Social Security 
and Medicare. They have not taken action on the patient bill of rights.
  Now, for my constituents that are listening this evening, there is an 
HMO in my district that has suddenly said to the seniors, ``We're not 
going to cover you anymore.'' That same HMO called me on the telephone 
and said, ``We're not going to cover you on the Federal Employee Health 
Benefit Plan. You are just going to have to find another provider.'' 
Why was this bottled up in the Senate? Why have we not taken action? We 
need campaign finance reform. We need HMO reform. We need the 
enforcement.
  I have an interesting story which may relate to some of the personal 
stories of families here. I was in the office of my ophthalmologist. 
The ophthalmologist had a difficult decision to make. As so often when 
I go to the doctor, and my friend from Wisconsin is here and he may 
have the same experiences, I often hear about what is wrong with the 
HMO for an hour and then maybe they examine me for 2 minutes. But on 
one of these occasions, the doctor said to me, Mrs. Lowey, I had to 
make the most difficult decision. I felt a patient needed to have 
surgery immediately to save her eye. That patient had to be put in a 
taxi, sent back to Stamford, Connecticut, this was in New York City, 
because the HMO would not allow this doctor to treat her and she had to 
be sent back for another physician who was not as expert as this 
physician. So in our HMO bill, we talk about enforcement, making sure 
that not just the doctor can be sued when something goes wrong but the 
HMO has to bear responsibility.
  So why has this Congress led by the Republican majority not passed 
HMO reform, passed campaign finance reform and passed our school 
modernization program? I am going to close now and turn it over to my 
good colleague from Wisconsin, because I think it is important that you 
hear what is happening all over the country. School modernization is 
critical. It is critical that in this negotiation that is going on, and 
it is not last-minute. I introduced my bill 2\1/2\ years ago. This is 
not last-minute. It is critical that we stand up and fight hard for the 
children of America. School modernization has nothing to do with 
bureaucrats. It has to do with the Federal Government reaching out to 
our local governments and to say to those local governments, ``We're 
going to be partners with you. You can lower your property taxes 
because we understand that you can't do this alone.'' This problem 
around the Nation is $112 billion.
  I want to close, as I mentioned before, by saying if this Congress 
can have a role in rebuilding highways and roads and bridges, and I 
think we should, if this Congress should have a critical role in 
building prisons, then we have a responsibility to make education the 
number-one issue. We have to make sure our youngsters are going to 
schools that have the latest technology. We have to make sure that our 
teachers are given all the support they need. It is too easy to 
criticize our teachers when you and I know that all the problems of our 
community converge on the teachers in our school system. So we want to 
be sure those schools are modern, we want to be sure those schools are 
equipped with computers, we want to be sure those youngsters are safe 
in those schools, we want to be sure there are not roofs that are 
leaking, we want to be sure that the boilers are up to date and that 
when we drive by we do not see a coal truck as I did delivering coal to 
the local school. We have this responsibility.

  I am very proud to be a Member of the Congress of the United States 
of America. As I look at the Capitol dome as I come in, it is often 
hard for me to believe that I was elected to be a Member of the 
Congress of the United States of America. And frankly it pains

[[Page H10912]]

me deeply to see constant attacks, constant partisan attacks. We have 
to work together on the priorities that our families and our 
communities sent us here to accomplish. It is unfortunate that my 
colleagues on the other side of the aisle want one investigation after 
another. We would like to bring these investigations to closure, take 
appropriate action and focus on the issues that we were sent here to 
do.
  Education, my colleagues, is number one. I started working on this 
not only as a mother, as a PTA president, I continue to care 
passionately about these issues, and I am optimistic that as these 
negotiations are brought to closure, we will not only increase the 
number of teachers by 100,000 as our President has suggested, but we 
will pass the appropriate legislation that will provide the partnership 
for school modernization that is so necessary for the future of this 
country. And then we can go home and make it clear to our constituents 
that we are here fighting for you and your concerns and be proud to be 
representatives in this great body, in this greatest country in the 
world. I thank my colleagues.
  I am delighted that I am joined here by my good friend the gentleman 
from Wisconsin (Mr. Barrett), and I know that he has worked hard on 
these issues, and my colleague would like to share some thoughts.
  Mr. BARRETT of Wisconsin. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from 
New York (Mrs. Lowey). I also want to welcome a good colleague the 
gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Etheridge) who has been an 
incredible force on the issue of education as well.
  As far as I am concerned, and I come, I think, to this issue from the 
same perspective as my good friend from New York, as a parent. I have 
two children who are in kindergarten right now, and so this is not a 
political issue, this is a real-world issue for me. As far as I am 
concerned, there is not an issue more important to the future of this 
country than education. We can talk about hundreds of other issues, we 
can talk about political fights back and forth between the parties, but 
education is our future. As we look to the future, we have to make the 
investment. The Republicans talk about this as if it is some sort of 
pork-barrel spending. I do not view this as pork-barrel spending. I 
view this as investing in our future. That is why I am pleased that the 
President has been so forceful and I am pleased that he has continued 
the fight that he began in January to add 100,000 teachers in our 
classrooms in this country. And I am pleased that we are continuing to 
fight for school construction.
  I want to tell my colleagues a story about my children, and it is 
important. I think it is instructive. Both of my kids are in Milwaukee 
public schools. We love the school. We love the teachers. It is 
wonderful. But just two nights ago my wife had her first parent-teacher 
conference for our 4-year-old daughter who is in 4-year-old 
kindergarten. I called her afterward, said how did it go, she said it 
went fine. Of course the teacher again, whom we think is a wonderful 
teacher, she taught our son last year, does not know her very well but 
you cannot really expect her to because she has got 25 kids in the 
morning and she has got 25 kids in the afternoon. So she has got 50 
kids. It is just difficult to get to know the kids. It is hard. It is 
hard for the teacher who is doing a tremendous job to get to know these 
children. I think there is not a person in this Chamber who would 
disagree with the statement that the smaller the class size, the more 
personal attention an individual is going to get. This is the time when 
we are nurturing our children.
  It is interesting to note that right now, we are basically in the 
second baby boom. There are more kids now in that younger stage than 
there have been since I was a baby boomer. So this is not an issue that 
is sort of a boutique issue for some people, this is a huge issue for 
our country. There are so many children in our country that we have to 
be mindful. It is more important in many ways that we pay attention to 
this baby boom generation than to my baby boom generation, because we 
are in a different economic world. Many of the jobs that were in my 
community, the jobs at American Motors or Pabst Brewery, Allis 
Chalmers, those jobs are gone and they are gone forever.

                              {time}  2015

  And if you are going to have a person who is going to be able to 
support a family, they are going to have to have an education to do it 
because many of those jobs have gone overseas, and they are never 
coming back, and so we have to be mindful.
  So I am pleased, although obviously it was a grudging acceptance from 
our colleagues on the other side of the aisle, that we have been able 
to move forward on the plan to put 100,000 teachers into classrooms, 
and the important phrase there is in classrooms because the debate we 
have had was whether the money should go in a fashion that would allow 
the Federal Government to skim off 1 percent for bureaucrats in 
Washington DC, whether the States should be able to then skim off 15 
percent more for bureaucrats at the State level, and at the local level 
who knows how much would be skimmed off? We were insistent that that 
money go in the classrooms because we want smaller classes. We think 
that that is extremely important.
  And I think we would not have gotten it if the President had not 
shown leadership on this issue in January and those of us in Congress 
had not kept talking about the issue when the majority party wanted to 
simply ignore it. It simply was not on the radar screen until we 
continued to work for this issue because it is important for the 
parents and the children of this country.
  Now we may have been successful, and I am pleased that we were 
successful in convincing the Republicans to help us add 100,000 
teachers, but there is a second issue, and, as you have pointed out, 
that is the issue of school construction.
  We have seen in the last decade and a half city after city build 
beautiful new stadiums. Many times those stadiums were built with the 
help of some sort of financing mechanism that was available through the 
Federal Government. That has dried up somewhat, but there are still 
very creative methods available for municipalities to build stadiums.
  I think that this is great, that we have these stadiums, but I find a 
lot of irony in the argument that people have to have a modern facility 
to go sit in and watch entertainment, but we do not think it is 
important for our kids to be able to sit in an environment conducive to 
learning.
  And as you have, Mrs. Lowey, and you have, Mr. Etheridge, I visit a 
lot of schools in my district, and just last month I visited a school, 
and it was a hot day, and it was an old school, and the ventilation was 
so bad when I visited one of the classrooms the teachers aide was going 
around to each student with one of these spray bottles with water in 
it, and was not embarrassed by doing it. The kids with obviously very 
hot, they were sitting there sweating, and said, ``Okay, I want you to 
hold up one finger or two fingers or three fingers. If you hold up one 
finger, I'll spray you once in the face. If you hold up two fingers, 
I'll spray you twice in the face. If you hold up three fingers, I will 
spray you twice in the face and once in the back of the head.'' And all 
the kids started raising their hands, and he would go around and spray 
them, and it was just so hot in this classroom with poor ventilation 
that they were delighted to get this, and they would then get a little 
towel, a paper towel, and they could dry themselves off. But this is 
the atmosphere that they are sitting in, and we are supposed to compete 
with all the other countries in the world if we are asking our children 
to sit in this type of classroom.
  It just simply boggles my mind that our friends on the other side of 
the aisle accept the notion that we should be partners in building 
highways, which we should be, that we should be partners in building 
prisons, which we should be, but somehow there is something wrong in 
investing in our children by giving them the physical tools to have an 
environment conducive to learning.
  So I am very, very frustrated that the majority does not think that 
this is an important issue because it is an important issue, and again 
I applaud you for the work that you have done. You have been 
tremendous.
  We are being joined by our friend the gentlewoman from California 
(Ms.

[[Page H10913]]

Sanchez) from California who also has been really outspoken on this 
issue.
  Mrs. LOWEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield to Mr. Etheridge from North Carolina 
who brings an education background, one that I think all of us 
appreciate, to these chambers, and although in his first term you would 
think he had been here 20 years because he has done so much in pushing 
this issue, I think he is teaching a lot of us from his perspective on 
how we can improve the education system in this country. So I would 
like to yield to Mr. Etheridge.
  Mr. ETHERIDGE. I thank my colleague. I was listening to what the 
gentleman from Wisconsin said about his child and being in school, and 
all of us can relate, having children. And I visited in 8 years, the 
State Superintendent, an awful lot of classrooms, some very good ones 
and some that sadden me greatly to see them. I have been in classrooms 
that water was in the basement, that we needed to move children out of 
the basement and out of harm's way, and in buildings that were fire 
codes that we had to move them out of.
  And I was listening earlier to our friends on the other side of the 
aisle, and they were berating bureaucrats, et cetera, and I could not 
help but think that it was a partisan issue.
  And 2 years ago in my State we had raised a lot of awareness on the 
need for school facilities, and we are not unlike any other State. 
North Carolina still has tremendous needs. We have grown very rapidly, 
and you were talking about the growth of students in the public 
schools, and we are now in the midst of what is being called the baby 
boom echo, the largest number of children showing up in the public 
schools over the next 10 years, and that is true today we have ever 
had, and North Carolina will be the fifth fastest growing State, the 
fifth; New York being the fourth; California being the first; Texas 
being second and Florida, number 3, over the next 10 years of students 
because of this phenomenon of growth.
  But the point being that we argued with our general assembly, and I 
happen to believe the public is well ahead of us in Congress and many 
of our State legislatures; the reason being, they know what their 
children need. They know that they need good safe environments, they 
need a good education, and we finally convinced the general assembly 
with the help of educators and parents, PTAs and others, put a $1.8 
billion bond issue on the ballot in North Carolina. We put it on at the 
same time that the general election was, and many of the politicians 
said, Oh, we don't want that on the ballot when we're on it.''
  Well, I happen to have disagreed with them. I thought it was the 
proper time to have it. And guess who got the most votes in the general 
election? It was not any candidate running for statewide office, from 
the Governor all the way down to our judges and all the counsel of 
State. It was that vote on the ballot that parents and grandparents and 
aunts and uncles could go to the ballot box and vote for the next 
generation of young people who were going to run this country, who were 
going to sit in these halls of Congress and the legislatures and teach 
our children and be our doctors and nurses and all the professions. It 
got over 60 percent of the vote, the largest bond issue in the history 
of our State by the largest margin ever of any statewide bond issue 
passing.

  That tells me that the people in my State, and I think that is 
reflective of America, will say to this Congress, you are not keeping 
up with the times when you refuse to say we are going to pay, we are 
going to allow you to sell bonds, and we are going to pay the interest 
on it so you can repair those run down buildings, so you can build a 
new building for growing population of young people who will be coming 
in so that the prisons are not better than the place we send our 
children.
  As I said the other night, children are not stupid either. You know, 
we tell them how important education is, we want you to get a good 
education, we want you to do better. And at a young age is, as you 
talked about your four year old a few minutes ago, every parent feels 
that way whether they are a United States Congressman or Congresswoman 
or whether they work in a sweat shop in Anywhere U.S.A. They want their 
child to have the very best. They want them to have a opportunity to 
burgeon out in them, whatever they have, they can be the best they can 
be. That is what they want.
  If that is true, and I happen to believe it is, then we ought not to 
say we cannot do it because we can if we have the will.
  There was a time when we did not provide water and sewer to our 
cities and our rural areas, and we are still doing it, as we should. 
You mentioned it earlier. The reason we did not do it, there was not a 
great need. This country was very rural.
  I grew up in rural North Carolina. I remember before we had running 
water. We had a well and an outhouse. Well, today that is not 
acceptable. It is only acceptable to have running water and the other 
things. And we invested. The Federal Government did not become the 
major partner. We became a little partner and provided leadership, and 
what we are talking about, the Democratic alternative here that we 
cannot get on the floor, and right now does not look like we are going 
to get it in a package, and we ought to have, and the President is 
fighting for it with us.
  I introduced a bill and join Representative Lowey on her bill because 
I think it is important in all across this country to have facilities. 
I also signed a bill for reducing class sizes. I know from personal 
experience what that will do. We have done that in North Carolina.
  Children are coming to school today different than the children were 
20-25 years ago. They come from backgrounds and homes where they have 
great needs. They do not get that love and nurturing they should have, 
not because parents do not want to, that is not the issue. They really 
want their child to have the best. Many do not know how and cannot, and 
for some others, they are working two jobs just to keep their lives a 
float, and they do not have the time, they come home worn out. And that 
small a class size allows that teacher to teach that child to read and 
do math before they get to the third grade, and if a child learns to 
read by the third grade, and these statistics are true all across 
America and around the world, if a child reads by the third grade, they 
are going to make it, they will not be a dropout. And we cannot afford 
dropouts. Dropouts cost all of us.
  Eighty percent of the people-- well, it is 85 percent now, 85 percent 
of the people who are incarcerated in American prisons today by and 
large are dropouts. The drug culture goes with dropouts. Cannot afford 
it, absolutely cannot afford it, and I am very proud of the job that my 
colleagues on the Democratic side are working so hard to help bring 
this issue of education to the forefront so that we can be a partner 
with the States, with the local jurisdictions and with parents and 
business community, as we have done in our State and you have done in 
your state.
  And I am proud to join with you this hour to talk about two issues 
that are so important, and there are a lot of others. We cannot solve 
them all, but these are two we can do something about before we go 
home, and we should.
  Mrs. LOWEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from California 
who had worked so hard and been such a champion for children in this 
session of the Congress as a freshman.
  Ms. SANCHEZ. I thank my colleague.
  You know, you were talking earlier about the fact that right here in 
this room we represent some of the States that have the largest 
increase in student enrollment, and it is amazing when you see those 
figures because your State is one of those, mine is, yours is also 
Nita. But the fact of the matter is that the people that I represent, 
the children that I represent in California and Anaheim, my own 
hometown, Santa Ana and Garden Grove, when we look at the rate of 
enrollment in these school districts, it is twice that of the five 
fastest growing States in enrollment across the United States. In fact, 
I get to go back to my elementary school, an elementary school that 
probably was about 550 students when I attended, maybe built for about 
600, maybe 700 at the most. These schools have 1100--a thousand 
children at them, and when you have a school district that grows at a 
thousand children, additional students a year, that is really a new 
school you need to be building.

[[Page H10914]]

  Now you know I have heard my colleagues on the other side say this is 
a very local issue. Well, normally I would say, yes, school 
construction should be as local as it gets. After all, it goes in your 
neighborhood, you care what it looks like, it affects the value of your 
home, and more importantly it affects the value of the future of your 
child. So it is a local issue.
  But you know in the State of California we decided awhile ago that 
building would be done at the State level, and we funded at the State 
level. In the last few years we have not funded it at all, which has 
created an incredible backlog not only of schools that need 
modernization, but new schools for the children and the enrollment that 
we have, and that is why we need to step in and say this is a national 
crisis, this is about our national security because our children are 
the future when we deploy them as troops, when we have problems of 
software engineers, when we need these high tech jobs that we are 
counting for the future. They are about our children being educated.

                              {time}  2030

  It is about the security of the United States for the future, so we 
need to be involved.
  I will tell you another reason we need to be involved. You were 
talking about a $1.8 billion school construction bond in your state. On 
November 3rd, we have a $9.2 billion bond issue that we are going to 
ask the voters in California to approve for school construction, the 
first one in a long time. The largest bond we have ever had.
  Why? Because we are so far behind. And yet that is not going to take 
care of the rest of the problems that we have, the rest of the money 
that is needed for school construction and renovation.
  In fact, if we pass that $9.2 billion at the state level, the only 
way for a school district like Anaheim City school district to get part 
of that money to help them build their schools is to match it 50-50, 
which means you have to locally find part of the solution.
  So when my colleagues on the other side say, ``This is a local 
issue,'' you are right, it is a local issue. And the initiative that 
the President has, I know it very well, and you described it very well 
earlier, is about the Federal Government helping local people make the 
right decision; helping local people decide, yes, I am going to invest 
in my local school district, I am going to build that school we need. 
When they do that, they will have in partnership, for example in 
Anaheim, the State of California with a little bit and the interest 
from the United States Government.
  This is not about taking your money in taxes and bringing it to 
Washington and then maybe sending it back to the school district. It is 
a tax cut. It is saying you get a one for one dollar write-off when you 
file your income tax return. So this is a tax cut. It is saying do not 
send your money; keep it in Anaheim and build the schools that you need 
for our children. That is what our initiative is about.
  So when people say we do not want locals to take responsibility, they 
must take the responsibility that, yes, they are going to build the 
school. We just need to help them.
  There is another reason why I believe we should be involved. As you 
both know, I was in the financial markets. I helped schools districts 
to build schools. What I did was finance them for them. So I know all 
the innovative financing techniques and how schools raise the money and 
how you can build it. And let me tell you, when the Federal Government 
is a part of the equation that builds schools, the money, the cost, the 
interest cost, goes significantly down.
  So we are giving them our stamp of approval to go ahead and build. 
They must raise local monies to do so and state monies to do so, and 
then they get a lower interest rate anyway, so the amount of money they 
need to spend on schools is even lower. It is a win-win-win for 
everyone.
  I know that the Democrats have fought for this, because I sit on the 
Committee on Education and Workforce. I have seen and I know because I 
put forward a bill that would do that. This is patterned after 
something we already have, the quality zone bonds that we passed last 
year, and it is working in California.
  I had a school district from Fresno, California, come in and tell me 
we needed to build an elementary school, that it was going to cost us 
$12 million. We saved our money, we had a little bit over $3 million 
saved in our pot, and by using the program that we put into play in 
August, their cost, because of the lower interest costs, because of the 
government security, will be about $4 million for the same school. It 
was amazing when they showed me the program they have to build this 
school.
  We need to help. Even if we pass bonds at the state level, a school 
district like Anaheim needs the Federal Government to make itself a 
partner with the local area.
  I think my colleague wanted to address an issue there.
  Mr. ETHERIDGE. I think the point you made earlier is so true. I could 
not help but think as you were talking about schools and how things 
have changed, I think unless you have been there a lot, you forget. I 
think of the community I grew up in that I happen to represent in 
Congress now. The school I was in was a very small union school that 
you stayed in. I went there for 12 years. That same community today has 
built schools, and they are running behind. I went there last year and 
they had 30 trailers outside of a new school, it is growing so rapidly.
  I talked with one of the financial people, a banker in that community 
today, Johnston County down in North Carolina, and he said, ``You know, 
we have passed two bond issues. We have the state bond money on a 
match,'' like California. He said, ``I do not know how we are going to 
make all these things fit with the tremendous growth we have without 
some help.'' The Wade County superintendent, where our state capital 
is, I was on a conference call with him two days ago with the 
Secretary. They are gaining 3,500 students a year in new students. He 
said, ``We are spending $3 million a month on construction and 
renovation and can't come close to keeping up.''
  These are the kinds of things where we need that partnership that you 
were talking about. No one entity is going to be able to take care of 
these tremendous burdens of cost, and if we will take care of the need 
for facilities, the technology will be there, it will be readily 
available.
  But, more importantly, the other issues that we struggle with here, 
the issue of crime, the issue of drugs, the issues of violence and 
safety in our schools, they will tend to go away, because when you have 
a good clean learning environment, academics go up and discipline 
problems go down. Statistically that is true. There is no question 
about it. It certainly happened in my state, and I think we are no 
different than any state in this country. Because when children have a 
nice place to come to, a nice building, in some of our communities, and 
it makes no difference whether it is an upscale community or otherwise, 
when you have a nice school building, that one school building becomes 
the community center for that community. And then pride comes. If you 
build a nice new school, academics improve and you start seeing 
reinvestment in that community all over again.
  So it is a good piece for investment in America. If you build a 
school, you put a lot of people to work, but, more important, you put a 
lot of people to work around that school building.
  Mrs. LOWEY. I want to thank my colleague, Mr. Etheridge from North 
Carolina again, and, of course, Ms. Sanchez from California. Mr. 
Etheridge has been cochair of the Education Task Force, and you have 
brought your huge experience, your wide range of experience as a 
superintendent of schools in North Carolina. So you have really seen 
the change over, I believe it is, eight years.
  Certainly Ms. Sanchez, who has been very involved in the community, 
has seen the change. I could not help but think as a young woman who 
grew up in the Bronx, New York, in the shadow of Yankee Stadium, how 
times have changed. In those years the biggest problem in the school 
was someone was chewing bubble gum or one child pushed another child. 
Life is different today, and all the problems of the community converge 
in our schools.

  My colleague, the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer) and I were 
working on a proposal for comprehensive

[[Page H10915]]

schools, because we believe, as you said, and I could not help but 
think of it as you were talking about it, that the school should be the 
focus of the community. It could be a place where not only the children 
gather, but our seniors could gather, where you could have reading 
programs, where the seniors could assist the young people, and we could 
really do creative things in the school.
  I mentioned before that I tour my schools all the time. My colleague, 
Ms. McCarthy, who could not be here with us tonight, represents another 
suburban district. It is amazing for us to see how this issue cuts 
across all of our communities. It is not just an inner-city issue, it 
is a middle class issue. In fact, I want to emphasize again a point I 
made before and my colleague Ms. Sanchez, who is an expert in this area 
of financing made before, that we are actually, by focusing on the 
school modernization program, the bill that was introduced by Charlie 
Rangel and myself and several others this year, are cutting taxes 
because of this partnership which will be controlled by the locals, not 
us in Washington, the local communities will make the decision. But 
because we are sharing the burden through tax relief, they will have a 
lower tax rate, because they will not have to raise the local property 
taxes.
  So I cannot understand why the majority party opposes this school 
modernization proposal. It makes sense. It helps us help local 
governments in revitalizing their schools, modernizing schools, 
expanding schools, providing up-to-date technology in our schools, 
putting computers in our schools, with the infrastructure, and that is 
a fancy word for anyone who is looking for it, for the wires and the 
mortar and bricks that support the computers. You just cannot put 
computers in these schools.
  So, to me, this should be an issue that everyone supports. My little 
girl, my grandchild that is watching this, wants to go to a school that 
provides up-to-date technology. Your children and your family all want 
to make sure that we are giving our youngsters the best education they 
can get, and I know how important this is to you.
  Ms. SANCHEZ. Let me explain a little. I am a businesswoman. That is 
the background I come from. I am in the finance area. Look at all the 
downsizing that has gone on in our United States. A lot of people have 
now begun their own businesses.
  Let us say tomorrow you decide to go and start your own business. 
Probably the first place you are going to do it from is your own home. 
Many people are doing that. You go home, you decide you are going to 
set a room aside. What would be the first thing you need? Well you need 
contact to the outside world. So how many phone lines would you put in 
that one room in your home to start a new business?
  Well, you would not put one. Most people would put at least two, 
three, maybe four. Let us see, you need one for your computer, you need 
one to access out to the Internet, you need one to receive calls, maybe 
one for your fax, maybe one to call out. You are going to put at least 
three lines in your own home for yourself to start your business.
  Now, can you imagine if I would tell you that the elementary schools 
in the City of Anaheim have three phone lines into their entire school? 
A school where you have a principal, and probably about three or four 
administrative-type people, and then you have, what, maybe 60 to 80 
teachers, what I would call middle managers. Then you have the 
employees, maybe 20 or 30, and really the client, the people who are in 
the classroom. You have 800, 900, 1,000 people in a particular spot 
every day, and the schools there only were built with three lines into 
the school.
  So that means if I am a parent and I am calling in to say my child is 
sick, I might get a busy signal, because if the PTA happened to buy a 
fax machine for that school and they have a fax and something is being 
faxed out, and the principal is there and she is on the line talking to 
another parent or the school district or to somebody, someone outside 
of the school, and I am calling in as a parent trying to say my child 
is sick today, and maybe there is more than one sick child that day and 
the other mother is calling in at the same time, guess what? The line 
will be busy.
  You would never do that in your own personal one-room business, so 
why do we allow our children to have inferior, inferior, offices when 
they go to school?
  We need to modernize. We need to bring it up. How can we have our 
children on the Internet, on computers in the classroom, so they can 
have the high-tech jobs of the future that we are all counting on? That 
is what globalization is about. We continue to say we are going to get 
rid of some of those other jobs and in their place we are going to put 
higher paying high-tech jobs for our children. How can they be skilled 
to have that type of a job if they started out for six or seven years 
without even a phone line into their classroom?
  This is what I believe America has not seen. Enough business people 
have not gone into the classroom to come out and shake their head and 
say, ``You know, we need to do something about this.''

                              {time}  2045

  That is what our school construction program is about, modernizing, 
building new facilities, giving our kids the same kind of office we 
would expect to have a fighting chance to start our business.
  Mrs. LOWEY. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the gentlewoman for those 
wise comments. I am particularly pleased that the gentlewoman talked 
about the global economy, because this is a global economy. We have to 
be sure that we are preparing our young people so that they can compete 
in this global economy, so they get the best education that we can 
provide in the leader of the free world, so these youngsters can go out 
there with this education and earn their own way in the world.
  We talk about cutting back on a lot of the support programs in our 
country. We can do this if we make sure our youngsters are educated, 
that they have the best education that we can provide them.
  I am going to close by just emphasizing a few points that we talked 
about this evening. With President Clinton's leadership, we did balance 
the budget. This is the time that we can focus on the concerns of 
working families in this country.
  Families care about education. They worked very hard to raise their 
children. They should not worry, when their children go to school, that 
the school is not safe, that it is not providing them with computer 
technology that is up-to-date. Parents should not have that concern.
  I know there are some people in the majority party who believe the 
answer to education is providing a voucher, to take a small percentage 
of youngsters out of the public schools and letting them go to another 
school, where we feel that we have to be sure not 2 percent, not 3 
percent of youngsters get the best education, but that every youngster 
gets what they are entitled to, the very best education that we can 
provide.
  It is unfortunate that we end up in one large omnibus bill, and that 
the majority party could not get each appropriation bill passed. I am a 
member of the Committee on Appropriations, and I would have liked to 
see every appropriations bill passed in a timely way. But this is where 
we are.
  So I am hoping that as these negotiations are going on, that everyone 
on both sides of the aisle remembers who sent us here, all the families 
of this country, and that we focus on not just education for a few, not 
just vouchers, which would take youngsters out of the school, but that 
we renew our commitment to every child in every community; that we 
include a school modernization program, so that every youngster can go 
to a school that is up-to-date, that is modern, that has computers, 
that is safe. Because it seems to me that that is the responsibility of 
this country, to provide the best education we can for our youngsters.
  I thank my good friend, the gentlewoman from California (Ms. 
Sanchez), for joining us here this evening. Whether it is California or 
New York, this would mean millions of dollars to our local school 
districts, creating a partnership that I know our families and our 
communities and our country need, so that we can be strong and enter 
the next century as a strong Nation.




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