[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 146 (Wednesday, October 14, 1998)]
[Senate]
[Pages S12539-S12540]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                       THE DEBATE OVER EDUCATION

  Mr. GORTON. Mr. President, I can do no better than to echo the 
eloquent remarks of my friend and colleague from New Hampshire. The 
debate over education today is not a debate over its importance. It is 
not a debate over the relative commitment of Republicans and Democrats 
to increase the educational opportunities for our children. The debate, 
as we have it today, is over who determines how and where that money 
should be spent--bureaucrats in Washington, DC, or the parents, 
teachers, principals, and elected school board members in thousands of 
school districts across the United States. That debate is a vitally 
important one.
  In his 1997 state of education speech, Secretary Riley said, ``We 
should not cloud our children's future with silly arguments about 
Federal Government intrusion.'' But that is exactly what this debate is 
about. It isn't silly, and it couldn't possibly be more important.
  Secretary Riley may feel it very natural that he and the President 
and his bureaucrats in the Department of Education here in Washington, 
DC, should set those priorities for all of the thousands of school 
districts across the country. We do not. We believe in the wisdom of 
school board members and in the dedication of principals and teachers 
and parents to the quality of their children's education.
  I want to emphasize once again, the President in his budget this year 
asked for $31.4 billion for education. The budget passed by the Senate 
of the United States has $31.4 billion for education. Later, the 
President came back and asked for an additional $1.1 billion. 
Republicans have agreed that that $1.1 billion is appropriate.
  But in negotiations, of which I have been a part, the President has 
narrow prescriptions for the use of that $1.1 billion. In fact, when I 
looked at the statutory language that the President's people asked for, 
the first two lines were about the appropriation of $1.1 billion. All 
of the rest of the language was designed to restrict the discretion of 
State and local education agencies in connection with the spending of 
that $1.1 billion, narrowly focused on teachers, focused even more on 
teachers in the first three grades; subject to the rules and 
regulations of the Federal Department of Education at every possible 
turn, the distribution formula and the set of rules already adopted for 
the spending of money from the pot into which this $1.1 billion is to 
go, according to the President. The formal rules take up just 15 pages 
of regulations--perhaps 15 pages too many. But the nonregulatory 
guidance for those regulations is another 171 pages. And, of course, 
there would have to be additional regulations on top of those, and 
additional guidance on top of those, for this program as the President 
has recommended it.

  In its publication called ``Education At The Crossroads,'' the 
Education Committee of the House of Representatives reports that there 
are now 760 Federal education programs, requiring something over 
48,600,000 hours of paperwork per year--48,600,000 hours of paperwork. 
We simply need not add to that burden. Mr. President, 90 percent of 
those hours now paid for out of the education budgets of our school 
districts and of our States, 90 percent of those hours could be far 
more profitably spent on additional instruction for our students or the 
money spent on improving the physical quality of our schools or the 
equipment that our schools and our teachers use to train our children. 
But those moneys are now spent meeting the regulations of the Federal 
Government accompanying the modest amount of money--some 7 percent to 8 
percent--the modest amount of money that the Federal Government 
supplies as against the States and local taxpayers for the maintenance 
and the instruction in our public school program.
  We, on the other hand, without a debate with the President over the

[[Page S12540]]

amount of money to be spent on education, prefer that it be distributed 
through an existing Federal program, the one existing Federal program 
that carries very few regulations with it, directly to the school 
districts of the United States, to be spent in the way that each of 
those school districts feels most appropriate. More teachers? Yes, 
where those school districts feel that is their No. 1 priority. Focused 
on special education where, as the Senator from New Hampshire pointed 
out, we have imposed innumerable burdens and regulations on our school 
districts but supply less than 10 percent of the money to meet those 
regulations? On other matters that may be more significant to 
particular school districts across the country? Yes.
  In discussion of this issue in the course of the last 24 hours with a 
distinguished Democratic Member of the House of Representatives on the 
committee there dealing with education, we were told that even in that 
Representative's own district, the school boards could not be trusted. 
This Representative was eloquent on the tumbled-down nature of many of 
the schools in his city, eloquent on the lack of adequate teaching in 
that school district, but he was totally unwilling to let the people 
who elected both him and the school board members in his city--he was 
unwilling to allow those elected school board members to decide how 
this new money should be used. He was convinced, for some reason or 
another, that they would ignore the condition of their schools and the 
quality of their teachers and find something else to spend the money 
on.
  Between that idea and ours, there is a great gulf fixed. We feel that 
if the school boards are allowed to determine how this money should be 
spent, it will, in the vast majority of all cases, be spent more wisely 
than it could possibly be spent under a set of one-size-fits-all 
regulations from Washington, DC, and we feel that there will be more 
money in the schools because less of it will be used for this 48-plus 
million hours of filling out paperwork.
  Those are the two principal reasons for our perspective on this 
issue--a trust in the dedication of the parents and teachers and 
principals and superintendents and school board members to the 
education of the children committed to their care, and to the belief 
that the less the paperwork, the fewer the regulations, the more 
dollars that can get actually into the classroom.
  That may be the last major issue separating us from the President in 
coming up with an overall omnibus budget and allowing this Congress to 
finish its work. But it is an issue of profound importance to every 
American--our students and our parents and all other Americans who wish 
to bequeath to their children and their grandchildren an even stronger 
America than the one they inherited from their parents.
  Mr. THOMAS addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Wyoming.
  Mr. THOMAS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I be allowed 
to speak for 10 minutes in morning business.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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