Congressional Record, Volume 145 Issue 38 (Wednesday, March 10, 1999)

[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 38 (Wednesday, March 10, 1999)]
[House]
[Pages H1148-H1154]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

COUNTRY FACES EDUCATION EMERGENCY

The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of
January 6, 1999, the gentleman from New York (Mr. Owens) is recognized
for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, several of the previous speakers have
mentioned education, and today's agenda in the Congress focused
primarily on education.
We had before us the bill which is commonly known as the Ed-Flex
bill, H.R. 800, and the rule for that bill allowed for only 5 hours of
debate. We need some additional time to discuss it. Why, when the
American people have stated that education is one of the highest
priorities, do we have only 5 hours in the United States Congress to
discuss an important education bill?
It must be important, if it is the first bill that the majority has
seen fit to bring to the floor. It is important to them. It is an
important proposal that they are making. Some of us contend that what
they are doing should not be done in this fashion; that we should have
this particular proposal about flexibility considered at the time of
the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education
Assistance Act.
We reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Assistance Act
every 5 years, and it is up for reauthorization this year. So if we are
doing that, why not consider these very important components of that
bill all at once?
They are taking a part of the bill, a part of the funds that go into
that bill related to Title I, and proposing that a greater portion of
it be used in an experiment which grants greater flexibility to the
States and localities as to how they spend the money. They are rushing
to do that. Already it is suspect, that kind of action. Why are we
being stampeded into a consideration of one particular aspect of the
Elementary and Secondary Education Assistance Act? What is the hurry?
Why, if we are going to treat education as an emergency, why not
bring the entire Elementary and Secondary Education Assistance Act to
the floor earlier this year instead of waiting until later? Why not
bring it all together instead of Balkanizing it, fragmentizing it, as
the Republican majority expects to do? The education emergency faced in
this country deserves a serious response from Congress. The emergency
is real, and we should go forward in a very serious way to deal with
that emergency.
One of the things we should do is to listen to what my Republican
colleagues were saying a few minutes ago; that the money that is in the
Federal Treasury does not belong to the Federal Government. It does not
belong to the Congress, it does not belong to the White House, it
belongs to the people. It is the taxpayers' money.
All taxes are local. Tip O'Neill used to say all politics are local.
Well, all taxes are local. They come from the pockets of all taxpayers.
The biggest tax, of course, is the income tax. It is not only local, it
is right into the family, right into the individual's pocket. It is
taxpayers' money. If it is taxpayers' money, why can we not match the
money up with the priorities the public has set?
In poll after poll we keep hearing that, after Social Security,
education is the number one priority. There was a time when education
was just one of the top five. There were other things that people
wanted done. Crime was a big concern, and it competed with education as
one of those top priorities. But it is clear now in all the polls that
education is the number one priority, after taking care of Social
Security.
If education is the number one priority, then the proposals that the
President has made in his budget that he submitted to Congress ought to
reflect that priority. The proposals that the Republican majority is
making ought to reflect the concern of the public.
We all look at the same kinds of polls. We had a Democratic retreat,
we went away and we spent days, and a large part of the time was
examining polls, public opinion polls and studies of the voters'
attitudes. I am certain that in the Republican Caucus retreat they did
the same thing. There is going to be a bipartisan retreat next week.
They will probably spend some time with some polls also. The polls
repeatedly say the same thing. Pollsters are very good. They take a
very scientific approach to things and they do a basically good job.
They all come up with the same answers; that, clearly, education is the
number one priority of the American people, the American voters.
Why do we not respond? I do not think a single poll has shown that
one of the top priorities for consideration by the American voters is
defense. The American voters may be concerned about defense, as they
should be, but it is not one of their top priorities. It is nowhere
near education as a priority. There are a lot of other things that take
priority over defense.
The common sense of the American people is amazing. While we stumble
around and make problems and create needs to expend greater amounts of
money on defense here in Washington, they clearly see that we have
other priorities that ought to be taken care of. They see that there is
no more Cold War. There is no more nuclear threat from another
superpower. They clearly see that we have the most modernized armed
forces anywhere in the world. They clearly see we are big enough to
handle most real threats to our national security.
So they have the common sense, the people's wisdom to say, look,
education is what we are concerned about. They may even be far ahead of
the military strategists, because they recognize what military
strategists know when questioned closely; that more than a need for
weapon systems, more than a need for additional military hardware, we
have a need for manpower capable of operating the modern weapon systems
that we have now.
We have systems that are very complicated. We have systems that
require

[[Page H1149]]

people, men and women, who have some training, some knowledge of how to
deal with this digitalized cyber world that we are living in. I have
cited several times the fact that the Navy floated a super aircraft
carrier recently, state of the art in aircraft carriers, state-of-the-
art in every respect, and for that reason they had a shortage of
personnel. They were 300 personnel short of the necessary number of
people needed to man that aircraft carrier.

{time} 2045

Why were they short? Are there not plenty of young people who want to
go to sea? Are there not plenty of young people in America, men and
women, who would like to be in the Navy? Yes, there are. But they want
people with a certain kind of training and aptitude, people who have
been developed to the point where they can learn how to operate very
sophisticated weapons systems, very sophisticated energy systems.
That aircraft carrier is probably loaded with systems that many of us
would consider systems of the future, kinds of things that we do not
see every day. They need young people who are already trained to the
point where they can easily pick up and be trained specifically for the
duties required in that piece of sophisticated floating city with a lot
of sophisticated operational systems that deserve the very best.
In general, our military is complaining about a lack of manpower,
that they are short of people. Well, they are short of people because
they are not willing to take anybody off the street. They need young
people who have some kind of training, some kind of prerequisite
preparations that allow them to see that they can train these people to
run the systems that we have.
So wherever you look, in the military, the answer is in education, a
greater need to train young people so that they can deal with the
systems that are necessary to make us secure. Education should be the
number-one concern of people who care about our defense. And, of
course, our economy, it is obvious that our economy has moved into a
high tech economy and that we are almost standing alone in this global
economy with sophistication in terms of the operation of a cyberworld
for business and it is likely to increase, that we are going to have to
carry that load. The Japanese, the second or third largest economy in
the world, is way behind this country now in terms of digitalized
systems in the business world, and there is probably no other country
or area that is going to catch up with us. In Europe they are still far
behind in terms of the kind of computerized and digitalized systems
that are going to carry us forward into the future. We are going to be
the leaders in the world for a long time if we are able to man it. The
science is there, the technology is there, but where is the manpower?
Where are the personnel? How much longer are we going to have to rely
on India and other countries to bring over or send over here the
information technology workers? How much can they fill for us? How much
longer are we going to ship contracts over to places like Bangalore,
India and have the income absorbed by people there that ought to be
going into our wage structure here so that the workers who get those
jobs in information technology can pay into the Social Security fund.
We are going in a circle. Even Social Security would be greatly
benefited if we were to focus more on investing in education. The
primary problem with Social Security is that we see that the wage
earners paying into Social Security in the future is going to decline
in proportion to the number of people who are retired and need to be
paid out of the Social Security fund. A very simple problem. Very
complicated answers are being offered. One of the answers is that we
must keep a wage-earning population out there that pays as much as
possible. It may not be the only answer. Some other source of funding
is going to have to be found, probably, I think, a Social Security tax
on unearned income would be one of those ways that we should seek more
revenue to put into the Social Security fund. But I am not going to
talk about that in detail here. The number-one source of revenue for
the Social Security fund for a long time will be the wage earner. We
need more wage earners earning the wages in the high tech areas. We do
not need foreigners absorbing that portion of our economy. We do not
need overseas contractors absorbing great amounts of money that ought
to be going into the economy to pay the wage earners who pay into
Social Security.
So education becomes the number-one issue even if you look at it from
the point of view of the military or the economy. It just again shows
the tremendous wisdom of the American people. Tremendous wisdom. They
understand what it is hard for us to understand or respond to here in
Congress.
What kind of response have we gotten? We have the Ed-Flex bill that
is on the floor now. We dealt with two amendments today, we are going
to move forward and finish the final hour of discussion tomorrow. I
think at least 3, 3\1/2\, most of those hours are gone. The question
everybody who is listening out there ought to put to their
Congressperson is why do we only have 5 hours to discuss the first
education bill on the floor? I mean, why only 5 hours? This bill is not
just a simple adjustment to the existing Elementary and Secondary
Education Assistance Act. It is not a simple adjustment. It is not a
little amendment that is going to make things move faster. We are
taking an experiment which involved 12 States, and most of those States
failed in that experiment according to the General Accounting Office.
They did not do very well. Yet we are going to go and broaden the
experiment and cover all 50 States. In the process what we are doing,
and the reason the Republican majority has put it on the floor and is
pushing us into a stampede mode is they want to set a precedent. They
want to open the door for the block grant process. They want block
grants to be the way of the 106th Congress. What we are going to see is
more and more talk of block granting, giving the money in one block,
just take the money and give it to the States. Take the money and give
it to the governors. Dollars to the governors. They talk about dollars
to the classrooms. It is dollars to the governors. The governors never
get enough. They want more and more.
The governors have welfare reform money falling out of all their
pockets. They have a great welfare reform windfall that they are
supposed to spend on job training, day care and other areas related to
dealing with the welfare reform situation. The recent surveys have
shown that most of the States are not using the money properly. The
governors are just using that money to take care of needs that they
consider their own special needs or pet needs. They are not following
the general mandate of law. They are not going to do it. Why are they
not going to do it? I am not sure I know why they are not going to do
it, but here is the history of education funding.
The States and the localities have always had the premier
responsibility for education. They still do. Most of the funding for
education comes from the States and the localities right now. Less than
10 percent of the funds for education, elementary and secondary
education, is provided by the Federal Government. I am being generous.
It is more like 7 or 8 percent. Only 7 or 8 percent is provided by the
Federal Government. If we are only providing 7 or 8 percent, then we
only have 7 or 8 percent of the control and the influence. The other
money is being provided by the States, and they have always provided
it, and the localities. The States and localities presently have
responsibility for education. They have always had responsibility for
education.
We heard speeches today which were fantastic on the floor blaming the
Federal Government for the state of education in America. Education is
in a poor state, they say, because the Federal Government has saddled
the States and localities with bureaucratic mandates, paperwork, they
have interfered with innovation, et cetera, et cetera. Well, what is
happening with the 93 percent of the funds that are strictly State and
local funds? They have total flexibility, total flexibility. They have
had flexibility since the dawning of this Nation. The Constitution has
never seized responsibility for education. It has always been a State
matter. The States have that responsibility.
Why did the Federal Government get involved in the first place? The
States

[[Page H1150]]

were not doing a good job. The States were not placing us in a position
to be able to mount the kind of technological drive and scientific
drive to keep up with the Soviet Union, which is a backward country in
many ways but scientifically they put the first sputnik into space and
they showed that when they concentrate on a particular area, they could
go forward and leave us in the lurch, leave us behind. For a long time
our policies were driven by the fact that we wanted to help improve
education in order to create the kinds of minds and the kinds of body
of expertise in this Nation that would allow us to do the job. We did
that. Large amounts of Federal aid went into the defense, the National
Defense Education Act, and later on Lyndon Johnson proposed the
Elementary and Secondary Education Assistance Act and other Federal aid
to education, because the States were not able to do the job, partially
because the complexity of the world had run off and left the States.
That is only a small part of the problem. The larger part of the
problem is that the States have never shown great vision in terms of
investing in their populations. Before World War II they were not doing
anything to help the total population just stay alive and healthy. When
World War II came along, we had a lot of recruits that were unhealthy,
a great majority of the recruits and the people who were drafted were
just unfit to fight and they had to be put in condition with special
procedures in order to just be able to carry a rifle. The States had
neglected their populations to that point in basic matters like health
care and providing decent, nutritious food to eat. The Federal
Government understood that lesson and began to deal with health care
and nutrition programs.

We have an act which provided for school lunches, recognizing that
the first thing the Government can do for our young people is to make
sure that the poorest youngsters get a decent meal at least once a day
at school. They also discovered at the time of sputnik that a nation
like Russia, the Soviet Union, had left us behind. Japan in terms of
industrial development, technological achievements there, had left us
behind. So it has been clear that whatever the States have been doing
for the last 300 years with respect to education is not enough just to
keep up.
But also the States do not show any great compassion and humanity for
their total populations. Large portions of State populations, the
people without power, have always been left behind. The poor whites;
certainly in the South the African Americans; in the Far West and the
West the Hispanics. Anybody who belongs in a group that does not have
power, left out of power, they have been consistently neglected and
abandoned by the States. That has been true historically and it is
still true now. The Federal Government's role was to step in and try to
compensate for the fact that the States were not doing what they should
be doing.
Now we have a situation where the Federal Government has stepped in,
its role is still minor, it is not a major player, it is a minor
partnership where they are only providing 7 to 8 percent of the funds,
leaving the States to take care of the other 93 percent, and they are
being accused, the Federal Government is being accused of ruining the
public education system in America.
We have a body of 435 people who are among the most talented people
in America. You do not get here without being talented in one way or
another. Most of the Members of Congress have a great deal of vision.
Maybe the vision does not see exactly what I see, the liberals see one
way and the conservatives see another, but they have vision and they
have a great deal of education. They know how to use data. It is a
highly qualified body here, the United States House of Representatives,
and the Senate also. We have highly qualified leaders capable of doing
great things. But we have allowed ourselves to be driven into a corner
where we are discussing really relative trivialities on education. Our
first great debate is focused on a charge that the Federal Government
must give more flexibility to the States for the small amounts of money
that the Federal Government is supplying. They must supply more
flexibility for the States in order for us to improve education in
America. That is a hypothesis that has no support in fact. It has no
support in fact. Again the American people show they have more common
sense than this talented body that we have here in the House of
Representatives, more common sense.
Common sense will tell you, if you have 93 percent of the control,
you are at fault if it goes wrong. Whatever is happening with education
in America that is wrong, the States and localities must accept the
blame for. What the Federal Government has said is that we want to be
partners. We would like to supply some small amount of money, we would
like to supply some advice from a national perspective, from an
international perspective.

{time} 2100

We are the only industrialized Nation that leaves the greater
proportion of the decision-making about education up to regions or
States or localities. Most other nations have national policies and
national education administrations that have much more influence than
we have. We defer to the States. The Constitution does not give the
Federal Government the responsibility for education, and therefore it
defers to the States and has done that traditionally.
So while we in 1999, in the 106th Congress, which has wasted a lot of
times with matters that really were not that important, but finally we
have gotten moving, why are we debating a bill which is based on the
assumption that the problem in America in education is that the States
need more flexibility? The Federal Government is preventing the States
from doing a good job. That is totally erroneous. The Federal
Government is not the problem. The Federal Government is begging to be
a partner, the Federal Government is taking certain initiatives to try
to move the States beyond their inflexibility. States are inflexible in
their incompetence, some States are inflexible in their corruption,
inflexible in their cronyism.
Mr. Speaker, as my colleagues know, State government is not a model
of government in America. They operate in areas where there are more
shadows than there are in respect to the Federal Government. I say that
at every level of State government. I was of government. I served at
every level. I was a commissioner in New York City of an agency, I was
a State senator in New York State, and now I serve here in the
Congress. I have served at every level of government, and I think that
the level of government which needs the most light shined upon it, the
most exposure, who should be held up mostly and examined and critiqued
is State government. State government is the in-between. They do not
have a constituency like you have, of the kind you have in city
government where the constituency is real, they are living, they are
breathing, and they are right there, and they are pushing for real
responses from their government. They do not have the kind of problem
that the Federal Government has where the whole Nation is looking at
what we do here, and the spotlight is on us, and we are dealing with
matters at a high policy level that are complicated and deserve a long
and intense discussion and will be picked up on by the media, will pick
up on what we are doing, and there are a number of reasons why we
cannot operate in shadows here.
But State government operates in shadows in State governments and
bureaucracies. They do not have the pressure of a constituency, so
state government is the least efficient form of government, least
efficient area in government, and it should not be glorified. I have
said that many times. We should not be here wasting our time debating a
bill which is focused primarily on removing Federal involvement,
removing Federal wisdom, in my opinion. What the Federal Government is
doing is far superior to anything that most States have offered. They
do not want to be told you got to do systematic planning. They do not
want to be told you got to have real goals. You cannot drop the burden
of education totally on the backs of the students and say we are going
to test them and kick them out of schools if they do not do well. When
they close down schools they do not do well. What are you doing as a
government to provide opportunities to learn? They do not like that
concept. Governors hate the concept, the opportunity to learn, because
it is all related

[[Page H1151]]

to the whole approach of necessary accountability.
Everybody else is held accountable. Why cannot Governors and local
school boards be held accountable? They do not want to deal with that.
They want the flexibility not to be accountable. They want the
flexibility of never being held responsible for systematic planning,
never to be questioned in their arbitrary decisions about sex in
personnel, never to be questioned about the fact that they are always
making new laws to put more burdens on the backs of students, but they
do not guarantee that students are going to have a safe place to study,
they do not guarantee the students are going to be able to have decent
laboratories and equipment for science, they do not guarantee the
students have enough books. They will not do the things that are
necessary for education, and they do not want the Federal Government to
say, well, we think you ought to show us how you are going to do that
before we give you more money on top of the money you already have.
It is all right to give the money back to the States and localities.
I began with the assumption it is our money, give it back to us. Give
it back to us for school construction. Give it back to us for whatever
needs are identified by the people. The people have identified
education as a major need. Do not take our money and spend it on
defense or spend it excessively somewhere else and neglect the requests
we have made that you provide more federal assistance to education.
Let me just conclude about today's Ed-Flex bill today's Ed-Flex bill,
H.R. 800. As my colleagues know, there are many of my colleagues who
have amendments to offer which are very useful amendments. We had an
amendment offered by the gentleman from California (Mr. Miller) today
which was very useful and would have made it possible for many more
Members to vote for the Ed-Flex bill if it had passed because it called
for accountability. It says if we are going to give the Governors, the
States and localities more flexibility as to how they spend a portion
of the Title I funds; that is what this is all about; if you are going
to do that, then let us have an agreement that they are going to be
held accountable in certain specific ways. They refuse to accept that.
We are discussing that there are other amendments that my colleagues
on the Committee on Education and the Workforce: the gentleman from New
Jersey (Mr. Payne), the gentlewoman from Hawaii (Mrs. Mink), the
gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Scott) have to offer in order to improve
the bill. Most of them are going to be rejected, and many of them are
never going to be considered because all we have is 5 hours to discuss
this bill. Now you say why do you only have five hours? We have a
system of rules here that determine how every bill will be processed on
the floor, and the Committee on Rules at the request obviously of the
leadership and the people on the majority party, members on the
Committee on Education and the Workforce, they decided to limit the
debate to 5 hours. It is as simple as that. So, if people want to
change things right away, why not you call your Member of Congress and
ask why we are debating this important bill for only 5 hours.
But let me make my final comment by reading from the New York Times
editorial page today, March 10, 1999. The New York Times had an
excellent editorial, and it says many of the things that the Democratic
members of the Committee on Education and the Workforce education said
at the time the bill was up for consideration in our committee, and I
will read the entire editorial and submit it also for the Record so
that it will be clearly known that all the parts are here and there
will be no mistakes. It is entitled ``A Threat To Impoverished
Schools''. This is a New York Times editorial page of March 10, 1999,
and I quote:

Let me reread the last sentence from the New York Times editorial.
The so-called Ed-Flex proposal could damage the poorest districts which
have traditionally been underfinanced by the States and cities even
though they bear the burden of teaching the least prepared students.
To continue reading the second paragraph of the editorial:

Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act was
the Federal government's way of assuring impoverished
children a chance at the supplemental services they need to
succeed. Title I money, about $8 billion a year, pays for
special courses like remedial reading and math as well as
services like counseling. Over all Federal dollars make up
only about 8 percent of the public school budgets, but in the
poorest schools in the deep rural south Title I can account
for more than a third of school spending. The Ed-Flex
proposal would allow States to apply for waivers to do what
they wish in education with the poverty money on the premise
that the States might use it more wisely than federal law
allows. The proponents of this process point to ongoing Ed-
Flex experiments conducted under the Clinton administration
in 12 States. But a report from the General Accounting Office
suggests that the experiments have been sloppily handled and
should not be duplicated without careful guidelines and
performance criteria. The GAO found that of the 12
experimental States only Texas had established clearly-
defined goals for employing the waivers and laid out criteria
for evaluating the experiment. The Ed-Flex expansion being
debated in Congress would extend waivers even to States that
have no intention of innovation and no means in place of
evaluating what they do.

Let me repeat what the New York Times editorial of today, March 10
says.

The Ed-Flex expansion being debated in Congress would
extend waivers even to States that have no intention of
innovation and no means in place of evaluating what they do.

Congressman George Miller, and I am continuing to read from the New
York Times editorial,

Congressman George Miller, Democrat of California, and Dale
Kildee, Democrat of Michigan, have proposed an amendment to
the plan that would allow waivers only if the States employ
serious assessment plans and commit themselves to closing the
achievement gaps between disadvantaged students and their
peers. The wise thing to do would be to put Ed-Flex aside
until later in the session when Congress reauthorizes the
entire Elementary and Secondary Education Act.

Let me reread the last sentence.

The wise thing to do would be to put Ed-Flex aside until
later in the session when Congress reauthorizes the entire
Elementary and Secondary Education Act.

But if Congress insists on moving forward now, to do so without the
Miller-Kildee amendment would be socially irresponsible. The Miller-
Kildee amendment was defeated on the floor of the House today as a last
act of Congress.
Mr. Speaker, I will enter this editorial in its entirety into the
Record:

[From the New York Times, March 10, 1999]

A Threat to Impoverished Schools

The achievement gap between affluent and disadvantaged
children is a challenge to American education and a threat to
national prosperity. Unfortunately, a bipartisan bill that is
scheduled for debate and a vote today in Congress could widen
that gap by allowing states to use Federal dollars targeted
at the poorest students for other educational purposes. The
so-called Ed-Flex proposal could damage the poorest
districts, which have traditionally been underfinanced by the
states and cities even though they bear the burden of
teaching the least prepared students.
Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act was
the Federal Government's way of assuring impoverished
children a chance at the supplemental services they need to
succeed. Title I money, about $8 billion a year, pays for
special courses like remedial reading and math as well as
services like counseling. Over all, Federal dollars make up
only about 8 percent of the public school budgets. But in the
poorest schools in the deep, rural South, Title I can account
for more than a third of school spending.
The Ed-Flex proposal would allow states to apply for
waivers to do what they wish in education with the poverty
money, on the premise that the states might use it more
wisely than Federal law allows. The proponents of this
process point to ongoing Ed-Flex experiments conducted under
the Clinton Administration in 12 states. But a report from
the General Accounting Office suggests that the experiments
have been sloppily handled and should not be duplicated
without careful guidelines and performance criteria. The
G.A.O. found that of the 12 experimental states, only Texas
had established clearly defined goals for employing the
waivers and laid out criteria for evaluating the experiment.
The Ed-Flex expansion being debated in Congress would extend
waivers even to states that have no intention of innovation
and no means in place of evaluating what they do.

[[Page H1152]]

Congressman George Miller, Democrat of California, and Dale
Kildee, Democrat of Michigan, have proposed an amendment to
the plan that would allow waivers only if the states employ
serious assessment plans and commit themselves to closing the
achievement gaps between disadvantaged students and their
peers. The wise thing to do would be to put Ed-Flex aside
until later in the session, when Congress re-authorizes the
entire Elementary and Secondary Education Act. But if
Congress insists on moving forward now, to do so without the
Miller-Kildee amendment would be socially irresponsible.

Mr. Speaker, I contend that the only reason we are considering the
Ed-Flex bill at this time is because it is a Trojan horse designed to
open the way for a block grant process. What they really want to do is
to block grant the entire Title I program. They want to give it all to
the States. This is an experiment; they put it on the floor early. If
they set a precedent by passing this, it greases the wheels, and it
makes it more likely that we are going to be able to get a block grant
where you just pick up the education money and hand it to the States.
Well, Congressman Owens, why should you object to that if you think
that all money comes from the States and localities and it ought to be
back to the States and localities?
I object to it because this money ought to go back to the States and
localities. It ought to go back with some instructions, some wisdom
from the Federal Government, some wisdom gleaned from national
experience, some wisdom based on the understanding of where we exist in
the global economy, some wisdom based on the fact that our military
needs are highly sophisticated, population in order to operate. All of
these considerations which States do not seem to care about, the
Federal Government must be concerned with.
Give the money back, but why not give it back in ways that are going
to promote some new approaches? The States have mostly failed up to now
in meeting the needs of education, of students in this 20th century. As
we go into the 21st century, let us at least end the arrogance of the
States or the arrogance of the Republican majority here in Congress.
Let us do away with the ideological addiction which says that States
must have the money back and can do far more than the Federal
Government.

{time} 2115

Why not have a partnership? All the Federal Government is asking is
this small amount of money that is being given back to the States
should do a few things differently, be more flexible, be more flexible
in the approach to education; do not do it the way it has been done for
300 years, and failing.
Let us do it a little differently. Why cannot we have that kind of
approach for the benefit of the entire Nation? The States refuse to
accept this and the goal is to remove the participation of the Federal
Government totally from education.
We are back to 1995. We are back to the Newt Gingrich Congress, the
majority, Republican majority, which came into this Congress in 1995.
They barnstormed in and said they wanted to eliminate the Department of
Education. They barnstormed in and said they wanted to cut education by
at least $4 billion. We are back to the process of removing the Federal
Government from the process of education reform in America. That is the
goal.
I do not know what the motivation is really, because we are not
allowed to impugn the integrity of the individuals. I do not care to
waste my time describing fully why the party is acting this way. I
suspect, however, that if we remove the Federal Government's role in
education, it appears to the Republican majority that we have removed
another piece of competition in the budget, a valid competitor in the
budget, for funds and they can pour more funds into tax cuts and into
lucrative defense projects that do not pay off for the American people.
I suspect that the drive to get the Federal Government out of the
business of education is based on the assumption that one can make the
budget safer for Republican priorities. Why are not Republican
priorities the same as the priorities of the American people? Why do
not they care about education? I do not know.
They pretend to care about education. When election time rolls
around, they bow to the facts that the public opinion polls show us. In
1996, after 2 years of threatening to eliminate the Department of
Education, of cutting back on school lunch programs, of threatening to
cut the education budget by $4 billion as we approached the 1996
elections in October, at the very last minute the Republican majority
went into the Committee on Appropriations process and increased the
education budget by $4 billion in response to the overwhelming
expression of need that came from the public.
So they are willing to pretend to care about education. When the
chips are down and the election is approaching, they pretend to be
champions of education, but they really would like to get the Federal
Government out of the business of education for their own purposes.
Now we are engaged in a process of wrangling in these discussions
about minor matters. The really big issue that ought to be on the table
here in this Congress is what will the 106th Congress do about the two
primary problems facing our public schools? The Federal Government
alone has the resources to deal with the number one problem faced by
the schools, and that is school modernization, construction; school
acquisition of the technology needed to prepare the students of the day
for the cyber civilization that is coming tomorrow.
That is what we need. We need a Federal Government assistance program
which can do what most States and localities cannot do fast enough.
Yes, there are funds that are available to States and localities which
they could use in greater proportion to provide funds for school
construction and modernization. They could do it, but they are not
doing it.
Certainly New York City and New York State, New York City had a
surplus last year of $2 billion. They did not spend a penny on school
construction or modernization, even though they have more than 250
schools that have coal burning furnaces. Of the 1,200 schools in New
York City, at least 250 still have furnaces that burn coal, polluting
the air, immediately threatening the health of children in that
vicinity.
We have a great asthma drive on. City Hall is pushing to do something
about asthma in dramatic ways but they do not talk about their failure
to provide funds for the conversion of the coal burning furnaces. So
they could do more.
Every State, most States, could do more. Many have surpluses. Even if
they were to put a great proportion of the available funds at the State
and local level, they would have to take a long time to catch up with
the needs that have accumulated over the years because of the deferring
of maintenance and deferring of capital projects.
The General Accounting Office said in 1995 that we needed $110
billion to stay even, to provide adequate schools for the enrollment
that existed at that time. Now we have galloped on and there are some
estimates that the need is way up at the level of $170 billion to stay
even and keep up with the enrollment, to modernize so that we can
actually wire schools for the Internet; $170 billion is needed.
We have on the table only the proposals that have been offered by the
President with respect to school construction. We should not be
debating ed-flex and how to take a portion of the existing title I
funds and give them to the governors. We should be debating how we are
going to meet the need for space out there in our school districts.
Some districts just need plain space that is clean, that is well
lighted, that is safe. Other districts need improvements in existing
buildings so that they can wire to be able to bring in technology that
is needed to teach students and prepare them for the jobs of tomorrow.
Some districts have a critical need of funds to eliminate health
hazards. If the health department of New York City were to be objective
and to treat the school system the way it treats private business, they
would close down some schools because of the health hazards they pose.
We have problems, first, of pollution by coal burning furnaces,
asbestos problems, lead poisoning in the pipes, lead poisoning in the
paint, and we have schools that have roofs that leak. No matter how
much you fix them, the damage keeps occurring. Walls are collapsing.

[[Page H1153]]

We have all kinds of health problems that ought to be addressed
first. So we need not what the President has proposed. We need far
more. The President has proposed $25 billion that would be bonds
floated by State and local governments. The Federal Government would
pay the interest on those bonds. We are offering to pay the interest on
$25 billion in bonds, bonding authority. The interest would amount to
about $3.7 billion over a 5-year period. That means that the Federal
Government is offering to cope with the construction problem that we
have, the need for new schools and modernization of schools. We are
offering $3.7 billion over a 5-year period.
The public has said we want the Federal Government to provide more
assistance in education to meet the needs of education. The response of
the Federal Government in the area construction is $3.7 billion. The
need is for $110 billion. The response is $3.7 billion over a 5-year
period.

Now, there is something wrong with our democracy if the people,
through the polls, keep telling us that we need more Federal assistance
and all we get is the $3.7 billion response in the area of construction
and modernization.
It is said that is just in the area of construction and
modernization. What about in the other areas? We are going to increase
the after-school centers to the tune of $400 million. We are going to
go from $200 million to $600 million. That will allow us to take care
of the after-school center needs, tutoring, counseling, et cetera, for
about 1.1 or 1.2 million young people.
We have a policy of no more social promotions that we are proposing,
and one of the answers we say to the social promotion is that instead
of social promotion, give kids more help through the after-school
centers. Do not promote them unless they are ready with the after-
school centers. The summer schools will allow them to catch up, but the
$600 million to serve the 1.2 million children is all we are offering
in that endeavor.
There are 53 million children in the public schools of the Nation
right now, 53 million children. If only one quarter of those need help,
then one can see how far we are from meeting the needs of that one
quarter of 53 million if we are only going to take care of the needs of
1.2 million.
If one adds up all of the increases in education that are being
proposed and say that we will be successful, the majority party in the
Congress will cooperate, we would get less than $10 million in
increases for education, less than $10 million. If we add them all up
from the President's budget, then the President is proposing far more
than anybody else. So we certainly endorse what the President proposes,
but we argue that it is not enough.
We must have a response from the President and from the Congress,
which is closer to the need that has been expressed, the priority that
has been set, by the public. We have not heard from the public in terms
of defense. Nobody has asked for $100 billion over a 6-year period or
5-year period for defense and yet we are proposing to spend $110
billion for defense while we are proposing to spend for school
construction only $3.7 billion.
Now tell me what sense that makes. The common sense of the American
people has to be brought to bear on this process in order to make the
Members of Congress, as well as the President, understand that
something is radically wrong. Why not spend $100 billion on
construction? When that kind of proposal is made, over a 5-year period,
I propose that we spend $100 billion on school construction, $20
billion a year over a 5-year period, we would still not meet the need
that the General Accounting Office identified in 1995 but we would be
realistic about it. We would be responding to what the American people
have said is a priority in a far more responsible way.
The immediate answer we get is that the Federal government cannot
spend that kind of money for school construction. We have never done
that before. Well, there are many areas where we have never been
before. Before Sputnik, we were not in education at all. Before we saw
ourselves falling below other industrialized nations, we did not have
assistance to education. We recognize that as we go into the 21st
Century, the complexities of a high tech economy and a global economy
dictate that we need a more educated population so we are going to do
things differently.
Why not spent what is necessary, starting with school construction?
School construction is the clearest need. School construction is the
need that ought to be the least controversial because school
construction does not involve tampering with the curriculum. It does
not involve telling local school boards what to do. It does not involve
a lot of paperwork. One builds a school and they leave it, and local
education authorities will run the school.
We could do a great service in an area where only the resources exist
at the Federal level to do the job that is needed; $100 billion over a
5-year period. Where is the money going to come from? Well, we could
close some loopholes, of course, in the corporate welfare structure. We
could raise taxes on unearned income. We could do a number of things.
The simplest thing to do is to take it from the surplus. The surplus,
according to the President, and nobody is disputing his priorities
here, 62 percent of the surplus should go for Social Security, 62
percent. Fifteen percent he wants for Medicare. We don't argue with
that. The next 20 percent, let us have it go for school construction.
That is where the money is, the next 20 percent go for school
construction. Twenty percent of the surplus each year, or $20 billion,
whichever is the smaller amount, let that be the way we deal with the
American people's stated priority that education assistance from the
government is a great need.

{time} 2130

We are going into a cyber civilization. We need an education system
which will prepare students for that cyber civilization. We have
nothing near that at this point. We are falling further behind as we go
along at this point. We have real needs for health and safety. The
first priority is to go to those schools that have health and safety
problems.
I think that maybe a fair way to do this is to have a per capita
distribution of the money for school construction. That is, all
districts would get money based on the number of students they have,
per capita. Those that do not need to build new schools would modernize
their schools for wiring. Those that are modernized and ready for
wiring could use the money to buy equipment for technology. The way to
deal with it in terms of the money going back to meet needs may be to
have a per capita formula.
However, the per capita formula ought to also have, the law should
have a provision that in the distribution of the per capita formula,
the first priority goes to those areas, not more money, but they get
the money first, those areas which have health and safety needs that
ought to be met. That is, the money in the first year would be
dedicated first to meet the needs of schools that have coal-burning
furnaces, lead poisoning, asbestos problems, roofs that are decaying
and falling in. Anything that threatens the health and the safety of a
child would be the first priority, and we could easily find that out
and get that certified.
They would get the first funding, but in the end, when it is all
over, they would get no more money, those areas would get no more money
than other areas, according to their per capita needs. We would not
distribute it the way the Title I formula is distributed, which is
fairer in terms of Federal Government helping the poorest districts. We
will not get into that. There is a claim that everybody needs help, so
let us help everybody at whatever level. They could have the
flexibility of spending it on school construction or on school
modernization, or on the purchase of technology, they could have that
flexibility. But let us understand that we need larger amounts of
money. We need $20 billion at a minimum over the next 5 years.
There is a title already in the Elementary and Secondary Assistance
Act, I think it is Title XII, it is sometimes stated as Title XI. Title
XI or XII, I forget which it is, but it is called the Education
Infrastructure Act. It is already in the law. It is already in the law.
Carol Moseley-Braun, the Senator from Illinois, and myself, we put it
in the law in the last reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary
Assistance Act. It is in the law. The Senate

[[Page H1154]]

actually helped Carol Moseley-Braun appropriate $100 million to get it
started, but the Republican majority came in the following year and
took out $100 million, so it never been funded. But it is in the law.
It is authorized. Only the Committee on Appropriations needs to act. We
could leave it as it is and the Committee on Appropriations could act
and begin to take care of the problem.
Mr. Speaker, I am not going to leave it as it is. I intend to amend
the title in order to provide for a $20 billion authorization, at a
minimum. Mr. Speaker, $20 billion will be less than we are proposing to
spend for defense; it will be far less than we authorized last year for
highways and transportation. Most of the Members of Congress voted for
a bill which provided $218 billion for highways and transportation;
$218 billion, because they felt it was needed. There was a general
feeling out in the public that it was needed. The public had not said
that transportation was a high priority. The public had not said that
highways were a priority, but they had no objection.
When we voted on that kind of bill, $218 billion of over I think a 6-
year period, there were no objections by the editorial boards, there
were no demonstrations, there were no letters; everybody accepted it,
that this is a need. Always, we need highways and sidewalks and in New
York we need help for our subway system and bus system, so that
expenditure was accepted because it made sense, to expend $100 billion
over a 5-year period on school construction makes sense.
We have no problem with the general public and the voters out there
who are asking us everyday to give education more help. The public must
look with great disgust on debates like the one that took place today
where the Members of Congress are wasting their time debating a bill
which is designed to hand governors more dollars. The greed of the
governors knows no end. All kinds of roadblocks are offered when we try
to do realistic approaches to meeting the response of the public that
they have placed upon us when they ask for more assistance for
education.
We have some people who have repeatedly said, we do not want to build
more schools because Davis-Bacon will drive up the cost of the schools,
and in order to get Davis-Bacon, they do not want to build schools.
They are going to punish the children, because two Republicans, one
named Davis and one named Bacon, authorized a law some time ago which
made a lot of sense that one could not bring contractors from outside
an area and lower the standard of living of the people who were workers
there by bringing in cheaper labor. If we had a government job
involving the Federal Government and we brought in outside labor or
used local labor, either way, you are going to have to pay the
prevailing wage. The prevailing wage means no more than whatever brick
layers, carpenters, whatever they are being paid in that area, you pay
it. It makes a lot of sense. Davis and Bacon, Republicans.
Now they are objecting to building more schools because they do not
want Davis-Bacon to be utilized because it drives up the cost. We have
study after study that shows that we can build schools at basically the
same cost or a lower cost when we use the Davis-Bacon contractors.
So let me conclude by saying that I hope the public, the voters who
have made it clear that they want education to be a priority will focus
intensely on what is happening here in this Congress. It looks as if
only the people can turn around the madness that is occurring here, the
endless debates about trivialities, the endless debates about changes
in the law, rerouting the money which will have minimal effect on the
improvement of education, and may have a dangerous impact because it
will take the money away from those who need it most.
Mr. Speaker, we need more money for construction, and we should get
it as soon as possible.

____________________