[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 91 (Thursday, June 24, 1999)]
[House]
[Pages H4901-H4906]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         THE REPUBLICAN AGENDA

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 6, 1999, the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Hoekstra) is 
recognized for 60 minutes.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, tonight I would like to take the 
opportunity to talk about a number of the items on the Republican 
agenda, the agenda that I believe provides us with the opportunity to 
really build on the prosperity that this country has experienced over 
the last 7 to 8 years, the opportunity to take that prosperity and to 
reform the programs that we have in here in Washington, to reform our 
budget priorities and to address some of the systematic problems that 
we are experiencing.
  Let me give my colleagues one example. In the budget resolution that 
we

[[Page H4902]]

passed earlier this year this Congress took a historic step. We stated 
that for the budget horizon, the next 10 years, that we would lock away 
every dollar of Social Security surplus, that we would lock it away and 
allow those funds to be only used to reform and save Social Security 
and Medicare.
  When we take a look at the commitment that we have made of locking 
away 1.8 trillion dollars, we see that that is a historic change. It 
provides the framework for shoring up Social Security and Medicare and 
at the same time ensures that those dollars will not be spent to grow 
other segments of government.
  That is exactly what has happened over the last 30 years. Every 
American today, they get their paycheck at the end of the week, and 
they recognize how much they have grossed, and between their gross and 
their net is this thing called FICA. That is the amount that your 
employer, actually that you, pay to Washington for Social Security. It 
is 6.2 percent of your income.
  The interesting thing is that your employer also matches that with 
another 6.2 percent. It means that you are paying or based on the hours 
and the salary that you have earned, 12.4 percent of your income is 
going to Washington, and it was going and it is supposed to be coming 
to Washington to deal with Social Security and to be set aside so that 
when you reach retirement income those dollars will be there and they 
will be there for you.
  But what has happened over the last 30 years is those dollars have 
come into Washington. They have been set aside. They have been set 
aside with IOUs. Government then went in, and took that money, and put 
in the IOU and spent it on other federal programs. So what we now have 
in the Social Security Trust Fund is not all of the 30 years of surplus 
in Social Security, but what we have is a stack of IOUs, and on this 
hand we have got a bunch of federal programs that we have grown and 
expanded.
  We want to set aside the total Social Security surplus for the next 
10 years, $1.8 trillion. That is a hundred billion dollars more than 
what the President plans to set aside for Social Security. As a matter 
of fact, when you take a look at a shorter window rather than 10 years 
out, you take a look at what this President and this administration is 
proposing for the next 5 years, they are going to spend $146 billion of 
the Social Security surplus. They are not saving every dime of Social 
Security over the next 5 years and setting it aside to save and reform 
Social Security and Medicare; they are actually going out and 
continuing the practices of the past, and they are going out, and they 
are going to spend it one more time.
  What happens when we set aside $1.8 trillion? What it means is that 
we can go out and we can reduce the public debt. We will reduce the 
public debt by $1.8 trillion over the next 10 years. That is $450 
billion more of debt reduction than what the President's budget 
proposes. Under our budget it means that the debt held by the public 
declines from $3.6 trillion to $1.9 trillion by the year 2009.
  The other thing that we have in our budget plan is that we maintain 
the spending discipline of the 1997 balanced budget agreement. As the 
Chair will remember, in 1997 we passed a historic budget agreement. It 
laid out a 5-year plan for spending, it laid out a 5-year plan for 
revenues, and it said by the year 2002 we will be out of surplus 
budget.
  Some positive things have happened. The economy and Federal tax 
revenues have been stronger than what we anticipated. What it means is 
that we move closer and we have actually moved to a surplus budget, as 
it is defined in Washington, this year. There are those now that would 
say, well, now that we are at surplus, let us forget about the spending 
restraints that we agreed to in 1997, let us open up the vault, and let 
us start spending the surplus.
  There are many here in the House who believe that that is the wrong 
thing to do. We believe that this is an opportunity where we can really 
continue the fiscal discipline and commit to meeting the spending 
targets that were outlined in 1997 which then enables us to save every 
dime for Social Security and then also provides us with the opportunity 
to another step which we think is very positive, which is to provide 
tax relief to the American people.
  When you take a look at taxes and why we need tax relief, think about 
the two-parent working family today. The second working adult usually 
earns about 40 percent of the combined income. It is interesting enough 
to note that the average American today pays 40 percent of their income 
in one form of tax or another, a State tax, a local tax or a Federal 
tax. What that means is that in a two-parent or two-working-parent 
family, the second person is not working to support the family. The 
second person is working to support Washington, their State government 
or their local government. They are paying 40 percent of their income.
  We have an opportunity to relieve the stress that that places on 
American families and that places on American workers. Think about it. 
You go out, and you earn a dollar; you lose 40 cents of it before you 
ever go home and use it to buy food, to pay for a vacation, to invest 
in your child's education. The first 40 cents always comes to 
government.
  We think that there is an opportunity to reduce taxes in three 
different areas. In one way we will propose in our tax relief package 
something that provides an immediate benefit to the American people. 
What does that mean? It means that your take-home pay is larger, means 
that your check at the end of the week for what you have worked that 
week, means that you get to keep more of it and Washington gets to take 
less of it.
  We want to provide tax relief in a way that says you can prepare for 
your long-term future. Because a tax code is being restructured, you 
can be better prepared to plan your financial future so that you will 
be more secure and you will have the freedom to get financial security.
  How do we do that? For those of you that save, for those of you that 
invest, we can reduce the capital gains tax. We can encourage you 
through the Tax Code to invest in individual retirement accounts so 
that you can prepare for your retirement, or perhaps that you can set 
aside dollars so that if you want to go out and purchase your first 
home, you can use those dollars for that, or if you are really talking 
about long-term security, would it not be great if you can take more of 
your income and set it aside so that you can prepare to help your child 
get a better education?
  That is what we mean when we talk about enabling you to have more 
freedom to plan for your future and to get your financial independence.
  There is another area that we think we can reduce taxes in, and that 
is we think you have got the opportunity, and we have got the 
opportunity, to let Washington know who is in charge. Do you ever have 
these fees or services that you just think where did they come from? 
And why are they doing this? Let me give you two examples:
  A few years ago we passed a telecommunications reform bill. As part 
of that we said that we were going to encourage the expansion of the 
Internet into the schools, a very good goal. We have got a bureaucracy 
that said: Wow, that gives us the latitude to impose a fee on every 
American's phone bill.

                              {time}  2030

  It is called the Gore tax. It is the Vice President's idea. It was 
not passed by Congress; it was an interpretation by a bureaucracy and a 
group of bureaucrats as a way to get money from the American people. 
This is a wonderful opportunity to say, no. The American people are in 
charge. We are going to repeal that bureaucratic abuse of power and we 
are going to eliminate that ``fee.'' It is not a fee. It was a tax that 
was initiated by bureaucrats who had no right and no authority to do 
it.
  There is another one that is currently going through, and I think it 
is maybe going to affect only a small number of Americans today, but 
again, it is an abuse of power, and it is an abuse of power by the 
Postal Service. For those of us that have a box, a mailbox, but it is 
not at the Post Office and it is now at a private business, there is a 
whole new set of rules and regulations that the Postal Service has put 
on the small businesses and has put this cost on Americans who say, I 
would really like a Post Office box or a place of business that can 
receive my mail, because it can do things that the

[[Page H4903]]

Postal Service cannot do, meaning that this business will sign and 
accept a delivery by an overnight delivery company. The Post Office 
will not do that. But if one now wants to do that, this company that 
has provided someone with this service is going to have to go through 
and provide a whole series of documents on that box to the Post Office.
  The bottom line: rules, regulations. They do not come free. It is a 
huge new cost and another way, again for, in this case, not for the 
government to collect more money, but for someone who is providing a 
service that may be in direct competition to a government monopoly, to 
penalize this service and make it more expensive for the American 
people to use an alternative delivery service or a Post Office box that 
provides additional services.
  This is a wonderful opportunity for us to go back and say, no. We are 
not going to let the government do that. We are going to repeal that. 
We are going to pass a bill here that says, you cannot put these kinds 
of costs on the American people. You cannot put these kinds of costs on 
small businesses who, because the Postal Service could not deliver the 
service, found a niche, identified a need, and in the great spirit of 
the American entrepreneurs, created a business, only now to be 
penalized by the Postal Service. We need to change that, and this will 
provide us an opportunity to do that.
  Mr. Speaker, underlying our direction on taxes where we want to 
increase take-home pay, we want to let Americans understand that they 
are going to have more freedom for planning their financial security in 
the future and for sending a message back to Washington that says, we 
are in charge and you are not, we want to overlay two broad themes. It 
is time to simplify the Tax Code, and it is time to make it fairer. 
Perhaps the most unfair component of our Tax Code today, although there 
are probably a number of different items competing for that title, but 
perhaps the most unfair is that our Tax Code continues to penalize 
married couples. Think about it. We have a Tax Code in America that 
penalizes people for being married. That is not fair. Not only that, it 
is the wrong thing to do. So as we move forward through our agenda this 
year, as we continue building on the balancing of the budget, as we 
plan for solidifying Social Security, solidifying Medicare, we are 
doing the right things, and we are using the prosperity to get our 
house in order.
  I want to spend a little time now moving on to another priority that 
over the last number of years I have spent a lot of time on, and that 
is education. I am glad that I came to the House Floor tonight to be 
able to respond to my colleague's comments about what those Republicans 
did this week with our Straight As program, where we are going to move 
more flexibility back to the local level and we are going to move the 
dollars down there so that people at the local and at the State level 
can have the flexibility to deal with the issues and the problems at 
their local level and not worry about whether their problems match the 
problems that we here in Washington have identified as national issues.
  I have a great quote. My colleague earlier was asking the question, 
do we really trust people at the local level and at the State level to 
do what is right for our kids? Do we really trust those people who know 
the names of the kids in their class and in their school to do the 
right thing for those kids? And the answer, obviously, from my 
colleague was, of course we do not. There is a Federal role here 
because Washington knows best.
  As my colleague in the chair remembers, back in 1995 when we began 
the welfare debate, we began the welfare debate very much on the same 
tone and tenor, and we really accelerated the debate on welfare reform 
when I came down to the floor with a number of my colleagues from 
Wisconsin. And the reason we came to the floor was that Wisconsin had 
proposed a reform of welfare. It had passed the State legislature in a 
bipartisan way. The governor had signed it. They sent their application 
here to Washington, because somebody in Washington in Health and Human 
Services had to approve what the State of Wisconsin wanted to do to 
help their people in their State get off of welfare, to go to work, to 
get training, and to become more productive.
  I believe that it was something like 287 days later that we came to 
the floor, 287 days or something like that after Wisconsin had sent 
their application to a bureaucracy in Washington, a bureaucracy that 
probably had some people from Wisconsin working in it, but the reform 
proposal maybe was not read by anybody that had ever been to Wisconsin. 
But 280-some days later, Health and Human Services had not acted.
  Now, get this. It is the State of Wisconsin, the governor, the State 
legislature saying, we think we have a better idea. We think we have a 
model that we would like to try that is better for our people and it is 
better for the people on welfare than what the national Washington one-
size-fits-all model is. And after roughly two-thirds of a year, the 
people in Washington had not thought it was important enough to go 
through this, to study the issue, and to answer the people in the State 
of Wisconsin as to whether this was or was not something that they were 
going to let them do. And that is the same attitude that our colleagues 
are expressing when it comes to education.
  What finally happened in welfare reform? We pushed for flexibility, 
we pushed for local accountability, and now that welfare reform has 
passed the House, that it has been implemented at the State level where 
we have given this authority to the governors and to the State 
legislatures and said, you have a great degree of flexibility, you have 
a huge opportunity here to take the Washington resources, to break the 
rules, to break the mold, and use the money to solve the problems in 
your own State.
  A couple of years ago we heard the same types of claims: they will 
not do the right thing. They will move the money into the wrong places. 
They do not really care about the people that are on welfare. They are 
not going to help. They are going to take the money and move it to 
different places.
  What we found in welfare reform is exactly the opposite. It is a 
wonderful success story. The States have taken the freedom, they have 
taken the flexibility to reach out and help those that were on welfare 
get work, to come off of the welfare rolls, and the wonderful thing is 
that I am not sure what they are doing in Wisconsin. Wisconsin has a 
model that works for them. Michigan has a model that has worked for us. 
Michigan is probably learning from Wisconsin and Wisconsin is learning 
from Michigan, and both programs are moving forward. What they are 
doing in Hawaii is probably a little bit different or very different 
from what they are doing in New York, but as we go around the country, 
it is one success story after another. And, we have 50 models of 
welfare reform, all working, all learning from each other, and all 
moving forward. And what a wonderful difference it makes to have 50 
States learning from each other and all competing to have the best 
welfare program, or the best welfare reform program; to have the best 
statistics about saying we have moved this percentage of people off of 
welfare into being more productive members of society. What a wonderful 
way to compete versus where we were before.

  Because what has happened now is States are forced to focus on 
results, not process. Under the old model, Wisconsin had to focus on 
process. They had to fill out all of the Washington forms. They had to 
fill out all of the forms and make sure that they dotted the I's and 
crossed the T's correctly, and they would send it to Washington and 
Washington would make sure that they had dotted the I's and crossed the 
T's and if they had filled out something slightly wrong, they would 
send it back to Wisconsin to fix it or they would send it back to 
Michigan to fix it and the paper would flow back and forth eating up 
dollars. But as soon as we reformed welfare, we moved away from a paper 
work shuffle, we moved away from a bureaucratic red-tape system to a 
system that is doing exactly what it is supposed to. It is focusing on 
people. It is focusing on how, with key help, people get off of 
welfare.
  Why am I talking about welfare reform? Because I think it is a 
beautiful model for what we are proposing to do with education. And we 
know that the same broken bureaucratic model that we suffered under in 
welfare reform is

[[Page H4904]]

also found in education. That model is Washington Knows Best. We are 
going to take the 7 percent of the dollars that any school district 
gets from Washington and we are going to use that 7 percent to, on a 
significant scale, impact what goes on in the school because we know 
best and the people at the local level do not. That is the broken 
model.
  How do we know that that is the model that people at the local level 
believe exists today? We know because we went to over 15 States, had 
something like 18, 19 different hearings, and learned about what is 
going on in education. But the thing that we found over and over and 
over again, really two things. Number one, we saw great schools, we saw 
great kids, we saw great teachers, great administrators, parents, 
administrators, and teachers who knew the child's name and had a 
passion for making sure that that child would have the best 
opportunities to learn that they could provide.
  Now what do we see? Here is what somebody basically found out and 
what they said about Washington. I think there is an arrogance on the 
part of the school bureaucracy, that is Washington, that assumes that 
they know what is best for everybody's children. I assume the opposite. 
I do not think that anybody can make a better decision for their 
children than the parent.

                              {time}  2045

  The focus of directing a child's education does not need to be here 
in a bureaucracy in Washington, it needs to be at the local level, 
starting with a parent or an adult guardian, moving to a teacher, 
moving to an administrator, and the last person in the food chain is a 
bureaucrat in Washington. We need to improve education.
  Let me just talk about why we believe it is important to reform 
education and why the current model does not work. We published a 
report called ``America's Education System at a Crossroads,'' 
``Education at a crossroads.'' It is the result of a whole series of 
hearings around the country, a series of hearings here in Washington 
meeting with the education experts here in Washington, and other 
research and analysis that we completed here.
  We know that America's education system needs to be reformed. Why? 
What are some of the statistics? Forty forty percent of fourth-graders 
do not read at even a basic level. Half of the students from urban 
school districts fail to graduate on time, if at all. The average NAPE 
scores among 17-year-olds are lower than they were in 1984. That is a 
year after a Nation at Risk was released. We are not necessarily making 
progress.
  U.S. 12th graders only outperformed two of 21 nations in mathematics. 
What does that mean? Here are the statistics. In the Third Annual 
International Math and Science Study, called TIMS, 12th grade U.S. lags 
behind in math and sciences.
  Here are the nations with average scores significantly higher than 
the U.S.: the Netherlands, Sweden, Denmark, Switzerland, Iceland, 
Norway, France, New Zealand, Australia, Canada, Austria, Slovenia, 
Germany, and Hungary. Nations with average scores not significantly 
different from the U.S.: Italy, the Russian federation, Lithuania, the 
Czech Republic, and the U.S. are in this category. The two nations that 
did score below us, Cyprus and South Africa; not a very impressive 
showing.
  Another startling statistic: American students fall further behind 
students from other countries the longer they are in school.
  One of our first hearings a couple of years ago was in California. We 
had one on K through 12 and then we had one on higher ed.
  The first year, the hearing with people from the colleges, they said, 
make sure you do not cut our remedial education budgets. You kind of do 
a double-take and say, excuse me? These are kids who have gotten into 
college. What are we remediating? They are remediating basic skills. 
Public institutions of higher education annually spend $1 billion on 
remedial education. It is a huge problem.
  The other thing that I can tell the Members, even though those are 
the national statistics, as we went around the country we saw success 
story after success story of people at the local level achieving some 
wonderful things. That is where the reform is taking place. It is where 
parents and people at the local level have control over their local 
schools.
  What other stuff did we find out as we took a look at Washington's 
answer to education, one of which says we are going to take the 7 
percent of the Washington dollars and we are going to come up with a 
solution for almost every problem? We wonder, how does 7 percent really 
drive so much of a local curriculum?
  Think about it. In Washington we have a program that will pay and 
contribute for a child's breakfast and a child's lunch. I am not saying 
these programs are not needed, but they come along with bureaucracy and 
red tape.
  There are people in Washington who want to build the schools, they 
want to pay for putting in technology, they want to buy the technology, 
they want to pay for the technology classes. We already pay for drug 
education. We pay for sex education. We pay for arts in the schools. 
They want to hire our teachers. They want to test our kids. They want 
to develop curriculum. They want to develop after-school programs.
  So when we take a look at it, they want to feed our kids breakfast, 
build our schools, pay for the technology, teach them about sex, teach 
them about drugs, teach them art, get involved with curriculum. They 
want to test our kids, hire our teachers, feed them lunch, do after-
school programs, maybe midnight basketball. But other than that, it is 
our local school.
  That is how 7 percent of Washington's Federal education dollars drive 
into a local school district to drive administrators from, rather than 
focusing on the child, rather than focusing on the education, to 
recognize that they have become just like welfare. They have become 
process-driven.
  I want administrators, I want teachers focused on helping our 
children learn, not pushing paper. How do we know that they push paper? 
We surveyed the Federal government, and these are not all K through 12, 
but when we asked the question, how many Federal education programs are 
there, there are 760. Like I said, they are not all K through 12, but 
there are lots of programs.
  We say, wow, that is why we have a Department of Education, to take 
these programs and centralize them in one department? Wrong. These 760 
programs are spread over 39 different agencies that spend over $100 
billion a year. It has gotten to be so complex that there is a cottage 
industry, again, the wonderful entrepreneurial spirit in America.
  There is a company called the Education Funding Research Council. 
What do they do? They will sell a book for $400. What is it? It is the 
guide to Federal Funding for Education. We have a business out here 
that has decided that they can make a living by telling the rest of 
America where the dollars are in education, and help them go through 
the process of getting Federal education dollars.
  There is another one that says, they talk about 500 education 
programs. There is another one that is called ``The Aid for Education 
Report.'' Here is what they say: ``Huge sums are available. In the 
Federal government alone there are nearly 800 different education 
programs that receive authorization totalling almost $100 billion a 
year.''
  What do 760, 800 programs, what do they lead to? Even accounting for 
recent reductions, the U.S. Department of Education still requires over 
48.6 million hours of paperwork per year, 48.6 million hours. This is 
for the paperwork. This is the focus on process rather than on results.
  The President talks about hiring maybe 100,000 teachers. We do know 
that when you require 48.6 million hours of paperwork, that is about 
the equivalent of 25,000 people working full-time, 25,000 people 
working to meet the paperwork requirements of the Department of 
education and other Federal agencies.
  The Department of Education talks about, well, there are only 4,637. 
We are one of the smallest agencies in Washington. They have been 
smart. They have moved the paperwork and the requirements down to the 
State level. At the State level there are another 13,400 full-time 
employees funded with Federal dollars to administer these programs.

[[Page H4905]]

  The end result is that when we send a dollar to Washington, there is 
a good chance that only 65 to 70 cents actually reaches the classroom. 
If we are really concerned about educating our children, let us take 
a look at the welfare model, the welfare reform model that has been so 
successful, and let us focus on results rather than paperwork and 
process. Let us focus on educating our children, rather than 
administering 760 programs with mountains of paperwork that are run by 
a shadow education department that consume 30 to 40 cents of every 
dollar before it gets back to the child.

  How does this work? Vice President Gore's National Performance Review 
discovered that the Department of Education's discretionary grant 
process, now think about this, in a world today where a new product in 
a high-tech business can be developed in India and can be in the room 
next door in a matter of seconds, if we want to get money from the 
Department of Education to help educate a child, the process is 26 
weeks long and goes for 487 steps.
  I have good news, the Department of Education has streamlined the 
process. They are now in the Information Age. But they define their 
Information Age and their streamlining as resulting in a process that 
now only takes 20 weeks and only has to go through 216 steps of review.
  Think about this. This is the model that we have for 7 percent of our 
education funding: 760 programs, mountains of paperwork, three 
employees in the States for every Federal employee here in Washington 
chewing up every dollar in education so there is only about 65 to 70 
cents left for the classroom, a process that goes through 216 steps and 
takes 20 weeks.
  Where does this money go? It is kind of like, well, at least we have 
65 to 70 cents of every dollar going to help educate our children in 
the basics. Wrong. Let me just give one good example: The Department of 
Education's Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services.
  The objective of this program is supposedly to promote the general 
welfare of the deaf and hard of hearing, a very appropriate goal. How 
is that mandate and objective interpreted in Washington? It means that 
in Washington our taxpayer dollars, when we have this kind of 
performance that I mentioned earlier in education, what we are doing is 
in Washington educational meaningful programs include paying for the 
closed captioning of Baywatch, Ricki Lake, the Montel Williams Show, 
and Jerry Springer. And they have a special program dedicated to closed 
captioning for major sports programs. That is defined as a high 
priority program in Washington.
  Other education programs, and remember, this is in context with where 
we were earlier for how our kids are performing internationally. Our 
education department believes that, here, they print a cartoon book. 
The title is ``The Ninjas, the X-men, and the Ladies, Playing with 
Power and Identity in the Urban Primary School.''

                              {time}  2100

  They have got one for the bakery industry. Lesson plans prepared for 
grocery employees. The lessons focused on topics from the workplace in 
the following areas: bakery, cake orders, courtesy clerk, and sushi 
bard. It is 96 pages long. Fifth grade pipe fitters. Building workplace 
vocabulary for pipe fitters, 27 pages.
  I am not sure that those are the right priorities. My colleague said 
that is why we need more money in Washington and we need more focus in 
Washington, because we cannot trust people at the local level.
  There is a better way to address education. What do we want to do? 
Let me talk a little bit about the values that are the foundation for 
our Academic Achievement For All Act, Straight A's, because there is a 
different approach. It builds on the welfare approach.
  What it says simply is, we are going to take these Federal programs, 
and we are going to provide States with the opportunity, this is not a 
mandated program, this is a choice for the States, we are going to 
provide them with the opportunity to go through the categorical 
programs, the model that my colleague thinks is the most appropriate; 
and my colleague should be pleased to know that that program is going 
to stay in place.
  But we also then provide the States with the opportunity of coming to 
Washington and presenting a plan and saying, we have got some special 
need and some special focus and some special priorities that we have in 
Wisconsin or that we have in Michigan that we really think we need to 
focus on.
  So they reach an agreement with the Department of Education on a 
charter. So they get a 5-year waiver from the rules and the 
regulations. And, yes, they do get flexibility. They get flexibility to 
move their dollars around to their areas of focus and their areas of 
need.
  In exchange for that increase to flexibility and in exchange for 
eliminating the paperwork, they reach an accountability agreement that 
says, for that flexibility for the dollars and that freedom from the 
red tape, we are going to focus on results, and we are going to agree 
on these accountability standards for all of our students, to make sure 
that we deal with all of our students and do not forget about any of 
our students. The State then gets that flexibility.
  If, after 5 years, the States have not met their accountability 
guidelines, the Federal Government can come back and say they did not 
do what they said they were going to do. They did not get the results 
that they were going to get. They have got to go back into the 
categorical programs.
  Flexibility, elimination of red tape, and a freedom to focus on 
results. It is the welfare model. What do we believe that this will 
lead to, and what are the values that drive this kind of a strategy? We 
believe that education needs to be student centered. Successful schools 
are not forced to rely and focus on Federal paperwork. They have the 
opportunity and the freedom to focus on each and every child. They are 
results oriented, not process oriented.
  We believe in equality. Each and every child in America must be given 
the opportunity to succeed in his or her school.
  Another value we have is that parental involvement and local control. 
Schools thrive, and we have seen this wherever we went, schools thrive 
when parents are integrated into the learning process, when parents and 
adults are viewed as equal partners in decision making and direction 
setting, and when decisions are made at the local level by individuals 
who know the names and understand the needs of each child in their 
school.
  Freedom. We believe that families and students deserve the 
opportunity to choose the school that they will attend.
  Safety. Successful schools are free from violence. Children and 
parents need schools which can provide a secure learning environment.
  Basic academics. It is another core value much the schools and the 
successful schools that we have seen focus on basic academics. Reading, 
writing, and math are taught as the foundation of lifelong learning and 
a sound future. The methods used to teach these subjects and others 
should be based on sound science and reliable and reputable research.
  Discipline. Successful schools maintain disciplined environments 
where all are respected.
  Flexibility. Schools need the ability to shape programs and policies 
that fit their particular needs. One size does not fit all. It did not 
work in welfare. It does not work in education. No two school districts 
or States are the same, and a one-size-fits-all Federal education 
system just will not work. One size fits all cannot replace the 
knowledge or the concern. To imply that people at the local level and 
that parents and teachers and administrators do not care about their 
children at the local level sells them short. It does not sell them 
short, it is just a total lack of understanding of what is going on in 
local America today.
  Results. Successful schools implement accountability mechanisms which 
measure whether or not a child is learning.
  Finally, another value is we believe that dollars need to be spent in 
the classroom and not on bureaucracy. Successful schools spend less 
time and resources on paperwork and more time on classroom resources.
  We all want a better education system. We want common sense 
principles

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that drive our education strategy. For us, that means parental 
involvement. It means basic academic. It means flexibility. It means 
dollars to the classroom, and it means eliminating red tape.
  For the other side, it means creating a Federal school board and 
running one's local school in a much more direct way from Washington 
than at the local level. That is just not going to work. It is not the 
right way to go.
  We have a wonderful opportunity in today's prosperity to reform and 
to rethink the education model. We did part of it earlier this year 
when we did the Education Flexibility Act, providing a certain degree 
of latitude and flexibility in States to deal with the paperwork that 
has been imposed upon them.
  We can build off that now by giving States and local schools the 
flexibility in how they spend their dollars and focusing on meeting the 
needs of their children's learning.
  We can provide parents with the opportunity and the flexibility to 
secure their child's education by providing tax relief in the form of 
education savings accounts.
  We can get more resources focused into the classroom by saying, when 
it comes to Federal education spending, Washington comes last. It does 
not mean we cut our Washington spending. It says that, for every dollar 
we spend in Washington, instead of getting 60 or 65 to 70 cents back to 
a local classroom, which is where the leverage point is, which is where 
we can have an impact on learning, we are saying we are going to get 95 
cents of every Federal dollar back.
  So without even expending more money in Washington, we can increase 
the amount of Federal dollars that get to the classroom, the local 
classroom, by 50 percent. That is an effective way to improve 
education.
  We have made a lot of progress. We are going to continue working on 
this issue.
  As I wrap up, I take a look at what we have accomplished and what we 
want to accomplish this year. We are going to have a balanced budget. 
We are going to begin the process of setting aside $1.8 trillion for 
Social Security and Medicare. We are going to provide tax relief to the 
American people. We are going to strengthen our national security so 
that we can be secure at home and abroad.
  We are going to focus on education. We are going to allow parents and 
local schools to focus on meeting the needs of their children. We are 
going to provide States the flexibility. We are going to take the model 
that worked in welfare, and we are going to take that same kind of 
criteria, which is a trust in the local level, a trust in the State 
level, and saying the top-down structure does not work. We have got a 
model that works. We have seen it work. People have experienced it. 
People are benefiting from it. We need to take that same model and 
apply it to education.

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