[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 119 (Tuesday, September 14, 1999)]
[Senate]
[Pages S10813-S10815]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                     THE REMAINING SENATE BUSINESS

  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, one of the items previously discussed 
deserves further exploration; that is, the whole question of what we 
are going to do in the closing weeks to meet the Senate's obligation to 
the people of this country, to deal with the most basic 
responsibilities of this Chamber.
  The most basic responsibility, of course, is to meet and pass the 
spending bills necessary for the orderly operation of the Federal 
Government. For those who are not students of the process, the fiscal 
year that we work under starts on October 1, and we are supposed to 
pass 13 different spending bills so that come October 1, the actions of 
Government can continue their business. This is our ordinary 
responsibility.
  So we meet on September 14 to discuss a lot of issues of importance. 
But the American people have the right to ask us what we have done 
about our basic responsibility to pass the spending bills for the next 
year. The honest answer is, of 13 bills, we have only passed and had 
signed into law one bill, and that is the military construction bill. 
All of the other activities of the Federal Government, frankly, are 
still in play. They are being debated on Capitol Hill. It is a sad 
commentary on those who manage the House and the Senate that we have 
not made more progress. In fact, closer inspection suggests to us that 
there are some serious problems ahead.
  Anyone who followed the proceedings last year knows that a similar 
situation led to a mountainous piece of legislation called a continuing 
resolution. If I am not mistaken, it was some 10,000 pages long and it 
was literally dropped in our laps with 48 hours to go and we had to 
read it, vote yes or no to continue the operations of Federal 
Government, and go home or stay here. It was chaotic.
  At a time when we have a Federal Government and a Congress with a 
responsibility, a staff and resources, it is hard to imagine we are 
about to repeat that scenario of last year. But it looks as if we are 
headed in that direction.
  The sad fact is that one of the more sinister games being played is 
that one of the most important spending bills for American families--
the bill that contains, for example, education spending for the United 
States of America--is being held hostage as the last spending bill 
which we are going to consider. As each appropriations bill that needs 
money comes along, it is taken from this education and health bill and 
put into another bill.
  The day of reckoning is upon us in the not-too-distant future where 
we will face the possibility of another continuing resolution.
  I am disappointed the Senate has not responded to the challenge by 
the President in his State of the Union Address and, frankly, challenge 
by the people of this country to address some

[[Page S10814]]

of the serious problems which we face. Instead, we find ourselves 
tangled in a weave of budgetary deception where the suggestion has been 
made this morning that there is going to be an extension of the fiscal 
year to make it 13 months long as opposed to 12 months.
  I believe it was Pope Gregory who came up with this calendar which we 
now use across the world. Now we have a suggestion that is part of 
their effort to extricate themselves from this budgetary maelstrom. The 
Republicans are going to somehow construct a 13-month calendar. I will 
not go into all the possibilities that were mentioned in the earlier 
debate, but I will say that it is, frankly, evidence of their failure 
to lead in the Senate and the House of Representatives because we are 
in the closing weeks of the fiscal year not having met our obligation 
to manage the Government and do it in an efficient manner.
  The President came to us many months ago in his State of the Union 
Address suggesting some changes which we should consider in education 
in America. I am sorry to report that, to my knowledge, there has been 
no hearings on the President's proposals, nor is there any likelihood 
that the budgetary bills coming before us in the closing hours of the 
session will even address these changes in education. Most of these 
changes are widely accepted and embraced by the American people. Yet we 
find the Republican majority in both the House and the Senate refusing 
to even consider them.
  The idea of increasing the number of teachers across America so 
classroom size is reduced is one that every parent understands. You 
walk into a classroom of 30 kindergartners and one of them is your 
child. You pray to God there will be a few minutes each day where the 
teacher might be able to pay special attention to your son's or 
daughter's particular problems. The same is true in the first, second, 
and third grades when children are learning the basics in terms of math 
and reading and such things that will build their education for the 
future.
  The plebiscite President said 100,000 new teachers and reduce 
classroom size across America and we will have better students, better 
graduates, a better workforce, and a better country. The American 
people said: We agree. Do something about it. As we stand here in 
September of 1999, 8 or 9 months later, nothing has been done--nothing.
  The President has already said--and I think he is right--address the 
needs to modernize classrooms across America.
  We had a press conference in Illinois last week in Farmington, a 
small town near Peoria.
  The school there was built in 1908. It is one of those battleship 
schools. I attended similar schools that reflect the turn of the 
century commitment to education in America. However, the school needs 
help. It needs a new fire escape. It needs new electrical service. It 
needs to be equipped for computers. It needs the basics.
  It is not alone. There are schools across America in need of 
modernization. New schools need to be built. There will be more 
students than there will be classrooms. Will we help school districts 
across America? Will this Congress rally, as the President has asked, 
to help the school districts? The honest answer is no. We have not had 
any show of will by the Republican majority to even address this. When 
we bring it up, they say: There you go again, another new program.
  Does this strike anyone listening to the debate as a radical 
suggestion, that our Federal Government lend a helping hand to school 
districts across America so schools are safer, that they are more 
modern, that in the 21st century kids have a better chance to learn? 
The honest answer is, that is not radical; that is as basic as it gets 
in the United States of America.
  Mrs. BOXER. Will the Senator yield?
  Mr. DURBIN. I am happy to yield to the Senator.
  Mrs. BOXER. I hate to break into the flow of thought, but in 
listening to my friend from Illinois I am wondering if he is aware that 
the first President to call attention to the needs of education in 
modern American history happened to be a Republican named Dwight 
Eisenhower. Is my friend familiar with his National Defense of 
Education Act?
  Mr. DURBIN. Yes.
  Mrs. BOXER. I think it is an important point.
  We have a Republican Party today in this Senate that is blocking the 
Senate from taking action, as my friend has stated, on the 100,000 
teachers, on school construction, on afterschool, which they say they 
support in one vote, and when it comes to putting money down, they are 
not there.
  My friend says they call it ``radical.'' President Eisenhower, when I 
was a youngster in the 1950s, said we could have all the missiles in 
the world on our side, we could have all the bombs and all the military 
people, but if we didn't have an educated workforce that understood how 
to use the equipment, if we didn't have an educated workforce to be 
productive, America wouldn't be what she must be, the leader of the 
free world.
  I merely interrupted my friend to ask him if he recalled that 
interesting fact, when Dwight Eisenhower said we had to do something as 
a Federal Government. Some people said, wait a minute, education is a 
State matter. He made a couple of points: A, you can't be a strong 
leader if you don't have educated kids; B, the States can't do 
everything; they need Congress to come in when there is a national 
problem. We can't come in for every little thing, but if we don't have 
enough teachers, that is a national problem. Afterschool is a national 
problem; early education, a national problem.
  The States are saying they need our help.
  I yield back to my friend. I would love to hear his comments on the 
irony of this modern-day Republican Party and this Senate essentially 
turning against what a wonderful Republican President of the United 
States, Dwight Eisenhower, said about education.
  Mr. DURBIN. I thank the Senator from California.
  The fact of the matter is, I managed to complete college because of 
the National Defense of Education Act, a bill passed by Congress, 
signed by President Eisenhower, that allowed me as a student from a 
working family to borrow money from the Federal Government to pay my 
college education and pay it back over 10 years at 3 percent interest. 
What a deal. I would sign up for it again.
  I hope those who were supporting it and reflecting on it believe that 
investment in this kid from East St. Louis and a lot of other children 
like me paid off for the country in the long haul.
  I think President Eisenhower and Congress were correct in calling 
this the national defense. When you talk about the national defense of 
America, I think it has a lot more to do with the people who live here 
than the hardware we purchase. The investment in education is such an 
investment. Think back to the turn of the century. If you had to go 
back 100 years and ask, Will America be a dominant country in the 21st 
century, most would guess no because in the 19th century we were a 
minor power.
  The European powers captured the attention of the world. We made some 
threshold decisions at the turn of the century that made a difference. 
I love this statistic: Between 1890 and 1920, on average, we built one 
new high school every day in America. For 30 years, a new high school 
was built every day in towns across the country--no Federal mandate, 
just the understanding that if you had a town that was worth its salt, 
it would have a high school. High school wasn't just for rich kids; 
high school was for all kids. The kids of immigrants, the kids of 
farmers, and the kids of small business people all went to school 
together in a public school system.
  What happened? We went from 6 percent of 17-year-olds graduating high 
school in 1900 to 1930, 30 percent, and today, over 75 percent. Make no 
mistake, that commitment by America to education, which created high 
schools, which were then called ``people's colleges'' because this was 
a chance for education beyond the eighth grade for just average kids, 
led to college education and a dramatic increase in the number of 
scientists, engineers, and doctors. It took America from Kitty Hawk to 
the space program.
  The obvious question is, Do we have the same commitment to education 
in the future that the leaders in the 19th century, looking to the 20th 
century, had? I don't hear it as I listen to the debate in the 
Congress. I don't hear men and women of vision standing up

[[Page S10815]]

and saying in the 21st century our kids will have the same 
opportunities.
  There are some things we have to commit ourselves to as a nation. 
That isn't being done here. Instead, we languish in this debate, lost 
in the minutiae about local control and forgetting the big picture. The 
American people expect Congress to understand the challenges our Nation 
faces for the next century. It is not reflected in the debate on the 
budget or in the appropriations bills.
  We have talked about school modernization, we talked about smaller 
classroom sizes in K through 4. Let me discuss another critically 
important topic: Quality teachers, men and women who will become 
professional teachers who are good at it--not to take what is left over 
from college or high school, but to take the very best and brightest 
and put them in a classroom to spark in each kid that feeling of 
creativity and learning which those who are blessed to have such 
teachers have experienced. Yet we don't have that commitment.

  The President has said: Invest in teachers. Make sure they have a 
chance to have their skills improved. Hold them accountable for what 
they do in a classroom. But make sure to bring these young men and 
women into the teaching profession.
  We can turn on the television almost any night and see the exposes 
about education in America where, unfortunately, some people are in 
classrooms and they shouldn't be there. The vast majority of teachers 
are good, hard-working men and women. We can help them improve their 
skills and keep those who are not good out of the classroom with a 
commitment in Washington that we just haven't seen during the course of 
this year.
  The last point I will make is on afterschool programs. I have been 
mystified by the fact we are still caught up in a mindset that is, 
frankly, old fashioned, a mindset that says children start school at 
the age of 6 and school lets out at 2:30 or 3:00 in the afternoon and 
we take 3 months off in the summer. This might have made sense at some 
point in time. It doesn't make sense in today's America. Six years of 
age is a good age to put a child in a classroom, but 5 is better; 4 may 
even be better. There might even be learning experiences for those 
younger who are now in a day-care setting.
  Ask any teacher, if they could add a year in education, where would 
they add it. It isn't at the end of 12th grade but at the beginning, 
kindergarten or before. The teachers say: Give me a chance to mold that 
child before they come into the classroom, and I will show you a better 
person and a better student.
  Yet our commitment to preschool programs, our commitment to programs 
for the earliest ages, just isn't there. We ignore it. We act as if it 
isn't a reality. We know it is. A younger child in a learning situation 
is a child more likely to be a good student.
  Classrooms adjourning each day at 2:30 or 3 o'clock in the afternoon 
made sense when Ozzie and Harriet were at home with milk and cookies 
waiting for the kids, but not in today's America. More parents are 
working; kids are going home to empty houses and getting in trouble 
after school.
  One might ask, Why doesn't the schoolday reflect the family day where 
parents might get home at 5:30, 6 o'clock, or after? Some schools 
adjust to that. Some schools provide that. Some schools need help. We 
have yet to come up with any suggestion here on Capitol Hill about 
afterschool programs responsive to the needs of today's working 
families. I suppose taking summer vacations off was an idea that made 
sense in my home State of Illinois. After all, the kids did have to go 
work on the farm. But out of a State of 12 million people, we only have 
75,000 farm families. Those children should be in another learning 
experience, another supervised experience so they are better students. 
If they are falling behind in reading and math, let them have remedial 
work during the summer. If they are good students, give them enrichment 
courses, teach them a musical instrument, or something new about 
science. Introduce them to computers. All the options and possibilities 
are there. Yet when you bring that up on Capitol Hill, you would think 
you were speaking a foreign language. People just cannot quite 
understand what we have to do with it.

  I think we have a lot to do with it. That this Congress has been so 
derelict when it comes to the issue of education is a suggestion to me 
that we just don't get it. We are not listening to American families 
who identify education as their highest priority. We certainly are not 
reading history, which tells us education made the 20th century the 
American century because of our commitment to education.
  Make no mistake about it; other countries around the world, in 
Europe, in parts of Asia, are starting to move forward. These are 
tomorrow's competitors. These are the people with whom our children 
will have to be ready to do business and with whom they will have to 
compete. If we are not prepared, they will pass us by. I don't want to 
see that happen to my children. I don't want to see that happen to this 
country.
  The honest question we have to ask ourselves is, Does Congress get 
that message? If you look at the budget debate, it is pretty clear to 
me we have missed the point completely. We are now entangled in this 
terrible budget debate with the President. Thank goodness the 
Republican Party has abandoned this $750 billion or $800 billion tax 
cut for wealthy people. They took that out in August. They were going 
to go home with it and explain to the American people why this was the 
real important thing to do for America's future. It fell on its face. 
It had about as much popularity as the new Coca-Cola. They came back 
and said: We have given up on that idea. Maybe we will do it next year.
  I hope they have walked away from it. But in abandoning that bad 
idea, why don't they pick up on a good idea like education? Why don't 
they join us in making certain the education funding bill is one that 
really is a source of pride rather than a source of embarrassment. At 
this point, unfortunately, we have seen that bill delayed. There have 
been absolutely no hearings on it and absolutely no effort being made, 
no initiative being shown, when it comes to improving education for the 
next generation.
  I think the American people rightly give us that responsibility and 
ask us to meet it. It is a responsibility that should be shared on a 
bipartisan basis. The things I have suggested are not radical 
Democratic ideas. The things I have suggested I think would appeal to 
families of Democrats, Republicans, and Independents--all families who 
care about the future of their children.
  I yield the floor hoping the debate soon will turn to these issues 
such as education, issues which most American families consider to be 
one of our highest priorities.

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