[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 121 (Thursday, September 16, 1999)]
[Senate]
[Pages S11032-S11034]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


                           EDUCATION FUNDING

  Mrs. LINCOLN. Mr. President, I rise, as did my other colleagues 
today, to talk about something of great importance to each Member 
individually. I think we have not taken full advantage to discuss what 
I think is our greatest blessing in this world, one of our greatest 
investments. That is our children.
  Today I will discuss the importance of education funding and why it 
is imperative the Senate act quickly and responsibly on this issue. We 
have an opportunity to do something on behalf of our children, to give 
them the capability they need. We talk about the magnitude of education 
on behalf of our children, but we don't often talk about the timeliness 
that is needed here on this issue today.
  I question the wisdom of delaying the vote on the appropriations bill 
that funds education, the Labor-HHS bill, until after we have completed 
the other 12 spending bills. I know for myself, as a working mother, 
and as do all of my colleagues here as working family individuals--we 
have to prioritize. We have to look at what is important and we make a 
list. We recognize what is important and then we go about accomplishing 
it. It seems our priorities are in the wrong place when we vote on the 
legislative appropriations bill before funding education, waiting until 
the last minute, the last issue, to try and drum up the necessary 
funding to educate our children for the future.
  School has started all over this country. Kids are taking tests; they 
are turning in papers; they are getting grades. We, as parents, as 
aunts and uncles, as mentors to our children all over this country, are 
encouraging them to aim for the best, to work towards that A, to do 
what it is they can to accomplish their best, to work hard at their 
education because it will pay off for them in the end.
  What are we doing? We are setting a very poor example. If this 
Congress was to be graded on its performance on prioritizing our 
children's education, it would be given a big red F.
  I know there is always a contentious debate over how to fund 
education, but it seems our colleagues on the Republican side are out 
of touch with the American people on this issue. A recent survey of the 
American public found that 73 percent of Americans favor increased 
Federal investment in education and placed it as the highest priority 
among the 19 other issues they were asked about. Yet we in Washington 
have failed to act, and the situation is only getting worse.
  During the August recess, instead of having townhall meetings, I set 
about having five back-to-school meetings across our State of Arkansas. 
I spent a great deal of time listening to parents, students, teachers, 
and school administrators at all of these different schools in these 
meetings that I organized across our State. One school superintendent 
told me that in his area, an enormously depressed area, they were 
starting the school year with 22 job openings; short 22 people in that 
school district. As a result, classrooms are overcrowded, teachers are 
overworked, and students are not receiving the kind of attention and 
education they deserve. We must send Federal money immediately to hire 
new teachers. We must look for incentives to get our young people into 
teaching.
  Do you realize the enormous brick wall we will hit soon, as we are 
having fewer and fewer of our young people going into the teaching 
profession? It doesn't matter if we have smaller class sizes or if we 
have new school buildings; we are not going to have the teachers to put 
in them. That is essential.
  We want to give our teachers the capability to be well qualified. We 
send our children to school 8 hours a day, 5 days a week. Teachers are 
some of the most important people in their lives, and they are not 
given the appropriate time to prepare nor are they receiving the 
reasonable accommodation in resources they need to be able to teach our 
children. We must send those Federal dollars to hire new teachers. 
Waiting until next year is not an option. Schools are already open this 
year. If we wait as planned, we will have missed an entire grade of 
children.
  I have talked to my colleagues: Oh, we won't get to that this year, 
or we will do it next year, or we will do it in the next Congress. 
Think about those years. Think about those first graders from this 
year. They will be second graders next year and then third graders. By 
the time we have finally done something on their behalf, we will have 
missed the most critical stage in their educational process. How 
irresponsible on our part.

  By the time the money is allocated and school districts can begin to 
make those hiring decisions, they have missed that opportunity. Our 
children will be the ones who suffer if we do not do the right thing in 
the Senate. I also think it is such a shame, as we look at the tax 
package that has been presented to the President, what it will do in 
robbing our children of the money that is needed to build new schools, 
hire new teachers, reduce class size, wire classrooms with the latest 
technology, and enhance the access to affordable higher education.
  Under the Republican plan that has been presented to the President, 
education funding will be cut by 17 percent. How inexcusable is that, 
our greatest resource in this Nation, our children, our future, and not 
even anteing up what we need to do to meet those needs. That is an 
embarrassment.
  It is in our Nation's long-term interest to give our children the 
very best, highest quality education that we can. But even if we would 
not do it for our children, should we not do it for our Nation? That is 
the future of our Nation, our children, their capability to compete 
with other children across this globe. We should make that a priority 
in the Senate. The American people have indicated to us that they have 
made it a priority on their wish list. They are the future of our 
workforce. They are the future of our country. If we fail our children, 
we have failed our Nation.
  So I rise today to encourage my Senate colleagues to reconsider their 
priorities and to support public schools by restoring full funding to 
education and supporting efforts to hire more teachers, to build more 
schools, and to establish valuable afterschool programs. Now is the 
time to act--not next year, not next Congress, but right here and right 
now. Let's get over the partisan bickering and political posturing and 
get on with the people's work.
  More important, let's move beyond the process posturing that the 
Senate is famous for and really reflect on our priorities, what our 
priorities should be, what is our greatest blessing, which I believe is 
our children. Their success is without a doubt the biggest measure of 
our Nation's success. I encourage my colleagues to do just as I am 
doing, and that is to talk about the education of our children and move 
this bill forward.
  I yield the remainder of my time.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Iowa.
  Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I compliment my colleague, the Senator 
from Arkansas, for a great statement on education. That is why I am 
taking the floor now, to talk about it and to lay out what has happened 
this year in education funding.
  I think my colleague, my friend from Arkansas, has really 
encapsulated it. There should be no higher priority in our country than 
the education of our children. I thank my colleague. We will work 
together on this.
  Education should not be a partisan issue. It should be bipartisan; it 
should have strong support from both parties. However, I am constrained 
to say at the beginning of this year, the Republican leadership said 
they were going to make education No. 1, the No. 1 priority. That is 
what the Senate majority leader said in January. That is what the 
chairman of the Budget Committee said. I am the ranking member on the 
appropriations subcommittee for education. When we got our initial 
allocation, we were then at a cut, in

[[Page S11033]]

the beginning, of $8 billion below a freeze from last year.
  I think my colleague, the chairman of our subcommittee, Senator 
Specter, has done a splendid job trying to get us moving forward. We 
were supposed to have a markup in May. That was postponed. This is for 
education. Then in June, postponed. Then we were supposed to mark up 
after the Fourth of July recess--postponed. They were supposed to do it 
before the August recess. We were supposed to have marked up last 
week--postponed. We were supposed to mark up this week--postponed. Why? 
Because the education subcommittee's funding has been raided to pay for 
other things. So I say to my friend from Arkansas, we have gone from 
No. 1 to No. 13. We can act on every other appropriations bill in the 
Senate, but education is dead last.

  Talk about priorities. I do not run the floor. The Republican 
leadership runs this floor and how we bring up the bills. We have not 
even brought the education appropriations bill up yet. We have 14 days 
left in this fiscal year. We passed a bill today that includes a pay 
raise for all the Senators and Congressmen. We passed that. We had time 
for that. We had the money for that. We had the money for defense. We 
have had the money for everything else. But we do not seem to have the 
money for education.
  What kind of a signal does that send? I said the other day, I feel 
sort of like that movie actor Bill Murray in ``Ground Hog Day.'' We 
keep getting the promise we are going to mark up education and it never 
happens. It never quite gets there. We never quite get to that day.
  So we have gone from 1st to 13th--dead last--in the Senate in terms 
of the priority for education.
  So what happened this week? Again, the education budget was raided, 
with $7.5 billion taken out of the education budget for VA-HUD. I am 
all for veterans. We have to fund our veterans' programs and medical 
care and housing. But they had to take it out of our education budget. 
In fact, even as I speak right now, the Appropriations Committee is 
marking up the VA-HUD bill with money that ought to be in there for 
education.
  So where does that leave us? That has left our Appropriations 
Subcommittee $15.5 billion below a freeze from last year. That 
translates into a 17-percent cut below last year.
  What does that mean for education? When you factor out education from 
all the other things we have in our bill, that is a $5.6 billion cut in 
education below what we had last year. And education is the No. 1 
priority of the Republican leadership? Say again? I do not understand 
this. We can fund everything else. We can pass every other bill. We can 
give huge increases to the Pentagon. But right now, as we stand here 
today, education is going to take a $5.6 billion cut.
  That translates into real cuts--real cuts for teachers, for example. 
We figured this out. We had an initiative last year of reducing class 
sizes. Everyone agrees, reducing class sizes is a goal that we ought to 
be pursuing diligently. This year we funded reducing class sizes by 
$1.2 billion. If this cut, where it stands right now, goes through, we 
will have to fire 5,246 teachers we just hired will lose their jobs. So 
5,000 teachers we hired for this school year, to reduce class sizes, 
will have to be let go with the 17-percent cut.
  Then I looked to see what it would do in my own State of Iowa. In 
Iowa, for example, some of the things that are most meaningful in 
education, title I--the title I reading and math program will be cut 
$11.3 million with this 17-percent cut; special education, IDEA, will 
be cut $8.5 million; class size reduction--the one I just spoke about; 
cutting the teachers--will be cut $1.6 million in the State of Iowa; 
safe and drug-free schools will be cut $717,000 from a $3.6 million 
level. That is just in my State of Iowa.
  I suggest to Senators that they might want to take a look at how much 
in each of their States' education funding will be cut where we are 
right now with that 17-percent across-the-board cut with what we have 
in our Education appropriations bill right now.
  Check your State. Then go back and tell your Governors and tell your 
State legislators, tell your school boards, tell your principals and 
superintendents and teachers how much education is going to get cut and 
how much they are going to have to come up with in increased property 
taxes. I bet the Governors will love that in the States.
  So right now education is dead last in the priorities in what is 
going on in the Senate. What does that say to our kids? What does that 
say to the people in general? We have increased defense spending. Oh, 
yes, we increased defense spending $16 billion. We have cut education 
by $5.6 billion. I guess we are going to have the strongest military in 
the world, and we are going to have a bunch of dummies in it or have 
more money in the military for remedial math and reading programs to 
bring them up to standards.

  Mr. President, I end where I started. We went from first in priority 
to dead last. That is unacceptable. We have to turn it around for the 
future of this country.
  I yield the floor.
  Mrs. MURRAY addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Washington.
  Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, I thank Senator Harkin for his statement 
and his commitment to education and the tremendous job he is doing to 
do the right thing, to get education back as the top priority of this 
Senate and not the last priority. I very much appreciate his strong 
words and his work, and I look forward to working with him.
  Mr. President, I remind my colleagues, at the beginning of this 
year,--as we were discussing budget priorities--virtually every Member 
of this Chamber--Republican and Democrat--came before you to say how 
important education is. I was proud to see that the issues that 
American families talk about around the kitchen table were finally 
being talked about here on the Senate floor.
  As the year has progressed, however, we have seen that it was just 
that--a lot of talk and no action. Members have not matched their talk 
about education funding with actual funds.
  For example, earlier this year, the budget chairman indicated he 
would increase funding for education and training by $5.6 billion. 
Including yesterday's actions on VA-HUD appropriations, we are now 
looking at--not an increase of $5.6 billion--but a decrease of more 
than $15 billion in education funding from last year.
  How are we going to look the American public in the eye and honestly 
say that we are doing what we have promised?
  This Congress has turned its back on the bipartisan commitment we 
made only last year. Schools in my State--and all across the country--
are using the Federal money we appropriated last year to hire more 
teachers right now. And it is working. But the current budget process 
cuts this progress off at the knees.
  A budget document is a statement of our values. When you look at the 
budgets that have come out this year, they show that Congress' values 
don't match Americans' values. How can we say that education is a 
priority if it receives only 1.6 percent of Federal spending?
  I cannot in good conscience sit quietly as this Congress goes back on 
its word and ignores the priorities of the American public.
  This is the most important discussion we can have right now. School 
is back in session, and people are talking about improving education. 
Only Congress is not listening.
  Sometimes in this Chamber it is hard to hear what our actions sound 
like across the country. Let me tell you what it sounds like to my 
constituents. They have told me in no uncertain terms that education 
funding matters.
  The people are speaking, but Congress is not listening.
  The American people have said that our children should not sit in 
overcrowded classrooms. When a child's hand goes up in the classroom, 
we all want the teacher to be able to focus on that child's question.
  What is Congress's reply? The Republican budget will cut education 
funding by more than 17 percent and guarantee that we keep our children 
in overcrowded classrooms.
  The people are speaking, but Congress is not listening.
  The American people have said that our teachers should be well-
trained and have the most recent skills and resources to meet today's 
complex

[[Page S11034]]

needs-- including knowing how to use technology to boost student 
achievement.

  What is Congress' reply? The Republican budget will cut education 
funding by more than 17 percent and guarantee that we cannot give our 
students the well-trained teachers they deserve. The people are 
speaking; Congress is not listening.
  The American people have said they want their children to learn in 
modern schools, not schools where plugging in a computer blows all the 
electrical circuits. What is Congress' reply? The Republican budget 
will cut education funding by more than 17 percent and guarantee that 
we will not be able to modernize our aging schools. The people are 
speaking; Congress is not listening.
  Over the past year, one place where our children should be the 
safest, our schools, has become a home to unspeakable acts of violence. 
At the end of last school year, we had tragedies in Colorado and 
Georgia. The American people have told us they want their children to 
be safe in school. What is Congress' reply? The Republican budget will 
cut education funding by more than 17 percent and guarantee that we 
take away resources for safe and drug-free schools now, when we need 
them the most. The people are speaking; Congress is not listening.
  When my colleagues say they are listening to the American people, 
they must be listening with their hands over their ears because they 
aren't getting the message.
  Let me be clear: Cutting education funding by more than 17 percent is 
not what the American people want. It is not what our students need, 
and it is not what this Congress said it would do.
  Why do I feel so strongly about this? Because making sure that we 
invest in public education and prepare our students and our country for 
tomorrow is at the core of who I am and why I am a United States 
Senator. When I was raising my children and my State was about to cut a 
small but very essential preschool program, I started talking to people 
around me about how we could keep that program. It wasn't very long 
before I had 15,000 people behind me making their voices heard in my 
State capital to save that preschool program. We fought very hard over 
a very small program, and we prevailed. The program wasn't cut, and 
today it is still helping students as it has been for the past 40 
years.
  These same parents and parents like them from around my State have 
responded so deeply to the need to invest in education that they sent 
me to the school board, the State senate, and now to the United States 
Senate. I stand before you as a person with a mission--to make sure 
that policymakers across this country do not walk away from their 
responsibility to the future of America and that they understand the 
importance of the Federal education dollar.
  Since I have been in the Senate, I have noticed a change. Because of 
the efforts of Members like myself, Tom Harkin, Ted Kennedy, Chris 
Dodd, Barbara Boxer, Jack Reed, and Republicans such as Senator 
Jeffords and others, this body is finally talking about education in a 
way that it never has before. This Chamber's discussion is more 
reflective of the discussions that go on around kitchen tables all over 
this country. But you don't get points for talk alone.
  I am sure that after my remarks today, some Members of this body will 
come here to say our public schools are failing, and they will paint us 
all a picture of woe and despair. The truth is, our public schools are 
doing a good job educating our children, and they are doing that good 
work in the face of enormous challenges today.

  I have to say it again because it has never been more clear: Our 
public schools have not failed us, but if we don't stop this Republican 
budget, we will be failing our public schools.
  The American people say education should be the highest priority. 
This Congress is making it our last priority. The American people say 
education should be our first priority. This Congress made it the last 
bill we will debate, after all the dollars have been spent, and there 
is only a little bit of spare change left.
  Some of the proposals out there would have you believe that we can 
solve everything just by making our Federal programs more flexible. We 
all want our programs to be flexible. But you can have all the 
flexibility in the world, and it won't solve our education problems. 
Our schools need resources and our schools need funding.
  The education budget has been left for the last. When we go home in a 
month, how will we explain the resulting decisions to our constituents? 
Which 17 percent of the kids are we going to say are not worth 
educating? To which 17 percent of the parents and families are we going 
to say: Sorry, we didn't have enough money to teach your child? Which 
17 percent of schools are not worth making safe, secure, and drug free?
  We cannot waste a single student. Even though it is very late in the 
game, and there is a lot of work to be done, we can turn this around. 
We can still decide to keep our word on education and to keep in step 
with the wishes of the American public.
  It is not too late. I urge all of my colleagues to act now to 
increase education funding and do right by our children.
  I thank the Chair and suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. GORTON. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. GORTON. Mr. President, is the Senate in morning business?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator is correct.

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