[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 156 (Monday, November 8, 1999)]
[House]
[Pages H11686-H11693]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                        EDUCATION SPENDING BILL

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Fletcher). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of January 6, 1999, the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Schaffer) 
is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
  Mr. SCHAFFER. Mr. Speaker, I am joined tonight by a couple of 
colleagues and others that I know are expecting to come over to the 
floor to help in this discussion.
  What we want to focus on this evening is our efforts to pass a series 
of appropriations bills that bring this country in under the budget 
caps that both the Congress and the White House had agreed to 
previously and, also, to alert our colleagues as to some of the real 
challenges that confront us as a Congress tonight and over the weekend 
and over the next couple of days that we are here in Washington as we 
move toward this deadline of Wednesday that we have set for ourselves, 
an expectation and anticipation that we will be able to arrive at a 
compromise with the White House.
  Because it is very clear, Mr. Speaker, that compromising with the 
White House is an expensive proposition.
  The Congressional Budget Office, as had been pointed out by colleague 
the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Kingston) who spoke just a few moments 
ago, had certified that the proposal that Republicans had put forward 
does balance the budget without raiding the Social Security trust fund 
and dip into Social Security funds to pay for Government, as has been 
the tradition over a great many years. And we are have very proud of 
that, and we want to stick as closely as possible to that ultimate 
goal.
  But things are getting a little more challenging in these 
negotiations with the White House. And I want to talk specifically 
about the budget as it relates to the topic of education.
  The United States Department of Education is an agency that controls 
approximately $120 billion in assets and expenditures, about $35 
billion in annual expenditures, at least according to the dollar 
amounts that we have set for the Department of Education; and the 
balance being the loan portfolio that the Department of Education 
maintains.
  Well, the President believes that we need to spend more. We have in 
fact, as I mentioned, budgeted $35 billion for the Department in the 
current spending bill, including $1.2 billion for the process of 
teaching to help appeal to the professional senses of our educators and 
classroom professionals throughout the country, to provide for more 
training for more teachers for those districts that wish to hire them 
and to do so within a framework of flexibility, not constraints but 
flexibility, in exchange for accountability.

  We believe there is a legitimate role for the Federal Government to 
be concerned about local schools but not to run them. We want to send 
the dollars back to local school districts, back to classrooms, and 
appeal to the professional sensibilities and the care and compassion 
and concern of qualified superintendents, school principals, locally 
elected school board members, and so on.
  Therein lies the difference, Mr. Speaker, that I want to zero in on 
tonight. Because the President's plan and the reason he vetoed the 
education spending bill, the reason he is holding that particular bill 
up at this very moment is a matter of philosophy. You see, we really do 
believe on the Republican side in our philosophy and our values of 
getting dollars back to the States with freedom and flexibility.
  But the President, instead, would like to hire approximately 100,000 
Government agents, Federal agents, and have those Federal employees 
working in classrooms and in my school where my children are educated. 
We believe, the Republican side, we want to give those dollars to 
classrooms and give them to local leaders and so on, but we do not want 
to define specifically how those dollars must be spent. We do not want 
to confine principals. We do not want to constrain superintendents. We 
do not want to limit the options and the freedom and liberty that local 
elected educators have. And we also want to honor and respect the 
leadership of governors throughout the country.
  There was a reporter just today who asked the President the following 
question, and I will quote the question. He says, ``Mr. President, on 
the issue of funding for teachers, sir, you resent it when Congress 
tells you to spend money in ways which you do not deem appropriate.''
  Let me stop right there at the reporter's question as it was put to 
the President. The President does disagree with this. We want to get 
dollars to the classrooms, to the local schools, and allow local 
professionals to determine how best to utilize those funds in the best 
interest of children. As the reporter accurately points out, the 
President resents it when Congress tells ``you'', the President, to 
spend money in ways which do you not deem appropriate.
  The reporter goes on: ``Why should a state governor who would like to 
spend that money differently feel any differently?'' And of course, the 
President has a different answer when it comes to governors. Here is 
what the President said in responding to governors and to this 
question. He said, ``Well, because it's not their money.''
  Now, this is the problem with Washington. In fact, that is what is 
sick with this city in Washington, D.C., when it comes to taking cash 
from the American people, bringing it here to Washington, sending those 
dollars back to the States, and putting crippling rules and regulations 
on those dollars and placing conditions on those dollars, which is what 
governors resent and what governors feel differently about.
  The President's answer is one that so many people in this 
bureaucratic mentality of Washington represent. He says, ``Well, 
because it's not their money.''
  The point being, this money must be his money. This money must be 
Government's money. This money must have been created somehow by people 
here in Washington.
  Well, I think most Americans, when they realize the attitude that 
comes from the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, it does not represent 
them, that this attitude is what people are most disgusted about when 
they think about Washington, D.C.
  We are trying to change that in this budget. That is the element of 
the debate that currently is holding up the agreement from going 
forward in this negotiation between the White House and the Congress.
  Well, we passed legislation, as I mentioned earlier, that deals with 
this effort to try to get dollars to local school districts and do it 
in a much more powerful and effective way and a way that more closely 
approximates the local priorities of school districts. And we are very 
serious about following through on that.
  We believe the liberty to teach and the freedom to learn are goals 
and objectives to which not only this Congress should aspire but the 
American people in general wish us to pursue, and we are going to stay 
on that course.
  The argument is compounded even further in our position, and the 
strength of it I think becomes even more apparent when you consider 
today's headline in the New York Daily News. I know this is small, but 
it is a copy of the front page. ``Not Fit to Teach Your Kid. In some 
city schools, 50 percent of teachers are uncertified,'' says the 
headline in the New York Daily  News.

  And the article that follows this headline shows that when you throw 
dollars at a goal of just simply hiring more Government employees that 
frequently you do not get the quality of teachers in this case that the 
American people would expect and that children in fact need.
  That is, I am afraid, the ultimate goal of the President's approach 
of restricting the dollars as they go to States, restricting them by 
tying strings to them, attaching mandates to those dollars. It will 
result I submit, Mr. Speaker, in more headlines like this not just in 
New York City but throughout the country. It is the kind of headline 
that we are working very

[[Page H11687]]

hard to avoid, in fact, and have headlines that we can be quite proud 
of about the professional kinds of teachers that we have in mind for 
hiring around the country through the leadership and through the 
initiative of governors, State legislators, school board members, 
principals, and superintendents.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield the floor to the gentleman from Pennsylvania 
(Mr. Peterson) who has worked very hard on this very topic and knows 
quite well how important it is to fight to get dollars to the 
classroom.
  Mr. PETERSON of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from 
Colorado (Mr. Schaffer) for yielding.
  Mr. Speaker, it is interesting, because most budget battles are about 
dollars, but the education debate going on in Washington now is not 
about more money. There is no argument about how much money we should 
spend but where the control lies.
  I think this is a pretty significant discussion that the American 
people needs to take seriously. And the question I ask, should the 
Federal Government dictate priorities for our local school districts? I 
think the vast majority of Americans would vote no to that. The vast 
majority of Americans would not want the Federal Government dictating 
local educational policies.
  Now, it is interesting, last year in some debate I remember the 
numbers, I think we take credit for supplying between 6.8 to 7 percent 
of the local dollars for basic education. But many said we provide 70 
percent of their bureaucratic nightmares. In other words, to get your 
hands on the Federal money, you have to have a lot of expertise. And it 
is interesting, when you look at the numbers of school districts who 
get very little Federal money and those who get a lot, that is the 
answer.
  So small, rural school districts, which I represent, I have school 
districts who get less than one-half of one percent of their money from 
the Federal Government. So no matter what we do here, it will not have 
a huge impact. And why do they not get that money?
  Well, in rural school districts you have a school superintendent and 
he is the butcher, the baker, and the candlestick maker. He does not 
have a finance officer. He does not have a curriculum director. He or 
she plays numerous roles because they do not have the dollars to have 
this bureaucracy within the school districts that can go after Federal 
dollars.
  Most school districts that are successful have specialized grantsmen 
who do nothing but look through the records and find out what programs 
may apply and how to apply for them. Urban suburban areas also have the 
luxury of educational consultants they can hire to help them get the 
Federal money.
  Now, when you have a bureaucratic system like that, it is rich get 
rich and the poorer get poorer because the poor do not have the money 
to invest in getting the Federal money. That is why in Pennsylvania, 
where I come from, there are schools who get less than one-half of one 
percent of their money from the Federal Government and there are 
schools that get 12 and 13 percent of their money from the Federal 
Government. Now, that is 25 times as much. Is that fair? No, that is 
not fair. But that is Federal bureaucracy, this federalized system.
  It is interesting because now the President is really hanging out out 
there and I heard his top people over the weekend talking about they 
were hanging out for a 100,000 teachers. In other words, if you will 
hire teachers, you can get in line for this money. But if you need 
computers, if you need more classrooms, if you need technology of some 
kind, if you need your school wired, if you need new books, we are not 
going to help you.
  Now, I think that that is the mistake. And I want to relate it back 
to several years ago the President wanted 100,000 cops, and the record 
on that program in place a number of years now has never put 100,000 
cops on the streets of America.
  In fact, I recently had my staff working with two communities who are 
on hard times who got seduced by that program to hire more cops because 
they were free and they could use the police protection. But now they 
are finding out that is a temporary program and that is this teaching 
program, if I understand it right, it is a temporary program. So they 
are going to hire more teachers and in a couple years there will be no 
Federal money to pay for them, they will have to have the local 
resources.
  Now, should we be seducing schools and communities to hire more 
teachers and more cops if we are not going to be there year after year? 
Is that how we build a good educational system? I do not think so. 
Because just a few years ago, we had more computers and more 
technology, more emphasis on science and math. And basic literacy has 
been an issue year after year, and we have several dozen literacy 
programs.

                              {time}  2000

  Is it cost effective to have several dozen literacy programs that 
schools can apply for, or to have one literacy program? Now we have 
several dozen. We have had programs to promote parental involvement. We 
have had programs suggested that we should build schools from the 
Federal level. And, of course, the issue of accountability never really 
gets addressed very much. And I think that is the question parents ask, 
is how do we keep our educational system accountable?
  It is interesting as we have this debate and the unfairness of it, 
when we have 6.8 percent of the money is what we claim funds local 
education. I recently asked the Department of Education in 
Pennsylvania, I would like a printout of the money that each and every 
school district in Pennsylvania, and there are 530 some, gets to fund 
their schools, local money, State money and Federal money. They have 
that, and they gave me this printout. The part that surprised me was 
when they added up the column for Federal aid, it came to 3.1 percent. 
We said, there must be something wrong. So we sent it back to them. We 
said, you must have missed some Federal program, some major one. They 
came back to us and they said, no, we think all Federal money is 
included.
  So the question I ask is, if 6.8 percent is what we are supposed to 
be providing, and if only 3.1 percent in this State, Pennsylvania, is 
getting into the classroom, where did the rest of the money go? I do 
know one thing, that when I served in State government, the bureaucracy 
there was pretty well funded with Federal dollars. We have a 
bureaucracy here in town funded with Federal dollars. We have regional 
bureaucracies that are funded with Federal dollars. It is my opinion, 
and I am not saying 3.1 percent is totally accurate because I expected 
to have a couple of percent chewed up in bureaucracy. I did not expect 
over half.
  But as we continue to review this, I think it helps make the argument 
we make. Let us fund dollars that get to the classroom. Let us not say 
to schools, if you want our money, you have got to buy computers or you 
have got to hire teachers or you have to build more schools or you have 
to do certain things, because those things vary from State to State and 
community to community. We have 530 school districts in Pennsylvania. 
Multiply that by 50 States. There is a huge difference in what goes on 
in Alaska and what goes on in Florida and what goes on in Maine and 
what goes on in Missouri or Arizona, or Pennsylvania, or California. 
There are very different parts of this country.
  I think saying 100,000 teachers is about politics. That is a slogan. 
That is a campaign issue. That is not about helping education. Because 
if we really wanted to help education, we would cut through this 
bureaucratic maze and we would get dollars into the classroom that 
would be allowed to fix up the classroom, that would be allowed to hire 
more teachers if that is the goal, would be allowed to buy more 
computers and more technology, buy more books, do things that enhance 
the educational process, recruit the right kind of teachers for science 
and math which are in short supply, but allow the local districts to 
make those decisions of how they can best use those dollars.
  I say, Mr. President, when I have school districts that get less than 
1 percent of their funding from the Federal Government, I am sure they 
are not going to be standing up clapping when you talk about 100,000 
new teachers, because there is no way they can reach that.
  I just want to share, I was disappointed in the President's comments

[[Page H11688]]

today. He said, ``Well, because it's not their money,'' and he is not 
the first politician that has said that. Lots of politicians have said 
that. It is like it is their money. But he went on to say, ``If they 
don't want the money, they don't have to take it. If they are offended 
by it, they can give it to the other States and other school 
districts.'' I am disappointed in that kind of rhetoric at this point 
in the process. I am disappointed in that kind of an attitude, because 
I think it is time that we think about the kids, we think about 
maximizing their potential education, and stop arguing about political 
slogans that will be used in brochures another 12 months and get down 
to saying, let us get the money to the schools. If we are only getting 
60 percent of it there, let us say we try to get 70 this year. If we 
are only getting 50 percent there, let us say we try to get 65 and next 
year 85 and let us get the money driven out. Let us somehow work 
through this bureaucratic maze that is chewing up these bucks and have 
the money go out there in someway that poor districts, that rural 
districts who do not have grantsmen, who do not have a lot of staff can 
get their fair share of Federal resources.
  The Federal program, in my view, rewards the rich, those who have the 
staff, those who have their own bureaucracy and can meet the needs of a 
Federal bureaucracy and leaves the poor, impoverished school districts 
out to lunch.
  Mr. SCHAFFER. Your comments about the differences between rural 
districts, urban districts, wealthy districts and poor districts is 
right at the heart of this debate over Clinton teachers versus local 
school teachers. It comes down to this. There are many, many places in 
America where districts need more teachers. They need the resources to 
hire more teachers, get them into classrooms, reduce class size, where 
these are the locally established goals, goals established by locally 
elected school board members, by principals who know the names of the 
students in those classrooms, by superintendents who know the names of 
the principals and so on. For those school districts, we say you ought 
to be able to spend your money on classroom reduction, to hire new 
teachers, local teachers if you would like.
  The President's answer is one that you have summed up perfectly, 
referring to his comments earlier today, that we should do it Clinton's 
way, because, as he says, well, because it is not their money. It is 
not that local principal's money, it is not that Governor in 
Pennsylvania's money or Colorado's money. This money somehow, according 
to people in the White House, belongs to, well, the White House, and 
they therefore believe that they have some title to define how those 
dollars should be spent. The principals who want to hire more teachers, 
they ought to be able to use their funds, their Federal funds, to hire 
more teachers, but those that wish to invest in technology, to buy a 
new school bus, to resurface the roof, to do a number of other things 
that they might believe to be more important, to target those dollars 
to reading programs for disadvantaged children and things of that sort, 
those teachers ought to have the full freedom, the full liberty to use 
their money as they see fit. That is the difference. We view these 
precious dollars that taxpayers send to Washington and we then send 
back to the States as the taxpayers' money. Down at the White House, 
they view these dollars as the White House's money. When the President 
uses that kind of language and that kind of attitude, I want our 
colleagues and the American people to know that the President is in for 
a fight on this one. These dollars do not belong to people in 
Washington. Americans work too hard to earn these dollars and send them 
here. I think they send too much here. But acknowledging that they work 
hard to send those dollars here to Washington, I want people to know 
that there is a party here in Washington that is going to stand up and 
look after those dollars and is going to send them back home with the 
fewest amount of strings and regulations and red tape and mandates 
attached, and that this is a fight worth fighting and we are going to 
stand in there for those children who ultimately will benefit from 
greater academic liberty and freedom and more managerial freedom at 
local levels.
  It also raises another point, and, that is, did we not already 
provide these 100,000 Clinton teachers? Did we not already fund them? 
Because that was in last year's budget as well. What happened to those? 
As it turns out, the President estimated that he had only hired 21,000 
teachers with the dollars we appropriated and as it turns out, an even 
deeper analysis concludes that we probably did not even hire those 
teachers with the funds that the White House insisted on last year. And 
so when you send these kinds of dollars to specific school districts 
and tell them that you have just got to go out and hire people, what 
happens is exactly what happens in New York, if you read the New York 
Daily News today, that in New York they took the cash. Of course, there 
is no principal or superintendent or school board that is going to turn 
down the cash. They took the cash and they hired teachers who are not 
certified, because they just had to spend the money, just spend cash. 
It did not matter whether the children were benefitting. It did not 
matter whether the kids were getting smarter. It did not matter whether 
they were hiring teachers that were capable of teaching. They just 
hired people, uncertified teachers in this case, as many as 50 percent 
in some New York schools. This is a bad formula for education in 
America and it is not the formula we want to see.
  I know there are a great number of us here in Congress who focus on 
this topic and feel passionately about it. Another one is with us 
today, the gentleman from California (Mr. McKeon), a member of the 
Committee on Education and the Workforce and subcommittee chairman, one 
who has demonstrated day after day and time after time his commitment 
to getting dollars to the classroom and looking out for children rather 
than the education special interests that we find here in Washington, 
D.C.
  I yield to the gentleman from California.
  Mr. McKEON. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the gentleman from Colorado 
(Mr. Schaffer) for taking the time to set up this special order to give 
us a chance to talk a little bit about what we are trying to do in 
education on our side of the aisle.
  Last year, early this year, we in our subcommittee started holding 
hearings on what we could do to improve and to help education. We were 
specifically looking at what we could do to help improve teaching. We 
started holding hearings around the country and here in Washington and 
people came and testified before us, people from various phases of 
education, administrators, teachers, school board members, parents, and 
they all said one thing in common, that the most important person in 
teaching is the parent; number two, the next most important person is 
the teacher. I think we all agreed on that and in a bipartisan way we 
moved forward and crafted legislation that said we would send money to 
the local school districts and let them decide how they would spend 
that money. We gave the highest priority to classroom reduction, class 
size reduction, because we felt that was a very high priority. However, 
if the district was unable to hire qualified teachers, we said that 
they could use that money to train the teachers that they now had.

  We had a young man, a young educator, African-American from 
Washington, D.C. come in to testify. He had been teaching, he said, for 
a couple of years, and he felt very inadequate. He was put in a third-
grade class and was told to teach these children how to read. He knew 
how to read and the principal said, you know how to read, teach them 
how to read. But he had never in his education had a class on how to 
teach reading, and he was very frustrated. He felt like he was not 
doing an adequate job and he was ready to leave the profession. 
Fortunately, somebody was able to get him to a class where he was able 
to learn how to teach and he was doing a much better job, his students 
were prospering, he was feeling better about himself and stayed in the 
profession.
  I have some real concerns about hiring a lot of people that may not 
be adequately prepared. In my own State of California, we reduced class 
size a couple of years ago, we put that as the number one priority from 
the governor, they mandated from the State headquarters class size 
reduction, and it has

[[Page H11689]]

resulted in over 30,000 underqualified teachers in California.
  Another example, Jacques Steinberg of the New York Times wrote that 
58 percent of newly hired teachers in the Los Angeles Unified School 
District, which is part of my district, are not certified. Instead, 
some were hired solely on their experience of leading church or camping 
groups. I am not saying that these are not good people and I am not 
saying that they are not concerned and they are trying to do their 
best, I am just saying that they are not prepared. We said in our bill 
that you take the money and you decide what is best for your local 
school district. The gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Peterson), the 
gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Schaffer), myself from southern 
California, all have different kinds of districts.
  I served for 9 years on a local school board. I was very frustrated 
with the mandates coming from Washington, or the mandates coming from 
Sacramento. That was one of the reasons why I ran for Congress and why 
I am happy to be on the Committee on Education and the Workforce and 
why I wanted to, to see if we could not try to solve a problem. Many 
Democrats joined with us in this legislation on teacher empowerment. 
They felt like it was the right thing to do. We talked and said, once 
in a while you can do the right thing here. But it is like the 
President is stuck on this 100,000 teachers and no matter what we do or 
say, he says, we are not leaving town until we give him a program for 
100,000 teachers. We say, we have the program. The only thing we are 
saying is, we are not going to run it out of Washington, we are going 
to let the local people decide. The money is there. Take the money. If 
you need it to hire teachers, do it. If you need it to train teachers, 
do it. If you need it to provide merit pay to ensure that your teachers 
do a better job or the better teachers are rewarded, do it. If you need 
it for tenure reform or other innovations, do it. But you have the 
responsibility. You have the ability.
  I represented our area in the State school board association for the 
time when I was on the school board. We had 6,000 locally elected 
school board members in California. They were good people. They were 
sincere. They really wanted to do what was right for the children. But 
their hands in most cases are tied, because of mandates that come out 
of Washington. If we send this money out and say, you can use it 
because the President says so for a Federal mandate to reduce class 
size, K-3, to 18 children, I do not know where they got that magical 
number, but that is what they said and that is the only choice you 
have, and like the gentleman from Pennsylvania said, his district 
probably will not see any of that money. Your districts may not see 
some of that money. But what we are saying is use it to improve the 
teachers that you now have. Help them do a better job.
  We did a press conference today and outside we were talking to a 
reporter.

                              {time}  2015

  And there was one of our security people standing right there, a 
mother; and I could see, she heard us talking and I could just see she 
wanted to enter into this conversation. And the reporter was asking 
questions, well, do you feel like you have reneged because you agreed 
to the President's 100,000 teachers last year and now you are backing 
out from it? I said look, we are not backing off of that at all. We are 
just saying that instead of Washington having to decide, we let the 
local people decide. Ask this lady right here. She looks like a mother. 
Ask her if she wants to have the best qualified teacher or if she wants 
the smaller class size.
  We say, she can have both. I have six children that grew up through 
the public education system. I have 17 grandchildren now growing up 
through the public education system. I have talked to my daughters, and 
I have talked to my daughters-in-law; and I find out what is going on 
in the school and they say look, if we have a chance to get the best 
teacher in the second grade class, and all teachers are not equal, if 
we have a chance to get that teacher and the class size is 25, worse is 
the teacher that they just hired to fill a Washington mandate and maybe 
made the class size 18, if I had my choice, I will take the teacher, 
the good, qualified teacher in the 25-student classroom, because I know 
my student will get a better education than they will in a smaller 
class size with a poorly prepared or inadequately prepared teacher.
  All we are saying, we are not fighting over the money, we are not 
fighting with the President. We are saying, Mr. President, join us. 
Call this your bill. Make it the Clinton Teacher Empowerment Act. I do 
not care. But let us put the students first, let us put our children 
first, and let us let their parents at the local level, the school 
boards at the local level be involved in the decision. Let them decide. 
Because one-size-fits-all out of Washington will not work.
  We are going to hold on this. We think this is important. If we have 
to stay here, Mr. President, until Christmas, if you have to miss your 
trip around the world to stay here to work with us on it, let us do it; 
but let us remember the children first. I thank the gentleman.
  Mr. SCHAFFER. Mr. Speaker, the gentleman points out really a lack of 
a distinction, I suppose, between the White House and the Congress when 
it comes to the actual dollars, because the reality is, there is no 
difference of opinion on the dollar amount for education and for the 
education budget.
  We are prepared to spend $35 billion on the Department of Education, 
and that is what we budgeted. In fact, when we really look at the 
bottom line, the Republican Congress has proposed more money and has 
spent more money on education this year than the President himself had 
requested and had suggested in the education budget. So this is not 
about spending money. That argument has been taken away from the White 
House.
  This is about how the money is spent, whether it goes to States with 
the flexibility and freedom to hire more teachers if they want, to buy 
more computers if they want, to do more training if they want, to focus 
more on teacher quality if they would like, versus the President's 
answer which assumes that it is not their money, as the President said; 
the American people, it is not their money and the States, and make 
that assumption and send those dollars back to States with 
constraining, restrictive rules that say, you may only spend those 
education dollars in a narrow sort of way.
  I represent a lot of rural districts in my congressional district. 
Even if we assume there are 100,000 teachers in this package, which 
there are not, as we saw last year, it is not even 21,000 that the 
President had thought he counted in the current year; it is much less 
than that. When we spread 21,000 teachers across the country, let us be 
generous. Let us say we really do hire 100,000 new Clinton teachers. 
Let us say we hire those teachers out of Washington and spread them out 
across the country. When we get to the small districts of America, they 
do not get any. There are no teachers left by the time we get to these 
rural areas. They are all consumed by the large inner city metropolitan 
areas around the country, and most children in most school districts 
will be abandoned by this narrow, mandated, restricted process that the 
President has outlined to spend these dollars.
  Mr. McKEON. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will yield, I heard a story 
over the weekend. One of our good Senators from the other body was 
having a discussion with one of the Federal bureaucrats and the Federal 
bureaucrat said, I resent what you are saying; I resent what you are 
proposing. I want you to know that I love your children every bit as 
much as you do. The Senator said, oh, yeah? What are their names?
  I go visit a lot of schools and I see principals go into classrooms 
and they know their names; they know the children. Are we to say that 
they are not going to do what is best for the children, at least as 
good as what they would do out of the White House. I propose that they 
would do much better. Let us give them the opportunity. Let us send the 
money back to them, and let them hire and train and help their 
teachers, and let us remember the children.

  Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will yield, there is a 
great story about a teacher, and we all had these institutional 
teachers that everybody loved and feared, but respected

[[Page H11690]]

and learned a lot from. This 30-year veteran of the school system in 
Gray, Georgia, a tiny little town outside of Macon, she was teaching, 
and this new up-start from the Department of Education, probably on the 
6th floor up there, third office down to the right, a very important 
person with cell phones and laptop computers, decided she was going to 
go down to Gray, Georgia, and grace the good teacher with some of her 
wisdom.
  Now, this young lady, who is a fine person, I am sure, but she had 
never taught kids. So she goes down to the teacher and says, you know, 
after 30 years of teaching, you have been teaching kids on the right-
hand side of the chalkboard, and do you know that the left side of the 
brain learns faster than the right side, and so what you need to do is 
switch and put everything over on the right side of the chalkboard, or 
the left side of the chalkboard, because that is really where you can 
improve your education, teaching. This is a lady who has been teaching 
for 30 years, listening to a 25-year-old bureaucrat from Washington, 
D.C. who had never put one hour in a classroom. This was a lady, a 
veteran teacher that you and I talk about and our cousins talk about 
and our friends talk about and we still remember what she taught us 
about Hemingway and Thoreau and Chaucer. But the good old Department of 
Education, because they love children.
  It is odd to me how a bureaucrat in Washington, D.C., as smart as 
they are, and as much love as they have in their hearts can love kids 
down in Gray, Georgia, and teach them better than the people in Gray, 
but also better than the people in New York City or California or 
Colorado. I mean, these are very interesting, brilliant people.
  The gentleman was talking about waste. There was an interview this 
weekend on a television show with John Stossel and Barbara Walters, and 
what the Clinton person was saying, well, the Republicans want to slash 
class size. And Mr. Stossel, who is a neutral journalist says, oh, come 
on. Local districts pay for education. Is there no fat in the Education 
Department? In five years, Federal education funding has increased 20 
percent. There are now 4,000 workers in Washington, D.C., attending 
conferences, making phone calls, and not teaching. Are they really 
necessary?
  Or how about the $400,000 appropriated to build a Doctor Seuss 
statue. Is that really necessary? He goes on and on and on. It is not 
just the Department of Education. The Department of Interior, the 
Department of Defense, the Department of Family Services. Everything 
has waste in it, and the only thing we have asked these bureaucracies 
in Washington to do is cut out one penny on the dollar so that we will 
not have to spend Social Security money. We want to be able to spend 
it.
  Mr. SCHAFFER. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, the examples the 
gentleman used are examples that seem quite obvious to the American 
people, but the expenditure is coming out of the White House.
  I want to go back to this example of the requirement that States use 
their education dollars the way the White House wants to prove the 
point, because the assumption is that 100,000 teachers is automatically 
a good idea. That sounds good to most people, 100,000 teachers. That 
sounds like a very positive thing. Most people who are familiar with 
classrooms that are overcrowded and so on just naturally assume that 
that is somehow going to help. But it ignores the question of quality, 
which is the bigger issue and the more important issue.
  What we find time and time again is that a quality teacher makes far 
more difference than a greater volume of teachers. The research is, 
across the academic spectrum, replete with results showing, and this is 
one from the National Center for Policy Analysis, and I will just read 
the first paragraph: ``There is little evidence that smaller classes 
help students,'' says education expert Chester Finn, Jr., who by the 
way, was a pretty high-ranking official in the Department of Education 
a few years back, ``and reducing class size may even hurt student 
achievement if the new teachers are mediocre,'' again, bringing the 
argument back to the notion that quality matters more than quantity. 
``Yet, President Clinton has proposed shrinking classes in the early 
grades to 18 students per teacher by hiring 100,000 more teachers at 
Federal expense for 7 years,'' and the report goes on further.
  In fact, I would ask unanimous consent that this be entered into the 
record. It is a brilliant report that shows that just spending money 
does not necessarily accomplish the goal of improving teacher quality. 
Sometimes that can happen. Spending money sometimes can work, but what 
we need are locally-elected school boards; we need professionals in 
administrative positions, superintendents and principals and other 
supervisors who are capable and competent of using the dollars in a way 
that more effectively meets the needs and objectives of classrooms and 
children and fits consistently within their management style at a 
classroom level.

  So, Mr. Speaker, I would ask unanimous consent to enter that into the 
RECORD at this point.
  Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, let me tell the gentleman another story 
from back in the district, Camden County, Georgia, a Southeast Georgia 
county that borders the St. Mary's River just North of Jacksonville, 
Florida. A lady down there, she was not a teacher, she was with the 
local Board of Education and she had just returned from Athens, 
Georgia, where the University of Georgia is located, from an anti-
hugging seminar. Now, that was not the name of it, but that is what 
they called it.
  What she had to attend was a conference put on by the national 
Department of Education in Athens, Georgia, for all of the teachers in 
the 165 school districts of the State of Georgia on not being alone 
with children. They told her, they said do not ever touch a child. 
Okay, a lot of sexual harassment going on, we can understand the good 
intentions here. They said, do not be alone with the child and do not 
ever express any kind of affection. So now she has to go back and tell 
all the teachers in Camden county not to hug, not to touch, not to be 
alone with children.
  Just think about this a minute. If you are a C student and you did 
not get the quadratic formula the first time around, you cannot go 
after school and see Ms. Jones because she has to have a witness for 
that 20 minutes that you are with her that she did not try anything on 
you. And if you are a little, say, a 6-year-old or 7-year-old and you 
have some problems with the mechanics of relieving yourself in the 
boys' or girls' room, sometimes you might need a teacher assistant. You 
cannot do that any more without a witness, because the National 
Department of Education knows best for the children in Camden County.
  She said, but you know what the real tragedy is? Camden County is the 
home of Kings Bay Naval Base, lots of young moms and dads, lots of 
parents of very small children who are away for 6 months at a time. She 
said, these little kids have a lot going on in their lives. They need a 
hug a lot more than they need an A, and if we want to help children, we 
need to get the bureaucracy in Washington off the backs of the teachers 
in Camden County so that they can do what they know best locally. And 
they are going to use good judgment.
  They do not need the bureaucracy of Washington, D.C. to stick their 
nose in their business. I know they are doing it in, Colorado; but it 
is just that same Washington-knows-best culture, let us spend money 
because the money well, as the President said, ``it is not their 
money.'' I guess the President is a very wealthy guy. But it certainly, 
as he says, it is not their money. I would agree with him, it is 
certainly not the Government's money on any level; it is the taxpayers' 
and the hard-earned workers' money that we are spending here, and that 
is why we should be very careful on how we spend it.

                              {time}  2030

  Mr. SCHAFFER. Absolutely. The assumption that the dollars that the 
taxpayers send to Washington do not belong to the taxpayers, but to the 
people in Washington, I cannot think of a more arrogant statement for 
anyone in Washington to make than that which was made just today down 
at the White House.
  Sending those dollars to Washington also entails being accountable 
for those dollars once they are spent. What three of us discovered, 
Members of Congress who actually went down to the Department of 
Education office building a week ago Friday, was that the Department's 
budget is not auditable. Their

[[Page H11691]]

accounting system is so bad that the General Accounting Office and the 
Inspector General of the Department of Education have concluded that 
for fiscal year 1998, their books are still unauditable, meaning that 
we will never really know in full detail where the money went that was 
spent in the Department of Education in 1998.
  Mr. KINGSTON. Exactly how much money is the gentleman talking about 
that is unauditable?
  Mr. SCHAFFER. Let me use 1999, since I am more familiar with those 
dollars. We spend approximately $35 billion in annual appropriations 
for the Department of Education. The Department of Education also 
manages the loan portfolios of virtually every student who has gone to 
school in America and financed a college education through a guaranteed 
government student loan.
  So when we add the loan portfolio, this is an agency that is in 
charge of a total financial portfolio of about $120 billion annually, 
and for an agency of that size, it makes it effectively one of the 
largest financial institutions on the entire planet. Their 1998 books 
are not auditable. The American people and this Congress have no 
assurance that the money in 1998 was spent well, let alone in 
subsequent years after that, which the appropriations are built upon.
  The point of all this is, for any president or any Cabinet Secretary 
to suggest that there is no savings to be found in a department is 
ludicrous at a time when they cannot even tell us where the dollars 
that are already in the Department are right now. The books in the 
Department are not auditable.
  Mr. KINGSTON. If the gentleman will yield further, Mr. Speaker, can 
the gentleman tell me this: If the IRS came to a business and found 
that business could not be audited, and they were having a dispute over 
accounting for tax dollars, what would the IRS do?
  Mr. SCHAFFER. Depending upon the length of time, there may be some 
extensions that a business could file, but not without substantial 
penalty, and certainly corporate embarrassment. It is more a matter of 
an unacceptability by stockholders and people who own a business who 
would not put up with the management of their enterprise in such a way.
  Beyond that, failure to audit books in a way which can provide a 
clear picture as to the tax liability will send people to jail. So in 
many cases, I think what the gentleman from Georgia was getting at, in 
many cases a business that had a picture like this of their financial 
statements not being auditable would be liable for substantial civil 
penalties, possibly criminal penalties, and certainly be looking at the 
potential of jail time.
  I point all that out, and our goal is not to send anybody in the 
Department of Education to jail or even to fine them, but the point of 
all of this is that my constituents and the gentleman's and the 
constituents of every other Member of Congress worked hard today to pay 
their income taxes and send them here to Washington, D.C. They would 
prefer to see those dollars spent on things that they can have some 
confidence in at the local level, maybe for their families, maybe 
savings for their own children.
  But to have those dollars taken from them, sent here to Washington, 
D.C. and accounted for in such a poor way, is a true disservice to the 
American taxpayer. The bottom line is, the inability to effectively 
manage the financial cash flow of a large department like the 
Department of Education hurts children.
  This picture right here to my right represents, and I know it talks 
about the inability to audit the financial books of the Department of 
Education, but what is really jeopardized through this process is the 
ability to get dollars to children, to get dollars to the classroom. 
Children are hurt when the Department of Education is run so poorly, as 
we are discovering this year.
  Mr. KINGSTON. Children are denied the good quality education, the 
quality education that they need.
  It is interesting that Mobil Oil Company cut their budget by 11 
percent this year. AT&T cut their budget by $2 billion. Yet, when we go 
to bureaucracies in Washington and ask them to come up with 1 percent, 
they cannot find it.
  To me, if I was the President and my cabinet said that, I would say, 
look, you know what, this is not our money; of course, I know he thinks 
it is; but, you have got to find 1 percent. That is reasonable. Nobody 
in America cannot find one cent in a dollar they spend to come up with 
savings.

  Mr. SCHAFFER. I want to point out again, Mr. Speaker, this is a 
simple picture that represents a big problem. Talking about finances 
and accounting and talking about financial procedures, accounting 
procedures, and the portfolios of loan funds and grant-backed funds is 
complicated, monotonous, boring stuff for a lot of people. We cannot 
sum up the nature of the problem by using some catchy word like 100,000 
teachers, like the President would suggest that we ought to do.
  What the President ought to be doing is focusing on this problem 
right here, the financial mismanagement of a $120 billion agency that 
affects children every day in America. He ought to roll up his sleeves 
and go down there to the Department of Education headquarters, just 
like Members of Congress were willing to do just a few days ago, and 
start asking some hard questions to the people in charge of these 
various programs.
  I will tell the Members what he will find, which is just what we 
found. We did not find any real resentment or resistance, for that 
matter. We found some pretty conscientious employees who realized they 
are in deep trouble and they have a little bit of a mess over there. 
They have committed to working with us as Members of Congress to try to 
fix these problems. Again, this is the monotonous, boring, nuts and 
bolts details of keeping track of the people's tax dollars.
  When we allow ourselves to believe, as the President clearly 
demonstrated he does, that it is not their money, it is not the 
taxpayers' money, then it becomes easier to rationalize a lot of waste 
in Washington. It becomes easier to rationalize rules and regulations 
and mandates and red tape attached to the taxpayers' dollars that 
renders those dollars less effective.
  If we really believe that the money belongs to the White House and 
not to the American people, then it is easy to start talking about the 
taxpayers' hard-earned dollars in terms of campaign one-line gimmicks, 
rather than doing the hard work of helping children.
  That is why there is such a difference of opinion in this 
appropriations process between the Congress and the White House, 
between the Republicans and the Democrats. On our side of the aisle, we 
are willing to do the hard work to help children, to squeeze the 
efficiency out of the Federal government so that the taxpayers are 
honored by having dollars come to Washington and help their children 
learn, not squander the dollars in Washington as though they belonged 
to the White House and people here in D.C., and that somehow children 
do not matter.
  That is the difference between the Republican vision to help children 
and the Democrat vision to help government.
  Mr. KINGSTON. If the gentleman will yield, again, all we are asking 
Washington to do is to do what people back home do, come up with 1 cent 
on every dollar they spend. One cent in savings here means savings for 
retirement, for social security, not just for seniors today but for all 
generations. That is all it takes.
  I am on the Subcommittee on Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and 
Drug Administration, and Related Agencies of the Committee on 
Appropriations, and if I eat a cheese pizza, it has been inspected by 
the Food and Drug Administration. But if I get a pepperoni pizza, it 
has to be inspected by the United States Department of Agriculture.
  I eat lots of pizza because I have four kids. It would appear to me 
that surely we could have the same inspector checking the pepperoni and 
the cheese pizza. I do not know if there is a different department for 
sardines, and knowing Washington there probably is, but it just goes on 
and on and on here, the potential savings that are resisted, and only 
in this town.
  In real America, every American does what we did yesterday. Sunday 
morning, Sunday mid-morning you go through Parade Magazine, you go 
through the local coupons in your local

[[Page H11692]]

Piggly-Wiggly, and I guess, what does the gentleman have in Colorado, 
Target?
  Mr. SCHAFFER. We have those, yes.
  Mr. KINGSTON. Target sells groceries, right? What is the gentleman's 
big grocery stores?
  Mr. SCHAFFER. We go to Albertson's.
  Mr. KINGSTON. My mother lives in Louisville, and I just wanted to 
make sure. I knew it was Albertson's. We have Piggly-Wiggly. If we want 
to buy the Special K cereal or we want to buy the Clusters, the kind of 
$3.50 a box stuff, we have to have the 75 cents, the 25 cents off 
coupons. Otherwise, we are going to get Piggly-Wiggly brand. Some of 
the Piggly-Wiggly brand is good but some just cannot quite compete with 
good old Kellogg's Corn Flakes, the best to you each morning. But we 
are not going to eat that unless we can save a quarter or 50 cents.
  We are not unusual. We are out there raising kids. That is just what 
we do. If we get our car washed, it is because we bought 8 gallons 
worth of gas. When we fill up our tank, it is when we have found the 
cheapest gas station on the block, the one that is $1.07 a gallon, not 
the one that is $1.15. I do not know who buys that premium unleaded 
stuff that is $1.27 a gallon. Somebody must, but it is not people I 
know. People I know do not buy suits unless they are on sale. They do 
not buy running shoes unless they are discontinued. They do not buy 
steak, they eat chicken. This is what American families go through 
every single day.
  If you want to go on a vacation, you save up your money and the dryer 
breaks, or you have to buy such exciting items as a new set of tires 
for your stationwagon. That is what America goes through daily, not 
just every now and then but every single day.
  What we are asking Washington to do just one time, for the sake of 
social security and for the sake of not having a tax increase, just 
find one measly little penny on every dollar they save so that we can 
protect and preserve social security, not for the next election but for 
the next generation.
  Mr. SCHAFFER. Mr. Speaker, I would like to use an example. That is, 
what Americans really want is to be able to send their tax dollars to a 
legitimate purpose, to help schoolchildren, in this example. There is a 
difference between sending those dollars directly to our local school 
or through the State, which the Constitution clearly places States as 
the legitimate jurisdiction to set up a public school system and to 
manage local schools. Most States defer a tremendous amount of 
authority to local school boards.
  Some of those dollars come here to Washington, D.C. So for a taxpayer 
who sends his or her hard-earned education tax dollar to Washington, I 
want to show the Members where those education tax dollars go. Because 
first, there is an expense associated with just paying the taxes, with 
complying with the IRS, and the Federal government spends a certain 
amount of our education dollar right up front just to pay for the cost 
of collecting that education dollar. That comes right out of the 
education apple to begin with.
  Then those dollars come here to Congress, and we redistribute those 
dollars. By the time they leave the United States Department of 
Education and come through this process, the U.S. Department of 
Education takes its bite out of the apple, and it is a pretty 
substantial bite out of the apple, as well.
  Then those Federal education dollars go back to the States and are 
administered by various State bureaucrats, and States have to comply 
with more Federal rules and regulations. They have to hire people to 
accomplish that. So of the education dollar, the States, by Federal 
mandate, are required to take their portion out of the equation, as 
well.
  By the time those dollars actually get to a child or actually get to 
the school district, the principal and the superintendent, of course, 
they have to file reports with the Federal government, as well. If they 
have lots of mandates and rules and regulations, as the gentleman from 
Pennsylvania earlier pointed out, local school districts have to hire 
people to comply with those Federal education rules and regulations, 
also.
  What we found here in Congress is by the time an education dollar 
goes through that whole process of being paid by a taxpayer and going 
back to their home States, there is only about 30 to 35 percent of that 
education dollar left. That is about it.
  People back home believe that they are working hard and they want to 
believe that the dollars they spend are helping children back home, but 
in reality this is what is coming home, just a couple of bites of the 
apple. The rest is cut up in little chunks and pieces, and bureaucrats 
all over Washington, D.C. get their bellies full and they are 
comfortable with these education dollars, but the children get a small 
percentage left over.
  We want to make this percentage bigger. In fact, we want to make it 
as close to 100 percent as we possibly can to help children back home.
  Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will yield further, as I 
listen to the gentleman I remember my days as a volunteer for United 
Way. United Way, for every dollar someone contributes, it uses less 
than 10 cents for administration. Ninety cents on that dollar goes to 
the victim, the social service recipient, the person in need, 90 cents.
  I would love to see the Washington bureaucracy adopt the United Way 
standard, because if we did, then I think there would be enough money 
to do everything to keep everybody satisfied.
  Mr. SCHAFFER. We really should. Then there is the question of 
mandates. If I can use a bit of one of these apples, again, I will use 
the 35 percent that goes to the classroom and start there, as the 
gentleman from Pennsylvania pointed out, in reality, when we talk about 
all of the dollars that end up in a classroom, most of those dollars 
are State and local dollars. The Federal government, through this 
process that I mentioned, really sends about 6 to 7 percent of the 
classroom budget, or is responsible for 6 to 7 percent of the classroom 
budget. Yet, for this little amount of funding in every classroom comes 
the vast majority of the mandates that principals and teachers and 
superintendents have to deal with.
  Again, for this little bit of money we get this much rules and 
regulations. It makes no sense. For many administrators that I speak 
with, that is the greatest thing they ask for. They do not even ask for 
more money. When it comes right down to it, they just want more 
freedom, more flexibility, more liberty, to be able to use those 
dollars in a way that they see fit.

                              {time}  2045

  And that brings us back to the original point of tonight's special 
order, is that the Republican Party here in Congress desperately wants 
to help children and reach out to school districts and the classrooms. 
We want to get those dollars to the districts in a way that allows them 
to spend them in the way that they see fit. But forcing States to spend 
the money the way the White House wants will result in more headlines 
like we see today in New York going to individuals who are really not 
teachers at all, folks who are in classrooms who are uncertified, 
incapable of teaching. They are only there because somebody in 
Washington dished out the cash in large proportions and invited someone 
else to spend it.
  Mr. Speaker, the children really do not matter in this headline and 
we think that is wrong. We want children to matter all across the 
country and we want to see headlines that are positive and talking 
about the great growth and the world's best schools. That is our goal 
and dream for our children and our country, and that is the goal to 
which we are most dedicated.
  With that, Mr. Speaker, I thank those who have joined me in this 
special order tonight.


                smaller classes not an education panacea

       There is little evidence that smaller classes help 
     students, says education expert Chester E. Finn Jr., and 
     reducing class size may even hurt student achievement if the 
     new teachers are mediocre. Yet President Clinton has proposed 
     shrinking classes in the early grades to 18 students per 
     teacher by hiring 100,000 more teachers at federal expense 
     for seven years.
       After reviewing the relevant research, economist Eric 
     Hanuskek of the University of Rochester concluded ``there is 
     little systematic gain from general reduction in class 
     size.''
       Class size has been shrinking for decades--the national 
     average is now 22 kids per classroom, down from more than 30 
     in the 1950s--

[[Page H11693]]

     at immense cost, but with no comparable gain in achievement.
       In fact, the Asian countries that trounce the U.S. on 
     international education assessments have vastly larger 
     classes, often 40 or 50 per teachers.
       And in California, When Gov. Pete Wilson shrank class 
     sizes, veteran teachers left inner-city schools in droves, 
     lured by higher pay and easier working conditions in suburban 
     schools that suddenly had openings.
       One or two studies that suggest fewer kindergarten children 
     in a classroom is linked with modest test-score gains, says 
     Finn; but more research is necessary before it can be said 
     its efficacy has been proven.
       Alternatively, Finn suggests the $12 billion in new federal 
     spending Clinton proposes would be better spent to fund 
     $4,000 scholarships for 425,000 low-income students for seven 
     years. Or it could be used to improve teaching by providing a 
     $4,500 college tuition grant for every one of the nation's 
     2.7 million teachers.
       That would be useful. Finn points out, because the 
     Department of Education reports that 36 percent of public-
     school teachers of academic subjects neither majored nor 
     minored in their main teaching field.
       Source: Chester D. Finn, Jr. (president, Thomas B. Fordham 
     Foundation) and Michael J. Petrilli (Hudson Institute), ``The 
     Elixir of Class Size,'' Weekly Standard, March 9, 1998.

                          ____________________