[Congressional Record Volume 146, Number 12 (Thursday, February 10, 2000)]
[Senate]
[Pages S594-S596]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                       BLOCK GRANTS IN EDUCATION

  Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, I rise to express my strong opposition to 
the use of block grants in education spending.
  First, education is clearly the No. 1 issue this body, our 
Government, and our country will face in the next decade. We have huge 
educational problems. We are now an ideas economy. Alan Greenspan put 
it best. He said: High value is no longer added by moving things but by 
thinking things, that it is an idea that produces value.
  In that kind of time and place, what could be more important than 
education? In an ideas economy, for America to have a mediocre 
educational system, which is what we have now, is a very real crisis. 
If we continue to be rated 15th, 16th, 17th among the educational 
systems of the OECD Western countries, the 22 countries in North 
America, Asia, and Europe, we are not going to stay the greatest 
country in the world by the time 2025 or 2050 rolls around. 
Fortunately, because of our democratic system and our free enterprise 
system, because of the great entrepreneurial nature of America, because 
we accept ambitious and intelligent people from all over the world to 
come here and grow and prosper, we have a little lead time but not 
much.
  Our educational system is at a critical point. Over the next decade, 
for instance, high school enrollment will increase by 11 percent. 
Schools will need

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to hire 2.2 million public schoolteachers. Over 50 percent of the 
teachers are over 50 years old. Every day more than 14 million children 
will attend schools in need of extensive repair and replacement, and 12 
percent of all newly hired teachers who enter the workforce will enter 
without any training at all. That will be even higher in math and 
science, computer science, engineering, and languages, the kinds of 
things for which we need people.

  So with the crisis upon us, all of a sudden we have a new proposal: a 
block grant. A block grant is exactly what we don't need to improve the 
educational system. A block grant is something that gives the school 
districts more money and doesn't direct them on how to spend it.
  I find there is a contradiction among so many of my friends who are 
strong advocates of block grants. They say the educational system is 
poor. I agree in many instances. They say we spend too much money and 
waste too much money on education. Then they say: Give those same 
localities, without any direction, more money.
  They can't have it both ways. Either the localities are doing a good 
job and need more money, which they are not professing because they 
really don't think they need more money, or the localities are doing a 
bad job and to give them more money makes very little sense at all.
  The notion that we should take Federal dollars, which have been used 
to raise academic standards, reduce class size, recruit new teachers, 
hold schools accountable, and send them in an unmarked paper bag to the 
Governors breaks our commitment to help communities and parents across 
the country. Block grants are a blank check from the Federal 
Government. They fundamentally make no sense. They are bad government 
policy.
  I am sure many of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle would 
agree with me that to separate the taxing authority and the spending 
authority makes no sense. The spending authority for that spending, if 
they don't have to raise the taxes, painful as that is, is not going to 
spend it as wisely as somebody who knows how important those dollars 
are.
  Sometimes I think we would be a lot better off eliminating the block 
grant program and giving the money back to the taxpayers rather than 
the Federal Government taxing and then giving this blank check to the 
locality and letting them spend it.
  A block grant is poor government policy to begin with because it 
separates the spending power from the taxing power. In education, it is 
even worse. We hear clamor in the land that the local school districts 
are not doing a good job. I have sympathy for those local school 
districts. First, they are so busy minute to minute and day to day 
trying to run a school system. They are up to their necks. Second, 
their only spending power is from the property tax--justifiably the 
most hated tax in America--so they can't raise new dollars.
  I have sympathy for those local school districts, but we all agree 
they are not doing as good a job as they might. The irony is that my 
colleagues from the other side of the aisle would probably say it is 
not more money. It is wasted money. Yet here we are, giving them more 
money.
  In today's global ideas-based economy, we cannot afford to have an 
atomized educational system. Instead, the trend must be for local, 
State, and Federal governments to work together with families and 
communities. What is very interesting about any public good is that 
there is no capitalism. Good ideas don't spread on their own. If 
someone invented a new heart valve in San Diego, it would spread to 
Boston in an hour. Why? Someone would sell it. That is what America is 
all about. But when a new educational innovation develops in one school 
district, it doesn't spread, frankly, because there is no capitalism.
  The appropriate role of the Federal Government in education is to 
find what works and, on a matching grant basis, say to the locality, 
this is a program that works. We will pay half or three-quarters of the 
cost because we know you are strapped based on these high property 
taxes. You pay some and use it. We are not requiring you to use it. I 
don't like mandates. We are giving you the opportunity to use it 
because we have seen it works in some areas.
  When I was working on the crime bill, this is what we did. We found 
there were, again, programs that worked.
  Community policing: Wichita, KS, had developed community policing and 
done it well. But it hadn't spread to Topeka. So I put in a bill when I 
was chairman of the Crime Subcommittee in the other body and I said 
let's give the localities money to do community policing on a matching 
grant basis. The President came in, and in his usual intelligent and 
astute way on these matters, said let's call it ``100,000 cops on the 
beat.'' So we did and it has worked. It changed policing in America.

  Without that program, we would not have had community policing. But 
the Federal Government played the appropriate role--finding a good 
idea, giving money as an incentive to help spread the idea--not 100 
percent; that is a bad idea, not even 90 percent. Then it is like a 
block grant with no strings attached and money gets wasted. And then 
they let it happen. It is not bureaucracy that is the problem in 
Federal aid to education, as some who support the block grant would 
say. Only one-half of 1 percent of Federal aid to schools is spent on 
administration. The States use an additional 4 percent. All the rest, 
95\1/2\ percent, goes to local school districts. It is not bureaucracy 
at all. In fact, the claims of those who spin stories of a grand 
Federal education bureaucracy ring hollow. In a letter written to the 
President by the House Committee on Education in the Workforce in 1997, 
the committee majority listed 760 so-called educational programs. They 
said we have too many. Combine them.
  Look at the programs they call ``educational'' programs: Boating 
safety financial assistance, Air Force defense research sciences, 
biological response to environmental health hazards, financial 
assistance for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
  Those are not educational programs. In truth, the Federal Government 
provides, on average, only 7 percent of all K-through-12 educational 
funding. It is the State and local communities that should and do 
maintain control over educational priorities. But what Washington can 
do is help communities meet certain reform priorities when their 
budgets are stretched too thin. Again, if the system isn't working, why 
give more money with no strings attached to the very localities that we 
think can do better? Why not do it in a way that directs them? Sure, 
the local school board wants free money. Fine. Let them raise taxes and 
do it for themselves. Don't let us put more burden on the Federal 
taxpayers to do it.
  Proponents of the block grants argue strenuously that control should 
be returned to the localities. But the irony here is the block grants 
would not return power to the communities; rather, it shifts control of 
the Federal funding away from parents and communities and gives it to 
politicians--Governors and the State legislature. This is the 
antithesis of local control.
  What I would like to do before I conclude is look at a couple of 
examples of block grant proposals. The Straight A's Act gives the 
States and the Governors the authority to combine into a block grant 
Federal funds from 10 educational programs. More than 80 percent of all 
Federal support to elementary and secondary education will be included 
in the block grant. This sounds to me like LEA. I remember Law 
Enforcement Assistance--a block grant to law enforcement. That is the 
area in which I have the most expertise. Do you know what they did when 
no strings were attached? One police department bought a tank; another 
police department bought an airplane to take the police officers back 
and forth to Washington--I think it was a jet-- all with block grant 
money. If we do this Straight A's Program, we will be back on the floor 
of the Senate a year or two later pointing out horror stories of how 
the taxpayers' money was wasted.

  Under Straight A's, parents, teachers, principals, and school boards 
would no longer have a say in how the Federal dollars are spent. 
Schools would no longer be accountable for results and national 
priorities, such as funding for the neediest students and better 
teachers. New school buildings could be put aside for more salaries for 
administrators. If this program gets straight

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A's, I would like to see what the curve is in that classroom.
  The Senate Health Committee intends to mark up a reauthorization of 
the Elementary and Secondary Education Act in the next few weeks. I am 
concerned to learn that the bill currently includes a block grant for 
teacher quality and professional development, programs to reduce class 
size and Goals 2000. Yes, we need qualified teachers and smaller 
classes. They produce the best results for children. But with the 
committee bill, there is no guarantee that class size reduction or 
teacher development will be done well, or even done at all.
  I ask my colleagues to look at the proposal that Senator Kennedy is 
putting together. His leadership on this issue has been extraordinary. 
His proposal does not intend to dictate to localities what they must do 
or impose new mandates on localities. Rather, it says, here are our 
Federal priorities; do you want to be part of them? They include 
smaller class size and new school construction. Fine. You are going to 
match our dollars. If you don't want to be part of them, keep doing the 
same old thing, but not with Federal dollars, Federal taxpayer money, 
which gives you a free ride.
  I hope my colleagues will look at Senator Kennedy's proposal and will 
examine the folly of block grants. I look forward to the debate that 
may come on education in the near future.
  I thank the Chair and yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Mexico.
  Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for 3 
minutes, and in the normal routine to return to Senator Murkowski from 
Alaska.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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