[Congressional Record Volume 146, Number 19 (Monday, February 28, 2000)]
[Senate]
[Pages S847-S862]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




               AFFORDABLE EDUCATION ACT OF 1999--Resumed

  Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, what is the pending business?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report the bill by title.
  The assistant legislative clerk read as follows:

       A bill (S. 1134) to amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 
     to allow tax-free expenditures from education individual 
     retirement accounts for elementary and secondary school 
     expenses, to increase the maximum annual amount of 
     contributions to such accounts, and for other purposes.

  Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, I advise my colleagues on both sides of the 
aisle that I have had some discussions this morning with Senator 
Daschle and I think we are making some progress on getting an agreement 
as to how we can proceed on the education savings account legislation. 
In our discussions this morning, we talked about the possibility of 
going forward with an agreement that education amendments and education 
tax-related amendments would be in order, plus one amendment by Senator 
Wellstone. I thought that was an excellent way to proceed.
  I am about to enter that as a unanimous consent request. I understand 
there still may be need to have some further discussions, but I hope we 
can get this worked out. If we do, it will mean we can vitiate the 
cloture vote that is scheduled for tomorrow, now at 2:30.
  So I renew my request of last Thursday and ask consent that all 
amendments be relevant to the subject matter of education or related to 
education taxes, with the exception of the Wellstone amendment 
regarding a report on a TANF program, and that time with respect to 
that amendment be limited to 2 hours equally divided and it be subject 
to relevant second-degree amendments.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Nevada.
  Mr. REID. Mr. President, reserving the right to object, I think 
progress has been made over the weekend. I, of course, would prefer to 
have the bill brought up and have no restrictions on amendments that 
could be offered. It does not appear we are going to be able to do 
that. Therefore, I hope during the next few hours, certainly before the 
scheduled cloture vote tomorrow, we can work something out and proceed 
on a unanimous consent basis. I hope it does not come to a point where 
we have to have the cloture vote.

  That being the position of the minority, I object at this time.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Objection is heard.
  Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, then I hope we can come to an agreement on 
the bill. This is important education legislation that does have 
bipartisan support. I believe we are close to getting an agreement. I 
appreciate what Senator Reid has been doing to try to bring about an 
agreement, including the amendment by Senator Wellstone that has 
basically already been agreed to.
  However, if an agreement cannot be reached on the subject matter on 
which Members may offer amendments, then Senators are reminded there 
will be a cloture vote to occur tomorrow.
  With that in mind, I now ask unanimous consent that the cloture vote 
be scheduled for 3:30 instead of 2:30 p.m. on Tuesday, if it is 
necessary to have that vote.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. LOTT. With these final negotiations going on, then, I ask the 
bill be open for debate only until 4 p.m. and that at 4 p.m. I be 
recognized.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, I realize we have at least one more Senator 
on the floor who wishes to speak, but I want to take a moment to speak 
on this legislation. This is legislation about which I feel very 
strongly. I believe the American people support it.
  It is a bill we debated a couple of years ago. It did pass the House 
and Senate, but it was vetoed by the President. At that time, I had 
some discussions with the White House that indicated they understood 
this had a lot of appeal and, while it is opposed by some people--
specifically, I guess, teachers' unions--that it has overwhelming 
appeal. And it does.
  Let me explain to those who may be listening basically what this 
legislation will do. It is not just about tax relief, although tax 
relief is very important for parents who want to help their children. 
It also is very much about education, quality education. Under this 
legislation, parents would be able to save up to $2,000 a year per 
child for their educational needs, K-12. That is the gist of it. I 
cannot understand some of the comments I have heard about how this is 
bad educational policy, that it was bad education policy 2 years ago, 
and it is still bad educational policy. Excuse me. What is bad about 
this? To allow people to save for their own children's educational 
needs?
  We are not talking about a massive amount of money. We are talking 
about a bill, also, that has offsets to pay for it. But you are talking 
about up to $2,000 a year, with the interest of course receiving 
special tax consideration, where that money can be used for children's 
educational needs at the fourth grade, if they need some remedial 
reading attention, or at the eighth grade, if they need a computer, or 
maybe it is even just clothes, I guess. Whatever the educational needs 
of your children would be--and I am not sure it would be applicable to 
clothes but supplies, tutors--I can think of a lot of things that could 
be done for our children at a critical age.

  We talk now about the need to have early intervention, that a lot of 
children by the time they start the first grade or kindergarten, they 
are already 2 years behind the curve. So we are looking now at what can 
we do for early intervention to help our children be ready to begin 
school.
  We are also continuing to look at statistics that are not very 
encouraging when it comes to reading and arithmetic and basic education 
at the

[[Page S848]]

elementary and secondary level: Fourth grade, eighth grade, tenth 
grade. What really is amazing to me is we do allow for tax 
considerations for parents to save for their children's educational 
needs in college. So it is OK for college, but it is not all right for 
elementary and secondary. Yet for higher education in America, there 
are scholarship programs, there are loan programs, there are grant 
programs, and there are supplemental grant programs. For any student in 
America who wants to get a college education, whether it is a community 
college or whether it is a special training program or higher 
education, there is financial assistance available but not for 
elementary and secondary. I do not understand that. A lot of the needs 
are at that level.
  So we are saying yes to higher education but no to K-12. If we do not 
help our children, our own children, along the way when they have extra 
needs, then they are not going to be ready for college or, when they 
graduate from high school, they are not going to be ready to be 
trained.
  I meet with corporate executives, people from the high-tech 
industries, and they say: We are really worried; the children now 
coming out of high school are not even ready to learn. They cannot be 
trained to work in Silicon Valley because they do not have the basics.
  I am not saying this one bill will totally solve that, but I am 
saying it is one more option, it is one more part of improving 
education in America. So I think it is good educational policy. I think 
it is good for our parents. I think it also provides tax relief.
  Some people will say that a lot of workers cannot save for their own 
children. Maybe that is true, although I think it would be a real 
incentive for people, even at a low income level, to be able to put 
aside just a little bit. It does not have to be $2,000; maybe it is 
only a couple of hundred. But it would be their money which they could 
use to help their children. Should not we provide that incentive?
  By the way, what about middle-income parents? There are a lot of 
programs that will help low-income children. Of course, children of 
parents who have plenty of income, they do not need our assistance. But 
what about the family where the father works in a shipyard and makes 
$37,000 a year? Should he not be able to do a little something for his 
own children?
  I urge my colleagues, as I know Members on both sides of the aisle 
already recognize this is important legislation, take a look at it. 
Tell me you can go back and tell your constituents you are against 
parents of children K-12 being able to save a little to help their 
children at that level. I do not believe you can do that.
  This is not a costly bill. This is a bill that has offsets. This is a 
bill that is a plus all the way down the line. I believe before we are 
done, this legislation is going to pass and it is going to pass 
overwhelmingly when we get to the final vote, as it should.
  I commend Senator Coverdell and the bipartisan group that has worked 
on this legislation, brought it to the floor once before and back here 
now. But I felt compelled to say something because I had seen this 
quote saying this is bad educational policy. For the life of me, I 
cannot explain why that would be true. This is good policy across the 
board.
  I urge my colleague to keep up the good work. I will continue to work 
with my colleagues on both sides of the aisle and with the leadership 
to come up with a process that is fair, where education amendments can 
be offered, where education tax amendments can be offered, now where 
the Wellstone amendment can be offered. If we can work out a couple of 
other agreements, certainly I will be prepared to try to do that 
because I think this is important and the legislation is good.
  With that, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Frist). The Senator from Nevada.
  Mr. REID. Mr. President, the New York Times reported last Wednesday 
that education stands out as the single most important issue 
nationally, and voters support action at the national level to improve 
the Nation's schools. I agree with the leader. It is important we talk 
about education. My own feeling, and I have mentioned this previously, 
is we should talk about all aspects of education. There are a lot of 
things that need to be done.
  Overwhelmingly, the American people support a national role in 
education. I hope as we proceed down this legislative road dealing with 
education that we are allowed to go beyond what the Senator from 
Georgia, Mr. Coverdell, has suggested. We need to go beyond this. That 
is why we are working so hard to get an agreement to go beyond this.
  We have to make sure we talk about why kids are dropping out of 
school at the rate they are, why school construction is not taking 
place where it is needed, why we are not able to reduce class size. As 
this debate goes forward, let's make sure it covers all education, not 
just a little bit of education which we all agree needs to be looked 
at, but let's broaden our scope.
  In light of the fact the Senator from Arizona has something 
scheduled, I will cut my remarks short.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Arizona.
  Mr. KYL. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Nevada. I appreciate 
his willingness to allow me to move forward.
  Also, what Senator Lott told us is extremely important. His point is 
this is an act that is not going to be opposed by very many Senators 
once we can get it to the floor for a vote. It is the procedural 
maneuvering that is going on right now by some who want to gain an 
advantage in this debate to propose some of their own extracurricular 
ideas that have nothing to do with the bill that is holding us up from 
considering the bill.
  I hope, along with the majority leader, we can get quickly to the 
consideration of this important legislation because, as he correctly 
noted, once we begin debate on this bill and have an opportunity to 
vote on it, it is going to receive overwhelming support from Members on 
both sides of the aisle in the Senate.
  I want to speak for a moment on an amendment which I intend to offer, 
but before I do that, I commend the Senator from Georgia, Mr. 
Coverdell, for his work on S. 1134. He has made a valiant effort, over 
a long period of time, to bring reform to our educational system.
  He particularly wants to give all parents more choice in deciding 
where to send their children and to give them more of their own money 
with which to do so, or perhaps I should say to allow them to keep more 
of their own money in order to have those choices.
  The number of Americans and, as I said, Senators of both parties who 
agree with Senator Coverdell is growing every day.
  His education IRA legislation, which was vetoed in 1998, is now a 
vital component of S. 1134. As noted by the majority leader, it will 
allow parents, grandparents, labor unions, churches, synagogues, 
employers, or others to contribute to tax-free savings accounts to 
provide for a child's education from kindergarten through high school.

  According to a 1998 report from Congress' Joint Committee on 
Taxation, 14 million families--a majority of them low and middle 
income--are currently denied these benefits because of the Clinton veto 
of this bill in 1998. These are the families who will benefit from this 
legislation.
  As one cosponsor of the vetoed bill, Democratic Senator Torricelli, 
lamented in an op-ed in the New York Times:

       With one stroke of a pen. . .an effort to begin a vast 
     reform of American education has ended.

  The Coverdell education IRA would extend a provision which I 
supported in the Balanced Budget Act of 1997 which allowed parents to 
save $500 per year tax free for their children's college education.
  However, all levels of education, not just college, need the 
incentives to improve that market-oriented reforms such as parental 
school choice supply.
  The real crisis in education, as former Education Secretary Bill 
Bennett has observed, ``is at the primary and secondary levels.''
  As the majority leader said a moment ago, all of the help we provide 
for college students goes for nought if our students are not prepared 
by the time they get to the college level. So we need to be focusing 
now on the primary and secondary levels.
  This resurrected Coverdell-Torricelli education IRA will allow 
families to

[[Page S849]]

save up to $2,000 a year in a special education savings account for 
each of their children.
  The contributions will be in after-tax dollars, but the interest 
generated will be tax free, as long as any deductions from the account 
are used to pay for school expenses.
  The President may resist it, but we have to develop a unified student 
assistance funding system that guarantees choice to struggling parents 
of all income levels with children in all grade levels, from 
kindergarten through college.
  Again, as Senator Torricelli said,

       For real reform to take place, both Democrats and 
     Republicans, liberals and conservatives, must look beyond 
     their narrow agendas and partisan political interests and 
     seek out new proposals. Our schoolchildren deserve nothing 
     less.

  I could not say it better.
  With that background, let me discuss the amendment which I will be 
offering to S. 1134. As the whole theory of this is to put resources 
where they will help the most, I have prepared an amendment which in a 
very narrow but important way will do precisely that. We call our 
amendment the Apples for Three Million Teachers Tax Credit Relief Act 
of 2000, first introduced on January 24 of this year, with Senator 
Bunning and Senator Fred Thompson as cosponsors.
  In the House, Representative Matt Salmon introduced companion 
legislation, H.R. 1710, which currently has 38 cosponsors, including 
the majority leader, Dick Armey.
  What will this amendment do? It will provide an annual tax credit of 
up to $100 for public and private teachers' unreimbursed classroom 
expenditures that are qualified under the Internal Revenue Code.
  What does that mean? We know that teachers routinely every year pay 
for a lot of their supplies for their classrooms to help instruct their 
children, things they know will be useful in their instruction but 
which are not provided by their local school districts. There is 
currently a tax deduction allowed--which I will talk more about in the 
future--but it does not work as well for these particular taxpayers.
  Our amendment provides a $100 tax credit right off the top for these 
school supplies which these teachers are taking to their classrooms.
  Thomas Jefferson once said ``an educated citizenry is essential for 
the preservation of democracy.''
  As the son and brother of teachers devoted to their students, I know 
firsthand of the public spiritedness and commitment of these 
professionals to their students.
  It falls to our teachers to inculcate the academic values and 
analytic skills that make good citizenship possible, of which Thomas 
Jefferson spoke.
  In talking with teachers, both public and private, I have come to 
learn that a lot of them use their own money to cover the cost of 
classroom materials that are not supplied by their schools. Some have 
used money from the family budget to purchase these needed classroom 
supplies, and they would do it again. It seems to me we should not 
expect them to pay for these things out of their own pockets, or at 
least to give some Federal financial assistance when they do, 
particularly those who are on a teacher's rather modest income.
  To put this in perspective, in 1996, according to a study by the 
National Education Association, the average K-12 teacher spent $408 
annually on those classroom materials which they thought they needed 
for their classroom instruction but which were not supplied by the 
schools. They spend $408 on average per year. That includes everything 
from books, workbooks, erasers, pens, pencils, paper, and other 
equipment.
  Under current law, a tax deduction is allowed for such expenses but 
only if the teacher itemizes and only if expenses exceed 2 percent of 
the teacher's adjusted gross income.
  I commend Senator Susan Collins for her successful amendment to the 
Taxpayer Relief Act which eliminates this 2-percent threshold. I look 
forward to working with her to give our teachers needed relief from 
their out-of-pocket cost for classroom expenditures.
  A deduction reduces taxable income. A credit will give teachers 
relief dollar for dollar spent, in the case of my amendment, up to the 
$100 annual limit.

  This isn't the solution, but it is a small first step which I think 
would be very much appreciated by our hard-working and sacrificing 
teachers.
  There is no absolute linkage between these personal contributions to 
school supplies and the quality of the teaching. However, there likely 
is some correlation, given the degree of commitment evidenced by these 
teachers who are spending their own money on their students.
  We will be helping the best teachers. I believe this will promote 
high-quality instruction.
  A similar provision enacted by the Arizona legislature in 1997 has 
been very well received by our teachers. Incidentally, it was recently 
upheld in terms of its constitutionality by the Arizona Supreme Court.
  I urge my colleagues to join me in supporting this bill and in 
supporting the amendment I will be offering. I think it is important 
that our teachers at least be partially reimbursed for some of the 
financial sacrifices they made to educate our Nation's children. If we 
are serious about getting dollars to the classrooms that need it, this 
is really an excellent way to do it.
  Again, I commend my colleague, Senator Coverdell, for all his efforts 
in this regard and look forward to working with him in the future as we 
get this legislation up for debate and, importantly, for a vote in the 
Senate.
  Mr. COVERDELL addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Georgia.
  Mr. COVERDELL. First, Mr. President, I thank the Senator from 
Arizona. Those were very good remarks. But they were also generous as 
in regard to our effort. I deeply appreciate it, along with his work.
  I say to the Senator from Iowa, Mr. Grassley, that Senator Reid 
curtailed his remarks in order to assist Senator Kyl. He would like to 
finish those remarks. I do not think he intends for them to be very 
long. Then the Senator from Iowa would be next in the queue, if that 
would be all right.
  Mr. REID. Mr. President, my appreciation to my friend from Georgia 
for his courtesy.
  First of all, in brief response to my friend from Arizona when he 
mentioned--I made a note here--political maneuvering by the minority to 
keep this bill from moving forward, the fact is we are not maneuvering 
anything. We are willing to go forward on this legislation and have it 
treated the same as all legislation has been treated for more than two 
centuries in the Senate--move forward on the legislation and allow 
amendments. But recognizing that the majority is not going to allow us 
to do that, we are trying to work out some kind of compromise so there 
will be the ability to offer some amendments. I am hopeful we can do 
that. Certainly I hope so.
  I talk about the need for us to discuss education. We need to discuss 
education but not just a piece of education here and a piece of 
education there. We need to talk about education in general.
  Overwhelmingly, as I mentioned earlier, the American people support a 
national role on education. The New York Times reported last Wednesday 
it is the most important issue facing the American people. When we talk 
about a national role, we are not talking about interference with 
decisions by local communities when it comes to schools. We are talking 
about giving them the resources--that is, school districts--to reduce 
class size, to strengthen the connection with parents, teachers, and 
students. We are talking about giving our children the best teachers in 
the world and programs to help schools attract and keep those teachers. 
We are talking about giving communities the resources to build new 
schools and to repair those crumbling schools that are all around us.
  I believe in public education. I was educated in public schools. My 
father never graduated from the eighth grade. My mother never graduated 
from high school. But as a result of the public school system we have 
in America, I was able to achieve the American dream of getting a good 
education.
  We should give all of our young people the tools to achieve their 
dreams. We can help them do this by modernizing our schools, raising 
our expectations and standards, and reducing class size. That is the 
right thing to do.

[[Page S850]]

  When we talk about political maneuvering, we are not maneuvering 
anything political. We simply want to go forward and treat the Senate 
as the Senate and not the House of Representatives. We should have been 
allowing amendments on this legislation last week. We would have been 
drawing this debate to a close today. But we are not doing that. 
Instead of that--because of the political maneuvering going on with the 
majority, not the minority--we are unable to move forward. I hope we 
can set aside partisan differences and move forward on this 
legislation. If we do so, the people who will benefit the most are the 
American people.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Iowa.
  Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, I rise to speak about some provisions in 
this bill I have long backed to improve education. But before I point 
my remarks directly to those few provisions of the bill, I would like 
to put this whole thing into context, if I could.
  No. 1, the American people are very concerned about education in the 
United States. If there is any one thing they want the Congress, the 
State legislatures, and the local schools and municipalities to 
address, it is the problem of education. I am convinced they want the 
decisionmaking to be done at the local level, but they would like to 
have both moral leadership and some resources to come from Washington.
  I happen to be one who believes those resources that come from 
Washington, to the extent they are given to States and local 
communities with few strings attached--less redtape and less 
paperwork--the better off we are.
  But I think, in the context of even more money, we want to think in 
terms of, if the money were the sole solution to the problems of 
education, then that would be an easy solution: Just appropriate more 
money. I think in terms of the $5,500 per student per year spent in my 
State of Iowa and the fact that our graduates end up either first, 
second, or third on the ACT scores in our competition with Minnesota 
and Wisconsin. For 7 or 8 years in a row, our graduates have ended up 
first in the SATs. That is the result. We ought to be concerned about 
results and not about process when we look at spending the taxpayers' 
dollars.
  Compare, on the one hand, that $5,500 per year spent by the State of 
Iowa--still, my State legislators would say: There is a lot of concern 
about the need to do more to improve the product of our educational 
system in our State--with the approximately $11,000 that is spent in 
the District of Columbia--almost twice the amount spent in my State--
and look at the massive dropout rate from the high schools in the 
District of Columbia. You can only conclude that there has to be a lot 
done in the District of Columbia other than just spending more money 
because if you looked at just more money being the solution to the 
educational problems, then I would quickly conclude that the District 
of Columbia ought to be doing much better than my State of Iowa.
  People are very concerned about education. So in each one of our 
State capitals, and in the Congress of the United States, there is a 
great deal of time being spent on education, as there ought to be. We 
believe every child is entitled to a good education, entitled to that 
good education in a crime-free environment and with the best of 
teachers.
  We also have to remember a basic principle: Education is all about 
children. The product of our schools is what matters. Does the process 
have the children in mind, or are there sometimes special interests 
beyond just the children's welfare to which we give too much attention?
  We have seen studies indicating that whatever we do in the schools, 
spending money or a policy other than spending money, one of the best 
things we can do to enhance the environment of learning is to get 
parents involved in the education of their children, checking the 
homework, talking about it at the dinner table, in every respect 
encouraging that child in that family to learn, and also being 
supportive of the educational environment the child comes from, whether 
it be the public school or the private school, or some other learning 
environment of which that child might be a part. We have to make sure 
we have the educational result that no child will fall through the 
cracks and, for those who do, that there is a process that the results 
in getting that child the best possible education so they can succeed 
in life as well.
  This bill is all about encouraging families to save money for the 
education of their kids from kindergarten through graduate school, 
planning for the future, not relying upon somebody else. With present 
tax dollars, less than 50 percent of the education dollar is spent in 
the classroom. That means we have to look at the allocation of 
resources within education and decide is it better to spend that on 
administration or is it better to spend it on teachers in the 
classroom, the ones who have the hands-on contact with the minute-by-
minute education of everybody in that classroom. We have to have 
accountability for education dollars. I am not sure we have that 
accountability today, when we are spending less in the classroom than 
we ought to be spending and more on other aspects of education than we 
ought to be spending.
  This bill is concerned with our children. When you are concerned 
about our children, you are concerned about the future. When you are 
concerned about the future of American children, you are concerned 
about America's future and our place in the world, our ability to lead 
the world, and our ability, individually and the country as a whole, to 
be economically competitive in the global environment in which we are 
now competing.
  Too many people look to Washington for the answer. They might say: 
Well, if you're saying people shouldn't look to Washington for an 
answer, they ought to look to their parents, they ought to look to 
their local or private school, why this legislation?
  Well, this legislation is all about empowering families, empowering 
parents. It is not concerned with process. It is concerned with giving 
parents choice. Basically, all the money that comes into the Federal 
Treasury is taxpayers' money. It comes from that individual working man 
or woman in America who pays taxes. This is about giving them some 
control over their own resources. It is about giving them choice. It is 
about not having help come from Washington with a lot of redtape 
connected with it to create more paperwork for the teachers than maybe 
the dollars they receive are worth.
  This definitely is not about making education policy in Washington, 
DC--pouring one mold in Washington and making all policy out of that 
mold. If we were to do that, we would be saying the problems of New 
York City can be solved in exactly the same way as they can be solved 
in Waterloo, IA. One of two things is going to happen. Either we are 
going to fail in one place and succeed in another or, simultaneous with 
that, if we get the taxpayers' money's worth in New York, we won't get 
their money's worth in Waterloo. So consequently, it is about 
saying that our country is so geographically vast and our population so 
heterogeneous that you shouldn't pour one mold in Washington and expect 
to accomplish the same amount of good wherever you are in the United 
States with those same taxpayer dollars.

  This is a way of saying to the American people: We give you an 
encouragement to save. We give you a tax incentive to save for the 
education of your children. What meets the educational policy needs of 
your family, the needs of your child, in the final analysis it is made 
by the family for which these resources should be used, empowering the 
family, involving the family to a greater extent in the education of 
their children, and also giving them the resources to meet those needs. 
It is not one size fits all. If we have 110 million different taxpayers 
in America, then this gives the possibility of 110 million different 
answers to the problems of education in America.
  With that background, I will speak about the two or three provisions 
of this legislation that I have been involved in, some of which were in 
the tax bill that had been vetoed in the past. In particular, I mention 
the tax deduction for student loan interest beyond its current 60-month 
payment restriction.
  Everybody who is paying attention to this legislation knows that the 
important part of this bill is expanding the education savings account 
from $500 per year to $2,000 per year. In conjunction with this, we are 
trying to do

[[Page S851]]

some things that have other tax benefits to help education, some for 
kindergarten through 12 and some for higher education. What I am 
speaking about regarding my involvement is eliminating the 60-month 
payment restriction for which I fought 6 years and finally got adopted 
in 1997, the provisions of our Tax Code that reinstitute the 
deductibility of interest on student loans.
  To fit that into the overall revenue-neutrality provisions of the 
budget law, we had to cap it at 60 months. This legislation would 
remove that 60-month cap. As the cost of higher education continues to 
rise, the levels of student debt are spiraling upward. Students and 
their families are finding that financing a higher education is 
burdensome. Some students, due to financial concerns, are unable to 
receive the education they need.
  We have a duty to assist them in their need and, in so doing, send a 
clear message that the Congress understands their hardships and values 
their efforts in improving themselves through college. Also, it gives 
me an opportunity to establish a principle involved in this legislation 
beyond just the economic points of view we are trying to make about 
getting an education and the economic value of that--that is, to send a 
clear signal to the young people of America that borrowing money to 
enhance their intellect is just as important, as far as the Tax Code of 
this country is concerned, as borrowing money for capital investment in 
some business. And it seems to me that parity is legitimate. 
Eliminating the 60-month payment restriction will eliminate costly 
reporting requirements that are currently required for both lenders and 
borrowers. That is an additional benefit to taking that 60-month limit 
off.

  Under the Taxpayer Relief Act of 1997, we succeeded in reinstating 
the tax deduction of interest on student loans, which had been 
eliminated 11 years previously. This brought much needed relief to 
students and their families. I spoke about the budget constraints we 
had in 1997, which today we would not have and we don't have. So we put 
that 60-month payment restriction in place for revenue neutrality. Our 
current budget situation makes it possible to reevaluate this 
limitation. As the price of going to college has continued to spiral 
upward, student debt has risen to very high levels.
  The current restriction hurts some of the most needy borrowers. It 
hurts those who, due to limited means, have borrowed most heavily. It 
also weighs heavily on those who have dedicated themselves to a career 
in public service, despite oftentimes lower pay that is connected with 
that--as an example, teachers. By eliminating the 60-month payment 
restriction, we will be assisting these most deserving borrowers, while 
rewarding civic involvement as well.
  Also in this bill are provisions for assistance in school 
construction. Last week, a Member on the other side of the aisle asked 
why we are not talking about school construction and repairs. My simple 
answer is: Read the bill. If they did, they would find that it contains 
some very helpful school construction and rehabilitation incentives. 
School districts across the country today are struggling to fix some of 
the wornout rungs in a fundamentally American institution, the public 
schools--the ladder by which people go up the economic scale. In fact, 
school districts nationwide spent $18.7 billion on school construction 
in the last year for which we have figures, 1996. Building and 
repairing U.S. elementary and secondary schools requires massive 
capital to keep up with growing enrollments, aging buildings, and 
modernization needs.
  My State's reputation for educational excellence has gained national 
prominence, as I have already referred to, throughout the 20th century. 
Even in my State, we have local school districts that have tremendous 
needs, and this bill will help them to accomplish a good building 
environment for the next century.
  As America prepares to enter this new century--and we have--we must 
work to strengthen our schools and ensure our classrooms are wired to 
deliver a 21st century quality education. That includes fixing basic 
structural damage and, even more so, installing modern communications 
and computer equipment. But whether it is repairing leaky roofs or 
removing hazardous asbestos or fixing the structure, everything needs a 
high-tech facelift at this particular time.
  Expanding greater access to affordable capital, which this bill does, 
will relieve pressure on the local tax base and help more school 
districts build and repair their schools. Initiatives in this bill do 
that, and I have sponsored some of those initiatives. They build on 
something that already works. They build upon the principle to 
establish tax-exempt bonds. In fact, the single most important source 
of funding for investment in public school construction and 
rehabilitation is the tax-exempt bond market. Iowa school districts 
were issued over $625 million in tax-exempt bonds in the last year we 
have figures for, which is 1998.

  Whether rural or suburban or urban schools, these school districts 
from coast to coast are facing substantial school construction costs. 
The greater the flexibility the better. One size fits all won't work, 
whether it is in capital investment in schools or investment in 
personal education. That is why my plan is designed to give local 
school districts greater leeway to secure critical funding.
  This legislation would allow school districts to partner with private 
investors, allowing school districts to tap deep pockets in the private 
sector and leverage private dollars to improve public schools. Second, 
it would expand the volume of school construction costs that a small 
school district could issue annually. This will allow smaller rural and 
suburban schools a better opportunity to manage the high cost of 
replacing or repairing aging facilities.
  In conclusion, I think all of these steps, along with a lot more in 
this bill, are important first steps. If and when we are able to pass a 
more comprehensive tax relief measure, I hope to build upon these 
initiatives and provide even more school construction assistance to our 
local communities.
  Unlike a lot of proposals from this administration for school 
construction that require local school districts to get permission from 
Federal Government bureaucracies, the incentives in our bill empower 
local people, people on the local school board, and they preserve local 
control. Without a doubt, that is what the people of this country want. 
They do not want the dictation of educational policy from Washington, 
DC. They do not want, as a local school board, to come hat-in-hand to 
some Washington bureaucrat to get permission to get a little bit of 
help for fixing a crack in the wall or wiring for some high-tech 
improvement. They want to be able to decide the needs for their 
community. Why should they be the ones to do that? Because they are the 
only ones who know about it. There is no way, no matter how intelligent 
a Washington bureaucrat might be, that they would know the needs of all 
the local school districts of our country.
  This is a very good bill that will enhance education in America. This 
bill will provide, through tax incentives, about $8 billion in 
education assistance to the American people, with local control of that 
money. It deserves our strong support.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from North Dakota is recognized.
  Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, the subject, of course, is education and I 
wanted to come to the floor for a few moments to visit about this 
issue. I am a product of a small public school in Regent, ND. I 
graduated in a high school class of 9. I always kid that I was in the 
top 5 of my class; I won't tell exactly where in that 5, though. I went 
to college and to graduate school and, through a strange set of 
circumstances, I made my way to the Congress and finally to the Senate.
  I am proud to stand on the floor of the Senate and discuss education. 
I don't pretend that I know more than anybody else in the Senate on the 
subject. I don't pretend to have all of the answers. But I do hope that 
when we debate education--and most parents in this country want us to 
debate how to improve public schools--I hope we will be able to debate 
all of the good ideas that exist in this Chamber, not only some or a 
few.
  It is my hope that, shortly, we will have an agreement by which we 
will be able to consider all of the good ideas that exist in this 
Chamber to improve and strengthen education in this country.

[[Page S852]]

  Thomas Jefferson used to say that anyone who believes a country can 
be both ignorant and free believes in something that never was and 
never can be. He understood the value of education, as I am sure most 
of my colleagues do. I understand the value of a quality education. I 
want every young child in this country to be able to go through a 
classroom door that we are proud of, into a classroom that will allow 
young children to be the best they can be. Regrettably, that doesn't 
happen all across our country. We have some wonderful schools and some 
excellent teachers, but we have some challenges as well.
  Let me start with this premise: Those who suggest the public 
education system in this country has collapsed and is unworkable are 
wrong--just wrong. We have many fine public schools in America. We have 
some outstanding teachers in our country. We need to have more. There 
are some significant areas of concern in some schools. Some inner-city 
schools and BIA schools on Indian reservations, for example, have 
physical facilities that should be cause for great concern.
  Mr. President, decade after decade, we hear the debate that the 
school system in this country is collapsing, and that somehow public 
schools are not making the grade. In fact, however, the evidence shows 
that we have many fine public schools in this country.
  The public school system has allowed the United States of America to 
progress and do things that virtually no other country has done. Why? 
Because we have an educated population.
  Some while ago, a periodical described the progress in our country. 
They said we have spliced genes, we have split the atom, we have cloned 
sheep, we invented plastic, the silicon chip, radar, television, and 
computers. We built airplanes; we learned to fly them. We built rockets 
and flew to the Moon. We cured polio. We cured smallpox. And this 
country is hardly out of breath.
  Did that come from a country that didn't educate its people? No. All 
of those advancements are a result of our investments in education in 
America--an investment in a system of public education in which we 
decided as a nation that every young child should be allowed to become 
the best he or she could be. We do not say to children somewhere along 
the line: All right, here is what you are going to do and become. 
Instead, we've said every child has the opportunity to be the best they 
can be in this system of ours.
  Is it an accident that we stand at this precipice in history with the 
strongest economy in the world? Is it an accident that we invented 
television, that we invented the computer, and that we are the center 
of the high-tech industry? It is, in my judgment, a direct result of 
the educational system.
  I am a little tired sometimes of hearing people denigrate the system 
of public education in our country. There is a lot to be said for 
public education.
  I'm reminded of the old saying that bad news travels halfway around 
the world before good news gets its shoes on. Never is that more 
evident than in the debate on education among politicians. They can't 
bump each other fast enough to get to a place to make a speech about 
how bad our schools are.
  Yes, some of our schools are not up to par. Some of our schools are 
in terrible need of repair. Some of our schools need reform. Yes; that 
is true. But I go into a lot of schools, and I see some remarkable 
places of learning.
  I have a couple of children in school. I deeply admire their 
teachers. They do more homework than I did when I was in school. They 
are studying subjects at a higher level than I did when I was in their 
grade in school.
  When we debate this subject of education, let's debate it based on 
the facts. I intend to bring a book to the floor by a researcher who 
compares the test scores of children in school now to children in 
schools a decade ago and to children in other countries, and who 
evaluates what, in fact, is happening to our system of public 
education. Is it, in fact, collapsing? Are test scores among the same 
group of students actually increasing?
  Said another way, perhaps only the top 25 percent of the kids in high 
school took a college entrance exam not too many years ago. Now 
somewhere around 60 percent do. Has the average score dropped? Sure. 
That is because you have the top 60 percent rather than the top 25 
percent taking the exam. Compare the top 25 percent of today to the top 
25 percent a decade ago. Have the scores decreased? No. They have not 
at all.
  There is a lot to be commended in our system of public education. I 
don't want to hear people talk about how awful it is because it is not 
awful. In my judgment, it has created a country that is the best in the 
world.
  But let me talk about the challenges because they exist. That is part 
of what we want to address.
  As I said, I come from a town of 300, and a high school that had 40 
kids combined in all four grades. So I know something about small 
schools. I visited an inner-city school--something with which I was 
totally unfamiliar. When I went in the front door of that school, there 
were two metal detectors and armed security guards sitting at the front 
door. There was a shooting at this school some weeks after I had been 
there. One kid bumped another at a water fountain, and the other kid 
pulled a gun and shot him three or four times. This is a school with 
metal detectors and armed guards.
  Does that school have a serious challenge? You bet your life it does.
  In my State of North Dakota, there are two schools I have described 
before. If people have heard this already, I am sorry, but it is 
important. Among the issues we will discuss, now that we have an 
agreement, is not only the proposal brought to the floor by Senator 
Coverdell and others to provide a tax cut for education savings 
accounts, but also ones to provide some help to improve and renovate 
schools and to reduce classroom size.
  Let me talk about the Cannon Ball School. I am probably the only one 
in the Senate who has been to the Cannon Ball School, which is about 40 
miles south of Mandan, ND, on the edge of the Standing Rock Sioux 
Indian Reservation. It is not a BIA school; it is a public school with 
mostly Indian students. And since it is on Indian land it has almost no 
tax base to support it.
  The school has roughly 160 kids, most of them young Native American 
children. Much of the building is 90 years old; some of it is newer. 
Most of the classrooms do not have the capability to be wired for the 
Internet, so we do not have high-tech education. It has 160 kids, 2 
bathrooms, and 1 water fountain. When I went there, they were using the 
old boiler room as a sort of make-do classroom, except a couple times a 
week they had to evacuate that temporary classroom because of a backed-
up sewer system.
  In the classrooms, the desks are an inch apart, with kids crowded 
into the little classrooms. How would Members feel if their daughter or 
son were walking into that classroom? Would they feel their children 
had an opportunity for a good education?
  A little girl named Rosie Two Bears, who was a third grader at the 
time, said to me: Mr. Senator, are you going to build me a new school?
  No, I am not able to build you a new school, not by myself. But I 
hope the actions of the Senate will give Rosie the opportunity to have 
a new school. I hope every young Rosie who is walking into a classroom 
in this country has parents who believe they are sending a child into a 
classroom of which they are proud, not one that is crowded with 30 or 
40 children, but a classroom in which a teacher can pay attention to 
those children and give the children a good education, a classroom 
connected to the future with new technology, a classroom in a building 
that is safe, a classroom where that child can learn to be the best she 
or he can become.
  That is not the case, regrettably, in Cannon Ball, ND, and those poor 
folks who run the school cannot do a thing about it because they don't 
have a tax base with which to issue a bond to renovate that school or 
build a new one. We ought to do something to help schools like this 
one, by providing funding for new teachers to reduce class size and to 
build new classrooms to reduce overcrowding.
  Some will say that this is a bureaucrat's approach to solving the 
problems at Cannon Ball Elementary School. If we say let's provide help 
to a school such as that, so that child can go to a good school, we are 
told that we want bureaucrats to run our public education system. That 
is not the case at all--not a bit.
  I am not embarrassed as a country for having goals and aspirations 
for our

[[Page S853]]

children. Some want to brag that we as a country, the United States of 
America, have no national goals in education; good for us. Don't count 
me among those who pat themselves on the back for having no national 
goals or no national aspirations for what we want to get out of our 
public school system.
  Has anybody been to the Ojibwa School? Probably not. The Ojibwa 
School has trailers sitting out on a hillside on the Turtle Mountain 
Indian Reservation. It is a BIA-funded school. We have a responsibility 
to these schools to do better. This school has been deemed unsafe by 
everybody. God forbid that someday there should be a fire that sweeps 
across those temporary classrooms with their wooden fire escapes, 
taking the lives of children. Everybody says: Why doesn't somebody 
stand up and take notice of that? They did. Study after study after 
study has found this school to be unsafe. Those children have to go out 
in the freezing cold weather in North Dakota between these mobile, 
temporary classrooms. Does anyone in the Senate volunteer to have their 
children attend that school? I don't think so.

  Where are the resources to give those kids a decent school building? 
Maybe from some bureaucrat? Is it by the local school district? By the 
tribal council? How about the State legislature? No, no, no, in every 
case. How about from us? Could we in the Congress do something for the 
young school children in the Ojibwa School?
  We have a list of those schools for which the federal government has 
responsibility. This is a federal trust responsibility that we have for 
Indian schools, and we are not meeting it. Why? Because we don't have 
the will to put up the money to build a decent school for those 
children.
  Everyone in the room knows what makes a good education: A good 
teacher who knows how to teach, a child who wants to learn, parents who 
care about that child's education, and a safe and effective learning 
environment. We know what works.
  We will, because of this unanimous consent agreement that was just 
reached, be able to address not just the question proposed by the 
Senator from Georgia regarding providing tax-favored education saving 
accounts for K-12 education.
  In conclusion, I fully support and feel very strongly about the need 
to address the issue of reducing class size. We know a teacher does 
much better for students when she or he is teaching a class of 15 
children rather than 35 children. We know that. That is not rocket 
science. We also know that a child who goes into a classroom that is in 
decent repair, in a good school building of which we can be proud, has 
a better opportunity to learn. We know that. To fail to address those 
two major issues is to fail on the subject of education. We will have 
an opportunity to debate that. I intend to debate those issues.
  An additional point. I believe every school in this country ought to 
provide a report card to parents about how it is doing. I am a parent. 
My children are in school. I get report cards. I am able to open the 
mail and get a report card that gives me a grade for how my children 
are performing in mathematics, in English literature, and so on. That 
is very helpful for a parent. Parents can talk to their children all 
day long when they get home from school: What did you do in school 
today? What did you learn? And you get one-word answers, as we know. So 
a report card is a very important tool to let parents know how their 
children are doing in school.
  But what about a report card on the school itself? Why don't parents, 
as taxpayers, have an opportunity to get a report card that says: This 
is how your school is doing versus other schools in the State; this is 
how your school is doing versus other schools in the school district, 
the State, and the Nation; so parents and taxpayers can compare their 
school to other schools? A school report card would give a parent 
information, not only about their child, but also information about 
their child's school, which is very important to their children's 
education.
  So I intend to offer an amendment that would provide that report 
card. It is not intrusive, in my judgment. It would empower parents, 
give parents information about what they are getting for their tax 
dollars, what kind of school they are producing for their children to 
attend.
  Let me say to the Senator from Georgia, as I have on past occasions, 
that he is a serious legislator. He brings ideas to the floor, some of 
which I disagree with strongly. Occasionally I have supported his 
ideas. But we are on the right subject. Education is the right subject. 
It is our future. It is our children. The unanimous consent agreement 
now gives us the opportunity in the next couple of days to address all 
the ideas for improving education. Instead of getting the worst of what 
each has to offer, maybe we can get the best of what both have to offer 
in this Chamber. That would be a refreshing change.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. COVERDELL. Mr. President, I renew the leader's request of a few 
minutes ago, which is that all amendments be relevant to the subject 
matter of education and/or related to education taxes with the 
exception of a Wellstone amendment regarding a TANF program, the time 
with respect to that amendment be limited to 2 hours equally divided, 
subject to a relevant second-degree amendment, and the amendment filed 
at the desk by Senator Bob Graham, which is amendment No. 2843.
  Mr. REID. Mr. President, reserving the right to object--I will not 
object--I am very happy that we have been able to arrive at a point 
where within the next few minutes we will be able to start debating 
education issues.
  I extend my appreciation to the Senator from Georgia and to the 
majority leader for this agreement. I think it is something with which 
we can work. I look forward to a good debate in the next few days on 
education and education-related matters.
  Mr. COVERDELL. I appreciate the remarks of the Senator from Nevada.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection? Without objection, it is 
so ordered.
  Mr. COVERDELL. Mr. President, having just reached an agreement, I now 
ask unanimous consent that the scheduled cloture vote for Tuesday be 
vitiated.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. COVERDELL. Mr. President, I hope Members will be prepared to 
offer their amendments with votes to occur beginning on Tuesday. It is 
the leader's hope the Senate can conclude this bill by Wednesday 
evening. In the meantime, I look forward to vigorous debate and thank 
all Members for their cooperation.
  I mentioned to the Senator from Nevada a little earlier that as we 
move forward with this bill, if we can get some parameters around the 
debate and equally divided limits on the amendments, I think that would 
be useful for everybody. But we will proceed at the appropriate time.
  Mr. REID. Mr. President, I say to my friend from Georgia that we are 
ready to start offering amendments this afternoon. We hope to be able 
to do that, and with notification to the leader, we hope there can be 
some votes tomorrow morning, or at least when we finish our 
conferences. We expect to have at least one amendment offered today. 
That would take a little while in the morning but is something we think 
we can get our teeth into and work quickly.
  Mr. COVERDELL. Mr. President, it is my understanding the first 
amendment is by Senator Dodd of Connecticut. If Senator Reid could 
offer it in his behalf, we could begin that debate--we can confer about 
this--at 9:30 in the morning. That is what I think is the schedule.
  Mr. REID. That seems appropriate.
  Mr. President, I extend my appreciation to the Senator from North 
Dakota. He has been a leader in education, both in the House and the 
Senate. I always look forward to what he has to say during debate on 
education.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Ms. Collins). The Senator from Georgia.
  Mr. COVERDELL. I thank the Senator for his remarks. There are a 
couple of comments I want to make but I know Senator Frist, from 
Tennessee, is pressed so I am going to yield the floor so he can begin.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Tennessee is recognized.
  Mr. FRIST. Madam President, it is a pleasure to be opening this 
second session of the 106th Congress with a bill that is, I believe, so 
important in our

[[Page S854]]

step-by-step approach to improving education, which is something I 
think both sides of the aisle feel strongly about. From the statements 
we have heard today and at the end of last week, and we will hear again 
and again, nothing is more important to America's future than 
addressing the education needs of our children. That is so for all the 
obvious reasons. There is nothing more important than education as we 
look at the preparation for quality of life, for looking at our 
Nation's overall economic prosperity domestically, but also as we look 
at issues such as global competitiveness.
  As we heard this afternoon, every child in America does deserve the 
right to a drug-free classroom, to a violence-free classroom, with a 
highly qualified teacher at the head of that class. As a father of 
three young boys, 16, 14, and 12, I think a lot about education. I 
think a lot about how students can be best prepared for a future that 
is increasingly sophisticated in technology, information technology, 
and a global economy where competitiveness is not only with other 
people in the community but other people across the State, across the 
country, and across the world.
  It comes back to that basic principle of local involvement, how we 
can step away from thinking education needs to be controlled by either 
us in the Senate or Washington, DC, or bureaucrats; and recognize it is 
that local control, those local schools that can best identify the 
needs of a local community with the involvement of parents who care the 
most about the education of their own children, and the involvement of 
principals in a local community. That is why last year my colleagues 
and I introduced legislation which we called Ed-Flex, which basically 
returns that power back to local communities, recognizing how limited 
we are, being right in Washington, DC, even assuming we can micromanage 
what goes on in Alamo, TN, or Soddy or Daisy, TN. It is those 
principals, those teachers, those parents, those superintendents, those 
districts that can best identify what the needs are of that community.
  Ed-Flex allowed schools to use Federal money. That particular bill 
did not include new Federal money. Although I might add, we in the 
Senate, under Republican leadership--and I am very proud of this--did 
increase Federal spending last year by $500 million above what the 
President of the United States wanted or requested. The Republican 
leadership in the Senate sent a strong message: Yes, if we have local 
control, improved flexibility, and strong accountability, we will 
continue to invest, and invest heavily, in education across this 
country.
  Ed-Flex took the same amount of money we had, but basically stripped 
away all the Washington redtape, freeing the shackles of these 
excessive, burdensome regulations that were added here in Washington, 
DC, but really handcuffing our teachers whose goal, whose profession is 
to educate people in that classroom, children in that classroom.

  Ed-Flex was a first step. Issues such as school safety are, again, 
very important issues that have to be addressed if that right really 
does include being in a classroom that is violence free and drug free. 
It is time we extend this concept of empowerment of families, of 
parents, of using resources locally so they can be directed where the 
needs are. That is what this legislation does.
  I am pleased because this is a continuation of a process. Again, this 
particular bill doesn't answer all the education challenges we have, 
but it continues that process by giving significant relief to American 
families, to parents as they pursue the educational opportunities which 
we all--both sides of the aisle--know are so important.
  I had the opportunity of presiding over the previous hour, and again 
you hear this particular bill does not do enough to improve all K-12 
education, or all education. Yes, this particular bill is not intended 
to solve all of the problems or all of the challenges of education. But 
it does very specifically address a number of them.
  At the same time this discussion on the floor continues, we are 
debating in committee what is called ESEA, although a lot of people are 
just getting familiar with what those letters mean. ESEA is the 
Elementary and Secondary Education Act. We are reauthorizing that large 
act, which addresses many of the other issues in education. This 
particular bill will likely be debated actively in committee within the 
next several weeks and then brought to the floor to follow the current 
bill about which we are talking.
  It is this combination of the bill we are talking about on the 
floor--and I will come to a few more of the details in this bill--and 
the more comprehensive legislation of ESEA that I believe put together, 
building on Ed-Flex last year, building on the additional $500 million 
investment this body put in above the President, that moves us towards 
the goal on the right track with the right principles of local control, 
strong accountability, and increased flexibility that ultimately will 
improve our American education system. That is true especially where we 
need the improvement the most, and that is kindergarten through the 
12th grade.
  The ESEA, or the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, addresses 
issues on the spending side of the ledger. The bill we are addressing 
today addresses the tax-related issues associated with education as 
well as the savings side of education. We had hearings in the Senate a 
couple of weeks ago. My colleague from Tennessee, Senator Thompson, 
held hearings on the rising cost of college, how that can be addressed 
today.
  One of the things that came out of those hearings is that we should 
do all we can to empower parents and students to save enough for a 
college education.
  What do we have today? Under current law, a family can contribute 
$500 per year into an education IRA. I do not want to diminish that 
because it is very important. It again came from this particular body, 
of which I am very proud. But I think we can extend it. We have an 
opportunity to extend that limit in one part of this bill.
  Last week in Tennessee, I had an opportunity to visit three different 
K-12 public schools. The teachers and parents who had come said: 
Senator Frist, we don't want you to be telling us how many computers we 
can have, what kind of computers, and where to hook them up. We want 
you to help us to be free to spend the resources we have. And can't you 
help us save a little bit for our children's education in the future? 
Isn't there something you can do in terms of legislation?
  IRAs are tremendous savings vehicles. The regular IRAs we have today 
simply do not help the conscientious people of Tennessee save enough 
money for their children's education because when you take money out of 
these traditional IRAs, you pay a significant penalty for early 
withdrawal. Therefore, the only savings vehicle we have today is the 
education IRA. But as I mentioned, the limit on maximum contributions 
is $500 a year, and that comes down to about $40 a month. I do not know 
about my colleagues, but that is about what my cable bill is each 
month.
  In addition to raising that contribution limit for education IRAs, 
this bill will also allow the American family for the first time to use 
some of those education savings for expenses that are associated with 
K-12 education. Currently, with an education IRA as presently designed, 
one cannot use that money for K-12 expenses. I have heard a number of 
my colleagues claim that allowing families to use some of their own 
money for elementary and secondary education is a backdoor attempt for 
a voucher debate. I hate to hear that almost fearmongering of: Let's 
not talk about the issues at hand because what you are really talking 
about is vouchers, when they are totally disassociated.
  It comes down to whose money is this? It is the family's money; it is 
their money to begin with. This whole debate on vouchers can be held on 
some other day.
  I want to make it clear this savings proposal we are debating is no 
more a voucher proposal than a tax cut is a voucher proposal.
  As chairman of the Senate Budget Committee's Task Force on Education, 
I had the opportunity to listen to people who were bringing before that 
task force creative solutions to the problems which plague our Nation's 
schools today. Although, again, we need to address that in a 
comprehensive manner, which we are doing, I believe expanding the 
education savings account is a positive, constructive first step, not a 
final solution.

[[Page S855]]

  It does move us in the important direction of empowering parents, 
children, and that parent-child team. Again, the concept is very 
different than a Washington, DC, one size fits all strategy or more 
mandates out of Washington. What we are doing is locally empowering 
that parent-child team. Who best can identify the local needs of that 
child? It might also be an individual with a disability. For the first 
time, we allow these K-12 funds to be used for the purchase of 
technology to make learning easier. Or we are empowering for the first 
time that parent and that child, through a savings account, to use 
those resources for afterschool tutoring for that child who cannot 
quite keep up or does not quite understand what the teacher is trying 
to say.
  On the issue of expansion of the definition of qualified education 
expenses, again, it has been talked about, but I want to make the point 
that you can do these things for higher education, but it is K-12 for 
which you cannot use these funds. Therefore, this expansion of 
definitions is critically important. It can be used for fees, it can be 
used for academic tutoring as I mentioned, for books, or for supplies. 
It can be used for the cost of computers or technology, for those 
individuals with disabilities. It might be a tool that allows one 
either to hear a little bit better or to express one's self if one is 
unable to talk. Home schooling expenses, again, can qualify. We all 
know it is parents who know best and who care the most about their 
children's future.

  The President signed in 1997 the Taxpayer Relief Act which authorized 
new education IRAs for those higher education expenses. I have been 
very supportive of that, and this body has been very supportive of 
that. What we want to do now is take those moneys and apply it to K-12.
  Higher education in this country is the envy of the world. There is 
no question about it. We have the greatest higher education system of 
all 140 or 150 countries anywhere in the world. But what about 
kindergarten through 12? Are we the best? No. Are we in the top four or 
five? I can tell you what TIMSS, the Third International Math and 
Science Study, shows.
  Looking at math and science and the 12th grade where one would think 
we would be the very best with the prosperity and the freedoms we have 
and our emphasis on education and the best higher education, surely in 
the 12th grade we are the best. In math and science, which we know 
pretty well are the backbone of technology and job creation of the 
future, we are not first in the world. We are not 5th in the world. We 
are not 8th in the world. We are not 12th in the world. We are not 15th 
in the world. We are not 18th in the world. But we are 19th and 20th in 
the world when it comes to the 12th grade. We are failing in K-12.
  There are a number of issues we can talk about, and I know there are 
other Members on the floor who want to speak, but I do want to mention 
the employer-sponsored aspect of this bill. We will talk a lot about 
the education savings account as we go forward, but in addition, this 
bill extends the tax exclusion for employer-provided educational 
assistance and restores the exclusion for employer-provided educational 
assistance at the graduate level.
  The Senator from Iowa was just in the Chamber and emphasized a very 
important point that can be overlooked but should not because it is a 
very important part of the bill, in that the bill eliminates the limit 
on the number of months a taxpayer may deduct the interest costs that 
he or she must pay on his or her student loan.
  As a reminder, currently a taxpayer can only deduct the interest on 
his or her loan for 5 years, regardless of how long he or she must pay 
interest on that loan. The provision allows taxpayers to deduct the 
interest that must be paid on a student loan for the lifetime of that 
loan.
  In closing, I want to mention that the bill itself does provide help 
for all of those schools, as well as those school districts in need of 
school construction, school modernization. Thus, I am pleased the 
majority leader has brought this bill before the Senate for early 
consideration. I applaud his decision to do so. It builds upon what we 
did in the last session. It sets us on the right track focusing on K-12 
education, and there is no more important issue as we look to the 
future than education.
  If we can complete action on this particular bill and then complete 
action on the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, we will have 
addressed both the spending side of the equation, as well as the tax 
side of the equation, both of which are important to improving and 
strengthening education in this country. We can do all of that before 
Easter.

  I compliment the Senator from Georgia, who has worked on this 
particular issue during the whole period I have been in the Senate. His 
leadership is impressive. He is a mentor to many of us on education. I 
appreciate his hard work. I urge my colleagues to support this very 
important bill in order to expand education opportunities for families 
and students, yes, in Tennessee but all across America.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Georgia.
  Mr. COVERDELL. I thank the Senator from Tennessee for his remarks and 
generous comments on our efforts. I enjoy very much working with him. I 
am very complimentary of his work in education on the Budget Committee 
and on the Educational Flexibility Act which was a historic 
accomplishment by the Congress. I thank the Senator so much for being 
here today.
  I yield the floor. I note the Senator from Texas is seeking 
recognition.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Texas is recognized.
  Mrs. HUTCHISON. Madam President, thank you very much for allowing me 
to speak. I am very pleased to support the bill. Of course, I 
acknowledge the leadership of Senator Coverdell and Senator Roth. They 
have been the leaders in trying to give more choices to more parents in 
our country to do what is best for their children.
  In Washington, sometimes we get a one-size-fits-all mentality, but 
everyone knows that every child in this country is different and every 
child has different needs. What we should be doing in Washington is 
giving parents the ability to choose what is best for their particular 
child. That is what S. 1134 does.
  The Affordable Education Act of 1999 is exactly what this country 
needs to empower parents to do the best for their children. Our goal is 
to give every child the opportunity to succeed in this country. No 
child can succeed without a good education.
  This bill is simple and it is compelling. We have in the law now an 
education IRA. It allows post-tax contributions to be invested and then 
used tax free for college tuition and other costs. This is a great 
idea.
  Once again, Senator Coverdell and Senator Roth led us to pass this 
bill. It creates an added incentive for Americans to save, particularly 
at a time when Americans have a negative savings rate. It encourages 
more Americans to think about and plan for and pay for college for 
their children. More college-educated Americans mean more higher-income 
Americans; it means more tax revenues to offset the lost revenues. If 
ever there was a win-win tax policy, this is it.
  So why would anyone oppose expanding this tremendously successful 
program for K through 12 education expenses? We have a high school 
dropout rate that is unacceptably high for the greatest country on 
Earth. We have children who are unable to afford basic supplies, much 
less computers. We have children literally trapped in failed schools.
  I support this bill because I support the ability of parents to 
choose what is best for their children. This bill ensures the maximum 
possible flexibility for parents. If they wish to save for college and 
use the proceeds to pay for college tuition on a tax-free basis, they 
can do that. If they want to use the proceeds to purchase band uniforms 
for their child, they can do that--or books or computers or anything 
that would relate to the education or development of their children.
  And yes, parents can use the accounts for private or parochial school 
tuition--which forms the core of the opposition to this bill by the 
President and our colleagues on the other side of the aisle.
  I am not going to apologize for supporting a bill that allows working 
families to save their own hard-earned

[[Page S856]]

money to send their children to the school that will give them the best 
choice and the best start in life. It takes not one penny from the 
public schools in this country.
  I do not apologize for supporting that because I know working-class 
Texans who have told me they want the choice to send their child to a 
school that they think is the best.
  Choice is what this bill is all about. Choice is at the heart of a 
provision that I offered to this bill last year, which was passed on 
the Senate floor before being vetoed by President Clinton. That 
amendment would, for the first time, make Federal funds available for 
public single-sex schools and classrooms as long as comparable 
educational opportunities were made available for students of both 
sexes.

  The Senate overwhelmingly approved this amendment on two previous 
occasions. I am confident it will again because I am going to bring it 
up on the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act 
scheduled to be taken up later this year in the Senate.
  I might say, Senator Collins, who is sitting in the Chair today, is a 
very strong supporter of this amendment. I appreciate her leadership on 
this issue. She has talked to parents in Maine who have wanted to be 
able to send their children to a single-sex classroom because they know 
that child would be able to do better in that environment, but they 
have been discouraged by the Department of Education.
  So because of that experience, because Senator Collins listened to 
her constituents in Maine, we are now going to team up and let every 
child in America have the choice that the parent in Maine wants for her 
child.
  I offered that provision to help remove the cloud of doubt that was 
hanging over the education community about what the Federal Government 
would do if parents decided this is what they wanted, and they went to 
the school board and asked for the authorization of a same-gender 
school or classroom.
  The amendment is simple. It adds the establishment and operation of 
same-gender schools and classrooms to the list of allowable uses for 
funds under title VI, the Federal innovation education block grant 
program. This amendment is necessary because for too long the 
Department of Education has discouraged States and public schools from 
pursuing voluntary single-sex programs, despite the clear benefits that 
such programs have for some students and despite the fact that they 
would only be offered where parents asked for it and support it.
  Ask almost any student or graduate of a same-gender school, most of 
whom are from private or parochial schools, and they will almost all 
tell you--enthusiastically--that they were enriched and strengthened by 
their experience.
  Surveys and studies of students show that at certain levels of 
education, for some students, both boys and girls enrolled in same-
gender programs tend to be more confident, more focused on their 
studies, and ultimately more successful in school, as well as later in 
their careers. Both sexes report feeling a camaraderie and a sense of 
peer and teacher support that they do not encounter to the same degree 
in coeducational classrooms. Teachers, too, report fewer control and 
discipline problems--something almost any teacher will tell you can 
consume a good part of classtime. Inevitably, these positive student 
attitudes translate into academic results.
  Study after study has demonstrated that girls and boys in same-gender 
schools, on average, are academically more successful and ambitious 
than their coeducational counterparts. These results and benefits of 
same-gender education for hundreds of thousands of American students 
and their families can be an option in public schools as well as 
parochial and private.
  Susan Estrich, a professor of law at the University of California, 
stated in a recently syndicated article regarding the amendment:

       Without boys in the classroom, researchers have found, 
     girls speak up more, take more science and math, and end up 
     getting more Ph.D.s, and serve on more corporate boards. 
     While the benefits of single-sex education for boys have been 
     less well-documented, there is at least anecdotal evidence 
     that boys' schools in the inner cities, where discipline is 
     stressed and positive male role models emphasized, may result 
     in lower dropout rates and higher test scores.
  I believe this is an idea that should be an option for every parent. 
It is not a mandate. It is not even a recommendation. It is just an 
option. Why not let the parents have the full range of choices in 
public school? That is what the innovation provision of title VI is 
supposed to do.
  We also hear a lot on the Senate floor about the need to hire more 
teachers and to reduce class size. Many on the other side of the aisle 
think the answer to the growing teacher shortage is to simply have the 
Federal Government hire more teachers, pay for a fraction of their 
salaries, and force local school districts to pick up the rest. I think 
there is a better approach and one that will not only ensure that more 
teachers are hired but that better teachers are also hired, teachers 
with real-world experience and knowledge that can be translated into 
the classroom.
  Called Careers to Classrooms, my proposal would build on a 
tremendously successful Department of Defense program that takes 
experienced, qualified military service men and women and helps them 
transition into the classroom as teachers. The program seeks out and 
helps place members of the military, with at least 10 years of service 
and skills, in high-need areas such as math, science, computers, and 
language skills. It also helps many of them with stipends while they 
get their certification, which usually comes through a streamlined 
certification process.
  Careers to Classrooms takes this successful model and applies it to 
civilian professionals interested in sharing their knowledge with 
public school students. Under this program, individuals with 
demonstrable skills in high-need areas, such as computers or foreign 
languages, would be helped to find a school that has a need for 
teachers in their field. It would provide assistance to the school to 
hire the individual while they obtain their certification--again, under 
a streamlined process.
  This is another example of a win-win for a career person who would 
like to go into a different career, would like to go into teaching, 
happens to be able to speak French or Russian or Italian or Chinese, 
and would like to offer that to a school that can't offer it to 
students because they don't have a qualified teacher. This approach is 
far less costly than simply paying the salaries of new teachers 
regardless of their expertise or background.
  While there is no question our teachers need to be paid, and paid 
well, this is an area that has been left to the discretion of our 
States and local school districts throughout the history of this 
Nation. Our Nation's parents and their children do not need more 
Federal control, more bureaucracy, and more redtape.
  I had a teacher come to one of my townhall meetings in a small town 
in north Texas. The teacher was about to go out of her mind. She 
brought me the number of forms she has to fill out. It was this tall--
this tall--with pages she has to fill out just to be a teacher in this 
very small school district in north Texas.
  That is not what our teachers need. What we need is to empower our 
parents with greater choices to find the education path that is best 
for each individual child in this country. We need to give teachers the 
ability to teach rather than have more Federal mandates. We need to 
make options available, and we need to do it in an innovative and 
flexible manner.
  Heaping more money on a failed system has been exhaustive to our 
teachers, to our principals, to our superintendents, to our parents, 
and to our children. The policies of the past have failed. The 
Affordable Education Act and the two additional proposals I have 
outlined are policies of the future, policies that will enable every 
child in this country to fulfill his or her potential.
  That is our goal. How we get there is the debate we are having today. 
I want to do it with flexibility, with options and empowerment of 
parents. That is what Senator Coverdell and Senator Roth are giving us 
the opportunity to pass. I urge my colleagues to support this very good 
piece of legislation.
  I thank the Chair and yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Georgia.
  Mr. COVERDELL. Madam President, I thank the Senator from Texas for 
her

[[Page S857]]

generous remarks and also the thoroughness with which she has described 
this legislation and her amendment.
  If the Chair is willing, I am glad to assume the Chair so the Senator 
from Maine might participate in this debate, if that is appropriate.
  (Senator COVERDELL assumed the Chair.)
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Chair recognizes the Senator from Maine.
  Ms. COLLINS. I thank the Presiding Officer for his generosity in 
assuming the Chair so I may debate this extremely important issue. The 
Senator from Georgia has been such a strong leader in the Senate on 
education issues. I have been very pleased to work with him on a number 
of education issues. I know how committed he is to improving education 
for all American children. I am delighted to join in this debate today.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Chair thanks the Senator.
  Ms. COLLINS. Mr. President, improving education for all American 
children is our No. 1 priority in the Senate. It is No. 1 on our 
Republican plan.
  Education is more important than ever before in our history. While 
education has always been the engine of social and economic progress, 
today it assumes more importance than ever before. Education is 
critical to allow people to fully participate in our increasingly 
technological society. Education is critical to narrowing the gap 
between the rich and the poor in this country, which is largely an 
educational gap. In fact, an individual with a college degree can 
expect to earn, on average, $17,000 more a year than an individual who 
only has a high school degree. Increasingly, education is important not 
only to our quality of life, not only to technological and medical 
breakthroughs, but to narrowing the gaps in our society and ensuring 
that everyone is able to have the quality of life he or she wishes to 
have.
  By working with our parents, our teachers, our communities, and our 
States, our goal is to strengthen our schools so that every American 
child has the opportunity for a good education, so that no child, in 
the words of Texas Governor George Bush, is left behind. That is our 
goal.
  A good education is a ladder of opportunity. It turns dreams into 
reality, it is responsible for improvements in our quality of life, and 
it enables a child to achieve his or her full potential. That is why I 
am a strong supporter of the Affordable Education Act, the legislation 
we are debating today.
  The Presiding Officer knows I am a very strong supporter of public 
education. I would not support a bill I thought in any way weakened 
public education. The last time this bill was debated on the Senate 
floor--and again today--I heard suggestions that somehow this bill was 
a backdoor attempt at vouchers. Nothing could be further from the 
truth. In fact, this legislation will allow American families to save 
for their children's future education--to save for college, for 
example. It will allow them to use the money they put aside to 
supplement public education in K through 12, to hire a tutor, for 
example, to pay for a school trip, to help to afford extra help by way 
of buying a computer. This will help parents help their own children 
with their own money that they are putting aside in an educational 
savings account.
  I am particularly interested in this legislation because I think it 
will help parents afford higher education, which often seems to be an 
obstacle that many families question they can afford.
  Creating the educational IRA, as this Congress did, was an important 
first step in encouraging families to save for higher education. But we 
need to go further, and the Affordable Education Act contains 
significantly improved benefits for families using educational IRAs to 
save for postsecondary education.
  In the State of Maine, we have a terrific record of encouraging our 
students to complete high school. We have one of the best records in 
the country. But, unfortunately, we don't do as well encouraging 
students to go beyond high school. In that area, we lag behind other 
States. Yet we know how important higher education is. It is more 
important than ever before. As I talk with students and their families, 
school administrators, and teachers, I find that too many Maine 
families believe education beyond high school is simply beyond their 
means. This legislation will help them save for the cost of higher 
education. It will increase the annual amount a family can contribute 
to an educational IRA from $500 to $2,000.
  Now, let's look at what that means and the difference that can make. 
That means if a family were saving the maximum amount of $2,000 each 
year for 18 years, starting at the child's birth, at a return of about 
8 percent per year, they would have about $75,000 to pay for a college 
education. Now, that contrasts sharply with the $19,000 they would have 
under current law. That is important because $75,000 is an awful lot 
closer to the average cost of attending a private college for 4 years 
than $19,000 would be.
  The Affordable Education Act also makes some important changes and 
improvements in prepaid tuition plans. That is another way we can help 
American families better afford higher education. Some of the 
provisions in this bill were originally proposed in legislation I 
introduced called the Savings For Scholars legislation.
  For example, families will be allowed to roll over accounts without 
incurring tax liability from one prepaid plan to another. So if they 
move from one State to another with a different variation, they don't 
lose the benefits of that plan.
  The legislation includes first cousins among the family members to 
whom a plan can be transferred should it not be needed or used by the 
child who was the original beneficiary. It will provide greater 
incentives for grandparents to establish prepaid tuition or to 
participate in prepaid tuition plans.
  Another provision of this legislation, which I think is very 
important, is that it will eliminate the 60-month limit on the 
deduction of student loan interest. The second bill I introduced as a 
new Senator in 1997 allowed students to deduct the interest on their 
student loans. I am very pleased that a version of my legislation--and 
there were many others supporting that approach as well--was 
incorporated into the 1997 Tax Relief Act. But we found that there was 
a 60-month limit put on how long someone could deduct the interest on a 
student loan. This legislation eliminates that 60-month limit. That is 
going to be very important to students who attend graduate or 
professional school or who otherwise have incurred a large debt burden.
  The impetus for the legislation I introduced back in 1997 came from 
my experience while working at a small college in Maine. Most of the 
students of this college--Husson College in Bangor, ME--were first-
generation college students, the first members of their family to 
attend college. Eighty-five percent of them received some sort of 
student loan in order to be able to afford college. What I found is 
that many of them were graduating with a mountain of debt. They were 
worried about how they were going to be able to pay off those student 
loans. Allowing them to deduct that interest every month when they 
write that check, knowing they will be able to deduct that interest, is 
an enormous help to them. By eliminating that 60-month limit, we will 
help even more students and help make higher education that much more 
affordable.
  Another important provision of the Affordable Education Act is the 
provision dealing with the National Health Corps scholarships 
exclusion. Because Maine is underserved in many of our rural areas for 
health care providers, this provision is particularly important to our 
State. What it would do is allow health care providers who had received 
these National Health Corps scholarships to exclude the cost of that 
scholarship from their gross income.
  I have touched on just some of the very important provisions of this 
legislation. We know that investing in education and making it easier 
for families to afford education, whether it is helping at the K 
through 12 level or making higher education more affordable, is a good 
investment, that it is the surest and best way for us to build our 
country's assets for the future. We need to help more American families 
afford higher education. We need to strengthen our educational system. 
That is what this legislation will accomplish.
  I urge all of my colleagues to join in supporting this legislation, 
which will

[[Page S858]]

make a real difference to so many American families.
  Thank you, Mr. President. I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Ms. Collins).
  Mr. CRAIG. Madam President, thank you very much. I am extremely 
pleased to be able to come to the floor this afternoon to join my 
colleague in support of S. 1134, the Affordable Education Act.
  A few moments ago, I was in our TV studio cutting a tape, as many of 
us oftentimes do, to send back to our constituents or to speak out on a 
given issue in which a group has asked us to become involved. I was 
cutting a tape on a project that is a nationwide project called Safe 
Place. You have probably seen that triangular, yellow sign that shows a 
child inside that is on the glass or door of a small business, a fire 
station, or a city hall. It says ``Safe Place,'' and designates that 
particular location as ready to receive a child in crisis, a child who 
has had a crisis within its home or with its peers in the community and 
feels at risk and therefore seeks a safe sanctuary, a haven.
  I have also asked our colleagues to support the third week of March 
for the second year in a row as National Safe Place Week.
  The reason I say that in the context of the Affordable Education Act 
is that we Americans recognize the value of our young people. We 
recognize they are without question our most important asset and that 
we have a fundamental responsibility to them as a culture and as a 
society.
  When I speak about Safe Place, that is one of the first things we 
think of as a parent and as a community. Are our children safe within 
our homes, safe within our suburbs, or safe within our communities? The 
next thing we begin to think about after their safety is their well-
being beyond safety. I think we all recognize that beyond safety comes 
education as a major part of a child's well-being; therefore, early on 
as a country we began to establish a general educational system so that 
all of our young people could be more educated and more prepared than 
the generation before them.
  Education has become a profound part of all levels of our government. 
While we recognize education is still the primary responsibility of 
State and local units of government, we have also said the family unit 
has as its major responsibility not only the haven of safety and 
security but the responsibility of assuring its young people an 
education and that we in government would help facilitate that, we 
would help make that happen. But most important is to empower the 
parent and the family in a way that allows them to bring on that 
fundamental and basic responsibility of providing for their children 
and their education.
  S. 1134, the Affordable Education Act, looks at some primary 
concerns, and it recognizes our Tax Code penalizes the family for 
saving money to defray a child's educational expenses.
  Is it fair to penalize them for wanting a better future for their 
children as a part of what I think is the fundamental responsibility of 
a human culture? Of course it is not. By expanding the educational IRA, 
we are doing something substantive to address a parent's concern about 
his or her child's education.
  Opponents of this bill claim we are not helping education as a whole 
but only giving a subsidy to private schools. Shame on them. Shame on 
them for trying to narrow the debate when the fundamental debate is to 
broaden the issue and to expand the ability of families to provide for 
their children's education.
  It is simply not the case that we offer a subsidy to the private 
school. The money parents can save with these accounts can be used 
toward books, supplies, and other ``qualified educational expenses'' at 
a public or a private school.
  Why should we stand in the way of a parent's responsibility, that I 
think I have appropriately explained, in fulfilling the needs of their 
child in his or her educational desires?
  This bill also benefits public education by changing the formula for 
local government bonds so more money would go to benefit public school 
construction. What is wrong with that? We have already heard about a 
deficit in the safety of some of our old educational structures or the 
need to expand and improve or to build new educational structures.
  It is true, though, that this bill would benefit parents who do not 
send their children to public schools, as the money from these savings 
accounts can be used to help defray expenses incurred at a private 
school or for home schooling. Yes, let me repeat that: Home schooling. 
What is wrong with allowing and empowering the parent to work for the 
education of their children?
  This again comes down to the issue of fairness. Instead of being 
selective and saying all children have to march down this single 
Federal national public tightrope because that is the only way they can 
get an education, we are saying that is simply not true.
  Thousands and thousands of American families today are demonstrating 
just that. They want the flexibility of choice to send their child 
where they think that child will receive the best education. Why 
shouldn't we have the intelligence--maybe there is another word that 
fits better--to allow that parent to do as he or she wishes and to 
improve their ability to do so with this kind of law, for these parents 
to decide if their children would learn better wherever they chose to 
place them? We in Washington should not penalize them for making every 
effort to ensure their child receives a quality education.
  This bill allows parents, many of whom are of lower or middle class, 
to use up to $2,000 tax free to help their child learn the way the 
parent wants them to learn--not a Washington bureaucrat, not a labor 
union leader, but the parent. That is where the fundamental and primary 
responsibility lies.
  In the end, it comes down to this essential question: Should we be 
taxing the money parents use to further their child's education or 
should we give them an opportunity by allowing them to put away a tax-
free dollar in that benefit? I, for one, do not believe we should tax 
in this area. This is the same as levying a punitive tax on education.
  We all know the old axiom: When you tax something, you get less of 
it. It is just very fundamental and very simple to understand. This 
legislation goes a long way toward offering parents that opportunity to 
advance their child's education.
  I know of no other issue today that is more important than the 
general issue of education. When I am home in my State of Idaho, 
holding town meetings or visiting with the citizens of my State, 
education is the issue. There is no question they express great 
concern, either about the safety of their schools, the quality of the 
education being provided, or the expense of a college education today. 
All Americans hope for a better life for their children than the one 
they led. They are absolutely sure that better life will come through 
fulfilling an American dream that offers an optimum educational 
experience. That is why this legislation, S. 1134, is so important.
  The sanctuary of security is our first parental instinct; our second 
is to try to provide the very best opportunities for our children. 
Those opportunities will only come and a parent will only be able to 
provide for the very best if they have the greatest of flexibility to 
assure that child has the better educational experience. That is what 
this legislation is about.
  I thank my colleague from Georgia for the leadership he has taken in 
working to empower America's families to put away in a nontaxed 
environment just a little bit to ensure the opportunity of their 
children to secure the education of their choice.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. COVERDELL. I thank the Senator from Idaho for his support of the 
legislation, his remarks, and the generous kindness he has extended to 
me.
  Madam President, I think it might be of use to those listening to 
take just another moment to frame the totality of the legislation, a 
little bit about who are the sponsors of the legislation, and then to 
respond to some of the critiques we have heard from the other side of 
the aisle. I first want to make clear, this is a bipartisan legislative 
effort. The chief cosponsor of this legislation is Senator Torricelli 
of New Jersey.

[[Page S859]]

  When this legislation was before the Senate last, it received 59 
favorable votes, Republican and Democrat.
  The first point is this is a bipartisan bill. It has received 
significant passionate and dedicated support from both sides of the 
aisle. There is no one who has fought harder for the legislation, as I 
said, than Senator Torricelli from New Jersey. He has been rather 
courageous about it, candidly.
  The second point I wish to make is to frame the nature of the overall 
bill. The component that gets talked about the most is the education 
savings account, which we know will benefit about half the elementary 
school population in the United States. Fourteen million families, we 
estimate, will open an education savings account for their children. 
They will be the parents of about 20 million kids. That is just under 
half the entire population going to kindergarten through high school. 
Over the next 10 years, we are saying to these 14 million families, if 
you put the money in your savings account, we will not tax the interest 
buildup. That is not a large sum of money. It is, over 5 years, about 
$1.3 billion. Over 10 years, it is about $2.4 billion that we would not 
have taxed out of these savings accounts. We would have left it in the 
savings accounts.
  I have said this many times. It is amazing to me how a small 
incentive makes Americans do big things. By saying to these families we 
will not tax the interest in your account, we estimate they will save, 
over 10 years, $12 billion. I asked a Senator the other day in the 
debate on how many Federal programs can we get a 10-to-1 return? Not 
many.
  We are forfeiting $2.5 billion in taxes and, in return, we are 
getting $12 billion voluntarily put forward to help schools all across 
the land. That would be one of the largest influxes of new resources 
behind education in the last 10 or 15 years. We have not had to 
appropriate anything to do it; no Governor did, no local community did. 
By simply saying we are not going to tax that interest, people step up 
to the bar.
  As has been mentioned in the debate by several Senators, that is a 
very powerful component of the legislation. But it will also help 1 
million employees advance their education because we are allowing the 
employer a tax incentive, up to $5,200 a year, that can be spent on an 
employee's continuing education and it would not be taxed. We are 
helping students who are in prepaid State tuition plans all across the 
country because we are not going to tax those proceeds. How many? About 
a million students. A million employees. This is beginning to add up to 
real numbers in America--14 million families.
  On school construction, we are using the proposal of Senator Graham 
of Florida, on the other side of the aisle, to help local communities 
with the problems of school construction.
  The Senator who is now acting as our Chair talked about the health 
care benefits that are in the legislation and the fact we are allowing, 
through the life of a loan, the deductibility of the interest for 
hundreds of thousands of students who have large debt when they get out 
of college.

  The point I am making is it is a very broad policy, and it is 
supported strongly by Members of both parties.
  In the debate last week, several people who have objected to the 
legislation did so on the grounds that it would allow a family 
attending a parochial school or a private school or a home school to 
use the proceeds of their own account to help pay for that. That is 
extremely puzzling to me.
  Ninety percent of America's students are in public schools. Only 10 
percent or less are in private or parochial schools. The major 
beneficiary of the savings accounts will be families in public schools. 
Seventy percent of the people who open these accounts will be helping 
their children who are in public schools. Thirty percent will be 
helping their children who are in a private, parochial, or home school.
  The division of the money being saved is higher for those in a 
parochial or private school because they know they have an extra burden 
to bear and they will tend to save a little more. So the distribution 
of the $12 billion will be about equal--$6 billion to public school 
students and $6 billion to private and parochial school students.
  The comment was made on the other side this past week that somehow 
the parents or families in parochial or private schools are wealthy and 
they do not deserve any incentive or public attention. Nothing could be 
further from the truth.
  There is a study out from New York that the demographics of the 
student body of a parochial or private school are virtually identical 
to the demographics of the student body in the public system. In 
parochial schools, about 60 percent of the families make less than 
$40,000 a year. In private schools, 60 percent make, according to the 
Census Bureau, less than $50,000 a year.
  With regard to private and parochial schools, we have parents who, 
for whatever reason, have decided they have to make a special effort to 
deal with the education of their children because, remember, all of 
these families are paying State taxes and local taxes for their school 
system. If they have decided to go to another school, they are still 
paying for the public school system. They have to reach down and pay 
another bill to get in this other system.
  They are not wealthy. I think it was offensive to hear these families 
described as people driving around in a long limousine dropping Johnny 
off at the school. We will discuss this more during the course of the 
debate, but the Chair recognizes that when scholarships have been 
offered in Washington, DC, or in other parts of the country, the 
principal applicants are African Americans who are struggling to 
educate their children. These are not rich families. They should not be 
characterized as such.
  Senator Collins and I had a long discussion--not a debate--about 
whether this is a voucher or not. As was concluded by the Senator from 
Maine, it is not a voucher. It will help people who have already made a 
decision. It will help people in public schools, but statistically 
insignificant is the number of people who might, because they have a 
savings account, change schools. I am sure it will happen, but it would 
be insignificant. And when it does happen, who is to say it should not?
  In my State, there is a huge debate raging in the general assembly 
about school accountability. Legislation that is likely to pass, which 
has been offered by a Democratic Governor, says schools are either 
making it or not, and if they are not, those children have a right to 
escape that school.

  If that becomes a law in my home State, then I want this kind of 
tool. It is just a tool to help families deal with that situation. The 
first thing that comes up is, if the school is not preparing our 
students and it is closed, who deals with the transportation? There 
will be all kinds of commensurate costs that occur for the students who 
have to go somewhere else. This kind of tool will help them deal with 
that.
  This debate is raging across the country. A little earlier, the 
Senator from North Dakota was complimentary of the public school system 
and I believe justifiably so. But the fact of life is, as the Senator 
from Tennessee alluded to, 40 percent of the students coming out of K-
12 all across America cannot effectively read. We do have some 
problems.
  This legislation will help a student, whether they are in a public 
setting or a private setting. Tutors and computers have been mentioned. 
The poor in our country are shortchanged. The President has alluded to 
it, and the Vice President alluded to the digital divide, they call it. 
This helps close the divide because it makes funds available to the 
family to begin to make high-tech equipment available to their kids, as 
well as to those in better systems.
  I close with a reminder that there is a piece of this legislation for 
which the reach is almost impossible for any of our estimators to 
figure. This IRA account is different than others because it allows 
sponsors. In other words, a child can have an account opened for her or 
him by a grandmother, a sister, a neighbor, an employer, a benevolent 
association, a labor organization. There is no limit to it when this 
becomes law--and it will--and people begin to understand: I can help 
this child over here; I can help the children of my employees; we can 
help the children of the people who belong to this union or church.
  I used an example in the last debate a couple of years ago about the 
loss of

[[Page S860]]

a couple of police officers in Atlanta. I thought at the time--because 
everybody wants to help--if we had been able to open this account for 
the children of those officers, when they reached high school or junior 
high or college, the community easily could have provided a benefit of 
enormous consequences to the families of the fallen officers. I believe 
we will see that kind of imagination begin to take root.
  The value of those contributions are not in any of these numbers. No 
one knows how many friends and neighbors and organizations and 
employers will begin to seize on this. I know it will be a lot because 
this kind of thing is in the American gut. It is a tool that Americans 
instinctively will use.

  I was about a third of the way through this debate last time when I 
remembered my father and I had opened a savings account for my two sets 
of twin nieces and nephews. At the time we opened it, we did not have 
two nickels to rub together. But we would put about $25 a month in it. 
If this had been the law, we would have had two to three times the 
amount of resources available when those children began to use it for 
school. As it was, it was not a lot of money. I think it probably got 
up to $5,000 to $8,000. But you know what. It made a difference. We did 
not have much money, but we found a way to put a few dollars away. A 
lot of other Americans will, too.
  With this legislation, no one gets hurt. Everybody gets helped: 
Public, private, parochial, home, whatever. No one is being gouged. No 
one is paying a price at the expense of somebody else. As I mentioned a 
moment ago, in America it is intuitive in our nature to step forward.
  The last thing I will say is, the dollars in these savings accounts 
have a--who knows?--3-to-1 value, 10-to-1 value. I do not know what it 
is, but these dollars are worth more than public dollars, a lot more, 
because they are laser-beam managed.
  First of all, mom and dad are going to get a statement from whichever 
savings and loan it is to remind them every month how much money is in 
that account, which will also remind them of their responsibility for 
educating those children. It is just an automatic reminder.
  The second thing that makes it so valuable is that no one knows the 
unique need of the child better than the parent or the sponsor of these 
accounts.
  So this money goes right to the target, whether it is a special 
education need, a medical need, a tutor, a home computer, whatever. 
Public dollars are hard to direct that way. They build the buildings; 
they hire the staff; they hire the teachers, and much good is done from 
it, but it is hard to put them right on the dime. It reminds you of one 
of these missiles we saw in Kosovo--going right down the chimney. That 
is exactly where these dollars will go.
  As has been said, we already have a savings account for higher 
education. That is good. This makes that account four times larger. In 
other words, higher education will benefit from this as well because 
many families will save for K through 12, and then they will not have 
to use that money. It will be there for college. But as the Chair 
noted, $75,000 versus $19,000 is a big difference.
  Because there is so much trouble in K through 12, there are families 
who will have to use it and need it at an earlier time. If that is the 
case, they should have the ability to do that. It seems illogical to me 
to try to push away the options and requirements and needs of families, 
of children who are in kindergarten through high school.
  That is where America's problem is right now. We will fix it. I am an 
optimist about this. I am not a pessimist. We will fix it. But 
remember, every day we wait on this we leave someone else behind. In my 
view, in this land of freedom, any child who is denied the fundamental 
skills of an education means there is one more among us who is not 
truly free and cannot enjoy the benefits of citizenship in the 
United States. There is no higher work for us than to keep that from 
happening every time we can.

  Madam President, with that, I yield the floor and suggest the absence 
of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Ms. COLLINS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Coverdell). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.


                           Amendment No. 2854

 (Purpose: To amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to eliminate the 
  2-percent floor on miscellaneous itemized deductions for qualified 
 professional development expenses of elementary and secondary school 
  teachers and to allow a credit against income tax to elementary and 
       secondary school teachers who provide classroom materials)

  Ms. COLLINS. Mr. President, I call up amendment No. 2854 and ask for 
its consideration.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report.
  The legislative clerk read as follows:

       The Senator from Maine [Ms. Collins], for herself, Mr. Kyl, 
     and Mr. Coverdell, proposes an amendment numbered 2854.

  Ms. COLLINS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent reading of the 
amendment be dispensed with.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The amendment is as follows:

       At the end of title II, insert:

     SEC. ____. 2-PERCENT FLOOR ON MISCELLANEOUS ITEMIZED 
                   DEDUCTIONS NOT TO APPLY TO QUALIFIED 
                   PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT EXPENSES OF ELEMENTARY 
                   AND SECONDARY SCHOOL TEACHERS.

       (a) In General.--Section 67(b) (defining miscellaneous 
     itemized deductions) is amended by striking ``and'' at the 
     end of paragraph (11), by striking the period at the end of 
     paragraph (12) and inserting ``, and'', and by adding at the 
     end the following new paragraph:
       ``(13) any deduction allowable for the qualified 
     professional development expenses paid or incurred by an 
     eligible teacher.''.
       (b) Definitions.--Section 67 (relating to 2-percent floor 
     on miscellaneous itemized deductions) is amended by adding at 
     the end the following new subsection:
       ``(g) Qualified Professional Development Expenses of 
     Eligible Teachers.--For purposes of subsection (b)(13)--
       ``(1) Qualified professional development expenses.--
       ``(A) In general.--The term `qualified professional 
     development expenses' means expenses--
       ``(i) for tuition, fees, books, supplies, equipment, and 
     transportation required for the enrollment or attendance of 
     an individual in a qualified course of instruction, and
       ``(ii) with respect to which a deduction is allowable under 
     section 162 (determined without regard to this section).
       ``(B) Qualified course of instruction.--The term `qualified 
     course of instruction' means a course of instruction which--
       ``(i) is--

       ``(I) directly related to the curriculum and academic 
     subjects in which an eligible teacher provides instruction, 
     or
       ``(II) designed to enhance the ability of an eligible 
     teacher to understand and use State standards for the 
     academic subjects in which such teacher provides instruction,

       ``(ii) may--

       ``(I) provide instruction in how to teach children with 
     different learning styles, particularly children with 
     disabilities and children with special learning needs 
     (including children who are gifted and talented), or
       ``(II) provide instruction in how best to discipline 
     children in the classroom and identify early and appropriate 
     interventions to help children described in subclause (I) to 
     learn,

       ``(iii) is tied to challenging State or local content 
     standards and student performance standards,
       ``(iv) is tied to strategies and programs that demonstrate 
     effectiveness in increasing student academic achievement and 
     student performance, or substantially increasing the 
     knowledge and teaching skills of an eligible teacher,
       ``(v) is of sufficient intensity and duration to have a 
     positive and lasting impact on the performance of an eligible 
     teacher in the classroom (which shall not include 1-day or 
     short-term workshops and conferences), except that this 
     clause shall not apply to an activity if such activity is 1 
     component described in a long-term comprehensive professional 
     development plan established by an eligible teacher and the 
     teacher's supervisor based upon an assessment of the needs of 
     the teacher, the students of the teacher, and the local 
     educational agency involved, and
       ``(vi) is part of a program of professional development 
     which is approved and certified by the appropriate local 
     educational agency as furthering the goals of the preceding 
     clauses.
       ``(C) Local educational agency.--The term `local 
     educational agency' has the meaning given such term by 
     section 14101 of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act 
     of 1965, as in effect on the date of the enactment of this 
     subsection.
       ``(2) Eligible teacher.--
       ``(A) In general.--The term `eligible teacher' means an 
     individual who is a kindergarten through grade 12 classroom 
     teacher in an elementary or secondary school.

[[Page S861]]

       ``(B) Elementary or secondary school.--The terms 
     `elementary school' and `secondary school' have the meanings 
     given such terms by section 14101 of the Elementary and 
     Secondary Education Act of 1965 (20 U.S.C. 8801), as so in 
     effect.''.
       (b) Effective Date.--The amendments made by this section 
     shall apply to taxable years beginning after December 31, 
     2000.

     SEC. ____. CREDIT TO ELEMENTARY AND SECONDARY SCHOOL TEACHERS 
                   WHO PROVIDE CLASSROOM MATERIALS.

       (a) In General.--Subpart B of part IV of subchapter A of 
     chapter 1 is amended by adding at the end the following new 
     section:

     ``SEC. 30B. CREDIT TO ELEMENTARY AND SECONDARY SCHOOL 
                   TEACHERS WHO PROVIDE CLASSROOM MATERIALS.

       ``(a) Allowance of Credit.--In the case of an eligible 
     teacher, there shall be allowed as a credit against the tax 
     imposed by this chapter for such taxable year an amount equal 
     to the qualified elementary and secondary education expenses 
     which are paid or incurred by the taxpayer during such 
     taxable year.
       ``(b) Maximum Credit.--The credit allowed by subsection (a) 
     for any taxable year shall not exceed $100.
       ``(c) Definitions.--
       ``(1) Eligible teacher.--The term `eligible teacher' means 
     an individual who is a kindergarten through grade 12 
     classroom teacher, instructor, counselor, aide, or principal 
     in an elementary or secondary school on a full-time basis for 
     an academic year ending during a taxable year.
       ``(2) Qualified elementary and secondary education 
     expenses.--The term `qualified elementary and secondary 
     education expenses' means expenses for books, supplies (other 
     than nonathletic supplies for courses of instruction in 
     health or physical education), computer equipment (including 
     related software and services) and other equipment, and 
     supplementary materials used by an eligible teacher in the 
     classroom.
       ``(3) Elementary or secondary school.--The term `elementary 
     or secondary school' means any school which provides 
     elementary education or secondary education (through grade 
     12), as determined under State law.
       ``(d) Special Rules.--
       ``(1) Denial of double benefit.--No deduction shall be 
     allowed under this chapter for any expense for which credit 
     is allowed under this section.
       ``(2) Application with other credits.--The credit allowable 
     under subsection (a) for any taxable year shall not exceed 
     the excess (if any) of--
       ``(A) the regular tax for the taxable year, reduced by the 
     sum of the credits allowable under subpart A and the 
     preceding sections of this subpart, over
       ``(B) the tentative minimum tax for the taxable year.
       ``(e) Election To Have Credit Not Apply.--A taxpayer may 
     elect to have this section not apply for any taxable year.''.
       (b) Clerical Amendment.--The table of sections for subpart 
     B of part IV of subchapter A of chapter 1 is amended by 
     adding at the end the following new item:

``Sec. 30B. Credit to elementary and secondary school teachers who 
              provide classroom materials.''.

       (c) Effective Date.--The amendments made by this section 
     shall apply to taxable years beginning after December 31, 
     2000.

  Ms. COLLINS. Mr. President, I rise to offer an amendment to the 
Affordable Education Act on behalf of myself, the Presiding Officer--
Senator Coverdell--and my good friend from Arizona, Senator Kyl.
  We worked together to craft this amendment to help our public school 
teachers when they either pursue professional development at their own 
expense or when they purchase supplies for their classrooms.
  Our legislation has two major provisions. First, it will allow 
teachers to deduct their professional development expenses without 
subjecting the deduction to the existing 2-percent floor that is in our 
Tax Code. Second, it will grant teachers a tax credit of up to $100 for 
books, supplies, and other equipment they purchase for their students. 
That is very common. As Senator Kyl noted earlier today, a study by the 
National Education Association indicates the average schoolteacher 
teaching K through the 12th grade spends more than $400 annually on 
supplies for the classroom.
  Our amendment would reward teachers for undertaking these activities 
that are designed to make them better teachers or to provide better 
supplies for their students. It is an example of a way that we can say 
thank you to teachers who do much for our children.
  Provisions similar to both of these components of our amendment were 
included in last year's tax bill. In this amendment, the definition of 
``acceptable professional development activities'' has been changed to 
reflect the definition included in the Teacher Empowerment Act that 
Senator Gregg of New Hampshire and I introduced last year, and which we 
expect to be included in the reauthorization of the Elementary and 
Secondary Education Act, which the Committee on Health, Education, 
Labor, and Pensions is about to mark up. This definition sets high 
standards for the quality of professional development activities 
covered by our amendment, ensuring that such programs will help 
teachers truly excel in the classroom.

  While our amendment provides financial relief for our dedicated 
teachers, its real beneficiaries are our Nation's students. Other than 
involved parents, which we all know to be the most important component, 
a well-qualified and dedicated teacher is the single most important 
prerequisite for student success. Educational researchers have 
repeatedly demonstrated the close relationship between qualified 
teachers and successful students. Moreover, teachers themselves 
understand how important professional development is to maintaining and 
expanding their levels of competence. When I meet with teachers from 
Maine, they always tell me of their need for more professional 
development and the scarcity of financial support for this very worthy 
pursuit. The willingness of Maine's teachers to reach deep into their 
own pockets to fund their own professional development impresses me 
deeply.
  For example, an English teacher in Bangor, who serves on my 
Educational Policy Advisory Committee, told me of spending her own 
money to attend a curriculum conference. She then came back and shared 
that information with all of the English teachers in her department. 
She is not alone. She is typical of teachers who are willing to pay for 
their own professional development as well as to purchase supplies and 
materials to enhance their teaching.
  Let me explain how our amendment would work in terms of real dollars 
when it comes to professional development. In 1997, the average yearly 
salary for a teacher was about $38,000. Under current law, a teacher 
earning this amount could not deduct the first $770 in professional 
development expenses he or she paid for out of pocket. So imagine, you 
are a teacher who is making about $38,000 a year and you are spending 
more than $700 in order to take a course to improve your teaching to 
help you be a better teacher. Yet because you don't reach that 2-
percent floor that is in the existing Tax Code, you don't get a tax 
break for that first $770. You have to spend more than that before you 
can get the deduction. Our amendment would change that. It would see to 
it that teachers receive tax relief for all such expenses. Under our 
amendment, that $770 would be a deduction on the teacher's income tax 
form.
  I greatly admire the many teachers who have voluntarily financed the 
additional education they need to improve their schools and to serve 
their students better. I greatly admire those teachers who reach into 
their own pockets to buy supplies, paints, books, all sorts of 
materials that are lacking in their classroom. We should reward those 
teachers. Let us change the Tax Code to recognize and reward their 
sacrifice and to encourage more teachers to take the courses they need 
or to help supplement the supplies in their classroom.
  I hope these changes in our Tax Code will encourage more teachers to 
undertake the formal course work in the subject matter they teach, or 
to complete graduate degrees in either a subject matter or in 
education, or to attend conferences to give them more ideas for 
innovative approaches to presenting the course work they teach in 
perhaps a more challenging manner.
  This amendment will reimburse teachers for just a small part of what 
they invest in our children's future. This money will be money well 
spent. Investing in education helps us to build one of the most 
important assets for our country's future; that is, a well-educated 
population. We need to ensure that our public schools have the very 
best teachers possible in order to bring out the very best in our 
students. Adopting this amendment is the first step toward that goal. 
It will help us in a small way recognize the many sacrifices our 
teachers make each and every day.
  I am very pleased to have had the opportunity to work with the 
Senator from Georgia and the Senator from Arizona on this amendment. 
They have

[[Page S862]]

both been great leaders in education and in coming up with innovative 
ways to use our Tax Code to encourage better teaching. I urge all of my 
colleagues to join us in support of this modest but important effort.
  I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  (Ms. COLLINS assumed the Chair.)
  Mr. COVERDELL. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the 
order for the quorum be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

                          ____________________