[Congressional Record Volume 146, Number 42 (Thursday, April 6, 2000)]
[House]
[Page H1948]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                     REAL MONEY NEED FOR EDUCATION

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from California (Mr. Sherman) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. SHERMAN. Mr. Speaker, I am honored to be joined here today by 
Patty Boyle, a teacher from Southern California, whose outstanding work 
is well known to the colleagues that she has had in teaching, to the 
parents, and the students that she has touched. As a result of Patty 
being here, I have decided to address the House on the importance of 
providing funds to modernize our schools and to provide additional 
classroom space.
  I think we are all aware of how important it is to modernize our 
schools, to provide Internet access to teachers and to students. Many 
of us have focused on how important it is to provide air conditioning 
for schools as we go into the spring and summer months. More and more 
schools have extra programs or full-year sessions. Certainly, air 
conditioning is necessary then. It may also be necessary in May and in 
September when schools have their regular sessions.
  Keep in mind, we here in Congress work in air-conditioned buildings. 
They tell tales of last century of what it was like to be a Member of 
Congress without air conditioning. Imagine what it is to try to teach 
30 students without air conditioning.
  Finally, Mr. Speaker, we have again and again talked about the 
importance of smaller class sizes, particularly in the first 3 years. 
Well, if we are going to have class sizes of 18 or 20 students in the 
first 3 years or throughout elementary school, we are going to need 
more classrooms. We are either going to need to reconfigure the space 
that we have now or build additional space for those classrooms that 
will be needed because we take the same number of students and put them 
into a larger number of classrooms so that they can have smaller class 
sizes.
  All too often, what this has meant for resource specialists, for 
special ed classrooms, is that, as there are more classrooms devoted to 
regular elementary school education, the special ed students find 
themselves relegated to closets, to faculty rooms, to whatever nook and 
cranny that was never designed to allow students to learn and teachers 
to teach.
  Both parties have recognized the importance of allocating Federal aid 
to schools and especially to provide school districts with the capacity 
to build additional classrooms and to modernize the classrooms that 
they do have.
  But while both parties have recognized the need and both parties have 
decided that that need should be met by changing our Tax Code, that is 
where the similarity ends.
  Unfortunately, the Republican Party has come up with a bizarre notion 
of how to use the Tax Code in order to encourage school construction. 
What they have said is it is okay for school districts to issue school 
bonds and then those districts will be encouraged to delay school 
construction, not for the 2 years that are allowed under the current 
tax law, but up to 4 years.
  Now school districts need flexibility into when they issue the bonds 
and when they actually do the construction, but this is the first case 
where that flexibility is designed as a method of providing money for 
the school districts.
  Well, how are they supposed to get money? Well, they are encouraged 
to arbitrage, to take the funds that they get by issuing school bonds 
and not build schools right away, but take the money to the markets, 
play the markets. Then they are allowed under the new Republican 
proposal to keep the profits.
  The sole contribution to school construction and modernization 
offered in this Republican tax plan is a free ticket to Las Vegas for 
every school board member in the country.
  I do not think that we should be encouraging schools to arbitrage 
invest, and we certainly should not view ourselves as having made some 
major contribution to education and school construction, because we 
have provided those free tickets to Las Vegas and told the school 
district that they are allowed to keep the profits that they make by 
playing the market.
  Instead, the Democratic tax proposal, one that I am proud to 
cosponsor, and it is not just a Democratic proposal now, I believe the 
gentlewoman from Connecticut (Mrs. Johnson) and many other Republicans 
have sponsored or cosponsored. This legislation would, instead, provide 
real money by allowing schools to have the Federal Government pay the 
interest on the bonds up to $25 billion in bonds. That is real money 
for schools to spend.

                          ____________________