[Congressional Record Volume 146, Number 117 (Wednesday, September 27, 2000)]
[House]
[Pages H8300-H8306]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




             CONGRESSIONAL BLACK CAUCUS ALTERNATIVE BUDGET

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 6, 1999, the gentleman from New York (Mr. Owens) is recognized 
for 60 minutes.
  Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, we are about to approach the end game 
negotiations, probably behind the scenes, the end game negotiations on 
the budget, and the appropriations process has started already.
  We have gone through a process of preparing a budget which sets forth 
the general contours, the outlines of where we want to go with respect 
to our expenditures for each particular function of government. We did 
that some time ago, and then we have gone through the passage of 13 
appropriations bills in the House of Representatives.
  Mr. Speaker, I understand they have not passed all of those bills in 
the other body, but we have passed them in the House of 
Representatives. In a situation where there is disagreement between the 
majority party in the House, they have the votes to pass whatever they 
want to pass, if there is disagreement between the majority party in 
the House and the White House or the majority party in the House plus 
the other body, they agree but then the White House disagrees, then the 
only way we resolve those disagreements is through a negotiation 
process, which takes place at the very end of the progress of the other 
steps that we have taken.
  Mr. Speaker, we are about to approach that point in the year when we 
have a special situation. For the first time in many decades, this 
Nation has a surplus, and it is not a small surplus at all. The Federal 
surplus keeps changing every day, but positively changing. It was $200 
billion a few weeks ago, and now I understand we are talking about $230 
billion as the most conservative estimate of what the budget will be 
available for some kind of processing by the House and the executive 
branch.
  There is another surplus for Social Security, which is a lockbox; 
that means we are not talking about money that would be taken away from 
Social

[[Page H8301]]

Security, because they have generated their own surplus, whereas we can 
give some part of the $230 billion to Social Security, they have their 
own surplus already.
  We do not have to rush to the rescue of Social Security with the 
surplus. We have some alternatives for what we do with the surplus. Mr. 
Speaker, I want to just go back to the point where the budget process 
started. I want to speak for the Congressional Black Caucus, which set 
forth its alternative budget during the beginning of the budget 
process.
  Now that we are at the end of the process, the negotiations that are 
going to take place will take place between the Democrat-controlled 
White House and the Republican-controlled Congress, both Houses of 
Congress. And we need to get on the agenda and we have to talk to the 
public in order to get on that agenda.
  We need to have you, members of the public, understand that public 
opinion will decide whether certain items go on to the agenda of the 
discussions that take place.
  We would like very much to get on the agenda from the White House 
side of the table to have the President understand what our final 
concerns are in this budget. We are concerned, like everybody else is, 
about certain priorities, but now that we are down to the last moment 
and the clock is ticking, we want to emphasize certain very special 
concerns that we have.
  Let me just go back and read from the introduction of a Congressional 
Black Caucus Alternative Budget to set a frame of reference for my 
final proposals today.
  We started with an introduction which reads as follows, carrying 
forward the great Democratic party traditions, Franklin Roosevelt's New 
Deal, Harry Truman's Marshal Plan, Lyndon Johnson's Great Society that 
produced Medicaid and Medicare, as advocates for the Democratic party 
mainstream philosophy, the Congressional Black Caucus sets forth this 
budget for maximum investment in opportunity.
  We call our budget a budget for maximum investment and opportunity. 
As we prepare the year 2001 budget, we are blessed by the long, warm 
rays of the sun of a coming decade of surpluses. Compassion and vision 
are no longer blocked by the spectrum of budget deficits. The 
conservative estimate is that there will be a $1.9 trillion nonSocial 
Security surplus over the next 10 years.
  I made that statement several months ago. We know it is greater than 
$1.9 trillion, the estimate. Using very simple logic, we should be able 
to project about $200 billion for the year 2001 budget as this window 
of opportunity opens.
  Investment for the future must be our first priority. Maximizing 
opportunities for individual citizens is synonymous with maximizing the 
growth and expansion of the U.S. superpower economy. It is the age of 
information, stupid. It is the time of a computer and digitalization. 
It is the era of thousands of high-level vacancies, because there are 
not enough information technology workers with enlightened budget 
decisions. We can, at this moment, begin the shaping of the contours of 
a new cybercivilization.

  If we fail to seize this moment to make investments that will allow 
our great Nation to surge forward in the creation of this new 
cybercivilization, then our children and our grandchildren will frown 
on us and lament the fact that we failed not because we lacked fiscal 
resources, but our failures, our very devastating blunder, was due to a 
poverty of vision.
  We have custodians of unprecedented wealth in a giant economy, but 
midget minds and tiny spirits have seized control and the only big 
sweeping idea being generated during this budget discussion is a 
negative Republican proposal for a monster tax cut for the wealthy. At 
a time when positive generosity is possible, such a proposal maximizes 
great selfishness.
  Now, this was at the time of the consideration of the budget and 
since that time, the Republican majority has retreated somewhat on the 
size of its proposed tax cut. We welcome that retreat, but we think of 
the lack of voices for investment, we want to invest a portion of the 
surplus in human resources, and we want to follow up that budget 
statement which was made, a very general statement made at that time, 
we want to follow up with more specific recommendations now.
  The boldest and the most vital proposal contained in our CBC budget 
alternative was at the heart of this function; that is, funding for 
school construction, responding to the fact that the American people in 
numerous polls have indicated that their number one priority for 
Federal budget action is education.
  Each of the budgets being present that were presented at that time 
offered education increases, but only the CBC budget has chosen to 
focus on the kingpin issue of school physical infrastructure. While we 
applaud the President's inclusion of $1.3 billion for emergency 
repairs, we deem it to be grossly inadequate.
  We support school financing via the Tax Code, however, most of the 
local education agencies cannot borrow money without a lengthy taxpayer 
referendum procedure.
  The CBC proposes a $10 billion increase over the President's budget 
for school construction. This amount would be taken from the $200 
billion surplus. In addition to this 5 percent for infrastructure 
repair, security, and new construction, the CBC budget proposes another 
5 percent, another $10 billion to address other education improvements. 
In other words, only 10 percent of the overall surplus would be 
utilized for the all-important mission of investment in human 
resources, only 10 percent.

                              {time}  1715

  We proposed that at that time. We would like to underscore that 
proposal and say that we were talking about education, of course 
education improvements for everybody, education improvements for the 
entire Nation.
  In fact, in my piece of specific legislation, our school 
construction, H.R. 3071, I proposed construction funding to be 
allocated to all schools throughout the Nation based on the number of 
school-age children in each State. There would be no other qualifying 
features except school-age children, which meant that every school 
district in the country would be able to receive some of the proposed 
Federal school infrastructure and modernization and construction 
funding.
  We are now, as I said before, at the point where the negotiations 
specifically on amounts of money to go into this so-called omnibus 
budget that we hear about, omnibus appropriation act, the actual 
allocation of funds is going to take place somewhere between now and 
October 15. We have various projections on when Congress will adjourn. 
But I suspect that the outer limit in an election year like this that 
we will dare go will probably be in the middle of October.
  So, therefore, I think it is reasonable to project that somewhere 
between now and October 15, this omnibus budget, this end-game 
negotiation product will be produced; and we will have to vote on it.
  Right now I want to appeal to everybody listening who cares about 
education to become a part of the process. They become a part of the 
process by understanding the power of public opinion in this process. 
Public opinion is always being monitored by both parties. Leadership is 
always watching the polls, watching the results of focus groups. There 
are various ways in which public opinion makes itself felt here in 
Washington.
  So I want my colleagues to understand that there is a danger right 
here that, despite the fact that we have enormous wealth, we have a 
huge budget surplus, the danger that we are going to make some 
ridiculous blunders. There is a danger that we are going to make some 
decisions about how to spend the first $200 billion or $230 billion of 
the surplus over this 10-year period which will set a pattern; and we 
will get set in that pattern, and we will find ourselves spending, 
utilizing funding in the same way for the next 10 years.
  It is possible for the political leadership to make horrendous 
blunders. We know that wars and all kinds of catastrophes have been 
caused in the past by political leadership. Very intelligent, very well 
trained, very experienced, but still they make outrageous blunders. We 
know that is possible.
  I would like to use the Roman Empire as an example that Rome was a 
great civilization, and it was in terms of technology, in terms of 
military

[[Page H8302]]

power, in terms of law. The Roman law is the basis on probably most of 
the civilized nations' legal systems today. The Romans started it all, 
a huge system of law with a level of courts and appeals. In addition to 
their military might and their technology prowess, the great 
civilization of Rome seemed to have it all.
  But at the same time the Romans were inventing concrete and building 
magnificent structures and conquering the rest of the world at that 
time, the Romans were feeding the Christians to the lions in the 
Coliseum. The leadership of the Roman Empire, the politicians of the 
Roman Empire, the elected officials such as they were of the Roman 
Empire, were feeding the Christians to the lions at the height of the 
Roman civilization.
  Politicians can make great blunders sometimes, and we must be aware 
of that. Public opinion has to be the check and balance on some of 
these blunders. We could look at the education situation in America now 
in terms of where it was a century ago and continue to make decisions 
as if we had little red schoolhouses and as if we still had teachers 
who were so dedicated that they would give their lives to the 
profession without being appropriately compensated.
  We could act as if we are fighting wars with rifles. It was a long 
time when the rifle was supreme in the war, in any wars fought. We have 
evolved modern military technology.
  The cost of a rifle now is not the way we judge whether or not we 
have a decent defense budget. Rifles are the least expensive item. If 
we were to look at the cost of rifles and say, well, we ought to have a 
defense budget which is reflective of the cost of rifles, it must be 
greatly reduced. We do not do that with the Department of Defense.
  We have nuclear aircraft carriers that cost $4 billion and $5 
billion. One nuclear aircraft carrier costs more than $4 billion. We 
recognize in modern warfare one has to have that kind of system. One F-
22, talking about 20 some million dollars a piece, each time we make a 
mistake and fire one of these test rockets in our new proposed 
antimissile defense system, the mistake costs us $100 million. So in 
terms of defense and technology for the 21st century, we are ready to 
spend the money.

  But when we start talking about education and schools, we want to go 
back to the Dark Ages, we want to go back to the horse and buggy era; 
and we think that 10 percent, 10 percent of the surplus is too much to 
dedicate to an increase in the education budget.
  That is what the Congressional Black Caucus introduction, as I have 
just read, said we needed. It is a conservative request to say that if 
one has $200 billion, dedicate 10 percent of the $200 billion to an 
improvement in the school and education system. Invest in human 
resources.
  Let us not think of schools as not needing that kind of money 
because, after all, it is only chalks and blackboards and low-paid 
teachers. Let us think of schools in the 21st century and all the kinds 
of needs that they face and be willing to invest at least 10 percent of 
the surplus in education.
  Updating our Congressional Black Caucus alternative budget is a 
statement that we are preparing now to address to the leadership of the 
Democratic Party. We would like to at this point become more specific. 
Time has gone by. No one is addressing the request for 10 percent, half 
of which was to go to school construction. No one is addressing that. 
We are running out of time.
  So we would like to go back and approach our leadership with a new 
request. The members of the Congressional Black Caucus are convinced 
that we are at a pivotal point in this 106th session of Congress and we 
are at a critical point in the history of our Nation.
  For the first time in many decades, we have a Federal budget surplus, 
and we anticipate a significant surplus every year for the next 10 
years. We have a window of opportunity to make positive budget 
decisions this year which will set a pattern for the next 10 years.
  We, members of the Congressional Black Caucus, have already stated 
our general budget and appropriations priorities through the 
Congressional Black Caucus alternative budget which emphasized the need 
to use our surplus to invest in human resources.
  Since the countdown for the end-game negotiations has now begun, we 
wish to state our priorities in more specific and concrete requests. 
First, we wish to state that we agree with the prevailing wisdom that a 
large percentage of the $230 billion surplus should be used for debt 
reduction.
  Remember, I said we had now gone beyond $200 billion, and the 
conservative estimate now is that the surplus after we get through with 
the Social Security surplus, and it has its own lockbox, leaving that 
aside, we still have $230 billion surplus as a conservative estimate.
  We agree that the greater portion of that ought to be used for debt 
reduction. Pay down the national debt. Why is it important to pay down 
the national debt? Because when we pay down the national debt, we 
eliminate the interest payment on that debt that happens every year. We 
have a huge amount of money that just goes into the budget every year 
to pay the interest on the money that we owe.
  If we pay down the debt, we eliminate the need for the interest 
payment at such a large size, and the money that would have gone into 
the interest payment can now be put into the regular budget for 
meaningful and productive activities. Or we can continue to pay down 
the debt with the money we save. It makes sense to use a large part of 
it to pay down the debt.
  We also concur that some portion of the allocation of funds from the 
surplus should be used to strengthen Medicare and to provide for 
prescription medicine benefit. We are in agreement. If we have $230 
billion, then most of it should go to pay down on the debt, but not all 
of it. Because, I mean, who would make this kind of choice?
  If one receives an income bonus, either one's stocks pay off well or 
better than one expected, one suddenly receives a bonus at one's house, 
one's family, and one of one's children is going to college, one can 
now pay for their college tuition without having to borrow money, would 
one pay one's mortgage off instead of paying for the tuition of one's 
child who is about to go to school? Or would one invest in that tuition 
for that child, let them go to school, and continue one's mortgage for 
a little while longer?
  I mean, we do not rush to pay off debts because there is a great 
virtue in paying off all debts. In the system that we have concocted, 
sometimes it makes sense to have long-term debts while we invest in 
immediate priorities.
  I always say now do not use all of the money to pay down the debt. 
Invest some of the money in human resources. Is it so difficult to 
understand that? We want to emphasize the need to use our surplus to 
invest in human resources.

  Since the countdown for the end-game negotiation has now begun, we 
wish to state our priorities in more specific and concrete requests. We 
were talking about a round figure of 10 percent for education for 
school construction, and another 10 percent for other education 
improvements. We were talking about focusing on the priority of school 
construction but also having money recognizing the other kinds of needs 
that we have.
  First, we wish to agree with the prevailing wisdom, as I said before, 
that a large percentage should go to pay down the debt. Secondly, 
however, we contend that, after these priority steps are taken, there 
should be a significant investment in human resources. At least 10 
percent of the surplus should be invested in education, 5 percent for 
school construction, and 5 percent for other school improvements.
  We propose that another 10 percent be invested in housing, health 
care, and social services in our Congressional Black Caucus alternative 
budget. For the benefit of the Nation, the Congressional Black Caucus 
still stands firm on the adoption of all of these proposals.
  If we had 10 percent for education and 10 percent for housing, social 
services and health care, that is 20 percent. We still have 80 percent. 
Out of that 80 percent, we can deal with shoring up Medicare, providing 
a Medicare prescription medicine benefit, giving a tax cut, a tax cut 
starting with the people at the lower rung instead of at the top, and 
paying down the debt. We still have quite a bit of money left. So give 
us our 10 percent for education.
  Since the hour is late and the negotiations have begun, we now find 
it

[[Page H8303]]

necessary to move from general concerns to specific emergencies. Within 
the African American community, education remains as our greatest 
emergency. This is a solution that makes it possible to resolve most of 
the other problems we face. Education remains as our greatest 
emergency, the solution that makes it possible to resolve most of the 
other problems we face.
  I might add that the problems faced by the African American 
communities are not unique. Low-income communities, working families 
communities face similar problems all over America. So when I propose a 
solution for problems that we face, particularly in the areas 
represented by the members of the Congressional Black Caucus, I am 
proposing solutions that apply to much of America where working 
families live who are not necessarily African American.
  Our crisis education situations require a systemic and well-targeted 
Federal emergency education initiative. Right now, we are weary of the 
ability to deal with the problem in the terms we state it. There 
probably will not be an overall 10 percent for education. The mechanism 
is not there.
  The leadership in charge appears to be ignoring the polls and public 
opinion for a change. Very rarely are the polls and public opinion 
ignored. But in a case of the demand for more government support for 
education, it is very interesting how the leadership of both parties 
choose to sort of talk about the problem without committing resources 
equal to the public demand.

                              {time}  1730

  So the public demand has to be louder. We need to hear more from the 
public. And I will talk about that in terms of school construction in a 
few minutes. But I think that we have to now think in terms of a 
Federal emergency education initiative to deal with the fact that, in 
general terms, the problem of the worst schools in America escalates. 
The problem in the worst communities, which need the greatest amount of 
help, continues to escalate. So we want a Federal emergency education 
initiative which directly addresses the most critical problems of the 
worst schools of the Nation.
  While the larger national education problems are being considered, we 
must have an immediate intensified initiative to address the Nation's 
schools which serves populations where more than 50 percent of the 
students qualify for free school lunches or where schools are failing 
and their local systems or the State authorities are ordering that they 
be closed down because they are just not functioning. They do not meet 
standards that have been set. Those are crisis schools. They are in 
crisis situations. They are in crisis school districts. So we need an 
emergency initiative to meet the crises.
  I am defining the crisis situation quite clearly. The school lunch 
program, children who qualify for the school lunch program, are the 
poorest children in America. We have used that as a benchmark for 
measuring how funds are allocated by the Federal Government. The E-
rate, for example, the most recent and most creative allocation of 
national funds, is done on the basis of the number of children who 
qualify for free school lunches. A school where 90 percent of the 
children qualify for free school lunches can get a 90 percent E-rate 
discount; where less qualified, the E-rate goes down. So the discount 
for the E-rate is less in the schools that are a little better off, and 
the wealthier schools of course can get a 15 percent standard discount, 
but no greater than that in the areas where the schools are serving 
students who do not qualify at all for the school lunch program.
  So for crisis situation schools we need a Federal education 
initiative, and that initiative should contain the following 
components:
  One major component has to be accelerated school construction and 
modernization. We must move faster to relieve our school systems of the 
burden of some of their cost for school construction, school repairs, 
school modernization. We must do that.
  I regret to report the fact that there seems to be this 
determination, a dogged determination, to ignore school construction 
needs, not only here in Washington, but a dogged determination in State 
governments and in city governments. Certainly New York is an example 
of a situation where 2 years ago the mayor of the City of New York had 
a $2 billion surplus. $2 billion is not like $200 billion, but for a 
city to have a surplus of $2 billion is significant, especially since 
this city has seen hard times and we have had deficits and had a brush 
with bankruptcy at one point in the last 20 years. So to have a $2 
billion surplus was a great window of opportunity for the city.
  Not a single penny of that surplus was spent on school repairs and 
school construction. Now, this is in a city which at that time had more 
than 175 schools that were still burning coal in the school furnaces. 
We have something like 1,200 schools in New York, and 175 are so old or 
neglected that they still have furnaces that burn coal. This is in a 
city where the air already is polluted enough; in a city where asthma 
is a major problem. We still burn coal in some of the school furnaces 
and not a single penny of the $2 billion surplus was allocated by the 
mayor of the City of New York to assist with school repairs.
  Not a single member of the city council, certainly no member 
representing part of my district, spoke up. Some of them, who are quite 
friendly with the mayor of the City of New York, did not speak out 
against the coal-burning furnaces in our district. They did not say, 
look, we ought to use some of this money to get rid of the coal burning 
furnaces. We have a situation where children are placed at risk. 
Certainly if they have asthma, it is aggravated by the fact they go 
into a situation where there is coal dust in the air. Coal dust is in 
the air no matter how good the filter situation is.
  I know this is true because the first house I ever owned was a house 
that had a coal burning furnace, and we had all kinds of filters and 
did all kinds of cleanup, but the coal dust still got through and the 
coal dust was there. I was very happy to replace that coal-burning 
furnace with a gas-burning furnace because just the battle with the 
dust was enough to merit a movement as fast as possible away from a 
situation with a coal-burning furnace.
  When we have hundreds of children who go to school every day 
throughout the winter into a situation where they are placed at risk by 
coal-burning furnaces it ought to be declared an emergency. We ought to 
have both the city and the State, as well as the Federal Government, 
moving as rapidly as possible to remove those remaining 175 coal-
burning furnaces.

  I am told by the school construction authority that, as a result of 
our agitation for the last 3 years, they now have a schedule whereby by 
the end of the year 2001 all of the coal-burning furnaces will be 
eliminated. Now, they will be eliminated after having existed for all 
these many decades since the invention of better, more efficient oil-
burning and gas-burning furnaces. But this is an emergency which is 
ignored by public officials.
  Yet this is only one of many emergencies related to the problem of 
school construction. We need funds at every level to go into play and 
to deal with basic problems that schools face. I do not ever represent 
school construction as being the only problem or the only priority that 
our schools face. The training of proper teachers, certified teachers, 
science teachers, math teachers, that is a problem equally as 
important; and I do not want to downplay that. Having decent 
laboratories in schools and decent libraries, there are many 
priorities.
  But I do point out the fact that the school building, the edifice, 
sends a message like no other component of the education system sends. 
It says to the children and it says to the teachers and the community 
that the people who are in charge, the elected officials who make 
decisions, whether they are Congresspeople or city council people or 
State legislators, the people who make the decisions care. It is a 
highly visible statement.
  If a school no longer has a coal-burning furnace, it meant that we 
cared about the situation enough, we cared about education, we cared 
about the students. If a school is not overcrowded to the point where 
classrooms have to be held in the hallways or in closets converted into 
classrooms, or there is a situation where the children have to start 
eating lunch at 10 a.m. in the morning because the students have to be 
cycled through the lunchroom because the lunch building that was built

[[Page H8304]]

 for 500 children now has 1,500. There are schools that must have three 
or four lunch periods and the first lunch period begins at 10 a.m., 
when the child just had breakfast.
  Now, some of my colleagues might say, well, that is an unusual 
situation; why should I talk about an extreme situation. Well, if a 
survey were to be conducted in any big city in America, we would find 
similar things are happening; and it happens in New York City on a 
large scale. There are a large number of schools where children have to 
eat lunch at 10 a.m. in the morning. And yet we are in a situation now 
where we have surpluses at the State level, surpluses at the city 
level, and surpluses here in Washington.
  I would like to say to every parent listening, or every decent 
citizen listening and who knows a situation where children are being 
forced to eat lunch at 10 a.m. in the morning, just after they have had 
breakfast, I would like to see our sense of decency and fair play be 
brought to bear on this outrageous practice. It is child abuse to force 
a student to eat lunch before 11 a.m. in the morning or after 1 p.m. 
Those who eat after 1 p.m. are hungry; those who eat at 10 a.m. do not 
want to eat breakfast. They are not hungry. They are being force-fed. 
That is child abuse.
  We have accepted this as a routine, ordinary part of getting through 
the school emergency situation in New York. The school space emergency 
situation is like routine now. Every year they announce, well, we are 
26,000 or 20,000 seats short. That happens at the beginning of the 
school year and we wonder, what happened; how did they deal with the 
problem? Well, somehow they crammed them into hallways, they crammed 
them into closets, they put them into situations where they have to eat 
lunch at 10 a.m. in the morning. They come to grips with the problem. 
They solve the problems by dehumanizing the children.
  So every parent, every decent human being in New York City should do 
all of us a favor by rising up and saying, look, we will not tolerate 
this kind of child abuse any more. Join us in a court suit. Let us go 
to the health department. The health department regulates day care 
centers and Head Start. They have tight regulations on what happens in 
facilities that serve children, but they put a waiver on the board of 
education. They have nothing to do basically with the operations of the 
board of education and the schools.
  So many kinds of horrendous things happen in respect to school space, 
ventilation and, in this case, the actual serving of lunch, which would 
not be allowed to happen in a day care center or Head Start center. We 
should not tolerate it any longer.
  For those people down here in Washington who are now pushing aside 
all discussions of school construction, school repairs, and are 
genteelly talking about everything else in education, but who refuse to 
recognize that there is a need in the area of school construction, I 
say that they are part of the problem of forcing this child abuse 
situation where we are forcing children to eat lunch just after they 
have had breakfast. These people must bear part of the blame. They may 
not be as bad as the Romans, who were feeding the Christians to the 
lions at a time when they had great prosperity and a high civilization, 
but they are guilty of something on a smaller scale that I think their 
grandchildren would not be very proud of.

  We have the money, we have the wealth, we have a surplus, we can deal 
with the problem of school construction. If the Federal Government were 
to give a portion of the money, it would stimulate and force the State 
governments and city governments to do more. We could eliminate these 
major problems of school overcrowding. We could eliminate that in the 
next 10 years. We have the resources to do it. So let us stop the child 
abuse. Do not force students to eat lunch, and parents should be 
indignant, and everybody else indignant, about that kind of child 
abuse.
  A second problem is that the outdoor and inside pollution caused by 
coal-burning furnaces constitutes a direct threat to the health of all 
children, and teachers too. Children with asthma are particularly 
placed at risk in these situations, in a city with an asthma epidemic. 
The mayor of the city, a little more than a year ago, had a special 
asthma initiative. And they are so cruel, so much like the Roman 
politicians, because they deliberately never mentioned coal-burning 
furnaces as part of the problem. That was not an accident.
  There are coal-burning furnaces in schools. If they draw the map of 
where the largest concentration of asthma cases are, where the asthma 
epidemic is, we can see the overlap with the places where we have the 
schools with the coal-burning furnaces. Any intelligent person can see 
the correlation, but the correlation was not recognized deliberately. 
Many articles in the newspapers were written, but nobody wanted to 
offend his majesty in city hall so they never said coal-burning 
furnaces are part of the problem, Mr. Mayor. Why not appropriate some 
money to get rid of coal-burning furnaces?
  We are part of the problem if we do not take the initiative now and 
use some of the funds we have here. Whose money is it, the $200 billion 
surplus? Does it belong to the Federal Government? My friends on the 
other side are telling us all the time it is the people's money. All 
taxes are local. All funding of government comes from the local level. 
We want to give it back. It is not a great act of generosity by the 
Federal Government to make money available for school construction or 
any other local purpose. It is one way we can help education without 
becoming involved, without being accused of trying to take over the 
decision-making process at the local level.

                              {time}  1745

  It is a capital expenditure, school construction. Go in, give the 
money, and oversee the process of getting the building going and get 
out. You do not have to stay around to interfere with operational 
decisions of the school board. Just help with the immediate physical 
infrastructure problem.
  Item three: the departments of government should fully enforce all 
health and building codes in school buildings and no waivers should be 
granted.
  Along with coal-burning furnaces, which should not be allowed by the 
health department in schools, you have many other violations. There was 
a survey done with the help of the United Federation of Teachers. The 
teachers union pushed for a survey. And every school building in New 
York has been inspected and there is a record of violations, a 
computerized record of violations. And many of them have numerous 
violations which, if they were not schools, they would be forced to 
immediately make the repairs or close down.
  So we elected officials, members of government, decision-makers are 
part of the problem if we allow these violations to continue to exist 
jeopardizing the safety and health of children in our schools.
  We also have a problem with school libraries and laboratories and 
facilities which allow children to really get the kind of education 
they need.
  The Board of Regents of New York State, like many other State bodies, 
have established certain standards and no child will be able to 
graduate and receive a diploma of any kind. They used to give a general 
diploma. If you did not pass the mathematics, the science and the 
English and the couple other regents tests, you got a general diploma. 
Well, they have decreed that no child will get any diploma if they do 
not pass certain Regents tests.
  Among those tests is a Regents science examination. We ought to 
postpone, eliminate the mandated Regents science examination required 
before a student can qualify for a diploma unless and until we have all 
high schools equipped with laboratories where they can have real 
science teaching take place.
  Science teachers will tell us now that theoretical science teaching, 
teaching only through theory, is not complete science instruction; you 
have to have laboratories. And yet, if you do not have the physical 
facilities, you use these old buildings which if you probably installed 
a decent laboratory, something will malfunction. They will catch fire 
or blow up.
  They do not have the wiring or the ventilation. They need in many 
cases totally new buildings, or they need massive renovation in order 
to have a decent science laboratory.
  We are enforcing standards and we are dumping on the students' backs 
the

[[Page H8305]]

responsibility of learning while we do not want to use valuable 
resources. The dollars are here. The money is here at the Federal level 
and at other levels, and we want to ignore it. I am not sure why. Some 
people say because the majority of the Members of Congress, their 
children are either in private schools or they are in suburban schools, 
which are very well taken care of. They do not have construction repair 
problems.
  I hate to believe that my colleagues do not accept the responsibility 
for all the schools and all the children in the Nation. At a time when 
we have the resources, I hate to believe that they turn their back on a 
portion of the population which very much needs to have an investment 
in their education.
  We have shortages of all kinds. Everybody is complaining about 
information technology shortages; we do not have young people who can 
actually fill the jobs. In the information technology industry, we do 
not have the people to do the computer programming, and we are 
importing people from outside.
  On the floor of the Congress, we are going to have a discussion of H-
1B which lifts the quota for the number of professionals who can come 
into the Nation because we need those professionals from outside the 
Nation to fill the jobs.
  And on and on it goes, the discussion which ignores the simple fact 
that, in the long run, we have to train our own population, we cannot 
rely on school systems of foreign countries to provide us with the 
manpower, with the professionals or any other degree of manpower in 
this digitalized economy that we need.
  So let us invest and let us have the broad view, the compassion 
necessary to see that, in our inner city schools, in our schools which 
serve the poorest youngsters. And there is a correlation between the 
construction problems and the schools which have overcrowding and the 
schools which do not have laboratories the schools which have the least 
number of certified teachers, the correlation is always in income.
  The low-income schools, where the parents have the least education 
and the least ability to deal with the system, they are always the ones 
who have these problems.

  Another item: the use of trailers in school playgrounds. The use of 
trailers in school playgrounds to relieve overcrowding should be 
limited to situations that are temporary substitutes for buildings 
under repair or in the process of construction. We should become 
indignant. Everybody out there should look at those trailers, and 
sometimes they have been around 10 years or more, and say that this was 
supposed to have been a temporary solution.
  Children should not have to go to school in trailers. They should not 
have to be in situations where in the winter time, in order for them to 
go to the bathroom, they have got to come out of the trailer and go 
into the main building. They should not be in situations where the 
ventilation and the situation is not up to par in terms of the square 
footage necessary to accommodate a full class of children.
  We should become indignant about the continuation of an emergency use 
of trailers when we have a $200 billion surplus. The mere dedication of 
10 percent of that will allow us in 10 years to wipe out these kinds of 
problems.
  Teachers for the classrooms is another program that we have 
emphasized greatly. We want to reduce the ratio of children to 
teachers. We want teachers to have smaller classes. All of us are in 
favor of that. I never heard of a Republican or Democrat against 
teachers having smaller classes.
  But there is a racketeering process set in the inner-city 
communities, certainly in New York City. We have taken the money to 
reduce the ratio of children to teachers, but since we do not have the 
classrooms, it is not happening. Sometimes they put in an additional 
teacher, an additional teacher goes into a crowded classroom. That is 
not what we meant. And you do not have the kind of teaching taking 
place when you have children crowded into a classroom, even though you 
have a second adult. That is not what is meant.
  We are spending large sums of money for teacher development or a 
number of other kinds of options that are in the law which they can 
take, while they stall on the basic problem of getting more teachers 
into the classroom.
  You cannot get classrooms that have smaller class sizes unless you 
build more classrooms or renovate classrooms. Teachers for the 
classroom funding ought to be used to lower the ratio of students to 
teachers within separate classrooms, not for the assignment of a second 
teacher to a crowded classroom or for some other auxiliary purpose. 
More classrooms must be made available.
  Otherwise, the number one item in our program, in our platform of 
teachers to the classroom, which we all are proud of, that item is 
sabotaged and we are really not honest about what we are doing.
  Finally, accreditation should be denied to any school which lacks an 
adequate physical infrastructure. I talked about laboratories. But the 
playroom space, the gym, all these things are part of the experience 
necessary to educate young people.
  Substandard and nonaccredited school buildings ought to be closed. We 
ought to create a crisis. Instead of continuing to accept these half 
measures which are dangerous to the psyche of kids as well as to their 
physical bodies, let us wage war on our own decision-makers. Let us 
understand that it is possible that we can make real blunders here and 
have blinders on. They are blinders which say school construction, that 
is too radical, anything related to school construction will give the 
impression that we are big spenders; and we do not want to be accused 
of being big spenders.
  It is all right to have $4 billion for an aircraft carrier. It is all 
right to spend $218 billion for highways and roads over a 6-year 
period. But do not talk about school construction $10 billion a year. 
Do not even talk about $2 billion a year.
  I want to applaud the President for at least putting $1.3 billion in 
the budget that he proposed. But since he proposed that, there is very 
little discussion. As we get closer to the end-game negotiations, I do 
not hear any discussion about the $1.3 billion direct appropriation in 
the budget that the President proposed.
  All I hear about is the $25 billion that is being proposed in the 
Committee on Ways and Means to loan. We have a proposal that $25 
billion would be available. The Government is willing to pay interest 
on up to $25 billion. So a local school district or the State can 
borrow money, and we will pay the interest. Rah, rah, rah.
  We have a $200 billion surplus, and all we are willing to do is to 
pay between $3 billion and $4 billion in interest or money borrowed by 
the local governments.
  Will it help New York City and New York State? Not likely. Because 
you have to have a school bond issue on the ballot. People have to 
approve the borrowing of money to build schools before you can borrow 
the money. And there are other places in the Nation with similar 
problems.

  I am all for what is now called the Rangel-Johnson school 
modernization bill. I am one of the cosponsors. And we should go 
forward with it. But it is only a small part of the problem. It can 
help districts which are able to use borrowed money and use it rapidly, 
but do not have to go through a process of taking it to the voters. We 
have turned down in the last 10 years two bond issues that might have 
helped schools.
  So we need direct appropriation. The Congressional Black Caucus would 
like to specifically request that we have more direct appropriation to 
be allocated to the schools in crisis situations. That is the schools 
that are serving large numbers of low-income youngsters who qualify for 
the free lunch program and the schools that are being closed down 
because they are not functioning properly.
  There is a crisis. There is a crisis out there, and we need to rally 
to meet that crisis. We should not allow future generations to look 
upon the situation we face now when we have a golden window of 
opportunity, a $230 billion surplus and we are so blind, so hard-
hearted, so mean-spirited, so whatever that we cannot see the need to 
invest in students and young people.
  What other reason is there to not set aside a substantial portion of 
a $230 billion surplus for education?
  Substantial is conservative. We talked about we are asking for 10 
percent. Ten percent of $200 billion is $20

[[Page H8306]]

billion. Ten percent of $200 billion is $20 billion. Over a 10-year 
period, 10 percent is $200 billion for school construction and other 
education improvements.
  Why are we going to pass up this opportunity and be guilty of history 
saying that we were no better than the great Romans? We had the 
technology. We had the economy. We had the military might. Rome was 
really a village compared to the United States of America at this point 
in history. There is nothing that has ever existed like the United 
States of America colossus. We are a colossus.
  Given all of this, how can we not make an investment in every human 
being out there? The human investment is the key now. Brain power 
drives everything. Brain power is obviously the kind of power that 
sustains us now and will carry us into the future. Let us at least have 
the vision to make the investment in the brain power.
  There are alternative education proposals being proposed by the 
Republican candidate for President and the Democratic candidate for 
President, the leadership of the House. All of the general outlines and 
the general plans that are being set forth we cannot quarrel with; we 
applaud. Most of the approaches on both sides are approaches that 
address serious problems related to education in America.
  The problem is priorities. The problems is seeing an emergency. The 
worst schools in America should not be deserted. The worst schools in 
America should not be abandoned as we prepare plans and we allocate 
resources for education. The worst schools have to be dealt with first.
  If we solve the problems of the worst schools and we deal with the 
challenges that are faced by the worst school systems, then we are in a 
position to deal with all the others. They become much easier. If we 
solve the problems faced by the worst schools, we also recoup the lost 
resources that we face as those youngsters fail to enter into the 
stream that carries them through high school graduation into higher 
education institutions.
  We need improvements of all kinds. The Congressional Black Caucus 
will be proposing to the leadership in the next few days as we move 
into the finality of the end-game negotiations that we examine not only 
the school construction, which is the first priority, but Pell Grants 
need to have more money. We need a technical research center for 
Historically Black Colleges and Universities. Teacher recruitment needs 
more funds. Training and the certification of teachers is still a major 
problem. The 21st century learning centers, the after-school centers, 
we need more of them. In our crisis, school districts, every district 
should have some of those learning centers.

                              {time}  1800

  They should not be allocated on the basis of competitive grants but 
allocated on the basis of need. We should have more money, produce more 
centers and allocate them on the basis of need. We are firmly convinced 
that a demand of this kind is in the interest of all of America. If you 
address the problems that are the worst problems, you will certainly be 
in a position to solve all the rest of the problems. Construction 
should not be pushed off to the side and abandoned as an undesirable 
activity because it might cost money. It will cost so much more to 
build prisons in the future, to build correction facilities in the 
future. It will cost so much more to have to compensate for the waste 
of human resources that will result from our failure to educate those 
who are in greatest need.
  I would like to end by saying we are at the end of a process we 
started when we covered the Congressional Black Caucus alternative 
budget. Our priorities are the same. We would like to zero in and talk 
about specific dollar figures for school construction in the 
communities where they have the greatest need. If you are not going to 
do it for everybody, at least we should do school construction in the 
communities with the greatest need. At least we should have an 
aggressive program for teacher training, teacher recruitment and 
certification of teachers in the communities with the greatest need. If 
we are not going to address the education problem generally as we 
should address it, at least we insist that you focus the dollars that 
are available through the surplus on the schools which have the 
greatest need. We can do no less.

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