[Congressional Record Volume 147, Number 30 (Thursday, March 8, 2001)]
[House]
[Pages H815-H821]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
SPECIAL EDUCATION FUNDING
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of
January 3, 2001, the gentleman from Maine (Mr. Allen) is recognized for
60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
Mr. ALLEN. Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I rise tonight to participate in a
discussion with my Democratic colleagues on the subject of special
education. All of us have been traveling through our districts talking
to teachers and parents and students and school administrators, and we
have found over and over again that the number one concern is the
failure of the Federal Government to live up to its responsibility to
pay the full 40 percent of the special education costs that were
mandated by the Federal Government 26 years ago.
But we need to set this debate about special education in context,
and particularly in the context of the debate over taxes we had here
today. For all of the sound and fury of the debate this afternoon, the
differences were fairly simple. On the one hand the Republicans were
advocating for an important part of what is an overall $1.6 trillion
tax cut over the next 10 years. $1.6 trillion.
On the other hand, the Democrats were arguing for a corresponding
part of what overall would be an $800 billion tax decrease over 10
years, half the size of the Republican tax cut.
Now, the reason the debate was so intense and the reason Members on
the Democratic side of the aisle felt so strongly about this subject is
that the numbers were not being put forth accurately.
For example, if we are going to give back either $800 billion as the
Democrats proposed in terms of tax cuts or $1.6 trillion in tax cuts as
the Republicans proposed, those are not the amounts by which the debt
is reduced because if you have a substantial tax cut, then that money
is not available to pay down the Federal debt and, therefore, interest
on the Federal debt would be higher than it would be otherwise.
On the Republican side, that $1.6 trillion tax cut, if enacted as
passed by the House today, means that we will have over 10 years $400
billion of interest that we have to pay on the national debt that we
would not have to pay if that tax cut were not enacted. On the
Democratic side the corresponding number is about $100 billion to $150
billion extra in interest that we will have to pay, and what is true
for tax cuts is true for spending.
Here is the fundamental problem. If you set aside the Social Security
trust fund and the Medicare trust fund, the Bush tax cut, $1.6 trillion
in tax cuts plus $400 billion in additional interest on the national
debt plus $300 billion in order to fix the alternative minimum tax,
very quickly you find that the Bush tax cut reduces the surplus by
about $2.4 trillion to $2.5 trillion.
If that tax cut passes the other body in the form that it passed here
today, we are in trouble as a country because that tax cut slams the
door on any effort to provide a Medicare prescription drug benefit for
our seniors any time in the next 10 years if current projections hold.
That tax cut, the Republican tax cut, slams the door on the use of
general revenues at any time in the next 10 years to shore up Medicare
and Social Security and extend the life of those two vital programs.
Mr. Speaker, with respect to the program that we are here to talk
about tonight, the Republican tax cut slams the door on any ability to
fully fund special education.
I know we have a number of Members on our side wanting to speak, but
just to lay this in context and say it simply, right now in the year in
which we are in, we spent $6.3 billion on special education. The
mandate that we required the States to meet 26 years ago to provide a
free and appropriate education for children with disabilities, and when
we said 26 years ago that the Federal Government would meet 40 percent
of the cost of that program, we do not even come close. This year $6.3
billion represents just under 15 percent of the total cost of special
education in this country. That is a long way from the 40 percent that
this Congress talked about when the mandate was imposed.
In our districts, teachers, school administrators, parents, and even
students understand that there is not enough money for special
education, that local funds are being drained out of regular education
programs in order to pay for special education, and that the local
property taxpayers are taking a hit. We can help all of these groups if
we would simply step up to the plate this year, reduce the tax cut and
fully fund special education.
The last thing I will say is this. If we do not do it this year, it
is not likely to happen any time in the next 10 years. The reason is
that full funding is an extra $11 billion. We do not run surpluses most
years. It has taken a hard climb to get to them, and now we have the
opportunity to use some portion of this Federal surplus to meet the
Federal Government's obligations. This is not a new program. It is
simply doing what we are obligated to do, what we ought to do for our
children and for our school districts, our parents and teachers around
the country.
Mr. Speaker, I am joined tonight by a number of Members, and it is a
particular pleasure to recognize the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr.
Holt) who helped organize this special order tonight.
Mr. HOLT. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to join my colleague from Maine,
and I thank you for yielding.
The gentleman from Maine set the stage very well. What happened on
the floor here just a matter of a couple of hours ago was really
putting the cart before the horse. There are certainly justifiable tax
cuts. I know that my constituents back in New Jersey are only too
eager, as the President says, to get a refund on overpayments. The
President came here and said in the joint session when he gave what
would be called a State of the Union address that he was asking for a
refund. But the reason this was the cart before the horse is because it
is hard to know what the amount of overpayment is because we have no
budget proposal that comes in advance of this tax cut vote.
[[Page H816]]
We have had no debate about really what are the obligations that this
Federal Government has in front of us and which of those obligations
are we going to honor and in which order.
Certainly our obligations are more than what some Members would say,
and that is the obligation of the Federal Government is only to provide
national defense. No, we have many other important obligations as well.
For example, we have an obligation, a promise, to America's veterans to
provide health care for them. We have made a promise to seniors to
provide health care, and that certainly should include in this day and
age prescription medicine. And we have made a promise, a national
commitment to excellent education for all. And that is where we get to
the subject at hand here.
Education has not been discussed in advance of today's vote on
changing the tax rates. But, in fact, to really provide a free,
appropriate public education for America's children is an expensive
proposition. School districts are discovering this. Property taxpayers
have certainly discovered it. As my colleague has pointed out so
clearly, for the Federal Government to provide funding at the level of
40 percent of the cost of educating the special education students
under the IDEA program would, over the 10-year period that we are
talking about in all of these estimates about tax cuts and so forth, we
have been talking about a 10-year period, in that period it would be on
the order of a hundred billion dollars.
This is not a footnote. This is not lost somewhere down the decimal
point line. This is real money, and it is something that we have, I
believe, an obligation to provide and to provide now. For years, since
1975, the Federal Government has made excuses about why it could
provide only 5 or 7 percent; or now, as we have in the current year,
provide about 14 percent of the cost of educating the special education
students, but those excuses do not apply any more when we have a
surplus, an honest-to-goodness surplus, and we are debating what we
should do with it.
Well, we have obligations; and we should have those obligations out
on the table along with the obligation of paying down the national
debt, along with the obligation of returning any surplus funds to
America's taxpayers.
I am pleased that we have the opportunity to get this out on the
floor for discussion now at least before the other body makes its
decisions so we can have a good debate about America's obligations.
Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for his comments; and I
appreciate all that the gentleman from New Jersey has been doing in his
State to try to, there as well as here, to try to get full funding for
special education students.
I do not know if you heard during the debate how many times our
friends on the other side of the aisle said what they were trying to
prevent was having the Federal Government spend money here in
Washington. Special education funds are not spent in Washington, they
are spent in our districts and States across this country. They are not
wasted and put away here in Washington. Special education funds go to
teachers, school districts, in our States in our districts across this
country. They make it better and easier to provide a good education for
special education students, provide a good education for regular
students, and they help. If we could ever fully fund this program, they
would help to relieve the stress that property taxpayers feel all
across this country right now.
{time} 1900
And it is not even a new program. This is money that goes back to our
States and back to our districts. But when we listened to the other
side during the tax debate today, it sounded as though this money is
buried somewhere here under the Capitol and never gets out to the
districts.
Mr. Speaker, I yield to my good friend, the gentlewoman from Oregon
(Ms. Hooley). It is very good to have her here tonight.
Ms. HOOLEY of Oregon. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding
to me.
As we talk about this issue, the gentleman is right when he talks
about our not burying this pot of money somewhere in Washington, D.C.
We send it out to our districts, and we send it out to our States and
to our local school districts. And as we talk about the needs of
special education, again the gentleman mentioned that this is a program
that is 26 years old. We have said that we should fund 40 percent of
the excess costs; yet we are up to under 15 percent. And this is the
best we have ever done. And if we do not pay our fair share, then the
burden goes someplace else.
Again, as the gentleman has gone across and talked throughout his
district and throughout his State about what is important to them, I
too have talked to people in my district. This is important to school
administrators, it is important to teachers, it is important to those
that have special-needs children, it is important to the general
population because we are all impacted by this.
This issue, plus the issue of smaller classroom sizes. We know if we
have fewer students in a classroom between kindergarten and third grade
that kids do better, and when they do better in those grades they also
do better in the upper grades, high school and even into college.
But tonight we are talking about special-needs children, children
with disabilities. And one of the things that is happening,
particularly in our rural communities, and I represent a lot of small
rural communities, is that there can be a special-needs child that will
cost over $100,000 if they have multiple disabilities. I have one with
autism and also has other disabilities that costs about $120,000 a
year. If this is a small rural community and there is only one student
with disabilities, all of a sudden, to give that child a free and
appropriate education, which is what we should be doing, we have to
hire a teacher for that child, and we have to provide transportation
for that child. For some of our small schools, it really does break the
bank.
The reason it breaks the bank is because we are not paying our fair
share. It is a little easier for some of the larger schools, where they
may have several students and so they can have one teacher for several
students, or transportation for several students. But it is still
expensive and we have to acknowledge that. I think no one can deny that
it is an expensive program, but it is an important program. And some of
the special-needs children are not that expensive, some are $400 or
$500 or $600 a year.
What has also happened is we have waiting lists in our schools. Now,
we have guaranteed a free and appropriate education for every child,
including those with disabilities; but we have a waiting list where
some children cannot get their needs taken care of because we have not
paid our fair share. As a result, all of us have to deal with this
problem. Again, this is a huge unfunded mandate that we made an
obligation to fund. I think we need to do it, and this is the time to
do it.
I have introduced a bill, and I know there are a lot of bills with
special education trying to get IDEA funding, Individuals With
Disabilities Education Act, but the bill I have introduced is H.R. 659.
I have introduced it with the gentlewoman from Connecticut (Mrs.
Johnson). And what we are trying to do in our piece of legislation, and
the gentleman talked about we need $11 billion this year, this piece of
legislation would ask that over the next 5 years we get up to the point
that we are paying the full 40 percent of our obligation. That takes
about $3 billion a year. Is that a lot of money? Absolutely. Do we need
to do it? Yes.
This is a promise we made. And I am one of these people that believe
when promises are made, they should be kept. So we made this promise 26
years ago, and I think it is time that we invest in every single child
and make sure that they have an appropriate education.
Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for her commitment to
this issue. The gentlewoman was talking about the importance of driving
the special education to full funding either this year or over a period
of years. All of us would love it to happen this year. It may or may
not.
The important point that I want to make right now is that if we look
at the proposal from the Bush administration, there is only one
sentence dealing with special education and it says special education
will be increased. Maybe
[[Page H817]]
by $10. Who knows? Maybe by $100; maybe by $10 million. Who knows? What
is clear is that in his proposed increases for the education department
there is not enough money to even come close to what the Clinton
administration did in each of the last 3 years. Because in each of the
last 3 years we increased special ed funding by about $1 billion a
year, and that simply cannot happen unless we finally get some real
numbers.
Maybe we will be pleasantly surprised. But looking at what the
President has sent to us so far, it looks like this is an area that
could easily be shortchanged when, in fact, it should be fully funded.
Ms. HOOLEY of Oregon. Let me try to put that in some perspective. I
talked about my piece of legislation. Whether it is this or something
else, it really does not matter as long as we live up to the
obligation. If we look at fully funding it over the next 5 years, it
costs an additional $3 billion a year. In the budget this year that was
presented to us, the number in there to take care of inflation, just
sheer numbers of additional people in the entire Department of
Education, is $2.4 billion, and there are several new proposals that
President Bush has for education. So it gives you an idea, just to fund
this is $3 billion. In the budget for everything is $2.4 billion.
So we have not really put our money where our mouths are, and we need
to do that and to live up to those commitments.
Mr. ALLEN. I thank the gentlewoman.
Mr. Speaker, I yield now to the gentlewoman from California (Mrs.
Capps), who has been a real leader on this issue, fighting for her
constituents back home, trying to make sure that we can make some real
progress and get full funding for special education. I yield to her.
Mrs. CAPPS. I thank the gentleman for yielding, and I am honored to
be here with my colleagues from Maine, from New Jersey, from Oregon,
and from California; all across the country.
Mr. Speaker, we are disappointed that we spent the entire day
discussing a tax package that is not right for this country; and the
passage of such a large tax reform bill out of a budget context will
mean, no doubt, that we will have fewer dollars to pay down our
national debt, to strengthen Social Security and Medicare, and to
improve our education system. And of course a centerpiece of education
in our country today and for the past 26 years has been IDEA,
Individuals with Disabilities Education Act.
I travel up and down the central coast of California, which I am
proud to represent, and I spend time on school campuses. And when I do,
I hear a common refrain: we need to fully fund IDEA. I hear this from
parents, I hear it from classroom teachers, from administrators, from
school boards, and I hear it from the community. The Individuals with
Disabilities Education Act requires the inclusion and equality of one
of our most disenfranchised groups, kids with disabilities.
IDEA ensures, and this is a good thing, it ensures that children with
disabilities can attend a public school in their hometown alongside
their peers. In my years of being a school nurse, I saw the value and
the importance of this wonderful idea, IDEA, that we in Congress, our
predecessors in Congress, put into place. This is a value for families
and for a community, for children with and without disabilities, to
have this kind of education within the least-restricted environment.
With over 6 million students in our schools who have special needs,
we should be appropriating over $17 billion in Federal funds each year.
We promised that when we authorized this education act. And what are we
giving them? Only $6 billion, as the gentleman said. Because this is a
right that we declared, that these children will have this opportunity,
local and State budgets are forced to absorb the shortfall. That is a
terrific cost to our communities.
While the Federal Government is authorized to pick up the tab for
fully 40 percent of these costs associated with special education,
currently we are only paying 14 percent of these costs. It was in 1975
that this law mandated that all children receive a free and appropriate
education, public education, and that 40 percent would be attached to
it; that that was our fair share as a Federal Government. But in the
last 25 years, we have failed to provide the necessary funding to
support this pledge that we made to local school districts. I believe,
along with my colleagues, that it is time to put our money where our
mouths are and to fully fund the Individuals with Disabilities
Education Act.
When States and schools, local schools, are forced to pick up the
difference in the costs for the needs of these children, they often
have to shortchange other children. We should not have to be forcing
them to make such a choice in providing an appropriate education for
one group of children and not for the other. It is our responsibility
to provide a good, free education to all of the students in this
country.
I want to share a local story to tell my colleagues about a situation
in San Luis Obispo County and their school district. They are currently
working with and providing resources for 13 children with autism. These
children need special assistance to be able to reach their educational
goals. In my district, the minimum cost of service for a child with
autism is $40,000 per child per year, and the San Luis Obispo school
system has only $200,000 for this program. They need more than twice
that amount to adequately provide the educational resources for these
children.
Because of situations like this, this particular school district, San
Luis Obispo, ends up spending 25 to 30 percent of their general funds
for children with disabilities. The kind of resentment and tension that
that creates within a local school setting is one of the unfortunate
by-products of our lack of taking on our own responsibility. So school
districts across this Nation are facing these terrible choices. It is
putting an unnecessary burden on the local school district, costing
them precious dollars, and it is pitting parents with students who have
disabilities against parents of children who do not. What an
unnecessary and unfair burden.
I am committed to working with all my colleagues here in Congress so
that we can assure that all of our children get the best education, the
best resources that our public schools have to offer them. One way, one
very specific and concrete way that we can do that is to own up to our
own responsibilities here in Congress and to fully fund the Individuals
with Disabilities Education Act.
So I thank the gentleman for holding this session so that we can
express our concerns about this matter, particularly timely, I believe
today, in the face of this enormous tax budget cut, which is really
going to wreak havoc on our opportunity to do this very thing.
Mr. ALLEN. I thank the gentlewoman for her comments, and I appreciate
the point she has made, which is so important, that when the Federal
Government fails to live up to its funding responsibilities there are
real consequences for real people. The tensions the gentlewoman
describes between parents of special ed kids and parents of other kids
in a school district can be really quite serious.
In my State of Maine we have about 230 or 240 school districts. We
only have 1.25 million people in the State of Maine; but we are
geographically so large, we are so spread out, we have relatively small
school districts, certainly compared to Virginia or Maryland or
California.
{time} 1915
It is a tremendous burden. I really thank the gentlewoman for making
that point.
Mrs. CAPPS. If I could just respond in saying that when we are doing
this in Congress, when we fund to 14 percent, we are not saving money
by doing that. These are obligations and responsibilities that local
school districts have. They bear the bottom line. It is the children in
the local communities who have the right and come up to the school door
and say, or the family say, here is my child, these are the needs, now
you provide the resources. We ask them to do that, sometimes in very
difficult circumstances.
When we do not meet our needs, it just foists that responsibility on
overburdened districts that have many other obligations to make as
well.
Mr. ALLEN. I thank the gentlewoman for her comments. That is also
[[Page H818]]
why we did not hear our friends on the Republican side of the aisle
mention special education today, because they really do not want it to
be part of this debate. But in truth if you pass a tax cut, as we did
today, if the tax cut passed today by the House Republican majority
becomes law, where will we ever in the next 10 years find the money to
meet our responsibilities created when the Federal Government laid down
the special education mandate 26 years ago?
I yield now to one of our outstanding freshman Members on the
Democratic side of the aisle, Mrs. Susan Davis, who now represents San
Diego, California.
Mrs. DAVIS of California. I thank the gentleman from Maine (Mr.
Allen) for giving me the opportunity to rise today and urge Congress to
make a priority in this session of budgeting sufficient funds for
special education costs. I know it has been suggested that we look at
the first of five annual steps this year, so that we work towards
funding 40 percent of these special education costs.
This is about children. It is about children who have been challenged
orthopedically, challenged physically in the full use of their senses
or in the thinking processes that block their learning. We owe them a
free education that accommodates their needs, even when these are in
the high cost/small incidence category. We know that the effect on
school district budgets of providing this court-ordered civil right can
be enormous. Inevitably, meeting these moral and these local
obligations leaves fewer resources for all the other educational
purposes that we have.
In the California legislature, I worked for many months with
educators and concerned groups to author a formula for California to
distribute its available funds more equitably. It was about 17 years
that they have been trying to find a way to do this. The goal for
Federal funding would only reach 40 percent of the assumed average
additional cost, and it would only reach this level in a way that we
are talking about today several years down the road.
Some have argued that this might be too much money in some districts
or that if the Federal Government assures these funds that a district
might somehow identify more students as qualifying. I just do not
believe that these are legitimate concerns. From my work in the
California legislature, I know that the actual costs of educating
special needs students varies a great deal. To receive an appropriate
education, some children need full-time assistance or must be taught in
special, sometimes private facilities. Children with severe
disabilities may be a higher percentage of the disabled student
population in one district than in the average nationally. I know that
as a school board member in San Diego, we were always aware that
military families were stationed in San Diego because of our special ed
program, so that in many ways we attracted children to the district,
and other children should not have to pay that price. We ought to fund
the program properly.
Costs for special needs students can differ, we know, from community
to community, because many States and communities have high costs of
cost of living and spend a great deal annually on the costs for each
pupil. Teacher salaries we know too may reflect that high cost of
living and certified special education teachers are in short supply in
many communities of our country. Such limited resources in other States
and communities provide much less money per child on average and even
after the Federal contribution, the unmet needs of disabled students
create a much larger debt in their budgets.
I have yet to see a school district that would consider even 40
percent of additional special education funding as an incentive to
identify students inappropriately, because doing so commits them to an
extensive and expensive program of evaluating and meeting these
children's needs. I believe that it is our fundamental responsibility,
and I am pleased that my colleagues have spoken to this as well, that
we commit today to a plan for meeting the 40 percent funding goal
without taking the dollars from other ongoing educational programs.
I thank the gentleman from Maine for bringing this to us. In truth,
this is a bipartisan issue. We know that, because there are a number of
bills that have been introduced in the Congress from both Democrats and
Republicans. We all recognize there is a need. We have heard from our
communities for years and years and years on this issue. But we must
look at it within the context of the larger budget and our tax debate.
I thank the gentleman very much for bringing this to our attention and
for being part of the dialogue today.
Mr. ALLEN. I thank the gentlewoman very much. Her comments certainly
are correct. There are certainly many on the Republican side of the
aisle who believe this is an important issue and who have joined with
us in legislation to encourage full funding. The problem is that when
it comes time to do the appropriation bill, the money turns out just
not to be there. Now for one of the few times in our history as a
country, we are sitting with a surplus, driven by the hard work of the
American people and the fact that this economy has been growing
extraordinarily rapidly by historical standards over the last 8 years.
This is a moment of opportunity, a moment of opportunity to meet our
obligations as a Federal Government to the States, to the school
districts, to the children, to the parents and to the teachers to
provide a better education not just for special ed students but for all
students. If the Republican tax cut becomes law in the form in which it
passed the House today, that opportunity will be lost and it may be
lost for a decade. That is why this is such an important issue. I
really thank the gentlewoman very much for being here today.
I would like to turn now to my good friend the gentleman from
Arkansas (Mr. Snyder), who has been a real leader on a variety of
education issues and a variety of other issues in this Congress.
I yield to the gentleman.
Mr. SNYDER. I can assure the people of Maine that the gentleman cares
so much about this topic that we were discussing it at 6:30 this
morning as he was bench pressing several hundred pounds, which I
thought was very impressive.
Let me just make several points here. First of all, this is about
unmet needs and there are a lot of unmet needs in our country and in
our States and in our towns. But it is also about unmet
responsibilities. Not only is the need there but the responsibility is
there, and we have not met it, as my colleagues have so eloquently been
discussing. We see this several places in this process here, in this
budget. I am on the Committee on Veterans' Affairs. On Tuesday we had
our new Secretary of Veterans Affairs, a fine guy, a Vietnam veteran,
he was there to discuss the overall budget number in the President's
budget. It is the feeling of everyone on the committee and every
veteran services organization, VFW, the American Legion, that that
number is clearly not adequate, the budget number for veterans, for the
veterans health care system and the other veterans responsibilities.
There is a need there but it is also not just a need, it is a
responsibility. We have not kept our responsibilities to veterans. The
following days the Committee on Veterans' Affairs met and unanimously,
Republican and Democrat, passed a resolution to send to the powers that
be in primarily the Republican leadership that we need to add money,
that this is our recommendation, higher than what the President
recommended, because we think that not only are there unmet needs in
the veterans community but there are unmet responsibilities. This is
another example, this funding for IDEA for those kids in school
districts that have these special needs.
In Arkansas, we have 310 school districts spread over our almost 2.5
million people. A lot of them are very small districts. A lot of them
struggle. I was talking recently with one of the school
superintendents. I brought up this topic of IDEA. It was actually a
very moving conversation because he told me, he said, they absolutely
know that they have a responsibility to do a good job with these kids,
and they are going to do whatever it takes to do a good job with those
kids. But because we the Federal Government do not meet our
responsibilities, they have to pull money from other programs. For
every Federal dollar that is not there,
[[Page H819]]
a State sales tax dollar, or a local property tax dollar has to go in
to meet the responsibilities on those kids. These are all great people,
they do a good job, but you can also sense there is some, I do not want
to use the word bitterness but they are very uncomfortable with the
fact that they know that they have agreed to this partnership with the
Federal Government and we have not kept that responsibility.
The third point I would make is there is a long-range benefit to us
all to meet this responsibility, because these are special needs kids,
and these are kids if we make that investment now in their education
and in the things that they can learn, it will be better for them and
their families and for us in the future. Working with these kids, the
earlier the better, with the best resources, the best technology, the
best teachers, all that takes money.
The fourth point I want to make, and this is where I get a little bit
baffled here, because it seems to me that what could happen is that we
all just converge one day, Republican and Democrat, right down here on
the floor of the House and say, by gosh, if we want to do nothing more
in education but meet this commitment overnight to fund IDEA, we would
accomplish what both sides of the aisle want and what our school
districts want.
What do I mean by that? I think there is some bipartisan interest in
putting additional money into education. I think that is great. I
attended a forum with the President in Arkansas last week at a school,
a grade school, and it was a great forum. He is talking about he wants
to put additional money in education. Where we are arguing about is,
well, will it be money that goes in kind of in the form of a block
grant or will it be money that goes in with a little more control and
how do you account for it? We are going to have that discussion and
debate and I think it is a good debate, but one way to resolve it is to
say, wait a minute, if we did nothing more than to make this commitment
of resources to IDEA, both those ideas would be met, because the school
districts are going to have flexibility because those Federal dollars
would free up their State dollars to do with them what they want to.
Right now their hands are tied. They do not have the flexibility to use
their own State dollars because they are obligated to put them into
this program that we have mandated on them, and they are also having to
do our Federal share.
I think also folks from this side of the aisle that sometimes want
more accountability, they would say, ``Wait a minute. We understand the
school districts. We told them that we would give them this money.
Let's step forward and give them this money because it is going for
these special needs kids and that frees up money in the whole
district.''
I think that this is an area that if the President wants to improve
flexibility for school districts and how they can spend their dollars,
all we have to do is just dramatically increase our commitment on IDEA,
as we should do, as we are morally obligated to, and that would help
kids, help all kids, help those special needs kids, give school
superintendents flexibility and free up those State and local dollars
that are in such short supply.
I appreciate the gentleman's efforts in this regard and I proudly
have signed on to the bill of the gentlewoman from Oregon (Ms. Hooley)
today that attempts to do this.
Mr. ALLEN. I thank the gentleman for his comments. His point about
the Committee on Veterans' Affairs, looking at the proposed budget for
veterans and finding it falling short is a real lesson to all of us.
The one thing that is absolutely clear about this tax bill that the
Republicans brought to the floor today is they brought it to the floor
before the needs of our veterans, the needs of our kids, the needs of
our transportation infrastructure, our defense requirements. None of
that has even been laid out by this administration. Yet they are
rushing through a tax cut which would basically eat up all, when you
make the proper, reasonable assumptions, eats up all of the surplus for
the next 10 years. I think a lot of the debate today was the concern
that that is simply going at this backwards. It is dessert first, as
some have said. We needed a much more responsible, more fiscally
disciplined approach. We did not get it today, but we will hope for the
best. I thank the gentleman for coming down here.
I would like to yield again to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr.
Holt) for additional comments that he may have.
Mr. HOLT. The gentleman and our colleagues have made some very good
points. I would just like to emphasize that someone has to pay for
this. I actually take issue with this phrase that we hear so often,
unfunded mandate. This is not something imposed by the U.S. Congress.
What happened was in 1975 there had been a series of court cases that
made it clear that the local schools had an obligation to provide
education, had an obligation to provide free, appropriate, excellent
education.
{time} 1930
Among those cases was Park versus State of Pennsylvania, Mills versus
D.C. Board of Education. Schools understood that this meant enormous
expenses for them because more than 25 years ago, when Congress passed
IDEA, it was to give hope to children with disabilities, and the law
has been really very successful in that respect.
Before its passage, children with disabilities were either segregated
from other students, given inferior education or too often received no
education at all.
There is an American ideal of excellent education for all, and the
courts made that clear. What Congress did in 1975 was to look around
the country, find the average cost of educating students, the average
cost of educating students with special needs, and made the average
estimate that it was about twice as expensive on average to educate the
students with special needs. So Congress codified this already-existing
need. It was a moral obligation, as well as a legal obligation, and
Congress said to help the States and the local school districts meet
this need that was clearly going to be expensive, Congress would over
time fund up to 40 percent of the cost, and this was codified in the
bill called Individuals With Disability Education Act, IDEA.
As I mentioned earlier and as our colleagues have said, now we are up
to only about 14 percent, a little over 14 percent, of funding the
costs according to this formula that was laid out in IDEA. So someone
has to pay for it.
We have an obligation to educate these children, and we have learned
so much. As the gentleman from Arkansas (Mr. Snyder) said, Federal
research shows that investment in education of our children with
disabilities, starting in the very earliest years, starting from birth,
throughout their school years, has rewards and benefits that are not
only for those children themselves but for our whole society, and
research shows that promoting educational opportunity for children with
disabilities directly affects their ability to live productive lives
and to be productive, contributing members of our society.
Research also has taught us a lot about how to provide excellent
education for these children. So through better diagnostics and through
what we have learned about remedial activities, as well as what we have
learned about how all children learn, of course, there are enormous
variations. Today, because of IDEA, infants and toddlers are receiving
early intervention and special education is working. It is helping all
of society. So I take exception to this phrase, unfunded mandate. There
is an obligation here. The Federal Government can and should help.
Certainly, in a State like mine where almost all of the school expenses
are paid through property taxes, the property owners feel the burden of
this and are crying for help.
It is an important and a tough subject. The gentleman has put it in
perspective very well. Today is a good day to be speaking about this.
It is not a good day because I am not happy with what we have seen on
the floor here earlier, but it is an appropriate time to be talking
about it.
Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr.
Holt) for his contribution to this discussion tonight.
It might be worth just revisiting sort of the basic numbers. Right
now the current level of funding for special education from the Federal
Government to the States, through the grants to States program, is a
bit over 14 percent. It is the highest it has ever been,
[[Page H820]]
largely because in the last 3 years we increased that number by about
$1 billion a year to get to the $6.3 billion in the current fiscal
year.
Now, to do full funding, what we mean by full funding is that the
Federal Government would fund 40 percent of the costs of special
education. We would need an additional $11.4 billion in fiscal year
2001 for a total of $17.7 billion. The reason this is appropriate to be
discussing tonight is, we just passed, over our objection, a trillion
dollar component of a $1.6 trillion tax cut with no effort, no
discussion, and nothing in the President's proposed outline of a budget
that would suggest there is going to be anything like full funding of
special ed.
Here we are at a moment of our history when we could meet that
mandate, help out our towns, help out our cities, help out our kids,
parents and educators, and we are just passing it by as if this topic
were not to be discussed until the tax cut was passed. If the
Republican tax cut passes in the form in which it went through this
House today, I think it is safe to say that it will be a decade before
we will be close to full funding of this mandate.
I would like now to turn to the gentleman from Guam (Mr. Underwood),
who has been actively interested in this particular area and with whom
I sit on the Committee on Armed Services.
Mr. UNDERWOOD. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Maine (Mr.
Allen) for yielding.
Mr. Speaker, I want to congratulate the gentleman from Maine (Mr.
Allen) for his excellent leadership on this particular issue. This is
exactly an appropriate time to raise concerns like this, especially
those areas of educational activities which we have passed into
national law. What a time to raise this, when in effect we have
squandered an opportunity to take care of this amongst many other
issues.
I would like to add my own personal support for full funding of IDEA.
This is an issue which has come to me as a professional; I am a
professional educator by trade. My wife in particular, Lorraine, also
worked in special ed for a number of years in Guam, and in dealing with
children with the severest conditions, particularly infant children,
one of the unfortunate dimensions of not fully funding an activity like
this is when one is in an isolated community like Guam, they are unable
to secure the kinds of financial resources and professional attention
that they need.
When they have a small community but they have these very strong
needs and these are human beings and these are people that we have made
a national commitment to, it is exactly the appropriate day today to
raise this in the context of the fact that we have let an opportunity
go by to raise this.
Again, I want to congratulate the gentleman from Maine (Mr. Allen) on
his leadership, very fine leadership, on this issue.
Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Guam (Mr.
Underwood) for his support.
Mr. Speaker, I would just like to add a few comments about my recent
experience. In the first 2 months of this year, I organized a couple of
forums with educators who are expert in K through 12 in Maine and we
had conversations. Some of them were principals. Some of them were
businessmen and women. Some of them were university professors, and we
talked about the problems in Maine with special education. Sixteen
percent of our kids in Maine are identified as special ed. We take the
obligation to give them a free and appropriate and excellent education
very seriously, and, in fact, they are doing well. I mean, by the
measures of the tests that we use to assess progress as students go
through, our special ed kids are doing very, very well. We are proud of
what they are doing.
As a number of Members tonight were saying, the cost of educating
special ed students is really substantial. On average, it may be about
twice, that is $12,000 as compared to $6,000 per year but, in fact,
some students require very special services and one can be looking at
$40,000 or $50,000 or sometimes even $100,000 a year to provide that
free and appropriate education to someone with significant
disabilities.
I then went out into my district and organized four forums in four
different communities through the local PTA or through other volunteer
groups, groups of volunteers in our schools. I sat at these meetings
with parents who were volunteers typically, with school administrators,
with superintendents of schools, a few teachers and a few students. It
was interesting.
When one goes back to the grass-roots and talks with people involved
in education on a day-to-day basis, they really are not talking about
testing as much as they are talking about three things. Number one,
always number one, is the plea to give full funding for special
education because so many other things fall into place if they can
simply use some additional amount of the increased funds each year at
the local level for the regular education programs and not have so much
drain-off by special education activities.
The second plea they made over and over was a plea for assistance in
finding, recruiting and retraining teachers, particularly in the math
and sciences. Our school districts in Maine are having a very hard time
finding, recruiting and holding teachers. The salaries are not high
enough in many cases to attract the kind of people they want.
Third, school construction, we have a lot of snow up in Maine. Our
buildings need to be very solid, very secure and they need to be well
insulated. The fact is that many of our schools are old. As I mentioned
earlier, we have about 230 school districts and we have some excellent
schools in terms of facilities, some new schools. Then we have some
which, frankly, really need help.
So the proposal that President Clinton made in the last couple of
years of his term that the Federal Government pick up some of the
interest costs on bonds that are floated for school renovation or
construction was something that really resonated among people who are
involved in education in my home State of Maine. I am not sure we are
going to see the same kind of interest or commitment from this
administration, but I will reserve judgment until we see a budget in
some detail.
Mr. HOLT. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?
Mr. ALLEN. I yield to the gentleman from New Jersey.
Mr. HOLT. On that point, the gentleman talks about the needs for
school construction. It is clearly a national need to find and recruit
and train teachers and give them good, continual professional
development, and there is IDEA and special education.
In his campaign, President Bush promised to increase the resources
for special education, moving toward, as he said, full funding of the
average per-pupil expenditures. Let me hasten to say, as I said
earlier, I believe that there is money available to give people of this
country a significant tax cut. I want to do that, but we want to get
the horse before the cart, get our obligations out in front of us, talk
about the debt, and then make our decisions. But to make room for this
huge tax cut, President Bush's budget would provide $44.5 billion for
the U.S. Department of Education, a 2.4 percent increase, which is only
6 percent, which does not keep pace with the increase in the Department
of Education over the past 5 years. In fact, compared with last year,
which was 18 percent, it is a very small increase.
As our colleague, the gentlewoman from Oregon (Ms. Hooley) pointed
out, that increase is not enough to deal with special education only;
even that, not counting school construction, not counting after school
and summer school programs, not counting teacher recruitment.
There is, in the sketchy numbers we have about the budget from the
President, for the Department of Education, it looks like it does not
add up. Something has to give.
Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr.
Holt) for his comments.
Mr. Speaker, we started this conversation about the discrepancy
between a tax cut of $1.6 trillion over 10 years and what that does to
all of our other priorities. I thought that Democrats on our side of
the aisle made the case very well today for a more balanced approach so
that some money was there, both to protect against the uncertainty of
future projections but some funds there to pay down the debt more than
the President proposes, some funds there for spending priorities like a
Medicare prescription drug benefit and for special ed. This is an
opportunity that we will lose, we will
[[Page H821]]
lose for years, if we do not deal with it right now, before a tax cut
is passed that will just simply slam the door on the opportunity for
full funding for special education.
{time} 1945
Mr. HOLT. If the gentleman will yield, in a conversation with school
board members today in my office here in Washington, I said what is
going on over on the floor right now is eating your lunch, not the
school lunch program. Come back a month from now and they will say, I
would like to help with special ed; but it is just not there, the money
is not there.
Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Speaker, we have been joined by the gentleman from
Washington (Mr. Inslee), and we are very pleased to have the gentleman
here at the tail end of this Special Order on special education, and I
am happy to yield to the gentleman.
Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the chance to express a view
from the northwest on this subject. I have a child who went through
special education, so I am particularly interested on a personal level
in this. I just want to make a comment about what happened today with
the tax cut as it broadly relates to a lot of issues, and not just
special ed. I think it was a great opportunity missed by our new
President, our new President who certainly has talked a lot about
uniting the country; and yet we found today, with this tax cut brought
to the floor of this House with no opportunity to talk to the
Democratic Party about the tax cut, or the budget, whatsoever; it was
rammed through this House. Frankly, the new President's tax cut had all
the uniting qualities of a guillotine in cleaving this House right down
the middle with no discussion with the Democrats or the Republicans,
for that matter, on a budget, special ed or otherwise. I just want to
note that I think it was a tremendous opportunity lost.
We are now going to hope that the President talks with us about
special ed and some other issues.
Let me just mention one of the other casualties of this tax cut,
without a budget first. On the very day we had a 6.8 on the Richter
scale earthquake in Seattle, the President announced that as part of
his efforts to make room for the tax cut, he wanted to kill Project
Impact, which is a project that we used in Seattle to help get ready
for earthquakes and have earthquake preparedness. We had efforts that
went on in Seattle that helped us avoid any loss of life in Seattle as
a result of that.
But in blind observance of this tax cut, without any consultation
with the rest of his government, he wanted to zero out this $25 million
project. Why did he do it? The Vice President told us he thought it was
an ineffective program. I went to Stevens Elementary School where a
one-ton tank of water was over these kids' heads, it was secured and
did not collapse, partially as a result of this earthquake preparedness
money. Those kids thought it was an effective program. So it is
interesting. We asked the FEMA director, Joe Allbaugh, what he thought
of this, and he said, well, you know, nobody asked me about this
project. They zeroed out a project in the FEMA budget and nobody asked
the FEMA director appointed by President Bush and, on educational
issues, this was rehab money for school districts, and in the seven
schools where this money was used, nobody got hurt and no structures
collapsed.
Mr. Speaker, I would just point out it is one instance where we had a
loss today.
Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Speaker, I thank all of my colleagues for
participating.
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