[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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