[Congressional Record Volume 147, Number 54 (Thursday, April 26, 2001)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3966-S3968]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                               EDUCATION

  Mr. DODD. Mr. President, I am here to continue to raise my voice and 
express concerns about the forthcoming debate regarding elementary and 
secondary education.
  During almost my entire service in the Senate, I have been fortunate 
to serve on what now is called the Health, Education, Labor, and 
Pensions Committee.
  I have had the privilege of serving with many wonderful Members, 
Democrats and Republicans, over the years, who have dedicated 
themselves to improving the quality of public education in America: 
Senator Pell, Senator Stafford, Senator Kennedy, the present ranking 
member, Senator Jeffords, the present chairperson of the committee. 
Each of them deeply committed to seeing to it that this Nation provides 
our children the best educational opportunities possible. I believe 
that the Members of the Committee, today, are anxious to continue that 
tradition.
  I do not know exactly when this matter will come before the Senate 
for consideration, but I am troubled that during the process of 
negotiation, while we are trying to work out our differences, not all 
the issues are on the table for discussion.
  It has been most worthwhile for us to deal with the issues of 
accountability. Our colleague from New Mexico, Senator Bingaman, has 
for years championed the cause of the accountability of our schools 
across America, both as a Member of this body, and earlier as a Member 
of the other body. He brings to this debate years of experience and 
knowledge and I am particularly grateful to him for his help.
  Over the years, we typically have passed education bills that enjoyed 
broad support, 90 or 95 votes, to support our elementary and secondary 
schools. I enjoyed being part of those truly bipartisan efforts.
  Every day, about 50 million children attend public schools in the 
United States. Many of them, through Title I of the Elementary and 
Secondary Education Act, depend on Congress to provide them with 
resources that they need to help them get the education they need and 
deserve. Yet, we spend only about 2 cents of every Federal dollar on 
public education. In my view, we have not been a very good partner with 
our local communities in helping to improve the quality of education. 
Another--probably surprising--fact is that the Federal government 
contributes only about 7 cents to every dollar spent on education. Our 
small towns, cities, counties, and States provide the other 93 cents 
education.
  So, for all we talk about what needs to be done about public 
education, we really haven't put our money--your money --where our 
mouth is. A couple weeks ago, we debated the budget of our country. The 
great debate was over the size of the tax cut that the President has 
proposed. Virtually every Member, in fact, virtually everyone I know, 
believes that a tax cut makes sense given the budget surpluses 
projected.
  But how much of a tax cut? The President wants $1.6 trillion, based 
on ten-year economic projections. I don't know of a single economist 
worth his or her salt who believes that we can project with any degree 
of certainty what America's and the world's economic situation will be 
a decade from now. Yet the President of the United States and those who 
support him on this matter want to spend $1.6 trillion of this budget 
over the next 10 years on a tax cut. And, Mr. President, $680 billion 
of that $1.6 trillion, will go to individuals who presently earn more 
than $300,000 a year. Over that same period, the President would 
increase spending on education by $42 billion, or about one-sixteenth 
of what he would spend on tax cuts for the wealthy.
  I think in that context that we really ought to do better than 
spending only 2 percent of our budget to support America's educational. 
The administration and others say that full funding for title I of 
ESEA, which provides Federal dollars to the most needy school districts 
in America, is just too costly; that full funding for special education 
is just too costly; that we just can't afford it. But, we can afford 
$680 billion for a tax cut for people who make more than $300,000 a 
year which by the way is about twice as much as the Federal, State, and 
local governments combined spend on education in this country.
  I represent the most affluent State in America on a per capita income 
basis. Some of my constituents want a tax cut. I have represented my 
State for more than two decades in the U.S. Congress. I am home almost 
every weekend. I have a fairly good idea of how people in Connecticut 
feel on issues.
  On this issue, the overwhelming majority of my constituents, 
including those from the most affluent communities, tell me that we 
don't need this size tax cut, in light of the economic forecast and the 
many needs that America has. And, these are the people who would be the 
direct beneficiaries of the proposal the President is advocating.
  This tax cut threatens to throw us back into the situation I 
encountered when I arrived in this body 20 years ago. I had been here a 
year, I say to my colleague from West Virginia, when I was asked to 
vote on a tax cut proposal that I thought was dangerous then. I wasn't 
sure. I was a new Member.
  I was one of 11 people who voted against the tax cut proposal, and as 
I look back over 20 years of public service in this body, I don't think 
I ever cast a better vote. And I don't know many Members who were here 
that day who wouldn't like to have that vote back because of the great 
harm it did

[[Page S3967]]

to our country, throwing us into a deficit that took our national debt 
from $900 billion to almost $5 trillion in a little less than a decade.
  Today, we have come out of that situation for a lot of reasons which 
I will not go into this afternoon. We have been given a second chance 
not to make the same mistake we did two decades ago. In the midst of 
this, we are going to have a debate about educational needs. The 
President has said many times that this is his No. 1 priority. How many 
times during the past year did we see the President campaigning in from 
of a banner that said ``Leave No Child Behind.''

  I supported Al Gore for the Presidency, but I liked that the 
President said he was committed to leaving no child behind. And, part 
of me said that maybe he would take the right track. But, I am sad to 
report after 100 days that the ``Leave No Child Behind" administration 
will do just that, if we adopt their education program that imposes 
strict new mandates on local communities--that they can't afford on 
their own--but won't commit the resources to match.
  Unlike the defense authorization or the agriculture bill, which we 
consider every year, we won't consider the elementary and secondary 
education bill again for seven years. This is our one chance to 
establish our educational priorities as we start the new global 
millennium.
  A child entering an elementary school in Connecticut today is not 
competing with a child from Louisiana or West Virginia or Oregon. They 
are competing with children from Beijing, Moscow, Australia, South 
Africa, and Europe. We are in a global economy. We have to produce the 
best educated, best prepared generation America has ever produced. And 
in no small measure what we do in the next few weeks will determine 
whether or not we are successful in that endeavor.
  We talk about testing teachers and testing students. Well, we are 
about to take a test, ourselves. The test is whether we can get beyond 
politics in discussing an education bill, as we used to do around here. 
It is an embarrassment that we spend only two cents of each dollar of 
the national budget on education, when the President says that 
education ought to be our top priority. I agree with the President on 
that, but not on the resources he is willing to devote to education.
  I am very worried that, during the ongoing negotiations, as we talk 
about testing and accountability, which I agree have and merit, we have 
not reached a consensus about how we will support real improvements in 
the schools. Tests are measurements, not reforms. We also need to 
support the real reforms that the tests will measure.
  An educator in my home State of Connecticut said the other day: 
Taking someone's temperature three times an hour does not improve their 
health, medicine does. Or, as my good friend and colleague from 
Louisiana, Senator Landrieu, said the other day: Resources without 
reform are a waste of money. But reform without resources is a waste of 
time.
  That is about as good a statement I have heard in this debate over 
the last number of weeks. She is exactly right.
  I would like to place on the table, in addition to accountability and 
testing and the other things we are discussing, the principle that we 
ought to have resources committed to school construction, and other 
issues. It is a disgrace that the average American child goes to school 
in a building built in the 1950s. And, we need to help schools get 
class sizes down to a level where teachers can teach and kids can 
learn. That ought to be a part of this negotiation.

  Teachers do a magnificent job every day. I am somewhat biased in 
this. My oldest sister has been a teacher for about 30 years in the 
public schools of my State. She taught in the private schools; in the 
Montessori system of teaching before that. I have a brother who taught 
25 years at the university level and my father's three sisters taught 
for 40 years apiece in the public school system in my State. All three 
are now gone, but they prided themselves on that and dedicated 
themselves as teachers. One of them was a Fulbright scholar. She taught 
in the Hartford Public High Schools. So I come to this debate and 
discussion, I suppose, with somewhat of a bias in that I have grown up 
with two generations of my family dedicated to teaching young people.
  Nothing makes me more angry than when I hear people suggest that 
teachers do not care. Maybe there are some, but I have never met one. 
The ones I have met, the ones I know, could have chosen other career 
paths in their lives and been financially rewarded to a far greater 
extent than they were as teachers. But they were dedicated to improving 
the educational quality of their pupils.
  This Nation is built on a number of great things. One of the best is 
a commitment to education by a group of people who educate succeeding 
generations of Americans. Those teachers embrace the values 
incorporated in our Declaration of Independence and our Constitution. 
We ought to applaud them every single day and thank them.
  I listen to teachers talk about what needs to be done. We all ought 
to pay attention to that. We ought to listen to our PTAs and school 
boards, people who work every day with these issues. When I talk about 
class size, school construction, afterschool programs, teacher 
quality--these are not my ideas; these are not issues the Senator from 
Louisiana or the Senator from West Virginia or the Senator from Oregon 
thought up on our own. We were back listening to the folks at home who 
told us this is what is needed to make the system work better.
  In the remaining hours and days here, before we begin a debate on 
this subject matter, let us not be co-architects of a plan we will come 
to regret. There are those who are anxious to see the public 
educational system of this country disappear. I know that sounds like a 
radical thought, but there are those who believe it. I believe we may 
be setting up a system that will have a self-fulfilling prophecy 
ingrained in it, to produce the result that schools do not work and 
that we have to come up with alternatives to those to educate people in 
this country.
  That is not an answer. Mr. President, 55 million children went to 
school today: 50 million went to a public school, 5 million went to a 
private or parochial school, 5 million. There is no way in the world we 
are going to create a private or parochial school system to accommodate 
the educational needs of generations of Americans for the 21st century 
and beyond. We have an obligation, every one of us here and at home, to 
weigh in and to make our schools better. We need national leadership 
that is going to put their shoulders behind that effort. And you cannot 
do it on the cheap. You cannot go around the country and talk about it 
every day and show up in classrooms for photo opportunities and come 
back here and say: We just cannot afford to do this, but we can afford 
to spend $1.6 trillion on a tax cut, nearly half of which goes to the 
most affluent.
  I hope my colleagues in the coming days will find that common ground 
and put these items on the table. Let's negotiate these items as well 
before we come to the floor with an education bill that runs the risk 
of testing kids and holding schools accountable but not providing the 
resources that our most needy schools require to implement reforms.
  I apologize to my colleagues for taking a bit more time than I 
thought I would, but I thank you for your attention, and I yield the 
floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from West Virginia.
  Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, I congratulate my colleague on his speech 
this afternoon. I share his thoughts, so beautifully and so eloquently 
expressed on this Senate floor. I salute him, and I will be working 
shoulder to shoulder with him to advance the education of our children.
  During a recent break, I read a book by Sir Francis Bacon. The book 
is entitled, ``The Advancement Of Learning.'' He was talking about some 
of the same things we are talking about today: the need for equipment 
in our educational institutions; the need to pay, the need to 
remunerate the people who teach in these schools. So I think we are--I 
was about to say ``walking in good footsteps.'' I hesitated because Sir 
Francis Bacon was impeached and went to the tower for a while. But 
anyway, I congratulate my friend.
  Mr. President, I understand my friend and colleague from Louisiana is 
also interested in speaking. May I ask her how much time she would 
need?

[[Page S3968]]

  Ms. LANDRIEU. I could probably use 5 minutes, if the Senator could be 
so gracious to allow that, for comments on education.
  Mr. BYRD. I have three speeches. I am not noted for brevity in my 
speeches, but I do not worry about that too much because Cicero was 
once asked which of Demosthenes' speeches, he, Cicero, liked the best.
  Cicero's answer was, ``the longest.'' He liked the longest of 
Demosthenes' speeches the best. Of course his speech ``On the Crown'' 
was probably the greatest speech ever made.
  I wonder if the distinguished Senator will let me do my first speech, 
which will require less than 10 minutes. Then I ask unanimous consent 
that I may yield to the Senator for her remarks, and that I retain the 
floor so I might complete my other two speeches.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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