[Congressional Record Volume 147, Number 172 (Wednesday, December 12, 2001)]
[House]
[Pages H9764-H9771]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




H.R. 1, NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND ACT, A GOOD BEGINNING WHICH REQUIRES ADDED 
                RESOURCES TO ASSURE AN EDUCATED POPULACE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Boozman). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of January 3, 2001, the gentleman from New York (Mr. Owens) is 
recognized for 60 minutes.
  Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, tomorrow or the next day we will have on the 
floor the long-awaited H.R. 1, Leave No Child Behind Act, an education 
bill initiated by the President shortly after he was sworn in, 
inaugurated.
  It is a landmark event. It is a history-making event. We should all 
look forward to it. It is an example of intensive bipartisan 
cooperation. It does break new ground, and we should see it as a 
commencement, a second commencement.
  Lyndon Johnson began the Federal role in elementary and secondary 
education more than 40 years ago when he initiated the first Elementary 
and Secondary Education Assistance Act, primarily designed to help poor 
school districts, poor children in poor school districts. This is a 
continuation of that, a reauthorization of it; but I think it has many 
elements which will move us forward. It has a lot of bipartisan 
agreement.
  We have moved from a situation which existed about 8 years ago where 
one party was calling for the abolishment of the Department of 
Education, and I think the Contract with America set forth by Speaker 
Gingrich called for an end to the Federal role in coordinating 
education. We had a very intense year of debate on that; and we fought 
an attempt to cut school lunch programs, we fought an attempt to cut 
Head Start. It was the depths of bipartisan conflict on education.
  Fortunately, the American people let their voices be heard, and they 
made it clear through the polls and through the focus groups that they 
considered education to be a high priority, and they wanted more 
Federal participation in education.
  By 1996, in the process of reauthorizing or setting forth a new 
budget, the end of 1995, actually, the party in power here in the 
House, the new party in power, the Republican Party, saw the light, and 
suddenly they began to support the Federal role in education. The 
appropriation process I think indicated that when we got a big 
increase, a more than $4 billion increase in education as a result of 
the majority Republicans responding to the will of the people. It would 
have been very disastrous if they had not recognized it and stopped the 
call for the dismantling of the Department of Education.
  So we are at a point now where the perception of the public, 
according to recent polls, is that Republicans and Democrats are pretty 
much the same in terms of their support for Federal involvement in 
education, in terms of their support for education. Whether I agree 
with that perception or not, that is the perception of the public. This 
bill shows that the two parties can reach agreement about the same 
thing, and it is a positive achievement. But in my opinion, it ought to 
be a second commencement.
  Now we agree on the basic role, and now we set some basic new 
directions where I think one of the parties can certainly distinguish 
itself at this point by recognizing the great need for more resources. 
I hope it is my party.
  I hope we wake up to the fact that all that we have done is 
important, and nobody should minimize the importance of the bill that 
will be on the floor, but the great flaw in the bill is that it lacks 
resources. It does not have the resources to do the job that has to be 
done.
  Let us just stop for a moment and consider some of the activities 
that are taking place in this first year of the 107th Congress. We have 
a monumental challenge. September 11 certainly heightened and escalated 
the nature of the challenge, but we had a challenge already in terms of 
a faltering economy.
  Things have been happening here which require some very difficult 
decisions to be made. In this democracy of ours, keeping the economy 
going, reacting to a new kind of threat, waging a new kind of war 
requires an educated population.
  I think governance of any modern industrialized society, that is far 
more difficult than nuclear physics. The governance of a modern society 
requires first of all an educated population. The most important 
resource we can have is an educated population.
  So the achievement of Congress, the two parties, in reaching the 
agreement that has been reached that will be on the floor here is not 
just a passing matter. Education is not just an ancillary kind of 
operation, off to the side, ancillary because, after all, the 
Constitution does specifically say that the Federal Government is not 
responsible for education, that it is the responsibility of the States 
and local governments. We have participated sort of as a stimulus and a 
catalyst to make things happen faster and better, but we are not really 
responsible. We do not understand it to be a major function of the 
Federal Government.

  I thoroughly disagree with this, and I think that in our new 
commencement

[[Page H9765]]

of the Federal effort, commencement number two, in my opinion, that 
this bill could be, we ought to take hold of the fact that education is 
at the very heart of our effort to maintain our society and to move to 
the point where we can master the complexities of a society which is 
really moving toward kind of a cybercivilization, even if it did not 
have these threats that are very real, the organized terrorist threat 
that has clearly stated objectives.
  ``Mein Kampf'' was a statement of Hitler's objectives, and if folks 
had just taken Hitler more seriously earlier, perhaps things would not 
have reached the point, the destructive point, it reached, because he 
clearly said what he wanted to do today and was going to do.
  If there was a terrorist power that says that our society is a modern 
society which is a decadent society which must be destroyed, and our 
policies with respect to assistance and aid to the democracy in Israel 
is unacceptable, but that is just only one thing that they find 
unacceptable, they find it unacceptable that our women do not have to 
cover themselves up, and we are too modern in allowing women to be 
equal to men in our decision-making, they do not particularly like 
democracy because they have kings and sheikhs and other kinds of people 
who make the decisions, and our whole way of life is threatened, that 
is very real and we have to rise to meet that threat and understand the 
seriousness of it when it is also backed by tremendous amounts of 
wealth, the oil money in the Middle East which finances the whole 
thing.
  So we have a serious challenge, and in this session we should be 
rising to meet that challenge. September 11 in my home city of New York 
was a horror that no one could have ever imagined. Yet September 11 
shows how vulnerable our society is, how complex it is, and how a 
strike at one nerve center could have a domino effect and impact on our 
entire Nation.
  The recession was already in place, so we cannot blame September 11 
for the continued downturn and the escalation of the economic downturn, 
but it certainly had a great impact on it. Communications were 
disrupted, the financial center of the United States and of the entire 
world was almost brought to its knees, and Wall Street really shut down 
for a few days.
  So it is very real, and as we marshall our resources to meet this 
threat, let us not put education off to the side as being something 
that is nice to do, but really is not at the heart of it.
  Our previous speaker spoke very eloquently and forcefully and 
intensively about the need for a ballistic missile system: Are you with 
us or are you against us? Are you for a ballistic missile system or are 
you not? That is going to save America, a blanket to protect us.
  Well, Mr. Speaker, the terrorist enemies that we are up against, very 
clever enemies that we are up against, used airline passenger planes as 
weapons, and some fanatic out there has used envelopes in the mail as 
weapons.
  I am more frightened of the anthrax scare than I am of a repeat of 
what happened on September 11 in terms of the hijacking of four planes 
on one day and the ability to use those planes as weapons. I do not 
think that will ever happen again in America.
  But the anthrax threat and the ease with which somebody out there can 
threaten a whole system, shut down some offices in Congress, bring the 
postal service to a halt, that is very frightening.

                              {time}  2200

  And so we are going to need all the resources we can marshal.
  We are going to need a well-educated populace. We should not ever be 
in a situation again where the anthrax cleanup is so slow because there 
are not enough specialists around to do it, especially since anthrax 
has been a concern of ours since the Gulf War. We began to be concerned 
about anthrax since the Gulf War. We even vaccinated large numbers of 
American troops to deal with the possibility of an enemy who might use 
anthrax. So I was surprised when we discovered we had a problem here on 
Capitol Hill and there were so few people to deal with it rapidly, and 
they did not know how exactly to deal with it.
  There were a number of blunders that were quite obvious from day-to-
day on the television set which showed that we were not prepared. I 
would rather be prepared for that kind of warfare than to put all of 
our resources into a ballistic missile system and to make that the 
great test of whether we really care about protecting America or not. A 
ballistic missile system will cost billions and billions of dollars, 
and there is a doubt about how effective it would be. And even if it is 
very effective, and once it is put in place, can be expected to do what 
it is supposed to do, we are dealing with an enemy which can quickly 
see that the use of anthrax through the mail or the introduction of 
smallpox viruses in various ways into our society could accomplish far 
more havoc than a single missile can accomplish at any time, if it is 
done in a way which catches us off guard, if we do not have sufficient 
specialists and experts, and if we do not have sufficiently-staffed 
medical institutions that can detect and diagnose right away.
  There are so many areas where we need more expertise, we need more 
people who can deal with these problems than we have. So September 11 
is a wake-up call, a vary tragic kind of wake-up call, but we need to 
understand the war effort is just one more example of how this Nation 
will not survive unless it has a better educated population to deal 
with all of these problems, many of which cannot be predicted ahead of 
time.
  What have we done here in the 107th Congress? In the first year of 
the 107th Congress, even with the war threat, I do not think we have 
rallied to meet the challenges that are before us. Day after day, and 
Christmas is just around the corner, the holiday season is upon us, and 
there is talk of us having to be here for the rest of the week and then 
come back next week just before Christmas. It looks like some kind of 
heroic effort is going on.
  After all, there is a war, and so you can understand how the calendar 
cannot be followed in the manner it has been followed in previous 
years, but it is not the war, I assure you. It is the great 
mismanagement of resources here by the majority party.
  We do not need to be here, and it is not a good use of taxpayers' 
resources to have us here. It is not a good use of our time and energy 
to have us separated from our constituents so much during this period. 
Many of the votes that we have taken this year, and I must say this 
because people are watching every Congressman all the time in relation 
to his voting record. And the voting record is a statistical thing. 
They do not really want to look into it very carefully, see the 
details, or what you were voting on, it is just 95 percent or 96 
percent or 100 percent, 90 percent, and that is it. How many times you 
voted on the Journal is not considered, and how many times you took 
junk votes.
  This majority party that we have in the House of Representatives is a 
master at a new product called junk votes, I call them. Votes that do 
not matter. Somebody invented the term ``junk bonds'' a long time ago. 
Junk votes are votes that are really not important at all and are 
distracting. I guess you cannot say that they are that harmful. A 
resolution to reaffirm that the golden rule is a good rule to follow. 
That is a resolution that we would all vote for. It is not going to do 
anybody any harm. A resolution that motherhood is a great thing. Those 
kinds of resolutions have been coming all the time this year. Our 
suspension calendar is full of items that are really quite trivial. We 
could really have been spending more time at home, we could have 
managed the serious votes in a manner which would allow us to be here 
just for serious votes and we could have more time on the floor for 
serious debate.
  The most serious issues, the bills which have the most serious 
content are the ones we give the least amount of time. That is the way 
the majority operates here.
  I am proud to report that finally we got the conference process back 
operating in a democratic mode again, and the conference process for 
H.R. 1, Leave No Child Behind, was a model of what this institution 
should be all about. The Senate and the House conferees met, they met 
in public, they negotiated, the staff carried the process through, all 
the Members were involved, and it was like we were back to old-
fashioned democracy. Something

[[Page H9766]]

that has not happened much in the last 6 to 8 years since the 
Republican majority took over.

  I know we are not supposed to talk about the other body that much, 
and that the Chair gave great liberties to two of my colleagues before 
finally reminding them of that, but let me praise the Members of the 
other body who worked with us on a conference committee. I think you 
can talk about a functioning, productive conference committee. We 
worked very well together and we produced a good piece of legislation. 
But, again, I am going to come back to its shortcomings. That 
legislation should be seen as a good beginning, and where we go from 
there is what I would like to discuss tonight.
  But before I get to that, I just want to talk about the fact that an 
educated population also is a population that must be able to discern 
what facts are and combat and counteract the stretching of the truth.
  I heard two of my colleagues on the Republican majority side earlier 
tonight talk about the achievements of this House, and they dared to 
say that we have taken steps to deal with the serious problem of 
unemployment, we have steps to take care of the needs of workers in an 
economy which is in a downturn, and that we have done our work. Where 
are the facts to support that? Where is there a response to the rapidly 
increasing unemployment? In none of the legislation that passed in this 
House will you find it.
  In many of the proposals that the Democrats have proposed there was a 
clear effort to try to deal with the immediate problem of unemployment. 
We had proposals which stretched the number of weeks that you could 
receive unemployment payments. We had proposed to increase the amount 
of unemployment insurance the person could receive. We had proposals 
even to provide 6 months of health insurance for workers who lost their 
health insurance as a result of leaving. We had proposals for training. 
All those were rejected by the majority party, yet they stood here on 
the floor and said that they had taken care of business related to the 
intense problems faced by workers in an economy experiencing a 
downturn.
  We need an educated population which can sort out those kinds of 
facts which are very close to home, and no one should be able to get 
away with distortions of that kind without being challenged by our 
constituents. It is a complex world. The complexities of the world 
demand that we have an educated population.
  I think the definition of an adequate education probably in most 
State constitutions is similar to the definition we find in the New 
York State constitution. Probably not the same wording, but there is a 
basic assumption when the States took on the responsibility for 
education that they were talking about an adequate education. They do 
not mean providing people with some luxury education that will allow 
them to speak many languages and have their own set of computers and 
technology, et cetera. But a basic and adequate education, as defined 
in the New York State constitution, is an education which will allow 
students to become productive citizens capable of civic engagement and 
sustaining competitive employment. Capable of civic engagement and 
sustaining competitive employment.
  That is what a sound basic education is according to the New York 
State constitution. That is no small item, I assure you. To be able to 
have students who become productive citizens capable of civic 
engagement and to be able to sustain competitive employment might have 
been far simpler 200 years ago, when the constitution of the State of 
New York was written, but in order to be able to sustain competitive 
employment, you need to know far more than just to read and write. Why 
not begin with reading. We have a problem just teaching reading.

  But we need to understand that the education that citizens need in 
our democracy demands that they be able to do far more than that, and 
that is going to cost money. That is going to require a complex system 
which is accountable. And the other part of it, a productive citizen 
capable of civic engagement, our democracy will not survive if we do 
not have citizens capable of civic engagement, who understand what our 
decision-making process is all about and what it needs to do.
  Now, it is to our credit that sometimes the public is way ahead of 
us. The public, the constituents out there, with the education that we 
have offered, we must be doing something right because they 
consistently insist that education should be a high priority of the 
government. The people of America, for the last 5 to 6 years, have 
placed education among the top three priorities. In the last 10 years 
it has been among the top five priorities. So there is something about 
our populace which makes them understand what the people they elect are 
quick to forget.
  We trivialize education. We do not make it a high priority except in 
terms of rhetoric. The highest priority items receive the greatest 
portion of the budget. There is a correlation between appropriations 
and priorities in this Congress, and we are not in the same place that 
the American people are. They would like to have us do far more.
  So capacity for civic engagement may be greater than we think and may 
be greater than we as decision-makers for those same people who are 
engaging in civic activity deserve. We deserve better action here to 
reflect that.
  On the other hand, they do not understand the complexities of the 
world in terms of justice and peace and in terms of how our relations 
with foreign governments are necessary to protect us. Those things get 
short shrift until we have a September 11, and then we understand that 
we cannot go it alone; that we have to have coalitions; we have to have 
some standards; we have to answer the charge that we exploit the rest 
of the world; we have to answer the charge that our foreign policy is 
rampant with favoritism toward one nation or another.
  Why should not our foreign policy lean in the direction of supporting 
democracies? There are a number of ways to answer that, but we have to 
be able to articulate that not just as a government but the people have 
to understand it too.
  We need a population that is educated to understand the best 
utilization of taxpayer resources. Was it good for us to have voted 
millions of dollars for the airline bailout, the cash for the bailout 
and the long-term, low-cost, low-interest loans for the airline 
industry bailout? Is that industry really that critical in our economy? 
Well, from the looks of the tourist industry and the repercussions of 
the lack of airline industry functioning properly, perhaps it is. Those 
kinds of judgments people need to make.
  Some are complaining quite a bit about that. Certainly I think they 
have a right to complain about the fact that if the airline industry is 
important, we should have taken steps to take care of the workers in 
the airline industry at the same time we helped the management and the 
owners of the airline industry. Those kinds of decisions and analyses 
of events are necessary.
  There is an insurance subsidy we have now voted. Some of the things 
we have done here are new and monumental. The insurance subsidy is one 
of them. I think the airline industry bill, the same bill that bailed 
out the airline industry, had a compensation fund which is also 
breaking new ground where the Federal Government is going to provide 
compensation for all the survivors of the victims of the September 11 
tragedy. I think it is a great step forward. We broke new ground there. 
Is that a good idea, really? And what is that really all about? Every 
citizen ought to be able to clearly understand.
  We are not trying to enrich anybody at the expense of taxpayers, but 
that is the kind of thing that government should be doing. But we ought 
to really understand that for what it is worth.
  Enron might seem like something totally unrelated to education, and 
why am I bringing up the Enron disaster? Most folks are not aware of 
the fact that Enron is a major economic disaster. Enron is the largest 
corporate bankruptcy ever experienced by America.
  It reminds me of the savings and loans phenomenon of a couple of 
decades ago. Anything as big as Enron was deemed, any bank that had 
that kind of position in the economic structure, was deemed too big to 
fail.

                              {time}  2215

  The whole policy of the Congress was to step in and bail out the 
banks, and

[[Page H9767]]

we did. Billions of dollars of taxpayers' money went into bailing out 
banks. Citizens never quite understood that, and most Members of 
Congress did not understand how many billions of dollars were spent. It 
is estimated that the taxpayers spent at least $500 billion bailing out 
the savings and loan industry.
  Is Enron something new that we are going to be confronted with? Are 
we going to bail out Enron? Will there be other energy companies that 
are too big to fail that we are going to come up with a set of 
legislative actions to undergird? Is that kind of swindle going to be 
perpetrated again?
  An article appeared recently in the paper about the Pritzker family 
bank in Illinois. That bank went under as a result of shenanigans. The 
savings and loan swindle was basically a swindle where people were 
encouraged to put their money in, and they were given very high rates 
for their investment because that would attract deposits. Once their 
deposits were in, every $100,000 worth of deposits was insured by the 
Federal Government. So people did not mind going where the highest rate 
was offered. If a savings and loan offered 15 percent, people moved 
their money there because they knew if they put $100,000 in, it started 
out at $10,000, but Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal, we pushed it 
up to $100,000. So it became profitable for banks to call in the money. 
Everybody knew the money would be safe, and then those banks that 
gathered all of that money misused it in terms of the investments that 
the banks made. People stole in various ways. In the final analysis, 
the Federal Government was handed the bill.
  Mr. Speaker, are we going to get into another swindle like that with 
energy companies? We need a very well-educated population to deal with 
these complexities. The governance of a modern, industrialized society 
is more difficult than nuclear physics; and education is not an 
ancillary function on the side, not for the Federal Government or any 
other branch of government.
  I would like to return to the item that is on the agenda now tomorrow 
or the next day and talk in more detail about the final version of H.R. 
1. It has gone through the conference process. I was fortunate enough 
to serve on the conference committee, and I think we did some useful 
things there, but my basic premise is that it is just a beginning. It 
is a good beginning, but it is a beginning. Now we need to go on to 
resources. To quote from an article that appeared in the Washington 
Post, many principles underlie the plan that we are going to be voting 
on were outlined by the President during his first week in office. He 
called the bill at that time his top domestic priority. It would expand 
the Federal Government's role in enforcement of educational standards 
requiring every public school student in the country to take state-
administered reading and math tests in grades 3 through 8, and holding 
schools and educators accountable for the result.
  The bill also requires States to establish a minimum level of 
proficiency on the exams, and to make steady progress in bringing all 
students up to that level that they establish within 12 years. In 
addition, the measure would require States to report progress toward 
the goal by several student subgroups defined by race, ethnicity, 
socioeconomic status and other factors. A statistically representative 
sample of students in each State would take the National Assessment of 
Educational Progress, a highly regarded Federal test, to set a 
benchmark for the State exams. The school that fails to meet the 
improvement timetables would be subject to escalating assistance and 
sanctions, and parents of students attending failing schools would be 
given new educational options.
  In various ways the spotlight would be thrown on the people who have 
the primary responsibility for education, the State and the local 
education agencies, a spotlight which is standardized. There would be a 
spotlight in each State which does not vary from State to State as a 
way to judge progress, to make each State accountable in accordance 
with a set of national standards. That is the most important feature of 
the bill. If it does nothing else but to force out into the open the 
accountability process whereby States have to let it be known what they 
are doing, the public will know, and we will see step by step what 
happens.
  The bill would provide nearly $1 billion for a program aimed at 
having all children reading by the third grade. That is a good feature 
of the bill, an emphasis on reading. We found that reading is basic to 
education. You cannot have education without a certain level of reading 
competence, forget about math and going forward with history and 
anything else. If a student cannot clear the first hurdle of being able 
to read adequately, and yet we found in colleges where teachers are 
trained, there is no specialized training in most colleges as to how to 
teach reading. Very few people were given special instruction in 
reading who became teachers of reading.

  There are some good features in terms of what we did not do also. The 
President must be given credit for throwing overboard what had been a 
major planking in the Republican majority's platform before, insisting 
that vouchers, that the Federal Government get into the business of 
providing money to parents so parents can have vouchers to go off and 
purchase the education from private schools, whether private or 
parochial. Of course that never was a very sound proposal because the 
Federal Government would only be able to give the amount of money 
allocated for title I children which never reached more than $1,400; 
and no school anywhere in the country is able to function with a 
tuition of $1,400.
  Poor parents would have to make up the difference which sort of was a 
contradiction. If you are poor, how are you going to raise the 
difference between $1,400 and $4,000 or $5,000 for tuition. That was 
taken off the table, and I congratulate the President for doing that.
  The President also insisted that we go back to the original purpose 
of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, and concentrate the 
funds that are available on the poorest children. Concentrate the funds 
available on the children with disabilities. The two functions of the 
Federal Government which must be given the highest priority for 
assistance in education are the poor and those who have disabilities 
and need special education. We are back to where we should have been, 
and President Bush should be given credit for pushing aside all of the 
temptations of our majority party in this House certainly to take what 
education funds were available and try to spread them as much as 
possible regardless of how much wealth a district had already.
  Members wanted to take something home to their district for 
education, and we had a great deal of pressure to take the title I 
funds and sort of dismantle them. President Bush has brought a halt to 
that and deserves credit for refocusing the resources of the Federal 
Government on the worst problems as the highest priority.
  We did have a big discussion about the need for the Federal 
Government to live up to its commitment which was made 25 years ago to 
provide 40 percent of the cost of special education funds. We passed a 
bill more than 25 years ago which said that we would cover 40 percent 
of the expenditure of each State for special education, which is called 
IDEA. At this point 25 years later, we are only providing 10 percent of 
the cost, and we wanted to move and there was a great debate in the 
conference committee, we wanted to move from the 10 percent to a full 
40 percent funding over the next 10 years; and we were unable to get 
that provision accepted by the Republican majority in the House.
  That is still unfinished business, but that is very much consistent 
with my message for tonight, and that is if we had taken on the 
responsibility of 40 percent funding for special education, it would be 
a great jump forward in terms of more resources for each local 
education agency because it would free up the funds that they are now 
spending for special education. They are required by the Constitution 
according to the Supreme Court interpretation to provide an education 
for all children regardless of their disabilities. So they must spend 
the money regardless of whether the Federal Government gives them a 
portion of it or not. If the Federal Government were to meet its 
promise and give them 40 percent of their expenditure, that is 40 
percent

[[Page H9768]]

that they do not have to budget for in their own budget for that 
purpose. They could use that for some other education purpose.
  The bill increases Federal funding despite the fact that it does not 
increase the funding for special education; it still increases Federal 
funding by $3.7 billion. And funding for title I for the poorest 
children would double over the next 5 years. These are positives, and 
it is a good beginning and we need more. We need more to deal with the 
fact that we are not providing the kind of education that our complex 
civilization requires to enough children, to enough people, to keep 
pace with the need.
  In other words, our cyber-civilization requires a tremendous amount 
of brain power, and the production of that brain power takes place in 
our school system. Since we have 83 million children in public school, 
that is where most of the brain power education is taking place. If we 
fail to produce the brain power needs of a cyber-civilization, we are 
going to crumble. We are going to fall. We need enough brain power to 
fill the positions in our government, in our military, in our technical 
areas, in our school system. Right through and through there is a 
demand for more and more and better brain power.
  I am going to read some excerpts from a speech I made at the Yale 
Political Union on Monday, November 26.
  Mr. Speaker, I include for the Record my speech in its entirety. It 
is entitled, ``Congress Should Spend More to Reform Public Education.''

         Congress Should Spend More to Reform Public Education

(By: Congressman Major R. Owens: Yale Political Union--Monday, November 
                               26, 2001)

       There are a number of interesting appropriation dollar 
     figures and funding facts which might serve as a useful 
     skeleton for this discussion:
       The highest per pupil cost is paid by the American 
     taxpayers supporting a public institution to educate a 
     student at West Point. The per pupil cost is about three 
     times the cost of educating a student at Yale.
       There are about sixteen thousand school districts in 
     America. Among the diverse school districts in New York State 
     the cost per pupil ranges from seven thousand to twenty-six 
     thousand dollars.
       The gross expenditure for education in America is more than 
     370 billion dollars; federal dollars are only seven percent 
     of this amount. The national governments of all of the other 
     industrial nations are far more deeply involved.
       There are 4,070 higher education institutions in America; 
     1,688 of these are public institutions. In the year 2001, 
     about 1.2 million higher education students received Bachelor 
     Degrees; the projection for the year 2005 is 1.25 million 
     graduates.
       There are 83 million students attending the public schools 
     of America; the total enrollment for four year higher 
     education institutions in 2001 was 9.4 million students.
       The new job openings projected by the U.S. Department of 
     Labor for the period between now and the year 2008 for the 
     following occupations are: 1.6 million teachers; 1 million 
     registered nurses and health technicians; 1.3 million police, 
     detective and other law enforcement and security personnel.
       Dan Goldin, the retiring Administrator of NASA predicts a 
     ``technological sunomi'' requiring 2 million additional 
     scientists and engineers over the next 20 years.
       H.R. 1, President Bush's high priority education 
     initiative, presently being negotiated by a House-Senate 
     Conference Committee, authorizes increases that, if 
     appropriated, would raise the overall federal share in 
     education expenditures from 7 percent to 8 percent within 
     five years.
       This set of relevant and revealing observations could 
     launch us on many diverse and interesting course. However, it 
     would be more profitable if we could focus this brief 
     dialogue on the hypothesis that the survival of the nation is 
     inextricably interwoven with the collective initiative to 
     reform public education. When we contend that ``Congress 
     Should Spend More Money to Reform Public Education'', we are 
     really insisting that Congress should spend more money on 
     education in order to guarantee the survival of the nation. I 
     am making this assertion at the outset, in order to make it 
     clear that this is not a ``mickey-mouse'' session about 
     adding a few dollars here or there to get higher public 
     school student test scores.
       In addition to providing vital cement for our civic, social 
     and economic infrastructure, our defense, safety, security; 
     basic national physical survival is directly dependent on the 
     amount and levels of the education of our population. If it 
     fails to maintain its brainpower production, its public 
     education system, in syncopation with its enormous brainpower 
     needs, this great American cyber-civilization will fall with 
     a momentum more rapid than the fall of the Roman Empire.
       The recent monumental management and communications 
     blunders of the CIA and the FBI; the absence of translators 
     to translate important information gathered through our 
     multi-billion dollar world-wide electronic surveillance 
     system; the failure of the FAA to implement decades-old 
     proposals for the securing of airplane cockpits; the 
     increasing amount of sloveliness or ``human error'' 
     related to the execution of routine but critical tasks; 
     these are examples of escalating brainpower deficits 
     directly related to our immediate safety and security.
       When the most recent super-aircraft carrier was launched, 
     it had dozens of unfilled positions because it could not find 
     within the Navy's ranks, persons who could operate the high-
     tech equipment being utilized. The National Aeronautical and 
     Space Administrator, Dan Goldin, recently announced that at 
     NASA there are twice as many engineers over sixty than there 
     are under thirty. Goldin predicts that two million additional 
     scientists and engineers will be needed over the next twenty 
     years when we be experiencing a ``technological sunomi''
       From our routine and less visionary sources such as the 
     U.S. Department of Labor are projected occupational shortages 
     which indicate the deficits will extend far beyond science 
     and technology: The projected number of job openings due to 
     growth and net replacements between now and the year 2008 is 
     1.6 million teachers; 1 million registered nurses and medical 
     technicans; 1.3 million law enforcement and security 
     personnel. The Information Technology Association estimates 
     that two million information technology professionals will be 
     needed. When you add this same degree of need for more 
     doctors, geneticists, pharmaceutical engineers, lawyers and 
     MBA's; there should be considerable fear aroused among 
     national decision-makers when we consider the fact that the 
     number of college graduates from our 4,000 degree granting 
     institutions will hover at only 1.2 million per year during 
     this seven-year period.
       At the mouth of America's great educational funnel from 
     Head Start and kindergarten through elementary and secondary 
     education to our colleges and universities; at this source of 
     our raw material there are 83 million students attending 
     public schools. The challenges of public education reform 
     stated in simple arithmetic is a matter of developing far 
     more than 1.2 million college graduates per year from a base 
     of 83 million. In addition to doubling and tripling the 
     number of college graduates, the public eduation system must 
     prepare millions of better educated technicians, mechanics, 
     craftsmen and operators. The performance of the mechanic 
     servicing an airplane is as critical as the performance of 
     the pilot of the plane. At every occupational level, the 
     pursuit of better quality is as important as the need to 
     produce greater numbers.
       Education adds value to all who are engaged. Even the worst 
     student exist from an education experience with some degree 
     of improvement. The system must be designed to add as much 
     value to every pupil as possible. Society requires increasing 
     levels of competence from an increasing number of performers 
     who can be produced only from a more effective ``churning'' 
     process at the mouth of the funnel. Excellence or even basic 
     competence is guaranteed only when there is a merit driven 
     process continuously pushing new expertise upward to replace 
     the burned out and to challenge smugness or stagnation.
       Our inability to more effectively transform the raw 
     material represented by the 83 million public school students 
     has brought us to a critical point where an explosion in need 
     for more brainpower is overwhelming our processes for the 
     production of the necessary brainpower. At other similar 
     pivotal points in its history, sometimes by fortunate 
     accident, and sometimes through the vision of geniuses, this 
     nation has adopted sound practices and innovative initiatives 
     in education. By fortunate accident the majority of the 
     states and localities embraced the concept of public schools. 
     As a result of the vision of Thomas Jefferson, the University 
     of Virginia became a model emphasizing publicly supported 
     higher education beyond the liberal arts to embrace practical 
     science, engineering and agricultural production.
       Another genius, Congressman Morrill, inspired by 
     Jefferson's model, initiated federal support for land grant 
     colleges and universities in all of the states. Following 
     World War II, the GI federal education subsidies provided a 
     massive boost in brainpower pools at a time when more 
     sophisticated mechanization and automation were creating 
     demands for new and better brainpower.
       Extraordinary federal support for the higher education 
     which qualified participants for immediate professional jobs 
     has provided a great incentive for the expansion and 
     improvement of the elementary and secondary public education 
     system. Preparing students for college is the first priority 
     of most local school districts. A more automated and 
     digitalized commercial and industrial sector with demands for 
     better educated high school graduates has provided an even 
     greater and broader incentive. Despite the present drift into 
     recession, these incentives and rewards for more and better 
     education are firmly in place. Certainly it is possible to 
     move a greater portion of the 83 million public school 
     attendees into education streams that will allow them to meet 
     the mushrooming needs of our cybercivilization.
       In this 107th Congress, the critical question is will a 
     great leap forward be taken to funnel 20 or 25 percent 
     (instead of the present 12 percent) of the 83 million upward 
     to higher levels of competence and expertise. The good news 
     is that the Bush proposal presently in

[[Page H9769]]

     conference does propose some small steps forward:
       HR 1 will authorize almost one billion dollars for a new 
     reading program.
       The bill proposes to double Title I funds from 8 billion 
     dollars to nearly 16 billion dollars over a five year period.
       The Senate conferees are insisting that the bill greatly 
     increase funding for children with disabilities.
       The bad news is that this is authorization legislation and 
     there are clear indications of resistance to these increases 
     by the appropriators. President Bush is also insisting on a 
     degree of regimentation and testing that poisons the 
     relationship between the federal, state and local education 
     policy makers. We may move from a 7 percent federal share to 
     an 8 percent share; however, the heavy handed oversight 
     offers the appearance of a federal bully instead of a federal 
     partner.
       The worst news is that even if a full appropriation is 
     achieved for the amounts authorized, this presidential 
     initiative, which is probably all that we can hope for in the 
     next four years will constitute only an incremental increase 
     in funding at a time when states and localities are being 
     forced to reduce funding for schools:
       The critical need for smaller class sizes and more 
     qualified teachers requires increased funding.
       The infrastructure of school physical facilities needs 
     about 300 billion dollars nationwide and this problem is not 
     addressed at all.
       Computers and other technology which may hold the key to 
     breakthroughs in the education of those most difficult to 
     reach are not encouraged sufficiently.
       Appropriations for children with disabilities (IDEA) which 
     moves in DC toward the current already authorized 40 percent 
     of total cost is being proposed by the Senate but opposed by 
     the President. The federal increase would free local funds 
     for greater application toward the needs cited above.
       In summary, the Bush initiative, even if improved by 
     current Senate proposals, falls far short of the significant 
     leap forward in federal funding which the present pivotal 
     moment in the nation's development demands. Through four 
     administrations, from Reagan through Bush to Clinton and 
     now another Bush, I have strongly recommended and will 
     continue to recommend that we establish new parameters for 
     federal assistance to education:
       In order to re-position the present primitive, almost 
     freakish, insistence that the least amount of federal funding 
     for elementary and secondary education is highly desirable, 
     we must learn from the examples of some of the other 
     industrialized nations. Greater federal support which moves 
     from 7 percent toward 25 percent of the overall national 
     education expenditure would not constitute an over-
     centralized takeover of education; instead, it would 
     represent a logical mean between the extremes of nationalized 
     education ministries and 16,000 uncoordinated independent 
     school districts in fifty states.
       Immediate significant federal funding initiatives should 
     focus on large, non-recurring capital expenditures for 
     physical facilities and equipment. States and localities 
     would not become dependent on Washington for their operating 
     expenses; however, necessary overwhelming one time 
     improvements could be realized.
       Priority for federal funding should continue to go to 
     assist in the education of those most difficult to educate--
     the poor and children with disabilities.
       Special federal funding must be made available to validate, 
     certify and promote education innovations that work. The best 
     programs and practices must be assisted in establishing 
     critical masses throughout the nation.
       Without bullying states and localities, the Congress should 
     continue to promote higher standards for student achievement 
     and for opportunities-to-learn.
       Funding to systematically expand support for Research, 
     Development and Dissemination must be greatly increased. It 
     must be recognized that this is an activity almost totally 
     neglected by states and localities.
       My final word is that society's fullest possible support of 
     public education should not be viewed as a noble gesture, or 
     a governmental philanthropic virtue, or the mere provision of 
     a ``safety net'' for those too poor to pay for their 
     children's education. The far wiser and more productive 
     public policy viewpoint must assume that public education is 
     a necessity vital for the functioning of our very complex 
     cyber-civilization. This nation literally will not be able to 
     survive without an adequate and continually updated public 
     education system.

  Mr. Speaker, I am going to comment and read a few excerpts from the 
speech. I started by saying that there are a number of interesting 
appropriation dollar figures and a number of interesting funding facts 
that might serve as a useful skeleton for the discussion of a topic 
that we were faced with. My topic was Congress should spend more to 
reform public education. There were debaters on the other side who 
opposed this later on, and it was an interesting evening at Yale 
University.
  Number one, we should look at the following figures and funding 
facts. The highest per-pupil cost is paid by the American taxpayer when 
we support the institution which educates the student at West Point. 
The highest per-pupil cost is paid to educate a West Point student. The 
per-pupil cost of education at West Point is at least three times the 
cost of educating a student at Yale or Harvard. I did get the facts 
about 8 years ago when we had a friendly chairman of the Committee on 
Armed Services who twisted the arms of the people at West Point, and 
they got me the facts and figures. At that time the cost per student at 
West Point was $120,000. That did not include the field training using 
artillery and all of the capital expenditure for that. Just the kind of 
academic training that they received was estimated to cost $120,000 per 
student.

                              {time}  2230

  At that time Harvard and Yale were about 30 to $35,000 per student. 
So we do believe in spending money to educate the best when we think it 
is necessary. We set a high priority on our military leadership. The 
very best is supposed to come from West Point so we spend a tremendous 
amount of money.
  Another fact. There are about 16,000 school districts across America. 
Among the diverse school districts in just one State, New York, the 
cost per pupil ranges from $7,000 per pupil to $26,000 in an upstate 
school district and most of the school districts within New York State 
are spending above $15,000 per pupil. $7,000 is about the lowest in the 
State, in New York City.
  Fact number three. The gross expenditure for education in America is 
more than $370 billion. But Federal dollars are only 7 percent of this 
amount. The national governments of all of the other industrialized 
nations are far more deeply involved in the education of their 
population. We have a decentralized system which also takes away the 
responsibility and allows the Federal Government not to be responsible 
for what is probably the most important task it has, and, that is, 
maintaining the education of the population. We only put 7 percent into 
the total expenditure pot for education.
  Point number four. H.R. 1, President Bush's high priority education 
initiative presently being negotiated, which is almost about to come to 
the floor, if every part is appropriated would maybe take us to 8 
percent instead of 7 percent. This is far too little in terms of the 
Federal share for education expenditures.
  We could take quite a bit of time to discuss just those four 
interesting facts, but it would be more profitable if we could focus 
this brief dialogue on the hypothesis that the survival of the Nation 
is inextricably interwoven with the collective initiative to reform 
public education. When we contend that Congress should spend more money 
to reform public education, we are really insisting that Congress 
should spend more money on education in order to guarantee the survival 
of the Nation. I am making this assertion at the outset in order to 
make it clear that this is not a Mickey Mouse session about adding a 
few dollars here or there to get higher public school student test 
scores. It is more than that.
  In addition to providing vital cement for our civic, social and 
economic infrastructure, our defense, safety, security, our basic 
national physical survival is directly dependent on the amount and 
levels of the education of our population. If it fails to maintain its 
brainpower production, its public education system, in syncopation with 
its enormous brainpower needs, this great America cybercivilization 
will fall with a momentum more rapid than the fall of the Roman Empire. 
Do not be smug. We saw the Soviet empire fall because it turned its 
back on certain realities. The great American empire can fall, too.
  The recent monumental mismanagement and communication blunders of the 
CIA and the FBI, and I do think some of those blunders led to September 
11, the absence of translators to translate important information 
gathered through our multi-billion-dollar worldwide electronic 
surveillance system, the failure of the FAA to implement decades-old 
proposals for the securing of airplane cockpits, the increased amount 
of slovenliness or human error related to the execution of routine but 
critical tasks, these are

[[Page H9770]]

examples of escalating brainpower deficits directly related to our 
immediate safety and security.
  When the most recent super aircraft carrier was launched, less than 2 
years ago, it had dozens of unfilled positions because it could not 
find within the Navy's ranks persons who could operate the high tech 
equipment being utilized. National Aeronautics and Space Administrator 
Dan Goldin, who just retired recently, announced that at NASA there are 
twice as many engineers over 60 than there are under 30. Goldin 
predicts that 2 million additional scientists and engineers will be 
needed over the next 20 years when we will be experiencing what he 
calls a ``technological tsunami.'' A tsunami is greater than a tidal 
wave, a hurricane or a tornado all put together.
  From more routine and less visionary sources such as the United 
States Department of Labor, we can find projections of occupational 
shortages which indicate that the deficits will extend far beyond 
science and technology. The projected number of job openings due to 
growth and net replacements between now and the year 2008 is about 1.6 
million teachers, 1 million registered nurses and medical technicians 
and 1.3 million law enforcement and security personnel. The Information 
Technology Association estimates that 2 million information technology 
professionals will be needed. When you add this same degree of need for 
more doctors, geneticists, pharmaceutical engineers, lawyers and 
MBAs, there should be considerable fear aroused among national 
decisionmakers when we consider the fact that the number of college 
graduates, although we have 4,000 degree-granting institutions in 
America, the number of college students who graduate each year hovers 
at 1.2 million per year. Over this 7-year period where we project all 
those needs for new people who are highly trained, we will be 
graduating only 1.2 million students per year.

  At the mouth of America's great educational funnel, if you look at an 
upward funnel, a funnel where down at the bottom is all these 83 
million public school students and as you go through the education 
process they funnel up into our higher education institutions and 
sometimes into 2-year colleges or sometimes into technical institutes, 
et cetera, from the mouth, this source of 83 million students, we 
should get a better return than 1.2 million graduates from college. We 
should double that instead. In addition to public education, students 
who will go to college, we should also understand that there are a 
great number of people who are needed as educated technicians, 
mechanics, craftsmen and operators. The performance of the mechanic 
servicing an airplane is as critical as the performance of the pilot of 
that same plane. We know that large amounts of money are spent to train 
pilots, but we should also know that at every occupational level, the 
pursuit of better quality is as important as the need to produce 
greater numbers.
  Education adds value to all who are engaged in education. Even the 
worst student exits from an education experience with some degree of 
improvement. The system must be designed to add as much value to every 
student as possible. Society requires increasing levels of competence 
from an increasing number of performers who can be produced only from a 
more effective education churning process at the mouth of that funnel 
which funnels them upward.
  Our inability to more effectively transform the raw material 
represented by the 83 million public school students in America has 
brought us to a critical point where an explosion in need for more 
brainpower is overwhelming our process for the production of the 
necessary brainpower. At other similar pivotal points in its history, 
sometimes by fortunate accident and sometimes through the vision of 
geniuses, this Nation has adopted sound practices and innovative 
initiatives in education. By fortunate accident, the majority of the 
States and localities very early in the history of the Nation embraced 
the concept of public schools. As a result of the vision of Thomas 
Jefferson, the University of Virginia became a model emphasizing 
publicly supported higher education beyond the liberal arts, publicly 
supported higher education which embraced practical science, 
engineering and agricultural production.
  Another genius following in the footsteps of Thomas Jefferson, 
Congressman Morrill, after the Civil War, he was inspired by 
Jefferson's model, he initiated the Federal support for land grant 
colleges and universities in all the States. Later on following World 
War II, the GI Federal education subsidies provided a massive boost in 
the brainpower pools in America at a time when more sophisticated 
mechanization and automation were creating demands for new and better 
brainpower. Senator Warner of Virginia at our last meeting of the 
House-Senate conference committee made a very moving speech about the 
fact that he was educated as a result of the GI subsidies. He got 7 
years of education subsidized by the Federal Government. That made all 
the difference in his life.
  Extraordinary Federal support for the higher education which 
qualified participants for immediate professional jobs, the Federal 
Government did support higher education very early and that started a 
system which provided incentives for students to go up and there was a 
clear pattern that if you got a decent education at the lower levels, 
you could go on to get a professional education in the colleges. 
Preparing students for college is the first priority that most local 
school districts see. That is what they are there for. A more automated 
and digitalized commercial and industrialized sector now demands better 
educated high school graduates who will not necessarily go to college. 
They provide incentives for them. You can go into a Microsoft program 
even if you are not a college graduate and take certain levels of exams 
and reach a point where you are making a very decent salary with 
opportunities for advancement as you educate yourself more. This is 
outside the formal education structure. Despite the present drift into 
recession, these incentives and rewards for more and better education 
are firmly in place. Our economy is going to recover. Our 
cybercivilization is going to continue. It is going to have greater and 
greater needs. It is possible to move a greater portion of the 83 
million base of students that we started with into the education 
streams which will produce the kind of people we need. We cannot do 
that unless we have greater resources.

  In the 107th Congress, the critical question is will a great leap 
forward be taken similar to the great leap forward of our forefathers 
who were wise enough to establish a public education system, again 
similar to the great leap forward taken by Thomas Jefferson when he 
created the University of Virginia or the great leap forward that was 
taken by Morrill when he established the land grant colleges. Or the 
great leap forward that was taken more recently in the GI education 
programs. Can we rise to meet the challenge so that instead of getting 
12 percent of our students, of the 83 million, to the college graduate 
level, we can double that to maybe 25 percent. The good news is that 
the legislation that will be on the floor takes some important steps 
forward. I have already mentioned that. Those steps are very important.
  The bad news is that what our legislation does is authorize. Tomorrow 
or the next day we will be voting on a bill that authorizes 
legislation. Each year the appropriation will have to match those 
authorizations if we are going to really move forward. Authorization 
has a problem without support from the appropriation. We may move from 
7 percent to 8 percent only if the appropriation is full over the next 
5 to 10 years. The worst news that we are confronted with is that we do 
not have the amounts of resources that we really need. The critical 
need for smaller class sizes has not been met. The critical need for 
more qualified teachers has not been met. The infrastructure of school 
physical facilities is totally ignored. We do not have any money that 
address the problem of the need for more funding for school 
infrastructure, for the building of buildings, repairing of buildings 
or the funding of technology, the installation of new technologies, et 
cetera. Computers and other technology which may hold the key to 
breakthroughs in the education of those most difficult to reach are not 
encouraged sufficiently in this legislation. Again, we do not 
appropriate the additional money which we felt was required for 
children with disabilities

[[Page H9771]]

which would have been a great step forward.
  Through four administrations, from Reagan through Bush to Clinton, 
and now another Bush, I have strongly recommended and will continue to 
recommend that we establish new parameters for Federal assistance to 
education.
  In order to reposition the present primitive, almost freakish 
insistence that the least amount of Federal funding for elementary and 
secondary education is highly desirable, we must learn from the 
examples of some of the other industrialized nations. Greater Federal 
support which moves from 7 percent toward 25 percent of the overall 
national educational expenditure would not constitute an 
overcentralized takeover of education. Instead, it would represent a 
logical need between the extremes of nationalized education ministries 
and the present 16,000 uncoordinated independent school districts in 50 
States in America. In other words, we are in an extreme position. We 
are at the lower end of support for our school systems, 7 percent of 
the total education bill, versus some countries which are at the other 
extreme where the education is totally run by the national government 
and they get some bad results as a result of that. But let us not 
remain at that extreme. We should move toward greater Federal 
participation.
  Immediate significant Federal funding initiatives should focus on 
large nonrecurring capital expenditures like the ones that I have just 
mentioned in terms of the physical infrastructure.

                              {time}  2245

  Priority Federal funding should continue to go to educate the poor 
and children with disabilities. Special Federal funding must be made 
available to validate, certify and promote education innovations that 
work. The best programs and practices must be assisted in establishing 
some kind of critical mass throughout the Nation, and Federal money is 
necessary to allow them to do that.
  Without bullying states and localities, Congress should continue to 
promote higher standards for student achievement and for opportunities 
to learn. Funding to systematically expand support for research, 
development and dissemination of information must be greatly increased, 
because none of the states are engaged in that kind of very important 
activity.
  My final word is that society's fullest possible support of public 
education should not be viewed as a noble gesture or a governmental 
philanthropic virtue or the mere provision of a safety net for those 
too poor to pay for their children's education. The far wiser and more 
productive public policy viewpoint must assume that public education is 
a necessity vital for the functioning of our very complex cyber-
civilization.
  This Nation, our great American Nation, literally will not be able to 
survive without an adequate and continually updated public education 
system. Brain power is our best protection for the future.

                          ____________________