[Congressional Record Volume 148, Number 62 (Wednesday, May 15, 2002)]
[House]
[Pages H2502-H2509]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
EDUCATION TAX CREDITS
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of
January 3, 2001, the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Schaffer) is
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
Mr. SCHAFFER. Mr. Speaker, this evening's discussion is on the topic
of education. It is a topic which has occupied a lot of time here on
the House floor during these Special Orders of the last few weeks. For
those who believe, as I do, that America's children warrant a profound
amount of attention and resources from the country, I would invite
those colleagues who might be monitoring tonight's proceedings to come
join us here on the floor this evening.
I specifically want to discuss school choice, trying to create a
market-driven education system in America, one where government-owned
institutions, or public schools, have the opportunity to compete on an
even playing field with other providers of academic services and
America's schoolchildren become the beneficiaries through the market
forces that ought to exist where education is concerned. We do not have
that to a large degree in America today.
We have what is effectively a government-owned, unionized monopoly
when it comes to the most important industry in America, that being
education. There are pockets around the country where you have a
competitive framework for delivery of education services. Those pockets
exist in some States. They exist in some community schools and in some
cities. They exist for the wealthy, certainly, because only the wealthy
in America on any given day can afford to forgo the taxes they pay to
the government schools and then pay tuition on top of that to send
their child to a school where services are delivered by private
professional institutions.
But what we really need to do today is try to eliminate this
discrimination that exists in American education today between the
extraordinarily wealthy and the extraordinarily poor. Because speaker
after speaker after speaker who comes to these microphones or maybe
testifies before any of our education committees, committees that deal
with education, seem to have a unanimous agreement that we need to have
a concerted effort in America involving the Federal Government and the
States to elevate the achievement of underserved children, the poor,
minority children, those who happen to live in school districts that
are just not achieving that much on behalf of children, and they need
our focus.
Too often in Washington, the conclusion from those kinds of concerns
results in an agreement that we should just spend more money, that we
should just take more cash from the American taxpayers and send it to
the Department of Education, maybe wave a little magic wand and hope
that the speech about poor children preceding the expenditure of cash
will somehow help underserved kids in America. We have been doing that
for years. Sometimes we get lucky. Sometimes we just manage to have the
right combination of devoted teachers, committed school board members,
a community that rallies around the poorest children in their
neighborhoods and a Federal program or two that provides some of the
resources. We see those examples of
[[Page H2503]]
success from time to time and we celebrate them when they are known to
occur, but those are the exception rather than the rule.
In inner city after inner city after inner city, the children who are
trapped in failing schools, without the opportunity to choose other
options, are the children who are the victims. It is unfortunate
because there are several States around the country that have really
showed us how to reach down to the neighborhoods and empower families
and empower children in a way that makes a meaningful difference in
their academic futures.
There are six States that have really gone far above and beyond the
rest of their peers among the 50 States in moving forward on a change
in the State tax code to benefit children. That solution involves
education tax credits. There are some great examples around the
country. Some of the best examples include the State of Arizona, the
State of Pennsylvania, the State of Illinois, the State of Florida, and
a handful of others. It is important to understand that education tax
credits allow for a revolutionary approach to public schooling and
private schooling, American schooling, on a nondiscriminatory basis
that results in a massive cash infusion into America's public education
system. And it does so in a way that reaches the children who need it
most, the very children that we all profess to care about more than all
the rest. This tax credit proposal is really something to be excited
about.
I am grateful tonight, Mr. Speaker, for the promise made by our
Speaker of our House to move an education tax credit bill through this
House, by the commitments from our President to support the education
tax credit legislation that we are currently in the process of
finalizing here in the House, and to make this concept of education tax
credits a high national priority. It is significant from the
President's standpoint because this really was the core of his
education proposal last year. Not so much education tax credits, to be
specific, but the concept of advancing the cause of academic choice,
school choice.
When he sent up his proposal, Leave No Child Behind, the core element
of that plan was school choice, the bill also entailed a component that
dealt with flexibility for States, and a third component that dealt
with accountability through a national testing strategy. But the core
element of school choice, the most important provision that the
President proposed and, in fact, campaigned on, was quickly abandoned
by the Congress. I regret to say that, because everybody rallied around
the President's proposal. When he took the ribbons off of it and
announced he was going to send it up here to Capitol Hill, there was
lots of fanfare and celebration, big press conferences, lots of
pictures. We even brought all the kids that sat in front of the podium
at that press conference and tried to convey the message that school
choice, flexibility for States, public accountability, were going to
help those kids sitting in front of us.
But as I mentioned, even before that bill had its first full hearing
in the education committee here in the House, that core element of the
President's proposal, the school choice provisions, were jerked right
out of the bill. The people did not want to vote on it. I want to
explain why. I want to explain the politics of it for those who are
unfamiliar with the rough and tumble nature of education politics. I
also want to explain in doing so how dollars get to children in
American schools today and why it seems that taxpayers pay and pay and
pay and are promised over and over again that money they send to
Washington for education is going to help children and yet it never
does. It rarely does. And I want to contrast that bureaucratic model,
that is, really the framework of American education today, with the new
model of freedom and academic liberty that is represented through
education tax credits, a model that has now been tried in six different
States, has been proposed in almost 40 States, and continues to be
debated this very day in the halls of State legislatures across the
country.
First, let me start with the status of education funding today. This
chart explains how a dollar gets to a child. At the top, we have the
hard-working taxpayer that is emblematic of every wage-earning, tax-
paying American today. They work hard to raise the money that is
confiscated by the Federal Government, taken out of their paychecks and
given to the U.S. Treasury and goes through this process till it gets
to the child way down here at the bottom. The Treasury Department
collects the cash, Members of Congress, politicians, me, others, all of
our colleagues, redistribute the wealth that has been collected by the
Nation's Treasury Department through the Internal Revenue Service. We
distribute that wealth through programs that we have selected, the
charities of our choice, in the Department of Education.
{time} 2230
The Department and its several office buildings just a few blocks
from here distribute those dollars to the States and tie strings to
those dollars as well under the pretense of accountability. At the
State level these dollars are considered in State legislatures and
governors' offices by more politicians, and they redistribute those
dollars at the State level, dispensing them through State Departments
of Education. The State Departments distribute those dollars to school
districts. School districts, of course, are political entities; they
are managed by elected officials, school board members, more
politicians, who distribute those dollars according to their values to
the various schools within a school district. Once we get those dollars
in a school, we have a handful of managers, principals, business
managers and program chairs who finally manage to get those dollars to
teachers, and then to a child. By the time we go through this whole
vortex of bureaucracy, the dollar that we work hard for every day to
send to Washington to help children gets whittled down as each one of
these bureaucracies, these agencies take their cut in order to run
their various programs, and by the time these dollars actually reach a
child, we only have maybe 60, 70 percent on a good day.
We want to bypass all of this. We are not going to get rid of this.
The bureaucracy has lobbyists. All of these agencies hire lobbyists
that come to Washington to preserve this system, and we will try to
change it as time goes on, and we have for years, but the politics are
tough to beat. So we are content to say that you have won. This
bureaucracy has won. This empire continues to grow. It does not matter
whether Republicans are in charge or Democrats are in charge, this
system gets bigger and bigger every year. So we can confront reality.
That is going to continue until there is a wave of change around the
country that calls for mass reform of this system. It just is not going
to happen, and there is not enough of us here. So we are going to leave
this in place in exchange for a tax credit proposal that the gentleman
from Michigan will describe, which is much more simple, and a proposal
to which the gentleman from Michigan has been supremely devoted, and I
yield the floor to him.
Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding. I
would like to point out the contrast between the chart that he
outlined, which is the money that flows through the Federal Government,
where it comes to Washington, goes through this funnel, the dollar gets
whittled down to 60 to 70 cents on the dollar, and then that 60 to 70
cents that is left that actually makes it to a child's classroom, not
only is that dollar whittled down to 60 to 70 cents, but it also comes
with strings attached, meaning that it comes for a reading program, it
comes for a math program, it comes for a science program, it comes with
a very specific set of requirements attached to it, and then the school
has to report back to the Federal Government that they actually spent
the money exactly the way that the Federal Government mandated that
they use that dollar to help our kids.
The gentleman from Colorado is absolutely correct. That system is
going to stay in place. We may reach the same point that we reached
finally a few years ago in welfare reform where we found out that it
was a failed system and that what we needed to do was to give States
flexibility in how they dealt with the individuals who are on welfare
to give them hope and to actually structure programs that would move
them off of welfare, and that may
[[Page H2504]]
happen with that system. But what we want to do is we want to put in a
system, that number one, takes the dollar from the taxpayer and moves
the dollar directly into a classroom, so we do not see that whittling
down, and what we also want to do is we want that dollar to get into
the classroom, we want that dollar to get into the school and give
local officials a great degree of discretion as to exactly how they
will spend that money, whether they will use it for a math program,
whether they need to use it for English as a second language program,
whether they want to use it for a science program, whether they want to
use it for class size reduction, or whether they want to use it for
technology, but the local school district will have a tremendous amount
of flexibility in terms of how they will spend that money.
Here is how it works. We have the one system that says, on April 15
your taxes are due, send in a check to Washington and eventually some
of that money will get back to your local school districts. This is
much simpler. Here is our taxpayer, a local parent, someone in the
community who is passionate about education in their community, they
are passionate about the kids in their community, a local business that
is passionate about the kids in their community. They are approached by
the local school and they say, hey, we have this need in our school
district. We want to keep this school open. We want to develop this
technology program. We have done an analysis of our kids and we are
really weak in this area. We have a program that we want to design for
this. Will you help us?
Joe Taxpayer, ABC Business, decides, man, I love this community. This
community is built on values; this community is built on each of our
kids getting a solid education. They have laid out, the school has laid
out a great case for what they want to do for the kids in our
community. I am going to write them a check for $1,000 and they get a
$500 tax credit.
So instead of whittling that dollar down from a dollar to 60 to 70
cents, what an education tax credit does is it takes the taxpayers'
dollar and it grows it. This person says, I am going to invest $2 in
education, but I am only going to get a reduction in my taxes of a
dollar. That money then goes directly to that school and that school
can spend that money on a program as they have identified it to the
taxpayer.
If they do a great job, guess what? They can go back to Joe Taxpayer,
they can go back to ABC Corporation the next year and say, wow, look at
the kind of results and the kind of performance that we are getting.
The accountability is directly back to the people in the community.
They say, we really want to build on that program, or we have
identified another need, and here we get the greatest accountability.
Joe Taxpayer of ABC Corporation, they can make the decision as to
whether they are going to invest in that school district again.
We have structured this program in such a way that individuals and
businesses can contribute to their local public school, a traditional
public school, to a local public charter school; they could also
contribute to an education scholarship fund, and this scholarship fund
would enable parents to apply for scholarships for sending their kids
to a nontraditional school, perhaps a private or parochial school.
But what the gentleman from Colorado and I and many others in our
conference are trying to do is we are trying to get a significant new
investment in education that grows the investment, that grows every
dollar of investment into $2 of education investment, make sure that it
is under local control, and is available for all of our kids, is
available for those kids that go to public schools, private, and
parochial, so that these new dollars going into education are driven at
the local level, the decisions are made at the local level as to how
they will help our kids out, and it is going to be for all of our kids.
There are a lot of advantages to this system, and it has been, as my
colleague may want to explain, this has been implemented in a number of
States. What we have seen is that there is a significant inflow of new
money into education, so that it is not a reallocation of the money
that is already being paid into a State government. This is new money
coming into education, and it is benefiting all of our kids and putting
some local control back into our schools as they have seen local
control being eroded by States taking more responsibility and now the
Federal Government reaching back into a local school district, reaching
back into the States, telling States and local schools exactly how they
are supposed to run their local school districts.
Mr. Speaker, I yield back to the gentleman from Colorado.
Mr. SCHAFFER. Mr. Speaker, in the State of Arizona, between 1998 and
the year 2000, in the first 3 years since Arizona passed their tax
credit language for education, that State raised over $30 million for
schoolchildren in Arizona. These are new dollars. These were not
dollars taken away from the existing public schools; these were new
dollars that were infused into the education system, the overall
system, the nondiscriminatory system of Arizona. Because today, when we
talk about academic freedom and choice, these qualities of liberty are
dispensed on a discriminatory basis. The wealthy get freedom, the
children of the wealthy do. Those who happen to live in one of these
unique States or neighborhoods where school choice is allowed to occur,
they get freedom. But the vast majority of children, especially those
who need it the most, are denied the freedom to go to the kinds of
schools that they want. Not only that, but the administrators of the
public schools have their hands tied behind their back because their
ability to access these new funds are limited, and the tax credit
proposal puts more money into the education system for private and
public schools. It does not discriminate against children. That is the
beauty of it and the difference between the bureaucratic model that we
have today that I described, and the tax credit liberty model of
education that my colleague described.
Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will yield, the other
thing that is different between what we are proposing here in
Washington versus what is happening in Arizona is Arizona is a 100
percent tax credit, so it is $30 million of new money flowing into
education, and it is a reduction in these individual's taxes of $30
million.
What we are proposing here in Washington is if we get $30 million of
new money invested in education that is actually, or if we get $30
million in tax credit, it is actually $60 million of new money that is
flowed into education and flowed into our schools at the local level.
It is a significant difference in that it shows the power, the
multiplier effect of this that says, I am going to put 2 bucks in, but
it is only going to reduce the tax bite by $1.
Mr. SCHAFFER. Mr. Speaker, we have done the research, we have done
the analysis. Sure, it would be great to have a bigger tax credit and
maybe some day we will, but initially we have to start out small. There
is a cost to government, there is no doubt about that.
Again, referring to the chart on how money is spent today, this city,
Washington, D.C., frankly lacks imagination when it comes to finding
new ways to fund schools. The answer for years has always been the
same, and that is to just spend more on this system whenever we find a
problem. When test scores take a dip, we do not really go fix the
problem in Washington; maybe some day we will. I think our new
President is committed to changing the management style of schools. But
over the last 10 years, we have gone to this model $125 billion worth
of times, and that is how much we spent over 10 years. We just keep
spending more.
Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will yield, we talk about
the accountability. In fact, through the tax credit models, as we
outlined, if the school district goes back to Joe Taxpayer or goes back
to ABC Corporation a second year and asks for a tax credit, or asks for
a donation, and they have mismanaged the funds, Joe Taxpayer at ABC
Corporation says, are you kidding me? No. I gave last year, and you
mismanaged it. Until you can demonstrate to me that you are going to
use my money wisely, I am not going to give you any more. That is a
great accountability measure.
On my colleague's chart here, the third line down we see the
Department of Education. Now, I applaud what
[[Page H2505]]
President Bush is doing in the Department of Education. But as the
gentleman and I know that from 1996 on, as he and I are on the
Committee on Education and the Workforce, year after year after year we
would call in the officials from the Department of Education and ask
them where the money went, and that third layer where that $120 billion
or $40 billion a year flows through could not even get a clean audit,
and the price for not getting a clean audit was what? How much did we
cut their spending? We did not cut their spending.
Mr. SCHAFFER. We did not cut it at all.
Mr. HOEKSTRA. The least we could have done is we probably froze it.
Mr. SCHAFFER. We increased their spending.
Mr. HOEKSTRA. We increased their spending each and every year, even
though they could not get a clean audit, and that is the bureaucratic
model that says, well, being able to go back to the American people and
getting a clean audit, that is not an essential requirement and, as a
matter of fact, even if we do not get a clean audit, they are going to
give us more money. There is a whole list of scandals and fraud within
the Department of Education, so it is not only that they could not get
a clean audit, the systems that they had in place were actually an open
invitation to theft and corruption between the Department of Education.
Now, that is rapidly changing under this President and Under Secretary
Paige. But it was accepted in the Clinton administration for 4 years,
and it was a major disappointment, and the biggest disappointment was
when they did not perform. Rather than having their spending frozen or
their spending cut, the bureaucratic, the Washington model said, that
is okay, we are going to give you more money.
{time} 2245
That would never happen with the tax credit.
Mr. SCHAFFER. They might have thought to fix it too, but what they
chose to do is ignore the problems, and that really gets back to the
beauty of tax credits. So from our perspective, the politicians here,
the Members of Congress who deal with these dollars that come to the
Treasury, every dollar spent on education really does come out of our
budget. Every dollar spent results in a dollar reduced from the
Nation's budget and, therefore, the ability to spend those dollars
somewhere else. But by the time those dollars get down to the child,
there is just a fraction of those dollars left. So the dollars spent
does not have as much buying power as a taxpayer would hope and
certainly as taxpayers deserve, certainly as much as children deserve.
The education tax credit, it costs us money as well. We do have the
budget for those dollars. The difference is we do not get a negative
like you get here. In fact, you double it through the proposal that we
are proposing because for every dollar that we have to budget for an
education tax credit, because it is a 50 percent tax credit, what that
means is that the taxpayer is donating $2 to the education charity of
his or her choice. And, again, we have run the surveys. We have done
the models, and we know Americans are eager to invest in schools when
they know the money is really going to get there, and that is the
beauty of tax credits because that is the promise that taxpayers get.
Mr. HOEKSTRA. If my colleague will hold the chart up for a minute,
the contrast between the two charts is absolutely phenomenal. My
colleague's chart is exactly the way the system here in Washington
works. The total emphasis here is on the stuff in red: the Treasury
Department, the Department of Education, the State, the politicians,
the State Department of Education, the school district and politicians.
That is where the whole focus is on the bureaucratic model. What is the
process that the dollar is going to make it from Washington down
through Lancing to Holland to Lincoln School? What is the process? What
are the rules and the regulations that are going to follow it? What are
the mandates that are going to follow it? And the child is kind of the
footnote, the asterisk at the bottom, saying, oh, yeah, this is about
kids; but most importantly this is first and foremost about process.
And what happens with the tax credit, it becomes very, very clear,
the focus is on two people. The focus is on the person who has the
ability and the desire to contribute to the schools and the focus is on
the child. The middle people are cut out. And as soon as the school can
demonstrate to the taxpayer that the child is going to benefit, the
dollars will flow in because that is exactly what we have seen at the
State, that States that have this, the school districts convince Joe
Taxpayer that if you give money to this school for that purpose, that
child is going to benefit, and this person sees the value, they write
the check and that is exactly what we want to have. We want to build
that connection between Joe Taxpayer, the local parents and people who
are passionate about education in their community and they want to give
more money, but they do not want to send it through that process. They
want it sent directly to their school, directly for the purpose that
that has outlined; and if that school blows it, they will not get a
check the second year, but they will have the opportunity to come back
in future years and say we have addressed those concerns and these
issues. We will fix and improve the system.
Mr. SCHAFFER. I was at the mall this weekend with my family and
someone stopped me and said they had seen us a couple of weeks ago
having the same discussion on education tax credits. She remembered
this chart because I was talking about the politics, the nature of the
tough politics that exists within these levels of bureaucracy and how
it is played out here in Congress. She said, Oh, Congressman, is it
really that bad? And it really is. There is no exaggeration.
Mr. HOEKSTRA. If my colleague will yield, it is not only that bad. It
is probably worse than what people actually think.
Mr. SCHAFFER. Right. If we think of this from the administrator's
perspective, the guy that runs this school, the principal, this
principal, in order to get money for the child because the principals
care about the kids. There is no doubt about that in my mind. But the
principal who is trying to get money to help the child has to beg to
these politicians at the school board to get the cash. In order for the
school members to get the cash, they have to beg to the State
Department of Education here to get the money. They have to apply for
grants. They have to go down to the State capitals. And they have to
learn the language of education finance.
Mr. HOEKSTRA. If my colleague will yield, at the bottom level here,
if you do not believe the system as my colleague and I are describing
it, all you need to do is go to your local school and go to the
administration building and ask them if they have got a couple of
people. Do you have a grants writer? I mean, the gentleman and I, when
we went to I think 20, 21 States and we had the hearings around the
country on what is wrong with this process, they all said we have to
get grant writers. What is a grant writer? A grant writer works at the
local school district level. They take a look at this whole
arrangement, an assortment of Federal education programs, and they go
through there and they figure out which one their school may qualify
for, and they start filling out the grant applications.
Mr. SCHAFFER. The grant writer cares about the children too. All of
these people who work in the school, they really do care about the
kids. But unfortunately, the system we have created for them over the
years, the system is a bunch of nonsense, and we have created it for
them, because in order for them to get the money to help the child,
they have to first learn almost a foreign language in school finance,
and they have to become proficient beggars to all of these different
levels of bureaucracy. And if they do not figure that out, if they do
not hire the expert who speaks in the bureaucratic language and
understands which forms to fill out, the timing of these forms, what to
say in the forms, even if it is not true, what to put on the forms in
order to get somebody's attention up here, if they do not learn all of
these things, then the child suffers. So their motivation is very pure.
Mr. HOEKSTRA. The real question is where does accountability flow in
that model? In that model the accountability flows from the school, to
the politicians, to the school district, to
[[Page H2506]]
the State Department of Education. It flows away from the local
community. And it flows away from the people who care most about the
kids. It starts flowing to the Department of Education. We have always
said, I am from Michigan, I wonder if we start with Secretary Paige and
you start going down through the hierarchy when we will find the first
person from Michigan and then when we will find the first person from
the Second Congressional District who really knows my communities, who
knows the difference between the needs in Muskegon and Muskegon Heights
and Holland and Baldwin and Ludington and Cadillac, and says they are
all a little bit different. But where is that person versus a tax
credit? The accountability flows immediately from the child through the
school to the taxpayer. So the accountability flows into the community,
not away from the communities. It flows to the people who care most
about the kids and they care most because they know the kids' names.
Mr. SCHAFFER. Just as the gentleman says in the chart, the taxpayer
usually knows the children. They know the children in the school. They
know the teachers, the administrators; they know the programs that seem
to work and which ones fail. I wish I could map this out like a map of
the country so we could see where their dollar goes. Let us use my
State, for example. This dollar might go from Fort Collins, Colorado,
my hometown, to Washington, D.C. From Washington, D.C. we will send it
just a few blocks down here to the Department of Education buildings.
They are massive. They are just a few blocks away. Those dollars would
be shipped to Denver, Colorado. From Denver, Colorado, to another
building in Denver, Colorado. From Denver, Colorado to Fort Collins,
Colorado, to the office building on La Porte Avenue, and from there to
my kid's school and ultimately to my child.
If these dollars got frequent flyer miles, it would be a great thing.
But what the tax credit proposal allows to occur is it allows this
taxpayer to give directly to the child, and it turns the leaders of the
school from beggars of the government and bureaucracy into beggars of
the community, people who can relate to taxpayers and speak the
language that parents understand, that taxpayers understand, that
communities understand, and ultimately the language the Nation needs to
maintain its sovereignty as a free Republic.
Mr. HOEKSTRA. I think the language, they do not become beggars. This
is a beggar system because it is a bureaucratic system. You have to
fill the forms out right. You have to check the exact number of boxes.
You have to dot the I's and cross the T's. If you do all that, that
really is a beggar system.
Mr. SCHAFFER. This really changes the dynamic entirely to a
partnership.
Mr. HOEKSTRA. This becomes a visionary system. That system does not
understand vision. It says, no, I can only write them a check if they
have filled out this form correctly. And if they after they have spent
the money, if they have sent the forms back in correctly telling me
that they spent it exactly the way I have told them to, then they have
done a good job. They do not ask whether children's performance has
actually improved. This is a visionary system where the school board or
a superintendent or a local principal or teacher can lay out a vision
for their schools and for their kids, and if the community buys into
that vision, they will embrace it and they will donate into this system
because we have seen it happen at the State level. So they have become
visionaries and cheerleaders for their kids and their local school
district, and they know if they are successful it will continue.
Mr. SCHAFFER. Here is what it means for students and for States. In
Philadelphia, the Philadelphia Inquirer just a few days ago published a
story, the headline is ``Nonprofit Foundations Ease Schools' Budget
Pains,'' and it talks about the Cherry Hill Education Foundation.
According to the Inquirer, this is an article by Kristen Graham, she
says, ``Across the nation a growing number of districts are relying on
grassroots, independent, nonprofit foundations to fund programs and
foster business relationships.'' Here is a quote from somebody named
Howie Schaffer, who is the spokesman of the Public Education Network
which is a national association of education funds. He says, ``The
growth is exponential around the country. There are quite a few in
Pennsylvania and New Jersey.'' The article goes on: ``An estimated
3,000 to 4,500 school foundations operate in the United States.''
These foundation are the ones that benefit from a tax credit that we
are proposing. Pennsylvania has really led the way. I am delighted the
gentlewoman from Pennsylvania (Ms. Hart) is here to tell us about her
experiences in Pennsylvania and tell us a little bit about some of
these kids, perhaps, that are benefiting from tax credits in her
hometown.
Ms. HART. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman.
Mr. Speaker, I am pleased that the gentleman is doing this, bringing
people's attention to the realities of how much we can do to help
children learn more just by opening up some opportunities, different
ideas, opportunities like Pennsylvania is now providing. I was a State
senator there for 10 years. We did work long and hard to get somebody
to get something to happen, and shortly after I came to Congress
actually they passed a wonderful tax credit plan that allows for these
foundations to collect money from corporations, money, every dollar of
which will go to educational scholarships, every dollar. There is not
money wasted in this plan.
So many different organizations have started foundations. They are
not all for religious education. They are not all for nonreligious. It
is just very different. It gives everybody an opportunity to have all
kinds of different options for their children, and it is something we
have worked on long and hard in Pennsylvania. We have tried the voucher
system. The Senate passed the plan. The House did not. That happens
over and over again. But the general theme of it has always been to
bring a more dynamic atmosphere to education, to make sure that our
students all have the opportunity to get the best education they can.
In Pennsylvania now, as was mentioned, there are, I do not know how
many foundations, but there are a lot of folks taking advantage of this
tax credit.
Mr. SCHAFFER. Just to name a few that were mentioned in this
Philadelphia Inquirer article just a few days ago, in fiscal year 2000
the Chester Education Foundation listed revenue of $1.2 million. The
Philadelphia Education Fund had $7.8 million in revenue in fiscal year
2000, collecting more than $50 million since its founding in 1984.
There are more. There is the Pew Charitable Trusts, the William Penn
Foundation, the Carnegie Corporation. In Bucks County you have the
Centennial Foundation, which has raised about $50,000 since 1997. These
are funds that raised money even before the tax credit. When the tax
credit in Pennsylvania took place making it easier for Pennsylvanians
to contribute to education projects managed by these nonprofits, the
revenue shot through the roof. These are dollars that were not taken
from the Pennsylvania school budgets. These were new dollars that were
added into the education system in a nondiscriminatory fashion.
Mr. HOEKSTRA. If the gentleman will yield, the beauty of this and the
amazing part of this is in the States that have established this, these
are voluntary contributions to your local public schools, to these
education scholarship funds. And it is amazing to watch Americans
willing to invest that kind of money in education. As long as they are
willing to, as long as the opportunity is there for your local public
schools and for all of our kids, different school districts and
different schools have different constituencies, but to watch a
potentially new massive infusion of dollars into the educational system
that builds the linkage between that local school and their community
again that they have just seen erode over the last few years.
{time} 2300
So what is happening in Pennsylvania, what is happening in Minnesota,
what is happening in Arizona, Illinois, Florida, this is one of those
areas where Washington really ought to take heed. We are going to keep
continuing to feed that beast, the bureaucratic beast, but let us
complement it with this tax credit proposal that is working so well and
has passed in a number of places on a bipartisan basis.
Mr. SCHAFFER. And how many times do we hear when we as political
[[Page H2507]]
figures are out campaigning or just in our communities from parents who
say I care about the schools, I care about the kids? Even people who
have no children in the schools, they are willing to invest and
contribute and be part of an education community, but they are sick and
tired of the wasted dollars in the programs that do not work. They are
sick and tired of seeing the government shovel mountains of cash into
schools that do not work and will not improve and the legacy of which
is children who have a profound disadvantage in entering the workforce
and becoming part of our economy.
These parents tell us all the time if we would just build them a
system that works, they will be a part of it. The gentlewoman from
Pennsylvania (Ms. Hart), this is her first term, and she ran a pretty
vigorous campaign and were in touch with thousands of people in her
District. What do they say?
Ms. HART. Mr. Speaker, in general, people are not happy with one
system, and I think the reality of the tax credit, the voucher,
whatever we are talking about, changing the system as it is, we improve
each sector of it, and I think that is one of the arguments that has
always been made for either a tax credit or school choice.
What people tell me, and unfortunately too many people have told me,
is that they cannot afford to send their kid to the school they want
to. The individual tax credit that we consider here on the Federal
level for parents who send their children to schools that require
tuition is a wonderful thing, and it only makes sense for us to do
that. Ultimately, a parent that chooses to send his or her child to a
public school will end up getting a better education there as well.
I think this is one of the things for many, many years that has been
sort of talked about by a lot of people involved in public education. I
am not really sure why a lot of them oppose this, because it does give
them a number of different things. One, it gives them more opportunity
to ease overcrowding which has become a huge burden and, of course,
comes to us here in the Congress in the form of requests for dollars
for new school construction. We could avoid a lot of that if we would
spend much fewer dollars on a tax credit. We would find that we would
not need those new school buildings. We probably would not need a lot
of things that we are convinced that we need because we are so wedded
to a certain system.
Mr. SCHAFFER. Mr. Speaker, if I can interject, if the District really
did need a new building and that was the education enrichment project
that a school District chose to undertake, the way we have got the tax
credit proposal written right now, that is a real priority in a
community and the community buys into it, the tax credit can be used as
a revenue stream to construct that facility or to buy the new computers
or to establish the new curriculum for underserved children.
Ms. HART. If the gentleman would yield, in a community that is truly
growing and that is a necessity, I think that is wonderful. However,
there are a lot of communities that have convinced themselves that they
do need new buildings when they actually do not.
One of the examples we always look at is the city of Philadelphia
where they have had a spike in young children, which is going to drop
again, and the question is do we need to build a whole bunch of new
elementary schools or should we allow more options in education, and if
we would allow more options in education and now we do, we will find
that they do not have that pressure, and they can spend the money
directly on the classroom, having the best quality teachers in that
classroom and then ultimately having those children be served better.
The thing is, like the gentleman asked me, what parents say in my
District, I am out in the District all the time as are my colleagues,
and I think we probably hear a lot of the same things. All parents
really want is to make sure that their child is going to be able to
succeed down the road. That means he or she needs tools. How do they
get those tools? The parents teach them as well as they can at home
right from wrong and all the other kinds of things, but they need
quality education.
How do they get that? We are part of the cog in the wheel providing
it, but we need to provide more freedoms for them, especially on the
State, to do what they want, and that has been I think our mantra for a
long time in Pennsylvania. It took a long time to get to that point. I
know Arizona has been doing a lot of creative things for a long time.
What we will see in Pennsylvania, I think we will see results in other
places, not just tax credits where it helps families to afford it, but
the tax credits for businesses like we have in Pennsylvania where it
helps more families to make a decision they were not even considering
before because they just did not have the wherewithal to do it.
Then ultimately that competition in the system, where there are
options, there is always a more dynamic system. That helps if we expect
our kids to do better in a dynamic future and a dynamic economy in the
United States and in the world. We certainly better get them adjusted
to it all their lives, that way I think they will be comfortable with
it. They will be more likely to succeed, and these kinds of programs
certainly present to them more of a real world opportunity for them
early, to get used to it, to like the competition, to strive harder,
which is exactly what we want them to do.
Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?
Mr. SCHAFFER. I yield to the gentleman from Michigan.
Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, I think what the gentlewoman from
Pennsylvania is pointing out, in Pennsylvania they have the tax credit
and they have seen this kind of explosion of new funds moving into
education. Even in the State of Michigan, where we do not have a tax
credit, what we have seen is that some people will say that the tax
credit, that money is only going to stay in the wealthier suburbs and
those types of things but in education.
I think, again, one of the great things about America, we recognize
the importance of education, that a child get a good education. The
other thing that I think is happening in a State like Michigan where
there is a potential of leaving too many kids behind, the community and
really the State is stepping up and businesses are stepping up and
saying it is not just okay for kids from this side of the State, to
make sure that no child is left behind in this side of the State. We
need to make sure that every child in Michigan has the opportunity for
a good education.
So even without a tax credit, proposal or model in place in Michigan,
there are dollars flowing into education in Michigan because people
want to step up, and those dollars are going into Detroit. They are
going into all different parts of the State, and what we want to do is
we want to accelerate that, and we want to grow that number through a
Federal tax credit, and I wish we could do it through a State tax
credit so that we could get the same dynamics kind of going on as in
Pennsylvania.
We know that when a State does it, we get an infusion of new dollars,
and what we want to do is we want to accelerate that process and
accelerate the number of dollars and new dollars, and I think that is
also the difference between what we are talking about with a tax credit
versus a voucher. Too often vouchers are viewed as being, rather than
what they do is they say okay, here is the education pie, now if the
State does vouchers, it means some people are going to win because they
are now going to get a croucher and they did not get one before, and
there are going to be certain people that lose because that education
pie is going to be split more ways than what it was before.
What a tax credit does it takes this education pie and grows it so
that there will be more dollars invested in it, and basically our
public schools will win, our kids that go to public schools will win.
Our private and parochial schoolers, home schoolers, just they will all
now have an opportunity, and we have a much better probability that we
will not leave a child behind than what we have under the current
system.
Mr. SCHAFFER. Mr. Speaker, every system has these education
scholarship foundations that exist but the requests for scholarships,
the applications, are far exceeded by dollars available, and usually
these foundations are started
[[Page H2508]]
by some philanthropist who wants to help them and make a difference in
one neighborhood or another, but we just need more of them because the
record is very clear. These foundations, these scholarship funds work.
I brought with me today some testimony from a little boy in Colorado
who testified in the Colorado legislature, before the Colorado
legislature as it considered an education tax credit in my State, and
here I will just read a couple paragraphs. His name was Joe Ray Sierra,
and this testimony was delivered just last February.
He says, ``I am really glad that I do not have to go to my old school
anymore. There are always people selling drugs there. I was afraid to
go to school because I did not want to get beat up anymore at my old
school. They gave me answers to the CSAP test,'' which is the State
standardized test in my State. ``They gave the kids the answers,'' and
I will go on.
``They were not very helpful to me with math, reading and writing. I
did not like my old school at all. I like my new school because they
help me better. They teach me in a way that is right for me. The
teacher is nice to me and so are the other school kids. I also like
that I do not have to switch classes. I like Dove Christian Academy so
much that I want to come back again. The new school I go to does help
me a lot more. Dove Christian Academy does different things to help me
learn. I read a lot better now and I think my math and writing are
better, too. I am really thankful to ACE,'' and ACE is the name of the
scholarship foundation, one of them, in Colorado.
``I am really thankful to ACE for the money they have given me. I am
so glad I was able to come to the school and learn.''
{time} 2310
``Now I have that chance to get a good education and maybe even go to
college. I never would have ever thought that before, if it weren't for
ACE.'' And Joe's teacher also testified that ``Joe Ray was designated
learning disabled in the local public school. At the end of his fifth
grade year he was reading between a second and third grade level. He
hated writing anything. His distraction level was extremely high. And
to complicate things more, he had some fine motor problems.''
So he was basically doomed in the school that the government told him
to attend. Some schools are great for kids. Most public schools are
great for kids and kids who are just like Joe Ray. But in this case the
school was not what he needed. He got the scholarship, and he is at the
school that makes more sense for him now, an academy that better meets
this child's needs, and the kid is back up to grade level and now he is
even talking about going before the State legislature and talking about
going to college.
It is kids like this that stand to gain from this tax credit debate.
We are going to have some opposition from people who think choice is a
bad idea or that liberty tends to threaten the power of the
bureaucracy. And that is true to a degree. And if we only care about
the bureaucracy, then we are going to keep voting to give it exclusive
monopoly status in running schools. But if we decide that kids like Joe
Ray Sierra matter more than the government, matter more than the
bureaucracy, matter more than programs and the internal language of
education generally, then we will make the country better for lots of
kids just like him.
Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will yield, I think this
really points out a couple of things. Number one, whatever we do in
education, the focus has to be on the kids. It has to be focused on Joe
Ray. It cannot be focused on the bureaucracy or the system. So we have
to keep the focus on the kids.
The second thing is we have to keep the focus on every child. We
cannot afford to leave a single child behind.
The third thing is we really have to drive for parental involvement,
or adult involvement with every kid to enable them to learn. Somebody
has to ask them at the end of the day how their day was at school, what
they have to get done, and what they have to get ready for for
tomorrow.
And the other thing we need to do is what Joe Ray pointed out here,
is that every child has the right to go to a school where the only
thing that they have to worry about and be afraid of is the test, the
next test, the next exam, not about the drugs or the violence that is
going on. Every child deserves and has a right to go to a safe and
drug-free school, where the only thing they fear is the exam they are
going to get in the afternoon and not walking from class to class or
from their locker to their next classroom.
Mr. SCHAFFER. We hear all the time from the defenders of the
bureaucracy that if we move forward with these simple choice
mechanisms, and we found a way to move forward with a choice mechanism
that does not even affect a single penny of the money appropriated to
the bureaucratic model, they still tell us this is going to somehow
harm education.
The gentlewoman from Pennsylvania has seen that choice makes a
difference in the lives of Pennsylvania children.
Ms. HART. The whole situation of labeling a child has become, I
think, a big problem in a lot of our government schools. If a child is
told at a young age there is something wrong with him or her, then that
child is going to believe it. I think the ultimate solution is, as the
gentleman suggests and as Joe Ray pointed out, every child who is given
an opportunity to excel and encouraged to excel will. They will to the
degree that they are able, instead of to the degree someone told them
they can.
One of the opportunities tax credits would also gives us is the
opportunity for children who would not be able to afford some of the
institutions that might believe specialize and be able to help them
through a difficulty, whether it is a speech difficulty or some other
kind of behavioral problem, that they will have access. I think it is
important for their parents to be the ones who can make the choice of
which type of educational institution is going to be best for the
child.
Unfortunately, right now, cost prohibits them from doing that in a
lot of cases and they only have one option. And sometimes that works
for the student, but a lot of times it does not. We find some wonderful
institutions closing their doors because the parents who would love to
send their children there just cannot find the resources to do it. So
this is another way to help those unique and diverse institutions that
can help a lot of kids to continue to provide those services.
Mr. SCHAFFER. I want to point out again, Mr. Speaker, that the
existing bureaucratic structure of education funding in America that is
represented by this chart will not be affected by an education tax
credit proposal. Now, that is a disappointment to some. I think this
needs to be reformed. No doubt about that.
And I want to point out again for those who believe we are giving up,
we are not giving up. We are going to continue to work on this at other
committees and at other points in time. But the politics of this system
is pretty brutal. All of these agencies that relate to one another
fight very hard to make sure we here in Congress do not tamper with
their line of work and their business. So fairness in the American
education system of today is measured by the relationship between all
of these agencies, the relationship between different programs within
the Department, the relationship between all 50 States and districts.
Mr. HOEKSTRA. If the gentleman will yield for just a second. We had a
great example today. The House was in recess for, what, 7 hours today,
as we debated welfare reform, or certain people debated welfare reform.
And the focus on the debate was not about what is good for the
individual recipient at the end of the welfare stream, to give them a
helping hand up, the whole debate was between the politicians as to who
was going to control the spending and who was going to put the
accountability measures in.
We spent a whole day waiting as politicians fought not about what was
best, but who was going to be in control, whether it was going to be
politicians in Washington or bureaucrats and politicians at the State
level. The debate was in the red parts here, without any consideration
to the people at the bottom and without any consideration to the people
at the top, the taxpayers.
Mr. SCHAFFER. And it is not just about the bills being proposed in
Congress. These groups, they have organizations, sometimes they
unionize, they
[[Page H2509]]
raise money, and they spend money on campaigns. Talk about campaign
finance reform. These organizations that represent employees of this
bureaucratic structure of education are the most powerful political
forces in American politics today, especially when you get down to the
school level.
These schools are organized, and the employees of them constitute the
largest union in America and spend more money on the political process
than anyone else. So that is why we get the system we have. It is not
by accident. This system was deliberately designed, if you can believe
that, and it was because these people have such powerful political
influence.
I would ask my colleague from Pennsylvania to tell us about the
politics of education. Do people in this vortex of education
bureaucracy get involved in your campaign?
Ms. HART. Unfortunately, yes. And I think a lot of us have sort of
two different opinions of people involved in the education system. We
all know that there are some fantastic educators out there. Some of
them we would count probably as our best friends, spouses, family. But
there is also this behemoth structure of sort of protecting the
bureaucracy folks, and that is a big problem.
Obviously, they have gotten involved in a lot of races, and I am sure
they have been involved in the gentleman's as well as they have been
involved in mine. The concern I hear from parents has nothing to do
with preservation of the education bureaucracy. I never hear them
saying, oh, please, can you make sure we still have this very strong
bureaucracy in my school district so that we spend more money on the
administration than in the classroom. No one ever asks me that. They
always say how can we get more dollars to go to directly help the kids.
Well, let us get that bureaucracy to work with us on that goal, and
then we will all be on the same page.
Mr. SCHAFFER. And while everybody on this chart has lobbyists, the
two people that do not have lobbyists are the taxpayer and the child.
That is our job.
Mr. HOEKSTRA. When we went to the 20 States with the Education at a
Crossroads, every time we brought in a parent or a local school
principal or a teacher, they always focused on the child. And the
parents would come in and say, please, do this because we have to help
Johnny, we have to help Mary. They would come in with the names, or
they would come in with their kids and say this is what it is all
about.
When we have the hearings with the bureaucracy, it is all about
forms, rules, regulations, mandates, and there is not a name or a face
or a child attached to it. And that was the power of going around the
country and spending the time. Because when you bring the parents in,
our colleague from Pennsylvania is exactly right, parents and teachers
and local principals talk about that bureaucratic structure not very
fondly. But they get passionate when they start talking about the kids
in the classroom, because these principals and these teachers, that is
why they went into education. They have got a passion for these kids.
What they do not have a passion for is the paperwork, the rules, the
mandates and the bureaucracy.
{time} 2320
Mr. SCHAFFER. Mr. Speaker, fairness in education should not be
measured by the relationship between all government agencies. It should
be measured by the relationship of children.
What we have today is a system where some children win, and some
children lose. For one reason or another, the children from the poorest
households, who come from inner city areas, who come from communities
that do not have a lot in terms of public resources, those are the
children that suffer the most. What we have seen through education tax
credits that have existed in States through scholarship foundations is
that the vast majority of these dollars are distributed on the basis of
need, and I know that is true in Pennsylvania as well.
Ms. HART. Mr. Speaker, I actually represent a school district that
has been termed academically bankrupt. Any student who goes to that
school district is sentenced to not learning anything, and it is not
right. A lot of money is spent, and we are getting no results. We do
need to change the sytem.
Mr. SCHAFFER. Mr. Speaker, I am grateful to the commitments from our
President, who has given his promise to help us get this bill passed,
the promise of the Speaker and our leadership here in the House to get
this bill to the floor. It is because of their commitment to children
and an education tax credit that we are having this debate now. I thank
the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Hoekstra) and the gentlewoman from
Pennsylvania (Ms. Hart) for participating in this Special Order. We
will do it again next week to speak about solutions for our children.
____________________