[Congressional Record Volume 148, Number 127 (Wednesday, October 2, 2002)]
[House]
[Pages H6975-H6981]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
TRIBUTE TO THE HON. PATSY MINK
The SPEAKER pro tempore. 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, I would like to begin by congratulating my
colleagues who provided the review of the irresponsibility of the
Republican majority toward the economy and my previous speaker, the
gentlewoman from Ohio, in terms of her spirit of indignation expressed
about cavalier attitudes towards war.
I think the subject that I want to talk about tonight, the lady that
I want to talk about, the Congresswoman I want to talk about tonight,
would very much approve of what our previous colleagues have done here
already tonight. I want to talk about Congresswoman Patsy Mink, who
recently passed away in Hawaii.
Patsy Mink is known for many things, but I know her as a Patsy Mink
who was filled with righteous indignation and anger against injustice,
and my colleagues have presented tonight very intelligent
presentations, well-documented presentations, but that will get all the
time. I think I heard in their voices also some outrage. They were
upset. They were angry about the irresponsibility of the Republican
majority, and that we have all too little of here in this Congress, all
too little righteous indignation and anger.
We are going to miss Patsy Mink because she was a lady with great
righteous indignation against injustice. She was angry at the kind of
callous approach to human welfare that was exhibited too many times on
the floor of this Congress.
Yesterday we had a resolution on Patsy Mink, and many people spoke. I
was not able to speak, but I did submit for the Record a tribute to
Congresswoman Patsy Mink, and I would like to start with that tribute
and make comments on it. The tribute, of course, is in its entirety in
the Record, Tuesday, October 1.
In Tuesday's Record this appears in its entirety, but I would like to
repeat it and comment as I go, because I heard my colleagues yesterday
talk about Patsy in many ways. Most of the references were personal. I
would like to focus primarily tonight on Patsy Mink as a policy
manager, Patsy Mink as a champion of the poor, Patsy Mink as a champion
of women, Patsy Mink who could be very intense, although she always was
polite and warm, and lots of people talked about that yesterday.
Patsy Mink will be remembered with a broad array of accolades. She
was a warm, compassionate colleague. She was civil and generous, even
to the opponents who angered her the most. As a member of the Committee
on Education and the Workforce, which when Patsy Mink first came to
Congress was called the Committee on Education and Labor, as a member
of that committee, in any long markup, and we could have some long
markups, we always knew that Patsy would try out macadamia nuts to
supply for all of us to refresh myself, and she would share my
macadamia with everybody, those who were opponents as well as those who
were allies.
I remember her chiding me, joking with me when I talked about how
much I loved macadamia nuts. I was a macadamia nut junkie, but I said
to her, Do not bring any more because I am on a diet, and these things
certainly do not help anybody's diet. The next time she came with
macadamia nuts, they were chocolate-covered macadamia nuts, and they
are even more delicious than
[[Page H6976]]
regular macadamia nuts and greater calories. But that was the kind of
person she was.
She was quite warm, cared very much about everybody, but she could be
angry. She could be a peace of chain lightning.
For me, she will be remembered as my friend, mentor and my personal
whip on the floor. Often at the door of a House Chamber, Patsy would
meet me with instructions. ``We,'' she said, ``are voting no,'' or,
``We are voting yes on this one.'' I did not consider that to be
intimidation at all. I considered it always an honor to have been
invited to function as an ideological twin to Patsy Mink. She was not
telling me or instructing me. She was making assumptions about how we
would be together in our analysis of the problem, our conclusions about
what to do with respect to voting. That was a great honor, and I am
going to miss that.
In the Committee on Education and the Workforce, as well as on the
House floor, I was always inspired by Patsy's convictions. She was
always an independent spirit, and she pursued her causes with total
dedication. She was not just another advocate for education or for
women or for jobs for welfare mothers, not just another one. Patsy Mink
was a special advocate.
She was forever a fiery and intense advocate on these issues. She
frequently exuded an old-fashioned righteous indignation that seems to
have become extinct in the halls of Congress. For Patsy, there were the
right policies and laws which she pushed with all the zeal she could
muster, and there were the wrong-headed, hypocritical, selfish and evil
policies which had to be confronted, and they had to be engaged to the
bitter end.
When colleagues spoke about partisan compromise negotiations, Patsy
would quickly warn Democrats to beware of an ambush or a trap. I think
Patsy in her encyclopedic approach to her mission, encyclopedic concern
about anything that affected human beings, would have very much
appreciated the presentation by my colleagues before the 1-hour
presentation on the economy.
On the Committee on Education and Labor where Patsy served and I have
served for the 20 years that I have been here in Congress, we used to
have hearings and testimony from economists, because this committee was
charged and is still charged with overall responsibility with respect
to the economy as it impacts on working families and working men and
women, and as the human resources interact with the other factors in
our economy. So we used to have many economists come, and our approach
was certainly not a tunnel-vision approach.
She would have been concerned and has been concerned all year long
about the fact that the economy has been deteriorating, the fact that
unemployment is increasing. The unemployment rate averaged 4.1 percent
in the year 2000 and reached a 30-year low of 3.9 percent in October of
2000; but today the unemployment rate has increased to 5.7 percent
nationwide. We have presently 8.1 million unemployed Americans, an
increase of 2.5 million compared to the year 2000. The number of
Americans experiencing long-term unemployment over 27 weeks has almost
doubled in the last year.
Some of this my colleagues heard from my previous colleagues who
spoke on the economy. I think this is summarized very well by my
colleague the gentleman from California (Mr. Waxman), the ranking
member of the Committee on Government Reform. Job creation has
reversed.
In the year 2000, the year before President Bush took office, the
economy created 1.7 million new jobs. This trend has been reversed, and
the economy has lost almost 1.5 million jobs since President Bush took
office in January 2001. Poverty is increasing. After decreasing for 8
straight years, decreasing for 8 straight years and reaching its lowest
level in 25 years, the poverty rate increased from 11.3 percent in 2000
to 11.7 percent in 2001. In the first year of the Bush administration,
1.3 million Americans slipped back into poverty, with a total of 32.9
million Americans living in poverty in 2001.
Incomes are falling. Hundreds of thousands of Americans are filing
for bankruptcy. Mortgage foreclosures are at a record high. The Federal
budget deficit is increasing. In 2000, the year before President Bush
took office, the Federal budget, excluding Social Security, showed a
surplus of $86.6 billion. The most recent figures from the
Congressional Budget Office indicate that for 2002 the Federal budget
excluding Social Security will show a deficit of $314 billion. This
represents the largest budget decline in U.S. history, and it is the
third largest on-budget deficit in history, exceeded in size only by
the deficits of 1991 and 1992 under the first President Bush.
{time} 1930
I think Patsy Mink would be, has shown all year long, that she is
very concerned about all of these matters. Patsy Mink, in the 107th
Congress, was one of the great spirits continually pushing to get more
activists going in response to the decline of the economy.
Patsy was a policymaker. Patsy should be remembered as a policymaker,
as a fighter. Whatever else we remember about her as an individual, we
should not trivialize her role in the dynamics here in the Congress
with respect to making policy. Her profound wisdom on all matters
related to education in particular and matters relating to human
resources, whether it was job training or occupational health and
safety, whatever matters relating to human resources, she had a
profound wisdom about that because she had been here for quite a long
time. Her long years of service on the Committee on Education and
Labor, which later became the Committee on Education and the Workforce,
afforded her that kind of wisdom.
Too many of us in the Congress have forgotten the value of
institutional memory. While the House is filled with Members who speak
as experts on education, Patsy Mink was among the few who had hard-
earned credentials with respect to education. She was a part of the
development and the nurturing of title I to the point where it has
become the cornerstone of Federal education reform. She was here during
the Great Society program creation. She served with Adam Clayton Powell
and Lyndon Johnson in the years that they passed more social
legislation than has ever been passed in Congress.
Title IX was a landmark reform to end the gender gap in our
educational institutions, in school athletics; but also many other
aspects of higher education. Title IX belongs to Patsy. She conceived
it decades ago, and she had to fight all the way to the President. Even
recently, in this 107th Congress, there were skirmishes seeking to cut
back on the funding for title IX. Title IX was passed in 1972, but
right up until recently, the grumbling and the attempts to undercut
have persisted.
I will talk more in greater detail about some of the things that have
happened along the way as Patsy was forced to fight to keep title IX.
As I said, she had an encyclopedic approach. She was involved in many
issues. There were certain issues she would focus on tenaciously. And
because she focused on them, she was prepared to defend them, and she
very effectively saved many of these programs from the jaws of those
who would roll back progress.
Title IX, like many other Federal policies and programs, was
considered to be impossible, something else we could not afford. We
could not afford to have equality in our education activities for
women. That would be a burden on our higher education institutions.
That would be a burden on higher education athletics, college
athletics, or school athletics. Always those who want to conscript and
limit the opportunities for a class of people insist that it is not
doable.
Social Security originally was attacked. We know we did not get a
single Republican vote when Social Security was implemented and passed.
Social Security was attacked as something that would wreck the economy.
The minimum wage was attacked. The minimum wage provision was attacked
as another item that would wreck the economy. Always reasons are found
to stop the spreading of the benefits of our great American democracy
and our great economy to all.
They particularly hold on with respect to matters relating to women.
We are way, way behind, even in liberal America, liberal and
progressive America. We are still way behind in recognizing full
unfettered rights for all women. There is no more category of
[[Page H6977]]
human being more oppressed in the world than women. If you want to look
at numbers, the greatest number of people oppressed throughout the
world are women. In all societies, just about, there is oppression. In
societies that suffer from racial prejudice, an oppression because of
race, or in others who suffer as a result of colonialism, and all those
societies where everybody might suffer, the women still suffer most of
all because of male dominance. Male chauvinism seems to hold on. It
seems to be institutionalized in certain religions. And when we
liberate women finally, we will have arrived as a civilization.
But there is a great need to have the fullest possible liberation for
women in America. We are more advanced in this respect than probably
any society. The mountaintop is in view, and we should certainly go on
to make certain that all of the pathways are cleared so that women and
men are clearly equal in one society in the world, that is the American
society, and that this will spread first in the Western world and on
and on and break down any shibboleth that may remain in terms of
religions that insist that women are inferior and women do not deserve
complete equality with men.
Patsy was an advocate for total equality for women, and that is quite
appropriate. Her spirit will be missed. We should remember Patsy as an
advocate for women. She was the coauthor of title IX of the Higher
Education Amendments of 1972 that prohibits sex discrimination in all
education institutions receiving Federal funds. This law, which Patsy
cited as one of her greatest accomplishments, has had a dramatic impact
in opening up opportunities for girls and women in the professions and
most visibly in athletics.
In 1970, before the passage of title IX, only 8.4 percent of medical
degrees were awarded to women. By 1980, this figure had increased to
23.4 percent. By 1997, women were earning 41 percent of medical
degrees. So in addition to athletics, in an area like medicine, Patsy's
title IX opened the way for women.
I think her colleague, Senator Akaka, in honoring Patsy, was able to
bring some light on her personal travails as a woman. Patsy wanted to
be a doctor. She applied for medical school after studying zoology and
chemistry at the University of Hawaii. She applied in 1948 to a medical
school there, but she was rejected, along with other bright young women
who were aspiring to be doctors at a time when women made up only 2 to
3 percent of the entering class. Patsy went on to apply to a law school
instead. She gained admission to the University of Chicago.
It was during her years at the University of Chicago that she met and
married her husband. Patsy returned to Hawaii and gained admission to
the Hawaii bar in 1953. But as a woman, even then, she had difficulty,
because it was said that her husband was a native of Pennsylvania, and
a woman had to gain her bar admission in the area where her husband
lived. She challenged that piece of sexism and she won. She was
admitted to the Hawaii bar, and she became the first Japanese American
woman to become a member of the bar in Hawaii.
In 1965, Patsy brought her views to the national stage when she
became the first woman of color elected to the United States House of
Representatives to represent Hawaii's Second Congressional District.
1965. You can see that she was here during the time when Lyndon Johnson
put forth his Great Society programs, and she was a colleague of Adam
Clayton Powell as each one of those measures came through the Committee
on Education and Labor on its way to the floor of the House to be
passed successfully by a Democratically controlled Congress and Senate.
So the institutional memory, the institutional achievements of Patsy
Mink ought to be remembered as part of the record.
She is a role model that the present Members of Congress should look
up to. She is a role model that should be held up to future Members of
Congress. We need role models that go beyond the fact that we are all
very intelligent men and women who come to this Congress. You will not
find a single person elected to Congress who is not intelligent. You do
not get here unless you are very intelligent. Most of us have extensive
formal education. Most of the Members of Congress are college
graduates. Many are people who have gone beyond college and have
professional degrees. So intelligence is not a problem here.
If intelligence were the kind of cleansing overall virtue that I once
believed it was when I was in high school and college, that intelligent
people always do the right thing, intelligent people understand the
world, they understand what is right, and they do what is right.
Intelligence does not automatically lead to correct and appropriate,
democratic, generous, progressive, and charitable behavior. So
intelligence is not the problem here in this Congress. The quality that
is missing here is indignation, righteous indignation, dedication to
the proposition that all men and women are created equal. And if they
are all created equal, they all have a right to share in the prosperity
and the benefits of this great country.
We have to make a way for them to do that, even if they are people
who are very poor and at one time or another have to go on welfare. At
one time or another they have to be the recipients of the safety net
benefits of our Nation. We have safety net beneficiaries who are rich
farmers, yet we never are critical of them. But we have safety net
beneficiaries who are welfare mothers, mothers of children; and you do
not become a woman on welfare unless you have children. It is Aid to
Families With Dependent Children. So welfare women, who we refer to,
are really mothers of children who are covered by the law Aid to
Families with Dependent Children.
In this Congress, Patsy declared war on the oppressors of welfare
women. It was a lonely army that she led. A very tiny platoon, I would
say, that she led as she made war on the oppressors of welfare women.
No one was more incensed and outraged than the Member from Hawaii when
the so-called welfare reform program of President Bush threatened
greater burdens and smaller subsidies for welfare recipients. Patsy
came to me often and said we must fight this, we must do something, we
must not allow this to happen. We must point out the fact that welfare
benefits have been greatly reduced in most of the States. We must point
out the fact that in the model State of Wisconsin, the State where the
Secretary of Health and Human Services, former Governor Thompson
presided, they have reduced the welfare benefits for a family of three
to less than $300 a month; and they are praising him for having made
that reduction. That is wonderful; that a welfare family of three only
gets less than $300 a month.
That same Governor Thompson had transferred welfare money that would
have gone to welfare beneficiaries to other functions in State
government. Maybe he had a few other cronies he wanted to employ, maybe
he gave a few more State banquets, who knows where the money went; but
the Federal money that was meant to go to welfare beneficiaries, the
law allowed him, if he saved it by curtailing the benefits for welfare
families, then he could use it in other ways. No one was more incensed
and outraged by that kind of activity than Patsy Mink.
Patsy said, we must do something. The Democrats are going to be
rubber stamps to the Republican proposals. The Democrats are going to
be rubber stamps to President Bush's proposals. Patsy Mink came
forward, and we had made many proposals. We fought the greater burdens
and smaller subsidies for welfare recipients. All of Patsy's proposals
in the House were voted down. We did not pass anything at all. But I
admire and will always praise Patsy Mink for leading the fight which
stirred up the long-dormant conscience among Democrats.
{time} 1945
Democrats did come to the floor with an alternative bill. We did
produce a fight on the floor. We did have a debate on the floor. We
offered an alternative. We set the stage for what happened after the
bill left this House and went to the other body. We would like to
believe that the fact that deliberations on this very important matter,
welfare reform, continues and is stalled because we fought valiantly
under the leadership of Patsy Mink, and that fight still goes on as a
result of the record. We united behind Patsy. We were voted down, but
we were together.
As I said before, Patsy Mink is a role model for what needs to happen
in this
[[Page H6978]]
House. Some Members of Congress focus on housing issues. Some focus on
transportation issues. Some focus on health issues. Whatever the issue,
they need to bring to it the kind of indignation and determination that
Patsy brought to the issues she cared about. She cared about education
and welfare mothers. Nobody knew better than Patsy about the
correlation between poverty and poor performance in education. She had
many poor people in the rural parts of her district, and Patsy Mink
understood the correlation.
There is a correlation between poor performance, and the ability of
students to take full advantage of the educational opportunities
offered, and poverty. Poverty and education should not be discussed
separately, they should be discussed together. What we do to welfare
families hurts education. When a welfare family has their budget
curtailed to the point where children go to school hungry, and the best
meal they get is the school free lunch because supper is not going to
be adequate, breakfast is not adequate, and at some schools we have
begun to provide breakfast because of that, why not provide higher
benefits and substitutes for the families so the children who are going
to school get over that first hurdle and they come to school prepared
to learn because they have a wholesome environment at home.
We had on the floor today several resolutions which attempted to
force the issue. Again, I think Patsy Mink would have been very pleased
with what happened this afternoon in the regular session. We had four
resolutions which showed some outrage, some indignation. We want to
force the issue. We do not want to bide time here in this Congress the
way that the Republican majority has decided we should. We do not want
to just be here and not deal with the issues. I would hate to read
history 50 years from now and hear how the historians analyzed what
happened to the great America; that at its apex when it was most
powerful, most prosperous, the leader of the entire world, the only
remaining superpower sat around and, like Nero, fiddled while Rome was
burning.
There are so many issues related to the changing patterns of the
weather, the climate, so many things that reach beyond our economy;
and, of course, the ongoing fight against terrorism. That is no less an
issue, but we have to chew gum and walk, sing, dance and do a lot of
things at the same time, and we are letting most of our resources, the
tremendous brain power of the Congress lies fallow, unutilized. There
is tremendous brain power and energy. The Congress is not being
utilized because, for political reasons, somebody has decided that it
is best for us to tread water and do nothing.
My colleagues in the Democrat Party, the gentleman from Pennsylvania
(Mr. Holden), the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Brown), the gentleman from
Indiana (Mr. Visclosky), and the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Obey),
they offered resolutions saying let us do something.
The gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Holden) offered a resolution
relating to family farmers and bankruptcy. Be it resolved that the
House of Representatives should call up for consideration H.R. 5348,
the Family Farmers and Family Fishermen Protection Act of 2002, which
will once and for all give family farmers the permanent bankruptcy
protections they have been waiting for for over 5 years.
Mr. Speaker, why not? We are all here. Why do we not debate an act on
this vital resolution? No, the Republican majority chose to vote it
down. With a motion to table, all you need is a majority of the votes,
and a motion to table takes effect.
The gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Brown) wanted to deal with the fact that
patent drugs, the drug companies are playing with patent law so they
can hold on to patents longer and keep the cost of drugs higher and
avoid the utilization of generic drugs. That was voted down, too.
The Brown resolution attempted to call for some constructive action,
but it was also voted down, but he did it, and Democrats rallied behind
the gentleman overwhelmingly out of a sense of indignation. Those of us
who are sick of being victimized by the majority, we are held
paralyzed. We are here, but we can do nothing. At least we can vote for
a resolution to call for action, and we did. But again, the majority
had the most votes, and this resolution was voted down.
The next resolution was by the gentleman from Indiana (Mr.
Visclosky). It was a simple resolution, after all of the whereases,
resolved that it is the sense of the House of Representatives that the
Congress should provide States with the resources they need to fully
implement the No Child Left Behind Act as promised less than a year
ago.
Less than a year ago we passed the No Child Left Behind Act. It was a
bipartisan vote on final passage. I voted for it. I voted for it
because of the promises that were made with respect to funding. The
President said he would double Title I over a 2-year period. The
President said he would provide and support the funding for the
implementation for No Child Left Behind, meaning the tests, the
training and the administrative costs related to that. The President
said that he would support an increase in the special education
funding, but he has reneged on those promises.
We would like to see the resources provided by passing the Health and
Human Services and the Education and related agencies appropriations.
The gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Visclosky) offered that resolution.
I would like to note that Patsy Mink said No Child Left Behind was a
piece of legislation that was an ambush; it was a trap. She voted
against it in committee, and she voted against it on the floor of the
House. And now she has been proven to be correct.
We made some stringent requirements there. We placed on the backs of
school systems and teachers and students a lot of new regulations and
threats, provisions for monitoring tests, and now we have reneged on
paying the costs of all of that, leaving it to them. In Patsy's
district, she complained several months ago that the provisions of the
No Child Left Behind were beginning to upset parents because there are
provisions that say if your individual school is failing in terms of
the achievements of the students in reading and math, if it is failing,
then you have a right to go to another school, transfer to another
public school.
Well, just about all of the schools in a certain area of her district
are failing, and the parents are frustrated because they want to use
that right, but in order to go to another school, they would have to
have air transportation. The island is constructed such that the only
way they can get to a school that is better than the schools in that
locale would be to have planes to transport them. The cost of
transportation is so prohibitive that the law has no meaning for them.
She was angry because they were angry at her, but they have been
stirred up by the promise that was offered by the No Child Left Behind
legislation.
I think that the next resolution that was offered by the gentleman
from Wisconsin (Mr. Obey), who is the ranking member of the Committee
on Appropriations, was in the same vein, concerned about the fact that
we have reneged on the promises of the legislation that we all voted
for, most of us voted for, in a bipartisan compromise. Patsy did not
vote for it. She said we would regret the compromise, and now we are
living to regret it.
The Obey resolution was, resolved that it is the sense of the House
of Representatives that the Congress should complete action on the
fiscal year 2003 Labor, Health and Human Services and Education and
related agencies appropriation before recessing, and should fund the No
Child Left Behind Act with levels commensurate with the levels promised
by the act less than a year ago.
Mr. Speaker, we are here. We should act now. Why have we defaulted on
action to the point where there is a discussion of nothing significant
is going to happen until after the election. Nothing significant is
going to be done about any appropriations issues until after the
election. That is a swindle. We owe it to the American people to take
action on critical activities and demonstrate what we are made of. Let
us have a record. Let us go forward and not play with the public
opinion polls where we know that the great majority of the American
people rank education as a major issue. Education is ranked
[[Page H6979]]
as a major issue, and, therefore, we pay lip service to education, but
we do not want to really doing anything.
The indignation shown by these resolutions, the attempt to force some
action or at least to dramatize it, the mobilization of one party to
make certain that this issue was on the floor I think Patsy Mink would
be quite proud of.
Patsy was always concerned about the fact that education was so
highly publicized by both parties. Patsy was concerned about the fact
that there barriers put up about education costing too much, although
in America we are only spending in terms of Federal funds, we only pick
up 7 percent of the cost of education. There is a continued drumbeat
that education costs too much. The Federal Government should not be
more involved in education.
{time} 2000
Our answer was, what activity is it that the American government is
involved in that does not need education as more than a footnote?
Education is a force in whatever activity we are engaged in and,
therefore, what fools we are to continue to ignore education when we
talk about critical issues. The Homeland Security Act, for example, the
creation of a homeland security agency does not talk in any significant
way about the role that education will play. The Education Department
is barely mentioned. Yet the Homeland Security Act is a complex
mechanism which will not work unless it has very educated people. It
will not work unless it has cadres of people who are well trained in
various ways. Homeland security will not work unless we train
tremendous numbers of people in the cleanup of anthrax or the cleanup
of biological warfare materials. We are preparing for that. We are
discussing each day how we have enough vaccine to vaccinate our whole
population in 10 days.
There are a number of things happening, but we are not discussing who
is going to do it. Where are the people who will give the vaccinations?
We have a shortage of nurses. We have a shortage of basic technicians
in our hospitals. We certainly cannot deal with complicated biological
warfare as exhibited by the way we handled the anthrax emergency here
in Washington.
What happened in the anthrax emergency here in Washington? I will not
go through the whole scenario, but Congress was threatened and the
focus of attention of all the experts was on Congress. The post office,
on the other hand, where the anthrax had to come through, was ignored.
Even when they discovered that there was anthrax in the post office,
all of the personnel were still focused here, all the expertise.
So we had two people die here in Washington. They were postal
employees, postmen, who died, because we did not have enough personnel
to do the total job and the total job was not really of epic
proportions. The anthrax attack, whoever did it, they still do not know
who did it, of course, it was small in comparison to what terrorists
could do. I fear anthrax more than I fear nuclear weapons. After
watching what happened here in Washington, after having been locked out
of my office for several weeks, even now we have to irradiate our mail,
after watching it take 4 months to clean up the anthrax in one
building, Senate building; and the experts, the hygienists who handle
anthrax, whoever the experts were, were so limited, the technicians so
limited till they only focused on the Senate building. There were not
enough to go around. We could not deal with the post office. We still
have not dealt with the cleanup of post offices the way we should.
So we have a shortage of people who can deal with anthrax; and that
is a clear and present threat, or something similar to anthrax. But in
the Homeland Security Act, there is no provision for the training of
more people in this area. There is no provision for dealing with the
fact that we have a shortage of nurses. Who is going to do all these
vaccinations in case we have an epidemic as a result of a biological
attack? We have shortages of people who are going into police
departments. We have shortages in fire departments in big cities like
New York, for example. They are working madly to recruit people to
replace the numerous firemen who lost their lives, but in general there
has been an attrition over the years of applicants in terms of these
agencies.
Many of these positions do not require a Ph.D., graduate education;
but they do require some education. Getting people to pass a basic test
involving literacy and simple calculations, getting graduates of our
schools who can pass those simple requirements has become a big
problem. We need to invest whatever is necessary if we are serious
about homeland security, or if we are serious about fighting terrorism.
One of the factors that keeps coming up is the very embarrassing fact
that we had a lot of data collected. Many of the facts that had been
assembled by our reconnaissance agencies, by our satellites in the sky,
picking up electronic communications, many of those items were there
which told things that would have been very useful in counteracting
what happened on September 11; but we did not have Arab translators. We
did not have enough translators.
I have said here on the floor many times, that is inexcusable, that
there were not enough Arab translators to stay current with the great
amount of data that was being collected from Arab sources. Arabs have
been terrorists for quite a long time. Since Ronald Reagan's reign when
they bombed the barracks in Beirut and killed 200 Marines, on and on,
every major act of terrorism, sabotage, Arabs have done it. So surely
Arabs should have been high on the radar screen and the number of
people who interpret Arabic should have been great. But it is not
there.
I heard advertising on the radio and television in New York a couple
of months after September 11 advertising for people who might want to
be Arab interpreters. On and on it could go, including the fact that in
the field in Afghanistan, where our troops have been victorious and
conducted a high-tech war in a very effective way, nevertheless, the
casualties, if you look at the casualties that we have suffered, the
majority of them have been from friendly fire as a result of human
error. We have suffered casualties ourselves as a result of human error
and friendly fire. We have had a couple of embarrassing incidents with
respect to the Canadians and with respect to some tribal groups as a
result of human error. So as war becomes more high tech, education
becomes an even more important factor.
There is a recognition in the military world of the value of
education. I would like to juxtapose the fact that they place a great
deal of value on education on specific things related to the military
while at the same time ignoring the greater funnel, the mass education
that has to funnel people into the military. For example, we have quite
a number of military academies beyond West Point. Most people only
think of West Point, the Navy at Annapolis, the Air Force Academy; but
we also have an Industrial College of the Armed Forces, National War
College, Army War College, Naval War College, Naval Post Graduate
School, Air War College, Air Force Institute of Technology graduate
school and long-term training arrangements and continued service
arrangements which allow members of the military to go to graduate
schools anywhere when needed.
There is a great deal of understanding in the military of the value
of education. Their personnel are constantly being put through a
process of improving their education. The military is not afraid to
spend money, also. It costs money to educate youngsters in this day and
age.
I hear complaints that education costs too much, that when I was a
kid we were only paying teachers so much and school costs were at very
low levels per child, but now teacher salaries are too high, and we
want computers. That is the way of the modern world. When World War II
started, we only had four or five vehicles in the Federal arsenal of
transportation. Roosevelt had a car and four or five other Cabinet
members. We were at that stage. Now we have a whole fleet of cars. We
have a fleet of planes. The world has changed.
If it has changed in every other respect, then surely it has changed
in respect to education. But we do not recognize that when it comes to
education. We do not look at the fact that
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our military academies are spending tremendous amounts of money. I have
only got figures for way back in 1990. They do not let you have current
figures. In 1990 we were spending tremendous amounts of money for the
Army academy, which is West Point; Naval Academy, et cetera. But more
important than what they were spending overall, which is hard to deal
with, as of 1996, the budget office study showed again with 1990
figures, that the amount of money being spent per officer, that is
where we can make some comparison.
They say right now at Harvard and Yale, Ivy League schools may cost
you between $40,000 and $50,000 per student per year now. In 1990, the
cost per officer commissioned in the Army was $299,000. $299,000 per
officer commissioned. In the Navy it was $197,000 per officer
commissioned. In the Air Force, $279,000 per officer commissioned. We
are willing to spend tremendous amounts of money when it involves
personnel serving the military directly. If we are willing to spend
$299,000 per officer commissioned, surely we can spend more than $8,000
per child in the New York City school system and understand that modern
costs are such that $8,000 per child is not going to get you very much
in terms of what is needed in this day and age.
I checked before Ron Dellums left as the head of the Armed Services
Committee. I did get some figures which showed that the cost at that
time, I think that was about 7 or 8 years ago, was down to $120,000 per
cadet at West Point, if you left out the actual cost of the military
training and just the academic training. The academic training at that
time was $120,000 per student while Harvard and Yale at that time were
estimated to be about $30,000 in the Ivy League. So either way you can
see the difference. We are willing to spend tremendous amounts of money
when we think it is important.
Patsy Mink and I used to talk a great deal about the great hypocrisy
of American policymakers. In private schools, the cost per child is far
higher than $8,000 per child, as it is in the New York City schools.
$8,000 per child is what the average is in New York City, because it
has so many different schools. There is a low end in my district. There
are some schools where they are spending only $4,000 per child; and
there is a high end where they are spending $12,000 per child because
the expenditure costs are driven by the personnel costs. The greatest
cost of personnel, the more experienced teachers and administrators are
in certain schools in certain districts that they consider highly
desirable places to be. So their salaries raise the cost per child in
those districts, while the poorest schools suffer from too many
substitute teachers and uncertified teachers and you have a very low
cost. But what I am saying is that as a Nation, we are investing very
highly in a well-qualified, well-educated military. We are blind to the
fact that all the other sectors must go along.
A complex, modern nation, the leader of the free world, needs to have
a comparable concern about education across the board. All of these
Department of Defense graduate institutions, is there a single peace
initiative we have which has Federal funding for graduate institutions?
Is there a single graduate institution that we know of? There is a
peace institute which you can hardly find in the budget, it is so
small; and it is very cautious about what it does. But there is no
place where we are training diplomats. There is no plan to make certain
that the greatest Nation on Earth, the last superpower, has knowledge
of all the other societies on Earth.
We not only have a shortage in people who can translate Arabic but in
Pakistan and some other countries, they speak Urdu. In Afghanistan they
speak Pashto. We have more than 3,000 colleges and universities in this
Nation. If you have a plan, if the Homeland Security Act cared about
really dealing with terrorism across the world, you would have a plan
which showed that somewhere in America there is a college or a
university that has an institute or a center which is not only learning
the language, teaching the language, but also teaching the culture of
any group of people anywhere on the face of the Earth.
Certainly any nation in the United Nations, we should have a program
which has people who are studying it. We can afford to do that. By
chance we have experts probably on everything, but single people who
decide they want to go off and study and are ready when we need them
for these kinds of assignments, that number is decreasing.
{time} 2015
Why not have a plan which guarantees that we will always have enough
people who speak Urdu to deal with increasing our friendship with
Pakistan? Pakistan is a friendly Muslim Nation. Pakistan is our ally in
the fight against terrorism. We need to know more about its culture and
be able to deal with it. If we are going to have nation-building, that
is a word that was trivial, used and ridiculed a few years ago, but now
it is understood that we cannot fight terrorism without nation-
building. We do not invest a large amount of energy, time, lives,
effort in a nation like Afghanistan and then walk off and leave it to
crumble back into the kind of primitive savagery that existed under the
Taliban. If we do not stay and we do not do nation-building, we will
have to do it all over again in 10 or 20 years. So nation-building is
part of a process that we should have in our overall plan to fight
terrorism.
Homeland security, military readiness, all that, we should look at
education first and foremost. The funnel which feeds everything we do
has to come up through our public school system. Fifty-three million
children are out there in our public school system. They could supply
every expert we need, every category of technician, but they are not
doing it when they come out of high school, and they can only barely
read and write properly, when calculations are minimal.
A large part of public school is inhabited by minorities, and one of
the problems is, which Patsy and I talked about many times, as the
minority population has increased in certain school systems, the big-
city school systems in America, the commitment of the locality and the
commitment of the State government has gone down, and we cannot get
away from an observation that racism is at work in decision-making.
Doing less for the schools has happened as the population has
changed, but let us take a look at what that means for America in one
area. In our military those same minorities who are being neglected in
our public schools make up a large part of our military relative to
their percentage of population. African Americans are considered by the
Census Bureau to be about 13 percent of the total population. In the
Army African Americans total 25.5 percent of the Army population;
480,435 people are African Americans. Hispanics are 9.3 percent. In the
Navy African Americans, which are only 13 percent of the population,
are 18.9 percent of the Navy. African Americans, who are only 13
percent of the population, are 16 percent of the soldiers in the Air
Force. In the Marines African Americans are 18.9 percent.
These same African Americans who are in the inner-city schools
predominantly, the supply that goes into our military, is jeopardized
if you do not provide appropriate education now. What would it be like
in a few years? What is it like now? Is the quality of the soldiers
declining at a time when the high-tech complexity of the military is
increasing?
We should take a hard look at all the various activities of our
society and how they complement each other.
Patsy Mink, as I said before, had an encyclopedic mind when it came
to looking at human resources and looking at the various missions of a
civilized society like ours should have. Patsy Mink and I have talked
about the fact that it is ridiculous to have a homeland security
program which allocates no significant role to the Department of
Education or to the universities and colleges in America. It is sort of
doomed to failure.
I would like to conclude by just refocusing on one particular project
or program that is identified most immediately and specifically with
Patsy Mink. That is Title IX. Many women who are doctors and lawyers,
who had a basically equal treatment in the university system and
graduate schools, have no idea what it was like before. I think one of
the women on the Supreme Court told a long story about how she was
denied access to decent
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jobs in the law firms when she first came out of college and later
denied promotions, et cetera. So there are individual stories that can
be told, but the figures were outrageous before Title IX.
Title IX has made a big difference, but Title IX has been fought step
by step all the way. It was signed into law in 1972, and Patsy had to
go to war and fight the Tower amendment in 1974. She had to fight
certain other Senate amendments that were attempted by Senator Helms
and S. 2146 in 1976 and 1977. On and on it goes. There have been
attempts to gut Title IX.
So Title IX, the welfare rights, the welfare reform, all of it was
part of why I say that Patsy Mink was a role model for decisionmakers
of this Congress, and she is a role model for decisionmakers in the
future. Compassion and riotous indignation are still vital
qualifications for the leaders of a Nation. Patsy Mink was a great
leader of this great Nation.
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