[Congressional Record Volume 154, Number 91 (Wednesday, June 4, 2008)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1137-E1138]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                     HONORING LYNDON BAINES JOHNSON

                                 ______
                                 

                            HON. GENE GREEN

                                of texas

                    in the house of representatives

                        Wednesday, June 4, 2008

  Mr. GENE GREEN of Texas. Madam Speaker, later this year the 
Department of Education will formally be renamed after a former 
teacher, who became president and made equal opportunity to education a 
national priority. President Lyndon Baines Johnson pioneered many 
issues such as civil rights, voting rights, but his education 
leadership stands out even among those accomplishments. President 
Johnson was a very human figure but his legacy is with us in many major 
ways today. Lyndon Johnson's first priority in life was education, and 
he was the first ``Education President.'' As we approach President 
Johnson's 100th birthday on August 27, I would like to submit the 
following article which appeared in the Austin-American Statesman 
highlighting the profound legacy President Johnson had on America's 
education system, and the renaming of the Department of Education 
Building.

         [From the Austin American Statesman, October 28, 2007]

                 LBJ Finally Gets His Due in Washington

                         (By David H. Bennett)

       Washington is a city of monuments; the Mall hosts 
     buildings, statues and walls commemorating big achievements 
     (saving the

[[Page E1138]]

     union) and small ones (inventing the screw propeller). But 
     until now, Washington had no monument to a man who left an 
     enormous mark, not only on American government, but on the 
     lives of our people: Lyndon Baines Johnson.
       Until this year, the only thing named for LBJ in the 
     capital area was a Memorial Grove, a clump of trees on the 
     Potomac in Virginia. But when the Department of Education 
     building is formally renamed for LBJ on September 18, it will 
     finally provide Washington recognition for the man who 
     fundamentally reshaped the role of government in the United 
     States.
       On one level, ignoring LBJ in Washington simply replicates 
     what has happened in politics and academia. For Republicans 
     and those on the right, the Johnson years have always been 
     anathema. He promised to be the ``education president,'' the 
     ``health president'' and the ``poor people's president.'' He 
     did all of that and more, earning the enduring hatred of 
     those who loathe government.
       But more surprising is that the man who presided over that 
     spectacular legislative run of victories for activist 
     government that he called the ``Great Society'' has been the 
     forgotten man by the party he once led. At Democratic 
     conventions, FDR, Truman, and Kennedy are the iconic figures 
     to whom speakers pay homage; LBJ goes unmentioned.
       Historians too seemed to look past LBJ--textbooks and 
     history classes often pay little heed to the achievements of 
     Johnson's domestic agenda. For many, it seems. the shadow of 
     Vietnam obscures everything else about LBJ's career and 
     accomplishments.
       That is a serious misreading of history, as a brief review 
     of Johnson's legacy makes clear. It is his educational agenda 
     that will be deservedly memorialized in the naming ceremony. 
     The 1965 Elementary and Secondary Education Act was landmark 
     legislation. It did not have a fancy title like ``No Child 
     Left Behind,'' but the ESEA marked the first time the federal 
     government committed to helping local school districts--and 
     with funding, not directives. The 1965 Higher Education Act 
     provided scholarships, grants, loans and work study 
     programs--hundreds of billions of dollars worth--that made 
     college possible for millions who could not afford it before. 
     In addition, LBJ, himself once a school teacher in a 
     desperately poor Texas district, was the president who first 
     recognized and funded bilingual and special education.
       But education is only part of the story. Medicare 
     transformed the health delivery system for older Americans, 
     having helped almost 50 million citizens stay out of poverty 
     and live longer. Medicaid has served over 200 million needy 
     people since its creation. The Heath Professions Act helped 
     to double the number of doctors graduating from medical 
     school.
       LBJ's ``War on Poverty'' would later become a whipping boy 
     for right-wing critics, but Head Start, Upward Bound, VISTA, 
     the Job Corps and other poverty programs made their mark 
     across the years, despite diminished resources and lack of 
     commitment in some subsequent administrations.
       And it was the political genius of the man who ``knew the 
     deck on Capitol Hill'' that played a critical role in pushing 
     through the landmark Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts in 
     1964 and 1965.
       There is much more. In a nation which no longer seems to 
     address infrastructure needs, Johnson's White House gave us 
     the Urban Mass Transit Act, bringing MARTA to Atlanta, BART 
     to the San Francisco Bay and, of course, Metro to Washington. 
     And Johnson was truly a pioneer of environmentalism, 
     spearheading the Clear Air, Water Quality, Clean Water 
     Restoration, Solid Waste Disposal and Motor Vehicle Air 
     Pollution Control Acts. Johnson also gave us regulatory 
     protections like product and child safety, truth in packaging 
     and truth a lending legislation, as well as the creation of 
     OSHA.
       LBJ promised that the Great Society would be concerned with 
     the quality of our lives as well as the quantity of our 
     goods. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the 
     Endowments for the Arts and the Humanities were the result. 
     There would be hundreds of playhouses, opera companies, 
     professional orchestras and dance companies created or 
     supported with federal dollars.
       With the possible exception of FDR's first term, there was 
     never anything like this record of legislative 
     accomplishment. It is clear why the political right wants to 
     bury the memory of LBJ. But why progressives have chosen to 
     disregard his extraordinary domestic achievement is something 
     else. The naming of the education building is a start in 
     redressing this act of historical amnesia.

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