[Congressional Record Volume 155, Number 190 (Tuesday, December 15, 2009)]
[House]
[Pages H14972-H14978]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                               EDUCATION

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 6, 2009, the gentlewoman from Wisconsin (Ms. Moore) is 
recognized for 60 minutes.
  Ms. MOORE of Wisconsin. Mr. Speaker, it's such a privilege to stand 
in the well of the House of Representatives.
  Each time I stand here, I just shiver and shake and think about just 
how I got here and the unusual circumstances that have allowed me to be 
here. Really coming from a very poor background, parents who had very, 
very meager means. But it was because of an educational opportunity 
that I'm able to be here with you and to speak with you here this 
evening.
  You've heard it all from the well of the House of Representatives, 
Mr. Speaker. You've heard about all of the problems that we have in our 
economy. And this evening I want to talk to you about the importance of 
reestablishing ourselves in the world as a nation that is graduating 
students from college and producing the next generation of innovators 
and engineers and doctors and scientists and teachers so that we can 
reestablish ourselves in the world and continue to enable our economy 
to grow. But, of course, you've heard about all of the problems that 
sort of crowd out a really important discussion about the importance of 
funding educational opportunity.
  You've heard about the two wars and the escalation, which is going to 
cost us $30 billion. You've heard about the war spending. Between 2001 
until 2009, we've spent just under $950 billion for Iraq and 
Afghanistan, and we've just included another $139 billion for both 
wars. In July, the DOD was spending $11 billion a month on both wars. 
And CRS projects that we're going to be spending another $400 billion 
to $900 billion in the next 10 years.
  You've heard about the entitlement programs, Medicare and Social 
Security, and how they're in danger and how we have to fund that. 
You've heard about the escalating health care costs consuming 20 cents 
of every consumer dollar in the so-called takeover by the government of 
health care. You've heard about the great recession where as many as 
700,000 jobs were lost in a single month in the last 15 months. You've 
heard about the financial systemic risk that threatens the economy not 
only of the United States of America but of the world, requiring 
countries, including this one, to develop billions of dollars in 
stimulus funding. You've heard about various proposals to right 
ourselves and to justify our economy. You've heard proposals to just 
simply reduce spending. You've heard proposals to give tax breaks to 
the wealthy and that these tax breaks will somehow trickle down to 
support those workers and small businesses. And you've even heard 
whispers of raising taxes. And very few people raise as a solution to 
this problem at looking hard at what we're doing in terms of

[[Page H14973]]

advancing post-secondary educational opportunity.
  That's why this evening, Mr. Speaker, I'm so happy to be joined by my 
dear friend and colleague from Virginia, Representative Bobby Scott, 
who serves on the Labor and Education Committee and I'm sure will give 
us some valuable information about the importance of preparing the next 
generation of students.
  Mr. SCOTT of Virginia. I thank the gentlewoman from Wisconsin for 
talking about education and talking about the importance of educating 
all of our young children.
  Quality education is more important today than ever before with the 
rapid development of a global marketplace. We find that we're competing 
not just with cities across a State or even cities across the Nation 
but cities all over the world.
  We can't compete with other countries on things like lower wages. 
There are people who work in other countries for wages that we can't 
compete with. We can't necessarily compete in terms of location. You 
don't have to work right next to your coworkers anymore. If you can 
work across the hall from your coworkers, you can work across the globe 
from your coworkers. And in manufacturing, if you manufacture 
something, you don't have to be that close to your customers. You can 
ship things overnight from almost anywhere. In the global economy when 
you're trying to get a plant financed, there used to be a time where 
you had to locate the plant in the United States because you needed 
financing. Now with worldwide banking, you can put that plant anywhere 
that you want.
  The one reason that businesses would want to locate in the United 
States or in a particular community is because they know they can find 
well-educated workers. So education becomes the competitive advantage. 
And when you start looking at the location, you know you can get the 
good workers. You know that the communities will benefit by having a 
good education. We know these communities that invest heavily in 
education suffer less crime, pay less welfare, and we know the 
individuals benefit, the students benefit with a good 
education. There's an old adage that says ``the more you learn, the 
more you earn.'' The more education you get, the higher your income 
will be. So we need to focus on education if we're going to maintain 
our competitiveness.

  But, unfortunately, we're finding that we're slipping in terms of 
math and science on any international basis. We used to be fairly high. 
We're kind of drifting down. We're kind of in the middle of the pack 
right now but dropping. We used to be number one in graduating our 
students from high school. Now we're dropping. We used to be number one 
in those going to college. We used to be number one by far. Now many 
countries are having more young people go to college and graduate from 
college than in the United States.
  Ms. MOORE of Wisconsin. Reclaiming my time, I guess what I'm 
recalling is a country where, I mean, we invented the telephone. We 
invented the automobile, the television, the camera, Google, iPod. 
We've made major medical breakthroughs. We discovered the cure. We 
discovered Penicillin and practically eradicated polio by developing 
the vaccine. And we've done this because we have been number one in the 
world for developing a brain trust.
  So I guess I'm sort of curious about the statements that you've just 
made that we no longer have the smartest students or the best workforce 
and that we're no longer leading in innovation and technology.

                              {time}  2145

  Mr. SCOTT of Virginia. If the gentlelady would yield, that's why we 
need to remain competitive and make sure that all of our students have 
an opportunity to go to college. We need to make sure that they have 
the knowledge to be successful, and we need to make sure that we are 
making those investments in early childhood education, in elementary 
and in secondary, and are making sure that all of our students have 
access to college. That means we have to make sure we continue to 
invest in Pell Grants and to reduce the interest on student loans so 
that everybody can get into college.
  One of the things we also have to do is to make sure they have the 
support, and not only the encouragement, to go to college. They need 
the financial access but also the support so they can stay in college. 
That's why the Federal TRIO Programs are so important--Talent Search, 
Upward Bound, Upward Bound Math and Science, Veterans Upward Bound, and 
Student Support Services. Once they get into college, there are the 
educational support centers and the Ronald E. McNair Post-Baccalaureate 
Achievement Program.
  The TRIO Programs encourage low-income and first-generation students 
to think in terms of college. For many of them, it's just not an 
expectation in their families, so they think, after high school, that's 
going to be about it. We need to instill upon them an expectation that, 
if you can do the work, you ought to continue your education. The TRIO 
Programs are extremely important in making sure they have not only the 
financial access but the support once they get there so that they can 
graduate.
  Ms. MOORE of Wisconsin. Will the gentleman yield, please?
  Mr. SCOTT of Virginia. I will yield.
  Ms. MOORE of Wisconsin. This administration has been very good on 
financial aid, and this Congress has been great in providing financial 
aid. As a matter of fact, between fiscal years 2001 and 2009, the Pell 
Grant has seen an increase of over $27 billion. Now, these TRIO 
Programs that you talk about have a funding level of $853 million. That 
is less than $1 billion to the Pell Grant of $27 billion.
  While providing financial aid to students is a great strategy, can 
you tell me why you think it is so important to fund these TRIO 
Programs in addition to the Pell Grant? Aren't we making a big enough 
investment in Pell?
  Mr. SCOTT of Virginia. Well, we're not making enough of an investment 
in Pell. We need to make those investments because the cost of college 
is going up even more than the increases in Pell Grants. We have done a 
lot in Pell Grants in the last few years. After several years of no 
increases, we have made significant increases in Pell Grants, but the 
Pell Grant still does not pay as much of a portion of your education as 
it used to. It used to be that, with a Pell Grant, you could almost pay 
your entire tuition--room and board--at a State college. Now it's about 
30 percent, and you've got to come up with the rest. With a Pell Grant, 
people back in the '60s and in the early '70s could work 15 hours a 
week at a little part-time job and could work their way through 
college. Today, even with a Pell Grant and while working 40 hours a 
week, it is still very difficult to work your way through college. We 
need to make sure that these opportunities are there.
  Even though you have financial access with the Pell Grants, with the 
student loans, and with the scholarships, you need to make sure that 
you have the support to get the work done. Many students will start in 
college and won't finish, and you'll have dropouts not only in high 
school but also dropouts in college. We need to make sure that they 
have those services.
  The beneficiaries of the TRIO Programs do much better in college 
completion than those who don't have those support services. You have 
the counseling, the tutorial, and the other support services that you 
need. They are so important, and that's why we need to make sure that 
the TRIO Program funding goes up as much as the funding for financial 
access, like Pell Grants and student loans. We have to recognize that 
the investments we make in education are so important and that, if we 
don't make these investments, we end up paying the bill anyway.
  I serve not only on the Education and Labor Committee, but I also 
serve on the Judiciary Committee, where I chair the Subcommittee on 
Crime. We know that there is a strong correlation between those who 
drop out of school and those who end up in the criminal justice system. 
The high school dropouts are much more likely to end up in prison. 
Those who graduate from high school and those who go to college are 
much less likely to get caught up in the criminal justice system. When 
you look at all of the costs of incarceration and when you look at all 
of the costs of affordable welfare, if we had made the investments in 
education to get young people on the right track and to keep

[[Page H14974]]

them on the right track, we wouldn't have had to make those 
expenditures in the criminal justice and social service programs.
  So education is extremely important, and it is a much more 
intelligent use of taxpayer money--investing in education--rather than 
waiting for young people to drop out of school and to mess up, to join 
a gang and then get into a bidding war as to how much time they're 
going to serve in prison.
  I saw an article in the last couple of days in New York. For every 
juvenile incarcerated, they spend about $200,000 a year locking up 
juveniles. California had the same number--over $200,000 per year per 
juvenile. You can just think of what kind of education could have been 
provided a few years before to make sure that the young people got on 
the right track and stayed on the right track. So investments in 
education are not only good for the economy and are not only good for 
the community, but they actually save more money than they cost when 
you look at the costs of failing to educate the next generation.
  Ms. MOORE of Wisconsin. Will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. SCOTT of Virginia. I yield.
  Ms. MOORE of Wisconsin. I come from a community where there has been 
a great deal of discussion about the failures of students on the 
fourth-grade reading tests and about the failures of students on the 
eighth-grade math tests, so I am really interested in your description 
of how the TRIO Programs really provide an intervention, as it were, 
in, admittedly, a systemically failed process up through middle school.

  The TRIO Programs, as I have come to understand them, literally 
intervene in kids' lives in middle schools through the Upper Bound 
program, for example, and through Talent Search. They really identify 
that next generation of students who have the capability and the 
capacity to go to college and to really keep our country on top. Many 
countries do this. They have done it for generations. They have 
identified kids in middle schools. Despite the incapacity of the 
families, based on their incomes, to put their kids in private schools 
or to give them tutoring, the TRIO Programs intervene in middle school, 
and put them on a college track. Here are some of the data and 
statistics that I want you to respond to:
  First of all, in terms of low-income students--and I'm not talking 
about any particular race or anything because, as I understand it, 37 
percent of those students enrolled in TRIO are white students; 35 
percent are African American; 19 percent are Hispanic; 4 percent are 
Native Americans; 22,000 of these students in TRIO are disabled 
students; and 25,000 are veterans.
  So here we have a really diverse group of students who take advantage 
of these TRIO Programs, but they have one thing in common--they are all 
low-income students. They are all students who are disadvantaged by not 
having wealthy parents who can send them to prep schools. These are 
students we are depending on to become that next generation of 
engineers, scientists, and biologists. They are the people who are 
going to correct the conditions of our lakes, of our forests, and who 
will be these innovators. Yet, of all the low-income students in our 
country, only 41 percent enroll in college, and after 6 years in these 
Student Support Services, we find that almost 31 percent of these 
students actually attain a bachelor's degree, and that only 21 percent, 
literally 10 percent fewer of them, graduate from college when you have 
only given them Pell Grants.
  I guess that is one of the problems that you have tried to share with 
us today, which is: If you are going to spend $27 billion and are going 
to make that kind of important investment in financial aid, it sure is 
important to give these students the wraparound services that they 
need, perhaps some remediation in math and in reading, so that they can 
succeed, some support services.
  If you will indulge me, Mr. Scott, I will tell you a little story.
  I was pregnant at 18 years old when I graduated from high school, and 
I was not headed to college. As a matter of fact, I was at the then-
Boys' Club--it was not the Boys and Girls Club. I was at the Boys' 
Club, watching the boys play basketball, when a young man walked up to 
me and said, The director of the Educational Opportunity Program in 
Marquette is looking for you, and he said he wants you to come down 
there right away. That's how I ended up in college--18 years old, 
pregnant.
  What these programs do is they actually interrupt the poverty cycle. 
They actually interrupted the sociological outcome for me to just be a 
welfare mom, receiving food stamps, with no hope of ever making an 
important contribution to society.
  So I think that, if we are looking at a long-term bang for our buck, 
these TRIO Programs and increasing the funding for these TRIO Programs 
will certainly do that because we cannot afford the downward slide that 
you have described.
  I'm not sure that people have really understood the seriousness of 
this. You mentioned that we were probably in the middle of the pack. 
According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, 
we are about 15th among 29 industrialized countries in college 
completion rates. That really has consequences, because when you look 
at China and at Japan and at South Korea, these are countries that are 
now the innovators in the world. They are producing the engineers. 
There used to be a time when you saw Chinese students sitting in 
American universities. You don't really see that anymore. They are 
staying at home and are obtaining their baccalaureate degrees.
  Now, President Obama has indicated that he has a goal of producing 
the highest proportion of college graduates in the world by 2020. To 
reach that goal, this Pell Grant increase is a part of that program. He 
also wants to expand the reach of community colleges, wants to invest 
Federal money in research and data collection and in other reforms to 
the student loan program, and wants to simplify the student aid 
process.
  The gentleman from Virginia, those are very good intentions, and 
you're experienced on the Education and Labor Committee, but I guess 
I'd like you to respond to whether or not just simply providing 
financial aid and collecting data will get us there.

  Mr. SCOTT of Virginia. Thank you.
  If the gentlelady would yield, one of the things we need to do is to 
make sure that we get all of our students headed toward college. You 
mentioned the impact of finances and the income of parents. One factor 
is that many parents never went to college, so there is not an 
expectation that their children will go to college. If your parents 
went to college, there is really an expectation that you are going to 
go to college, too. It's not a question of whether you are going to 
college. After you graduate from high school, it's which college are 
you going to go to. There is just an expectation.
  Ms. MOORE of Wisconsin. Right.
  Mr. SCOTT of Virginia. When you have parents who did not go to 
college--and this is one of the main focuses of the TRIO Programs--they 
want to develop that expectation.
  When I was in college, I was an Upward Bound counselor, and I could 
see in the Upward Bound program the profound change in attitude that 
young people had as the summer went on. At the beginning of the summer, 
I remember you could ask young people, What are your plans for the 
future? They would start telling you their plans for the weekend. Later 
in the program, you'd ask, What are your plans for the future? They'd 
tell you what courses they needed to take in high school to make sure 
they could get into college, and they'd tell you the courses that 
they'd have to take in college in order to get into law school or into 
medical school. They had planned their futures a lot farther along than 
just the weekend.
  When you have a different perspective and when you start having an 
expectation that ``my future includes college,'' a lot of things 
happen. One, you are less likely to use drugs and to get caught up in 
delinquency because you know that will adversely affect your future.

                              {time}  2200

  So just the fact that you're looking at a future, you will much more 
likely get on the right track and stay on the right track to actually 
achieve those goals.
  Ms. MOORE of Wisconsin. Will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. SCOTT of Virginia. I yield.

[[Page H14975]]

  Ms. MOORE of Wisconsin. Gentleman, you indicated, I heard you say 
that we need to get all of our kids prepared to go to college. And I'm 
wondering if we aren't concerned about class warfare. We talked about 
those parents who are not low income. They've gone to college. They've 
had a college fund for their children early on. And perhaps these are 
parents who might feel somewhat resentful that there's a program out 
there that provides supportive services for low-income students, as I 
indicated, I mean, 41 percent of low-income students, just--I mean, if 
you're not an athlete and you can win a scholarship, you know, if 
you're not summa cum laude, valedictorian of your high school, you 
might not have access to scholarship funds.
  What would you say to those parents who do have a baccalaureate 
degree about the need to make sure we give access to all students to 
college?
  Mr. SCOTT of Virginia. Well, one of the things we found in our work 
in Education and Labor and on the Crime Subcommittee is that so many of 
our young people are not graduating from high school. In some States, 
in some schools, and they're called drop-out factories, half the 
children that go to those schools fail to graduate. And so it's 
important, if we're going to have any kind of society, that we 
encourage young people to go to college because at least that means 
they'll get through high school. If you do not pay for education, you 
will pay for welfare and crime. And so it's important for us, as a 
society, to make sure that we invest in education so we won't have as 
much to pay for in crime and welfare, and also, we'll have an educated 
workforce so that when businesses come to the community and consider 
moving their businesses to your community, you'll have a well-educated 
workforce to show off, and you'll also demonstrate that if they bring 
their business here, their workers will have access to a good 
education. So it's in everybody's best interest to have a well-educated 
workforce and to make the investments in education.
  The Pell Grants make sure that everybody can have access. A 
significant reduction in interest on student loans has taken place in 
the last few years. There are a lot of things that we're doing, and 
we're helping colleges. We've made significant investments in colleges 
and how they can help their students. There are a lot of things that 
we've been doing, but the main focus has got to be to get young people 
into college, and once they get into college, to make sure they have 
the support services that the TRIO programs will provide to make sure 
that they can actually graduate.
  Ms. MOORE of Wisconsin. I was just looking at an article that was 
published in Forbes Magazine recently, called Investing in America's 
Future, and one of the points that the author made was that in 
California, two-fifths of the State's jobs are expected to require 
college degrees by the year 2020. But the number of adults with those 
credentials will fall short. So it's not just a matter of providing an 
opportunity for middle-class and upper-class students.
  We've been joined by Congresswoman Sheila Jackson-Lee, who has spoken 
often about the need for businesses to have an educated workforce. I've 
heard her speak very passionately about how there are so many requests 
among our business leaders for foreign students to come into the 
country because we don't have an educated workforce.
  And so, gentleman, I'd like you to respond to that.
  Mr. SCOTT of Virginia. You mentioned two-fifths require college. But 
even more than that require some education past the high school level, 
some kind of training, some kind of education, maybe not the 4-year 
college but a 2-year college, or maybe some career training course so 
that you could learn your trade. There used to be a time where you 
could get a low-skilled job, keep it for 40 years and then retire. The 
jobs of today require continual learning, lifelong learning. You've got 
to be retrained. A lot of jobs have become obsolete. Instead of one job 
for a long time, most people will have four or five or six jobs during 
their careers. It's important to make sure that you can learn and you 
have lifelong learning so that you can keep up with the new jobs. Most, 
40 percent require college, but virtually all of them, good jobs, will 
require some kind of education past the high school level.
  Ms. MOORE of Wisconsin. Thank you so much.
  I'm so happy this evening that we've been joined by Congresswoman 
Sheila Jackson-Lee from Houston, Texas; and I would yield to her at 
this time.
  Ms. JACKSON-LEE of Texas. Let me thank the distinguished gentlelady 
from the great State of Wisconsin for her persistence in the work that 
I found her doing when I visited her district some several years ago. 
She has been persistent and consistent, and I'm delighted to join her 
this evening, along with my friend and colleague from Virginia. I 
served with Bobby Scott as the Chairman of the Subcommittee on Crime. 
But he has redefined that committee, and he realizes, with his 
experience on the Education and Labor Committee, that we are going down 
the wrong direction. And I combine the idea of steering people away 
from a life of crime or the mistakes that we've made in the criminal 
justice system with the poor response that we have given to our 
education system. I really think that we have, or we took our education 
system for granted. It was there. We were at a point in our lives in 
the 19th century, the 20th century, most particularly when we were 
really churning in the economy and we were at the cutting edge of 
invention. We had televisions; we were doing transistor radios; we did 
the telephone. We were really, if you will, at the peak of the envy of 
all the world, and we took for granted that individuals would start 
school, public school, by the way, and they would finish school and 
some would finish high school, but they would still be at an economic 
level that they could provide for their families. And others went to 
college. And so I'm listening to this discussion about our 
international competitiveness, and I read this sentence to you: America 
no longer has the smartest students or the smartest workforce in the 
world.

  I would take issue with that and say that we have the smart people, 
but we have not cultivated them and provided them the support system 
that a TRIO provides, a steering. It's almost as if you had a playing 
field and you told people to just get out on that playing field. There 
were no guidelines, there were no bases to make, there were no 
touchdowns to make, and what would you get? You'd have very poor 
results. But if you had some guidelines, if you told them that they had 
to go from one point to the next, that they had to kick the ball into 
the field goal area, or they had to make a touchdown, or they to had 
hit a home run. And that's why I've come to the floor today, because I 
want to share these statistics, but I want to refute these statistics 
and I want to say, it's time now to go back to the old, to reinvest in 
our education as if we cared about it.
  And so let me cite these numbers that may have already been put into 
the Record, but I believe it's important, that show the 2007 trends in 
international mathematics and science study, which is really a baby of 
mine. I've been on or served on the Science Committee for 12 years. In 
that, my emphasis was math and science and NASA and what NASA can do to 
inspire our young people to want to be scientists and mathematicians. 
It measures the math and science knowledge of fourth and eighth 
graders.
  Our students don't perform like those in competitor nations. Only 10 
percent of U.S. fourth graders and 6 percent of U.S. eighth graders 
scored at or above the international average in math. That means that 
94 percent of our eighth graders are getting beat by countries like 
Singapore, Hong Kong, England and Russia, and Kazakhstani students 
scored better in math than our own fourth graders. What does that mean? 
It means that there is a legitimate argument for TRIO because TRIO 
provides the kind of road map that gives you the support systems that 
really cause students who come from disadvantaged backgrounds to get to 
the finish line, to be able to kick the goal, to make the touchdown, to 
make the home run.

                              {time}  2210

  And I believe that we've been lax in the funding. It's always easy to 
cut funding for the vulnerable. We don't have to worry about any 
funding for

[[Page H14976]]

the vulnerable because their voices cannot be heard. We know that just 
across the country, the University of either Southern California or 
Berkley has students who have been picketing and sitting in for weeks 
because of tuition increases. So we know how disadvantaged students are 
more disadvantaged as they raise tuition costs and they don't have 
support systems.
  So, for example, here is what TRIO has done, college going rates for 
TRIO versus non-TRIO students: All low-income students, 41 percent 
enrolled in college; Upward Bound participants, 77.3 percent; Upward 
Bound Math-Science, 86.5 percent; and Talent Search, 79 percent.
  What is there to convince that TRIO works, that the support system 
works?
  Student Support Services, low-income bachelor degree attainment with 
a 6-year period: Student Support Services, 30.9 percent; receive Pell 
but no support, 21 percent, way down; receive neither Pell nor support, 
8.9 percent. They just don't make it.
  Ms. MOORE of Wisconsin. Will the gentlelady yield?
  Ms. JACKSON-LEE of Texas. I'll be happy to yield.
  Ms. MOORE of Wisconsin. This is the question I have for my colleagues 
here. If it's so clear, as you've indicated, gentlelady from Texas, 
that TRIO works, if it's so clear, as the gentleman from Virginia has 
indicated, that we need, in order to remain globally competitive and to 
continue to be the innovative country and to really develop a way to 
develop and create new revenues for our country, we're not going to 
just cut spending and raise taxes and have that be adequate for 
remaining a first-class nation.
  If it's true that we don't have enough upper-class students who are 
graduating from college that we can afford to ignore low-income white 
students, low-income African American students, low-income Hispanic 
students, low-income Asian students, disabled students and veterans who 
are in these programs, if we can't afford to ignore them, we've got to 
grab them and educate them so that we can meet those goals and that 
bar, why has TRIO been flat funded?
  What are the consequences of the fact that TRIO was flat funded 
during fiscal year 2006 and 2008, had just a minimal increase in 2009, 
a minimal increase in 2010 and, God bless him, our Appropriations 
Chair, Dave Obey, added $20 million to TRIO this cycle, but after all 
of the negotiations with the Senate, only $5 million was retained in 
that program. What are the consequences of reducing these vital 
services to TRIO students and our remaining competitiveness of the 
world? We need at least $200 million for this program.
  Ms. JACKSON-LEE of Texas. You are eloquent in crafting the 
frustration that you experience and so many of us experience. And do 
you know what the answer is? They just don't get it. Not the friends 
and allies who work so hard, the chairman of the Appropriations 
Committee on the House side, so many Members who understand what TRIO 
means, but the overall thinkers about education and how to cut dollars 
just don't get it.
  TRIO costs an average of about $1,000 per student per year, $1,000. 
Pell is estimated to spend approximately $25 billion helping over 7 
million students get aid. The combination of a TRIO effort for a 
student counters the tragedy, and let me just retract that word and not 
utilize ``tragedy,'' but when you look at it and you say we are the 
country that spent the 20th century just inventing about everything the 
world now uses, when we think of China, we are glad that it has made 
gigantic steps of development. It still is a developing nation, and a 
lot of what China has made its economic rise on has been what we 
invented in the 20th century and now they make it in a cheaper manner.
  So what we are losing is we are losing the genius of our invention 
and inventiveness. H-1B is what you're talking about. The H-1B visas 
have become the popular response. So I'm not going to worry about the 
fact that our children don't know math and science. Forget about it. 
We'll just import thousands upon thousands.
  I have no quarrel with them. We just stood today and introduced a 
comprehensive immigration reform bill. There is no quarrel with the 
idea that this Nation is a nation of laws and immigrants, but there is 
a quarrel when we throw to the side those disabled, those veterans, 
those disadvantaged students, those children who have a single parent 
who would not have the ability to be able to follow through on college.
  So what do we lose? Again, we lose the ability to invent for the next 
generation. We lose the scientific minds that are going to be at the 
cutting edge of finding the right kind of cure for HIV/AIDS or stopping 
the H1N1 pandemic or finding a cure for cancer or being able to fix 
crumbling bridges. This is what we lose. And, frankly, I believe we are 
long overdue for the reckoning that comes with the idea that we are 
ignoring our children.

  I would like to just use as an example the fact what we call AP 
classes and advanced classes. You poll and find out how many of those 
classes are still being kept, advanced placement. It's all about 
budget. We don't respect or appreciate how much money good education 
can generate, and I think that we lose our rightful competitive place 
in the world. And I would much rather invest $1,000 in TRIO than $1,000 
in making war and taking a chance of losing one of our bright young men 
or bright young women who has gone on the front lines. We appreciate 
them.
  But what I'm saying is we should give equal opportunity for those who 
are either after their military service or in the midst of their 
military service or that want to go to school, we should give them the 
opportunity to do so, and that is what TRIO is all about.
  Ms. MOORE of Wisconsin. Will the gentlelady yield?
  Ms. JACKSON-LEE of Texas. I'd be happy to yield.
  Ms. MOORE of Wisconsin. My colleague Representative Scott is a great 
mentor of mine. He serves on the Budget Committee, and he is an expert 
on one of the subjects that really consumes a great deal of time on 
this floor and in our committees, and that's the subject of the budget 
deficit and how we dig ourselves out of this hole. And I guess I was 
wondering if he would share--I'm sort of surprising him with this 
question, but I guess I would like for him to talk about the revenue 
options or the cutting options or how we got into this fiscal hole that 
we are in and what the role of educating and having an educated 
workforce will have on us ever being able to approach some sort of 
deficit reduction.
  And I will yield to the gentleman.
  Mr. SCOTT of Virginia. There are direct consequences of spending more 
money on education, one of which is that the average income of those 
who you have invested in, the average income will go up, better known 
from a budget perspective as more taxable income. And so those that you 
invest in and have more taxable income will be able to help fund the 
government. That is on the plus side.
  On the minus side, if you do not educate the people, they are much 
more likely to be involved in crime and welfare, better known as 
expenditures. So instead of getting more revenue, you end up with more 
expenditures.
  So we need to make sure that we make these investments in education 
so more and more of our students go on to college. And we know what 
works. We know that TRIO works. The TRIO programs, the Talent Search, 
Upward Bound, Upward Bound Math-Science, and Veterans Upward Bound all 
help students think about college and get them on track to college.
  The Student Support Services, Educational Opportunity Centers, and 
the Ronald E. McNair Postbaccalaureate Achievement Programs help 
students once they get to college. They are involved in those programs 
and are much more likely to graduate and complete their education, 
making sure they will be much more contributing members of society. And 
we know they work. There are currently 2,800 TRIO programs that are 
serving 850,000 low-income and first-generation students.
  Now, you can only imagine that without TRIO, many of these students 
wouldn't even be thinking about college. And if you just look around 
the country, many of these programs have waiting lists, young people 
that are trying to get the help of a TRIO program, but because we 
haven't funded them adequately, there are not enough slots and they 
have to languish and perhaps not get an education because

[[Page H14977]]

they didn't get the services that they needed.

                              {time}  2220

  We need to make sure those investments are there. If you're looking 
long term in the budget, we need to make sure that people are self-
sufficient, not depending on government. The investments we make in 
education in the long-term budget perspective are investments that need 
to be made.
  Ms. MOORE of Wisconsin. Thank you so much for that, gentleman. That 
is so important.
  You know, the Department of Education really bears this out. They say 
a high school dropout earns about $18,000 a year--of course that's if 
they're not costing us money in the prison system--a high school 
graduate, $26,000 a year, an associates degree, $38,000, and a 
bachelor's degree, $65,000. When we consider our aging baby boomers, we 
certainly are going to need to make sure that we have a lot of higher-
income individuals working toward all of these innovations that we are 
so capable of.
  Mr. SCOTT of Virginia. And if we don't make the investments that 
we're talking about today, this may be the first generation that has a 
lower achievement of education than their previous generation. Right 
now, many children of college-educated parents are not going to 
college. We are very close to having this generation less educated than 
last. That will be the first time in American history that that has 
ever taken place.
  Ms. MOORE of Wisconsin. Wow. Before I yield to the gentlelady, I just 
want to say that old adage, ``pennywise and pound foolish.'' I started 
this hour out by talking about all of the competing problems that we 
discuss on this floor, the cost of the war and cost of health care, 
costs of Medicare and Social Security, those entitlement programs, the 
cost of escalating the war in Afghanistan, the great recession where, 
at its height, 700,000 jobs were lost in a single month, the bailout 
funds for the ``too big to fail'' institutions.
  And so if we allow ourselves to get mired down in this and decide 
that $200 million for an education program is just too much money, that 
would be the perfect place to talk about pennywise and pound foolish, 
wouldn't you agree, gentleman?
  Mr. SCOTT of Virginia. I would agree. And I have introduced, as you 
know, the Youth Promise Act, which looks at a comprehensive approach to 
investing in our young people, getting them on the right track, keeping 
them on the right track rather than waiting for them to drop out of 
school, mess up, and then spend all the money on incarceration.
  If we take a comprehensive approach, we have found that you are more 
likely to save money in the long run--indeed, certainly even in the 
short run. Comprehensive approaches to juvenile crime, one in 
Pennsylvania where they spent $60 million investing in young people--in 
a couple of years they figured they saved $300 million. Those kinds of 
results happen all over the country when you take a comprehensive 
approach, making sure young people can get on the right track and stay 
on the right track and get out of what the Children's Defense Fund 
calls the cradle-to-prison pipeline and get into the cradle-to-college 
or cradle-to-workforce pipelines. Those pipelines, the college and 
workforce pipelines, are actually cheaper to construct than a cradle-
to-prison pipeline where you spend huge sums of money locking people 
up. You don't get the benefit of the increased earnings; you just end 
up spending all the money on crime and welfare.
  So if we make the right investments in getting young people on the 
right track and keeping them on the right track, we not only have a 
better society, but the budget will look better.
  Ms. MOORE of Wisconsin. Thank you so much. That was just amazing 
information.
  The gentlelady from Texas, I would love to hear what you have to say 
on this matter.
  Ms. JACKSON-LEE of Texas. Well, I think this discussion should be a 
roadmap, but it also should be a primer, a tutorial for us not heading 
toward the disaster that we are heading toward. We should heed some of 
the comments that have been made.
  I would like to build on this issue of the criminal justice system, 
which has just grown exponentially. I would say to the gentlelady that 
there are at least 1 million persons in our prison system throughout 
the Nation. It is known to be the largest prison system in the 
civilized world. It is called the ``prison industrial complex'' because 
there is so much money spent in incarcerating persons, and it does not 
seem that we have gotten it again to invest on the front end.
  So I would just like to share with you, according to the National 
Center for Education Statistics, which studies the math skills of 15-
year-olds throughout several industrialized countries, our United 
States students ranked 25th internationally. Why? Probably not embraced 
by the TRIO concept, the support system concept. High school graduates, 
only 75 percent. I realize that TRIO goes forward into the college 
area, but it means that these students are not getting support early.

  High school graduation, only 75 percent of first-year high school 
students graduate within 4 years; 25 percent of our students are left 
behind. Today, 1 in 10 24-year-olds still lack a high school degree. 
According to the Alliance for Excellent Education, 76 percent of white 
students graduate in a 4-year period, compared with 55 percent of 
Hispanic students and 51 percent of African American students. There 
lies the crux of the need for TRIO, because we need that kind of 
inspiration.
  Let me just finish. The Alliance estimates that high school dropouts 
from the class of 2008--listen to this number--will cost the United 
States $319 billion in lost wages over their lifetime. Is there any 
defense for not supporting TRIO, for not funding it to the max so that 
we can draw these students through the high school period into the 
college and then see them graduate and invest that $319 billion into 
the economic engine of this economy, and on the other side, having 
skills that are marketable skills?
  I started out by saying that we have been cited as not having the 
smartest students in this century or this time frame. I said, no, these 
are smart students; we just have not given them the rules, we have not 
laid out the plan, we have not directed them, we have not provided them 
the TRIO support system that can be so helpful in providing the kind of 
economic engine for America.
  So in this climate of high unemployment and all of this talk about 
creating jobs, we cannot ignore America's education system for our 
children.
  Ms. MOORE of Wisconsin. Thank you so much, gentlelady from Houston, 
Texas. And thank you, my dear friend and colleague on the Budget 
Committee and also on the Education and Labor Committee.
  Before we close out this hour, I just want to sort of summarize what 
we have said here this evening.
  We really admire this Congress and our President for really revamping 
tuition and making adequate tuition a priority. It has been so 
important to revisit how we make student loans so that we don't just 
provide funding for bankers, that we actually use those funds for 
students, to simplify student forms. It is even important to invest in 
research about educational outcomes.
  It has been very, very important to have seen the dramatic increase 
in the Pell Grant because, without this tuition assistance, students 
would not be able to make it. Tuition assistance is a vital component 
in helping low-income and first-generation college students or any 
students get through college. Without these dollars, higher education 
would be unattainable for millions of students who rely on Pell to pay 
the bills. But all too often, Pell is a wasted investment for our low-
income kids because they don't have access to guidance counselors and 
tutors and the other types of support that come with the TRIO programs.
  It doesn't do the student or our country much good if we spend 
millions on first-year Pell recipients only to have those students drop 
out after their second or third year. That's not a sound investment. A 
sound investment is making sure that when we commit to providing 
educational resources for our most vulnerable kids, we give them all 
the tools to successfully see that journey through.
  That's why we're here today. This Congress has drastically increased 
vital funding for Pell Grants. I have been and will continue to be a 
staunch

[[Page H14978]]

supporter of that increased investment, but I also know that millions 
of those dollars will be wasted unless we also invest in the tools to 
get these students through college.

                              {time}  2230

  More importantly, our country, our country, our beloved country that 
we love so much, and love so dearly, and a country that has given us an 
amazing life-style of modern living is at risk if we don't educate the 
future workforce. We have got to start with our tiny tots in early 
education, but that's a more long-term goal. Right now we are having an 
emergency, an emergency; students are either not graduating from high 
school or they are graduating with deficiencies.
  In order to step up, we need a TRIO program, a modest amount of 
funding, $200 million in the scheme of things, nothing like we are 
spending on all the other crises in this country, that would help these 
programs serve those students who are on waiting lists.
  With that, I would yield to the gentleman from Virginia.
  Mr. SCOTT of Virginia. I want to thank the gentlewoman from Wisconsin 
for her hard work. She has benefited from the TRIO Program, so she 
knows firsthand as I do, as a counselor in college. I spent 3 years as 
a counselor in the Upward Bound Program, noticing the profound change 
from the beginning of the program to the end of the program.
  We need to make sure these opportunities and this guidance is made 
available to all students to make sure they can get into college and 
then to support services once they get there so that they can graduate. 
These are important programs.
  I thank the gentlelady for organizing this Special Order and I thank 
the gentlelady from Texas for joining us.
  Ms. JACKSON-LEE of Texas. If I may say a word of appreciation for you 
and say a picture is worth a thousand words, these tall bars, if they 
can be seen, show what happens to Upward Bound participants, Upward 
Bound Math and Science and Talent Search, much higher than the little 
low bar here that shows students without assistance.
  One last point is that one in nine African American men age 20 to 34 
are behind bars. Black men are more likely to be in jail than to have a 
graduate degree. We can lock up people, but we can also break that 
chain, take the key and open the doors to opportunity.
  The gentlelady has told and expressed to us her story. It's a 
powerful story. I would say that we need to give everyone the same 
chance that so many of us have had for a great opportunity.
  Ms. MOORE of Wisconsin. This has been great, this has been fantastic, 
and I would say that the importance of this program is its diversity. 
It is not a program that just benefits one group of people. Thirty-
seven percent of TRIO students are white, 35 percent are African 
Americans, 19 percent are Hispanics, 4 percent are Native Americans, 
22,000 of TRIO's students are disabled students, and 25,000 are our 
beloved veterans.
  This is a program that embraces every American from all backgrounds 
and makes sure that money is not the reason that you cannot use your 
brain. Talk about a brain drain, it's a brain drain when the only thing 
that stands between you and greatness is an education.
  Thank you so much and good night.

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