[Congressional Record Volume 156, Number 16 (Wednesday, February 3, 2010)]
[House]
[Pages H546-H552]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




          A REDUCED ROLE FOR THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT IS NEEDED

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 6, 2009, the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Hoekstra) is 
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, tonight I come to talk about a variety of 
issues.
  You know, clearly the country faces tough times, clearly our States 
face very, very difficult times. And over the last few months we have 
had the opportunity to go and to listen to our constituents at the 
State level talk about some of the issues that are important to them.
  My home State of Michigan is struggling today with 15 percent 
unemployment--the highest unemployment rate in the country. And one of 
the things that we consistently hear about is, you know, Washington 
made us do this. I hear people talking about, you know, our State needs 
to raise taxes. Why? So we can get the Federal highway dollars. And 
what we forget is that those are our dollars to begin with. Those 
aren't Federal highway dollars. Those aren't Michigan highway dollars.
  As a matter of fact, for 53 years, a State like Michigan has received 
83 cents on the dollar--83 cents for every dollar that we sent to 
Washington for our gas tax. And now Washington tells us in tough times, 
to get that money back, you have to put up a State match. That is 
wrong.
  In 2001, President Bush passed--with this Congress' help--legislation 
calling for an improvement in K-12 education. It was called No Child 
Left Behind, and it put the Federal imprint on our K-12 education 
system across the country and across the State of Michigan. That's 
wrong.
  Why? Why do we need the Federal Government telling us how to run our 
schools at the State and at the local level? It's a community issue. 
It's a family issue. It's not a Federal issue. It's also not very 
efficient.
  Just like in the highway bill, the Federal Government forces a State 
like Michigan to build things we don't need. We build overpasses, but 
they're for bicycles. We build fences not to protect motorists but to 
protect turtles.
  You wonder and say, why are we doing this? This is our money. This is 
not the priority for our State to get our State moving.
  So you have got issues with highways, you have got issues with 
education.
  And it's not only that the money is being spent unwisely, but it's 
also being spent inefficiently.
  Let me talk about No Child Left Behind, K-12 education.
  I see my friend is going to join me. I welcome him. And, you know, I 
am talking a little bit about the bureaucracy and the need to return to 
federalism, and let me yield.

                              {time}  1945

  Mr. AKIN. If it's all right, if you take a look at what's happened, 
over the last 50 years, this government here has just grown like Topsy. 
For a while, you and I were in the majority. We passed some 
conservative bills, and we did the best we could. They were mostly 
blocked by Senators. But I think what the public really wants is I 
think they want something different out of this city. I think that what 
they really want is for the Federal Government not to threaten them 
anymore. I think they want us to deconstruct. You mentioned the No 
Child Left Behind.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. Let me reclaim my time for just a second. I want to 
make it clear to the people in the Chamber, and I want to make it clear 
to the people around the country and the people in Michigan, No Child 
Left Behind was a bill that I voted against because I believed in 
parental control, I believed in local control, and I believed in State 
control. I just want to make that clear because I might not have done 
that as I was describing what this Congress was doing.
  I had voted to get rid of the Federal highway program or to basically 
deconstruct it. I want to deconstruct the Education Department and 
return the rights back to the States so the States can focus on what 
they need to do, but more importantly that the Federal Government can 
focus on what it needs to do, trade policy, national security and those 
types of things. I will yield back.
  Mr. AKIN. Congressman, I really respect you for that vote because 
what I think a lot of people listening this evening might not 
understand is Congressman Hoekstra took the very first House bill of a 
Republican administration, it was their pet bill, and you had the guts 
to stand up, as a Republican, to the Republican administration, and 
say, no, because I believe education is a local control kind of issue.
  Now I have to relay an amusing story because I voted ``no'' on it 
too, and some staffer made a mistake and invited me to the bill signing 
ceremony. So I actually sat in the bill signing ceremony for No Child 
Left Behind after having voted ``no'' the same way you did.
  And I think that is precisely what the public wants. They want to 
take this place apart. Education can be done fine at a State level, and 
in my opinion, as a former State representative, I would say it ought 
to be done at the local level. But certainly we don't need a bunch of 
Washington bureaucrats telling us how to educate our kids. I couldn't 
respect you more for that independence of thought and the clarion 
understanding that that is just not a Federal priority.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. Reclaiming my time, I think you and I have had a 
discussion about this. But I really do believe, and I want to build off 
the thought that you had, is that our constituents want us to 
deconstruct Washington. They don't want us to tear it down. They want 
us to constructively go through the process and shed the things that 
are not Washington issues, move them back to States, move them back to 
communities, and move it back to individuals. And if we don't do that, 
they want to be able to hold us accountable.
  You and I sat through much of 2009 where we saw an abomination 
probably much bigger than No Child Left Behind, the health care bill, 
which was going to take from you and from me, from our doctors, our 
hospitals, and our States the right to set our own health care agenda. 
And we were going to probably construct, not deconstruct, but construct 
a new building here in Washington, D.C., probably several new 
buildings, filled with bureaucrats, who were then going to make the 
decisions that you and I historically made about our health care. I 
will yield.
  Mr. AKIN. You are going to wonder where I'm going with this perhaps. 
Here is what I'm thinking about. I'm a guy that was an engineer. I like 
geology. And they talk about earthquakes. And they have a scale of how 
bad an earthquake is. And if you use a Richter scale, an earthquake of 
about 7 or 8 or 9 is one whale of an earthquake. And if you were to 
rate how bad legislation is in Congress, the one that you chose to talk 
about, that health care bill, I would rate that as probably the worst 
bill I have seen in 22 years. And it is high enough on that Richter 
scale that when it got done, American civilization would have been 
shaken so badly, there wouldn't have been much of it left. That was 
really a bad one.
  My rating number two, and I just want to see where you are on rating 
these things, whether you are the same scientist that I would be, and I 
would say that that cap-and-tax bill was another one that would be not 
quite as bad but still a real mess of a bad bill. What do you think?
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. I have seen this up close and personal in Michigan. And 
you may have remembered over the last 18 months that as President Obama 
was developing his economic strategy, he had the Governor of Michigan 
sitting next to him quite frequently. And I thought that's a good 
strategy because he could then ask and say, Governor, did you try this 
in Michigan? And if the answer was ``yes,'' he would say, well, we 
won't do that at the Federal level.
  But it seems to be that whether it's cap-and-trade, cap-and-tax, 
whether it is health care, what we have seen is in

[[Page H547]]

Washington, we have adopted many of the same policies that our Governor 
in Michigan adopted, and the end result is we have seen unemployment 
grow, we have seen huge deficits that at the end of the year are fixed 
but they are cut, they are massive cuts in the size of government, we 
are losing population, so we are seeing our citizens leave.
  And now we are starting to see that at the Federal level. We are 
going to have a whole set of massive new tax increases that the 
President and the Democrats in Congress are going to let the tax cuts 
expire, meaning it's an effective increase in taxes. Was it 41 new 
taxes in the budget? I don't remember what the number was. Do you know?
  Mr. AKIN. Well, there were quite a number of them. Some of them were 
small. But you add the whole thing together, you're talking about 
trillions of dollars in tax increases.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. Trillions of dollars. And you and I at the beginning of 
2009 we saw unemployment at just under 8 percent.
  Mr. AKIN. But if we didn't pass that stimulus bill, we might see 
unemployment go over 8 percent is what we were told.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. Right. And we are now at?
  Mr. AKIN. Ten-something, and that's not counting the people that have 
given up looking for a job.
  Now what you're talking about is it used to be said that America was 
a great experiment. And to a degree, we could be an experiment, because 
different States could try things, and if it was a lousy idea, if you 
had any brains, you wouldn't repeat a dumb idea. And so we tried this 
kind of government control of health care in Massachusetts and 
Tennessee, and here we turned around, and it didn't work worth a hoot 
for them, and we're trying to do this at the Federal level. And you're 
saying that in the case of Michigan you have a governor that seemed to 
have majored in some bad ideas, and you're saying, why in the world are 
you going to perpetrate ideas that don't work?
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. I want to talk with you briefly about an experiment. 
You and I have had the opportunity to briefly discuss this idea. What 
is happening right now in grass-roots America is very, very healthy. 
People are engaged. And as they have gone through the last year, they 
saw the passage of a stimulus bill, $787 billion, then they saw a cap-
and-tax bill passed in the middle of the night where they added 400 
pages in the middle of the night at the last minute.

  Mr. AKIN. Three hundred pages at 3 o'clock in the morning. And we are 
sitting here in this Chamber trying to find a copy of the bill, and a 
copy of the bill doesn't exist as we are debating it. Now that's a new 
record, I suppose.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. Then they give us a 2,000-page health care bill, and it 
gets over to the Senate and they give the Senator from Louisiana $300 
million.
  Mr. AKIN. Is that the ``Louisiana purchase''?
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. The Louisiana purchase. Then we have the deal for 
Nebraska which says even though you're, as a State, you're pretty 
healthy--you only have an unemployment rate of under 5 percent--but you 
don't have to pick up this unfunded mandate that the other 49 States 
are going to get. As a matter of fact, those other 49 States, including 
the State of Michigan, are going to pay for your unfunded mandate 
because I need your vote. So you get your deal.
  Mr. AKIN. What do you think the public thinks about that kind of 
thing?
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. Well, we know what they think because we saw it a 
couple of weeks ago in Massachusetts where they said this is absolutely 
wrong and we're going to stop it. And effectively what the people of 
Massachusetts did, in that momentous Tuesday night, they had the 
opportunity to change history, because after watching this House, this 
Senate and this administration for 12 months, they said, No more. They 
effectively recalled their Democrat Senator and replaced it with 
someone who they believed would listen more closely to their demands 
and their desires and to start deconstructing Washington.
  That's the proposal that I have in that I said I've been through this 
before. I was through this in 1993 and 1994. I introduced legislation 
back then. I called it a voters' bill of rights. And as I was sitting 
with constituents in my district, and I heard them say, Congressman--
most of them call me Pete--and they said, Pete, we call our Senators. 
We talk to them about the stimulus bill. We talk to them about health 
care. We talk to them about cap-and-trade. We talk about them bringing 
Gitmo to Standish, Michigan, and we always get the same thing. They 
answer, they are rude, and then they hang up. And then they said, Pete, 
there's nothing we can do to hold these folks accountable. The earliest 
we can do anything is 2012 and these bad things may happen.
  And as I've been listening to them, I asked my staff to go back and 
get these voters' bill of rights, because I introduced them, we thought 
through them. It's populism. My colleagues here on the floor don't like 
it. But one of the lead things that we proposed in 1994, 1995, and 1996 
was a bill that said one of the keystones of the voters' bill of rights 
says that when you call your Senator or your Representative, and they 
arrogantly answer the phone, are rude, then hang up, and then vote 
wrong, which traditionally means they are voting for bigger government 
and taking rights away from the individuals, rights away from the 
States, you now have an option.
  The option is that when you leave the meeting where you're talking 
about this and someone gives you a piece of paper that has a few lines 
on it and you say, get some voters to sign those lines, and then at the 
top it says, this is a recall of Senator so-and-so, or a recall of 
Representative so-and-so, it allows the voters to exercise 
accountability throughout the process. I wrote an op-ed that hopefully 
we are going to get published soon. What it does is it allows the 
people to take back ownership of their government.
  Michigan is a recall State. I had a mini-town hall meeting yesterday, 
and I ran into a township official. She is being recalled. It's very, 
very tough for people when they're recalled. But it clearly humbles 
people when they recognize that the voters can come back and if they 
don't like what we are doing, the voters can stand up and say, no, it's 
time for you to come home because you no longer understand who you work 
for, and it's time for us to have an opportunity to send someone to 
Washington that will listen to us.
  Mr. AKIN. That's an interesting proposal. It shows a lot of 
imagination on your part. It doesn't make you popular with the 
establishment here; but then again, a bunch of us have been pretty 
establishment from the beginning because we understand that you do need 
to deconstruct. As you say, it's not to destroy all of government but 
to carefully prune out all of these things that have grown like Topsy 
through the years.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. It's about making it more efficient. You and I know 
that with No Child Left Behind, when the taxpayer from Michigan, the 
taxpayer from Lansing, the taxpayer from Detroit, the taxpayer from 
Holland and the taxpayer from Sault Sainte Marie sends a dollar to 
Washington for education, it goes through the bureaucracies. It goes 
through the State bureaucracies. And at every juncture, a PacMan comes 
out and takes a piece and takes another piece; and by the time it gets 
to the classroom, there may only be 60 to 65 cents left.
  Mr. AKIN. Now you're starting with the assumption that the 65 cents 
is actually going to do some good and is not possibly harmful. And I 
would even bet that some of the programs coming out of Washington just 
in and of their nature are harmful.
  One of the things that I think particularly the Washington 
establishment has misunderstood and perhaps some of our national media, 
they would like to write off a whole lot of Americans as, well, they 
are just a bunch of crazy TEA party people or something. What I have 
seen of that movement to me it seems like it defies party labels. And 
it is a very broad spectrum of Americans who are saying, enough already 
and this idea of deconstructing. I think they get sick of, we talked 
about 300 pages of amendments at 3 o'clock in the morning.
  Here is another thing that sort of bugs me--and tell me what you 
think about it. We have this deal called a farm bill. It's really not a 
farm bill. It's this deal that is made between food stamps and farmers 
and this and that, and it's all put together, and it's set up from a 
political point of view to pass.

[[Page H548]]

But what has happened is, if you really looked at the individual 
component parts, most people would say, I don't like it. And yet by 
packaging this stuff up, we end up with that much more Federal 
spending, and I think it's that kind of thing that those Americans are 
starting to pay attention to. I will tell you what should spook the 
people down here in the establishment: they are starting to read some 
of the legislation. And that's a scary thought.

                              {time}  2000

  Mr. HOEKSTRA. That's a scary thing, and that is exactly the type of 
process that people don't like. And they don't like the fact that when 
the President comes out and says during a campaign, when we get to the 
health care negotiations, it is going to be on C-SPAN so that we can 
see whether the gentleman is arguing for his voters, fighting for his 
constituents, or whether that person over there is fighting for the 
insurance companies or fighting for the unions or whatever. And it is 
kind of like, we get to there and you are watching C-SPAN at 11:30 at 
night, and someone walks up to the microphone and says, Hey, we have 
got a deal.
  Mr. AKIN. What deal? Transparency?
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. It is like, you are announcing this at 11:30 at night 
and there is only a few of us that have nothing better to do and we are 
watching C-SPAN so we know, but nobody else will, and they'll find out 
in the morning?
  But that is the transparency. That is where I think this concept of 
recall gets real power. Recall says I think two things. It says to 
Washington, stop the midnight deals.
  The other thing I think that provides a tremendous amount of power 
and authority is it tells Washington, stop the power grab. Stop taking 
the stuff away from the States and away from us as individuals.
  We need to put something back in the process so that the ``rights of 
States'' has real meaning, has real teeth. Right now, we go through the 
appropriations process, the States are all at the pig's trough, the 
feeding trough, trying to get as much money as they can, get more than 
the next guy. It is kind of like, no, don't send the money here, ever. 
And if we have the opportunity for citizens to potentially recall their 
Representatives and their Senators, it creates potentially a whole new 
dynamic of putting States' rights back at the forefront.
  Mr. AKIN. Let me ask you a question, because I know you are a proud 
resident of Michigan. I just want to say, speculatively, what would 
happen if you were the Governor of Michigan and somebody came to you 
with this health care bill, and the Congressional Budget Office, 
because it had been carefully written, said it was a $1 trillion bill, 
but when you looked at it, you said, ``Well it is $1 trillion to the 
Federal, but it has got unfunded mandates for the State of Michigan''? 
And you have probably got a balanced budget in some sort of amendment 
in Michigan. Wouldn't that make you frustrated if we are dumping the 
real cost of something down onto the States?
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. You are exactly right, and this is where Governors need 
to stand up and say no. I think with the health care bill, I think 
wasn't there a movement in like 29 States or something where State 
legislators were saying, No, we don't want it.
  And why? In the State of Michigan, we calculated, or Heritage or 
someone calculated that the unfunded mandate for Medicaid alone was 
$700 million.
  Mr. AKIN. That is a huge amount for a State budget.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. It is a huge amount for a State budget. But it happens 
every program. You know, we promise health care for all. No child left 
behind. No worker left behind. Everybody has a job. We put a little bit 
of money into the pot and then we pass it down to the States, and then 
the States get it and they say, Whoa, we thought you were going to pay 
for all of this.
  That has been the biggest complaint about No Child Left Behind. 
Right? All of these mandates, and you didn't give us the money to 
implement it. Give us more money. It's kind of like, No, don't give us 
more money. Let us keep our money. Get rid of the mandates, and we will 
run our own schools.
  Mr. AKIN. That is a novel idea.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. It is a novel idea.
  Mr. AKIN. You know, it was interesting. When we were looking at that 
No Child Left Behind, it was my first kind of introduction to insider 
ball in Washington, DC, and the Department of Education. And there were 
all of these programs in the Department of Education, and each one was 
funded.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. Over 600. We counted them. Across the government, there 
were over, I think, 650 different education programs, and you say, Why?
  Mr. AKIN. What we attempted to do, and I think you were part of 
negotiating, trying to get this bill to be something that we could be 
proud of. And I think the deal was, How about we do this? How about we 
let the local superintendent of his school take a look at all 600-
something of these programs, take the money that he could get for all 
of them, and if he wants to, direct it all to one or two of his 
favorite programs that meet the needs of their individual schools 
instead of having the red tape of 600 different Federal programs?
  And that seemed like a pretty logical thing, because each 
superintendent could take a look at their school and their own needs, 
and they could take the money and channel it in an effective way.
  Guess what the establishment down here said?
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. No. We don't trust them.
  Mr. AKIN. Exactly. We know more what they are doing than they do.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. So what we do is we tell Ypsilanti, we tell Midland, we 
tell Traverse City, At least a portion of the money that you get from 
Washington, you will all run it the same way. And it is kind of like, 
Wow----
  Mr. AKIN. Whether the program works or not.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. These are three very, very different communities with 
very different needs and challenges right now. Why are we trying to put 
them all into one straitjacket? Don't we really trust the local 
officials? And, more importantly, are you telling us you don't trust 
local parents to take ownership over their schools?
  Dick Armey, our former colleague, used to say, The people that I want 
running my schools are the people who know the names of my kids. That 
is the local folks.
  Mr. AKIN. That paints a picture. Doesn't it?
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. It paints a picture. Because if you come to Washington 
and you ask, Do you know the kids in the fifth grade at South Middle 
School or West Middle School? And it is kind of like, What town?
  Well, in Holland.
  No, I don't. And they have gone through consolidation and all of 
that.
  The names of the schools aren't that important. What is important is, 
Do you know the names of the kids at Muskegon Heights? in Bay City? in 
Mackinaw? And the answer will be, No. As a matter of fact, I can't even 
find some of those places on the map if I have to look, is what you 
will get from the Education Department.
  I have always wanted to go to the Education Department and start with 
the Secretary, say, Mr. Secretary, what State are you from? Well, I 
know he is from Illinois. He is from Chicago. He is not far from 
Michigan. He actually probably understands the Midwest and he 
understands large, urban school districts.
  Okay. Do you have anybody in your office, the secretariat or whatever 
that is from Michigan?
  No, I don't think so.
  Then you go to the undersecretaries. And, Do you have anybody that is 
from Michigan?
  How far do I have to go down before I find somebody in the position 
of authority that is maybe from my State that may have a little bit of 
understanding of my State? Now, we have over 9 million people living in 
Michigan, so that person might understand a piece of Michigan but not 
the whole State.

  And then you kind of go through and say, I wonder how long it would 
take me to find somebody from the Second Congressional District. Then, 
I wonder how long it would take me to find somebody from my hometown 
who understands that right now the community is facing a $2 million 
shortfall, that we have got issues with our public schools. The public 
schools are asking for a $70 million bond issue, and that they would 
understand the challenges. I don't think I will find anybody from 
Holland.

[[Page H549]]

  To Washington, our kids are a number at best. In Holland, it is 
``Aaron.'' They know the names of the kids.
  Mr. AKIN. Of course, that whole discussion suggests the Founders were 
a little smarter than we gave them credit for. There is nothing in the 
Constitution that justifies the creation of a Federal Department of 
Education in the first place. It was, I think, more of a concession to 
the NEA teachers union. And I am not sure if they got a very good deal 
anyway.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. I can tell you, we worked with the NEA, the National 
Education Association. We worked with them, Barney Frank and I. Barney 
Frank, one of my colleagues from the other side of the aisle, we fought 
this issue, and he came at it from a very different standpoint than 
where I did.
  Mr. AKIN. I would assume.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. We came at it from the right and the left. But we came 
together because we both saw the inherent problems with this bill, and 
we had an amendment that we were hoping that if the NEA, if the 
National Education Association had joined with us and supported it, I 
think we would have passed our amendment and we would have a very 
different No Child Left Behind framework than what we have today. But 
they were kind of neutral. They didn't take a position, which also 
tells something to our constituents: If you are not involved in the 
process, someone else will decide the future for you.
  What the NEA found out is that they didn't participate actively in 
fighting this bill. And now, I just talked to a group of students, I 
think it was Monday morning, or they were at one of the lunches. There 
were 18 students there. They were there with their teacher. They were 
advanced AP students, out of school. They were there at lunch in 
Wayland, Michigan.
  I said, I voted against No Child Left Behind. And that always 
surprises a lot of the teachers in my district, because they thought 
that I was just lockstep with the President. Of course Hoekstra voted 
with the President. No, I voted against the bill. And the loudest 
applause comes from the NEA member, the teacher, because he has seen 
what it has done to his local schools. And we have just gone through, 
and we are in the process of duplicating exactly what happened with No 
Child Left Behind with this new program called Race to the Top.
  What does Race to the Top do? In Michigan--and I just kind of laid 
back a little. If people asked me, I would say, If I were you, I 
wouldn't go for the money. But the State went for the money because you 
had to do some reforms. The reforms were good. But if the reforms were 
good, we should have done them anyway. We should not have waited for 
Washington to bribe us to do this, because now that we are involved in 
this Race to the Top process, we are also finding out, well, this is No 
Child Left Behind all over again. Because what Race to the Top does is 
the same thing as No Child Left Behind. It promised a pot of gold at 
the end of the rainbow.
  And now local school districts are starting to take a look at this 
and they are saying, This isn't so good. No one told us that we are 
going to get X amount of dollars, but that to implement the mandates 
that come with Race to the Top it is going to cost us more than X. So, 
actually, we are going to get this Federal money and we are going to 
get the mandates that come along with it, and now to implement these 
mandates it is going to cost us extra money to do it when we are 
already being squeezed.
  Sounds like No Child Left Behind. Sounds like health care.
  Mr. AKIN. The thing that surprises me, because I was a State 
legislator in the State of Missouri for 12 years. It seems like the 
States never seem to catch up to the scam.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. It is kind of like Charlie Brown. How many times are 
you going to pull the football away?
  Mr. AKIN. It is kind of like Lucy with the football and Charlie Brown 
trying to kick the football. There is always a string on the piece of 
cheese, and they say, Come on, mouse, get the cheese. Then they reel 
the string in. And they have been doing this for I don't know how many 
years.
  If you were Governor, wouldn't you think it would be smart in some 
States to say, I have seen this before. I really don't want you telling 
me how to run our schools. I don't want you telling me how to do the 
things that our State knows how to do for ourselves far better. You can 
just keep your money down in Washington, D.C. It is not a temptation to 
us anymore, and we are going to run a clean and efficient State where 
we really do things. Our objective is going to be one of the top 
performing States all across America, and this is a competition where 
we are going to start right now by saying no to a whole lot of 
government red tape.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. And what you will see again is the States becoming 
incubators of ideas. Missouri or Michigan, we will compete, and you 
will get some great ideas, we will get some great ideas. You will have 
some bad ideas and we will have some bad ideas. We will try them. Some 
things will work, some things will not. And then we will be looking 
around at the other States and saying, Hey, what are you doing that 
works? And when we find something that says, Your community is not 
exactly like ours, but if we kind of take what you have done, there is 
a lot of good stuff there, and if we put that into place in Grand 
Rapids, with a few tweaks, we think that is going to help us; we think 
that is going to help make our schools in Grand Rapids better.

                              {time}  2015

  Mr. AKIN. You know what is exciting is you are talking about that 
spirit of ingenuity that Americans have. One of the things people down 
here in the institutional part of our government, they think everybody 
has got to have a Ph.D. and be an expert in this or that. And what I 
have seen so often in Americans, you use just a little bit of common 
sense, and as you are saying, you take that ingenuity and that can do 
spirit and just get the red tape and the government chains off of them 
and let them start to solve their problems.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. The other thing that we will see is we will see that at 
a State level you can respond. When something doesn't work, you change 
it. You and I are both very familiar that there is a key component of 
No Child Left Behind that does not work. What is it? It says we are 
going to measure this year's first grade class and their performance, 
and we are going to compare it to last year's first grade class and 
their performance.
  I say, well, you know, this could be 27 kids and this could be 27 
kids, but they may be very, very different kids. And as a matter of 
fact, I was looking at that. And right after No Child Left Behind 
passed, I went to one of my schools, because they invited me to come 
in. And I knew where the school was, and I thought that this was in a 
relatively stable neighborhood. And they were explaining to me some of 
their issues. And they said Congressman, you know, we don't even have 
these 27 kids all year. We have 27 kids when we begin the year, we have 
27 kids in this class when we end the year, but there may be 20 to 25 
kids that have come in and out of this class. And you kind of look at 
them and say I thought this was a pretty stable neighborhood. They said 
you don't understand. We have got these types of things in the 
neighborhood, and this is a very transient population.
  Mr. AKIN. How in the world could any statistics mean anything when 
you have got the situation you are talking about?
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. Right. But the standard has been in place for 8 years. 
Everybody knows it is wrong and it doesn't work. Technology has moved 
to the point where it says we can track Johnny individually. And if he 
moves from one school to another, we can track his specific 
performance. We ought to be tracking the specific performance of every 
kid in the classroom versus a group of kids that is in and out and all 
of that.
  But after 8 years, what is the measurement? The same one that passed 
in 2001 that everybody agrees doesn't work. But it is what, it is 
implemented in all 50 States, and it is the criteria that determines 
whether you are a good school or you are--only Washington can use these 
terms--a failing school.
  For the teachers that are in this school that have a 70 percent 
turnover of kids in their classroom during the year, you know, they may 
not measure up very well to the arbitrary standards that were put in 
place here in Washington, D.C., but they may be some of

[[Page H550]]

our most committed and talented teachers because they are dealing with 
different kids in the classroom.
  You know, every couple of weeks a new child comes in, a couple leave, 
and it is like, wow, this kid has different skills than the two that 
have left. I have got to figure out exactly, you know, is this kid 
excelling in math? You know, he has got great math skills, but I got to 
help him in reading. You know, you got to do a whole assessment. But 
the current model doesn't allow for those kinds of differences.
  Mr. AKIN. Is that current model something that could be changed? 
Let's say you were to, a State were to basically say hey, we are going 
to start over again. We are going to do a different approach. Is that 
the kind of thing a State could really be innovative on, or has the 
Federal Government just got them locked down?
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. Absolutely. What you want to have happen is you and I 
both want accountability. But as technology changes, and as teaching 
changes, and as practices in the classroom changes, you know, I want 
Missouri developing an accountability model, I want Michigan developing 
an accountability model, I want Illinois developing an accountability 
model. And then every year I want to get together and say, you know, 
here is what is working for us, but we got some problems in this area. 
We just don't appear to be getting it right. What are you doing?
  And then Missouri may come back and say, well, you know, we had those 
same kinds of issues 3 years ago, and here is what we did, and this 
appears to make our accountability system better. But you know, here is 
where we are running into a problem right now. So you have that 
learning going on, and then you get together and you say, you know, 
well, what is the best way to put in performance pay for teachers? How 
do you recognize the differences in a classroom where you begin the 
year with 27 kids in the classroom and at the end of the year they have 
the same 27 kids? You know, how do you measure teachers' performance in 
a classroom like that versus the teacher who is in a classroom where 
they have got the 70 percent turnover? You can't treat them the same. 
You can't have the same kind of measurement. You know, how do you deal 
with that? That is the kind of ingenuity and creativity that we need to 
be seeing going on across the country.
  Someone sent me an email message tonight talking about the video 
learning, the high-tech learning and those types of things. And there 
are people that are experimenting with that at higher level, at the 
community colleges, our high schools and all that. You know, it is like 
somebody ought to really try that and see what works. Do a little 
experimentation.
  Mr. AKIN. I couldn't help thinking about what you are saying and 
getting me excited a little bit about this. If I were in Missouri, I 
think it would be a Show Me Progress or something. They call us the 
Show Me State. And I think one of the ways that would really be pretty 
interesting and might change the paradigm quite a bit would be if you 
really want to give bonuses to teachers, why don't you let the parents 
of the students have a say in how their performance would be?
  Because I will tell you, if you think back about all of your teachers 
that you have had, I can't remember too much stuff the teachers taught 
me, but I can sure remember the people and the characters that I 
respected because of the way they lived their lives. And there were 
some that were just really, really treasures. They were like State 
treasures. They were such wonderful people. And I still remember them 
to the day. And I think sometimes I am guilty, I should have gone back 
and thanked them for putting up with a little brat like me.
  And if the parents have some chance to direct those bonuses, I am 
sure that would probably politically knock the train off the track. But 
there is an idea. Because those parents know whether their kids are 
getting the real stuff or not.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. And I am not saying that bonuses for teachers are the 
way to go. But we ought to be working with teachers, with parents, and 
with others to have these laboratories around the country. And that 
doesn't mean that every class is a laboratory and you are trying the 
whole thing brand new. It means what you are saying is every year, 
every month, every week we are going to be focused on having continuous 
improvement. That if we can learn from other States, if we can learn 
from other schools, if we can learn from other countries we are always 
going to be on the cutting edge of improving our schools.

  Right now where are we? Where do our superintendents look? Where do 
our State education bureaucrats look? Now they have to look to some old 
bill that was passed in 2001 that tells them how to run their schools. 
You won't find that in business anymore. You won't find businesses 
operating on a model that was in place in 2001. If they were still 
operating in the same practices, the same technology and all of these 
kinds of things that they were operating on in 2001, guess what, in 
2010 they would be out of business. They could no longer compete.
  So whether it is education, whether it is infrastructure, you know, 
the whole gamut. You want to do the same thing with job training. You 
know, as a starter, I have got bills to do this. It is kind of like 
highway money goes back to the States, the gas tax money. It doesn't 
need to come here. Send a penny out of every dollar, let the 435 of us 
here fight over one penny of gas tax, not a dollar of gas tax.
  All right. Then same thing with K-12 education. Send us the money 
back. We will get 35 cents more of every dollar to put into the 
classroom. And then it is really a win-win. You know, send me 90 cents 
of every education dollar. You save 10 percent, I get 25 cents more 
going into the classroom. It is a win for all of us. Get rid of the 
bureaucracy and the paperwork. Put the emphasis on the kids. And then 
do it with job training. I have got bills on all three of those areas. 
And the bottom line is if you don't do it, recall.
  Mr. AKIN. Recall. You know, if you take a look at what the Federal 
Government was like when it was originally created, as I recall there 
were really only four laws. One of the laws was against piracy on the 
high seas. One of the laws was against counterfeiting, because the 
Federal Government printed the money. There was a law against being a 
traitor or a spy to your country. All of those laws had in common that 
it was really a Federal authority, as opposed to something that could 
be handled by the States. But the States had all the laws that hang him 
if he steals a horse or whatever the different State laws were. All of 
your laws almost were at a State level.
  Where now what has happened is people somehow think that all of the 
intelligence moved to Washington, D.C., and they have got all of these 
Federal laws, statute books full. Then you have got all of these 
bureaucracies full of rules and regulations. Somehow we have got to 
start taking this place apart and sending that authority to the State 
level. And with all due respect, gentlemen, a lot could go to the local 
and the parental level as well.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. Absolutely. You know, because you take a look at a 
State like Michigan, and I think it is probably the same in Missouri, 
and you take a look at the State and you say, well, my State this year 
is starting the year off with--or they are looking at their next budget 
year and they are saying we are going to have somewhere between a $1.2 
and a $1.4 billion deficit for the next budget year, which they got to 
get done later this calendar year. And you look at it and say, well, 
you got a $47 billion budget. You know, finding $1.2, finding $1.4 
billion in savings, you know, 2, 3 percent? That shouldn't be that 
hard.
  And then you start looking at the reality and say, well, out of that 
$47 billion, 19 of it is direct money from Washington, D.C. All right. 
Well, that is off the table. Then you take a look at it and say, well, 
but you know, with that highway money we get that is part of that $19 
billion, it requires that we have the State match. And this money that 
we got for K-12, you know, that comes from No Child Left Behind, it 
controls some of the spending of the rest of the budget.
  And you start looking at it and saying, well, now all of a sudden I 
have got a $1.2 or $1.4 billion deficit and I have got maybe $10, $11 
billion that I can work with. And it is like, no, there are

[[Page H551]]

efficiencies that we can find in all of those areas if that money never 
left the State and we were given the authority.
  Because you know, the other thing that we talk about, the money comes 
from Washington, but what then happens? That is not the end of the 
line. If the money comes from Washington, then--actually, Washington 
collects the money.
  Mr. AKIN. It came from your and my taxpayers.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. You and I paid it and our constituents paid it. All 
right. And it is gone. It comes to this place here. We then decide what 
we are going to do with it.
  Now, if our people in our communities or our States want to get the 
money back, a lot of times what do they have to do? What do they have? 
All of my school districts have what they call grant writers, somebody 
they pay $30 to $35,000 to, and there is a very good performance 
measure.
  Mr. AKIN. Do they get the grant?
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. You know, we are paying you $35,000 a year. If you get 
$36,000 in grants coming back to the school district, you have been a 
good investment. So they have to apply for the money. And they may not 
get it. But you know, a lot of times it is a competition to get the 
money. So a lot of the application money is wasted. The money then 
comes back to the State, goes to our local schools, we lose 35 percent. 
Once it is in the classroom, once it is being built to build a turtle 
fence or build a bike overpass that we don't need, then we have to send 
a report back to Washington telling them what we did with the money. I 
have always wanted to find the person who reads it. Okay. Does anybody 
really read the report?
  And then every once in a while, and perhaps too often, you will find 
the next thing. You will find the auditor going back to a local school 
district or a local government agency and say, ``Prove it. Prove that 
you spent the money the way that you applied for it and the way that 
you developed and moved it forward.''
  Mr. AKIN. I tell you there is plenty of work to do. And it just needs 
some energy, some innovation both in Washington, D.C., but also at the 
State levels. What is the situation in Michigan in terms of 
unemployment? Do you have the same kind of problems there that other 
people are facing?
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. Actually, we don't have the same kind of problems. Our 
problems are much more severe than anybody else's. We lead the country 
in unemployment. And we have done that for a number of years.

                              {time}  2030

  I think the last unemployment number in Michigan was 14.8 percent. 
But for the last 12 to 18 months we've been in the 14, 15 percent 
unemployment. Well above any other State. That really doesn't include 
the people that have stopped working. It doesn't include the people 
that are underemployed. It also doesn't include the number of people--
when I come here to Washington every week, I'm always amazed by the 
number of people who are on the plane, or as I'm talking to the people 
in my district, the number of people who I run into and say, Pete, I'm 
in Michigan. I'm committed to Michigan. But I'm gone 2 weeks at a time 
from my wife and my kids because the only place I can find a job is 
somewhere else. I'm working somewhere other than Michigan. Some of them 
stay because they're so committed. Others stay because, obviously, in a 
State that has declining population, by definition you have a housing 
surplus, meaning that it's hard for them to sell their homes.
  The vision that we have for Michigan is to bring Michigan back. 
Michigan is a great State. Missouri is a great State. This is a great 
country. I think you and I are committed to believing that with the 
right kind of leadership either at the Federal level or at the State 
level, there's no reason we ought to be enduring 10 percent at a 
national level or 15 percent at a State level. Go back to the 
principles that we employed back in 1994. It's accountability back to 
the people. That's what the Contract with America was all about. I 
tried to get recall as part of the Contract with America. I wish we 
had. I wish voters today had the opportunity to recall their 
representatives and their senators.
  But what we did in 1995 and 1996, we didn't increase spending, we 
didn't do a stimulus bill like that, we didn't do cap-and-trade, we 
didn't do health care. We didn't do all these massive government 
spending programs. We basically froze spending. We cut taxes. We 
reformed government. We reformed welfare. And we did it with a 
Republican Congress and a Democrat President. We were able to focus on 
what the American people wanted, what they needed, and we had an era of 
prosperity that helped a lot of people. But the formula is simple: Give 
more money back to the American people, reform government, and control 
spending.
  Mr. AKIN. You know, your simple little phrase--sometimes a simple 
phrase is very effective. You talked about, bring Michigan back. Or, 
bring Missouri back. The tragedy is that what you just said in a few 
sentences explains how to do it. It's not like this is that 
complicated. You don't have to be too bright to say, If you want jobs, 
you've got to have some company that's going to provide the jobs. And 
you don't have to be too bright to say that if you tax the hide off of 
the guy that owns the little business, he is not going to have any 
money to build a new wing or to buy a new machine tool or to add the 
new process to create the new jobs. It's not that complicated.
  But the trouble is we get these people down here who are so 
institutional, and they think we know what to do. We're going to tax 
the rich guy and redistribute the money. And somehow that makes the 
economy better.
  I mean that stimulus bill, the whole logic behind it was totally 
flawed. Yet, what you have just said in a sentence or two, gentleman, 
you put your finger on exactly what has to be done. And it's got to 
kill you to go back to Michigan. You love your State, you love the 
people in the State. And you understand what it takes to make it work. 
And people are just tone deaf.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. I don't think people are tone deaf. I think people in 
the State sense that----
  Mr. AKIN. The Federal Government is tone deaf.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. Just like the gentleman demonstrated in Massachusetts, 
the people are not tone deaf. They think we are. And they know 
Washington is.
  Mr. AKIN. That's what I meant.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. Gentleman, that's the problem down here. Washington, 
D.C., as an institution has become tone deaf. And you've got solutions. 
You know what the solutions are. You can fix the problem in Michigan, 
you can fix the problem in Missouri. It's as simple as what JFK did, 
what Ronald Reagan did, what Bush did, and that is get off the 
spending, get off the taxing, and give the American public a chance.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. Here's how we start our op-ed. I like our title. Of 
course, I helped write it. We call it ``Storming the Castle.'' On 
January 19, the people of Massachusetts stormed the castle of the 
political elite and toppled it to the ground. After months of abuse and 
neglect and being shut out of the lofty parapets of the U.S. Senate, 
they took a stand and sent a strong, undeniable message to the 
Democrat-controlled castle of American politics. Enough is enough.
  I think that sums it all up. That's where the American people are 
today. That's where grassroots America is today. That's where they were 
in 1993 and 1994. In 1993 and 1994, they got involved. When I meet with 
these folks, I do ask them the question: How different would this 
country be today if the involvement that we saw in 1993 and 1994, the 
insightful, knowledgeable involvement--I mean these people understand 
the issues. They know where they want to go. If that involvement we saw 
in 1993 and 1994, and the involvement that we're seeing in 2009 and 
2010, how different would this country have been if they had stayed 
involved through that whole timeframe?
  And that's partly our responsibility by not motivating them enough 
and inviting them into the process. But if they would been involved in 
the process, we wouldn't be talking about whether we should be passing 
legislation or passing a constitutional amendment that would give them 
the authority to recall their Federal elected officials. We'd already 
have it. It would now be working its way through the States. I think 
it's so healthy to have these people involved in the process

[[Page H552]]

and involved in a knowledgeable way, because they do recognize that if 
they don't show up, someone else will run this country. They recognize 
that government is run by those who show up on election day.
  Mr. AKIN. You know, the interesting thing is, as you make government 
bigger, it makes the citizens smaller. And it's gotten to the point now 
where that government has got to be trimmed. And I think people are 
ready to do it. I would like to just say that I appreciate your 
leadership these years that I've shared in the Congress with you, 
Congressman Hoekstra, and for the fact that you have consistently, 
before it was popular, you have always been in this position of trying 
to deconstruct the unnecessary elements of the Federal Government. And 
I think that in a sense that you and I have seen a time where more 
voters are going to think, Boy, I wish there were more Congressmen 
Hoekstras in the way that they vote and the way they keep taking the 
tough choices, regardless of political party, to do what is right and 
send that decisionmaking back to the local citizens. Send that tax 
dollar, let him keep it in his pocket, and keep the government small.
  Mr. HOEKSTRA. I thank my colleague, Congressman Akin. This is a time 
where we've got the great State of Michigan, the great State of 
Missouri, the Show-Me State. It's now time for this Congress to show 
the people of Missouri, to show the people of America, and to show the 
people of Michigan where we're headed. And if we don't do it, guess 
what? They will show us on election day. And they will storm the castle 
by saying, Enough is enough.
  With that, Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

                          ____________________