[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 145 (1999), Part 14]
[House]
[Pages 19553-19555]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



                     SCHOOL CONSTRUCTION IN AMERICA

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Sweeney). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of January 6, 1999, the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. 
Etheridge) is recognized for half the time until midnight as the 
designee of the minority leader.
  Mr. ETHERIDGE. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my Democratic colleagues 
for joining me this evening as we take some time in this very late hour 
to talk about a very important issue, school construction and the 
companies that we are sending our children back to across this country.
  Because across America this week and next week and in the next 
several weeks to come, depending on where one might live, summer 
vacations are coming to a close, parents are shopping back-to-school 
sales, and teachers and students are gearing up for the coming year.
  In my home county and State, a lot of the schools have already opened 
and they are going to school. Unfortunately, in many of those schools, 
it is very hot, they are not air-conditioned the way they should be. 
But children are in school.
  In some communities, we find that children are not going to school in 
schools. They are in trailers. They are in closets. They are in 
basements. They are in hallways. And they are in anyplace that we can 
get children into because the crowding is so bad.
  Unfortunately, this Congress has failed to act to provide our local 
communities with any assistance with quality facilities for our 
children.
  I could not help but think earlier today we have passed foreign aid 
bills, we have passed emergency aid bills that we send overseas for 
foreign children to have decent places to go to school in in some 
communities; and yet, for our own children here in America, Members of 
the majority say it is not Congress's responsibility to get involved.
  It seems like I remember reading in my history books that that was 
not the responsibility of Congress when we needed water, sewer, rural 
electric power, and a whole host of long lists. And ultimately we got 
involved and provided electricity for rural America, the one thing that 
changed it. And the list goes on.
  Mr. Speaker, our schools are bursting at the seams. The communities 
throughout my district and throughout this country, the flood of 
student enrollments are swamping our ability and the ability of local 
communities and local taxpayers to meet the needs.
  It is time for this Congress to stop arguing and start acting. I have 
written legislation, H.R. 996, that will provide $7.2 billion in school 
construction bonds. On the Democratic side today we lined up to sign a 
discharge petition to bring the school construction bills to the floor 
so that we could take action and help children.
  I will talk more about that in a minute, but at this point let me 
yield to one of my colleagues from California, who is a real leader in 
this Congress on educational issues. Before she came to Congress, she 
was a school nurse. She knows about the issues teachers face every day, 
the issues children face.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from California (Mrs. Capps) 
for comments on this issue as it relates to California and her 
district.
  Mrs. CAPPS. Mr. Speaker, I am honored to have my colleague yield time 
to me, particularly with his strong background in education. Being a 
former State superintendent, it is a pleasure to work with a 
professional in support of our Nation's schools.
  I believe so strongly that we must come together in the House of 
Representatives in a bipartisan way to support legislation that will 
truly improve the quality of education for our children, improve the 
schools in our local communities and across this country. The future of 
our children depend on this.
  I am so aware that we are the beneficiaries of a generation that 
instituted the GI Bill of Rights. Many of our parents and our community 
members and our relatives got the benefit of a country that came 
together around public schools like nothing before its time. Many of us 
attended wonderful school buildings.
  Unfortunately, these same school buildings have not been improved 
much since that time, and that is what we are here to discuss this 
evening.

                              {time}  2330

  Mr. Speaker, I will discuss our school system as I experienced it 
firsthand on the central coast of California where, as my colleague has 
mentioned, I was

[[Page 19554]]

privileged, really honored, to be a school nurse in Santa Barbara 
School System for over 20 years, and I have seen firsthand the damage 
that deteriorating schools can do. I have been with students as they 
have attended classes held in hallways, in teachers' lounges, in 
utility rooms and in auditoriums. I know that students, we all know 
that students, cannot thrive academically if they are learning in 
overcrowded and crumbling classrooms.
  I want to pay particular attention to a phenomenon that occurs in 
many of our growing communities where school buildings are exploding, 
literally exploding, and when this has happened, it did in the 1950s 
and 1960s and 1970s in California and across much of the population in 
the West and throughout the country really, and so portable classrooms 
were brought in. These portable classrooms were designed for temporary 
housing of students. Thirty years ago these same buildings with very 
little improvement are still in use today. It is incredible that we 
expect our children to learn, hot in the summer, cold and musty and 
mildewy throughout the year. These classrooms are what our young people 
are having to attend.
  I want to just, and then I will yield back because we have other 
colleagues here as well, but I want to highlight one particular school 
district in my central coast district. The Santa Maria Bonita School 
District which lies at the heart of my district is in such desperate 
need of funds for school construction. This district was built to house 
6,700 students, and currently enrollments are at 10,500. To accommodate 
the growth 12 of the district's 14 schools have converted to a four-
track, year-round school schedule, and 175 portables have been added. 
To add these buildings means cutting down on valuable playground space. 
They are stretched to the limit and need funding to build better 
facilities. This Santa Maria School District has tried twice in the 
past year to pass bond measures to receive State money to help build 
new schools. In our State a two-thirds majority is required. By a very 
small number these measures have failed both times.
  To me this is a failure to our children, and we have the opportunity 
here in Congress to make it easier for our local school districts to 
obtain the funding that they need to pass their local bond issues. We 
want the bond issues to be local, we want the support for schools to be 
local, and yet we have a role we can play here in the Federal 
Government.
  That is why I am so pleased that it is the bill of the gentleman from 
North Carolina (Mr. Etheridge), his school construction bill, that I 
have cosponsored and also the gentleman from New York (Mr. Rangel's) 
school modernization bill. Both of these bills offer viable solutions 
to this serious problem, yet we had to march down and make sure and try 
to sign to get a discussion of this legislation on the floor.
  Today we are preparing students for jobs in the new economy. This is 
not a laughing matter, this is not a simple or a slight thing. This is 
a huge challenge that we have before us, to find that the framework and 
the setting for which this technology can be transferred to the next 
generation. It is about our economy, it is about the future of our 
country, and it is about our democracy surviving. To do this students 
have to have facilities that are big enough, well equipped enough and 
up to date in every way.
  Districts like the one I described, Santa Maria Bonita School 
District, cannot keep up with these demands, and we have to step up to 
the plate. We cannot turn the other way any longer.
  Mr. ETHERIDGE. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for her remarks, 
and let me just say to her that one of the things, without dwelling on 
it as we talk about school construction and the overcrowding and the 
problems, if we see it in the workplace for businesses, then we know 
what happens there. Defects of the product goes up. We have problems 
and a whole host of things happen; as my colleagues know, problems with 
the employees; and yet we hear people on this very floor clamor about 
why schools do not do better, why we cannot get better. They want to 
blame the teachers, they want to blame the system, and yet they turn 
their backs when it comes time when we can help.
  We just had pre-filed a tax bill for just a trillion dollars over the 
next 10 years, exploding to $3 trillion over 20 years when we could use 
some money, when a time we have resources to take care of Social 
Security and Medicare, and pay down the debt and make sure our children 
have a safe, secure and good environment in which to learn, and you 
talk about those trailers that are true all across this country, and 
one thing we need to remember, that when it rains those children get 
wet going to and from. They go to too small a cafeteria, too small a 
library, and then we wonder why they do not learn and education is not 
important to them. We sent a pretty powerful signal that it is not 
important to us when they do not spend the resources.
  Now let me yield to my colleague from California also (Mr. Sherman) 
who certainly has been a leader on this floor in working for education. 
He understands the tax consequences of when you do not spend your money 
wisely how you are going to pay a real price in the future.
  Mr. SHERMAN. I thank the gentleman from North Carolina. It is an 
honor to be with him and with the gentlewoman from California (Mrs. 
Capps) because you understand what is most important to the people in 
my district, which is education, but you understand how we can make it 
work.
  One thing that is obvious to me is that we are going to have smaller 
classes. At least in California the people have taxed themselves to 
provide for smaller classes, smaller class sizes. But that means you 
need more classrooms, and as you have explained and as the gentlewoman 
from California (Mrs. Capps) explained quite eloquently, we need to 
build new school facilities.
  In fact, and this is odd, both parties have agreed in concept that 
the Federal Government needs to help out, and while I do not match the 
gentleman's expertise or the gentlewoman's expertise in education, it 
is perhaps surprising to some people back home that the way that 
Congress has agreed to try to help schools is through the tax law, and 
here is where there is a tremendous divergence.
  You see, the Democrats had a relatively small tax bill, and yet we 
found room in that bill to provide real help to school districts. Santa 
Maria was not able to pass its school bonds, and I can understand that, 
because people would have to not only pay back the bonds, they have to 
pay the interest on the bonds, and what the Democratic tax bill did is 
it funded interest on school bonds across this country. It provided $9 
billion of Federal revenue to pay the interest on $22 billion of school 
bonds. So when Santa Maria dealt with those school bonds, people can 
say: We will go that far for our kids, we will tax ourselves to pay the 
principle, and thank God Congress has done something to pay the 
interest.
  But then the Republican bill comes to the floor, and I know the 
conference report was just introduced. We do not know what is in it. We 
will read it late tonight, tomorrow morning, but I think what is in it 
is what was in the House bill that passed a couple weeks ago. And there 
lurking was a provision supposedly there to help schools issue school 
bonds under the title of arbitrage.
  What is arbitrage? Gambling.
  What the Republican bill does, instead of providing real money to pay 
the interest on the bonds, is it turns to every school district and 
says: Go ahead and issue the bonds, and you will have to pay the 
interest on the bonds.
  But in the past you had to use the school bonds to build schools 
pretty quickly. Do not do that.

                              {time}  2340

  Issue the bonds, do not build schools, delay the schools. Kids do not 
need schools, according to the Republican bill. Take the money to Las 
Vegas or Wall Street and take that school bond money and invest in 
debentures, invest in interest futures. Invest, if you want, in pork 
bellies. Then you get to keep the profits.

[[Page 19555]]

  The Republican bill, desperate to spend no money helping schools but 
to fool the American public into thinking it helps schools, does 
nothing more than provide a free airplane ticket to Las Vegas for every 
school board member in the country so that they can take the school 
bond money to Vegas and see whether they can beat the odds. If they 
beat the odds, they can keep the profits for the kids.
  Oh, if they lose the money, well, that is what Orange County, 
California, did, the county to the south of Lois and myself. They tried 
to play this arbitrage game, and they went bankrupt.
  Mr. ETHERIDGE. I thank the gentleman. On that note, let me remind him 
and those who happen to be watching this evening that as school opens 
this fall, we will have showing up at the schoolhouse doors across 
America in the public schools more children than have ever been to 
public schools in America's history. Last year, as you remember, the 
secretary released his report on the baby-boom echo, which means all 
those baby-boomers after World War II now are having children and they 
are showing up.
  Tonight I can report to Members we have talked with the Department 
today, we do not have the report on the numbers, but there is one thing 
we can say from what we have heard, that what we saw last year was a 
ripple compared to what we are going to see when the report comes out 
very shortly, because those numbers are just absolutely exploding all 
across America.
  In my district, as an example, the baby-boom echoes, we have counties 
that are in double digits. You say well, there has to be a lot of 
economic growth there. Unfortunately, they happen to be counties 
adjacent to an urban center where they are getting a lot of residential 
growth, not a lot of economic-commercial growth.
  For instance, one county, Franklin, had 19.6 percent growth over the 
last 8 years. My home county, 18.9; Lee County, 17.1, Nash, 17.3. They 
are all rural counties in transition and property taxes are under a 
burden. Wade County, the capital county, right at 30 percent. They are 
welcoming anywhere from 4,000 to 6,000 students this fall, and they 
have done it for the last several years. That is true across America. 
The pressure is getting so great out there, and this is a way we can be 
a help.
  Mr. Speaker, the Republican leadership is putting the final touch, 
and as we heard already, has already put their touches on the final tax 
bill. We will find out tomorrow morning if they really care about 
making sure the children in this country have an opportunity for a 
decent place to go to school. Because if you are in a cold environment 
in the winter and a hot environment in the summer, and the building 
roofs leak and the wind blows through the walls, you can talk all you 
want to about quality education, and then we wonder why we cannot 
recruit teachers and retain teachers. You do not have to be very bright 
to figure that out. Business figured that out a long time ago. They 
provide a good environment for their employees and quality training.
  We can do something about it. It is within our goal. We stood in line 
today to sign the Rangel bill to make sure we got a discharge petition. 
Today my colleagues are working on it.
  Mr. Speaker, I know our time is about to expire. Let me thank my two 
colleagues from California for joining me this evening. On behalf of 
the children of America, who only have us to speak for them, because 
they do not vote, and some of their parents do not take the opportunity 
to vote, I thank you for coming this evening and sharing and getting 
into the record the importance of school construction and opportunities 
for our children.

                          ____________________