[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 145 (1999), Part 16]
[Senate]
[Pages 22647-22648]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



                      THE IMPORTANCE OF EDUCATION

  Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I want to make a few comments about the 
subject of education.
  We will have two votes later today on two competing resolutions 
offered by the majority leader and the Democratic leader here in the 
Senate on the subject of education. I would like to make a couple of 
comments about that general subject.
  Some long while ago, I was touring refugee camps as a member of a 
hunger committee in the House of Representatives. One of the camps I 
recall visiting was on the border between Honduras and Guatemala.
  At the United Nations High Command for Relief Operations camp that 
they were running there on the border of Guatemala, I saw a lot of 
impoverished people who had been forced to leave their homes and were 
living in the camp. I visited with some of them through an interpreter. 
One older fellow, probably in his seventies, could not speak English 
but he motioned with his hands for me to come with him.
  So I followed him about 20 paces or so back to this area where he was 
living in a tent with so many others. The refugees at this camp had 
cots to sleep on, and this fellow reached under his cot, and from among 
his meager belongings, which would have fit in one small knapsack, he 
pulled out a very small book. Then he grinned a rather toothless grin. 
He had only a few teeth in his mouth, but his smile was a mile wide as 
he held up this book to show me. The interpreter who had walked with me 
into that tent said: He wants to show you the book he is learning to 
read.
  Here was a man living in a refugee camp, sleeping on a cot, in a tent 
with many others with only a meager subsistence who was proud to show a 
visitor that he was learning to read. The book he held up to show me 
was the Spanish equivalent of a ``See Spot Run'' book. In halting 
Spanish, he read a couple of pages, and the interpreter interpreted 
what he was reading for me.
  I have always remembered those circumstance because there on that 
dirt floor, in that tent, in that refugee camp, this fellow in his 
seventies was enormously proud of being able to learn to read, even 
though he was on his first primer book.
  This story illustrates for a lot of people how important it is to be 
educated and to have opportunity. How does it happen that opportunity 
exists in some societies and not in others? How does it happen that we 
in America have been so fortunate while some others have not?
  I have told my colleagues before that one of the first visits I made 
when I came to Congress was to the oldest Member of Congress at the 
time, Claude Pepper. He was then in his late eighties. Above the chair 
in his office were two photographs autographed to him. The first 
photograph was of Orville and Wilbur Wright making the first airplane 
flight. Orville Wright had

[[Page 22648]]

autographed it to Congressman Claude Pepper before he died. Beneath it 
was an autographed picture of Neil Armstrong walking on the Moon, also 
autographed to Congressman Claude Pepper.
  I was struck by those two gifts from the first persons who learned to 
fly and then from the first person to fly to the Moon--autographed 
pictures that occurred in the span of Congressman Pepper's lifetime.
  What was it that caused that explosion of knowledge, learning, and 
technology? The answer: Education. It was our education system that 
said to every young boy or girl in this country: You can become 
whatever you want to become. You can be a physicist, a scientist, a 
doctor, a barber, a mechanic. You decide what you want to become, and 
our education system allows your young minds to flower and to develop 
their full potential.
  How is it that in our country we invented the television, we invented 
the computer, we invented plastic, radar, the silicon chip, we learned 
to fly, we flew to the Moon, and now we splice genes? That all comes 
from education.
  This education system of ours is not perfect. Through public 
education in America, we have decided there will be universal 
opportunity for all children and our obligation is to maintain a public 
school system to provide that opportunity for all. In our public 
schools in this country, we have about 53 million students who went to 
school this morning, 53 million children in kindergarten through high 
school, and that number is going to continue to increase. Our challenge 
is to have education policies that invest in our schools to make sure 
those children are attending good schools.
  When they walk through the door of a school, we want to make certain 
children have a good learning environment. Yet we have crumbling 
schools across this country. I have spoken on the floor at length about 
some Indian schools I have visited that no one in this Chamber would 
want their children to attend, but there is not enough money to invest 
in fixing these crumbling schools. What are we doing to attract and 
retain the best teachers? Do we have enough money to do that?
  Some say these things are too expensive. Yet in the Senate we have 
folks saying, although we cannot increase education funding, we have 
enough resources to provide a $792 billion tax cut over 10 years. That 
is our priority, they say. But we do not have enough money to fund this 
Federal investment in education. In fact, what has happened is that the 
$792 billion tax cut is only possible if we put a squeeze on domestic 
discretionary spending that means there is not enough money to fund 
education.
  My colleagues on Friday described the consequences of the Republican 
actions. The Republican budget allocation for education, which is 17 
percent lower than the 1999 levels, would provide 5,246 fewer new 
qualified teachers, 50,000 students would be denied afterschool and 
summer school programs, 142,000 children denied access to Head Start, 
100,000 students denied Pell grant awards, and the list goes on because 
there is not adequate funding to do that.
  Some of us believe there are certain obligations we have to maintain 
a strong public education system. To do that, we have put forward a 
proposal that does not cost very much but that would allow the 
refurbishing and remodeling of 6,000 public schools nationwide. Many of 
these schools across the country were built after the second world war 
and many of them are in desperate need of modernization and repair. 
This is a need not currently being met, and we have proposed a method 
to meet it. Helping local communities to reduce class sizes by being 
able to hire more teachers, ensuring teachers get the professional 
development they need to stay on top of their subject matter, increased 
funding for special education, and providing 1 million more children 
with access to constructive afterschool programs--all of these are 
important ingredients for developing a public education system we can 
be proud of and one that continues to work.
  There is a big difference in these proposals and what those on the 
other side of the aisle have proposed. I am proud to be part of a 
political party that has always viewed education and investment in this 
country's children as a priority. There are some people serving in the 
Senate who have said let's abolish the Federal Department of Education. 
They have stopped actively trying to do that because they know it is 
massively unpopular with the American people and so we do not hear much 
from them anymore. But that is what they believe; that is what they 
would like to do. They have a right to that belief. I respect that, but 
I disagree with it profoundly because this country's future progress 
and opportunities rest on our ability to educate our future, our young 
children. It is our responsibility to educate our children in good 
schools with good teachers in classrooms that are safe.
  I hope that, when we vote on the education resolutions before us this 
evening and when we continue to discuss this issue in the days ahead, 
we might reach a consensus among everyone in this Chamber that 
education ought to be the engine driving the budget train. It ought not 
be the caboose on this appropriations train, it should be the lead car. 
Education ought not be dealt with as an afterthought. It ought to be 
the priority for this Congress.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor. I make a point of order a quorum is 
not present.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Voinovich). The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk called the roll.
  Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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