[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 145 (1999), Part 17]
[House]
[Page 25163]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



        WE NEED TO PUT AMERICA'S CHILDREN FIRST INSTEAD OF LAST

  (Mr. WU asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. WU. Mr. Speaker, school has been in session from anywhere from 
1\1/2\ months to 2 months, and we have got anywhere from 2 weeks to 2 
months to bring this budget cycle to a close. It is time to put 
America's children first instead of last.
  I have been working hard to reduce class size by putting 100,000 
teachers into classrooms across America. We clearly need smaller class 
sizes in my congressional district. Some of the newest schools have 
overcrowding problems already, even though they have only been open for 
a year or two.
  At other facilities, they either have trailers in the parking lot and 
in the schoolyard, or else there has not been any new construction 
since 1927, in some of the rural communities in my congressional 
district.
  We need the ability to build classrooms where classrooms are needed. 
We need the ability to put additional qualified teachers into those 
classrooms. We need to put America's children first, instead of last. 
We need to get that taken care of in the next 30 to 60 days in this 
Congress.

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