[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 146 (2000), Part 17]
[House]
[Pages 24355-24356]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



                          SCHOOL CONSTRUCTION

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Etheridge) is recognized for 5 
minutes.
  Mr. ETHERIDGE. Mr. Speaker, I rise this evening to talk for just a 
few minutes about an issue that is critical not only to my district, 
but to communities and children all across this country. This issue is 
school construction. I am pleased that several of my Democratic 
colleagues have agreed to join me this evening to talk about school 
construction and other priorities in the Democrats' education agenda. I 
shall restrict my remarks mostly to school construction.
  Today is October 25. The fiscal year started October 1; and yet, the 
Republican leadership of this House has failed to do its work and get 
the work done for the American people. To put it in school terms, they 
are tardy and they are incomplete. They have failed the test of 
leadership for the American people. Today, the House passed a stopgap 
spending measure to keep the government from shutting down for one more 
day. This is the fifth time this year that we have had to pass one of 
these bills just because the leadership, the Republican leadership has 
failed to get the people's work done.
  Specifically, they have failed to act on important educational 
priorities, like the bipartisan school construction bill that is 
desperately needed in communities all across this country. The bill 
would provide $25 billion in school construction bonds to build new 
schools, renovate them, and to relieve overcrowding, reduce class size, 
and enhance the opportunity for discipline in the classroom and improve 
education by making sure that all of our children get the kind of 
individual attention that they need to learn.
  Mr. Speaker, I have been working with my colleagues on both sides of 
the political aisle to pass this bill since I first came to this 
people's house 4 years ago. We have gathered more than 228 members on 
H.R. 4094; and yet, the Republican leadership has refused to simply 
bring this bill to a vote.
  As this Congress crawls to its conclusion, more than 3 weeks late, 
the educational funding bill is the very last priority of the 
Republican leadership. While education languishes under the threats of 
cuts and the current congressional leadership has loaded up the 
appropriations bill with special interest pork, we are still waiting.
  Last week, I told this body about a Senator from Arizona's 
observation that the leadership's pork has swelled each of the spending 
bills that have been passed. For example, he pointed out that the 
transportation appropriation contains some $700 million in 
transportation earmarks for the Chicago Metropolitan Transit Authority 
in the home State of the Speaker of the House. The transportation 
appropriations bill also earmarked $102 million for a bridge across the 
Mississippi River in the home State of the majority leader of the other 
body. A senior Republican appropriations member got $1.5 million to 
refurbish something called the Vulcan Statue in Alabama.
  Today, I was shocked to read in the paper that one of the Republican 
appropriation members describing the raid on the U.S. Treasury by the 
chairman of the Senate Committee on Appropriations. The House 
Republican described items like $1.25 million for repairs to a church, 
$176,000 for a Reindeer Herders Association for somewhere in 
southeastern Alaska. That Republican concluded by saying, ``You need a 
cargo plane to carry all of this money back.''
  Mr. Speaker, each of these projects may very well merit Federal 
support. These projects may not be the big spending Federal pork that 
they appear to be. I am not an expert on these items. But as a former 
State superintendent of the State of North Carolina, I know that our 
local neighborhood schools need our help. Our schools are bursting at 
the seams, and our communities do not have the resources to build or 
repair and provide the quality schools that our children need. As a 
result, children are stuffed into overcrowded classrooms, substandard 
facilities and rickety trailers that they should not be in.
  My Republican colleagues like to talk about block grants, but when it 
comes to their own special projects, they are not shy about adding 
earmarks, and all of us in this body know what earmarks are. They are 
directed projects to be spent specifically for that purpose. If they 
were not so important, why did they not just put them in the 
transportation bill and let them decide at the local level how to spend 
the money. When it comes to roads, airports, bridges and prisons, 
special interest pork is powerful when it comes to powerful 
politicians.
  Mr. Speaker, we should be able to come up with common sense 
legislation to build a few schools for the children in this country, 
and I think H.R.

[[Page 24356]]

4094 is that common sense bill. Mr. Speaker, I call on the Members to 
pass it and pass it now. Prisons ought not to be nicer than our 
schools.
  Finally, Mr. Speaker, I think it is important to remind my colleagues 
that the bills we passed here are much more important than the abstract 
arguments about outlays and budget authority. These bills reflect our 
values, and these bills demonstrate what our priorities are.

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