[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 146 (2000), Part 6]
[House]
[Pages 8955-8962]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



               THE MILLION MOM MARCH AND SETTING AGENDAS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Shimkus). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of January 6, 1999, the gentleman from New York (Mr. Owens) is 
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
  Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, I would like to begin by congratulating the 
Million Mom March. The Million Mom March took place on May 14. I think 
the moms marching had a lot to do with our agenda here in Congress 
today and tomorrow and our agenda for the rest of the year. I just hope 
that the moms realize that their power, the power of mothers marching, 
is great enough to have an impact and an influence on what we do here, 
in many ways.
  Their immediate objective was gun control, but there are many other 
items that I would like to see placed on their agenda. I would like to 
see the mothers set the agenda for what is going to happen here in 
Washington in the next few months.
  Mr. Speaker, there is a secret, almost a secret, that nobody wants to 
talk about that I think the million moms and the fathers too ought to 
be concerned with and should be discussing. Fathers as well as mothers, 
and all of us, are concerned about the future and concerned about the 
Nation's future as it impacts upon our immediate children and our 
grandchildren. We want to see a greater America, we want to see a 
better world, and we have a golden opportunity here in this United 
States of America right now with the surplus of $2 trillion over the 
next 10 years as a possibility. It is possible that we may have a 
surplus of $2 trillion.

[[Page 8956]]

  This year's surplus is definitely, by the most conservative estimate, 
going to be about $200 billion, $200 billion this year, and it will 
probably be no less than $200 billion for the next 10 years. I think 
the million moms marching ought to know about that. I think they ought 
to be involved in a discussion of what happens with that $2 trillion 
over the next 10 years to impact upon their lives and their children's 
lives.
  I think the most comprehensive, the longest and the loudest 
discussion ever held in the history of our democracy should focus on 
this window of opportunity that we have at this point. We started the 
debate today on permanent trade with China. The relationship with China 
is relevant here in terms of the fact that some of us believe that the 
trade with China agreement will have a great impact on the working 
families of America because it is going to take away many of the jobs 
that people at the lower levels have.
  Trade with China is definitely going to be as bad or far worse than 
the trade agreement with Mexico, which immediately began to drain away 
certain manufacturing jobs. China is so much bigger. China's economy is 
controlled and manipulated, and the likely danger that our economy will 
be greatly impacted by China is even greater than anything that 
happened in the case of Mexican cheap labor destroying jobs in America.
  The question is, what does all this have to do with the million moms 
marching? What does it have to do with the setting of the agenda here 
in this Capitol for the next few months? What does it have to do with 
the $2 trillion surplus we expect over the next 10 years? It all comes 
together because, as we lose those jobs that are going to fly away to 
China, inevitably corporations will pick up and they will go locate 
plants where the cheapest labor market is, where there are 25-cent-an-
hour workers in China, where in some cases they use prison labor.
  Already our economy and our stores are flooded with goods from China 
because everybody can make a killing. Companies can go and manufacture 
goods at dirt cheap prices and then come back into our advanced economy 
and sell them at very high prices, relatively speaking, and make a big 
profit. So no industry, no corporation is going to back away from the 
opportunity to make these big profits. They will be chasing dollars at 
the expense of the loss of many jobs.
  So, what is one of the possible answers to the problem that will be 
created if the people who want to pass the trade bill prevail, and the 
rumor is that they have enough votes and they will probably prevail 
tomorrow and there will be a China trade agreement? There will be a 
huge loss of jobs. A country that has 1.2 billion people has a lot of 
customers, they say, and they want to get those customers. But before 
they get to the customers, they have a lot of workers who need jobs and 
who will work for almost nothing and will undercut the workers here in 
this country.
  So one possible answer immediately is in the same breath that as we 
create jobs in China, as we lose jobs here and create more jobs in 
China, let us respond to the argument that so many of the proponents of 
the China trade bill have made, and that is that, yes, we will lose 
jobs in manufacturing; yes, we will lose jobs at the lower level of the 
economy, but we will gain tremendous number of jobs and sales in the 
high-tech industry. We are going to take off where a new boom, a new 
surge in the sale of PCs and in the sale of services to established Web 
sites and all of the telecommunications, high-tech technology that is 
necessary. We will be the suppliers of that.
  It may be true that for a while there will be this great surge of 
need in the Chinese economy for American know-how and for American 
high-tech machinery. If that is the case, then there will be jobs 
created in America in the high-tech area. At the same time we are 
making a trade agreement, then let us guarantee that the thousands and 
thousands of workers who are going to lose jobs are also given an 
opportunity to get some training in these high-tech areas. Let them 
learn how to be the people who hook up the technology. Some might even 
travel to China. Let them learn how to manufacture the gadgets and the 
gears and the switches and the lines that might require skills that are 
different from the manufacturing skills that the people who make cars 
have, or the people who make refrigerators, or the various consumer 
products that are going to now be made in China. Let the people who 
lose the jobs making those products begin to make the products for the 
high-tech revolution. They cannot do it without some more training. 
They need training immediately.
  I do not know of any place where there is any legislation on the 
drawing board which says we are going to have a massive emergency 
training program for workers who lose their jobs as a result of the 
China trade bill passing. In the long run, however, we do talk and have 
talked a great deal about revamping our school system, improving the 
way we educate young people, so that in the long run the young people 
who are in school now will get an education which allows them to fill 
those high-tech jobs. And at least the China trade bill will not take 
away jobs in the future because the young people will be able and 
capable of stepping out of school and commanding the jobs that do exist 
in the high-tech industry.
  They predict that there may be as many as 1.5 million job vacancies 
in the high-tech industry in the next 5 years because of the fact that 
we are not training enough people in computer sciences and related 
sciences in our colleges so that vacancies are going to be there. So 
our schools, then, must rise to meet the occasion and prepare 
youngsters for these guaranteed jobs.
  In the absence of any special education effort, what we are doing is 
going abroad. And one item that is going to be on the agenda in this 
Congress in the next few weeks is the H-1B program. The H-1B section of 
the immigration law allows us to bring in foreigners to fill the 
vacancies that are created in the high-tech industry. And primarily 
that is the target. They are not bringing in these people for anything 
else. The great need is in the high-tech industry, information 
technology industry. So what we did not train our youngsters for in the 
past, will now be taken care of by foreigners. And that will keep 
going.
  How are we going to deal with the vacuum created by the movement of 
manufacturing jobs to China if the only source of the manpower to fill 
the jobs that do exist is going to be the foreign countries, foreign 
countries who have information technology expertise and will send the 
personnel here?
  Weaving this story together may, at the beginning, sound very 
complicated, but it really is not. It is quite simple. Mothers should 
be aware of the fact that the best way they can take care of their 
children is to have an impact on the policies that are made here in 
Washington, on the bills and the legislation that come to this floor. 
Mothers should have an impact.
  I congratulate the mothers for understanding the relationship between 
their marching and the possibility of making their schools safer, of 
making their neighborhoods safer, of ridding our society slowly of a 
menace that has grown over the years because mothers have not been 
active in attempting to end that menace. We have more than 200 million 
guns in our society. Those guns out there are menacing. Those guns out 
there represent danger to our children. They recognize that, and their 
immediate focus in marching here on May 14, Mother's Day, was to deal 
with the menace of the gun, the immediate threat to the lives of 
children.
  I think that is appropriate, and I congratulate them for focusing on 
something very concrete. It is possible to get some results if the 
mothers stay organized. It is possible we will get some basic 
legislation passed which will make the world of our children safer with 
respect to guns. We have very limited objectives this year, and we 
ought to be able to meet those objectives.
  But beyond that, mothers need to set a larger agenda. I think that 
The New York Times certainly had it right when they said that perhaps 
the best fate for

[[Page 8957]]

the holiday, Mother's Day, would be to make Mother's Day again a day of 
open activism as they did on this May 14. Mother's Day has an 
interesting history, a very interesting history.
  People say it is very unusual, very nontraditional, very unorthodox 
to have mothers marching on Mother's Day, May 14. In my community, 
there were large numbers of mothers who thought it was an insult. We 
did have one bus load of mothers who came from my district. They 
actually left the city from my office, and they were mothers mostly of 
children who had been injured or killed by guns. There were large 
numbers of other mothers who were really more traditionalist and said, 
no, I am not ready yet.
  But I think I would urge all mothers to rethink the possibility that 
Mother's Day should be a day of activism, and maybe fathers should take 
note too and make Father's Day a day of activism. If we care about the 
next generation, our children, our grandchildren, one of the ways we 
should express our concern for their survival is to try harder to have 
an impact on what happens in our government.
  Now, let me just read from The New York Times editorial on May 14, 
which I thought was very appropriate, where they applauded the activism 
on Mother's Day. ``No matter how simple it looks, Mother's Day is a 
complicated holiday. It has its roots in mid-19th century women's 
activism, championed first in 1858 by Anna Reeves Jarvis and then in 
1872 by Julia Ward Howe. Their causes, honored locally on various 
mother's days in mid-spring, were improved sanitation, first aid, and 
world peace.

                              {time}  2030

  ``But activism is about the last thing Mother's Day had begun to call 
to mind in the 20th century. Woodrow Wilson proclaimed the first 
official Mother's Day on May 8, 1914, fulfilling a joint resolution of 
Congress that authorized the President to proclaim the second Sunday in 
May as Mother's Day and to request a flying of the American flag as a 
token of that fact. The patriotism has filtered out of Mother's Day 
over the past 86 years, making it hard to think of this holiday as an 
acknowledgment, as the joint resolution put it, of the service rendered 
in the United States by the American mother.''
  Continuing to read from the New York Times editorial of May 14: ``The 
day has instead been formalized, commercially into a festival of 
flowers and feminine gifts and perhaps a few minutes of hard-earned 
leisure. But it has also been informalized, made a more intimate and 
less civic display of feeling. There is something a little ambivalent, 
a little archaic, about the formulaic ways we celebrate this day, if 
only because the status of mothers has never been more complex.
  ``In 1914, the mother's service outside the home was mainly 
inferential. The American mother, Congress wrote at that time, is doing 
so much for the home, for moral uplift and religion, hence so much for 
good government and good humanity. There is a lot in that word `hence.' 
But these days there is no inference about it at all. Mothers are as 
likely to work in government as they are in the home.
  ``Perhaps the best fate for this holiday would be to make it again a 
day of open activism, as it was for the woman marching on behalf of gun 
control in many cities across this country today. Not everyone believes 
as Julia Ward Howe did, that if mothers could only come together 
somehow, world peace would ensue. But the second Sunday of every May 
could come to symbolize a powerful reality of contemporary American 
politics. Women united behind a cause can be a powerful force for 
progressive social policies, better child care, broader health coverage 
and fully equal opportunity for them and their children.'' That was the 
New York Times editorial of May 14, the year 2000.
  Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to enter the statement in its 
entirety in the Record.

                [From the New York Times, May 14, 2000]

                        Activism on Mother's Day

       No matter how simple it looks, Mother's Day is a 
     complicated holiday. It has its roots in mid-19th-century 
     women's activism, championed first in 1858 by Anna Reeves 
     Jarvis and then in 1872 by Julia Ward Howe. Their causes, 
     honored locally on various mother's days in mid-spring, were 
     improved sanitation, first aid and world peace. But activism 
     is about the last thing Mother's Day called to mind in the 
     20th century.
       Woodrow Wilson proclaimed the first official Mother's Day 
     on May 8, 1914, fulfilling a joint resolution of Congress 
     that authorized the president to proclaim the second Sunday 
     in May as Mother's Day and to request the flying of the 
     American flag as a token of that fact. The patriotism has 
     filtered out of Mother's Day over the past 86 years, making 
     it hard to think of this holiday as an acknowledgment, as the 
     joint resolution put it, of ``the service rendered the United 
     States by the American mother.''
       The day has instead been formalized, commercially, into a 
     festival of flowers and feminine gifts and, perhaps, a few 
     minutes of hard-earned leisure. But it has also been 
     informalized, made a more intimate and less civic display of 
     feeling.
       There is something a little ambivalent, a little archaic, 
     about the formulaic ways we celebrate this day, if only 
     because the status of mothers has never been more complex. In 
     1914, a mother's service outside the home was mainly 
     inferential. ``The American mother,'' Congress wrote, ``is 
     doing so much for the home, for moral uplift, and religion, 
     hence so much for good government and humanity.'' There is a 
     lot in that one word ``hence.'' But these days there is no 
     inference about it at all. Mothers are as likely to work in 
     good government as they are in the home.
       Perhaps the best fate for this holiday would be to make it, 
     again, a day of open activism, as it is for the women 
     marching on behalf of gun control in many cities across the 
     country today. Not everyone believes, as Julia Ward Howe did, 
     that if mothers could only come together somehow, world peace 
     would ensue. But the second Sunday of every May could come to 
     symbolize a powerful reality of contemporary American 
     politics. Women united behind a cause can be a powerful force 
     for progressive social policies, better child care, broader 
     health coverage and fully equal opportunity for them and 
     their children.

  Mr. Speaker, there is a second editorial that was done the next day 
by The New York Times, and it reads as follows: ``The surge of energy 
was palpable yesterday as hundreds of thousands of marchers gathered on 
the Mall in Washington to demand stiffer gun control measures, and 
additional crowds joined in the demonstration at other sites around the 
country.
  ``The event may not have reached the million mom goal set by some 
alliteration-loving promoters, but the turnout, estimated at more than 
750,000, was nonetheless impressive, especially on a day traditionally 
devoted to family gatherings. There is a real hope that the seed 
planted by this march could blossom into a movement that could change 
the dynamics of the national struggle to achieve sensible gun 
control.''
  I am quoting from The New York Times editorial. I am not going to 
read the entire editorial, but another section of it reads as follows: 
``The marchers offered a sound agenda ranging from the registration of 
all handguns and the licensing of all handgun owners to mandatory 
safety locks and full background checks before all gun sales.''
  This is a very limited, very practical, very reasonable agenda of the 
mothers who came here on May 14. They are asking for very little. I 
think it is possible that if they still organize they could gain this. 
I will just reread what can be the summary of what they came for: ``The 
marchers offered a sound agenda, ranging from the registration of all 
handguns and the licensing of all handgun owners to mandatory safety 
locks and full background checks before all gun sales. That is an 
agenda that mothers set to make their children safer in a very 
immediate and practical way.''
  The editorial of the New York Times on May 15, the day after the 
march ends as follows: ``It is not yet clear how the gun control issue 
will play out politically. Even as mothers were mobilizing for their 
march, a new poll showed that the gender gap on guns is growing with 
men more apt to support the rights of gun owners and women more 
interested in gun restrictions. The challenge for the marchers will be 
to turn the event into a sustained political movement.
  ``Many speakers held this as a historical turning point in the gun 
control struggle, but it will only become so if the marchers keep up 
the pressure on

[[Page 8958]]

Congress to pass the modest but useful gun control measures that remain 
blocked in a conference committee and on candidates running in the fall 
elections to support strict gun control laws.
  ``The hands that rock the Nation's cradles have the potential to rock 
its political institutions, but only if they keep rocking hard.'' That 
is the conclusion of the New York Times May 15 editorial on the day 
after the Million Moms March. The hands that rock the Nation's cradles 
have the potential to rock its political institutions, but only if they 
keep rocking hard.
  Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to submit the entirety of the 
New York Times editorial of May 15 into the Record.

                [From the New York Times, May 15, 2000]

                     The Power of Mothers Marching

       The surge of energy was palpable yesterday as hundreds of 
     thousands of marchers gathered on the Mall in Washington to 
     demand stiffer gun control measures--and additional crowds 
     joined in the demonstration at other sites around the 
     country. The event may not have reached the ``million mom'' 
     goal set by some alliteration-loving promoters, but the 
     turnout--estimated at more than 750,000 by the organizers--
     was nonetheless impressive, especially on a day traditionally 
     devoted to family gatherings. There is real hope that the 
     seed planted by this march could blossom into a movement that 
     could change the dynamics of the national struggle to achieve 
     sensible gun control.
       That possibility clearly has the National Rifle Association 
     running scared. It tried to neutralize the impact of the 
     march in advance with advertisements in print and broadcast 
     media denigrating the event and offering its own tepid 
     alternative, a program to teach gun safety in every 
     elementary school classroom in America. A full-page N.R.A. ad 
     in The Times on Friday derided the march as ``a political 
     agenda masquerading as motherhood'' and called it ``shameful 
     to seize a cherished holiday for political advantage.'' That 
     seemed a disingenuous complaint from an organization that 
     regularly uses its lavish campaign contributions to seize the 
     political process and thwart the will of the American people.
       The marchers offered a sound agenda, ranging from the 
     registration of all handguns and the licensing of all handgun 
     owners to mandatory safety locks and full background checks 
     before all gun sales. By contrast, the solutions offered by 
     the N.R.A. were laughably insufficient--safety education in 
     the elementary schools, better parenting and better 
     enforcement of existing laws, riddled as they are with 
     loopholes. Those are all laudable goals but would not come 
     close to stemming the epidemic of gun violence.
       Even worse ideas came from some participants in a 
     countermarch staged by gun advocates. They argued for the 
     arming of teachers and other citizens and the right to carry 
     concealed weapons on the theory that if more of the ``good'' 
     people owned guns for self-protection, the ``bad'' people 
     would be deterred from attacking them. That sounded more like 
     a recipe for shootouts than for crime control.
       It is not yet clear how the gun control issue will play out 
     politically. Even as the mothers were mobilizing for their 
     march, a new poll showed that the gender gap on guns is 
     growing, with men more apt to support the rights of gun 
     owners and women more interested in gun restrictions. The 
     challenge for the marchers will be to turn the event into a 
     sustained political movement. Many speakers hailed this as a 
     historic turning point in the gun control struggle, but it 
     will only become so if the marchers keep up the pressure--on 
     Congress to pass the modest but useful gun control measures 
     that remain blocked in a conference committee, and on 
     candidates running in the fall elections to support strict 
     gun control laws. The hands that rock the nation's cradles 
     have the potential to rock its political institutions--but 
     only if they keep rocking hard.

  Mr. Speaker, as my colleagues can see, I want to go further than gun 
control. I think that the practical objectives of the Million Moms 
March on May 14 are realizable. I think they should strive to see those 
objectives, since they are so limited, realized this year. Why not? 
They are very modest goals. I would like to appeal, however, to the 
million moms and all the moms and moms organizations everywhere to go 
further and set a larger agenda, beyond gun control, to make your 
children safe in this world, beyond gun control to guarantee that your 
children have a reasonable opportunity to pursue happiness. It will 
have the tools and the capability to be employed in the industries that 
are going to be very complex and demanding in the future with respect 
to training and intellectual capabilities.
  Let us set the agenda so that they have a chance. Let us set the 
agenda so that at a point in history where there is a $2 trillion 
surplus anticipated over a 10-year period that $2 trillion surplus is 
not squandered by the traditional conventional wisdom that prevails 
here in Washington.
  I am not going to set female reasoning up against male reasoning. I 
know there was a recent article in the New York Times that talked about 
the fact that women may have a chemical hormone that makes them more 
nurturing; and they may be more useful to civilization, because their 
immediate response to danger and response to challenges to the survival 
of themselves and their children is to close ranks and to organize and 
to help each other.
  I am not going to get into that kind of scientific basis that is 
being attempted to establish the fact that mothers are more suitable 
for maintaining our civilization and that women are more suitable for 
maintaining our civilization. Now men, I would like to appeal to men to 
march also, since I was very much impressed, I was down here for the 
Million Moms March, very impressed at the way that they turned this 
traditional holiday into a temporary movement, and I was very impressed 
by the editorials in The New York Times that call for the mothers to 
make the temporary movement a permanent movement.
  I only say that the permanent movement should set a larger agenda; 
let the mothers set the agenda for Washington. Let the mothers set the 
agenda for the House of Representatives, for the Congress. Let the 
mothers set the agenda for the end game negotiations that take place 
every budget year at the White House. There is going to be an end game 
negotiation where the decisions will be made about how to spend some of 
that surplus. Nobody wants to talk about it now.
  The Committee on Appropriations process is moving forward with no 
discussion of the surplus. They are acting as if we are still in a 
period of desperate deficits. The Committee on Appropriations and the 
authorizing committees act that way in all cases, except one. Mothers 
need to know that, last week, last week mothers, we passed a defense 
authorization bill which was $309.9 billion. The authorization bill 
already was $21.1 billion greater than the amount spent for the last 
year on defense. However, the Republican majority added an additional 
$4.5 billion to the bill.
  So if you want to know where the surplus is likely to go, if you want 
to know what the temperament is and what the likely manner in which it 
will be wasted, you watch the defense budget. There is no great war on 
right now. There is no evil empire to defend ourselves against, but it 
is the first place the extra money has been utilized.
  H.R. 4205, the defense authorization bill, increases the defense 
budget to $309.9 billion. If we do not have the debate, if you are not 
aware throughout the entire country that there is a window of 
opportunity that right now we have an opportunity to use revenue that 
is available in constructive ways, I do not say that the defense 
authorizations are not constructive, I just think they have enough 
money already before the additional amounts were added.
  There is plenty of money to meet the agenda that the defense and 
military establishment have set, the legitimate agenda. I would like to 
see them expand the agenda and use some of the tremendous resources of 
the defense and military establishment to do more to help with disaster 
relief, disaster relief in this country, disaster relief anywhere in 
the world. We have this huge apparatus of equipment and men and know-
how and I think we ought to expand the mission of the defense to be a 
mission to help with natural disasters throughout the world.
  We can spend the money well there, but even then they have too much 
money. At the same time that they are authorizing an additional amount 
for defense, the Republican majority and the appropriation committees 
have led the fight to cut education drastically. Education has been 
cut, despite the fact that we no longer have a desperate deficit.

[[Page 8959]]

  They cannot argue, as they argued under the Newt Gingrich Contract 
with America, that they had to cut school lunches and they had to 
destroy the Department of Education, they had to cut Head Start, they 
had to deny increases in higher education grants, because we had a 
deficit, the country was on the verge of bankruptcy. That was the 
illusion that they painted. That was the picture that they painted.
  The country is not on the verge of bankruptcy now. So why are the 
Republicans leading these tremendous cuts in education? Why at a time 
when we are opening trade with China, trade with China, which will draw 
out our manufacturing jobs, the jobs for entry-level persons who do not 
have an education? Why at a time like this are we going to cut back on 
the education budget? Yes, it is true the Federal Government only gives 
a small portion.
  It provides a small portion of the education budget. Most of the 
education budget is provided by the States and by the localities, but 
the Federal Government's 7 percent or 8 percent is a key amount, and 
the fact that it is only 7 percent or 8 percent is unfortunate. There 
is no reason why it could not be larger.
  The dogma has been over the years that the Federal Government should 
not spend more money for education, because we want to keep our schools 
under local and State control. But if there is only a 7 percent 
investment in the schools, there is certainly no way you are going to 
take over the schools. And if we increase the 7 percent investment from 
the Federal level to 25 percent, there still is only a 25 percent 
power, 25 percent of the power, the other 75 percent of the power would 
still be at the local and State level.
  What is this great myth that more State, more Federal money would 
mean more Federal control? We need the money from the Federal 
Government to revamp our schools now. The window of opportunity is now 
while we have this great Federal surplus. There are some States that 
have some surplus. There are some cities that have some surplus, but 
there is no surplus like the tremendous surplus that is being projected 
over the 10 years for the Federal Government.
  There is no place where we are going to find over the next 10 years a 
projection of sums like $2 trillion, this year, $200 billion. So I 
think the mothers who marched here ought to know and ought to join the 
debate.

                              {time}  2045

  Mothers, keep the pressure on for gun control, but, mothers, if you 
want to save your children and want to allow them to join the 21st 
century revolution which moves into a kind of a cyber-civilization, a 
digital world, where you have to have special skills, if you want all 
the children to be able to keep up with the rapid changes in our 
digital society, then we have got to have the education revamping now. 
We have to have the reform in education now. We need the computers in 
the schools now. We need the teachers that know how to use computers to 
teach. We need many of the items that were cut by the Republican 
majority in the Committee on Appropriations.
  At this point, I would like to read portions of a letter that was 
submitted from the National Education Association. It is headed by 
Robert Chase, who I heard speak a few months ago, and he talked about 
the fact that our schools have a great deal of needs operationally, but 
there are even greater needs in terms of the infrastructure. Our school 
buildings, our school equipment, our laboratories, there is a great 
need for an investment there.
  I want to congratulate Mr. Chase and the National Education 
Association, because following their statement of that need, they went 
out and they did an in-depth study, a thorough study from State to 
State of what the needs were for our school infrastructure. 
Infrastructure means buildings, it means gyms, it means laboratories 
and cafeterias, it means classroom space. That is what infrastructure 
means. In addition to infrastructure, they also studied our technology 
needs in the schools, computers and the hookups you need for the 
computers in terms of wiring, et cetera.
  So the National Education Association is certainly qualified and has 
earned the right to criticize the recent cuts that the Committee on 
Appropriations has made in the education bill. Let us remember now that 
the majority party, the Republican majority, is the same party which 6 
years ago proposed that we abolish the Department of Education. They 
proposed that we cut Head Start, they proposed that we cut school 
lunches. They are not as bold and as open and honest in their assault 
on education now as they were 6 years ago, but here is an assault.
  In this letter from the NEA, it states that the $1.3 billion in 
emergency grant and loan programs proposed by the President for school 
repairs has been cut from the budget, cut from the appropriations. They 
did not put one penny in to replace that. There is no school 
modernization and construction money in the bill that is passed out of 
the Committee on Appropriations, the subcommittee, by the Republican 
majority.
  The possibility of reducing class sizes is cut down drastically when 
you do not have the classrooms, when you do not have the infrastructure 
improvements. The NEA study estimates that there are $268 billion in 
unmet school infrastructure needs. Now, we are talking about 
infrastructure, buildings, that are needed to service the enrollment 
right now. The population of the schools right now is being made to 
operate in inadequate facilities. We are not talking about projections 
over the next 10 years of enrollment, we are talking about the needs 
right now. $268 billion is needed, according to the National Education 
Association study, yet, the cuts that were made by the Subcommittee on 
Appropriations for education have wiped out any possibility of even 
entering $1.3 billion for emergency repairs.
  They have eliminated the Class Size Reduction Program, which was 
going forward without the extra classrooms. We started that last year 
by appropriating money for additional teachers. The assumption is if 
you have additional teachers, the ratio of pupils to teachers will be 
smaller in each class.
  The problem is that if you do not have the classrooms, you can give 
money for more teachers, but there is no way to reduce the class size. 
In the case of New York City and a few other places across the country, 
they have put an additional teacher in the classroom. When you have 
young children in the elementary grades, a teacher at one end of the 
room and a teacher at the other end of the room trying to teach 2 
different classes is definitely an adventure slated to not be 
successful.
  Various other adaptations of the teaching takes place when you do not 
have the classroom space. But, nevertheless, I certainly support the 
program to have more teachers.
  We wanted to put 100,000 new teachers in our classrooms over a 3- or 
4-year period. The successful class size reduction program has already 
helped schools to hire 29,000 highly qualified new teachers. Just last 
November, Congress agreed on a bipartisan basis to continue and 
strengthen this critical program as part of the consolidated fiscal 
year 2000 appropriations bill. Elimination of targeted funds for class 
size reduction will not only jeopardize the gains already realized, but 
will prevent the schools from hiring an additional 20,000 qualified 
teachers to serve another 2.9 million children. We urge the committee 
to restore funding for this critical program.
  The Teacher Empowerment Act Block Grant, the subcommittee bill 
provides for $1.7 billion for a block grant consolidating the 
Eisenhower Professional Class Reduction Program. Because the bill 
provides only a minimal increase above the current funding, schools 
seeking to hire additional teachers to reduce class size will have to 
do so at the expense of programs to recruit and train teachers. In 
other words, the Republican majority has folded in other programs into 
the money and into the program that was designed to get additional 
teachers.
  Insufficient funding for the teacher quality programs, they have cut 
that also. They have frozen the funds for the

[[Page 8960]]

critical Title I programs. The subcommittee bill not only eliminates 
targeted funding to help low-performance schools maximize student 
achievement, but the subcommittee bill denies additional math and 
reading services to 260,000 disadvantaged children.
  Just last fall, the House passed a bipartisan Student Results Act 
setting the Title I authorization level at $9.85 billion, yet the 
subcommittee bill provides almost $2 billion below this level, 
something like $7.8 billion. So there is another cut in a critical 
program.
  There is no program that has been more critical than Title I, which 
is a basic thrust of the Federal Government in elementary and secondary 
education. Title I provides funds to schools where the poorest 
youngsters are attending, and it is designed to enhance the school 
program with extra services.
  They have eliminated $20 million for elementary school councils, 
frozen funds for bilingual school programs, refused to give additional 
funding for Head Start. All of this adds up to a hostile Republican 
majority attacking education again through the budget action. All of 
this is an indication that there is no concern about the fact that we 
have a surplus, a $2 trillion surplus over a 10-year period.
  We are not going to spend the money on education if we continue to 
follow the leadership of the Subcommittee on Education which passed out 
this appropriations bill. They refused to discuss the surplus. But the 
million moms out there who marched on March 14 ought to wake up and ask 
the question, what are you going to do with the surplus? And the second 
question is, what are you going to do about education with the surplus?
  There is no reason why we cannot simplify matters. I think we should 
make it easy on ourselves and dedicate 10 percent of the surplus, no 
matter what it is. If it goes down, then it is 10 percent of whatever 
that is; if it goes up, it is 10 percent of that. Ten percent of the 
surplus over the next 10 years ought to be dedicated to education, to 
educational improvements. Half of it can go in the form of the 
improvement of the infrastructure for schools all across America; the 
other half can go to other reforms. The debate about what the other 
reforms should be might continue for some time, but the money would be 
there when we reach consensus on programs that do work.
  We know that there are some programs that do work. Head Start works. 
We know that. The TRIO programs work; we know that. There are a number 
of different programs that we agree work. They should be the recipients 
of the increased funding first. Then additional programs that are 
designated as programs that work can be funded also out of the second 
half of the 10 percent of the surplus.
  What is 10 percent of the surplus this year? It would mean $20 
billion; $20 billion into education this year. $10 billion of that goes 
toward school construction and infrastructure improvement. Then you 
would you have $10 billion left for other reforms and education 
improvements.
  I am certain that there are many who dismiss this proposal right away 
as being too ambitious, out of harmony with what is practical and 
acceptable, but those of us who are Members of Congress know better. We 
authorized a $218 billion program for a 6-year program for highways 
just a year ago, so $218 billion for highways over a 6-year period was 
not unthinkable. We can think big when it is necessary.
  We have just increased the defense budget, as I said before, 
increased it to $309.9 billion. Just as an afterthought, we added $4.5 
billion to last year's budget. The President had already added $21 
billion to it. So we think big, and we think in the billions. There is 
no reason why we cannot think about $20 billion for education 
improvements in one year, especially if half of that goes toward 
construction.
  School construction and infrastructure expenditures for wiring 
schools, for technology, et cetera, those are items which do not 
involve interference by the Federal Government in the operation of a 
local school. Those are capital budget items. The Federal Government 
gives the money, let us do the construction, let us revamp the schools, 
repair those schools, let us wire the schools so they can have Internet 
access, let us buy computers, let us do the capital improvements 
necessary, and then the Federal Government can get out. The operation 
of the school goes on, and you actually free up additional dollars so 
that the State and the Federal Government dollars, more of them can be 
spent on operational activities instead of capital budget activities.
  That is a simple formula. The amount of money spent for construction 
is no threat to local control at all. It is an easy way to relieve the 
burden at the local level.
  If these amounts seem too great, let me just go back for a moment to 
the National Education Association study. The National Education 
Association study is very revealing because they conclude, as I said 
before, that we need $253.8 billion, about $254 billion, for 
infrastructure other than technology. They conclude that just for 
technology, we need $53 billion additional. They have mapped it out 
quite thoroughly. Unmet needs, school modernization funding, totals, 
when you add technology and infrastructure together, $307.6 billion. 
They break it down in two areas, school infrastructure and technology.
  School infrastructure means deferred maintenance, take care of that, 
new construction, renovation, retrofitting, additions to existing 
facilities, major improvements. The results would be that we would have 
to bring it up to par, spend that $254 billion that I spoke about.
  Educational technology, they define that. A comprehensive definition 
of educational technology according to the NEA study is multimedia 
computers, peripherals, software, connectivity, networks, technology 
infrastructure, equipment, maintenance and repair, professional 
development and support.

                              {time}  2100

  All of that goes into the physical needs for technology. They do not 
talk about training teachers. That was a different bill, and we still 
need that.
  What does it all add up to in terms of the States? They break it down 
according to the needs of each State. One might be interested to know 
that at the very top of the States in terms of infrastructure needs 
stands the great Empire State of New York. New York, according to the 
National Education Association study, New York's infrastructure needs 
total $47.6 billion. New York has the greatest infrastructure, they 
call it unmet needs, greater modernization of unmet needs in New York, 
the infrastructure is $47.6 billion, technology is $3 billion.
  According to the survey and the standards supplied by the National 
Education Association, the total need in New York is $50.6 billion to 
bring their schools up to par, to meet the needs of the 21st century in 
infrastructure and technology combined. New York is so bad off, they 
are in such terrible shape, that the second State in terms of need is 
about half that amount.
  Now, California is the second State in terms of infrastructure need, 
technology need. California is number two. Even though California has a 
much larger population, their infrastructure need is only $22 billion, 
not even half of New York State's $47.6 billion. Their technology needs 
are greater because New York, according to the survey, has done more in 
terms of computerization than California, so the technology needs of 
California are $10 billion, for a total of $32,901,000 that California 
needs versus New York's $50,675,000. I am talking big figures, these 
are big numbers. Let us not run away from them.
  Do we know the cost of one nuclear aircraft carrier? We do not run 
away from the cost of a nuclear aircraft carrier. It is more than $4 
billion. Do we know the cost of a Sea Wolf submarine? It used to be 
around $2.1 billion. It has probably gone up by now. In weapons 
technology, the Star Wars, the new missile defense system that we are 
going to construct, I think we added almost $6 billion more to play 
with that some more. We have spent billions of dollars over the years 
to get a missile defense against terrorism. We

[[Page 8961]]

are willing to throw away additional money on that.
  Common sense tells us that a terrorist does not need a long-range 
missile to throw a bomb into a crowded city, or to bring a bomb into a 
crowded city. There are many, many ways other than the firing of a 
long-range missile. So a system which is designed to stop long-term 
missiles where we have already spend hundreds of billions of dollars, 
we do not need to spend more billions of dollars. But my argument is 
that this is the way it will be thrown away. It will just be flushed 
down the drain, all of the surplus money, in one foolish project after 
another by policymakers who ought to know better, under pressures from 
lobbyists and from corporations and from hundreds of people who will 
make millions of dollars as a result of our wasting our money.
  The best defense for America is in brain power, developing maximum 
brain power so that when the China trade agreement begins to siphon off 
the jobs for our young people, the brain power that has been developed 
in those young people to step forward and take those high-tech jobs 
that we still have left. We do not have to bring foreigners in with an 
H 1 B program to take the jobs that our own youngsters should be 
trained for. It all comes together.
  Let the mothers set the agenda. Let the mothers have the common sense 
to do what so far the policymakers here are not willing to do. Let the 
mothers in on the discussion. Let us not keep proceeding toward 
September when the end game negotiations will take place and decisions 
will be made about what we should do with the surplus. Yes there have 
been some proposals by the President, and I support all of his 
proposals. He proposes to use some of the money to deal with the 
Medicare problems, the problems of Medicare, the possible deficit in 
Medicare in 15 or 20 years. Some of the money can be used to deal with 
that.
  The President is proposing we use some of the surplus to deal with a 
prescription drug benefit. That is one of the possibilities. Another 
possibility has been, of course, that we pay down the debt, the most 
popular one; and I am all in favor of paying down the debt. But we are 
not in a situation where all of the funds have to be used to pay down 
the debt at once. Why not invest in education, because the investment 
in education will only increase the surplus and increase the health of 
the economy.
  Mr. Speaker, there are a lot of arguments that make sense, and yes, 
they have gone forward; but suddenly there is silence about even the 
President's proposals which he made in the State of the Union address 
are not getting any great amount of discussion here on Capitol Hill. 
The Senate and the Congress are moving at this point as if there is no 
surplus. If there are discussions of a surplus, and there are, I am 
sure, they are all behind the scenes getting ready for D-Day when the 
Democratic President and the White House will have to sit down with the 
Republican-controlled Congress, and they will dole out what happens to 
portions of the surplus that they are going to spend this year.
  Mr. Speaker, it is our duty to send them a message. Public opinion is 
still vitally important. It is not as important as it used to be 
because there was a time when public opinion was used as a barometer 
for a lot of decision-making and people would say well, I have to do it 
because the public wants it. I cannot do it because the public is 
against it. Never before has public opinion been as strong as it is now 
in favor of the Federal Government providing more assistance to 
education. For the last 5 years, public opinion has told us that 
education ranks as one of the top five priorities of the public for the 
use of government money, government funds. For the last 2 years, 
education has been number one. Indisputably, this year education ranks 
as the number one priority according to the public. The polls that are 
taken by the Republicans show the same as the polls that are taken by 
the Democrats.
  Why is our leadership fully aware that education is a number one 
priority of the public refusing to respond by dedicating more of our 
resources to education? Our leaders who read these public opinion 
polls, we pay large amounts of money to pollsters to do the polls. Some 
of them come free from objective sources that have no stake in 
politics. Why are they not listened to?
  Now, we are like the Roman Empire right now in terms of the rest of 
the world. We sit on top of the world as the only superpower; and it is 
to our credit that we are a superpower not only in military terms, but 
in terms of influence of our popular culture, in terms of our 
compassion. Probably no nation can match our overall compassion when it 
comes to international emergencies. The history of defending democracy 
far from our shores is written in the blood of the young men who died 
on the beaches at Normandy and on it goes. So we have a lot to 
celebrate, and if there is any empire that exists now in the modern 
21st century, then the empire of America is one that we can be proud 
of, not an empire built on blood, but the empire can fall.
  Mr. Speaker, we are in the same pivotal position as the Roman Empire 
was. Science and technology, military might has brought us to this 
point. But let us remember, at the same time Roman technology and the 
Roman engineers and the Roman scientists were at their height, they 
invented concrete. They built magnificent structures. They were way 
ahead of the rest of the world at that time.
  At the same time the Roman engineers and the scientists and the 
craftsmen were doing such great work, the Roman politicians were so 
backward that they were feeding the Christians to the lions in the 
colosseum. The engineers built a magnificent colosseum, but the Roman 
politicians determined who died, who was fed to the lions. So the 
savagery and the backwardness of the politicians, of the policymakers, 
of the people in charge was the beginning of the downfall of Rome.
  Mr. Speaker, we have so much going for us economically, 
scientifically, militarily. Why is it that we cannot make decisions in 
this case in response to our own electorate, in response to the mothers 
and fathers out there who answer the polls? The pollsters tell us they 
want more money spent for education. When they questioned the people 
more closely within the category of education, they said they want us 
to fix up the schools. How much more information do we need? How much 
more instruction from the people do we need?
  Mr. Speaker, there is a stubbornness which is dangerous. There is a 
stubbornness which is deadly. There is a stubbornness which we see in 
the figures related to gun control. We are a Nation of savages when it 
comes to the number of people who die from gunshot wounds every year. 
Compared to the other industrialized nations, Germany, Japan, France, 
we have 100 times more people dying from guns, being killed by guns. No 
other nation allows 200 million guns to circulate in their society. The 
mothers were late, the mothers were late, but at least they are there 
on gun control.
  There are other kinds of savage acts that are taking place that need 
to be challenged. There was a book written called Savage Inequity, 
which was a book describing the way the school resources are allocated 
in New York City. They compared the best schools in certain 
neighborhoods with the worst schools in other neighborhoods. I am 
sorry, it was not just New York City, it was other cities as well. They 
called it savage inequities in the way we are educating our children. 
That was almost 20 years ago. The savage inequities in the way we 
allocate our resources for education have gotten worse, not better. Now 
we have the resources. We have a $200 billion surplus this year, and 
over a 10-year period, a $2 trillion surplus. Why not end the savage 
inequities? Why not end the savage inequities? Do we need the mothers 
to come here and tell us what to do?
  I think in 1990, March 27, 1990, I made a speech on the floor of this 
House which was called, ``Keeping Our Eyes on the Real Prize: The Child 
Care Bill.'' At that time we were considering a bill for child care, 
and again, we were nickel and diming the situation, looking at

[[Page 8962]]

ways in which to cut pennies from the program at the same time the 
savings and loan swindle was raging. Billions of dollars were going 
down the drain from the taxpayers to take care of the crooked savings 
and loan swindles and deals, and we were nickel and diming the child 
care program.
  There was a meeting held here, I will not go into the details of that 
meeting, and Marian Wright Edleman was invited to that meeting. She is 
the head of the Children's Defense Fund. The discussion that took place 
at that meeting and the way in which they responded to her, the 
negative way in which many of the persons at that meeting, Congress 
persons, responded to her simple plea for more money for child care 
upset me to the point where I wrote my first rap poem and found that 
rap poems are a good way to get off your frustration here in this 
place.
  I called that rap poem, ``Let the Mothers Lead the Fight.'' I 
dedicated it to Marian Wright Edleman and the Children's Defense Fund. 
It is very appropriate now. The mothers are leading the fight, they 
came to Washington, and I just want to close out by reading this rap 
poem that was put into the Congressional Record on the 27th of March, 
1990. It is relevant.

       Let the mothers lead the fight; sisters snatch the future 
     from the night. Dangerous dumb males have made a mess on the 
     right, macho mad egos on the left swollen out of sight.
       Let the mothers lead the fight. Drop the linen, throw away 
     the lace, stop the murder, sweep out the arms race. Let the 
     mothers lead the fight.

                              {time}  2115

       Use your broom. Sweep out the doom. Do not fear the mouse. 
     Break out of the house. Rats are ruining the world. Let the 
     mothers lead the fight.
       Fat cats want to buy your soul. Saving the children is the 
     mother's role. Cook up some cool calculations. Look some of 
     new recipes. Lock the generals tight down in the deep freeze. 
     Let the mothers lead the fight.
       Human history is a long ugly tale. Tragedy guided by the 
     frail monster male. Babies bashed with blind bayonets. 
     Daughters trapped in slimy lust nets. Across time hear our 
     loud terrified wail. Holocaust happens when the silly males 
     fail. Let the mothers lead the fight.
       Snatch the future back from the night. Storm the conference 
     rooms with our rage. Focus x-rays on the Washington stage. 
     The world is being ruined by rats. Rescue is in the hands of 
     the cats. Scratch out their lies. Put pins in smug rat eyes. 
     Hate the fakes. Burn rhetoric at the stakes. Enough of this 
     endless bloody night. Let the mothers lead the fight.
       Holocaust happens when the silly males fail. March now to 
     end this long ugly tale. Let the mothers lead the fight.
       Stand up now to the frail monster male. Let the mothers 
     lead the fight.
       Snatch the future back from the night. Let the mothers lead 
     the fight.

                          ____________________