[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 151 (2005), Part 15]
[House]
[Pages 20750-20751]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                    UNEQUAL TAXATION HURTS EDUCATION

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Utah (Mr. Bishop) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Mr. Speaker, in a prior existence, I spent eight 
terms in the Utah legislature and 28 years as a public classroom 
teacher. And in both of these situations I recognized, first of all, as 
a legislator, the capacity of the State to fund public education. And 
as a teacher, I understood firsthand the need for adequate funding of 
education. And it seemed as if in all cases there was some gigantic 
blockage that made it impossible for those two needs to kind of 
coalesce together.
  Well, today I am a Member of this august body, I am a member of the 
Federal Government, and I have identified what I think is that blockage 
that made it so difficult to bring these two needs together. That 
blockage is we. It is the Federal Government. It is the amount of land 
that the Federal Government owns.
  Like a dam in a creek that artificially stops the flow of water in 
that creek, there is a dam on the stream of funds for kids, and that 
dam is the biggest landowner this side of the Soviet Union: we, the 
Federal Government.
  Let me try and illustrate what I am talking about. If you look at 
this first map, notice the States that are in red. These are the States 
that have the most difficult time of increasing their funds and their 
commitment to public education. And you will notice that these red 
States are predominately in the West. Twelve of the 15 States with the 
slowest growth in public education funding are actually found in the 
West. And it is a significant difference.
  These Western States have an increase of around 33 percent in their 
funding growth of education, whereas the Eastern States have a 68 
percent increase in their growth of funding.
  Let us try the next one. If you look at the kind of concept of class 
size, once again if you look at the States that are in red, those are 
the States with the largest class size. And it is a significant 
difference, as much as an average of 3 per class in each of those 
particular States.
  Let me try the third one as well. If you look at the need for public 
education funding, the States once again in red are the States where 
the need is greatest.

                              {time}  1930

  The States in red, those in the West have a 3 percent growth rate in 
their population going into public education. The East this year for 
the first time got up to zero percent. They had been the negative 
number system before that time. So why is this situation where the 
States in red, those in the West, are always having a difficult time in 
funding of education? It is not because they do not tax as much.
  If you look at the western States, their total State and local taxes 
are equal to or higher than those in the East. And it is not because 
they do not have a commitment to education. If you look at the 
percentage of their budget that goes to education, it is once again a 
higher ratio almost by .6 percent higher in the West than it is in the 
East.
  If the West is taxing as much, if they are as committed in their 
budget, if they have the need, yet their class sizes are high and they 
cannot fund the education that happens to be there, then what seems to 
be the problem? What is this obstacle?
  I happen to think that I found at least a prima facie case for a 
correlation, and it is land. If you draw an imaginary line between 
Montana to New Mexico, everything west of that line, 52 percent of that 
is owned by the Federal Government. Go east of that line and only 4 
percent is owned by the Federal Government. Let us try this next map 
and you will see what I mean.
  Everything indicated in blue is the amount of each State owned and 
controlled by the Federal Government. If you make a correlation with 
those States having a difficult time funding their educational system 
and the amount of land owned by the Federal Government, you see an 
amazing correlation. The problem lies at the feet of the Federal 
Government. The enormous amount of land owned and controlled by the 
Federal Government is the reason why those States in the West are 
basically in the back of the financial bus for education.
  Land has historically been the mechanism of funding education by 
States. The State of George in 1777 was the first State that actually 
offered opportunities to try to assist those local communities. The 
State of Connecticut actually sold 3 million acres of land to fund 
their education system. Of course it was land that was in Ohio which 
they claimed at the time; but even

[[Page 20751]]

though it was not their State, at least they were selling something. 
Close enough for government work.
  The State of Texas, you will notice, has very little land owned by 
the Federal Government because when they were admitted they kept their 
land; but immediately they set aside 17,000 acres by the State to put 
in a trust fund to pay for their public education programs and systems.
  It goes back to when Henry VIII closed down the monasteries and 
redistributed the land. One of the conditions for redistributing that 
land was they would take the traditional role of that monastery land 
and help to fund the purposes of education.
  There are four ways in which land connects with public education 
funding: through school trust lands, through royalties from land, 
through the enacting clause promised western States, and, fourth, 
through property tax.
  Let me talk about a few of those for just a moment. Property tax. It 
is obvious those in the West do not have the property to tax. If you 
were to change the situation around and simply say four percent of the 
West should be owned by the Federal Government and put the price at 
about $525 an acre, that is an average, and up it at the lowest tax 
rate, this is what the result would be. This is the amount of money 
that each western State would have additionally that they could raise 
by themselves to fund public education. My State of Utah would have 
$116 million. California, $110 million. Alaska would have $782 million, 
and that is only the portion that would deal with the funding of 
education.
  There is another concept that should be involved here. When every one 
of these western States was made a State, there was a clause in their 
enabling language that said the land should be given to the Federal 
Government until such time as the Federal Government shall dispose of 
the land.
  With that, Mr. Speaker, I will come back at another time and review 
some of these issues with you. But there is a need to recognize the 
situation in the West. And there is a need to understand that the West 
is being treated unfairly, and it goes back to this problem of public 
ownership with the West. At some time, there needs to be a solution to 
this problem.

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