[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 161 (2015), Part 8]
[Senate]
[Pages 11214-11215]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                         EXPERIMENTS IN POLICY

  Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, when I return home to my State during our 
district work periods--the time when the Senate is not in session--as I 
get a chance to travel my State, as the Presiding Officer does in his, 
I always feel as though I learn something, and I appreciate a little 
bit more how different policies can have a different impact and produce 
different results.
  As the distinguished Senator from Wisconsin was speaking about the 
importance of education, I couldn't help but think that we all agree 
with that, but we have maybe some differences on which policies 
actually produce a better result. I couldn't help but think a little 
bit about that last week as I was visiting some of the ranchers and 
folks in west Texas in the ag sector who

[[Page 11215]]

were very interested in what we were doing here in Washington on trade 
promotion authority, as we have worked with the President on a 
bipartisan basis to pass this structure by which the next big trade 
agreement--the Trans-Pacific Partnership--will be considered and voted 
on.
  I do have a bias. I think experiments in policy are best conducted at 
the State level, not at the national level. We have seen, for example, 
as the Presiding Officer knows, a huge experiment in health care reform 
where, under the Affordable Care Act, one-sixth of our economy was 
effectively commandeered by the Federal Government in a one-size-fits-
all approach. Of course, the results were much worse than even its most 
ardent opponents predicted. Many of the basic promises that were made 
in order to sell the Affordable Care Act simply aren't true. They 
haven't come to pass.
  So I think it is helpful to do just the opposite. Rather than 
experiment at the national level with what kinds of policies actually 
work, let's try these at the State level. Indeed, on the matter of 
trade, I would say I come from a State that is the No. 1 exporting 
State in the country, and that is one reason why our economy grew last 
year--2014--at 5.2 percent. The economy across the United States grew 
at 2.2 percent. There are a lot of reasons for that difference, but 
don't we think it would make some people curious about whether there 
were actually policies or practices at the State level that produced a 
better result--a growing economy with rising wages and more jobs?
  This isn't just me being proud of where I come from. I guess people 
are accustomed to Texans being proud of their State and bragging about 
it. That is just kind of who we are, and we accept that. But this is 
more than that. This is talking about the policies that actually work, 
that have been embraced and implemented here at the national level, 
once tested at the State level--we could actually see a better outcome 
for all of America.
  For example, Texas farmers and ranchers know from our experience in 
Texas that trade is a good thing. As we begin to explain and explore 
the importance of trade promotion authority, the idea that we comprise 
roughly 5 percent of the world's population--in other words, 95 percent 
of the world's population is beyond our shores but we represent 20 
percent of the world's purchasing power--why wouldn't we want to open 
up our goods and services and the things we grow and make to these 
markets abroad so that more people can buy the things we grow and raise 
and what we make?
  I wish to speak about another innovation or at least another practice 
at the State level that has had an impact on the quality of education 
at the State level. As we continue the discussion of the Every Child 
Achieves Act--legislation that will hopefully help improve the results 
for 50 million children--I am glad we will be bringing another tried-
and-true example of what has happened at the State level to the 
national level.
  I was happy to cosponsor with the senior Senator from Virginia an 
amendment which takes into account the commonsense purpose of 
encouraging the States to conduct efficiency reviews of school 
districts and campuses to make sure Federal dollars delivered to each 
classroom are spent as cost-effectively as possible. This amendment 
builds on an incredibly successful program in Texas--one that brings 
greater accountability to our schools and helps them discern how they 
can make each dollar go just a little bit further. This program is 
called the Financial Allocation Study for Texas, or FAST. It was 
developed by the Texas comptroller, Susan Combs--the immediate past 
comptroller of the State of Texas--to evaluate the operational 
efficiency of the school districts and campuses across our State. To do 
that, the comptroller uses data about school finances, school 
demographics, and academic performance from each school and campus 
around the State to help measure academic achievement relative to 
spending.
  There is a broadly held fallacy that the quality of educational 
outputs is equal to how much money we put into it. In other words, if 
we want a better product--education--all we have to do is spend more 
money. I would say that is demonstrably false. There are many of our 
parochial schools that do an outstanding job of educating their 
students at a fraction of what our public schools do. So I think it is 
a fallacy to say that if we want more or better education, all we have 
to do is spend more money. There is a smarter, more efficient way to 
deal with that, and that is what the financial allocation study is 
designed to achieve--to measure academic achievement relative to 
spending.
  As the senior Senator from Virginia explained earlier, this 
successful Texas model of a fiscally responsible education system 
caught his eye when he was Governor of Virginia, and fortunately he 
then implemented a similar program. In Virginia, the savings came from 
commonsense recommendations--again, as we did in Texas--things such as 
introducing software programs to improve bus routes, enhancing methods 
of facilities management, and encouraging best practices in hiring and 
personnel management.
  While more States have adopted similar programs, these money-saving 
opportunities should be available to all school districts nationwide. 
So now, with the adoption of this amendment just yesterday and with the 
eventual passage of the Every Child Achieves Act, we can make sure 
school districts all across the country are using their dollars for 
what they are really intended--classroom education--not stuck in the 
back office bureaucracy.
  As many of us have already mentioned, the underlying legislation, the 
Every Child Achieves Act, is really about putting the responsibility 
for our children's education back in the hands of parents, local school 
districts, and teachers--the people who are actually closer to the 
issue, closer to the problems, and the ones who perhaps know more than 
any bureaucrat in Washington could ever hope to know about what 
actually works at the local level. It is also about flexibility, 
meaning it is up to individual States, not just the Federal Government, 
to determine how to achieve the best outcome for all of our students. 
Importantly, I should add, that flexibility translates into greater 
options for schools across the country by giving States additional 
freedom to create and replicate high-quality charter schools, for 
example, and giving more parents more choices, as I said, for their 
children's education.
  I am very proud of the good progress we have made across a number of 
issues this year so far--passing the anti-human trafficking laws and 
finally cracking the code on how we pay physicians under Medicare 
adequately rather than temporarily patching that problem, as we have 
for so many years. We passed a budget for the first time since 2009 
that balances in 10 years. And, yes, we worked with the President of 
the United States on a bipartisan basis to pass trade promotion 
authority. Next week, we will conclude this Every Child Achieves Act by 
reforming our early and elementary childhood education system to get 
more of the power, to get more of the authority out of Washington and 
back to parents, teachers, and the States, where it really belongs.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Minnesota.
  Mr. FRANKEN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for up 
to 20 minutes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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