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CONGR~;SSIONALnUDGET FOR THE UNITED STATES

s.!'REV GOVERNMENT FOR FISCAL YEARS 1999200020012002 AND NEX'r~

2003

Text From the Congressional Record

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)2Qrglln~Byron

[D·ND]

. 1998·

Begin (H'.Ol 15:1646

End 15:27:32

Length 00:10:46

Mr. DORGAN. Mr. President, I very much appreciate

Senator Lautenberg yielding me the time. I am going to visit

a bit some of the items that werejust discussed about Indian

schools and schools generally. I wanted to come and talk

about the Moseley-Braun amendment

We talk a lot about family values in this Chamber. It seems

to me that every family that sits around in the evening and

talks about their lives must certainly talk about the schools

their kids are going to. We have 14 million students who

attend schools in this country now, schools that are in need

of extensive repair-extensive repair.

This afternoon, we sit in a nice Chamber. We have people

here who enjoy their lives, and they are well dressed. We

talk about education and theory in the abstract In

Cannonball, NO, today there is some little kid silting in

school, and I bet you that child is smelling sewer gas backed

up from the pipes, because that is the way the school is down

in Cannonball. That school is 70 years old. There are 150

kids attending that school with two bathrooms and one water

fountain, and that school is in serious disrepair.

I just mention that one, but I could mention thousands of

schools across this country that are in desperate need of

repair. Senator Moseley-Braun has proposed an amendment

that says in this Budget Act let us make room for school

construction, for the Federal Government to provide some

incentive, some small incentive to State and local

governments to help repair and rebuild our schools.

I have two children in public school this afternoon. Last year

in public school, one of those children was in a classroom

with 30 students. That is too big. This year, one of them is in

a temporary classroom or an expanded mobile home. That is

too bad. It is a good school, and both of them are getting a

good education. The fact is, we can do better in all of these

areas, especially with respect to school construction. We

know what the problem is and we know how to fix it The

issue of the budget on the floor of the Senate is a matter of

priorities. What do each of us think is important for this

country.

I watched last week during consideration of the supplemental

appropriations bill someone come into this Chamber and

offered an amendment that wentjust like that, just that quick,

for $ I70 million for missile defense. It wasn't debated, it

wasn't discussed, it was just added. And there it was, $170

million.

Let me talk about these schools for a moment, and Ict me

talk specifically about the Indian schools, because while we

are talking about the 14 million students who are in school

today in schools that need extensive repair, let me talk just

for a moment about the students in the Indian schools run by

the BIA. These are schools owned by the Federal

Government They are owned by us. We have no one else to

blame if we don't fix those schools, and it doesn't take a

rocket scientist to figure out how to fix it You can look at

the school, find out what is wrong and spend the money to

invest in that school to help those children.

Let me tell you about the Ojibwa school. That is up on the

Turtle Mountain Indian Reservation. Those children walk

between portable classrooms in the middle of the winter up

to six times a day in bone-chilling weather. A health and

safety inspection of that school and temporary classrooms in

1995 found 156 violations.. fire hazards, broken windows,

roof leaking, wooden stairs and landings for portable

classrooms had deteriorated so much to the point they were

no longer safe, wires hanging exposed from some

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classrooms.

The Cannonball School is a public school. It is not a BIA

school. It is on the Standing Rock Indian Reservation for

grades K through five. The school is 70 years old. It has been

condemned as a fire hazard, but the local tax base cannot

support building a new school. The second level of the

school isn't used because the stairs are unsafe. The water and

sewer systems arc old and regularly back up.

Last week, when we talked to the Cannonball School

superintendent, she said two classes had to be moved in with

other classes because the smell of sewage got so bad in the

classrooms of these young children. One wing of the school

doesn't have running water. Mr. President, 145 students and

40 staff share two bathrooms and one water fountain. The

electric wiring is so old that it cannot support computers in

the classrooms, but.it doesn't matter, because there can't be

computers in these classrooms. The classrooms are 8 foot by

12 fool The music classes take place in what used to be the

janitor's closet, 8 foot by 10 fool

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Standing Rock Reservation: Standing Rock School has PCBs

leaking from the light fixtures. PCB, as we know, is a

carcinogen. It is very dangerous. Federal law says that PCB

levels over 50 parts per million are unsafe. In the Fort Yates

school, the PCBs leaking from the light fixtures measured

not 50 parts per million, which is unsafe, but 143,000 parts

per million. That is in our school. That is with kids attending

school.

What happened? They shut the school. The took the kids out

of the school and placed them around town in portable

classrooms, some in a home. Six classes have been meeting

in

the school gymnasium. The others have been meeting in

portable trailers and a private home. The extra classes, like

physical education, music and art, of course, have been

suspended, and the school officials don't yet know when the

students will return (0 their classrooms.

PCBs leaking from light fixtures in a school that is in

disrepair--this happens to be on an Indian reservation where,

incidentally, in 9 months, 48 teenagers attempted suicide. In

the last 9 months, 48 attempted suicides, 6 of which were

successful.

If I sound a little angry about this, I am. Every single year I

have come to the floor of the Senate to talk about this

problem, and these kids go to school in conditions for which

we ought to be ashamed. This Congress can do something

about it, and the budget process is a process in which we

make decisions. If someone stands up here and says, 'No,

school construction doesn't count because we have other

priorities,' I ask them, 'What is your priority ifit is not your

children?' By 'your children,' I mean this country's children.

All across this country, when our kids go to school, I hope

every parent wants their child to walk into a school that is

safe, secure, and in good repair. I defy anybody in this

Chamber to stand up and say to me that kids who go to

school where sewer gas leaks into the classrooms and they

have to move kids out of those classrooms because of the

stench of sewer gas, I defy anybody to say it is a good thing

for kids. If it is not a good thing for kids, and we know it is

going on around this country--and aneedotically we sec it in

a GAO report and other investigations--thenlet's decide we

want to do something about it. The question isn't whether,

the question is what.

Senator Moseley-Braun has made a proposal. Her proposal is

modest. I suspect it will be voted down. It will be voted

down because we have people who construct the budget and

say, 'Here are our priorities; this is what we want to spend

money on, and it doesn't include this.'

The amount of school repairs necessary in this country last

year--3 percent of the funds available to meet the needs of

school repairs was allocated to the State and local

governments last year. If this Congress doesn't have the

nerve and the will to sayan behalf of our kids that you

matter, this is a problem we know we can fix and we are

going to put in our budget the provisions that allow us to say

to kids, 'We're going to invest in your young lives,' if this

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Congress doesn't have the capability to do that. then there is

something. in my judgment. fundamentally wrong with the

priorities we have established for public spending.

I said yesterday that everybody in this Chamber will be dead

in 100years. Everybody. Nobody will be around here feeling

good, working. They will all be dead. We will all be dead.

Only historians will evaluate through our budget, by looking

back at the budget process in this Congress, the 105th

Congress, what were our values; what did we think was

important; what did we decide to invest in; what did we think

would improve this country.

I hope historians will not look back at us and say,.'Well, oh,

they had discussions about a terrible deplorable condition in

some schools in their country, but they decided not to invest

in schools, because, somehow, schools took a backseat,

schools were in second place to a range of other priorities,

some of them very strange priorities.'

I hope historians will say that this Congress, yes, in tight

fiscal times decided that one of the most important

investments they could make in America was to make a good

investment in the education of our kids.

No kid in this country can go to school and learn the way we

expect children to be able to learn unless those schools are in

decent repair. They must be safe, in decent repair, good

places of learning, You have to have a teacher who knows

how to teach, a student who is willing to learn, and a parent

involved in that education. When you have that at work and

have invested in good school facilities that are necessary to

make that take place, then we will have done our job as a

country.

I wanted to come and say Senator Moseley-Braun has

offered an amendment that is very, very important. I can

think of a thousand reasons why people will stand up and say

they are against it. None of them are good. Mark Twain was

once asked to debate-d have told my colleagues this before.

He said, 'Of course.'

'We've not told you the subject.'

He said, 'Doesn't matter, as long as I can take the negative

side; that takes no preparation.'

It takes very little preparation to oppose. The Senator from

Illinois has proposed something that ought to rank right at

the top of the list of what is important for this country. When

we vote today, I hope the American people who listen to this

debate will call the offices and say, 'We agree that this

represents the first priority for the Congress, thc first priority

for this country, to invest in the lives and education of the

American children.'

Me.President, I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of

a quorum.

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