May 22, 1995 CONGRESSIONAL RECORD — SENATE S7079

Medicare recommended under section 307,

address the long-term solvency of the medicare program under title XVIII of the Social

Security Act (42 U.S.C. 1395 et seq.), high priority should be given to proposals which

identify, eliminate, and recover funds expended from the Federal Hospital Insurance

Trust Fund and the Federal Supplementary

Medical Insurance Trust Fund due to, fraud

and abuse in such program.

Mr. EXON. Will the Senator yield for

a question?

Mr. COHEN. Yes, I yield for a question.

Mr. EXON. The Senator from North

Dakota has a bill that he would like to

proceed to introduce, as in morning

business, and take 10 minutes to talk

about it. It has nothing to do with the

measure at hand. After the conclusion

of the opening remarks on the offering

of his amendment, I would appreciate

that side accommodating the Senator

from North Dakota, if that is satisfactory, and the time will be charged to

us.

Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, might

I inquire, the Senator said it is unrelated to the budget?

Mr. EXON. Yes, unrelated to the

budget.

Mr. DOMENICI. We have a similar request, Mr. President. Did the Senator

from Wyoming wish some time? Did he

not want to introduce a bill?

Mr. THOMAS. Three minutes, if I

may.

Mr. DOMENICI. May we have, immediately following, 3 minutes for the

junior Senator from Wyoming?

Mr. EXON. I assume the Senator

from Maine would want to go ahead

and offer his amendment at this time.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Maine offered the amendment.

Mr. EXON. I thank the Senator from

Maine and the chairman of the committee.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without

objection, it is so ordered. We will proceed with the Senator from North Dakota, followed by the Senator from Wyoming for 3 minutes, and then the Senator from Maine.

Mr. CONRAD. I thank the Chair.

(The remarks of Mr. CONRAD pertaining to the introduction of S. 840 are located in today’s RECORD under ‘‘Statements on Introduced Bills and Joint

Resolutions.’’)

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under

the previous order, the Senator from

Wyoming is recognized.

Mr. LOTT. Will the Senator yield?

UNANIMOUS-CONSENT AGREEMENT

Mr. THOMAS. Yes.

Mr. LOTT. Mr. President, I ask unanfimous consent that a vote occur on or

in relation to the Cohen Medicare fraud

amendment, to be followed immediately by a vote on or in relation to

the Democratic education amendment,

at 7:15 p.m. this evening, with the first

vote limited to the regular 20-minute

time limit, and the second vote limited

to 10 minutes in length. I note at this

point that this has been cleared with

the Democratic side of the aisle. I further ask that no points of order be considered as having been waived by this

agreement.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without

objection, it is so ordered.

Mr. LOTT. I further ask unanimous

consent that no second-degree amendments be in order to either amendment, and that the time between now

and 4:30 be equally divided for consideration of the Cohen amendment, and the

time from 4:30 p.m. to 7:15 p.m. be

equally divided on the Democratic education amendment, and that following

the two back-to-back votes, Senator

ABRAHAM be recognized to offer an

amendment relative to education.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without

objection, it is so ordered.

Under the previous order, the Senator from Maine is recognized.

AMENDMENT NO. 1116, AS MODIFIED

Mr. COHEN. I send a modification of

my amendment to the desk.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator has that right.

The amendment is so modified.

The amendment (No. 1116), as modified, is as follows:

Strike all after the word ‘‘section’’ and insert the following:

SEC. . SENSE OF THE SENATE REGARDING

LOSSES OF TRUST FUNDS DUE TO

FRAUD AND ABUSE IN THE MEDICARE PROGRAM.

(a) FINDINGS.—The Senate finds that—

(1) the General Accounting Office estimates that as much as $100,000,000,000 are

wasted each year in the health care system

due to fraud and abuse;

(2) outlays for the medicare program under

title XVIII of the Social Security Act during

fiscal year 1995 were $161,100,000,000, and the

General Accounting Office estimates that up

to 10 percent of those outlays were wasted

because of fraud and abuse;

(3) medicare beneficiaries incur higher outof-pocket costs and copayments due to inflated billings resulting from fraudulent and

abusive practices perpetrated against the

medicare program; and

(4) funds lost because of fraud and abuse

are contributing to the financial crises of the

Federal Hospital Insurance Trust Fund and

the Federal Supplementary Medical Insurance Trust Fund, as identified by the Boards

of Trustees of such trust funds in their 1995

annual reports.

(b) SENSE OF THE SENATE.—It is the sense

of the Senate that as the Committee on Finance of the Senate and if established, the

Bipartisan Commission on the Solvency of

Medicare recommended under section 307,

address the long-term solvency of the medicare program under title XVIII of the Social

Security Act (42 U.S.C. 1395 et seq.), high priority should be given to proposals which

identify, eliminate, and recover funds expended from the Federal Hospital Insurance

Trust Fund and the Federal Supplementary

Medical Insurance Trust Fund due to, fraud

and abuse in such program.

In addition, the Senate assumes that funds

recovered from enhanced anti-fraud and

abuse efforts be used to fund health care

anti-fraud and abuse enforcement efforts, reimbursements to the Federal Hospital Insurance Trust Fund and the Federal Supplementary Medical Insurance Trust Fund for

losses due to fraud and abuse, and deficit reduction.

Mr. COHEN. The focus of debate

today has been on what to do about

Medicare. I think all of us share the

concern over the grim news that the

Medicare trustees announced a few

weeks ago, namely, that the Medicare

trust fund is going bankrupt.

I support the budget resolution that

calls for a bipartisan commission to devise a plan to basically pull Medicare

out of its financial crisis. Just as we

restored public confidence in the Social

Security system over a decade ago

through a bipartisan panel, the only

way to fix Medicare is also through a

bipartisan panel.

The amendment I am offering today

for myself, Senators DOLE and BRADLEY, urges the bipartisan commission

to give high priority to a problem that

is costing the Medicare Program, senior citizens, and taxpayers across the

country billions of dollars every year:

health care fraud in Medicare.

For the past 3 years, the staff on the

Senate Special Committee on Aging

has been investigating the explosion of

fraud and abuse throughout the U.S.

health care system. Nearly a trillion

dollars is spent on health care each

year, and roughly 10 percent is lost

through abusive practices and fraudulent activities.

Over the past 5 years, the estimated

losses from health care system fraud

total $418 billion. That is four times

the amount lost to the savings and

loan crisis—all those scandals, four

times the amount just in the past 5

years.

A major victim of this health care

fraud is the American taxpayer. In

1993, spending on Medicare and Medicaid totaled some $272 billion, or over 30

percent of all the moneys we spend on

health care in this country. The Federal Government loses as much as $30

billion a year due to fraud in the Medicare and Medicaid systems and as

much as $44 billion from fraud when we

take into account all of the Federal

health care programs.

Taxpayers are losing $44 billion a

year today through health care fraud. I

think this only represents a tiny fraction of the problem. These are the ones

that we know about, the ones that are

being caught and prosecuted. I think

they represent a tiny fraction of the

level of fraudulent activity taking

place in this country.

Mr. President, it is shockingly simple

to defraud the current system. The

payors are running as fast as they can

to process the over four billion claims

that are filed every year, and law enforcement simply is lacking in the resources necessary to really detect and

prosecute this fraudulent activity.

Recently the Aging Committee

heard, I think, some compelling testimony on the extent of the fraud in this

country. FBI Director, Louis Freeh,

testified ‘‘We see cocaine dealers turning into health care fraud entrepreneurs’’ because that is where the

money is big—but enforcement is little.
S7080 CONGRESSIONAL RECORD — SENATE May 22, 1995

Director Freeh also told the committee about how the Russian mafia and

other organized criminal groups from

every corner of the globe are now engaged in creative schemes to siphon off

money from the Government and private health care funds.

Mr. President, padding claims and

cost reports, charging the Government

beneficiaries outrageous prices for

unbundled services, and billing Medicare for program costs that have nothing to do with patient care are but a

few of the schemes that are currently

ruining our system.

The Medicare system is the one that

is being targeted because of its sheer

size and complexity. At our hearing,

the Aging Committee heard testimony

that we are experiencing ‘‘a feeding

frenzy’’ on the Medicare and Medicaid

Programs, equivalent to ‘‘unprecedented white collar wilding in which

wave after wave of multimillion dollar

frauds have swept through nursing

homes and hospitals, clinics and pharmacies, durable medical equipment, radiology and labs, and more recently,

home health care.’’

I would like to share with my colleagues just a few examples of how

Medicare is being exploited and how

fraudulent providers are draining Medicare, siphoning off these precious dollars from the Medicare trust fund and

increasing the costs for senior citizens.

A chain of health home care companies were discovered by Medicare auditors to have been billing Medicare for

over $16,000 in alcoholic beverages at

conferences, over $9,800 in personal

travel for the owner’s family, and over

$3,200 in golf shop expenses. The home

care companies also allegedly charged

the Medicare Program for over $100,000

in promotional items given to doctors

and others to encourage them to use

the company’s home health care, including $85,000 in gourmet popcorn provided to doctors. Let me repeat that:

$85,000 for gourmet popcorn going to

doctors to promote the use of these

home care companies.

Mr. President, it is difficult to call

on our senior citizens to bear cuts in

Medicare when they learn that their

Medicare taxes and premiums are being

used to pay for gourmet popcorn.

It is not limited to gourmet popcorn

and golf shop fees. Let me give a couple

of other examples of the costs that are

driving Medicare close to bankruptcy.

We have the case of a phantom laboratory allegedly cheating Medicare

out of $300,000 for lab tests that were

never performed. The so-called lab submitted the bills that were really no

more than a rented mailbox and a Medicare billing number.

We had a medical equipment supplier

billed Medicare close to $1,300 apiece

for wheelchair pads that cost about $50

to $100 to manufacture, representing a

markup of roughly 2,500 percent.

We have an equipment supplier that

allegedly billed Medicare for $4,000

apiece for compressors used to treat

swelling. The devices cost less than

$500 each.

We have a chiropractor and his wife

who defrauded Medicare and private insurers by billing for services never provided. One time bills were submitted

for 169 patients supposedly treated in a

single day.

We had four companies who peddled

liquid nutritional supplements by offering ‘‘free medical milk.’’ These companies then billed Medicare for over $14

million for the supplements that were

not medically necessary, and that were

often not even delivered to the Medicare patients.

While I want to emphasize that by

far most health care providers are honest professionals with only the best interest of patients and Medicare beneficiaries in mind, without a doubt there

is fraud in each segment of the health

care industry. The cases I have mentioned are just a small example of the

kinds of rip-offs that are being perpetrated day in and day out in our

Medicare Program, and indeed,

throughout the entire U.S. health care

system.

Mr. President, we cannot wait any

longer. I have tried for the past 2 years

to introduce legislation that would

deal with Medicare fraud. Each time it

has been blunted. On the one hand, the

Senate passed an amendment to the

crime bill containing some of the provisions of my legislation, only to have

the House strip them out saying that

this anti-fraud legislation does not belong on the crime bill. It belongs on

health care reform. Of course, we did

not have health care reform last year.

I tried every single way to attach the

health care fraud legislation to appropriations bills last year, including the

D.C. appropriations bill, but others

sought to amend it, because they wanted to load down this amendment with

other issues.

Mr. President, as a result of this, we

have had to wait for health care fraud

reforms. What we are doing is we are

losing roughly $11.5 million to health

care fraud every hour. That is precisely

what is being lost through fraud. We

are losing $11.5 million an hour, $275

million a day, $100 billion a year.

Mr. President, this legislation that I

have introduced the past 2 years was

included in virtually every health care

bill that was circulating last Congress:

The Dole bill, the President Clinton

bill, the so-called Mainstream Coalition bill. These provisions in the legislation that I have introduced had the

support of the Justice Department, the

Director of the FBI, and the Department of Health and Human Services’

inspector general. I believe the White

House is now also advocating health

care fraud enforcement measures.

Now is the time to move forward

with the bill. It has been introduced

and will be considered as separate,

free-standing legislation, hopefully in

the very near future. In the meantime,

what we have to do is at least go on

record as saying we have to put a stop

to the level of fraud taking place in our

health care system today, particularly

in Medicare and Medicaid.

This resolution calls upon the bipartisan panel to look at ways in which we

can reduce the perpetration of fraud

against our system, that those moneys

can be saved. Perhaps we will not be

able to recover all the dollars lost to

health care fraud in Medicare, but we

will be able to recover some of these

billions that are now being lost to

fraud and abuse. Hopefully, the

amounts recovered will be used to increase our health care fraud enforcement efforts, to reduce the deficit, and

to apply to the Medicare trust fund itself. It seems to me that would be an

appropriate recommendation for the

trustees of the Medicare trust fund to

endorse.

I am hoping that we will use the

same sort of bipartisan commission to

restore public confidence in the solvency of Medicare that was formed in

the wake of the declaration over a decade ago that Social Security was going

broke.

I mentioned this morning during my

remarks that the issue was exploited

by the Democratic majority at that

time. They waited until after the 1982

elections were over and exploited the

issue and then came back in and said,

‘‘Let us form that bipartisan panel.’’

We did. The Social Security trust

fund is solvent at least until the year

2020 or 2030. We need to do precisely the

same thing now. We have to call together a bipartisan panel to look at

what is taking place in our health care

system. The FBI has identified areas of

fraud. We can look at the New York

Times on Sunday’s edition and find another example of the kind of scams

that are being perpetrated against our

elderly—not confined just to health

care, but scams that target the elderly

in general—and we have to put a stop

to it. We have an opportunity to take a

big step toward cracking down on

scams targeting the elderly and programs serving the elderly by passing

legislation that will give the tools and

resources necessary to law enforcement

officials to accomplish that end.

There should be no political disagreement on this issue. This cannot be delayed another day, another week, another year, or else the very people that

we are trying to help who are now facing the prospect of having their Medicare trust fund go broke within a 61⁄2

year period of time will be the ultimate losers. We will be the ultimate

losers.

We have an opportunity to prevent

that from taking place through reforms contained in the budget resolution itself, which Senator DOMENICI as

chairman is calling for so we do not see

the growth of 10.5 percent but rather 7

or 7.1 percent. In that 7.1 percent, we

can save billions of dollars by adopting

the legislation that everyone says that

we need.

Mr. President, I will not take a great

deal of time today since time has now

been limited. Let me say that this is an
May 22, 1995 CONGRESSIONAL RECORD — SENATE S7081

important resolution. Hopefully, it will

enjoy bipartisan and perhaps even

unanimous support, so we can all go on

record as in favor of giving this panel

an opportunity to consider ways to

shape legislation to prevent the kind of

fraudulent activity that is robbing our

senior citizens of their trust funds and

driving up the costs of Medicare and

the entire health care system.

Mr. President, I reserve the balance

of my time.

The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr.

CRAIG). If neither side yields time, the

time is charged equally.

Mr. CONRAD. Mr. President, I ask

unanimous consent that the order for

the quorum call be rescinded.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without

objection, it is so ordered.

Mr. CONRAD. Mr. President, I ask

unanimous consent that we go into a

quorum call and that both sides be

charged equally.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without

objection, it is so ordered.

The clerk will call the roll.

The legislative clerk proceeded to

call the roll.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I ask

unanimous consent that the order for

the quorum call be rescinded.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without

objection, it is so ordered.

AMENDMENT NO. 1116, AS FURTHER MODIFIED

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I ask

unanimous consent that the amendment presented at the desk by Senator

COHEN be modified. I send a copy of the

modification to the desk.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without

objection, it is so ordered.

The amendment (No. 1116), as further

modified, is as follows:

On page 94, after line 21, add the following

new section.

SEC. . SENSE OF THE SENATE REGARDING

LOSSES OF TRUST FUNDS DUE TO

FRAUD AND ABUSE IN THE MEDICARE PROGRAM.

(a) FINDINGS.—The Senate finds that—

(1) the General Accounting Office estimates that as much as $100,000,000,000 are

wasted each year in the health care system

due to fraud and abuse;

(2) outlays for the Medicare program under

title XVIII of the Social Security Act during

fiscal year 1994 were $161,100,000,000, and the

General Accounting Office estimates that up

to 10 percent of those outlays were wasted

because of fraud and abuse;

(3) medicare beneficiaries incur higher outof-pocket costs and copayments due to inflated billings resulting from fraudulent and

abusive practices perpetrated against the

medicare program; and

(4) funds lost because of fraud and abuse

are contributing to the financial crisis of the

Federal Hospital Insurance Trust Fund and

the Federal Supplementary Medical Insurance Trust Fund, as identified by the Boards

of Trustees of such trust funds in their 1995

annual reports.

(b) SENSE OF THE SENATE.—It is the sense

of the Senate that as the Committee on Finance of the Senate and, if established, the

Bipartisan Commission on the Solvency of

Medicare recommended under section 307,

address the long-term solvency of the medicare program under title XVIII of the Social

Security Act (42 U.S.C. 1395 et seq.), high priority should be given to proposals which

identify, eliminate, and recover funds expended from the Federal Hospital Insurance

Trust Fund and the Federal Supplementary

Medical Insurance Trust Fund due to, fraud

and abuse in such program.

In addition the Senate assumes that funds

recovered from enhanced antifraud and abuse

efforts be used to fund health care anti-fraud

and abuse enforcement efforts, reimbursements to the Federal Hospital Insurance

Trust Fund and the Federal Supplementary

Medical Insurance Trust Fund for losses due

to fraud and abuse, and deficit reduction.

Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, by most

estimates, the costs of health care in

the United States approach $1 trillion

annually. By the turn of the century,

the figure will exceed $1.5 trillion, consuming up to 16 percent of the Nation’s

gross domestic product.

Since health insurance experts, the

FBI, and other agencies agree that

fraud and abuse can account for as

much as 5 to 10 percent of these costs,

any effort to rein in health spending

needs to address this problem. That is

why I commend my colleague from

Maine for bringing his amendment to

the floor.

Still, I must raise some concerns

about the language my colleague proposes which would have the Senate go

on record in support of using health

care fraud related fines and penalties

to finance our investigative efforts in

this area.

Frankly, I feel it is a dangerous

precedent. We need to carefully contemplate whether such a financing

mechanism will taint our anti-fraud effort.

Historically, Congress has frowned on

financing law enforcement activities

through criminal and civil fines and

penalties. Yet, this amendment—as did

most of the major health care bills last

Congress—suggests that our Nation’s

antifraud efforts should be funded

through fines, penalties, and damages

collected.

I believe this sort of a system will

create an incentive for Federal investigators to forgo prosecution or exclusion where warranted—or pursue civil

actions where unwarranted—in favor of

large civil penalties that will provide

additional funding for investigators.

Year after year, Federal agencies associated with such a program will be motivated by their immediate fiscal

needs. I think this is a serious issue.

Americans have witnessed how civil

forfeiture and the resultant dash for

cash by law enforcement has, in some

cases, inappropriately driven law enforcement investigations. We must be

sure that we do not compromise the

priorities and integrity of our law enforcement officials.

I also have concerns about taking

one penny which could be used to replenish the Medicare trust funds and

dedicating it to law enforcement purposes. According to the Congressional

Budget Office, in fiscal year 1994, Federal spending for the Medicare Program totaled an estimated $162 billion,

or over $440 million a day. CBO estimates that, in less than a decade, Medicare spending will more than double

from $181 billion in 1995 to $463 billion

in 2005.

Even by the most conservative estimates, billions of dollars are being lost

to waste, fraud, and abuse and that is a

luxury we cannot afford. However,

Medicare’s hospital insurance trust

fund is going bankrupt; in fact, its balances will dip into the red next year.

We should use any recoveries from

illspent Medicare funds to put back

into the trust funds, not for new purposes.

As I stated earlier in my remarks, I

have strong concerns regarding the use

of health care fraud related fines and

penalties to finance investigative efforts in this area. Moreover, it seems

to me that any funds recovered should

be used for their original purpose

which is to provide health care to Medicare beneficiaries.

I support the spirit with which my

colleague offers this broadly crafted

amendment. But, I have serious reservations about the so-called bounty

hunter provisions contained in the second part of this sense-of-the-Senate

amendment.

Nevertheless, I will support the

Cohen amendment, but reserve my

rights to debate this matter further on

the floor should legislation in this area

be considered.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, I suggest

the absence of a quorum.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. In suggesting that, does the Senator suggest

that the quorum be divided equally?

Mr. GREGG. I ask unanimous consent that the time be charged equally

with the time running against both

sides.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without

objection, it is so ordered.

The clerk will call the roll.

The legislative clerk proceeded to

call the roll.

Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, I ask

unanimous consent that the order for

the quorum call be rescinded.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without

objection, it is so ordered.

Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, I ask

unanimous consent that I be allowed to

speak on the Harkin-Hollings amendment during the remainder of this time

between now and the beginning of the

debate on that amendment.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without

objection, it is so ordered.

Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, I do

not think anybody disagrees that we

need to reduce dramatically the portion of our revenues that we expend on

interest on the national debt. There is

no disagreement that the current level

of debt which was built up particularly

in the 1980’s and early parts of this decade needs to be brought under control.

The interest on that debt is robbing us

of the ability to invest in our children

and in our future. We need to bring our

annual deficits down to zero. We need

to start to reduce the underlying debt

in order to ensure that our children are

not saddled with the interest burden

that we bear today.
S7082 CONGRESSIONAL RECORD — SENATE May 22, 1995

Mr. President, we can go about this

task in a shortsighted way by just cutting programs, including education and

training programs and investments in

our future, and reducing taxes at the

same time—that is essentially what

the Budget Committee has proposed. It

said we shall cut programs, we shall

take the savings from those cuts and

reserve them for a tax cut . Or we can

take the responsible and long-term and

comprehensive approach that the Harkin-Hollings amendment will propose.

That amendment restores funding to

the function of the budget that provides for education and training, including student loans.

If we free our children from the burden of the Federal debt only by depriving them of the education and training

they will need to compete and succeed

in the global and technologically driven economy of the next century, then

we have not been responsible. All we

have done is trade one burden, which is

debt payments, for another, which is

inadequate skills. The budget resolution which has been presented does just

that. It is anti-working-families and

anti-seniors and anti-future.

What the Harkin-Hollings amendment does is to take the $170 billion

the committee has identified and earmarked for a tax cut, and applies $40

billion of that to restore some of the

funding that has been cut by the Republican budget in the areas of education and training. The $40 billion is

still far short of what we should be restoring to that vital function, but it

will help significantly.

When given the choice of a tax cut,

which will go largely to wealthy taxpayers—at least the blueprint that the

House has announced clearly intends

that—or reinvestment in education and

training for working citizens and for

our neediest children, I do not think we

should hesitate for a moment to forego

the cut in taxes and seek the longer

term benefit that we will reap from

educating our children.

Let me make one thing very clear.

The Budget Committee resolution does

drastically cut education and training

programs. I have heard various proponents for the budget say that all

they are doing is restraining the

growth in spending and not really cutting. That argument does not apply to

the budget for education. The GOP

budget does provide for less funding in

1996 than we are spending in 1995. It

provides for a decreasing amount

thereafter. Over 7 years, 25 percent is

taken out of the level of funding for

these programs, the level that they receive today, when you measure that in

constant dollars.

Furthermore, the GOP figures make

no adjustment for the fact that the

population is growing. There will be 9

percent more children of school age in

the next 7 years in this country. In my

home State of New Mexico, the estimate is there will be 12 percent more

children in school. But the GOP budget

does not take into account that increase in the school age population. So

the effect of the budget is to make

States stretch dollars with a shrinking

value over an increasing number of students.

Let me be specific. My State of New

Mexico has the third highest rate of

child poverty of any State in the country. More than 1 in 4 children in my

State live in families with incomes

below the poverty line. One-third of the

students in New Mexico’s schools have

limited proficiency in English. Our

school-age population has grown tremendously. It has grown much faster

than the school-age population in most

parts of the country, and that growth

is anticipated to continue.

Against this background, we are facing actual decreases in funds for the

programs that serve our students.

The title I program, formerly known

as chapter 1, provides about $850 per

disadvantaged student to help them

meet high standards in math and in

reading. That is the 1995 number, the

current fiscal year, before the rescission that we have voted on and that

the President has indicated he will

veto.

The Budget Committee chairman has

expressed an intent, expressed in this

budget resolution, that title I funds

not be cut but instead be frozen. If that

intent is carried out by the appropriators and title I in fact is not cut the

way that other education programs

will be cut, the result for New Mexico

is not that we will enjoy ‘‘level funding’’ of the program; no, it will mean

that we receive the same number of

dollars each year for the program.

Those same number of dollars will buy

less and less as the 7 years progress and

the costs of education—supplies, teacher salaries, and energy costs—all increase.

So even if our population did not

grow, we would be facing a decrease in

the real buying power of the Federal

dollars for education. But, of course,

the population is growing. It is expected to grow over 12 percent in the

next 7 years. So instead of 88,000 children being eligible for title I services

in my State, as is the case today, there

will be almost 99,000 eligible students

by the year 2002. Today we serve 73 percent of the students eligible for title I.

In 2002, that percentage will decline

considerably to near 50 percent. That

will mean almost 50,000 poor children

from New Mexico who will not receive

the services they need to meet high

standards that we are setting for our

children.

It is clear that if the funding is frozen to 1995 levels, then almost 4 million

needy children will be denied assistance nationwide. If programs are cut at

even 25 percent across the board, then

title I would leave another 1 million

children unserved.

What I just described assumes that

title I will not be cut and that that

proposal to not cut title I is carried

out. If that assumption is correct, then

all of the other programs will have to

be cut drastically in order to achieve

the overall decrease in the budget category that this budget requires.

What are some of those other programs? Technology is one of the programs. The current programs which are

attempting to bring technology to the

classroom will have to be cut. Mr.

President, these programs are very,

very limited at the present time. In

1995, we have committed $40 million to

this effort, assuming the rescission bill

does not pass. But even that would be

seriously jeopardized if this budget resolution is adopted.

The Star Schools Program, again,

would face a drastic cut. Obviously, we

cannot tell just what the appropriators

will do. The Star Schools Program

tries to bring distance learning, technology-based education to our neediest

schools, especially those in isolated

rural areas, and those funds will likely

be cut as well.

Because of the nature of Federal programs—which are usually targeted to

the neediest students—withdrawal of

Federal aid will hurt those States that

are least able to make up the shortfall

themselves. New Mexico is one of those

States.

Let me talk for just a moment about

higher education funding, Mr. President. The budget includes a $14 billion

cut in student loan aid and an undetermined cut in Pell grants.

Mr. President, Pell grants are critical to students in my State. I noted

above that the poverty rate in my

State is among the highest in the Nation. The way out of poverty is education. Yet many of our citizens are

not able to afford that education. They

depend upon Pell grants. They depend

upon work-study and Stafford loans

and State aid to pay for the increased

cost of higher education.

The GOP budget says that the Pell

grants will remain at current funding—

at least that is the apparent intent—

but what does it mean? It means that

the total Pell grant funding will remain at 1995 levels with no cuts or increase through the year 2002. That

would mean that real funding, measured in constant dollars, would decline

by reason of the growth of student population and by reason of inflation.

Today, about 33,000 students in New

Mexico receive Pell grants. I think it is

pretty obvious that this budget is

going to either cut the amount these

students receive in Pell grants or result in a much smaller percentage of

our young people who are eligible to

apply and receive those Pell grants.

It is clear to me that the budget is

going to have a profound impact on

students in my home State, even if you

look just at the students who receive

these Pell grants. When you look at

other programs, you have to come to

the same conclusion.

The Federal work study program provides about $5.4 million in grants to

6,300 students in our State.

The Federal supplemental opportunity grant program serves 6,500 students in our State.
May 22, 1995 CONGRESSIONAL RECORD — SENATE S7083

Perkins loans serve over 5,000 students in New Mexico.

The numbers they have provided in

this budget resolution point in one direction, Mr. President. The numbers

indicate that the Stafford program will

not be impaired, but if, in fact, we are

going to save the $14 billion that is

contemplated in the budget resolution,

we are going to have to cut that program. We are going to have to charge

interest to those students from the

time they take those loans just as the

House has proposed to do.

Mr. President, the proposal before us

has as its purpose to cut the deficit.

Clearly, we need to accomplish that. I

am proud of the deficit reduction we

have accomplished in the last 2 years.

I am sorry we did not have the same

zeal for deficit reduction by many of

my colleagues when those votes were

being cast in the last few years.

But cutting investment in education

and training for our children is not the

right way to accomplish deficit reduction. If this Nation is to remain the

world leader in the 21st century, we

cannot cut investments in our most

important resource; that is, in our children.

The effect of this amendment that

Senators HARKIN and HOLLINGS are offering would be to reduce the size of

the proposed tax cut by $40 billion so

we can return some reasonable level of

support for education and training. It

is an amendment that makes excellent

sense for the future of America.

I urge my colleagues to support it.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under a

previous order, amendment No. 1116 is

temporarily set aside.

Under the previous order, it would

now be in order for a Democratic

amendment regarding education.

Mr. EXON. That order had been

agreed to previously; is that correct?

The PRESIDING OFFICER. It has.

Mr. EXON. Then the Chair will be

recognizing the Senator from Iowa; is

that correct?

The PRESIDING OFFICER. That is

correct.

Mr. EXON. I thank the Chair.

Mr. HARKIN addressed the Chair.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Iowa, Senator HARKIN.

AMENDMENT NO. 1117

(Purpose: To restore funding to education by

using amounts set aside for a tax cut)

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I send

an amendment to the desk on behalf of

myself and Senator HOLLINGS.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The

clerk will report.

The legislative clerk read as follows:

The Senator from Iowa [Mr. HARKIN], for

himself and Mr. HOLLINGS, proposes an

amendment numbered 1117.

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I ask

unanimous consent that the reading of

the amendment be dispensed with.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without

objection, it is so ordered.

The amendment is as follows:

On page 74, strike lines 12 through 24 and

insert the following: ‘‘budget, the appropriate budgetary allocations, aggregates, and

levels shall be revised to reflect

$28,000,000,000 in budget authority and outlays of the additional deficit reduction

achieved as calculated under subsection (c)

for legislation that reduces the adverse effects on discretionary spending on education

and $12,000,000,000 in budget authority and

outlays for legislation that reduces the adverse effects on direct spending for education.

‘‘(b) REVISED ALLOCATIONS AND AGGREGATES.—Upon the reporting of legislation

pursuant to subsection (a), and again upon

the submission of a conference report on

such legislation (if a conference report is

submitted), the Chair of the Committee on

the Budget of the Senate may submit to the

Senate appropriately revised allocations

under sections 302(a) and 602(a) of the Congressional Budget Act of 1974, discretionary

spending limits under section 201(a) of this

resolution, budgetary aggregates, and levels

under this resolution, revised by an amount

that does not exceed the additional deficit

reduction specified under subsection (a).’’.

Mr. HARKIN. Will the President

please advise the Senators as to the

timeframe now for debate on the education amendment?

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The time

until 7:15 this evening is to be equally

divided, with Senator BINGAMAN having

asked unanimous consent and spoke

using some of the time allocated to the

Democratic side.

Mr. HARKIN. So between now——

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Right

now the Senator has 72 minutes.

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I join

with Senator HOLLINGS in offering this

amendment. I believe this amendment

really does set the stage for what we

are talking about in terms of priorities

and choices. We all agree we need to

get the deficit down and balance the

budget, but what we have all talked

about is in terms of reducing the deficit and what it does to help future generations of Americans. There has been

a lot of talk about our responsibility to

balance the budget for the sake of our

children and their future, and that is

true.

But what this budget does is it cuts

off the very fountain of life and funding

that ensures that our children and future generations will be able to have a

better life in our country because of

the devastating cuts that this budget

makes in education.

We have seen report after report

after report, study after study telling

us about the importance of investing in

education. I am reminded even of the

group of CEO’s that was brought together by President Reagan. These

were not social planners and thinkers,

these were CEO’s of our major corporations, charged with the responsibility

by President Reagan of determining

what we needed to do in our educational system. They met, they filed

their reports, and what they said basically is that we have to fund education,

we have to fund early intervention programs, and we cannot back off on the

Federal commitment to education.

The President of the United States,

President Bush, convened the Governors, and in 1989 they set up the national education goals, agreed upon by

a Republican President, by Republican

and Democratic Governors, by the U.S.

Congress—by the Senate and by the

House—what our goals were in education by the year 2000.

Mr. President, we do not need any

more reports. We know what needs to

be done. We know how critical education and training is to competing in

the world economy. We know that investing in education will save us

money in the long run. We know that

we are falling behind our competitors.

We know that it is more difficult for

middle-class families to pay for college

education today. How many more reports do we need to tell us what we already know? We do not need any more

reports.

We know that slashing education by

the largest level ever is wrong. Taxing

millions of college students with more

debt is wrong. Denying Head Start to

hundreds of thousands of young Americans is wrong. The amendment I am offering with Senator HOLLINGS will do

what is right: It will keep us on the

right path, the right course.

Our amendment restores $40 billion

for education and training programs.

Our amendment restores $12 billion for

student loans, $28 billion for discretionary spending. It restores common

sense by investing in education.

Mr. President, this is an anxious

time for our Nation’s students. They

will soon be getting their report cards

and, I must say, it is an anxious time

for parents who are funding our kids in

college. We want to see those report

cards, too. We want to see how they

have done in the classroom. I asked my

daughter today if she got her report

card from college. No, she did not have

it yet.

I think it is time for us to look at a

report card to see how this budget

would do in our Nation’s classrooms.

Let us see if this budget that we have

before us passes or fails, what kind of a

grade it gets.

So let us look at the different assignments, Mr. President, and I have it

here on the report card. Let us look at

the different assignments that the people of this country have given to us,

the national education goals, what

they have set out. Let us see how this

budget does on a report card.

Our first assignment was to make

college affordable for students and for

working families. How does this budget

do? It cuts student loans and reduces

PELL grants by 40 percent. It cuts $5

billion from other grant and loan programs. It increases the personal debt of

college students by anywhere from 20

to 48 percent.

What that means is a lower income

college student going to college borrowing money will have his or her debt

increased by anywhere from 20 percent

minimum to 48 percent maximum. The

maximum increase, of course, falls on

the poorest students because they borrow the most money, and so they will
S7084 CONGRESSIONAL RECORD — SENATE May 22, 1995

have the biggest debt to pay back. Just

the opposite.

What kind of a grade do we give this

assignment? It cannot be anything

more than an F. It flunks at making

college affordable for students and

working families.

Our next assignment: Make sure all

children will start school ready to

learn. Mr. President, the No. 1 goal of

the President’s Conference on Education set up by President Bush, agreed

upon by Republican and Democratic

Governors in 1989, the No. 1 goal: All

children will start school ready to

learn.

What does this budget do? It freezes

Head Start funding so that by the year

2002, 350,000 to 550,000 fewer children

will be served. It freezes Head Start.

Fewer children will be served. Another

F.

Another assignment: Improve student achievements so that U.S. students will be best educated. Another

one of our goals, by the way. What does

the budget do? It freezes title I funding

so that by 2002, 2 million fewer children

will be served. Right now, Mr. President, the Federal Government provides

about 6.6 percent of funding for local

school districts. In 1980, that was 11

percent. It is now down to 6.6 percent,

and that includes the school lunch program. So if you take out the school

lunch program, it is even a lot less

than that. Education right now is 2.2

percent of the Federal budget—2.2 percent. In 2002 under this budget proposal, it will fall; 1.4 percent of the

Federal budget will go for education.

What does that mean? That means

that if our local school districts and

our States want to continue a high

level of education and input, it can

only mean one thing: Hang on, your

property taxes are going to go through

the roof. And so this budget fails in improving student achievement so that

they will be the best educated.

The next assignment, making sure

that all schools will be safe and drug

free, another one of our goals, to make

our schools safe and drug free.

This program funds things like the

DARE Program that we are all so familiar with and I am sure we hear

about in our States when we go back

there and how successful the DARE

Program is. This budget cuts over $1

billion from the Safe and Drug Free

Schools Program. Ninety-four percent

of school districts will lose funding

from it, affecting over 39 million children. So on keeping our schools safe

and drug free, this budget, another F.

Another assignment we have is to increase the Federal commitment for

funding of special education and reduce

the costs to local school districts.

Mr. President, this Congress in 1975

passed legislation for the education of

all handicapped. It is called now IDEA,

Individuals with Disabilities Education

Act. The commitment of Congress in

1975, and in every Congress since then,

has been to pick up 40 percent of the

costs of special education for our

school districts—40 percent. Do you

know what it is now? Eight percent; 8

percent.

We are not talking about something

that local schools can do or cannot do

at their will. There is a constitutional

obligation on our local school districts

that if they provide a free and appropriate public education for nonhandicapped students, they have to do it for

handicapped students. Constitutional

requirement. We have said that we will

come in and help local school districts

meet that constitutional requirement

by helping fund special education.

Five-and-a-half million students with

disabilities. Over the next 7 years,

under this budget, school districts will

lose over $5 billion in Federal funding

for special education. And again, these

school districts cannot say: OK, now we

have lost the Federal funding, so all

you disabled kids, out, we are not

going to give you the kind of education

that is comparable to other students.

They cannot do that. The Constitution

of the United States commands that

they have to do that.

So what it means, again, is hang on

to your hat in your local school districts, Mr. President. Property taxes

will go up through the ceiling to pay

for special education, because we, in

this budget, are saying we are not

going to fund it. So another F on that

assignment.

Another assignment is to make the

United States first in the world in

math and science—another goal—by

2000. In an international assessment of

eighth graders on math in 1992, the

United States ranked 13th out of 15

countries. This budget cuts $700 million

in teacher training for math and

science teachers—400,000 fewer teachers

will receive training and retraining.

So in trying to make our country

first in math and science, another F.

Another goal is to improve technology to prepare students for the 21st

century. We are saying we have to get

better technology in the schools: Upto-date computers, fiber optics and

interaction, and get on the superhighway, get all this technology, Star

schools, we are all for it. We have to do

it if our kids are going to be competitive in the future. Over the next 7

years under this budget $175 million

will be cut from Star schools and education technology. Another F.

Well, lastly, I think our overall assignment, is it not, is to ensure a better future for our children. Is this not

really why we are here? Is this not why

we take time on the Senate floor to debate and offer amendments? Is this not

why our constituents put us here, to

ensure a better future for our children?

This is the largest education cut in the

history of this Congress, the largest

education cut in history. How, I ask, is

that ensuring a better future for our

kids?

So, Mr. President, in test after test,

this Republican education budget fails

our children. It fails them in the earliest times, getting them ready for

school, and it fails them later on when

they go to college. It fails our future.

As a parent, I would be upset if my

daughter brought home a report card

with nothing but F’s, and if she did, she

would have to go back to school and do

it all over again. That is what we are

trying to do with our amendment. We

are saying: Go back to school, those of

you on the other side that want this

budget. You have failed. So Senator

HOLLINGS and I are saying, we will

make it right and we will send you

back to school. We will send you back

with this amendment so we do not fail

our kids. We want them to pass and we

want to invest in education. The way

to do it is to restore these cuts and restore some common sense back in the

budget.

Mr. HOLLINGS addressed the Chair.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Does the

Senator yield time to the Senator from

South Carolina?

Mr. HARKIN. Yes, I yield whatever

time the Senator may wish to

consume.

Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, I ask

unanimous consent that the distinguished Senator from Nebraska, Senator EXON, be added as a cosponsor.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without

objection, it is so ordered.

Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, One

of the most distinguished forefathers,

James Madison, said that ‘‘a popular

Government without popular information or the means of acquiring it is but

a prologue to a farce or a tragedy, or

perhaps both.’’ He said that in a letter

to John Adams, and Adams wrote back

that ‘‘The whole people must take

upon themselves the education of the

whole people and be willing to bear the

expense of it.’’

Coming up to Horace Mann’s day, he

referred to the Northwest ordinance

where we laid the groundwork to develop Iowa—and it is a distinct pleasure to be associated with Senator HARKIN. Those States in the Midwest were

set up in 6 mile by 6 mile blocks, and

the middle block—number 16—was reserved for public education.

Horace Mann said:

This law laid the foundation of the present

system of free schools. The idea of an educational system that was at once both universal, free, and available to all the people,

rich and poor alike, was revolutionary. This

is the great thing about America. No other

nation ever had such an institution. Three

centuries later, it is a stranger to the bulk of

the people of the world. The free public

school system, which Puritans conceived,

has been in large measure the secret of

America’s success. In these classrooms children of all races, nationalities and tongues

learn the common language and became imbued with one central idea—the American

conception that all men are created equal,

that opportunities are open to all, that every

minority, whether respected or despised, has

the same guaranteed rights as the majority.

Parents who landed here often brought with

them the antagonisms, the rivalries and suspicions of other continents. But their children became one and united in the pursuit of

a democratic ideal.

Mr. President, this idea was brought

up-to-date, this observation of Horace
May 22, 1995 CONGRESSIONAL RECORD — SENATE S7085

Mann, just Sunday before last, on May

14, at the graduation exercises at the

College of Charleston in my hometown

which, incidentally, was founded in

1767. It is the fourth-oldest liberal arts

college in the United States and the

oldest municipal college in the United

States, now having become a State university. Our distinguished colleague

from Kansas, the Senator from Kansas,

Senator NANCY KASSEBAUM, was the

graduation speaker. As Dr. Alexander,

our greatest of great presidents there,

spoke and introduced the program, he

said this, and I think it should gain the

attention of everyone:

A few more than 900 soon-to-be graduates

are seated behind me. If I ask each of them

to stand who had attended college on a grant

from the Federal Government, 405 of them

would stand. If I then asked those to stand

who had received a Government loan, an additional 198 would stand. If I then asked all

those to stand who had received a scholarship which included at least some Government involvement, an additional 120 would

stand. Eighty percent of today’s graduates

would then be standing. Of course, all the

rest, as well as those who are standing, had

a part of the expenses at the college paid for

by the State of South Carolina.

So while our graduates are thanking their

families and friends, they might do well to

also thank the Government. At the College

of Charleston, we do not think of the Government as our enemy. It is not possible to

love the College of Charleston and hate the

Government. In the American democracy,

the Government, in the phrase of Lincoln, is

‘‘of the people, by the people and for the people.’’ Speaking for myself, I do not think it

is possible to love America and hate the Government.

So my plea this afternoon is if we can

set aside partisanship momentarily and

get some bipartisanship back on track

for the general good, let us look at this

amendment and realize that we have to

move forward.

This particular amendment has what

aim? Is it our aim to streamline the

Government and cut out the fat? Or is

it our aim to hack away indiscriminately, to tear down Government, to

cut out not just the fat but also the

muscle? Quite frankly, I look at the

unprecedented education cuts in the

budget resolution and this is what I

see—not an efficiency inspired streamlining, but ideologically-driven amputation.

I am reminded of the Florida doctors

down there who recently went into the

operating room to amputate a foot,

when the patient awoke, he discovered

that the doctors had amputated his

healthy foot.

That is exactly what is occurring

here in this particular budget resolution. We are not talking here, Mr.

President, about highway demonstration projects and more subsidies and

the usual litany of Government waste.

To the contrary. We are talking about

Government at its best. Government at

its most cost efficient.

We are talking about proven programs—Head Start, Title I, assistance

for educating disabled people, and college loans for low-income people. These

are programs that demonstrably work,

and work for our neediest citizens.

By the most conservative estimate,

Mr. President, every $1 spent on Head

Start translates into $2 in later cost

savings and educational benefits. One

investigation, the famous Perry Preschool Study, determined that there

are $3 in benefits for every $1 spent on

Head Start.

We see an even greater return from

Title I programs. For every poor child,

thanks to Title I intervention, who

does not have to repeat a grade, Mr.

President, we save $7,000. For every

child who, thanks to Title I, does not

drop out of school, we save potentially

tens of thousands of dollars in welfare

costs.

Mr. President, the cuts proposed in

the budget resolution give rise to a

broader question: How in the world did

we allow education to become a partisan issue? How in the world did we

reach a point where virtually every Republican is reported ready to vote for

radical cuts in the education budget,

and virtually every Democrat is ready

to vote against the cuts.

I will never forget the bipartisan

move over the years with the distinguished Senator from Vermont, Bob

Stafford. We had been Governors together and worked on education and

the education amendments. Thanks to

the success of Senator Stafford, we had

equally wonderful bipartisan support

and leadership.

We used to have two rules for nonpartisanship around this place: One

rule was politics stop at the water’s

edge; the other rule was that politics

stops at the schoolhouse door. I deeply

regret in the rush to dismantle Government we are willy-nilly throwing away

our consensus on education.

Mr. President, I come to the floor to

plead for a restoration of that consensus, to plead with my colleagues on the

other side of the aisle to join in support of the amendment. Republicans

have spoken very passionately about

the need for people to pull themselves

up by their own bootstraps, to stand on

their own feet, to get out of the wagon,

and help pull the wagon.

The distinguished Speaker of the

other body has made a compelling case

for what he calls ‘‘conservative opportunity society,’’ a society which, he

says, should guarantee equal opportunity but not equality of results.

Fine. How can we credibly talk about

equality of opportunity at a time that

we are making radical cuts in education? How can we tell poor and disadvantaged persons that we believe in

equal opportunity at the same time we

are cutting the dickens out of Head

Start, Title I, and other programs

whose entire purpose is to make opportunity less unequal?

Indeed, Mr. President, if the cuts proposed in the budget resolution are allowed to stand without modification

we will deal a devastating one-two

punch to poor Americans.

First, we will shred the social safety

net by enacting cuts in child nutrition,

health care, job training and so on.

Sixty percent of the $961 billion in

budget cuts planned over the next 7

years will come from programs for poor

and elderly. By hacking away at education, we cripple the ability of poor

children to get a decent start toward

literacy and other skills that they will

need to stay off welfare and survive in

the new economy.

I see a common thread, Mr. President, running through this budget resolution. The more needy a person is the

more deeply they get cut. This is true

not just of children but of States as

well. Cutbacks in the budget resolution

will hit hardest in the States that are

most dependent on Federal aid.

These States tend to be small, they

tend to be poor, and, yes, they tend to

be Southern. Consider the following

States and how much they depend on

Federal assistance in their education

budgets: Mississippi, 17 percent; New

Mexico, 12.4 percent; Alaska, 11.5 percent; Alabama, 11.4 percent; South Dakota, 11.1 percent; North Dakota 11.1

percent; Louisiana, 10.8; Arkansas, 10.8;

Kentucky, 10.1 percent; my own State

of South Carolina, 9 percent.

The main program cut back by the

resolution is Title I for the disadvantaged. We now serve, Mr. President,

about 6 million children under the program, and projecting the same acrossthe-board cut to education, the Department of Education says that we will be

serving only 4 million children when

that particular cut has become law.

Taken together, the cuts in the budget resolution make a mockery of any

notion of an opportunity society. This

budget resolution tells poor people to

pull them themselves up by the bootstraps, and then it takes away the

boots.

It strikes me strongly that those who

would make deep cuts in the social

safety net have a special obligation, a

special moral obligation, to at a minimum maintain the Federal Government’s current level of investment in

education. The bottom line, of course,

is education equals opportunity.

The income and opportunity gap is

already striking. Between 1973 and 1989,

the annual earnings of black male high

school dropouts in their twenties declined by fully 50 percent.

Consider this, Mr. President: Kids

whose parents are on the top quartile

of income have no trouble going to college. A whopping 76 percent of them

earn Bachelor’s degrees. But for kids

whose parents are on the bottom quartile, a shockingly different story. Only

4 percent of these lower-income kids

receive a Bachelor’s degree.

Mr. President, we are limited on time

here this afternoon and many of our

distinguished colleagues are interested

in addressing this particular problem.

Let me just say these are exactly the

kids who are most at risk in

underachieving, flunking a grade or

dropping out. Take away Head Start

and Title I and we are yanking the rug

out from under the kids.
S7086 CONGRESSIONAL RECORD — SENATE May 22, 1995

We have to get real. We cannot claim

to favor an ‘‘opportunity society’’ at

the same time we enact savage cuts in

education. The opportunities of society

should not be for those who are born on

third base; rather, we also need an opportunity society for poor children who

are born stuck in the batter’s box with

a two-strike count.

Yet by cutting deeply into Head

Start, Title I, and the other education

programs for the disadvantaged, we are

heading in exactly the wrong direction.

It is too late, now, Mr. President, to reconsider the priorities set forth in the

budget resolution. To that end, therefore, I urge a strong bipartisan vote in

favor of this amendment. If we are serious about opportunity for everyone,

then we should be boosting our investment in education, not busting it.

Mr. HARKIN. I thank Senator HOLLINGS for his support and for his cosponsorship of this amendment and his

long-time support for education in our

country.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to add the following as cosponsors:

Senator JEFFORDS, Senator KENNEDY,

Senator PELL, Senator DODD, Senator

BINGAMAN, Senator SIMON, and Senator

MURRAY as cosponsors.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without

objection, it is so ordered.

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I yield 8

minutes to the Senator from Washington.

The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr.

FRIST). The Senator from Washington.

Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, of all

the pain in this budget, nothing will

hurt our Nation more than the draconian cuts to education.

Education allows Americans to pull

themselves up by their own bootstraps.

And I know this first hand. I am one of

seven children from a family in a small

town in Washington State.

My parents taught us the most important lessons in life. They taught us

that everyone can make a difference.

They showed us the bright promise of

the American dream.

And, they taught us that education

was the key to success.

That’s why my parents—like many—

are watching this debate closely. They

understand what’s at stake—because

they know the difference education

made in their children’s lives.

Every one of my brothers and sisters,

every one of us went to college. Every

one of us has been able to follow our

dreams—and one of us—my twin sister—is now a teacher herself.

When I stand here in this debate, I

think of my sister, Peggy, in her classroom in Bellingham, WA. I know the

challenges she faces as a sixth grade

teacher.

Peggy tells me how class size will

grow if these types of cuts are made. If

we just shift costs from the Federal to

local level in this way, the quality of

education in her classroom will decrease.

I know she is watching this budget

debate—like teachers all across this

Nation—and she is expecting us to keep

education funding a top priority.

Peggy instills the same hopes and

dreams in today’s children our parents

and teachers instilled in us.

And, she knows that the priorities in

this budget are misguided. Taxes on

working families. Drastic cuts to Medicaid and Medicare. Slash-and-burn

education cuts.

It frankly amazes me that we are seriously considering a budget which

cuts education so severely.

The fundamental goal of any economic policy should be to raise the

standard of living, and increase opportunity for all Americans.

You achieve this by strengthening

education at all levels.

Last year, I worked with some of my

colleagues from across the aisle in a bipartisan fashion to help expand educational opportunities for all Americans. Unfortunately, it seems—in this

budget—that spirit has now collapsed.

This year, we are taking giant steps

backward. In this budget, education is

targeted for some of the largest cuts.

I have stated many times that I am

all for deficit reduction. However, it is

irrational to cut investments in our

children and in our workers—and then

turn around and say these cuts are

good for our future. How is cutting

education good for our future?

The American people have the right

to know what’s in this budget. Let’s

look at the specifics:

Head Start, one of the most effective

early nutrition and education programs, in cut by $3 billion. This draconian cut will deny as many as 100,000

low-income children the benefit of a

pre-school education. That makes no

sense.

K through 12 education programs

also take a big hit. This budget would

eliminate Goals 2000, which supports

the efforts of schools and communities

to raise academic standards in their

areas. That makes so sense.

Training programs are cut. The

School-to-Work Program ensures that

all young people attain the skills they

need to enter the workforce. Some of

our colleagues want to eliminate this

program. That makes no sense.

Finally, I am truly concerned about

the absence of student financial aid

funds in this budget. Nationally, the

costs for higher education have increased at twice the rate of family income over the past decade. Without financial aid, college has simply become

unavailable to the middle class.

I would have never even thought of

college if it were not for financial aid.

Neither would any of my six brothers

and sisters. This budget says to young

Americans ‘‘you have to be rich to go

to college.’’ Again, that makes no

sense. Again, this is the wrong message

to our young people who far too often

feel today there is no hope and no future for them.

We can not expect to retain our position as a leader in innovation, research, and production—unless we continue to invest in education.

At a time when Americans are fearful

of losing their jobs; when Americans

need training; when our high school

seniors lack the funds for college; at

this time, it makes no sense to turn

our backs on them.

Every day, I hear my distinguished

colleagues—who were captains of industry—talk about what private industry and big business need in this budget.

I do listen to leaders in industry.

They tell me how important education

is to American competitiveness. High

tech companies and manufacturing

firms need well-trained, high skilled

work force. So, I do listen to them.

And, I also listen to Americans who do

not have rich, powerful lobbyists behind them.

Let us listen to America’s displaced

workers who need to be retrained. Let

us listen to America’s teachers. Let us

listen to America’s schoolchildren. Let

us remember the common sense our

parents taught us. Let us remember

how each and every one of us got to

this Senate.

I urge my colleagues to vote for this

amendment and restore these education cuts, restore some hope to our

children’s faces, and restore some common sense to this budget process.

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I yield

10 minutes to the Senator from Massachusetts.

Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I

thank my colleagues, Senator HARKIN,

Senator HOLLINGS, Senator MURRAY,

and others who have made such a

strong presentation on an issue which

is of such fundamental importance to

all Americans as the priority of education for the young people of this

country.

What this amendment to the budget

proposal is doing is restoring in a dramatic way support for higher education.

If there has been one extraordinary

success story in the postwar period in

the United States, it has been higher

education. Of the 140 great world universities, 127 of them are in the United

States of America. That is not an accident. Our higher education is the envy

of the world. We are doing it right.

How has that come about? One reason is because you have participation

of individuals that is not simply based

on their ability to pay; another is government support for research, and finally, we have a system that attracts

the best academic minds in the world.

Overall, higher education has been an

extraordinary success.

Mr. President, we have many problems in this country. We have many

problems around the world. One problem that is growing increasingly serious is that access for the sons and

daughters of working families to higher education is becoming more difficult. The escalation of costs has become a serious problem.

The universities, the teaching hospitals, the schools of this country are

the envy of the world, and we have to
May 22, 1995 CONGRESSIONAL RECORD — SENATE S7087

ask ourselves in this budget resolution,

as we are looking to the future: Why

are we putting them at risk? And we

are putting them at risk by the reduction of $30 billion in education funding

over the next 7 years. That is the very

basic and fundamental question. In a

minute, I will come to the same question in terms of what we are doing in

primary and elementary education, as

well.

I would like to review for all of our

colleagues the figures about what people earn when they achieve higher education—this chart can be viewed by our

colleagues. The chart is self-evident,

but fortunately, or unfortunately, we

have to remind our colleagues and remind the American people.

The chart shows average annual

earnings by level of education. If you

do not finish high school, the average

income is $12,000. If you complete high

school, the average over the lifetime is

$18,000. If you have some college but do

not complete 2 years, it goes up to

$19,000. It is $24,000 if you get an associate’s degree from a 2-year college, and

up to $32,000 if you graduate from a 4-

year college. It goes on. For a master’s,

$40,000; a doctorate, $54,000; for a professional degree, $74,000 individually.

Our older brothers and sisters and

parents understand it because they had

the GI bill. Generally, borrowers under

the GI bill repaid $8 for every $1 that

was expended. Student loans work.

Higher education works in the United

States of America.

What did we do in the last Congress?

In the last Congress, because of the

concern about increased cost of education and the costs of loans to the

Government—we moved toward a direct loan program to try to recapture

some of the funding that was going to

banks in the guaranteed loan program.

We moved to phase in a direct loan program. We moved in a moderate way.

There were some who believed we

ought to go to a full direct loan program immediately. There were some

who said, ‘‘Senator KENNEDY, Senator

SIMON, and Senator Durenberger, since

we have the best in terms of higher

education, why do you risk the system

by going to a direct loan program when

we do not really know?’’

We said, ‘‘Fine.’’ We worked out a

compromise, Republicans and Democrats alike, to move into a direct loan

program in a moderate way. The direct

loan program is now being managed by

the Department of Education effectively. We have a direct loan program

going on with competition with the

guaranteed loan program, and we have

reduced the losses that were coming

from failure to repay student loans

from $2.7 billion down to less than $1.2

billion—a dramatic reduction.

It is so interesting to hear Mr. Bennett talking about the Department of

Education and we ought to abolish it. I

wish he had been as good a manager as

Dick Riley in recapturing the billions

of dollars that were lost during his tenure. If he knows so much about the Department, where did not he recapture

the funds?

So we have a situation now where we

are doing well in implementing a direct

loan program. We are also lowering the

basic fees, reducing those the initial

fee students have to pay.

We have also adopted national service as an additional way to get young

people to go to college because we

know that our Nation’s future depends

upon education.

Now we have before us the dramatic

changes proposed the Republican budget to the Pell grants. This chart shows

what is going to happen to these grants

even though the chairman of the Budget Committee is telling us he is going

to hold them harmless. You can hear

all the statements that you want, but

if you want to know what is going to

happen to costs for students as we follow through the years of this budget,

look at this chart. The bottom line

shows what the value of the Pell grant

will be in the year 2002—$1,501. The

other line shows the average cost of

going to State universities across the

country—$8,026. Right now, the Pell

grant is worth $2,590 and the average

cost at a State university is $5,314.

That shows you pretty clearly what is

going to happen to students.

It is interesting that in 1965, when

the Aid to Education Program was

passed, we had three-quarter grants,

one-quarter loans. Why? Because we

set the economic challenge to the

young person by figuring out what that

young person could bring to their education, what they could earn over the

course of the summer and during the

year. But we did not want to encumber

that individual and that family far into

the distant future. If they were eligible

on the basis of need, we intended that

they were going to be able to get a

grant and only a quarter was going to

be a loan. Twelve years later, threequarters are loans and one-quarter

grants. What do our friends on the

other side say? They are going to make

the loans even more expensive.

So they are going to indenture the

young people of this Nation. We hear

all these speeches by our Republican

brothers and sisters saying we are

doing the young people a favor because

we are going to keep the next generation out of debt. Instead, they are putting them in debt, putting them in debt

by what they will have to pay for college to say nothing of what they will

have to pay for graduate school.

I see our distinguished friend and a

distinguished doctor presiding now. He

can certainly tell us about what happened with his own classmates at medical school and the indebtedness of

those individuals.

Whatever help and assistance we are

providing in terms of the young people

is going to be heavily undermined with

this particular proposal. There is no

other way about it. You can say, ‘‘Well,

we are going to hold them harmless.

We are going to provide the services.’’

If you one program harmless, then you

are going to find the further emasculation of some other program such as the

chapter I program, the title I program,

about $6.8 billion that goes to the neediest children, or you are going to emasculate others like the Head Start programs that depend upon the same pot

of funding. It makes no sense. It makes

no sense for the young people that are

going to go through this system. It

makes no sense for the universities

and, most importantly, it makes no

sense for the country. We have something that is working, and we are putting it at serious risk at the present

time.

Mr. President, this amendment

moves us dramatically back into a sane

and rational position by restoring some

$40 billion to education.

Mr. President, if we look where we

are in primary, elementary, and secondary education, the fact of the matter is all of us who have supported the

various programs understand that education is a local responsibility. I hear

so much about what we need to do is

get parents back in the school system

and I agree that we do have to do that.

I hear what we have to do is let teachers make changes in the curriculum

and that is also true.

As the Senator from Iowa and the

Senator from South Carolina know,

and others know, only about 7 cents

out of every dollar is provided by the

Federal Government. But they are important dollars. Just look at the special needs children that were never

being taken care of prior to the program that was developed in a bipartisan way under Senator Weicker, Senator HARKIN, and many of the members, Republican and Democrat, on the

Human Resources Committee and on

the Appropriations Committees. Education is not just a Democratic effort.

I daresay that Senator Weicker had as

much to do with increasing the commitment of this Nation to special needs

children as any Member here. This has

been a Republican as well as a Democratic effort.

We have often listened to our colleagues talk about how migrant children and illegal children have settled

in various States and schools, and how

they need some help and assistance.

But if you take out the nutrition programs, and the special needs programs,

if you take out Star schools, take out

technology, take out the TRIO program, what do we have left? These are

programs that have been tested, evaluated, challenged, and worked. Those

are the programs they are emasculating.

What happened last year? We had a

bipartisan commission that was set up

to review what had happened in Head

Start. In the 1980’s and into the early

1990’s, there was some increase in funding, to the credit of President Bush.

But the problem was there was not

quality control. You had continued

turnover in programs without insisting

on quality provisions for the teachers

that were involved.
S7088 CONGRESSIONAL RECORD — SENATE May 22, 1995

So there was a real question about

the quality of the Head Start Program.

We had a very good bipartisan panel,

and their recommendations were reported out with only one dissenting

vote on the Human Resources Committee, Republicans and Democrats alike.

I am not going to quote many of our

colleagues on that side talking about

the changes in the Head Start Program, how we were at last getting this

on track, how important that was because I do not have the time, but we

made important changes. Then we

went ahead and took a look at the

chapter I program because of the various challenges that were suggested by

many for that program. We reviewed

and had hearings as did the House as

well. Those changes were supported

overwhelmingly by the Republicans

and Democrats. We dealt with the

changes that were taking place with

different kinds of poverty impacting

local communities and the growth of

poverty in some of the rural areas. We

went through that. We did not do all

the things that everybody would have

wanted, but we worked together and

made great progress, Republicans and

Democrats alike. Even in the Goals

2000 Program, Republicans and Democrats alike came together to pass legislation that provides new help and assistance to schools. Of that funding, 85

percent goes to local schools.

Goals 2000 was developed by Dick

Riley from South Carolina, one of the

most effective Governors in education,

and also Governor Bill Clinton. Riley

had great credibility because he had

changed the academic achievement and

outcomes of the black and brown and

white students of his State of South

Carolina in an extraordinary way, involving parents, involving local communities, involving the businesses. In

Goals 2000 he brought that experience

to the legislation.

We also had bipartisan support for

the School-to-Work Program. I was

with a former Governor of Maine, a Republican, last week at the dedication of

the 1-year anniversary of the signing of

the School-to-Work Program. This Republican Governor said that this is one

of the most important programs of education that he has seen in the State of

Maine.

At a hearing in our Human Resources

Committee Tommy Thompson, Republican Governor of the State of Wisconsin, down, also said that this is one of

the most important initiatives in his

state. School to Work would be emasculated in this budget.

I mean, what is the sense? We have

hearings, we develop the coalition, we

develop the bipartisanship, we have

men and women that are out on the

front line, Republicans and Democrats,

and we have educators and parents saying how the good the programs are.

And we are effectively emasculating

them, saying we are going to have to

cut someplace, and we are going to go

ahead and cut it.

So, Mr. President, I do not believe

the wholesale cuts that have been effected in this budget are justified or

warranted. I find to the contrary.

I think one of the things that I remember so clearly—is my time running

out? Mr. President, how much time do

I have?

Mr. President, if I can have 2 more

minutes.

Let me just give you a few instances

about the importance of support for

students. This stack here on my desk

represents the mail that I have received on the Internet system from

students all over the country. I hope

that our Members check their mail because when they do they will finding

out what these proposed cuts mean.

I think there has been a great deal of

trivializing the importance of the extra

debt burden to students. You know,

people are saying, ‘‘It is really only the

cost of a big gulp a day. Really, it is

only the cost of a one-way plane ticket

down to Ft. Lauderdale.’’ People are

trying to trivialize this. I can tell you

the increases are not trivial to students and working people.

I think this whole process demeans

the young people of this country. It demeans their parents who have worked

hard, worked and scraped and saved

over the course of a lifetime to help

send their children to college.

A student attending medical school

in Massachusetts writes:

I am a 24-year-old African-American

woman, born and raised in St. Louis, MO. I

come from a poor, working- class, two-parent

household. I am proud to say I was the first

African-American valedictorian in my high

school. I went on to college at a private institution. I received much-needed financial

aid while there, including loans and scholarships. My parents helped as much as they

could, but with two other children, they

could only help a little.

Without the Stafford and Perkins loans

that I received, I would not have been able to

continue my education. After graduating

from college I was accepted to an Ivy League

medical school where I am still very much

dependent on Federal financial aid. I hope to

practice primary care (pediatrics) in an indigent community.

I am close to finishing school and may not

be affected by such harsh cutbacks, but I am

very concerned for the future generation of

students.

Mr. President, this student and thousands of other students just like her

are exactly what we need, primary care

physicians in indigent communities.

Under the Republican budget a student following this course of study

could well face over $40,000 in additional interest payments at the end of

her medical training.

A student from New York writes:

‘‘My mother just got laid off today. I only

have one year left before I receive my bachelor’s degree. I don’t want my opportunity

and those of others to be cut short. Everyone

in the White House, on Capitol Hill, and in

the state governments had their opportunity. Why are you taking away ours?

A college graduate from Colorado

writes:

‘‘I am not a student, but I’m raising my

voice in support of government backing for

student loans. If it were not for student

loans, I would not have been able to attend

college. My mother was supporting two kids

and we lived in government subsidized housing—the projects. There was simply no way

she could have paid for a college education

for us, so we applied for loans and more

loans. I received some grants and a great

deal of loan assistance, and still I worked at

McDonald’s. I am now a consulting writer

and I never have to look for work . . . it

looks for me. This is a most wonderful life

and I wouldn’t have had any chance at all of

attaining it without those student loans and

grants. Please do whatever it takes to ensure

that others get this chance . . . it is what

allowed me to become who I am today, and

I thank you all.

Another student, from Maine, summed up

the situation: ‘‘If you think education is expensive—try ignorance’’

I ask each of you to think seriously before

you consider voting for a budget that contains $30 billion in cuts to student aid. You

will see very clearly that this budget is turning its back on the nation’s students.

The Republican budget turns its back on

education, and it does so in order to pay for

a tax cut for the wealthiest individuals in

the country. That makes no sense. It is the

wrong priority for education, and the wrong

priority for the nation.

The pending Democratic amendment restores $40 billion to this anti-education budget—$40 billion that will help to correct these

misplaced priorities. I urge the Senate to

support the Democratic amendment.

I thank the Senator from Iowa for

yielding time.

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I thank

the Senator from Massachusetts for a

very eloquent and learned statement. I

again wish to thank him for his great

leadership over so many years in the

area of education. I think what the

Senator from Massachusetts just said

really pulls it all together in terms of

what this budget is about and what it

is doing to kids in this country, and

the history of what we have tried to do

over the last couple of generations of

young people to ensure that our kids

do get that affordable, quality education in this country. Senator KENNEDY has captured it in his statement.

Mr. President, how much time do I

have remaining?

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator has 21 minutes.

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I yield 8

minutes to the Senator from Rhode Island. I apologize. If he does need some

more, I will try to get some more time

for the author of the Pell Grant Program.

Mr. PELL. Eight minutes is fine.

Mr. HARKIN. Senator PELL has been

so important in making sure that the

poorest kids in this country get a decent education. I am proud to yield to

the Senator from Rhode Island.

Mr. PELL. I thank the Senator from

Iowa. I second his remarks about the

Senator from Massachusetts. He has

shown remarkable leadership.

The budget resolution before us

would have a very detrimental impact

on Federal education spending. Instead

of adjustments, fine tuning and reasonable savings, this resolution would

produce drastic and unwarranted reductions of the small but critical role
May 22, 1995 CONGRESSIONAL RECORD — SENATE S7089

our Federal Government plays in education—5 percent for general education

and 11 percent for higher education is

the share of the Federal Government.

According to the Budget Committee

figures, this resolution assumes a reduction of $59.4 billion in outlays for

function 500 over the next 7 years when

compared with current law. When compared with the President’s budget,

though, the estimate is that the reduction would total $65 billion over the

same 7-year period. According to the

Labor Committee’s own estimates, education makes up about 58 percent of

function 500, and this means therefore

that the reduction in education spending could total as much as $38 billion

over the next 7 years.

The reduction in education would

come in two areas, mandatory spending

and discretionary spending. The Hollings-Harkin amendment before us

would add back $40 billion in both mandatory and discretionary spending. It

would have the effect, therefore, of ensuring that we would not experience

drastic cutbacks in Federal education

spending.

Failure to approve this amendment

would surely put education in harm’s

way. While the budget resolution assumes protection of certain programs,

those are only assumptions. They do

not have the full force of law. The final

decision for discretionary cuts will be

left to the Appropriations Committee,

while the final decision for mandatory

cuts will fall to we, the authorizing

committee.

My fear is that the size of the cuts in

the budget resolution are so immense

that no program will be protected and

all will be at risk. If the cuts are applied across the board, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that

one-third of the Federal investment in

education will be eliminated by the

year 2002.

In mandatory spending, the budget

resolution before us assumes savings of

$13.8 billion in outlays over the next 7

years. Seven assumptions are made in

order to achieve those savings, but

only five of those are within the jurisdiction of our Labor Committee. According to OMB, the total of the remaining five options is less than $5 billion. That includes about $3.3 billion in

savings if we eliminate the in-school

interest subsidy for graduate students,

an option which I for one would vigorously oppose.

The Labor Committee is also left

with the responsibility to come up with

almost $9 billion in additional savings.

This is such a massive requirement

that the only option available would be

the elimination of the in-school interest subsidy for undergraduate students

who come primarily from middle-income families.

To my mind, this is not the road we

should travel. Elimination of the inschool interest subsidy for all students

would, according to the Department of

Education, increase student indebtedness by 20 to 50 percent. In a period

when more Americans are borrowing

more money to help finance a college

education, this would be the wrong

step and the wrong direction to take.

In a very real sense, we would be increasing private debt to decrease public debt, an option that is not at all

satisfactory.

With respect to discretionary program spending, the effect would be

equally alarming. Freezing the Pell

Grant Program at the current law level

would diminish the value of that program by as much as 40 percent over the

next 7 years. According to OMB, half of

that is because of the increase in eligible students and the other half because

of the expected increase in inflation in

the next 7 years.

Freezing the title I program in elementary and secondary education for

the 7 years comes when we anticipate

at least a 9-percent increase in student

population. The result: According to

OMB, we will serve 2 million fewer students by the year 2002. That is 2 million fewer students by the year 2002.

According to OMB, failure to protect

the Safe and Drug Free Schools Program would save $1 billion over the

next 7 years. It would also mean that 94

percent, almost all of our Nation’s

school districts would lose funding that

now goes to help 39 million students.

Failure to protect vocational education and training would place the

very existence of this program at risk.

OMB estimates that a possible cut of

$5.3 billion over the next 7 years means

that some 12 million fewer students

would be served. This would come at a

time when business and industry leaders are telling us they need a better

and more well-educated work force if

we are to remain leaders in the world

marketplace.

Passage of this resolution without

adoption of the Harkin-Hollings

amendment before us would alter almost 30 years of a strong bipartisan

partnership on behalf of education. It

would seriously threaten bipartisan accomplishments that have brought the

dream of a college education within

the reach of every American who has

the drive and the desire and the yearning that has begun to bring poor children into the education mainstream

and that have brought real meaning to

the concept of equal educational opportunity.

Mr. President, this is not the time to

retreat in education; it is the time to

advance. As President Clinton has

noted, as a nation we face both a budget deficit and an education deficit. To

my mind, we should not increase the

latter to decrease the former. A strong

and sound economy depends on a welleducated, well-prepared work force. To

pull back in education is the wrong

step, in the wrong direction, at the

wrong time, and I hope we would not

do so.

Accordingly, with all the strength we

have, let us support the amendment before us.

I yield the floor.

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I take

this opportunity, in this small amount

of time, to thank the distinguished

Senator from Rhode Island for his

many years of leadership and service to

the young people in our country. There

is a reason why they are called Pell

grants. Go to any college, any student

in this country—well, you go to anybody who is out in the professional

world, who has graduated from college

in the last 20 years. They all know one

thing. They know what a Pell grant is.

So many of our young people who came

from lower-income families, who otherwise would not have had the ability to

get through college, got those Pell

grants. They are educated; they are

making money; they are paying taxes;

and we are all better off for it. We are

a better country because of that.

I wish to say to the Senator from

Rhode Island, thank you so much on

behalf of millions of students, presentday students and millions of Americans

who are out there now earning a decent

living, raising their families, passing

on a better life to the next generation,

living the American dream because of

the efforts of the Senator from Rhode

Island.

Mr. PELL. I thank the Senator.

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I yield 5

minutes to the Senator from Vermont,

and I will try to yield more if I can.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Vermont.

Mr. JEFFORDS. Thank you, Mr.

President.

I rise in favor of the amendment.

I also want to echo the accolades for

my patriot on the Education Committee, Senator PELL, who has done so

much over the years. I stand here as

the new subcommittee chairman of the

Committee on Education, because I

feel, as he does and others have, that

we must be sure of what we do now.

This is serious business.

Everybody recognizes that finally we

have to balance the budget. But if we

do not do it carefully, what we do will

be counterproductive and will result in

increased costs and decreased revenues.

It is so simple and easy for us to all

hold hands, close our eyes, and cut

across the board. But that will not do

it. This will not do it if you get into

the area of education.

Education has always been bipartisan

and it should remain so today. So let

us strike any partisanship out of here

and take an examination of what will

happen if we do not do this carefully.

Let us talk about the counterproductive aspects of cutting education.

First of all, the business community

came to me a year ago and cried to me,

‘‘You have to do something about increasing our productivity, of helping us

improve the education of this Nation,

because we are not any longer as competitive as we used to be.’’ And unless

we improve things, we will be less competitive in the next century and this

Nation will slip into a Third World capacity. Why?
S7090 CONGRESSIONAL RECORD — SENATE May 22, 1995

Let us take a look at this chart. A

chart is worth a thousand words.

The first chart is high school graduates unable to perform basic tasks.

Just take our standards, forget about

the international standards. Over half

of our kids graduate unable to do simple functions that would mean that

you are at least basically literate. I

will show you later what that has an

impact on.

Let me take the next chart. Let us

take a narrow look at the international scene, where we stand in the

world with respect to our education

system. And I will end up with it in another area. We are now in the area of

math, and the same is true in science,

dead last when we compete with those

other countries that are giving us competition in the international fields.

That is shameful.

Are we going to do something about

it? We cannot, if we cut education.

Let us take a look at what this failure of education has to do with our

budget situation right now. We have a

loss, through education failure, of $1⁄2

trillion in our GDP. That is because we

are slipping behind with respect to productivity. We have problems. Eighty

percent of those incarcerated in jails,

costing $20,000 to $60,000 a year to incarcerate, are school dropouts; 60 percent of the teenage pregnancies are

school dropouts.

In addition, the literacy level reduces

our productivity level, losing more,

and we have $208 billion a year through

lost productivity through welfare. And

it costs us another $200 billion for remedial training to bring our students

up to the capacity where they can be

productive in our industrial society.

In addition to that, because they

earn less money being nonproductive

citizens, it costs us $125 billion in lost

revenue.

So let us take a look at the next

chart and see what this has done to the

median family income in this country

and why we are losing that revenue.

Two-thirds of our society over the

last 20 years—over the last 20 years—

have had a decrease in their family income. And that is true even though we

now have more two-worker families

than ever before.

Education is related to what you

earn. You will see the only ones now

that are increasing their income in this

decade are those that have had postgraduate education in college.

Now let us take a look at what is

happening with respect to another

area. One area in here, which is part of

this proposal as well, but one that

seems to be the easiest thing to do—

our graduate students. Why do we not

just increase their debt load a little

bit? Why allow them to get subsidies

for interest while they are in graduate

school? Seems like an innocuous thing

to do.

Well, this Nation has the best graduate schools in the world. Everybody

wants to come here. However, over the

last several years, a decade, the debt

load of our college students has gotten

so high now, it is estimated it will be

up around $22,000 when they get out.

Well, they cannot go on to graduate

school. We have fewer and fewer and

fewer people that are going to graduate

school.

Now what has that done to us? Let us

take a look at what it has done to us in

a competitive area.

Mr. President, I ask Senator for an

additional 30 seconds.

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, how

much do I have remaining?

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Six minutes 5 seconds.

Mr. HARKIN. I hate to tell the Senator from Vermont, I only have 6 minutes 5 seconds. I have two people that

I promised more time to.

Mr. JEFFORDS. My punch line is all

I wanted to get out.

Mr. HARKIN. The Senator gets at

least 2 minutes for his punch line.

Mr. JEFFORDS. Well, it will not

take that long.

What this chart shows here is, before,

you know, we used to have all the foreign students come here. They used to

get educated and they stayed. You saw

them at IBM and all over the country

allowing us to be more productive. Now

what is happening, because of the debt

load, fewer and fewer of our kids are

going to graduate school and more foreign students are going to graduate

school. The blue indicates the ones

that are going home and the red indicates the ones that are staying here.

More and more are going home. So

what we are doing now is we are seeing

almost all of the graduate students are

being foreign students, a majority are,

and they are all going home. Ours are

staying here, but we do not have

enough to fill the slots.

So that one little thing in this budget proposal would probably do more

damage to our competitiveness than

about anything else.

I yield the floor.

Mr. HARKIN. I thank the Senator

from Vermont for his contribution now

and in the past.

I yield 3 minutes to the Senator from

Illinois.

Mr. SIMON. Mr. President, I will try

to make it fast.

Of course, we need a balanced budget.

But, of course, we have to have the

right priorities.

Every study that has been made by

any group—conservative, liberal, you

name it—says we have to invest more

in education. I have never seen a study

that suggests to the contrary. And yet

what we are asked to do is to cut

back—cut back on Head Start, cut

back on title I that helps poor kids

that is really showing results, cut back

in higher education.

Senator JEFFORDS is absolutely correct. In the narrative on the budget,

you will see we are going to get that

$14.7 billion in savings by cutting out

assistance to graduate students. That

is bad enough.

But you put the numbers together

and you only get $2 billion of that.

Where do we get the other $12.7 billion?

Well, we get it out of the hides of students. And it means a lot of students

are not going to go on to higher education. That is not the way we ought to

go.

In fiscal year 1949, I say to Senator

HARKIN, we devoted 9 percent of the

Federal budget to education. We are

now devoting less than 2 percent. And

if this budget is adopted as is, it will go

down even further——

Mr. HARKIN. To 1.4 percent.

Mr. SIMON. Down to 1.4 percent,

Senator HARKIN says. It just does not

make sense.

I visited a Head Start group in Rock

Island, IL, an impoverished part of that

city. Like every Head Start group,

they have a waiting list. Monday morning, one set of kids comes in, Tuesday

morning a different one, Wednesday

morning a different one, and so forth.

I asked the woman in charge what

would it mean in the lives of these

young people if they could come here 5

days a week. She smiled and she said,

‘‘You could not believe the difference it

would make in their lives.’’

We are denying them that chance.

Oh, we are saving money, like you save

money when you put up a house and

you do not put a roof on it. You do not

save money in the long run. We have to

face up to the reality that we are going

to have to change in this field of education. We are going to have to fund it

more adequately.

I think of the testimony before our

committee by the Secretary of Labor

talking about a manufacturing company from Connecticut, I believe it

was, making a decision, do they build

in Mexico, the United States, or Germany? Mexico offered cheap labor, poor

education; the United States better

education, higher wages; and they reluctantly made the decision to build

their plant in Germany where they

have to pay $6.50 more per hour but

where people are well prepared.

We are cutting back on our future if

we do not adopt this amendment. I

hope we do.

I yield the floor.

Mr. HARKIN. How much time do I

have remaining?

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Two

minutes 20 seconds.

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I must

say that I find the fact that we only

have 3 hours to debate education unconscionable. We should have more

time. I was under the impression we

were going to have 6 hours. I found out

when I walked on the floor we have 3,

by unanimous consent. I do not know

how that happened. We need more

time. This is the most important part

of the budget to future generations.

I yield whatever time I have to the

Senator from Minnesota.

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I

think it is unconscionable that we not

have more time.

PRIVILEGE OF THE FLOOR

Mr. WELLSTONE. I thank Mary

McEvoy, who is a fellow with me who
May 22, 1995 CONGRESSIONAL RECORD — SENATE S7091

helped write, I think, an important

speech. I ask unanimous consent that

she be allowed the privilege of the floor

during the rest of this debate.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without

objection, it is so ordered.

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President,

what we have before us today is a budget that says loud and clear to the

American people that education is no

longer a priority. The proposed $40 billion cut in education spending represents the largest education cuts in

American history. In fact, it is estimated that by the year 2002, the Federal Government’s commitment to

young Americans will be cut by over 33

percent. And these cuts span all age

groups. For example, by the year 2002:

Over 400,000 young children will be

denied a Head Start through preschool

education;

Education for over 5.5 million children and youth with disabilities will be

eliminated;

School-to-work programs, partnerships between businesses, communities,

and schools stand to lose over $5.3 billion.

And less than one-half of the children

who need it will receive assistance to

improve their reading and math skills.

Are these America’s new Goals 2002?

The cuts I have listed above are devastating. But there is also another program that the proposed Education

budget reductions will negatively impact. I want to talk to you about cuts

in student aid.

Remember, all of those who signed

the Contract With America have signed

a document that says they intend to

support cuts in student aid. The proposed Senate budget is serving as another vehicle to accomplish this devastating promise.

Under the proposed budget, $30 billion would be cut in Federal aid to college students over the next 7 years, affecting over 4 million students. For example, last year in Minnesota, over

14,000 students received assistance from

the Federal Stafford Loan Program

alone. And these students are not from

wealthy families who could afford to

bear the entire brunt of the cost of

their child’s post-secondary education.

In fact, the average income for the

families of these students was less than

$37,000 per year.

A college education is an essential

part of the American dream. It gives

people an opportunity to be all that

they can be. And, I know from what my

father always believed for me and I believe for my children—that their lives

will be better than the last generation

because they went on to pursue a higher education. In fact, over 92 percent of

all Americans believe that investing in

a Federal support of a college education is an investment in our country’s future.

We also must remember that college

education also significantly benefits to

our Nation as a whole. Our communities are stronger, our economy is

stronger and our democracy is stronger.

But the dream of an education is

more and more difficult to achieve.

Most students now are not going

straight to college from high school. It

is not affordable. Some have to save

some money before they can afford to

go. Some have small children to take

care of. The student body these days

includes a lot more non-traditional

students—those who are returning to

school, those who only go part time because of jobs or family or both, and

those who take more than 4 years to

get their degree.

The costs of going to school keep

going up. Students are forced to put off

school until they have saved enough

money, seek student grants or go into

a lot of debt. It used to be that State

and Federal governments provided

more grants than loans. Students were

not asked to mortgage their future.

But over the last 10 years the balance

between grants and loans have been inverted—the number of loans far outweighs the number of grants. Loans are

now the largest source of Federal student aid.

The Federal Government has had a

commitment to high education for almost 50 years. Yet even at its current

level of resources, the Federal Government’s contribution is insufficient. We

should not be cutting financial aid programs—we should be increasing and

improving those programs. Higher education is one of the best investments

we can make as a country and it is one

of the best investments individuals can

make in their own future. An education increases earning potential, decreases unemployment, and improves

the standard of living.

As a Nation, we cannot afford to cut

educational financial aid to America’s

families. We should not be taking away

one of the few opportunities families

have for their children and grandchildren to make a better life for themselves.

The Senate should go on record in

saying that in our effort to balance the

budget we should not be reducing opportunities for students to improve

their lives.

IT IS EXTREMELY DIFFICULT TO GO TO COLLEGE

THESE DAYS

The total costs of attending a 4-year

public institution averages to about

$7,600. The average cost to go to a 4-

year private institution is around

$16,000. Tuition alone has increased

more than 120 percent over the last 10

years. At this cost higher education is

out of reach for many middle income

families. Without student aid many

would be unable to pursue higher education. Students must seek out scholarship and other grants and awards.

Many borrow, but even that is not possible without help from the Federal

Government. For the 1993–94 academic

year, students borrowed a record

amount—$23 billion from Federal guaranteed loan programs. The average

loan exceeds $2,700 annually. And, borrowing of course sends recent graduates into the working world with a

pile of debt along with their nice new

diploma. Debt that is sometimes with

them for half of their lives.

Krista Hannem is a sophomore who

will be graduating from community

college and going on to Mankato State

University to get a B.A. She is 24 years

old, and married. She writes:

I do not receive State or Federal grants,

nor do I have any scholarships. In order to

pay for my 2 years at [a community college],

I have had to take out over $5,000 in student

loans * * *. Last year I was receiving help

through the State work-study program.

When that was cut I suffered again. I realize

that part of education is receiving some

debt, and that it should not be a free ride,

but neither should it be a weight tied around

my neck. So I ask that whatever decision

you make, you consider the many students

like myself who are choking with this

weight.

MOST STUDENTS ARE NON TRADITIONAL

The typical student these days is not

the Brady Bunch kid who graduates

high school and goes straight on to college. Forty-five percent of the student

body these days is over 25 years old. In

fact, nearly 20 percent of all students

are older than 35. Many are single parents. Forty-three percent attend on a

part time basis, thus probably not finishing a B.A. in 4 years. Even traditional students, students who enroll

full time at 4-year institutions immediately after high school are remaining

for 4 consecutive years, obtain a bachelor’s degree within 5.5 years. Sixtytwo percent of students of all ages

work, including nearly half of traditional students. And, about one student

in five is a member of a minority

group: African American, Asian American, Latino, or Native American.

Denise Peters from Edina writes:

I am a 29 single parent currently enrolled

as a Jr. at the U. of M. Because of the excellent support of financial aid and other programs I have been successfully maintaining

a 3.76 GPA. Before returning to school—from

the time my son was 6 weeks old I worked as

a medical assistant making $9.00 an hour

* * *. Without the needed assistance the rug

would be pulled out from under me * * *.

Sandra Mitchell from St. Louis Park

writes:

I am devastated at the idea of any financial aid cuts. Not only would I need to drop

out of college—I am a sophomore—but it

would leave me with only two options. First,

I could obtain an entry level position. Second, I could remain a public assistance recipient for a while. At any rate the best I could

do for my self and my son and society is to

maintain at below poverty level. I faced

these options after a miserable divorce

which left me without a home, money, or

even credit to plan for the future. I have

goals, not only for myself, but to be allowed

to contribute and replace what I have used.

By the time I graduate in 1997, I will be financially independent. Likewise I am setting

an example for my son to achieve independence and pride which are invaluable to our

whole society.

Troy Goodwater is a sophomore at

Austin Community College. He is a 20-

year single male. He lives at home. He

has a part-time job and attends college

full time. He writes:

My father is retired and receives only a

four hundred dollar check each month from
S7092 CONGRESSIONAL RECORD — SENATE May 22, 1995

social security and my mother works two

jobs in an effort to make ends meet. They

are unable to assist me in anyway in helping

paying my tuition. I receive federal and

state grants to help me pay my tuition,

without these grants I would not be able to

further my education. These grants pay for

all my schooling, because of my low finances. The Federal and State grants are

very helpful to myself and many others college students and if these grants are cut the

people who want an education and can not

afford one will suffer the most in the long

run.

OUR FEDERAL COMMITMENT TO HIGHER

EDUCATION SHOULD BE STRENGTHENED NOT CUT

For almost 50 years the Federal Government has made a commitment to

helping students go on to higher learning. Just during the academic year of

1993–1994 the Federal Government spent

$31.4 billion to ensure that lack of resources does not prevent people from

pursuing their dreams of a college education. In Minnesota alone, students

received more than $420 million in Federal dollars.

The Federal Government provides 75

percent of all student aid including federal grant, loan, and work-study programs.

In 1990, about 5 million students received Federal student aid under one or

more Federal programs. In the 1993–94

academic year about 3.8 million students received Pell grants; 4.5 million

received Stafford loans; 991,000 received

supplemental education opportunity

grants; 697,000 received Perkins loans;

713,000 received Federal Work Study

awards; and 650,000 received State student incentive grants.

Most Federal student aid is based on

need, with the amount of assistance determined by formulas that factor in

family, individual earnings, savings,

and the cost of education. Pell grants

are targeted to the neediest students.

The campus-based programs—supplemental educational opportunity

grants, Federal work study, and Perkins loans—gives school financial aid

officers the flexibility to respond to

unique student needs.

These programs help both low- and

middle-income families. Of the Pell

grants awarded to dependent students—those who are financially dependent on their parents—41 percent

goes to students from families with incomes less than $12,000 and 91 percent

goes to students from families with incomes below $30,000. Among Pell recipients who are financially independent,

73 percent have an income below

$12,000.

Stafford and direct loans primarily

benefit middle income families. Most

subsidized student loans—72 percent

are awarded to students who are still

financially dependent on their families.

The average family income of a dependent student who receives a Stafford loan—a loan on which interest is

not charged while students are in

school—is approximately $35,000. Seventy-five percent of such students have

family income between $12,000 and

$60,000. Among independent students

who receive loans, average family income is $14,400. More than 69 percent

have incomes above $6,000.

More than half of the students who

receive Perkins loans have family income below $30,000. More than half of

the students who receive funds under

the work-study program have family

income below $30,000. And more than 75

percent of students who receive funds

under the Federal supplemental education opportunity grant program have

family income below $30,000.

In recent years the Federal Government commitment has been diminishing. It used to be that State and Federal governments provided more grants

than loans. Students were not asked to

mortgage their future. But over the

last 10 years the balance between

grants and loans has been inverted—

the number of loans far outweigh the

number of grants. Loans are now the

largest source of Federal student aid.

And, even the number of loans has decreased. The explosion in the numbers

of eligible Pell grant recipients combined with inflation meant that in 1992,

4.2 million students were forced to

share the same amount of money that

served 2.8 million students in 1987.

FINANCIAL AID IS AN INVESTMENT IN OUR

FUTURE

Statistics show that financial aid to

students more than pays for itself by

stimulating economic growth, expanding the tax base and increasing productivity. A college degree makes an extraordinary difference in the lives of

people holding them and in the lives of

their communities. Our new service

and information based economy increasingly requires the technical skills

and knowledge that can only be obtained through higher education.

Higher education also makes a difference to us as a Nation. A more educated citizenry makes a strong democracy.

THERE ARE BIG DIFFERENCES IN THE FUTURE OF

THOSE WHO GO TO COLLEGE AND THOSE WHO

DO NOT

Higher education is a ticket to greater opportunity and a better standard of

living for millions of people. That is

why over 82 percent of Americans feel

that without a college-educated work

force we will not be able to compete in

a global marketplace.

It certainly has been instilled in me

since I was young that the most important way to improve your lot in life

was through an education. An education meant that your life would be

better than your parents. That you

would have more opportunities that

they did. I feel the same about my children, and now my grandchildren. And, I

think an education is even more important now than it was when I was growing up. The economy is so unsure these

days that there is no guarantee that

our children will be better off than we

are. This is one of the biggest worries

I hear back home. And part of that

concern is the affordability of college.

According to the Department of Commerce, the lifetime average earnings of

a man with a college degree is 51 percent higher than his colleague with a

high school degree. The difference for

women is even greater. The lifetime

average earnings of a woman with a

college degree is 57 percent higher than

her colleague with a high school diploma.

In 1992, figures showed that the median income of men who were dropouts

was $15,928, for a man with a high

school diploma it was $22,765, and for a

man with a college degree it was

$36,691. For women dropouts the median income was $9,784, for a woman

with a high school diploma it was

$13,266, and for a woman with a college

degree it was $24,126.

And, of course unemployment rates

are decreasing according to education

levels. In 1990 the unemployment rate

for high school dropouts was about 12

percent. A high school diploma cuts

that rate in half. A college degree cuts

the rate in half once again.

CONCLUSION

All children, and all people, must

share in America’s future. We should

not be balancing the budget on the

backs of students, nor should we be

balancing the budget by cutting back

on investments in our future. And this

must include opportunities for a college education.

The numbers in the current budget

proposal that we now have in front of

us do not add up. Despite what may be

said, we cannot cut $40 billion without

substantially reducing Federal aid to

undergraduate and graduate students

thus denying opportunities for millions

of our young people. This educational

opportunity cannot belong only to the

well to do.

I urge my colleagues to restore the

$40 billion proposed cuts in Education

programs to the budget. We must send

the message loud and clear that this

Congress is committed to assuring that

all children, youth, and young adults

have educational opportunities to become productive, tax-paying citizens of

America.

Finally, all I can say as somebody

who has been a teacher for 20 years—

and it is impossible for me to speak

about this issue in now 1 minute or

less—I will just say to my colleagues

that they are being myopic, very shortsighted, if they do not understand that

the very best we can do is invest in the

health, intellect, and skill of young

people.

If we want to reduce poverty in this

country, focus on a good education. If

we want to have real welfare reform,

focus on a good education. If we want

to have a stable middle class, focus on

a good education. If we want to have a

country that can compete in the international arena, focus on a good education. If we want to have a representative democracy where men and women

can think on their own two feet, understand the world, the country, and community they live in, and know what

they can do to make it a better world,
May 22, 1995 CONGRESSIONAL RECORD — SENATE S7093

a better country, and a better community, focus on a good education.

This budget resolution takes us exactly in the wrong direction, and that

is why I support this amendment and

that is why, one way or another, we

will have a lot more debate on this

issue over the next 4 or 5 months, several years to come.

This resolution is a huge mistake. We

will never reduce the violence, Mr.

President, in our communities unless

we understand an essential truth,

which is we must invest in the health

and the skills and the intellect and the

character of young people in America,

and that starts with investment in education.

That is all I can do, I say to my colleague from Iowa, in 11⁄2 minutes.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Time has

expired.

PRIVILEGE OF THE FLOOR

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I ask

unanimous consent that Elizabeth

Street, a congressional science fellow,

and Ruth Hardy, a J.J. Pickle fellow,

be granted privilege of the floor during

the remainder of the debate on Senate

Concurrent Resolution 13.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without

objection, it is so ordered.

Mr. BENNETT addressed the Chair.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Utah.

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I understand we have 82 minutes.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator is correct.

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I will

have some opening remarks, but my

colleague from Indiana wishes to speak

first, and so we will turn to him. But

before I do, and while my friends from

the other side are still on the floor, I

would like to make one opening comment for myself that I believe resonates with other Members on this side.

Senator WELLSTONE said if you want

to solve poverty, focus on education; if

you want a solid middle class, focus on

education; if you want a sound working

force—et cetera—focus on education.

I wish the record could be very clear

that this Senator could not agree more

with that statement. Indeed, if I may

be personal, Mr. President, the thing

that got me back into public life after

I had left it and decided that I would

spend the balance of my career in the

private sector as a business executive

was when I got a phone call asking me

to serve as chairman of the Strategic

Planning Commission for Education in

the State of Utah. For the next 18

months, I immersed myself in educational issues. I came out of that with

the conviction that with the collapse of

the Soviet Union, education has replaced defense as the No. 1 survival

issue in this country.

So I yield to no one on either side of

the aisle in my conviction that we

must, as a Nation, solve our educational problem. But I ask this rhetorical question as we begin this debate: As we agree about the importance

of education, does that mean that

there is no such thing as an educational program that is not working

and may need to be defunded? Does

that mean, in our conviction that education is essential to our survival, that

there is not anything in the Department of Education that could be done

more efficiently than is being done

today and might, indeed, with better

management yield up some hardearned dollars to go toward balancing

the budget? Does that mean we cannot

have a lucid discussion about education

in this Chamber that focuses on the effectiveness of the educational dollars

that we are spending because education

is such a Holy Grail that nothing relating to its effectiveness or its performance can be discussed?

If that is what it means, then I think

the debate in this Chamber will not be

particularly enlightening on this subject to either side.

Before I yield time to the Senator

from Indiana, I would like to review

the overall record. In unadjusted dollars, Federal spending for education

has gone up 900 percent from 1965 to

1993. In constant dollars, it has more

than doubled in that same time period.

And what has happened to our educational achievements in the period

when we have been doubling our commitment? The national assessment of

educational progress says that over the

past 20 years, there has been little

overall change in student proficiency

in reading, writing, science, and mathematics.

The senior Senator from New York,

prior to his entering this Chamber, was

a distinguished writer, and I remember

reading an article by him where he said

whimsically—and we all know he is

given to whimsy at times—if you were

to put educational achievement and

educational spending on the same

chart and track the trend lines, you

would come to the conclusion that increased spending produces decreased

performance in a straight cause-and-effect relationship.

The senior Senator from New York

obviously does not believe it. He did

not believe it when he said it, but he

said it to make the point that the problems in education are not necessarily

problems of money. I came to that conclusion in the 18 months that I immersed myself in educational issues in

Utah.

I am dedicated to doing what I can to

resolve and repair educational problems in this country. I have established

a foundation to which I have given my

personal wealth, whose primary focus

right now is exploring new ways of

solving our educational problems. We

have some pilot projects which I may

talk about where we are achieving dramatic breakthroughs in teaching and

learning progress among disadvantaged

students without any increase in costs.

With that opening statement, then,

Mr. President, I yield such time as he

may consume to the Senator from Indiana.

Mr. COATS addressed the Chair.

The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr.

COVERDELL). The Chair recognizes the

Senator from Indiana.

Mr. COATS. Mr. President, I thank

the Senator from Utah for yielding,

and I certainly want to say how much

I respect the amount of effort and time

that he has personally committed into

looking into this issue, certainly more

than this particular Senator. I am anxiously looking forward to his discussion with us about what he has found

and what he learned in those 18 months

that he has committed to studying this

subject. And I think he raises the essential point that we are attempting to

deal with here, and that is not whether

or not Members of either side are more

or less committed to education. I think

we are all committed to education. I

think our record shows that we are

committed to education. But what

many of us are attempting to communicate is that the current system of

education—providing public education

for our children in this country—does

not seem to be working very well. Report after report throughout the decade of the 1980’s, and now the 1990’s, indicates that there are significant problems with the public education system

in America. It is not based on anecdote, but it is based on facts, studies

and statistics.

And so the question that Republicans

are essentially raising is: Is there a

better way to provide education for

America’s young people, so that they

are better prepared to enter today’s

work force, so that we as a Nation are

better prepared to compete internationally, so that we as parents can

provide our children with better opportunities to learn? Those are the questions that are before us.

It is, in a sense, a question of, do we

retain the status quo, the structure,

the framework that has brought us to

this point in American education, or do

we allow for change? Do we allow for

experimentation? Do we allow for a different approach? And perhaps if we do

that, we can find that there is a more

effective, more cost-effective and results-oriented way of providing education in this country.

Now, if it were simply a matter of

money, we would be the best-educated

Nation in the world. Our children

would be head and shoulders above everybody else, because we have poured

untold amounts of money into education in an attempt to solve the very

problems that I think we all recognize

exist today in education. It is the solution where we draw a line of distinction in terms of the difference between

us.

The fact is that education spending

has increased dramatically. In the last

30 years, we have increased spending

four times what we spent in the 1950’s.

On average, we pay as much per student per year in public schools as many

private schools charge. Per pupil

spending tripled from its 1960 level, resulting in an average cost of $5,971 in

1993 figures. In the last 10 years alone,
S7094 CONGRESSIONAL RECORD — SENATE May 22, 1995

per pupil spending nationwide has increased 30 percent above the level required to keep up with inflation. That

is according to the Education Commission of the States’ report.

The Department of Education, in its

first year, which was fiscal year 1980,

housed 150 programs funded at $14 billion. Today, just 15 years later, it

houses 250 separately authorized programs, employing nearly 5,000 people.

Its fiscal year 1995 appropriations total

is $33.7 billion. Their administrative

costs alone are $440 million. The Education Department spends nearly $500

for every student in America.

So the question is not, are we pouring money into education, or are we

making resources available either at

the Federal, State or local levels for

education. That is being accomplished.

The question is: What are we getting

for the money that we are putting into

education? Are we getting the kind of

results back that all of us here would

desire? Or should we look to see if

there is a more effective way of accomplishing this goal?

I suggest that we need to look—and

look pretty immediately—at whether

or not there is a more effective way,

because the results are pretty discouraging.

We have all heard about the decline

in SAT scores and the National Assessment of Educational Progress Reports,

where in the face of the fact that real

public spending in elementary and secondary education rose from just over

$50 billion in 1960 to nearly $190 billion

in 1990, and whereas real per pupil

spending more than tripled from $1,450

in 1960 to $4,622 in 1990, I do not know

of anybody saying that the result has

been a tripling of the quality of education that is being received by our

students.

Eric Hanushek, in his book, ‘‘Making

Schools Work,’’ which was published by

the Brookings Institution, concluded

from an exhaustive study of educational funding in America, that funding is not related to school quality.

A study done by American Demographics, a publication of the U.S. Census Board found that——

Mr. WELLSTONE. Will the Senator

yield?

Mr. COATS. I will be happy to yield

when I have finished my statement. My

understanding is that the Democrats

have had their full 90 minutes. We

would like to use some of our time. I

know the clock is running.

Mr. WELLSTONE. I did not mean to

interrupt. I understand.

Mr. COATS. The results of the American Demographics study found that

there was no direct correlation between the amount of money spent per

pupil and student performance. In fact,

there were many examples where it

was the reverse—the more money spent

per pupil, the worse the student performance in that school actually was.

And oftentimes, where the amounts per

pupil were relatively low, performance

was relatively high. And so experts

studying the situation had to go in and

determine whether or not there were

other factors involved in providing

learning and education for our students. They found that there were

many other factors involved.

Many have pointed to those factors.

And those are factors that I would hope

throughout the debate this year on

education—and to my colleagues who

said it is unconscionable that we only

have 3 hours, let me just reply that I

was not here when the unanimous-consent agreement was offered, but unanimous consent by its very nature means

that any one of us can object. If anybody wanted to object, I suppose we

could have objected to that.

We will have probably hundreds of

hours of debate on education this year

in this Congress. There are many bills

that will be coming up. Senator

LIEBERMAN and I are offering a bill,

which may be an amendment to education. Others will be offering amendments on various bills. We will be dealing with this subject at length. So I do

not think anybody needs to worry that

we are going to be shorted in the

amount of time we are going to speak

on education subjects.

But, clearly, for those who think the

solution to education is simply to

pump more money into a system that

has produced such disastrous results—I

cannot understand that logic. It seems

to me that now is the time to be asking

fundamental questions about how we

can reform the education system in

this country. What changes can we

make? What demonstration programs

should we enter into to give us more

data with which we can make decisions?

I have found—and I think this is supported by a number of studies and researchers—that there are some very

basic principles that are involved in

providing sound education. If you

study schools that produce results, if

you look at students that can demonstrate through their educational

achievement the kind of success that

we are looking for, you find some very

common themes running through the

whole program.

One theme is that the education

process to which those students have

been subjected to dealt with basic core

subjects—the reading, writing, arithmetic and other subjects that have traditionally formed the core of our elementary and secondary education in

this country.

We have seen a great deviation from

that in the last few decades. There

have been many new experimental programs and so forth, and unfortunately,

the kind of electives that students

have been allowed to sign up for, have

not resulted in the kind of educational

achievement in the basic subjects necessary for adequate performance in the

workplace.

Schools that have returned to basic

core subject teaching have turned out

students that are much better prepared

to compete in today’s society.

Second, we found that in those

schools that have demonstrated success and students have demonstrated

success, we have found that there has

been a pretty steady, high level of discipline, that the standards established

by the schools, by the communities in

which those schools resided, and administered by the administrators and

the standards to which the students

were held accountable, were high

standards. Discipline was one of the

major ingredients, one of the basic

principles underlying the education

process.

Third, we found that there was an

emphasis on teachers, not on administrators. We have seen an explosion of

administrative costs in our schools,

where it seems that we have more positions filled by administrators than we

do teachers.

Mr. WELLSTONE. Will the Senator

yield? I wanted to ask a question.

Mr. COATS. Mr. President, I give the

same reply to the Senator from Minnesota that I gave before. I would like

to be able to complete my statement. I

am sure the Senator has a number of

questions he would like to ask, but I

would prefer to make my statement.

To the best of my knowledge, we allowed your side to make your statements without interruption, and I

think we would appreciate making our

statements without interruption. I

know the Senator would like to engage

in debate on this subject. The time is

divided. We will be happy to do that.

There will be plenty of opportunities

all year long, in committee, on the

floor. We are under a time limitation.

The limitation was agreed to. The Senator from Minnesota and Iowa agreed

to it, or did not object to it.

So here we are. I think those of us

who have a statement to make, to

counter the statements made by the

Senator from Iowa, the Senator from

Minnesota and the Senator from Massachusetts, would like to make those

statements without interruption.

Mr. President, if I could do that, I

would appreciate that.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator has the right not to yield.

Mr. COATS. Mr. President, as I was

saying, I think one of the basic principles underlying the provision of a

sound education is the emphasis on

those providing the education, not on

those administering the building. One

of the most discouraging things to this

Senator in viewing public education is

to find the layer upon layer upon layer

upon layer of administrative bureaucracy designed to solve every problem in

the school except providing the teaching of the student.

Inevitably, the more we involve the

Federal Government in the educational

process, the more layers of administration are required. The more assistant

principals for this, that and everything

else, the more forms, the more procedures, the more rules, the more of everything but what ought to take place

in the classroom.
May 22, 1995 CONGRESSIONAL RECORD — SENATE S7095

I, for one, have been urging the Senate to revise the way in which we fund

our schools so that we can provide

funds to hire competent teachers and

then let them teach.

Another thing I have noticed: it does

not make a difference how fancy the

school is, how much equipment they

have, or what the condition of the

building is, these items pale in comparison to the requirement that the

teacher knows what they are doing and

the teacher is able to provide sound

teaching to the students under his or

her tutelage.

The fourth basic principle I found

that seems to be a component of successful education is that the school involves the parents, that there is parental involvement and community involvement in the education process.

There is a direct correlation between

parental involvement and educational

success.

Those are part of the values that we

cannot necessarily legislate. Pumping

more money into the Department of

Education is not going to suddenly

transform parents into being more concerned about their children’s education. It is not going to make them

show up at school more often, be more

involved in the homework, be more involved in making sure their student

gets to class on time and performs the

work that is assigned. Community involvement and parental involvement is

an essential key ingredient to educational success.

Finally, and I know this is controversial, but those schools that maintain

some core basic values, have some

value education as part of their curriculum, are more successful in turning

out students who perform better, who

are better trained, who do better on

the tests. It provides, I believe, a better

atmosphere for learning and has been

demonstrated to be effective.

The sad reality that has emerged

from about 30 years of Federal involvement and ever-increasing Federal dollars and ever-increasing Federal rules

and regulations into our education is a

pattern of more spending, especially as

I said for administration, fewer students staying in school through graduation, lower SAT scores, lower graduation rates and dismal rates of academic proficiency.

We only need to look at the District

of Columbia right outside our door to

show that spending per pupil is not the

solution to the problem. Most public

school graduates arriving at college,

graduating from District of Columbia

schools, are ill-prepared for their further education. Nearly 90 percent of

the freshmen at the University of the

District of Columbia last fall needed

remedial work in English, 49 percent

had trouble reading, and 49 percent

could not do basic math.

Now, is the solution to pour more

money into the system? Or is the solution to say maybe there is something

wrong with the system. Maybe we

ought to look at ways in which we can

change the system.

That is one of the things that Senator LIEBERMAN and I are attempting

to do with our school choice demonstration project, designed for low-income families and low-income students

and parents who find that their students are trapped in a public education

system that is not going to provide

them with the education they need to

rise out of their current level of poverty. Many parents, particularly those

who live in the inner city, are begging

for the opportunity to send their students somewhere other than the public

education facility.

We have a school in Indianapolis, IN,

which is a private parochial school

that spends one-third of the amount

per pupil as the public school just down

the block. We have parents standing in

line trying to enroll their students in a

parochial school that spends one-third

less on their students than the public

schools, because they know they are

going to get a better education. And

why will they get a better education?

Because the basic principles underlying

the education in that parochial school,

many of which I have outlined earlier,

are not provided in the local public

school. All Senator LIEBERMAN and I

are attempting to do is set aside some

funds so that on a voluntary basis,

communities can enter into demonstration programs, demonstration programs which will provide this Congress

with objective data about the school

choice alternative, which we can use to

determine how best to make the necessary changes in the education system

to enable the children in this country

to lead successful, productive lives.

Yet each time we offer this amendment, we are thwarted by the same

proponents of this amendment. We are

not allowed any experimentation. ‘‘Do

not do anything different. Keep the

system just exactly as it is. The only

thing it lacks is more money.’’

Well, I would argue, Mr. President,

that it lacks much more than greater

amounts of money, rather that it needs

fundamental, basic reform. I do not

have the answers as to exactly what

that reform ought to be, but we ought

to at least be able to experiment and

give students and parents a choice outside the system. If we can give them a

choice outside the system, maybe it

will make the system better.

If we had one car company in America, I daresay that we, as consumers,

would not enjoy the variety, the quality, nor the cost effectiveness that we

get from having competition throughout the industry.

I am not aware of any system in

America, that as a monopoly, operates

efficiently. Competition spurs better

performance, it spurs more cost-effective performance, it spurs better results. Yet we do not have competition

in schooling alternatives in America

for those with low incomes.

It is easy for Senators to say, ‘‘Let us

keep all the emphasis on public

schools.’’ We can afford to send our

kids somewhere outside the public

schools. My children go to public

schools, but it is easy for me. If I do

not like the public school I can afford

to send them somewhere else. But what

about the low-income mother, living in

the inner city? What about the parents

who do not have the income to have a

choice? They are condemned to a

school which is condemning their child

to an inferior education, trapping that

child in circumstances and in poverty.

And we cannot even provide a demonstration project to see whether or

not it would benefit the children to

have a degree of choice as to what

school they attend.

Who are we trying to protect? The

administrators? The system? Or do we

really care about the education of children? I submit our goal here is not to

protect the system. It is not to protect

the administrators. It is not to protect

the lobbying groups. Our goal is to

look out for the children and give them

opportunities that they have not had

under our current system.

So, I urge my colleagues to reject

this ‘‘Let us just put more money into

the existing system’’ amendment. That

is what it is. ‘‘Let us make sure we perpetuate the status quo. Let us keep everything within the box and the framework will be defined by the public system and their lobbyists. They will define the framework. And do not let

anybody dare compete with them because they might do it better.’’

Who do we really care about? Who

are we really looking out for? I contend

it is the students we should care about.

It is their future we should care about.

And we ought to give them the opportunities to escape a lousy, rotten,

failed school if that is where they find

themselves.

There are many public schools doing

a fine job in America. But there are

many lousy schools doing a lousy job

in America. And to trap a certain segment of our population, low-income

families, in that situation I think is a

great disservice to the future of this

country. To argue that those who object to putting more money into the

failed system are against education, or

do not care about the future of America, or somehow do not care about the

future of our children, is the most disingenuous argument that I have heard.

It just flies in the face of the facts that

we all know are true.

As the report in the 1980’s said, we

are just treading along in a sea of mediocrity in public education in this

country. It is high time we made some

changes in the system. In 1995 let us be

a little bit innovative, let us be bold,

let us take some chances, especially

when we are dealing with a system

that has failed us so badly.

I went on longer than I intended. I

thank the Senator from Utah for his

generous yielding of time. I yield the

floor.
S7096 CONGRESSIONAL RECORD — SENATE May 22, 1995

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The

Chair recognizes the Senator from

Utah.

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I yield

myself such time as I may require and

will yield shortly to the senior Senator

from New Mexico, who has a point to

make.

Mr. WELLSTONE. May I have a

point of inquiry and that is it?

Mr. BENNETT. I will be happy to

yield to my friend for a question.

Mr. WELLSTONE. Will there be any

opportunity for questions and discussion after the Senator speaks? Or does

he want to just go forward without any

questions?

Mr. BENNETT. I cannot speak for

other Senators. When I get in my presentation, if the questions are not so

much a barrier to prevent me from

going on to the point I would make, I

will be happy to yield for questions at

the appropriate time, and tell my

friend he could look forward to that, if

he can stand the boredom of staying on

the floor until I get going.

Mr. WELLSTONE. I thank my colleague for his graciousness and say to

him, as a teacher, as long as we are

talking about education, the best education is when we have a chance to

have this exchange of views. I thank

my colleague.

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, we

have had some general statements

about education here. Undoubtedly we

will have some more before this time is

up.

May I ask how much time remains?

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The

Chair would advise the Senator from

Utah that he has 491⁄2 minutes remaining.

Mr. BENNETT. I thank the chair.

Let us talk for just a minute, although it may seem extraneous to the

discussion we have had, about what the

amendment does. Let us talk about the

parliamentary situation with which we

are faced, rather than about cosmic

matters relating to education in general.

The total amount of Federal spending in America’s educational system

comes to 6.6 percent of the total figure.

So we are talking about what happens

to that Federal 6.6 percent. With all of

this talk about gigantic slashes, even if

we were to eliminate all of it that

would be a 6.6 percent cut. But of

course we are not talking about eliminating all of it. We are talking about

funding here at a level that has been

established in fiscal 1992. Someone

says, ‘‘Why do you go back to 1992?’’

Simply because as I understand the

budget process, there was a strong blip

up in 1993 and 1994, and the Budget

Committee has gone back to the level

that they would consider to be more

traditional, to hold that level through

the year 2002. So we are talking about

level funding, not slashing all of the 6.6

percent.

From some of the rhetoric I have

heard on the floor this afternoon you

would think we were cutting the entire

educational system of the country by

huge, huge amounts when in fact the

amendment proposed by the Budget

Committee would establish a level of

funding for that which is 6.6 percent of

the total rather than the other implications we have had.

Do Washington education dollars

fund my daughter’s textbooks? No.

That is all done with State and local

funds. So this budget has nothing to do

with textbooks.

Do Washington education dollars pay

for my son’s teachers? No. That is all

done with State and local funds. This

has nothing to do with the paying of

teachers’ salaries.

Then do Washington education dollars build my neighborhood schools?

No. We are not talking about building

schools, paying teachers, buying textbooks or supplies.

The Federal dollars we are talking

about go to very specific programs, primarily to assist State and local governments in efforts for special populations: Disadvantaged, individuals

with disabilities—Federal dollars go to

assist State and local people in that

population. I stress assist, because,

once again, the bulk of the funds come

from the States and the localities. I

will address that in just a moment. It

goes to assist those with special needs:

Bilingual education, drug use prevention, dropout prevention and so on.

Some assists with research.

The programs with the largest outlays in the Federal dollars are Indian

education, impact aid, school improvement—that is drug-free schools—math

and science improvement kinds of

things, education for the disadvantaged—we call Chapter 1 programs—

and, as I say bilingual education, special education, rehabilitation services

for those with disabilities, some vocational, libraries and so on.

I alluded, in my opening comment, to

my experience as chairman of the Strategic Planning Commission for Education in the State of Utah. We looked

over the budget. That is where you

start. You look at the numbers. And as

the folks were outlining the budget to

me, I said, ‘‘Can we move any money

from this to this?’’

I was told, ‘‘Oh, no. You cannot move

any money from this function to that

function.’’

‘‘Why not?’’

I am coming in as a businessman, all

excited with this assignment from the

State Board of Education. I am going

to show them some sound business

practices—all the naivete that comes

with that kind of assignment, with

those who really do not understand

what they are getting into.

I was told: ‘‘You cannot move this

money from this program to this program because when it is over here, it is

matching Federal funds.’’

And naively I said ‘‘Oh, matching

Federal funds? OK. I understand that.

We are spending 50-cent dollars, are

we? The Fed put up 50 cents, and we

put up 50 cents. I can understand that.

Is it not wonderful to spend 50 cents

out of every dollar?’’ ‘‘Oh,’’ they said.

‘‘Bob, you really are naive. The Feds do

not put up 50 cents. The Feds will put

up 15 cents and require you to match

the 85.’’ ‘‘Oh. Well then,’’ I said,’’in

that case, if we do not like the program, let us just tell the Feds to keep

their 15 cents, and we will spend the 85

cents someplace else.’’ Once again,

with the shake of the head, ‘‘Bob, are

you naive? You have to put up the 85

cents whether you want to or not. The

Federal law requires it.’’ I said, ‘‘Wait

a minute. What is it? Matching funds?

Matching means 50–50.’’ They said ‘‘No.

Matching means whatever the Feds decide it means.’’ ‘‘You mean we cannot

refuse the 15 cents? We have to take

the 85 cents, whether we want to or

not, and spend it in this program?’’

They said, ‘‘Now you are beginning to

understand.’’

I said, ‘‘What would happen if we did

refuse the 15 cents?’’ They said, ‘‘The

Federal Government would sue you.

And they would win.’’ I said, ‘‘Isn’t

there any program of matching funds

where the Feds put up at least 50 cents

out of every dollar?’’ They said, ‘‘Yes.

There is one program where the Feds

put up 50 cents out of every dollar. It is

school lunch. But everything else the

Feds put up less than 50 cents and the

States have to put up more.’’

So they said, in effect, even though

the Federal Government only puts up 6

percent of the total educational budget, the Federal Government controls

the State priorities through this process because they distort how you are

spending your State funds. My first

education, if you will, in education and

the discovery of how intrusive the Federal Government can be. Somehow I

came back here with the desire that

that ought to be changed. And this

budget resolution which begins to level

out rather than continue to spiral up

Federal spending, I think, gives us an

opportunity to effect that kind of

change.

We have heard a great deal on this

floor about the cost of college education, how we need to bring down the

cost of college education, to do something about student loans, as this

budget resolution does, and that it

would be devastating to every college

student who has to borrow money to go

to college. Now, in this debate they are

ignoring one very important thing

when they say that.

I am about to yield time to the senior Senator from New Mexico because

he has a chart on this and is ready to

talk to us about that.

The important thing to remember is

that the Congressional Budget Office

has told us that, if we adopt this budget resolution, interest rates will come

down. That means students who borrow

money to go to school will have to pay

back less because they have lower interest rates. Not only those students

who are borrowing student loans, but

also those students who, for one reason

or another, cannot get a student loan
May 22, 1995 CONGRESSIONAL RECORD — SENATE S7097

will also benefit as a result of this

budget resolution. The benefit will be

across the board. All students who

have to go into debt to pay their college education, whether themselves or

their parents, will benefit as a result of

this budget resolution, and you are diluting that if you adopt this amendment.

Mr. GREGG. Mr. President, will the

Senator from Utah yield for a question?

Mr. BENNETT. I am happy to yield

for a question.

Mr. GREGG. Does the Senator from

Utah think there is a certain amount

of irony in this? You have these Members from the other side of the aisle

who I know come here in good faith,

spending money which is basically the

result of the efforts made by Members

on our side of the aisle to get the budget balanced, which dollars are generated by a scoring of a balanced budget, as a result of which the CBO says

they can score a 2-percent reduction in

interest rates.

So the money which is being used in

this amendment to fund this alleged

expenditure, or this expenditure they

are proposing, is generated by a 2-percent dividend which is the result of the

drop in interest rates. Yet, they totally

ignore at the same time that that 2-

percent dividend in a drop in interest

rates will run to the benefit of all the

students who are borrowing money, all

the homeowners who are borrowing

money, all the people who have credit

cards, all the folks in this country who

are involved in the use of credit,

whether it is for a home or for getting

through the day with their Visa card or

MasterCharge card, or whether it is

their education.

So they are perfectly happy to spend

the money that is generated by this 2-

percent dividend, but they give us no

credit for scoring the benefits to the

students of this country as a result of

getting that 2-percent dividend.

Is not that ironic?

Mr. BENNETT. I agree that it is

ironic. But it goes beyond that, if I

may respond.

The adoption of this amendment

would imperil the creation of the socalled special fund or discretionary

fund at the end of the process from

which they intend to take the $40 billion. In other words, if in fact more

money is spent on education than is

called for in this resolution, the fund

at the back end will not occur and,

therefore, it will not be available to

them to pay for the $40 billion that

they are spending. The only way that

can be there is if the budget amendment is held intact.

So it is not only ironic; it is fiscally

impossible for you to do both things at

the same time.

Mr. GREGG. If the Senator will yield

for an additional question.

Mr. BENNETT. I will yield for an additional comment.

Mr. GREGG. I think this point is

very important to emphasize because I

asked my staff. If they are going to

continue to spend this 2-percent that is

generated as a result of interest rates

coming down, should not we at least

find out what that benefit is to the

American people generally, not only in

the area of deficit reduction but generally? So I asked my staff. They

talked to the people at the Federal Reserve and found what the gross

consumer debt is in this country and

what the gross home ownership debt is

in this country. One can make a simple

calculation. What is 2-percent of that

worth to the American people? They

did that. I am not sure how good their

math is, but their numbers say that

the 2-percent savings on the gross

consumer debt, which happens to be

$928 trillion, 2-percent savings——

Mr. BENNETT. Was that $928 trillion?

Mr. GREGG. That is right.

Mr. BENNETT. I think the Senator

missed a decimal point.

Mr. DOMENICI. That is the entire

consumer debt.

Mr. GREGG. The entire consumer

debt. The Senator is right, ‘‘billion dollars’’; $928 billion.

Mr. BENNETT. The entire worth of

the country is about $27 trillion.

Mr. GREGG. Just a second. I will get

to the trillion dollars. The 2-percent

savings on that is $18 billion annually.

On home ownership mortgages, the entire debt is $4.3 trillion—$4.3 trillion—

which means that the annual savings

on that number is approximately $90

billion.

So you put those two together, and

you are up to $100 billion of savings in

interest costs that we are going to generate for the American consumer over

the next year, every year that we have

in place this balanced budget.

I did not happen to get the number

for what the gross amount is of student

loans, but I think that would be a very

interesting number. The gross amount

of student loans which we have in this

country, take 2 percent off that, and I

suspect you are going to see that the

dividend to the students in this country far exceeds the number which is

being considered here over a 5-year or

7-year plan.

I think this is critical to understand

because there is nobody on that side,

nobody, who is going to vote to institute the type of changes that are necessary in order to get to a balanced

budget which generates this dividend,

this reduction in interest rates.

I think it is critical. I appreciate the

Senator from Utah correcting my

math. That is deeply critical. But I

think it is very important, as the Senator from Utah has pointed out; it is a

very significant fact.

Mr. BENNETT. I thank the Senator.

I have two observations. One is a personal one. I remember when I went to

the University of Southern California

where my son decided he wanted to go.

I went there with some fear and trembling because I did not think I could afford to have him do that, my two other

children having gone to much cheaper

institutions financially.

I said, ‘‘Can I get a loan?’’ They said,

‘‘Well, what is your income?’’ I told

them my income. They said, ‘‘Well, we

are not sure. Do you have any other

children in college?’’ I said, ‘‘Oh.

Sure.’’ I have six children and not all of

them were in college at the same time

but enough were. They said with other

children in college I could get a loan. I

said, ‘‘Good. At a lower interest rate?’’

‘‘Oh, yes. Subsidized interest rate.’’

Then they said, ‘‘By the way, what is

your house worth?’’ I was living in

southern California at the time, and

real estate prices had gone sky high.

And when I told them what my house

was worth, they said, ‘‘There is no way

in the world you can qualify for a loan

with that much net worth.’’ The only

way I could get that son in school was

to take out a second mortgage on my

house. But I could not get it subsidized

with a Government program because

my house was worth too much.

So, on a personal basis, bringing

down the interest rates 2 percent on

my home loan would have been tremendously valuable to me in terms of what

I could afford for that student. And

that goes to the point I was making

earlier, which is this budget resolution,

if passed intact, will not only benefit

those students that are getting student

loans from the Government but the

over 50 percent of students whose loans

are not subsidized by the Government

but whose parents are paying for it directly.

I refer you to the chart which the

senior Senator from New Mexico has

placed on the floor, and I ask the Senator if he would care to take us

through that.

I yield such time as the senior Senator from New Mexico may require.

Mr. DOMENICI. I thank the Senator

very much.

Mr. President, I am not sure that

Senator HARKIN would be within earshot of these comments, but actually,

from my standpoint, I would just suggest he very much wanted to speak and

apparently did not get a chance. I

would have no objection if he wanted

to use 5 or 6 minutes of our time, if he

appeared here shortly on the floor, I

say to the Senator.

Mr. BENNETT. I would have no objection.

Mr. DOMENICI. If the Senator would

like to come to the floor, I will yield

him 6 or 7 minutes if he wants to

speak. We will try to work it out where

he does not get the last remarks, just

as a matter of principle but, otherwise,

I would not mind at all.

Mr. President, maybe what I will do

for a few minutes is just go through

about 5 charges, what we have been

charged with doing in this budget, and

respond to it in terms of what we think

we are doing. So maybe I could just

take a few minutes and do this.

Yesterday, I was on the floor and

heard this. I would be very surprised if

it was not said again today. Under the
S7098 CONGRESSIONAL RECORD — SENATE May 22, 1995

Senate resolution, thousands of students will not have access to Pell

grants. Remember that statement?

Response: The budget resolution before us makes a number of assumptions

and comes out with exactly the

amount of money saved and spent in

this resolution. The answer to that

charge is: Absolutely false. The Senate

resolution assumes no changes in the

Pell grant program.

In fact, the report accompanying the

resolution states clearly current law

funding for Pell grants is assumed. The

Pell grant program, while a discretionary program and thus up to the appropriators, is funded on the basis of

eligible population. The resolution assumes that this will continue to be the

case. The Pell grants will be $2,340 per

student. The Senate resolution has no

change in current law.

Next one. Charge: Under the Republican plan—and this is the most gross

charge and grossly erroneous charge—

it will cost graduate students $40,000

more to go to school.

Response: This argument is based

upon the assumption that the student

borrows the maximum amount for all 4

years of undergraduate education, for 2

years of graduate school, that interest

accrues during that entire period while

the student is in school, and they repay

the loan over 20 years.

Now let me suggest, the Senate plan

does this: For the above student that I

just referred to, interest costs would

accrue during school only for those

loans taken out as a graduate student,

not undergraduate. Under the Senate

plan, under the most extreme case, for

example, if a student borrowed the

maximum amount, $65,000 over 6 years,

and took 30 years to repay—not 20, but

30; so we even make it a longer period

of time—their cost would rise by 10

percent over what they would pay

under current law.

Under current law, this student

would repay a total of $173,605. Under

the Senate plan, in an extreme case, affecting less than 1 percent of all students—that is why I used it; it is an extreme case—we would add $17,000 over

30 years, not $40,000 over 20, and only 1

percent of the students borrowing

money today would be affected by that

most extreme scenario. And they are

all graduate students. Now, that is the

truth.

Charge: Under the Senate resolution,

it will cost undergraduate students an

additional $5,000 repayment of their

loans.

Our response: That assumption is

based upon the premise that an undergraduate student borrows the maximum amount allowable each year for 4

years, and that interest accrues during

the in-school period.

Again, this is false. The assumption

about the Senate resolution is false

and is being done in a vacuum. The

Senate resolution assumes current law

with respect to undergraduate students

while they are in school. Under current

law, while they are in school, their interest will not accrue until graduation.

Under the Senate balanced budget

resolution, a student who borrows

$17,125 over 4 years will pay an additional $182 over the 10-year repayment,

for approximately $1 per month.

Now, I could go on, but I will insert

in the RECORD the charge about middle-class families not being allowed to

send their children to college. That is

an allegation, a charge.

Response: For all students, the plan

provides a current growth in loan volume as projected by the Congressional

Budget Office.

According to the Congressional Budget Office, the availability of loans for

students at much lower cost than what

they could receive in consumer markets will not be limited in any way

under this budget plan.

Under this Senate plan, students will

receive $26 billion in 1996. The level of

available loans will continue to rise to

$33 billion by the year 2000.

Over the next 5 years, $151.4 billion in

student loans will be available.

Now, Mr. President, I am quite sure

that for those who listened to the debate, they would never have assumed

that that is the case, for they would

have assumed the Republicans do not

understand the value of education.

They would have assumed that we just

set out on a course to say even those

programs that are successful, we are

for cutting them, tightening them up,

getting rid of them, none of which is

true.

Mr. President, I would like very

much to go through this chart for a

minute and then tell the American people what we are trying to do.

Here is the way the undergraduate

program looks.

Current law, original principal and

amount borrowed, $10,000. Senate budget resolution, same, $10,000. Difference,

zero.

Amount used to pay fees, $400; $500;

$100 in additional fees.

In other words, we are having the

student pay a little bit of the fees, $100.

Amount available to pay education

costs over 10 years, $9,600; $9,500; minus

$100.

Original principal amount of repayment, $10,000; $10,000. Difference, none.

This next one, the accrued interest

during 6-month grace period. This is

the change. Right now, you have 6

months after graduation and obtaining

the degree before interest starts to accrue. So during that 6 months, there is

zero. In the suggested program in that

budget resolution, you do not get that

6-month grace. You start paying interest—$330 total amount at repayment.

You would have thought these undergraduate students were going to end up

paying three or four times what they

are paying—$10,000; $10,330; plus $330.

Perhaps there are some who would

like to say, ‘‘We can’t afford that. We

just cannot do that. Do it somewhere

else.’’ Or, ‘‘Do not get a balanced budget. Just charge the future generations.

That is a little, tiny bit of money.’’

Repayment at a standard 10 year

monthly payment, $123. Estimated

after the balanced budget, $124. Why?

Interest rates come down. The amount

is $1.

Somebody might say, ‘‘But what if

those interest rates do not come

down?’’ Let me see if I can read what

happens. This one is changed to $8, Mr.

President. So instead of $1, which we

assume will be the case, a $1 increase,

it will be $8. This is the entire student

loan program, $26.6 billion. Are we cutting the $26.6 billion? How much is it

going up to? One hundred fifty-one billion dollars over 5 years, that is what

we are recommending this loan portfolio be for undergraduates. Cumulative repayment.

College students of America, your

contribution to helping us balance the

budget of the United States under the

student loan program is $1 a month increase, an astronomical amount over

the 10-year repayment of $142. Frankly,

I will take my chance on that on any

campus in America. I will go tell the

freshmen and the seniors: For your student loan program, do you want to

share a little bit with us the sacrifice

so we can get a balanced budget, or do

you want to listen to people who say to

do that is to destroy universities, is to

eliminate opportunities for all our

children, all those wanting to go to college?

I do not believe that is the case, and

I do not believe the young people in

college feel that. If we were not going

to get a balanced budget, and we were

just going to run-around here like we

have been doing for all these years and

tinkering around the edges and say we

will take care of that some day, some

day some year—in the meantime, get

your college degrees and go to work

and then we will make you start paying off these bills. Not these bills, these

other giant bills, these billions that we

are going to charge to you, you college

students, we are going to make you

pay them off, I would think they would

jump for this proposition. Frankly,

that is not all.

We have been accused here of cutting

title I for the poor children. Let me tell

you, I do not know whether the appropriators will cut it or not, but we left

it at current law. We did not even

touch title I. It needs a lot of reform,

everybody knows that. It has been reformed somewhat. We did not touch it.

We said it is a good program.

You know, Mr. President, we do not

have the time to go through every

charge, but I thought it might just do

a little bit of good to put in perspective

one program that people are talking

most about. That is the undergraduate

student loan guarantee program. I

think we have done that fairly well

here, and I thank the Senator for yielding.

Mr. BENNETT. I thank the Senator.

Mr. President, how much time remains?

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The

Chair advises the Senator from Utah

that there are 20 minutes remaining. I

notice the Senator from Idaho on the
May 22, 1995 CONGRESSIONAL RECORD — SENATE S7099

floor. I yield 10 minutes to the senior

Senator from Idaho.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The

Chair recognizes the Senator from

Idaho.

Mr. CRAIG. Mr. President, let me

thank the Senator from Utah for yielding in what is really one of the most

important parts of the debate as we

consider Senate Concurrent Resolution

13, and that is a portion of the debate

that most of us would consider, and

many would argue from the other side,

is a portion of the Federal budget that

is an investment in the future, an investment in the education of our young

people.

While the amendment of the Senator

from Iowa and South Carolina would

argue all of these very worthy issues

and attempt to put them in perspective, what they are really arguing is

against a balanced budget. They are

largely arguing that at least there

should be somewhere near a $40 billion

to $50 billion deficit built into the

budget as we are now having it proposed to us, at least to the future, the

next 5 to 6 years, and the dividend that

the chairman of the Budget Committee

and that Senate Concurrent Resolution

13 embodies that we believe would go

into potential reductions in taxes that

would stimulate the economy simply is

not what ought to be done or how it

ought to be spent.

So it really is important when you

listen to the Senator from New Mexico

argue about an investment in our

young people’s future. To begin to

weigh just how important a balanced

budget is, last year the Office of Management and Budget, I believe, proposed that young people in the very

near future, at least in their earning

lifetime if they were born last year,

would have to start investing as much

as 80 percent plus of their gross income

into all forms of Government just to

continue current services as they

would be projected from last year into

the future 30 to 40 years and into the

peak of their earning capacity.

That is talking about the future. If I

have to turn to the young people in my

family and say you are going to have

to pay 65 to 75 to 80 percent of your

gross pay to afford all levels of Government, I am awfully afraid they are

going to say: ‘‘Dad, I don’t want to

work that hard. What is the advantage

in working hard to get ahead? I can’t

own a home or at least the kind of

home that you and mom used to own. I

am not sure I can afford to provide for

my children the kind of education that

you helped me get, because we cannot

afford the Government that you left

us.’’

So the reason I am on the floor tonight and the reason a lot of Senators

have come to the floor the last few

days and will through tomorrow and

Wednesday is because for the first time

in this Senator’s legislative life in Congress, I have a chance to vote for a balanced budget amendment. No longer is

it just the idea or the concept that

since 1982 I have come to the floor to

debate, and that is a constitutional

amendment requiring a balanced budget, we are doing what the other side,

the Democrats for over 5 weeks, challenged us to do: ‘‘Don’t put forth an

amendment, put forth a balanced budget. Don’t talk just rhetoric, do it.’’

So the Budget Committee of the U.S.

Senate and the Budget Committee in

the House are doing it, and they are

doing it in a way that absolutely begins to cause the American people to

understand that this is not pie in the

sky, this is reality. It can be done.

So, Mr. President, for the next few

minutes, let me give you the top 10 list

of why we ought to have a balanced

budget amendment and why Senate

Concurrent Resolution 13 is or should

be rated as No. 1, if you are listing top

10 lists.

The first reason we ought to have it

is the very reason I have been talking

about, the very reason the Senator

from Utah and New Mexico have talked

about. It is our children, it is the future, it is providing them with an unburdened, debt-free opportunity to

achieve. And when you strive to do

that, you create an economic environment in which our colleges and universities can thrive in the very economy

that supports them, and that is usually

the State economy, and the local

economies can also thrive.

What is the second reason in the top

10 list? It is jobs. It is the fact that DRI

McGraw-Hill, one of the leading economic forecasting firms, has projected

that a balanced budget will create 2.5

million new jobs by the year 2002. That

is exciting to think that if we get our

economic house in order that the economy of this country will begin to respond by the generation of an additional 2.5 million jobs. That makes a

world of sense.

What is the third reason in the list of

10? It is the seniors, the seniors of our

Nation, who I think really recognize

what this debate is all about because

they were born into a debt-free society.

They were taught by their elders to

live within their means, and it is awfully frustrating for them today to understand, or to try to understand, why

we have a $4.8 trillion debt and why we

are having to look at Government and

attempt to downsize it and change it

and shift the priorities today.

And when we debate Social Security

on the floor, they understand better

than anybody else that the debt is the

threat to Social Security, not the U.S.

Congress. The reason Medicare is in

trouble is the spending rate and the

fact that it will be bankrupt, and

President Clinton’s own advisers said

it. Yet, the other side ties their hands

and walks away and uses the language

of fear. The seniors understand that in

this country. They know that the debt

is the threat to Social Security, to the

future of our young people, to the

strength of our colleges and universities, and to Medicare.

What is the fourth good reason? Well,

it is lower taxes. It is the stimulation

of an economy. It is what makes sense

in America, that we do not overburden

our society beyond their ability, or

their will, or their enthusiasm to

produce.

The fifth reason is economic growth.

It is not trickle down. It is called leaving money in society to generate an

economic base that fuels an economy

that creates jobs.

It really means if we do what we say

we are trying to do, that we put $1,000

in every wage earner’s pocket, that the

Federal Government would have

reached out and snatched away by 2002,

if we pass this resolution and if this

Congress becomes committed to a balanced budget amendment.

Reason 6 in that top 10 list is investment. Over $200 billion a year in annual

deficits drag the economy down, and

we know—and economists are telling

us—that if we balance the budget, we

are going to see an economy begin to

pick up at another 2 or 3 percent annually. That is jobs. That is exciting.

Well, if you really look who is buying

the debt, who is really taking advantage of a Government that is in perpetual debt and has to borrow a lot of

money, it is an awful lot of overseas interest. We used to hear that argument

from the other side. Somehow they are

quiet today. They are not interested in

the fact that we pay $75 billion or $80

billion interest that flows abroad when

that money can stay here and be invested in our society and create jobs

for our people.

Of course, what we are doing with

this resolution also empowers the U.S.

Congress to begin to look at the priorities of what Government really ought

to be doing and, most importantly,

what Government should not be doing;

what State government ought to be

doing that the Federal Government

now may be doing but that it should

not be doing. That is the kind of shifting in priorities that I think is fundamentally important. When we talk

about the Domenici dividend and the

$170 billion that will be saved and,

therefore, create an opportunity

through taxation to—reductions to

stimulate our economy, that is the

kind of empowerment that our Congress is talking about.

The ninth reason is a reasonable and

responsible glidepath. Anybody who

has served in Congress any length of

time who is committed to balancing a

Federal budget knows, and knows very

clearly, that it cannot be done overnight. It probably should not, under

any circumstance, be done overnight.

But this Budget Committee, with the

direction of this side of the aisle, has

built a glidepath to take us to the year

2002 that makes a heck of a lot of

sense. And that builds the kind of economic resurgence we need and says to

the average worker: You are going to

have less Government to pay for. And,

in simple terms, that means you are

going to have more money to spend on
S7100 CONGRESSIONAL RECORD — SENATE May 22, 1995

yourself and your kids. That is what

this budget really ought to be all

about.

In the end, the 10th and most important reason is the people of our country. Seventy-five to 80 percent of the

American people, year after year, for

well over a decade, have said: Congress,

wake up, balance the budget, get your

fiscal house in order. The debt is really

the threat to our future and the future

of this country, and they, as the average citizens, know it. The common

sense of balancing your own checkbook

has already said it.

For years, we have labored under the

burden that if we just spent a little

more in every program, the world

would be just a little better. We have

put a lot of money into education, and

our educational system today does not

meet the test and standards that we

want it to meet.

Mr. President, those are the top 10

reasons that the Harkin amendment

ought to be voted down and that we

ought to stay with Senate Concurrent

Resolution 13, the reasonable approach

toward balancing the Federal budget

and forcing this Congress into the kind

of spending priorities that it must

make and it never before has caused itself to do.

I yield the remainder of my time.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Who

yields time?

Mr. BENNETT. How much time remains?

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Eight

minutes three seconds.

Mr. BENNETT. As per the previous

agreement, I yield 4 minutes to Senator HARKIN and reserve the remainder

for myself.

Mr. HARKIN. Thank you. I appreciate the yielding of the time so that

we can have a few more minutes to respond and make a couple of points on

this side.

First of all, the Senator from Utah is

a very thoughtful individual. I wanted

to respond about some of the comments he made at the opening of the

debate in regard to reviewing on a regular basis and changing education programs. I want to assure the Senator

that on a regular basis, our committee,

the Education Committee, reviews—as

we do in the authorizing process every

year—and has hearings, and we do

change programs. We are doing that

right now with IDEA, Individuals With

Disabilities Education Act; we are

changing it. Last year, we reauthorized

the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, and we made several

changes to the title I program. We rewrote the formula. It was quite a fight

around here, as the Senator probably

remembers. That went on for several

months. In 1992, we reauthorized the

Higher Education Act and again made

changes, in responding to the concerns

of our constituents. For example, one

of the changes we made concerned a lot

of farm kids with parents that were

land rich but had no cash. They had a

farm but did not have any money. We

changed that so these kids could be eligible, also, for financial assistance.

Finally, every year the appropriations process also does its part. For the

6 years that I chaired the subcommittee, we eliminated programs every

year. Last year, more than a dozen

education programs were just eliminated. I wanted to respond to the Senator that we do take our responsibility

seriously, and we do have the authorizing process here under which we do, in

fact, review these programs and get rid

of some in the appropriations process,

change them as times and circumstances demand. I feel very strongly that trying to use the budget process to maintain certain changes without having gone through this authorizing process and without looking at the

history, I think, is really the wrong approach on this.

Finally, I wanted to respond to the

chairman of the Budget Committee,

Senator DOMENICI, in talking about

some of the figures and how they add

up. When you look at the assignment

from the new GOP budget, the numbers

do not add up. They require a $13.7 billion cut. But when you look at what

the Budget Committee proposed in

privatizing Sallie Mae, we get no

money. Maintaining long-term interest

rates for student loans, we pick up

about $229 billion. Extending the State

default fee to direct loans, we get $702

billion. Eliminating in-school interest

subsidy for graduate students, $3.3 billion. There is about $4.257 billion in the

instructions of the Budget Committee.

Yet we are supposed to cut $13.7 billion.

Maybe this is why I am so interested in

putting more in education. This math

does not add up. I hope the chairman

will look at his math. And $13.7 billion

does not equal $4.257 billion. So there is

a gap here of money that needs to be

raised.

I submit, Mr. President, that really

the only way we can possibly get it

would be through the undergraduate

student loan program, which is the

only program large enough under

which we can get the missing $9 billion.

Finally, the budget chairman claims

to hold the Pell at the current level.

But if we add inflation and the additional growth of students, that comes

out to be a 40 percent reduction in

value of the grant by the year 2002.

What is now about a $2,500 a year

grant will now be down to about $1,600

by the year 2002.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The time

of the Senator from Iowa is expired.

UNANIMOUS-CONSENT AGREEMENT

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, I ask

unanimous consent that when the Senate considers the conference report accompanying H.R. 1158, the supplemental rescissions bill, that it be considered under the following time agreement: 20 minutes under the control of

the chairman and ranking minority

member of the Appropriations Committee; 30 minutes under the control of

Senator MCCAIN; 10 minutes under the

control of Senator FEINGOLD; 15 minutes under the control of Senator

WELLSTONE; and that following the

conclusion of the debate, the Senate

vote, without any intervening action

or debate, on adoption of the conference report.

I understand this has been cleared

with the minority side.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without

objection, it is so ordered.

Mr. BENNETT. Mr. President, we

have come to the end of this debate. We

have heard a great deal about education, a great deal about numbers,

whose numbers add and whose numbers

do not.

Mr. President, I will not try to repeat

or summarize all the rhetoric that has

gone down. There is one point that perhaps has not been adequately made

that needs to be understood by all Senators before we vote.

If we pass this amendment, the entire

$170 billion reserve is lost. The $170 billion reserve exists only if the Senate

budget resolution passes as structured.

It comes from the scoring of the CBO

that says if this amendment passes as

structured, the lowering of interest

rates and other economic activity that

will occur as a beneficial result of this

budget will produce an additional $170

billion.

If the budget does not pass and is not

enforced as structured, the $170 billion

will not be there. So the $40 billion

that is taken in additional spending

breaks through the one condition that

the CBO laid out when they promised

the $170 billion—I am informed by the

chairman of the committee that if this

amendment passes, the $170 billion that

we thought would be available to the

Finance Committee for consideration

for other purposes will, in fact, not be

there. And the whole $170 billion will

disappear.

If for no other reason, Mr. President,

that alone is reason enough to vote

down the Harkin amendment.

We must recognize the work that the

Budget Committee has done and how

carefully they have structured all of

their numbers, how carefully it has

been examined by the CBO, and on

what thin ground the $170 billion reserve fund rests. It is not thin ground

in the analysis, but it is thin ground in

terms of the ease with which the

ground could be cut away by amendments that break through the overall

limit.

If we, in our wisdom, decide we want

to increase the budget by that $40 billion, meaning there will be no balanced

budget by the year 2002 because there

are no offsets in the Harkin amendment, meaning that we do not reach

our target, then what the CBO says the

cost will be, will be $170 billion gone in

the form of lower interest rates and

lower economic activity.

The Budget Committee, as I understand it, did not put that in. It came

from the CBO after the analysis. Senators must keep that in mind as we

cast this vote. I yield the floor.
May 22, 1995 CONGRESSIONAL RECORD — SENATE S7101

VOTE ON AMENDMENT NO. 1116, AS FURTHER

MODIFIED

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The

question now occurs on amendment

numbered 1116, offered by the Senator

from Maine [Mr. COHEN].

Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, I ask

for the yeas and nays.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a

sufficient second?

There is a sufficient second.

The yeas and nays were ordered.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The

clerk will call the roll.

The bill clerk called the roll.

Mr. LOTT. I announce that the Senator from Texas [Mr. GRAMM] is necessarily absent.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Are there

any other Senators in the Chamber desiring to vote?

The result was announced—yeas 99,

nays 0, as follows:

[Rollcall Vote No. 174 Leg.]

YEAS—99

Abraham

Akaka

Ashcroft

Baucus

Bennett

Biden

Bingaman

Bond

Boxer

Bradley

Breaux

Brown

Bryan

Bumpers

Burns

Byrd

Campbell

Chafee

Coats

Cochran

Cohen

Conrad

Coverdell

Craig

D’Amato

Daschle

DeWine

Dodd

Dole

Domenici

Dorgan

Exon

Faircloth

Feingold

Feinstein

Ford

Frist

Glenn

Gorton

Graham

Grams

Grassley

Gregg

Harkin

Hatch

Hatfield

Heflin

Helms

Hollings

Hutchison

Inhofe

Inouye

Jeffords

Johnston

Kassebaum

Kempthorne

Kennedy

Kerrey

Kerry

Kohl

Kyl

Lautenberg

Leahy

Levin

Lieberman

Lott

Lugar

Mack

McCain

McConnell

Mikulski

Moseley-Braun

Moynihan

Murkowski

Murray

Nickles

Nunn

Packwood

Pell

Pressler

Pryor

Reid

Robb

Rockefeller

Roth

Santorum

Sarbanes

Shelby

Simon

Simpson

Smith

Snowe

Specter

Stevens

Thomas

Thompson

Thurmond

Warner

Wellstone

NOT VOTING—1

Gramm

So the amendment (No. 1116) was

agreed to.

Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, I

move to reconsider the vote by which

the amendment was agreed to.

Mr. President, may we have order,

please?

Mr. President, the pending Harkin

amendment is not germane to the provisions of the budget resolution. Pursuant to section 305(b)(2) of the Budget

Act, I raise a point of order against the

pending amendment.

MOTION TO WAIVE THE BUDGET ACT

Mr. EXON. Mr. President, pursuant

to section 904 of the Congressional

Budget Act of 1974, I move to waive

section 305 of that act for the purposes

of the Harkin amendment.

I ask for the yeas and nays.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a

sufficient second?

There is a sufficient second.

The yeas and nays were ordered.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The

question is on agreeing to the motion

from the Senator from Nebraska to

waive the Budget Act for the consideration of amendment No. 1117 offered by

the Senator from Iowa. On this question, the yeas and nays have been ordered, and the clerk will call the roll.

The assistant legislative clerk called

the roll.

Mr. LOTT. I announce that the Senator from Texas [Mr. GRAMM] is necessarily absent.

Mr. FORD. I announce that the Senator from New Jersey [Mr. BRADLEY] is

necessarily absent.

The yeas and nays resulted—yeas 47,

nays 51, as follows:

[Rollcall Vote No. 175 Leg.]

YEAS—47

Akaka

Baucus

Biden

Bingaman

Boxer

Breaux

Bryan

Bumpers

Byrd

Campbell

Conrad

Daschle

Dodd

Dorgan

Exon

Feingold

Feinstein

Ford

Glenn

Graham

Harkin

Heflin

Hollings

Inouye

Jeffords

Johnston

Kennedy

Kerrey

Kerry

Kohl

Lautenberg

Leahy

Levin

Lieberman

Mikulski

Moseley-Braun

Moynihan

Murray

Nunn

Pell

Pryor

Reid

Robb

Rockefeller

Sarbanes

Simon

Wellstone

NAYS—51

Abraham

Ashcroft

Bennett

Bond

Brown

Burns

Chafee

Coats

Cochran

Cohen

Coverdell

Craig

D’Amato

DeWine

Dole

Domenici

Faircloth

Frist

Gorton

Grams

Grassley

Gregg

Hatch

Hatfield

Helms

Hutchison

Inhofe

Kassebaum

Kempthorne

Kyl

Lott

Lugar

Mack

McCain

McConnell

Murkowski

Nickles

Packwood

Pressler

Roth

Santorum

Shelby

Simpson

Smith

Snowe

Specter

Stevens

Thomas

Thompson

Thurmond

Warner

NOT VOTING—2

Bradley Gramm

The PRESIDING OFFICER. On this

vote the ayes are 47, the nays are 51.

Three-fifths of the Senators duly chosen and sworn, not having voted in the

affirmative, the motion is rejected.

The amendment expands the subject

matter contained in the underlying

resolution in violation of section

305(B)(2) of the Congressional Budget

Act. The point of order is sustained.

The amendment falls.

Mr. DOLE addressed the Chair.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority leader.

ORDER OF PROCEDURE

Mr. DOLE. Mr. President, we have

had a lot of inquiries as to what will

happen the remainder of this evening.

We are still discussing this with the

Democratic leader, Senator DASCHLE.

Let me indicate what I hope will happen for the remainder of the week.

As I understand, when we complete

action today, if we stay 5 more hours,

there will be about 15 hours left on the

resolution. And then tomorrow, to accommodate the other side for their

fundraiser, we can only go to about 6

o’clock, but we can still maybe get 8

hours in by working through the lunch

hour—or 10 hours—and start at 8, 8:30.

So then that would leave 5 hours remaining on Wednesday. If we start

early on Wednesday, we hope to finish

this bill by mid-afternoon on Wednesday and, I assume, as in many other

cases, there will be a number of votes

before final passage.

Amendments will be called up and

voted upon. You could have 2 or 3 hours

of votes because we want to move to

the antiterrorism bill, hopefully, on

Wednesday, try to complete action on

that Thursday or, if not, on Friday. We

indicated to the President we would do

that.

It is my hope we can have a bipartisan effort so that we can pass that legislation before the Memorial Day recess, as we indicated to the President

we would.

We are not in a position to indicate

there will be no more votes, but there

will be no more votes at least until

9:15, 9:30, if that is of any help to anyone. Otherwise, we will be here a number of hours and there will be votes. If

we are here, we could have votes.

Mr. DOMENICI addressed the Chair.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Mexico.

Mr. DOMENICI. Mr. President, we on

our side are entitled to an amendment.

Senator ROTH is going to offer an

amendment. I designate him to be in

control and manager of the time on our

side.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Delaware.

AMENDMENT NO. 1121

(Purpose: To express the Sense-of-the-Senate

that the number of Federal full-time

equivalent positions should be further reduced, and for other purposes)

Mr. ROTH. Mr. President, I send an

amendment to the desk.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The

clerk will report.

The assistant legislative clerk read

as follows:

The Senator from Delaware [Mr. ROTH]

proposes an amendment numbered 1121.

Mr. ROTH. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the reading of the

amendment be dispensed with.

The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr.

THOMPSON). Without objection, it is so

ordered.

The amendment is as follows:

At the appropriate place in the resolution

insert the following new section:

SEC. . SENSE OF THE SENATE REGARDING FURTHER FEDERAL WORKFORCE REDUCTIONS.

It is the sense of the Senate that the assumptions underlying the functional totals

in this resolution include that the reductions

in Federal full-time equivalent positions required under section 5(b) of the Federal

Workforce Restructuring Act of 1994 (5

U.S.C. 3101 note) should be further reduced to

provide that—

(1) the total number of full-time equivalent

positions in all agencies shall not exceed

1,682,300 during fiscal year 2002; and

(2) of the additional reduction of 200,000

full-time equivalent positions provided for
S7102 CONGRESSIONAL RECORD — SENATE May 22, 1995

under paragraph (1), no more than 50,000

shall be within the Department of Defense.

Mr. ROTH. Mr. President, my amendment would express the sense of the

Senate to reduce the number of Government-wide full-time equivalent

[FTE] positions over the next 7 years.

It is consistent with the Domenici

budget to streamline and eliminate

several Government functions and programs.

The amendment provides for a reduction of 200,000 positions by 2002 in addition to the already enacted reduction

of 272,900 FTE’s by 1999 in the Federal

Workforce Restructuring Act of 1994.

That legislation included governmentwide annual FTE caps on civilian employment as well as provided buyout

authority to help agencies downsize in

a more humane fashion.

The Domenici budget calls for the

elimination of the Department of Commerce, an idea that I have endorsed

since the early 1980’s. It also calls for

the elimination or phase out of nearly

150 Federal programs and functions.

My estimates show that with these

programmatic changes, over 150,000 positions could be eliminated in non-Defense agencies by fiscal year 2020.

My amendment limits the overall reductions within the Department of Defense to 50,000. Current Clinton administration projections show that 208,000

of the mandated 272,900 FTE reductions

will be within the Department of Defense. This amendment will help to

achieve the originally intended balance

to further downsize the non-Defense related agencies as well. My amendment

is consistent with the Roth-Kasich Defense Department acquisition reform

bill to reduce the number of acquisition personnel. According to the Congressional Budget Office, this reform

bill would produce 42,500 in FTE savings with the Defense Department.

Current FTE reductions to comply

with the 1994 Federal Workforce

Restructing Act of 272,900 by 1999 are

proceeding as planned. Further, OMB

has estimated that the total civilian

workforce will be approximately 25,000

below the existing FTE cap levels for

1995 and 1996.

Let me take just a few moments to

explain the personnel savings that

could be achieved within the acquisition workforce at the Defense Department. Despite recent efforts at improvement, DOD programs continue to

experience significant cost, schedule

and performance problems. A recent

Defense Department study found that

defense programs are over budget and

behind schedule by one-third, on average. The Defense Science Board reported that ‘‘ * * * without fundamental reform, DOD will be unable to afford the weapons, equipment and services it needs to provide for our national

security.’’ After spending billions of

dollars this suggests our troops in the

future could face an enemy who is better equipped, because of the failure of

the current bureaucracy to efficiently

procure weapons.

Last month, I introduced the Defense

Acquisition Management Reform Act

to address this situation. It contains

two key elements. First, it busts the

bureaucracy. It combines the three separate maintenance and procurement

systems—the Army, Navy and Air

Force—into one. This is a commonsense solution for incredible duplication and inefficient bureaucracy. In

fact, this bill turns 20 levels of bureaucracy into 3, and eliminates hundreds of paperwork requirements.

We are proposing that the Pentagon

use the lean, results-oriented approach

employed by globally competitive

high-technology firms. This will not

only highlight results over process, but

it will cut the timeline in half! As the

result, the bill returns authority to

program managers and those who actually use the weapons.

Second, it changes the incentives and

rewards that drive the day-to-day actions of the individuals in the buying

system. The Defense Acquisition Management Reform Act of 1995 gives managers and contractors the incentives

they need to deliver their programs on

time and on budget. If they deliver

more than 10 percent ahead of time and

under budget, they get bonuses. If they

deliver more than 10 percent late or

over budget, they are penalized. If they

are more than 50 percent over budget,

the program is cancelled. It is that

simple.

These changes are only a few of the

many features contained in this bill

that will save the American taxpayers

some $20 billion each and every year.

As a part of these savings, we calculate

that this bill will allow a reduction of

the defense acquisition work force, currently estimated at 425,000, by at least

10 percent. This is a bill with teeth, different from past reform efforts because

of the incentives and penalties that

will affect the program managers. Pay

for performance and busting the bureaucracy will make all the difference.

The act focuses on eight, key principles: First, expanding the 90 percent

cost, schedule and performance goals

established for defense acquisition by

the Federal Acquisition Streamlining

Act of 1994; second, creating a single,

lean DOD acquisition command which

is more responsive to the war fighters;

third, more directly tying the pay of

the work force to achievement of program goals; fourth, establishing an accelerated, results-oriented acquisition

cycle which is more sensitive to user

needs; fifth, speeding up the contracting process; sixth, instituting performance-based contract management

which focuses on sharing with defense

contractors the gain (or the pain) of

meeting (or missing) program performance goals; seventh, requiring improvements in the financial management

systems and procedures used to ensure

the most effective stewardship of taxpayer dollars; and eighth, increasing

the efficiency of acquisition operations

through consolidation of military depots and elimination of duplicative defense industry capabilities.

Mr. President, as I said, the purpose

of this amendment is to express the

sense of the Senate that the number of

Federal full-time equivalent positions

should be further reduced.

It is a very simple amendment. It

provides that it is the sense of the Senate that the assumptions underlying

the fundamental totals in this resolution include that the reductions in

Federal full-time equivalent positions

required under section 5(b) of the Federal Work Force Restructuring Act of

1995 should be further reduced to provide that, first, the total number of

full-time equivalent positions in all

agencies shall not exceed 1,682,300 during fiscal year 2002; second, of the additional reductions of 200,000 full-time

equivalent positions provided for under

paragraph 1, no more than 50,000 shall

be within the Department of Defense.

Mr. President, I urge the adoption of

my amendment. I yield the floor.

Mr. GLENN. Mr. President, I rise to

oppose the amendment by my colleague and committee chairman on

Governmental Affairs. I do it, although

this is a sense of the Senate and is not

binding on the Senate. I am afraid that

it sets out goals that are not achievable.

Let me go back. The new administration came in. One of the things that

they set out to do was to downsize Government. They have been doing a pretty good job of it. They have been getting very little credit for it. They have

been doing a pretty good job. First off,

they do not go about their task of

downsizing Government just by picking

a number off the top of their head to

set out as a goal for reducing the fulltime employees of Government, the

FTE’s.

What they did was have the Office of

Personnel Management actually make

estimates, department by department,

agency by agency, all over Government, and come up with a total of what

they thought was really doable.

Mr. President, they set out to have

the Office of Personnel Management do

actual estimates, the numbers of fulltime employees that the managers,

doing the work of Government,

thought they could do without. They

came up with a total. It came out to

272,900, to be done over a 4-year period.

Now, Mr. President, that was doable.

That had a basis in fact, a basis in the

estimates that were made by the various departments and agencies.

Now, that was a very studied approach. As a result of that, we had

fewer reductions in force where they

are mandatory, where they call people

in and fire them. That was not necessary.

What we did was we provided for buyout legislation, put some money in the

kitty so they could address this problem of getting people to leave Government, not just solely by attrition, because attrition, unfortunately, occurs

in the lower GS ratings and fewer in
May 22, 1995 CONGRESSIONAL RECORD — SENATE S7103

the higher GS ratings. That is understandable, more turnover at the lower

level.

What they did was they asked Members to go ahead and set up buy-out

legislation. We did that. I proposed

that in committee. We had it patterned

after the civil service ratings, on the

same basis we had provided for the

Pentagon some time before on reduction in force over there, and doing it in

a way where we did not have to really

just call people in and fire them. We

wanted to do as much as we could by

attrition but have buy-out legislation

to encourage people to get out if we

needed to use it. That has worked very,

very well. It was one of our better administered plans in Government.

Let me say that along the way we

had an additional thing we were trying

to achieve with this buy-out legislation. Through the years, great inefficiencies have developed in the Government in our hiring and staffing patterns in that we had about one boss,

one supervisor, for every seven employees in the Federal Government, just on

an average. Some areas that required

higher level GS ratings, as NIH and

places like that, would be different, but

overall across Government, there was

one supervisor for each seven employees.

Now, how does that compare to private industry? Private industry averages 1 to 15 on an average across the

country for the average business. Some

employee-intensive industries will vary

from that ratio, obviously. However,

there would be many on the other side

that would balance it the other way.

The overall ratio for the country is

about 1 to 15.

With this buy-out legislation, we provided a way in which different departments and agencies could help correct

that imbalance while we are getting

people out. We wanted the buy-out legislation targeted at GS 13’s, 14’s and

15’s so we could correct this imbalance.

It has been working very, very well.

How far have we come with this goal

of 272,900 people? Right now they estimate 108,000 people are actually out,

and they are hoping by the end of the

year to have the whole 272,900 reduced.

This was done on a very studied

basis. It was not done just on picking a

number off the top of our heads and

saying, well, we will shoot for there

and see how many more we can get out.

Nevertheless, whether this is a studied basis or not, it is set as a goal. How

on earth would we meet it? We say that

defense would be left out of this equation here except not completely left

out. We say no more than 50,000 more

shall come out of the Department of

Defense. What is to protect NIH? What

is to protect those areas—the Center

for Disease Control in Atlanta? What is

to protect the FDA? What is to protect

areas of health and safety that we

should be protecting, also?

My colleague on the other side of the

aisle says, well, commerce is going to

be put out of business, perhaps, if the

plan goes through and some 150 Federal

programs will be out. We do not know

that yet for sure. We do not know what

ones.

It seems to me that the approach we

should be using is to set what we want

to define as the functions of Government, not just swinging a machete

wildly and say, pick a number, any

number, off the top of our heads and

say we will set that as a goal to meet

as though we could do just as good a

job in Government no matter how low

we cut the FTE’s down.

I think we should be defining the

functions of Government first. I do not

know that there was any real thought

given on how we arrived at that 200,000.

I would ask my colleague, Senator

ROTH, the Senator from Delaware, how

he arrived at that 200,000.

Where did he come up with that? Was

it a studied approach such as OPM used

on behalf of the administration to be

used on behalf of the 272,900? That was

not a figure just picked wildly at random, but arrived at by totaling the

number of people that agencies and departments said they could probably do

without. And we came up to 272,900

that could be cut. That was done on a

very, very, studied basis.

I do not know how we arrived at this

200,000. I do not know, in addition, how

much it will cost for a buy-out if we

are not to just set out wholesale firing

people. I know it was said we would try

to do this as much by attrition as possible.

Let me say this: Attrition does not

work if we are going to correct the imbalance between the supervisors or the

bosses in Government and the employees that are the workers across Government. If we were just to take attrition, attrition normally occurs in the

lower civil service ranks. It does not

occur in the higher ranks. We specifically, in the legislation that was

passed before that helped them along

to get the administration’s reduction

of 272,900, we provided money in there,

buy-out money, to help attain that

goal.

That approach was worked very, very

well. If we are to do this further

downsizing as my distinguished colleague from Delaware indicates, then it

seems to me we would want to continue this correction of the imbalance

in the GS ratings as much as we possibly could. We are not providing for

that in this sense-of-the-Senate proposal.

My colleague also talks about the

procurement legislation, putting defense procurement all into one section.

We still have different functions of

Government to be performed, whether

they are left in the individual services

or combined into one section. We will

still have to have people that do the

design work, the evaluation work on

airplanes, ships, tanks, infantry and

tactics, and all of the other things.

I do not know whether that will save

money or not. I am certainly willing to

look at the defense procurement bill in

1995 and see how that works out. What

my distinguished colleague from Delaware said a little while ago as far as

time limits on this, if it runs 10 percent

over dollars or 10 percent over time,

that the contract would be canceled, if

I understood his proposal correctly, I

would say would almost certainly have

precluded some of the major advances

we have had in military equipment in

the past.

When we procure military equipment

we are not just procuring Ford and

Chevy trucks off the line in Detroit,

where you can predict exactly, with

great accuracy, when they come off the

line, how much they will cost, and

when they can be delivered.

We are talking about tanks that, as

you go along, may need some change to

the original design. We are talking

about the development of lasers, where

you do not really know the cost, exactly, nor the time, yet you know it is

worthwhile to go ahead and develop

that particular capability.

On guided missiles, we rarely know

exactly when, what date they are going

to come into active service on because,

as you go along, you find problems.

The same thing with aircraft. Yet we

do not want to say that every aircraft

that we design for the military would

have to be such a simplistic design, not

getting into state-of-the-art matters,

that it could possibly adhere to an absolute 10-percent dollar or 10-percent

time limit or have its contract canceled. You are not talking about things

that are that neatly developed and that

much here and now.

Many of these are programs that

need to be developed and I do not know

how you would take care of something

like that.

I am happy to look at the defense

procurement legislation but I think we

have to be very, very careful when we

set hard and strict rules that say

things will be canceled if they are 10

percent over budget or 10 percent over

time. Perhaps bonuses can be given for

coming in on time or coming in ahead

of time. Maybe that would be a different approach and I will be glad to

discuss that and work with my colleague from Delaware in looking into

that. But I think, to get back to the

original proposal here on passing a

sense-of-the-Senate resolution that

just automatically says:

The total number of full-time equivalent

positions in all agencies shall not exceed

1,682,300 during fiscal year 2002; and, No. 2, of

the additional reduction of 200,000 full-time

equivalent positions provided for under paragraph (1), no more than 50,000 shall be within

the Department of Defense.

That leaves 150,000 other cuts in Government.

I just cannot in good conscience vote

for something that maybe some people

would interpret to mean cuts in FDA,

cuts in NIH, cuts in the Centers for

Disease Control; cuts in safety for our

people, for health and safety matters

for our people. We can say, ‘‘I know it

is not likely that would occur.’’ But do
S7104 CONGRESSIONAL RECORD — SENATE May 22, 1995

we have any guarantee it will not

occur? And with other things being

proposed, the big cuts being proposed

in other areas within this budget resolution, I do not have much faith we

would not have to take cuts in NIH and

CDC and everywhere else. And I do not

want to see that happen. I think that

would be a major, major mistake.

So I rise in opposition to this legislation even though it is only a sense of

the Senate. I know it is easy, sometimes, to say it is sense of the Senate

so it is not really binding so let us not

worry about it, let us pass it and we

will work it out later on. But I do not

look at this as being quite so innocuous, because what we are doing is we

are going on record saying the best

judgment of the Senate of the United

States is that we can, without defining

where they would come from, cut another 200,000 people beyond the 272,900

that will already have been cut by this

administration by the end of this year.

If we wanted to charge the Office of

Personnel Management with going

through once again at the end of this

272,900 cut and say OK, let us look at

this now, see what the job is of Government, see how many people we need to

do it, and can we really safely cut some

additional people in Government without hurting the function of Government, whatever it is—NIH or FDA or

whatever—then that would make some

sense. But to just pick an arbitrary figure and say we will cut 200,000—we

could just as well have said cut the

work force in half. Cut the work force

by 800,000. Cut the work force by half a

million. It would have made just as

much sense. But the 200,000 to me is a

figure I would not want the Senate to

go on record as saying that would be

the objective, even in a sense-of-theSenate resolution.

So, Mr. President, for all those reasons I oppose the amendment by my

distinguished colleague from Delaware.

I will be glad to work with him on

some of the defense procurement legislation he is proposing, but just to go

out and say we will automatically

whack another 200,000 people out without knowing exactly where they are

coming from or defining this, agency

by agency, or department by department, would be a big mistake.

I yield the floor.

Mr. SARBANES addressed the Chair.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Maryland.

Mr. SARBANES. Mr. President, has

enough not happened over the last few

weeks that this abysmal practice of

beating up on Federal employees ought

to come to an end? ‘‘Oh, it is just a

sense-of-the-Senate resolution,’’ the

sponsor says. Nevertheless, it would

represent a judgment of the Senate

that we are going to cut the Federal

work force another 11 percent over and

above, I repeat, over and above the

272,000 reduction in force that has already been programmed; over and

above that reduction in force.

At some point I hope people will

reach the conclusion that Federal employees have a reasonable role and

place in the workings of our system

and they ought to be treated with a

measure of dignity. Why, once again,

are we landing with both feet on the

men and women who render dedicated

service to the country? They are already taking a very heavy hit in this

budget resolution.

In fact, over the period of this budget

resolution Federal employees will, in

effect, give up $85 billion of pay adjustments that are provided for by law in

terms of assuring them comparability

with the private sector. Yet here some

come, late at night, with this amendment. There is no study that backs

these figures. They say, ‘‘We assume

the Department of Commerce is going

to be done away with.’’ Even the people

advocating the elimination of the Department of Commerce are not advocating the elimination of all of the programs carried out by the Department

of Commerce. When questioned, they in

effect say, ‘‘This program is going to

go here, this program is going to go

there. Yes, this activity should continue.’’ So most of those activities

have to go on. They are important to

the economy of our country.

Now we are going to say to the Federal employees: Over 11 percent of you

are going to go by the board, over and

above the reduction of 272,000 which

has already been programmed and

which is well underway. In fact, now

well over 100,000 of those positions have

been phased out in the course of the reduction that is taking place, and the

rest are projected to accrue by the end

of the century.

This amendment says to people who

have already been through turmoil,

who have already had all of the worry

and the anxiety connected with these

reductions, ‘‘Well, now there are an additional 200,000—well over 10 percent of

those of you that are left—who are on

your way out.’’

What do you think that does for the

morale of the work force? What do you

think that does for the health of their

families? What do you think that does

to having a first-rate Federal service?

We have a national interest in having a

first-rate Federal service. You do not

want a second-rate Federal service.

But, if you continue in effect to assault

people, keep them in this state of agitation and anxiety and fear and apprehension, you are well on your way to

bringing about a second-rate service.

People have other opportunities. Good

people have other opportunities and

will leave to take them. Good people

will not come in because they do not

want to live in this environment. This

is not a rational, sensible proposal. It

is not a proposal that is grounded on

some thorough analysis working up

from a real examination of activities.

It arbitrarily imposes this upon the

work force.’’ We have had far too much

of that.

For years the Federal employees

have been a favorite target. Take it out

on the Federal employees. Call them

‘‘bureaucrats’’ with a sneer. Deprecate

the work that they do. How long is this

going to go on?

Are my colleagues finally going to

begin to say these are dedicated people,

the vast number of them. They render

important service. Many are highly

trained and highly skilled. They are

proud of the work they do. They give a

good performance. They carry out very

important and essential functions. Yet,

many constantly berate them, denigrate their work, treat them not even

as second-class but third-class citizens.

Now they come along and make these

proposals. Proposals that have not

been worked out carefully. They propose to go ahead and slap the Federal

employees once again, or twice again.

After all, they are a favorite target,

even though they are making, and have

made, extraordinary sacrifices

throughout this deficit reduction process.

Literally tens and tens of billions of

dollars for the deficit reduction process

have come out of the Federal employees. Now the offeror of this amendment

comes along and says, despite the

downsizing of 272,000 which is now on

track to be carried through by the end

of the century, let us add another

200,000 to it; over an additional 10 percent of the work force.

At some point enough is enough, and

this ought to be the point. We ought to

stop this practice of berating the Federal employees and stop now.

Some say, ‘‘Well, it is only a senseof-the-Senate resolution.’’ I simply say

to them, that the message that is sent

to the Federal employees, and the message sent to the public at large about

the Federal employees, is every bit as

strong in this sense-of-the-Senate resolution which the Senator from Delaware has introduced as it would be in a

piece of binding legislation.

Mr. President, I say to my colleagues, it is time to stop this abysmal

practice. These employees have sacrificed a lot. They ought not to be held

under this sword of Damocles hanging

over them, and be kept in this state of

turmoil and apprehension. We ought to

have some sensitivity for the situation

in which they find themselves, and reject the constant assault that is made

upon hard working, dedicated men and

women in the Federal service. They deserve to be treated with some measure

of dignity. This resolution does not do

that. I hope it will be defeated.

Several Senators addressed the

Chair.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Pennsylvania.

Mr. SANTORUM. I ask if the Senator

from Delaware will yield time on the

amendment.

Mr. ROTH. I will be happy to yield as

much time as the distinguished Senator from Pennsylvania may desire.

Mr. SANTORUM. I thank the Senator

from Delaware for the time yielded.

I would like to first just respond to

the comments made by the Senator

from Maryland. I am the son of two
May 22, 1995 CONGRESSIONAL RECORD — SENATE S7105

Federal employees. My parents worked

for the Federal Government for their

entire careers.

I think the Senator is right. I think

Federal employees do get beat up on a

lot. A lot of them are doing the best

they can in a system that is not working particularly well for them, a Government which was designed under the

theory of bureaucracy, a theory created prior to the invention of the typewriter. That is how we wrote our Federal Government.

So to saddle them with a bureaucratic organizational structure in an

era where we are debating a telecommunications bill that is going to

move us into the next millennium,

which was unthinkable as much as 10

years ago, to saddle them with that

and to suggest that they can perform

their functions is almost asking too

much of them.

In addition, to suggest that the number of Federal employees in this information age cannot and should not be

reduced, as it is in every private sector

employment of any major corporation,

is again not to face reality, that in fact

structures must change, delivery systems must change, theories that ran

our Government from the time of the

revolution to now must change, and as

a result the Federal compliment of employees must change, as it is in every

major corporation in the country of

any size.

I would daresay that if the Senator

from Maryland suggested we had a 10

percent cut in employment, we cannot

afford another 10 percent, I would look

to any major company in the country

that has not cut their work force by 5,

10, or 20 percent or more. We have to do

the same thing here. We have to understand that we have to deliver services

more efficiently using technology that

is available for us to do it better,

cheaper, more efficiently and with less

people in many cases.

So I do not think the argument—at

least my argument is not to look at

these Federal workers as terrible, these

do not do a good job. I disagree with

that. I think the Federal workers that

I know—and I know lots of them—work

very hard, are very concerned about

their job and want to do the best they

can, and in the most of the cases are

hamstrung by their own internal operations from doing the job that they

wanted to do. But to suggest that now

as we move into this information age

that we cannot modernize like everybody else and as a result of that modernization be able to downsize the work

force I think just flies in the face of

what is going on in the entire world

around us.

Government should reflect what the

country is doing, and what the private

sector is doing to be able to streamline

and make more efficient.

I would suggest that there is one

Federal employee who is not doing a

very good job, who does need to be

scrutinized more in this debate in particular; that is, the President of the

United States.

If there is a Federal employee who is

not facing up to the demands of his job

and coming forward with solutions to

solve problems that face this country,

it is, in fact, the President.

We have the President now standing

tall and firm against deficit reduction

by saying he is going to veto the rescissions bill which is trumpeted to be $16

billion but, as most of us in this Chamber know, as the Federal Government

continues to spend money day after

day after day, that rescission bill is not

worth $16 billion any more. We might

be able to get $9 billion in savings. But

the President says, ‘‘No, you have got a

couple of million dollars or so that I

don’t like and so we are going to throw

the whole thing out.’’ Leadership.

Leadership.

In trying to solve the problem that is

most pressing on the American public’s

mind and one that is front and center

to this U.S. Senate these last 2 weeks

when we are debating the budget resolution, where has the President been on

the budget resolution? Well, he did

present his budget earlier this year

that called for $200 billion and $300 billion deficits for as far as the eye can

see, which last week was voted down 99

to nothing, 99 to nothing. Hardly leadership, hardly visionary on the part of

the President to put forward a budget

that simply was a nonstarter on both

sides of the aisle unanimously.

So where has he been? Where has the

leadership been from the one Federal

employee that we demand the most

from? Nowhere.

And so I came to the floor last week

and I said that I would be here every

day between now and the 1st of October

when the new fiscal year starts and remind Members of the Senate of the

kind of leader we have in the White

House when it comes to balancing our

budget.

On Saturday, the President did not

present a budget that brought this

country into balance over the next 7

years. That was the third day that before the Senate was the balanced budget resolution. On Sunday, day four, the

President did not present a balanced

budget resolution. And today, day five,

the President did not present a balanced budget resolution.

It is incredulous to me that the

President of the United States, who

said during the balanced budget

amendment debate, the amendment to

the Constitution, that the we did not

need a balanced budget amendment to

move forward and solve the deficit crisis that faces us; that all we needed

was our own resolve, our own resolve.

This same President 2 years ago during

his budget debate, his first one, in 1993,

when he passed a large tax increase and

a few spending cuts along the way challenged Republicans and said, ‘‘Where is

your plan? Where is your plan? Why

don’t you come up with something?

Show us your specifics?’’ He said ‘‘No

hot air, show me where.’’ Show me

where.

The minority leader, Senator

DASCHLE, on March 3, 1995, during the

balanced budget debate said, ‘‘And for

those who say we do not need a constitutional amendment to do the job’’—

that job being balancing the budget—‘‘I

think it is all the more important that

we demonstrate that we can, that we

are up to the task, that we can meet

our responsibilities to make it happen

correctly, to make it happen in a way

that was foreseen when we passed the

law setting up the budget process.’’

And what amendments have we seen?

Are they amendments that have been

brought to the floor by the other side

of the aisle the substitutes to show us

what their plan is to get to a balanced

budget? No. Are they rearranging

spending priorities to say we should

cut from this area of Government and

add to another area of Government in

setting priorities? No.

What are they? They are amendments to spend more money, to take

the reserve account, which is theoretical on the part of the Congressional

Budget Office, that only occurs if we,

in fact, have a budget that brings us to

balance in 7 years. Then they give us a

bonus of $170 billion because they figure lower interest rates, more economic growth, and lower inflation.

So this bonus now, what do they

want to do? Do they want to put it toward the deficit? Do they want to give

it back to you, the taxpayers, who paid

it in the first place? No. We want to

spend it right away. We do not want to

wait until it accrues in the future. We

want to spend it now.

This is responsibility? This is demonstrating that we can, that we have

the resolve?

I suspect the American public has a

hard time buying all of this—certainly,

I have a hard time buying all of this—

that the President and his party are serious about making tough decisions;

about having ideas and vision as to

where to take this country into a future that is a fiscally sound future;

about having innovative approaches

like the Senator from Delaware, who

does not just and has not, as chairman

of this committee, just proposed cuts

in Federal employment. He proposes a

performance-based budget which puts

managerial goals for Federal employees to achieve, to give flexibility to

managers, to make it more like a private sector employment place, to give

the kind of flexibility that many Federal employees ask me, plead for me, to

give.

So the Senator from Delaware is not

just out here willy-nilly throwing numbers around. He is putting forward responsible proposals that have a vision

as to where to take this country in the

future. And you will see, and have seen

from this side of the aisle, such proposals, and you will see more.

So I commend the Senator from

Delaware for his amendment. I wish

him success in that amendment.
S7106 CONGRESSIONAL RECORD — SENATE May 22, 1995

I hope that I do not have to be here

tomorrow. I hope that I do not have to

be here with this chart. I hope the

President has read the polls, seen the

position he has taken is not one that is

particularly popular with the American public and, more importantly, is

not what is right for this country.

For this system to work, we need a

healthy dialog and we need leadership

from both sides for us to come up with

this compromise and the strategy to

move us forward

I yield the floor.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Who

yields time?

Mr. GLENN addressed the Chair.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Ohio.

Mr. GLENN. Mr. President I would

like to respond to my colleague from

Pennsylvania briefly.

Mr. SARBANES. Would the Senator

yield to me for a question?

Mr. GLENN. Yes.

Mr. SARBANES. I wanted to ask the

Senator from Pennsylvania, if he is

here tomorrow with his chart, will that

fellow who puts the numbers up be here

with him in order to make this demonstration work? I am just curious. Unfortunately, he left the floor once he

got the number up. And I just wanted

to know, if you are here tomorrow and

you have to put a number up, will that

fellow come back so we can catch another glimpse of him, the one who puts

the next number up.

Mr. SANTORUM. His wife and kids

like to see him, too.

Mr. SARBANES. I am glad to hear

there is concern about his wife and

kids, because I listened to this diatribe

about the President, when we needed to

talk about a very serious matter affecting the rank and file of the Federal

employees. So I am glad to see there is

some sensitivity.

Mr. GLENN. I yield 15 minutes to the

Senator from Maryland.

Ms. MIKULSKI. I thank the ranking

member for yielding such time.

Mr. President, I rise to oppose the

Roth amendment to further reduce the

Federal work force beyond the quarter

of a million that we have already done

under the Clinton reinventing Government framework.

I am concerned that we are engaging

in a mass mania of who can rack up the

biggest number. Every day there seems

to be a bidding war on who can escalate

the numbers of Federal employees that

need to be laid off in this so-called

downsizing of Government.

But make no mistake, every time we

raise the number beyond a reasonable

and rational level that we can achieve

through technological innovation, we

are not accomplishing downsizing; we

are accomplishing downgrading.

The sense-of-the-Senate resolution

essentially says what it is that the

Senate wants to do. Well, I believe that

we have already been on record to support reinventing Government as laid

out by President Bill Clinton and Vice

President AL GORE, looking at the best

available management practices and

technological innovation to reduce, in

a rational way, the Federal work force.

What this says to 200,000 more Federal employees is we do not want you

to show up; we do not value you; we do

not think you are needed; we think

your time is up and it is time for you

to go.

Well, Mr. President, who is it that we

do not want to show up? I want to talk

about my own State of Maryland. I

have the honor of representing the National Institutes of Health, which are

located in the State of Maryland, and

there are thousands of Federal employees working there from research scientists to lab technicians to back-up

support services to security personnel.

Now who are we saying not to show

up at the National Institutes of

Health? Are we saying to that Nobel

prize candidate who could have a

breakthrough in AIDS research, Don’t

bother to show up, we’re downsizing,

we’re going to technological innovation, we don’t need your intellectual

competency, we’ll do a computer simulation?

What will we say in this decade of

the brain research to those scientists

working on Alzheimer’s research which

killed my father—Alzheimer’s killed

my father—and if we can find a cure for

it it would significantly reduce the

health care debt in this country. Are

we saying to NIH, Don’t show up?

But let us not just stay around the

State of Maryland. Let us go to the

Centers for Disease Control. We now

know Ebola virus threatens Zaire and

could even possibly threaten the world.

We had a near outbreak in something

called The Hot Zone in northern Virginia. If you read the book, you know

what the story was. It was Federal employees at Fort Dietrick who were willing to risk their lives—willing to risk

their lives—who were willing to go into

the hot zone to kill the monkeys that

carried this disease.

When you read the newspaper accounts—this is not MIKULSKI memos,

this is newspaper accounts—that talk

about how skimpy the resources are at

CDC and in infectious diseases, they

are stretched so thin that they are now

afraid an accident could happen at the

CDC exactly at the same time when we

are asking for their help. The world is

asking for their help to come and take

care of the Ebola virus.

Let us talk about other threats to

the safety and security of the United

States. Let us talk about our law enforcement. Who else are we telling not

to show up? Shall we say no more FBI

agents, do not show up? Are we saying

to the Secret Service, Well, you might

be in the line of fire in one way, but

we’re going to put you in the line of

fire in another way. We are going to

tell them not to show up?

We in Maryland were willing to take

a Federal prison. There is a medium-security prison right now in the Allegheny Mountains in the community of

Cumberland. We have a Federal prison

for medium-security prisoners. Are we

telling the prison guards that they are

superfluous, we are going to have better locks, better keys, maybe have

chain gangs; we do not need you?

Well, I want those prison workers

there. I want the bums and thugs off

the street. I supported life without parole legislation. I have supported not

only prevention programs but tough

prison sentences. So are we going to

tell the prison workers we do not want

you; do not show up?

And then here we are now on the eve

of celebrating victory in Europe, the

end of World War II, and what do we

say to the GI Joe generation? Oh,

aren’t taking your health care, but we

are going to say no to the doctors at

VA; we are going to say we are going to

shrink the nurses; we are going to say

we are going to shrink the lab technicians; we are going to say we do not

need them. We are going to replace

them with something called technological innovation.

We know we are going to downsize.

We have already begun to do it. The

President of the United States has not

been AWOL on this issue. He has been

in the forefront. He has charged the

Vice President to do it, and we have

absolutely done it.

In Maryland, this downsizing will

have devastating impacts on the economy of Maryland but also on the morale of Maryland. Right now, there is a

morale crisis among Federal employees. They have essentially been told

they are not needed, they are not valued, and now the bums and thugs in the

world are even targeting them for violent attacks.

I do not think this is the United

States of America. We are from the

generation that when Jack Kennedy

said ‘‘Ask not what your country can

do for you, but what you can do for

your country,’’ we answered that call.

Many of the people in my generation

saw public service as a noble calling, a

way to serve the United States of

America to do good and earn a decent

living. Now they feel that they are absolutely under attack.

I can tell you what is going to happen. You will not only downsize Federal employees, but, no smart, self-respecting person will want to come to

work for the Federal Government.

And who do you think is going to be

in these Federal agencies? Do we not

want a Government at all? If we want

to do that, well then let us do that. Let

us not go through this charade of

downsizing, if you are going to have a

Government and you believe that there

are core functions that Government

must perform, not only in national defense, but on domestic security issues

and the risks that the United States of

America faces—crime on the streets,

drug dealing, punks that want to sabotage the United States of America, and

we need law enforcement.

We are also plagued by another

horseman of the apocalypse called

plague and pestilence, and we want to
May 22, 1995 CONGRESSIONAL RECORD — SENATE S7107

make sure that we have the medical research and the staff at FDA and the

Centers for Disease Control that are

going to find the cures for disease and

be able to work to contain pestilence

around the world. We think that is important.

What are the other threats to the security of the United States of America?

It is a crisis of confidence. We should

make sure that we have a core set of

values that encourage people, along

with the values of duty, obligation,

loyalty, patriotism.

If we treat our Federal employees

this way, how are we going to call it

forth? We are going to ask them to be

loyal to us when we are not loyal to

them, to have a sense of duty about the

job they do when we do not have a

sense of obligation to them? I think

this is a terrible course of action.

There is a logical, rational way to

downsizing. I oversee as an appropriator 25 different agencies. We are already taking concrete steps to be able

to do it. I was the one that commissioned the study on the National Association of Public Administrators,

which is now being used as the framework to downsize HUD. I am not opposed to shrinking the work force, but

I am opposed to shirking our duties to

our Federal employees.

Mr. President, our Federal employees

have served their country, they have

devoted themselves to public service,

they deserve our gratitude and our support. We are already reducing by 272,000

positions. The Roth amendment is not

only going to result in downsizing but,

as I said, in downgrading. So I stand

here to support those Federal employees and to defend them who defend my

health, my safety and my national security.

Mr. President, I hope we defeat the

Roth amendment and, most of all, I

hope we defeat the attitude that

underlies the Roth amendment.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Who

yields time?

Mrs. HUTCHISON addressed the

Chair.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Who

yields time?

Mr. ROTH. I yield the distinguished

Senator 10 minutes.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Texas.

Mrs. HUTCHISON. Mr. President, I

have, of course, been watching the debate for the last few days and there is

no question, this is a tough debate. We

are getting down to the decisions that

are very difficult to make. But I have

been watching my colleagues with

charts really since this debate started

last week. You see everybody’s chart,

and there are the budget lines that go

up and budget lines that go down. But

now we are into making those tough

decisions and saying, You know, everybody in America is going to disagree

with something that we do. In fact,

probably every Member of the Senate

is going to disagree with something we

do in this budget resolution. But, in

fact, we have to make the priority

choices. We have to go back to the basics and talk about what is the role of

Federal Government. what must we do

to set those priorities and then with

the money that we have left, we have

to determine where we have to cut and

where we need to spend.

I think that Senator ROTH has done a

very responsible thing. He has proposed

a sense of the Senate about what we

would look for in ways to meet these

budget targets that we are going to be

voting on for the next few days—200,000

positions by 2002. That is over a 7-year

period and is about 11 percent of the

work force. Now, if we make the budget

cuts that we are talking about making

over the next 7 years to get to that

magic number in the year 2002, we are

going to have to cut. We are going to

have to cut the size of Government,

and that means that we will have to

downsize departments.

I remember when I first got here

about 2 years ago, I introduced an

amendment to cut the legislative

branch budget by 7 percent. Mr. President, you should have heard the debate. People came running on the floor

and they said we might have to shut

the Library of Congress. We might

have to shut the Washington Monument. You know, we always have our

priorities and we decide what is important in those priorities. Of course,

shutting the Library of Congress would

not have been an option. But we heard

the sky-is-falling-theories all over the

place. I lost on that amendment by

about two votes. Do you know what

happened? After all the sky is falling

and after losing that amendment 2

years ago, guess what? This year, we

come in and we have cut our legislative

branch budget about 15 percent. Is the

sky falling? I do not think so. Are we

making do with less? Yes. Are we doing

the responsible business of our Government? Yes. And I do not think one person in America has written me a letter

saying you cut your legislative branch

budget 15 percent and I miss that

money. Not one person.

So I think that Senator ROTH is trying to do the responsible thing. He has

come in and he has said we are going to

have to have an 11 percent cut. Well, if

we are going to cut the budget for the

next 7 years in the places where we

can, if we are going to stop the growth

in increases in our budget, of course,

we are going to have fewer employees.

And I think it is very important that

we establish a sense-of-the-Senate resolution so that we can have the parameters we need when we start making

these tough decisions.

You know, the people of America

have been looking at the debate for the

last few weeks in the House, and the

last few days on the Senate side, and I

think the people of America are really

beginning to see the differences between the two parties and the way we

come at the problems of Government.

And I think the people of America are

going to be able to make a decision

about what is right. And I think they

are seeing all the smoke and that there

is a group of Senators that really

wants to do what we said we were going

to do. I was elected in 1994 and I did

promise that I would do everything in

my power to have a balanced budget

for the future of our country. I am

going to do everything in my power to

keep that promise. That is something

the American people have not had for

so long—politicians who make a promise and lo and behold, keep it. They are

going to keep their promises this time,

and that is new. We have seen politicians from both parties—this is not in

any way partisan —come in and they

make promises and then the election is

held and they go about the business of

Government, business as usual, just

like it has always been. Not this year.

This year is going to be different. We

are going to pass a balanced budget

resolution. We are going to take the

tough steps. And even if we disagree on

this part of it or that part of it, I think

enough Senators are going to take the

responsible step and say my part may

not be so important that I would hold

up the progress of this Senate for the

future of America. That is the parameter we are going to have to put around

that final vote.

Is it more important that we get

every single thing we want, just the

way we want it, or is it more important for us to say in the long-term, the

most important vote we will ever take

is to start that long march toward a

balanced budget for the future of this

country.

This is a historic moment; it is a historic debate and we do have the opportunity to do what is right for America.

So I appreciate my colleague, Senator ROTH, and my colleague Senator

DOMENICI for working so hard, for so

many years to try to make this happen. I appreciate the input that we are

having on this floor. But I hope that in

the end, when all of us, Democrats and

Republicans, have had our say, maybe

we have won a few, maybe we are going

to lose a few; but when it all comes

down to that last vote, the people of

America are going to have the ability

to judge which politicians are keeping

their word and which of us are ready to

take that historic step, change the way

Washington does business and start

balancing that budget.

Mr. President, this resolution is

going to be one of those first steps. We

will see a lot more over the next few

days. But on Wednesday, I hope we will

be ready to do the right thing for

America.

Thank you. I yield the floor.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Who

yields time?

Mr. GLENN. How much time remains

on this side?

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator has 23 minutes. Senator ROTH has

29 minutes.

Mr. GLENN. Mr. President, I would

like to respond very briefly to some of
S7108 CONGRESSIONAL RECORD — SENATE May 22, 1995

the remarks made by the Senator from

Pennsylvania that did not address directly the proposal of this sense of the

Senate resolution by my distinguished

colleague from Delaware. He talked

about the President of the United

States and what he has done. I would

like to go back a little and take a few

minutes to describe what actually has

happened over the past 15 years or so.

We came out of the Carter years, and

President Carter, during his time in office, I think, did a lot of fine things,

foreign policy and so on. One thing

that did not occur is a real close control of the economy. We hit a time period where there was 21 percent interest rates and 17 percent inflation rates.

I think that contributed a lot to President Reagan being elected when he

was. What happened? A lot of people

were scared and President Reagan proposed the supply side economics and

the budget cuts, and we reduced taxes

here by 25 percent over a 3-year period—over a 3-year period, 5 percent

the first year, 10 percent each of the

next 2 years. This was supposed to

stimulate the economy so much that it

was going to result in such a new level

of business activity and consumer confidence that we were going to see the

new business level raised to such a

point that there was going to be more

than enough revenue to make up what

had been left and we were going to

move on to a new higher level.

Now, what happened? That did not

occur. Most voted for that, but some

with the idea after trying to get it

down to 15 percent reduction and trying to make several changes, finally

voted for it because we had been

scared, too, about what had happened

before. We voted for it with the idea

that we would try to come back and

change it if it did not work.

Now, what happened? Over the next

12 years, we saw an additional $3.6 trillion in debt pile up as supply-side economics did not work. Then we came

into the time period where Gramm–

Rudman-Hollings was placed out here.

That did not do the job. Then we came

to the election of President Clinton.

President Clinton said privately as well

as publicly that the first thing we had

to do was get control of the economy.

What did he do? He proposed a way of

getting control of the economy that he

sent the Congress and we farmed it out

here on the Democratic side, farmed it

out to the committees, with targets to

hit, targets to try to meet the efforts

to balance the budget that President

Clinton proposed.

Now, we passed that reconciliation

bill in the summer of 1993. I think we

need to look at what happened on that.

Now, President Clinton was honest

enough that he said I will not promise

people a lot of tax cuts back then. No.

What he said was we will cut as many

programs as we can and we will increase taxes. Much has been made of

that since then. We will increase

taxes—what, on the top 1.2 percent income people of the country, not the

middle-income people, not the poor

folks of the country. He is going to increase taxes on the top income people

of the country, the top 1.2 percent.

That is where half of that budget balancing effort came from.

Now, what happened? After all the

dire predictions here on the Senate

floor about all the unemployment this

would cause if we passed that President

Clinton proposal—there would be millions unemployed was one of the statements here on the floor.

What happened? Well, I can say at

that time when we passed that budget

reconciliation bill, we passed it without one single Republican vote in either the House or the Senate. Not one

single vote. Not a one. And it was a

moment of high drama here in the Senate when the vote was tied 50–50, and

the Vice President broke the tie and

cast a winning vote.

What happened? At that time the

budget deficit was running right at $300

billion a year. As a result of that reconciliation effort in the summer of

1993, last year the budget deficit was

down do $246 billion. This year, it is

$192 billion. It is the first time since

Harry Truman that the budget deficit

has gone down 3 years in a row—the

first time since Harry Truman.

I say one-half of it was reduction in

programs and one-half was the tax on

the top 1.2 percent income people of the

country.

Now, that is real leadership. We can

have all the derogatory signs put up on

the Senate floor that deride the President and make light of the President if

we want to. That is what actually occurred for the first time since Harry

Truman. Three years in a row, the

budget deficit has gone down as a result of President Clinton’s policies.

What we should be debating is how

we keep that going, how we keep it

going down incrementally, rather than

some of the schemes that are being

proposed. Some of the proposals out of

the House here make assumptions on

how we can balance the budget now,

make assumptions that I cannot go

along with.

Medicare. We say we will take $87

million out of Medicare over the next 7

years, meaning we assume that it will

not grow at the 9 percent it is growing

now, that it goes down to 3 percent to

4 percent in growth.

We are saying that we will assume

that doctors and hospitals will not be

allowed to make as much as they can.

They will be kept below inflation rate,

as a matter of fact, and we will limit

the fees for doctors and hospitals.

Those assumptions are made. We

make assumptions for HMO savings.

That is how we get $87 billion proposed.

Some of the assumptions, I think, are

false. We have to depend on a CPI adjustment downward from where it is

now. We have to assume that the average inflation will not go above 2.5 percent. We have to say there will be no

inflation increase in administrative

costs, and that will save 22 percent in

that area. These are assumptions that

really are not very realistic when we

get into it.

Back to the President’s proposal.

Now, what happened out of that reconciliation bill we passed in the summer of 1993? Since then, we have had

the lowest unemployment in 4 years. In

cutting back on the size of the Government, the administration has cut over

300 programs out of Government.

They set a goal of cutting 272,900 people out of civil service by the end of the

administration’s term. They are well

ahead of schedule. They have 108,000 actually cut up to now and think they

will be able to meet the whole 272,900

target by the end of this year. When

that occurs, there will be the lowest

Federal employment overall since John

F. Kennedy was President, the lowest

Government employment since John F.

Kennedy was the President.

Now, along with that, last year we

passed a crime bill, a very major bill. I

know there will be efforts to override

some of it this year. That was a major

effort. We passed the GATT legislation,

General Agreement on Tariff and

Trade. That is a mighty big step forward in recognizing we no longer could

be an isolationist nation if we wanted

to be in this country, because most of

our trade, in fact, about one out of

every eight manufacturing jobs in the

whole country, and it is certainly true

in my State of Ohio, works to make a

product that gets exported.

We can no longer be an isolationist

America. We have moved into the

world. And the GATT agreement, with

its readjustments being required, indicate our willingness to move into that

international world.

We passed a family leave bill. We

passed a Head Start bill in the first 2

years of this administration that helps

over 200,000 kids get a fair start in

school. We passed the national service

bill. We passed a college loan bill that

over the period of 5 years will let an

additional 20 million young people go

to school.

Now, all of these are things that were

passed in the first 2 years of this administration in spite of all of the

things that are said about this administration on the other side of the aisle.

Do Members know what Time magazine said last October? They printed a

chart showing what agenda—announced agenda—had been passed by

each of our past Presidents. They

pointed out that President Bill Clinton

had the best record of getting his agenda through in the first 2 years of Congress of any President since Lyndon

Baines Johnson, and before that going

clear back to Eisenhower.

Now, I think that is a remarkable

record. It is one I am proud to support

the President on. When I hear all these

derogatory remarks about the President and what is going on and signs up

here on the Senate floor that are

meant to be derogatory, then I just

have to take exception to that.

Now, back to our current sense-ofthe-Senate resolution that is up now.
May 22, 1995 CONGRESSIONAL RECORD — SENATE S7109

This administration has already cut

108,000 jobs out of the Federal work

force, and done it in a responsible manner, done it in a way that helps correct

the imbalance between the higher GS

ratings and the lower GS ratings,

through the buyout legislation that we

passed out of the Governmental Affairs

Committee.

I know that a sense of the Senate

that would just arbitrarily add another

200,000 to it is not binding, but it certainly sets the course. I do not know

how we would meet that. I would rather ask OPM do another study, a follow

on and see where we can do this, and do

it responsibly rather than just setting

what I view as a goal that might result

in some real harm being done to our

Government.

If we want to do the thing that we

should do, what we do is define the role

we want Government to have in all

these different areas or different departments or agencies. If we are eliminating the agency, fine, eliminate it.

But rather than just pick an arbitrary

figure, we will have OPM study the

Government again, each agency, department by department, agency by

agency, and decide how many they

think can be cut, and do this responsibly and target those departments

where we have too big an imbalance

yet. That is the way the figure of

272,900 was arrived at. It was not a figure off the top of somebody’s head. It

was a figure arrived at by study, by

canvassing the agencies, by holding

their feet to the fire on what they

could do or not do. I think that is what

we should be doing for the future.

I hate to have to oppose my colleague

from Delaware but I do. I think to pass

this Sense-of-the-Senate would indicate a wrong direction for us to be taking.

Mr. President, how much time do I

have remaining on this side?

The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr.

DEWINE). The Senator has 10 minutes

and 50 seconds.

Mr. GLENN. I thank the Chair. I reserve the remainder of my time and

yield the floor.

Mr. ROTH. Mr. President, I yield 5

minutes to the distinguished Senator

from Texas.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Texas.

Mrs. HUTCHISON. Mr. President, I

just want to talk about some of the

things that were just said by my distinguished colleague from Ohio. I

would like to talk about the tax increase that he mentioned that was

passed without one Republican vote in

1993, because I do think there was a difference of opinion that became very

clear when the Democrats passed the

largest tax increase in the history of

America without one Republican vote.

It was described as a tax on the rich,

but I do not think Social Security recipients making $34,000 a year or couples making $44,000 a year are rich people. That is middle income. And the

taxes were raised on those people.

I do not think that was the way to

start the process of getting to a balanced budget. In fact, the President’s

budget that has been sent to us does

not balance the budget. The President

gave up on balancing the budget. He

left it to us to do it. He left us the responsibility.

In fact the deficits are lower in the

last 2 years but the reason the deficits

are lower is because we have financed

our debt with short-term borrowings.

We are in fact in one of the weakest recoveries from a recession that we have

ever had. We should be in a booming

economy and we are not in a booming

economy. We are in a relatively flat

economy. It is going up a little. The

deficit is coming down a little. But we

are going to have to pay the price. We

are going to have to pay the price for

short-term borrowing to finance that

debt. That was a bad decision and we

will have to pay for that later. If interest rates go up there is no question

that the deficit is going to rise when

we have to refinance that debt.

This is all going to become very clear

when we have to raise the debt ceiling

toward the end of the summer, this

year. That is going to be the scary

thing. We have $5 trillion in debt in

this country. That is not a small

amount.

The debate we are having today is for

the future of our country. We cannot

continue to raise that debt ceiling

without taking care of that long-term

debt situation. So I think it is very important that we keep our eye on the

ball here. We cannot continue to raise

taxes to try to bring the deficit down.

We cannot do short-term financing on

that long-term debt, because the price

will go up.

Alan Greenspan, the Chairman of the

Federal Reserve Board, told us what

would happen if we balanced the budget

and if Congress shows it has the will to

balance the budget. That is when we

will see our economy take off. That is

when the investors in our country will

know that they are making a good and

wise investment for the long term.

We will be able to see our economy

take off. We will be able to see the deficit come down, if we take the steps to

balance the budget. I just hope my colleagues, like the Senator from Ohio

and the Senator from Minnesota, will

help us when that final vote is taken.

It is going to be tough. Senator ROTH is

giving us a tough choice. But we are

going to stand up and we are going to

do it and I hope it will be a bipartisan

effort in the end, because we are going

to do it without increasing taxes and

that is the distinction between the philosophy of the President, who gave us a

budget that is not balanced, and the

Republican majority in Congress that

is going to give a balanced budget to

the people of this country.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. WELLSTONE addressed the

Chair.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Who

yields time?

Mr. GLENN. Mr. President, I yield

the Senator 4 minutes.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator is yielded 4 minutes.

Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I

do not come on the floor with any wellrehearsed speech. But it does seem to

me that, once again, we are not actually debating whether or not there

ought to be deficit reduction. We are

also not debating whether or not anybody is in favor of the debt that we

built up in this country.

As a matter of fact, I could make my

own analysis about what happened

starting with what was

euphemistically called the Economic

Recovery Act, passed in 1981, pushed by

President Reagan, which eroded the

revenue base of this country about $700

billion over 5, 6, 7 years; plus an unprecedented buildup in the Pentagon

budget.

I find it interesting that by and large

we still have not heard very much discussion about all the subsidies that go

for oil companies; all the subsidies that

go for tobacco companies; all the subsidies that go for pharmaceutical companies; all the subsidies that go to

some of the largest corporations and financial institutions in America. But

we have been talking about cuts in nutrition programs and financial aid for

higher education. We did not have

much time to debate that on the floor

this afternoon. And, I think, draconian

cuts—draconian cuts in Medicare and

Medicaid. I do not have the time and I

do not have the data right now to go

into those arguments in great detail.

But I will say to my colleagues that

when I presented this this morning on

policy grounds, I did not hear any rebuttal. So in terms of ‘‘we have to do

all of this,’’ let us not be so generous

with other people’s suffering. Let us

make sure we do it in a responsible

way.

The reason I support my colleague

from Ohio is that I consider this to be

bashing. I mean, 200,000 additional positions eliminated—by what agency?

What job? What position? A description

of those positions? Who are we going to

do it to? What positions are we eliminating?

It is very easy to just say eliminate

200,000 positions. I would like to know:

Where? Where do these men and women

work? For what agencies? Is it the National Institutes of Health? Or is it

going to be some of the other Federal

agencies?

Where are you eliminating these positions?

It seems to me it is not responsible

unless the Congress approves in advance exactly what agency, what positions, what descriptions, what men and

women, whose positions are you eliminating?

Colleagues stand up on the floor and

they say ‘‘Oh, these decisions are so

difficult. We have to make difficult decisions.’’ Easy if it is not our job. Very

easy. We have to make these difficult

decisions.
S7110 CONGRESSIONAL RECORD — SENATE May 22, 1995

Sometimes I think we get a little bit

too generous with the suffering of

other people. Before I would vote for

such an amendment I would want to

know exactly which people we are talking about. Let us just get concrete.

What agency? What descriptions?

Which Federal employees? Providing

what kind of work in this country? For

whom? Let us have a discussion of

that. I think in the absence of that

kind of specificity this is a profoundly

mistaken amendment.

I yield the floor.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Who

yields time?

Mr. GLENN. Mr. President, how

much time is remaining?

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Ohio has 67 minutes and 32

seconds remaining, and the Senator

from Delaware has 24 minutes and 7

seconds.

Mr. GLENN. I thank the Chair.

Mr. ROTH addressed the Chair.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Delaware.

Mr. ROTH. Mr. President, I yield

such time as I may take.

Mr. President, I was surprised to

once again hear the attack on the

Reagan years. I recall during the

Carter administration when we had

double-digit unemployment, doubledigit inflation, the misery index, which

was based upon unemployment and inflation, was never higher, and unemployment was as high as it has been in

recent years. But after the tax cut in

the Reagan administration, we enjoyed

the longest peacetime growth period in

the history of this country.

Mr. FORD. And the largest debt.

Mr. ROTH. I hear someone talk about

the largest debt.

But let me point out that Congress,

part of Congress, was Democratic, the

House of Representatives. And I would

say that the problem there was that,

yes, the President was trying to build

up defense but the other party was trying to build up social spending. Unfortunately, the compromise was by increasing spending everywhere. So both

Democrats and Republicans can take a

partial credit for the increase in the

debt. That was not just the act of the

administration.

But what we are talking about today

is trying to make Government smaller,

Government less obtrusive, and Government more efficient.

There is no question that but what

modern technology has made it possible for Government, as well as the

private sector, to do more with less.

What we are proposing today in the

way of reductions in personnel are not

just figures drawn out of the air, but

based primarily on the proposals in the

Domenici budget. What we are proposing in the way of reduction in employment, first of all, is a 50,000 reduction

in FTE savings below the current FTE

caps. And the GAO figures show that is

a reality.

With the elimination of the Department of Commerce we expect a reduction of 30,000 in FTE, HUD, 20,000, and

the Department of Defense, 50,000.

Let me point out that the administration has made significant reductions

in the DOD. But basically most of the

reductions are in Defense Department,

and not in the other civilian agencies.

As a matter of fact, defense military

functions will be reduced something

like 208,000 under 272,000.

What we are proposing in our reduction of 200,000 is that most of these reductions will come from the civilian

agencies, limiting the reduction in the

Department of Defense to 50,000. Currently, in the acquisition of military

systems there is something like 17 to 20

levels of bureaucracy. This bureaucracy does not add value or expedite the

acquisition of new weapons. Instead, it

takes about twice as long in the military area to go from an idea to fielding

a weapon as it does in the private sector to go from an idea to selling a product in the market.

What we are seeking here is a reduction of personnel that is based on those

programs and departments that would

be reduced or eliminated under the Domenici budget.

Just let me point out that for the fiscal year 1996 the chairman’s mark lists

something like 150 different programs

that are going to be eliminated. And

obviously, when you eliminate programs, you do not need the personnel

that you otherwise have. So that is

where we are proposing these reductions. By doing this, we expect better

service to be given the American people.

Let me point out that one of our concerns is that we want to make the Federal Government a desirable place in

which to work. And, unfortunately,

anyone who has discussed the matter

with people in the executive branch

will tell you the frustration, the inability to move forward because of the

process that has been built up over recent years. And that is what we are

trying to eliminate today. Hopefully,

by reducing the size of Government,

and by changing the personnel policies,

the Federal work force will find this a

better place in which to work because

what we are proposing as changes is

that individuals who perform in the executive branch will be rewarded for

their accomplishments. They will also

be penalized if they do not perform.

My distinguished colleague and

friend from Ohio said that we proposed

to do away with a military system, if it

were 10 percent off the proposed goal.

In other words, if the cost of the system was 10 percent higher than schedule, or if the time was 10 percent

longer, the system would be canceled.

That is not what I have proposed.

To the contrary, what we are proposing is that, in order to get a bonus, an

employee would have to perform 10 percent better than the goal set as the acquisition of the weapons system, or, on

the other hand, if it is 10 percent more

expensive, the schedule is 10 percent

behind, then the employee can be penalized. But we would only revoke the

system if it were 50 percent off course,

and hopefully those opportunities

would not present themselves too

often.

But again, let me spell out what we

are proposing in this amendment. Our

amendment expresses the sense of the

Senate to reduce the number of Governmentwide, full-time equivalent positions over the next 7 years. And it

provides for a reduction of 200,000 positions by 2002 in addition to the already

enacted reduction of 272,900 FTE’s by

1999 in the 1994 Federal Work Force Restructuring Act.

Not more than 50,000 of the reductions may be within the Department of

Defense. As I have already indicated, of

the reductions that have already been

made by this administration, the vast

majority have already been in the Defense Department. And our program is

consistent with the Domenici budget to

streamline and eliminate several Government functions and programs.

It is also consistent with the Roth–

Kasich Defense Department acquisition

reform bill to reduce the number of acquisition personnel. This reform bill

would produce savings of 42,000 in

FTE’s with Department of Defense.

Current FTE reductions to comply

with the 1994 Federal Work Force Reduction Act of 272,900 are proceeding as

planned.

And it has been further estimated by

OMB that the total civilian work force

will be approximately 25,000 below the

existing FTE cap for 1995 and 1996. Current projections show that 208,000 of

the mandated 272,000 FTE reductions

will be within the Department of Defense, and this amendment will help to

achieve the originally intended balance

to further downsize the non-defense-related agencies as well.

So in conclusion, just let me point

out, Mr. President, that what we are

proposing is based upon the DOMENICI

budget. We are eliminating 150 different programs and activities. We are

going to be reducing the size of departments, if not the department itself, and

the number of positions that we are

eliminating reflect those changes.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Who

yields time?

Mr. GLENN. How much time is remaining, Mr. President?

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Ohio has 6 minutes 27 seconds, the Senator from Delaware has 12

minutes 7 seconds.

Mr. ROTH. Mr. President, I yield 5

minutes to the distinguished Senator

from South Dakota.

Mr. PRESSLER. Mr. President, I rise

in support of the DOMENICI budget. As I

have said on the Senate floor before, I

strongly believe that this represents a

solid blueprint that finally will lead

this government to a balanced budget.

It has been a very strange sequence

of events here in the Senate when we
May 22, 1995 CONGRESSIONAL RECORD — SENATE S7111

saw the entire Senate reject the President’s budget. I would certainly welcome a debate on the President’s budget, but the members of his own party

voted his budget down. Thus, the only

budget that is before us is the DOMENICI

budget.

Overall, this budget is a solid, responsible plan, and takes an acrossthe-board approach to achieve balance.

Without this kind of bold plan, we will

be facing bankruptcy, both in terms of

the Federal deficit and in terms of

Medicare. The liberals may be criticizing this budget, but where is their

budget?

Insofar as agriculture is concerned, I

think many of us have said that we

will take an across-the-board approach,

and I think this budget does that.

There will be efforts, and perhaps I will

join them, to make some minor

changes in the Domenici budget, but

overall it represents a path or a guidepost to a balanced budget.

Mr. President, recently our dollar

has been doing very poorly. We have an

unstable dollar. It is because of our

huge Federal deficit. We have reports

that Medicare will go bankrupt by the

year 2002. I would rather give senior

citizens a stable, sound dollar and a secure Medicare than to continue going

on year after year without taking some

action. It is time that we take sound

action in this Chamber, and this represents that opportunity.

So, Mr. President, I commend Senator DOMENICI and the Budget Committee for their leadership and its hard

work. I know there may be some

changes in that document this week.

But I would say to the liberals who are

criticizing it to bring forward a complete budget of their own. Indeed, the

Democrats on the other side of the

aisle voted down the President’s budget

entirely. Where is their plan?

The Senate Republicans have a plan.

It is a solid plan for the American people. I believe that we are on the right

path.

I thank the Chair, and I yield the

floor.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Who

yields time? If no one yields time, it

will be deducted equally from each

side.

Mr. ROTH. Mr. President, I yield

such time as I have remaining to the

distinguished Senator from Wyoming.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Wyoming.

Mr. THOMAS. Mr. President, it has

been an interesting experience today to

listen to the debate about balancing

the budget. It is a little bit surprising,

as a matter of fact, I suppose, that

there is a great deal of debate about

balancing the budget. It is legitimate

to have differences of view as to exactly how that is done, but the fact is

that we have to do something to be fiscally and financially responsible.

I am encouraged, frankly, by the

chance to do something. For the first

time in three decades we have a chance

to balance the budget. And I suppose,

when we think about that, my goodness, that is irresponsible. How can

that be? But it is a fact. We have gone

all this time with no balanced budget.

So I am encouraged by the opportunity. I am encouraged by the fact

that voters said to us clearly a few

months ago that Government is too big

and it costs too much and it is time

you do something about that. And I

think a measure of good Government is

the responsiveness we have to doing

something about it.

So I am encouraged by the fact that

we have this opportunity. I know there

are differences. There are some here

who really believe that balancing the

budget is not important, that it is just

a matter of dollars, it does not really

matter.

Let me suggest to you that I think it

is terribly important for some very

concrete reasons, such as the fact that

it takes money out of the economy to

finance this deficit, maybe more to the

point that the interest on the debt will

soon be the largest single line item in

the budget, larger than the total budget was just a couple of decades ago. It

is important.

There are those that believe that

more spending through the Government is a better way to do it; that, in

fact, Government spends money better

than you and I do in our families. That

is a legitimate view, I suppose.

There are those who think we are

better off with more Government and

more spending. I do not happen to

agree with that, nor do most of us on

this side agree with that. We believe

that we have to balance the budget,

that it is the responsible thing to do,

and we have an opportunity to do it.

I hear everybody who stands up

starts out by saying, ‘‘We have to balance the budget. I know we are going

to balance the budget, I want to balance the budget,’’ and then goes on to

point out the reasons why it cannot be

done.

We heard the same thing about the

balanced budget amendment. ‘‘Well, I

wanted to balance the budget but we do

not need to do this, we can do it by just

making the hard decisions.’’ Well, now

is the time to make some hard decisions. What we have is each time we

come up with another amendment, we

hear arguments that you cannot do it.

It is time to make the tough decisions.

I suspect this is the kind of conversation that has gone on for decades here,

and that is why we have not done it,

and that has been the history of what

we have to do. We clearly have to do

something about Medicare. It is not an

option unless you simply do not want

to have a program to provide health

care for the elderly. Do nothing, as is

the proposal from that side, and the

program goes into reserves in 2 years,

goes broke in 7 years, no question

about that.

Or, in fact, we can take the approach

that has been taken and say, ‘‘Let’s

raise taxes.’’ In order to balance the

budget without doing something about

spending, we would have to raise taxes

by $950 billion in 7 years. How is that

as an option? I do not think many people would choose it. And yet we cannot

seem to say, ‘‘Yes, we can make cuts,

not draconian cuts but to reduce the

spending from 5 percent a year to 3.’’

That is hardly asking too much, and

voters are asking that of us.

So, Mr. President, it is interesting as

we go forward that we always hear,

‘‘Well, we have to balance the budget, I

want to balance the budget, but we

cannot do that to balance the budget,

we can’t do this to balance the budget.’’ What can we do to balance the

budget? There is no plan on that side.

The President has no plan.

So despite that, Mr. President, I am

very optimistic that we will for the

first time in my legislative experience,

for the first time I guess in my political experience, have a genuine, legitimate, bona fide effort to balance the

budget to cause the Government to be

a little smaller, a little less expensive.

Give us the opportunity to choose

some options, to look at programs and

make sure that they are efficient and

effective and, in fact, that they are legitimate, that they need to be done,

and we can do that. We can do that. No

one argues with that concept. Unfortunately, it does not happen. We find a

million excuses why we cannot do that,

why we cannot cut it here, why we cannot slow growth. Why we really should

not take a look at why the program

cannot be changed, to be more efficient, the delivery of programs cannot

be done more efficiently.

I do go away from the last 3 or 4 days

of this debate, again optimistic that we

will do something that has not been

done for a very long time, and that is

lay before the American people a plan

to balance the budget in 7 years, and

we can do it.

The committee has laid out a plan.

Of course, it is not perfect. Does it take

some pain? Of course it takes some

pain. It always takes some pain to recoup when you find yourself in this

kind of a financial problem—$5 trillion

in debt, taxes at the rate of about

$21,000 per household, to pay the interest on the debt costs $5,000 for each

household each year.

That is where we are, Mr. President.

So we do not really have a choice as to

whether we do something. The fact is

we need to do it. We have to do it. We

can have legitimate debate about options but not a legitimate debate about

just saying, ‘‘No, no, can’t do it,’’ and

that is what we hear.

Mr. President, I thank you for the

time. I yield the floor.

Mr. SARBANES. Will the Senator

yield me 2 minutes?

Mr. GLENN. I yield 2 minutes to the

Senator from Maryland.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Maryland.

Mr. SARBANES. Mr. President, because there have been general statements about the budget tonight in addition to the statement about the
S7112 CONGRESSIONAL RECORD — SENATE May 22, 1995

amendment that is pending before us, I

just want to underscore this point. The

budget resolution that is before us

takes $175 billion, which the CBO has

put out there as a pot to be available

at the end, and commits it for tax cuts.

Now the amendments that have been

offered today on Medicare and on education have said rather than committing that money to tax cuts, you

should make a less draconian cut in

Medicare and education. You should

not come down with such heavy force

on our senior citizens or on our young

people seeking an education, and that,

as a matter of national priorities, we

should place ahead of a tax cut, which

in the House-passed legislation is overwhelmingly committed to the very

wealthy, the people at the very top of

the income scale, overwhelmingly so

committed.

These amendments, in effect, are saying that instead of a tax cut that has

that impact, we should make less draconian cuts in Medicare and in education. As a matter of national priorities, educating the next generation

and preparing them for the 21st century and assuring that our young people’s capacities are developed to the

fullest extent possible should put that

ahead of taking this pot of money and

committing it to tax cuts.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator’s 2 minutes has expired.

Mr. GLENN. I yield him another 2

minutes.

Mr. SARBANES. So there is a very

important question of priorities that is

at issue here, and the same is true with

respect to each of the measures being

taken in order to bring about this drastic reduction.

It is one thing to deal with a matter

in a reasonable way, it is another thing

to deal with it in an extreme way. I

submit that much of what is in the

budget resolution is extreme, and it is

particularly extreme when it is seen

that the purpose of it is to create this

pot of money to be committed to tax

cuts which, as I said, in the Housepassed bill overwhelmingly committed

to the people at the upper end of the

income scale. In order to achieve this,

our senior citizens receiving Medicare

are being subjected to incredible cuts,

and our young people seeking an education are going to find that their opportunities are being frustrated and

may be perhaps even denied to them.

So that is an issue that is put and it

is put very clearly by the resolution

that is before us and by the amendments which have been proposed to the

resolution. I have supported those

amendments because I think they represent a better balance in terms of

what our national priorities are.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The time

yielded to the Senator has now expired.

Mr. SARBANES. I thank the Chair.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Ohio has 51 seconds and the

Senator from Delaware 43 seconds.

Mr. GLENN. I reserve the remainder

of my time.

Mr. President, what is the time situation?

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Delaware has 33 seconds. The

Senator from Ohio has 41 seconds.

Mr. GLENN. I yield the remainder of

my time.

Mr. DOLE. I yield back the remainder of our time.

Mr. GLENN. I ask for the yeas and

nays.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a

sufficient second?

There is a sufficient second.

The yeas and nays were ordered.

Mr. DOLE. Mr. President, I am waiting for the distinguished Democratic

leader. Let me indicate while he is on

his way to the floor that I want very

much to accommodate the Democrats

tomorrow evening. But we will complete at least 10 hours on the resolution tomorrow. We are going to have

two or three votes. We tried to get

credit for that. We cannot get that. So

I just suggest that we will have to stay

here beyond 6:30, probably, to get the 10

hours—maybe 7 o’clock. We will try to

accommodate our colleagues in every

way possible.

As I understand, we will be working

through the policy lunch period tomorrow, and so if there are no amendments, I assume there will be a quorum

call so the clock will run against the

resolution.

Mr. President, in an effort to complete action on this resolution by early

Wednesday afternoon, I yield back 3

hours and 51 minutes of the majority

side time for debate.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority leader has that right.

Mr. DOLE. Mr. President, as I understand it, if I can inquire of the chair,

does this not mean there are 14 hours

for total debate remaining?

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator is correct.

Mr. LAUTENBERG. Mr. President, I

rise in strong support of the pending

amendment.

This amendment again poses the

central question in this budget debate:

Whose side are you on?

In this case, the issue is whether the

Senate will side with ordinary, middleclass families who are trying to ensure

a decent education for their kids. Or

whether we will again side with the

wealthy, by preserving the slush fund

that will be used to provide them with

lavish tax breaks.

I have heard Senators from the other

side of the aisle say that this budget is

for our children and grandchildren.

They say it is for their future.

Yet if Republicans really are concerned about our children, why are

they proposing the biggest cut in education in the history of the United

States? Let me repeat: This budget

contains the largest cut in education in

the history of this country.

Is that their idea of helping our children?

This budget resolution cuts education for young people from preschool to graduate school. These cuts

will affect all students. From 3 year

olds who are learning fingerpainting,

to graduate students studying business

administration. No young person will

be spared.

The Republican budget cuts the Federal investment in education by 33 percent by the year 2002. This figure

comes from CBO, not from the Democrats on the Budget Committee.

Mr. President, let me tell you the impact that this will have on our young

people. Let us go chronologically.

First, let us start with the preschoolers. The discretionary cuts in

this budget mean that 350,000 to 550,000

preschoolers will not be able to get

into a Head Start Program.

Second, let us take a look at what

will happen to those children from kindergarten through 12th grade. The Republican budget will: Cut funds for

math and reading for 2 million children. It will cut $1 billion for the Safe

and Drug Free Schools Programs. It

will cut $5 billion for special education

for almost 6 million children with disabilities. It will cut assistance for

school to work programs that help students who don’t go to college to acquire skills and obtain meaningful employment.

Regrettably, the education cuts do

not end at the 12th grade. These cuts

will also hurt those young people who

want to get a college education.

The Republican budget also makes

deep cuts in the student loan programs

and Pell grants. These programs help

young people attend the college of

their choice. They help them obtain

skills to get a foothold in our economy.

They help them live out the American

dream, just like the GI bill did for me

and other Members of this body.

The student loan program is not a

welfare program for poor children. It is

for all low and middle income Americans. In fact, 50 percent of all college

students receive Federal financial assistance.

Middle class families need this assistance because college tuition has gone

through the roof. Tuition, room and

board at a private college now costs approximately $25,000 per year. If you

think I am kidding, let me give you

some examples of these costs. These include tuition, room and board: Brown

University—$26,000; Dartmouth College—$24,000; Georgetown—$24,500; Harvard—$25,000; Yale—$25,000.

Mr. President, if you think you can

avoid paying such costs by sending

your child to a quality State university—think again. Tuition, room and

board for non-residents at many State

schools also are staggering. Consider

two examples: University of Michigan—$16,000; University of California

Berkeley—$20,000.

It is very difficult for American families to afford this type of tuition without borrowing money. The proposed

Republican deferral of interest will

cost these students and their families

another $3,000 to $5,000 on top of the

thousands of dollars they now spend.
May 22, 1995 CONGRESSIONAL RECORD — SENATE S7113

Members of the other side of the aisle

have talked a lot about balancing the

budget so that the young people of this

country will not be burdened by the national debt. Well, if we pass this Republican budget they will be saddled with

more debt. They will be punished for

trying to get ahead. Punished for getting a college education. This is simply

wrong.

I urge the Senate to adopt this

amendment. Stop the tax cuts for the

rich and restore these harmful cuts in

education.

OPPOSING EDUCATION CUTS

Mr. AKAKA. Mr. President, I rise

today to support the Democratic response for funding education and to

speak in opposition to the education

cuts that are assumed in the Republican budget plan. The resolution reported by the Budget Committee calls

for $97 billion in education cutbacks

over 7 years, a 33-percent reduction

from current service levels.

This adverse disregard for our most

important long-term asset—the knowledge and skills of our emerging and future workforce—illustrates the failure

of the Republican agenda.

It reveals that Republicans are willing to destroy the single most important factor that will determine the success of our Nation’s future economic

viability—educational opportunity.

My colleagues on the other side of

the aisle claim that their package of

spending cuts and tax changes is proof

that they are serious about eliminating

the deficit. I welcome this expression

of fiscal responsibility, if it is genuine;

I only wish we heard such oratory in

the Reagan-Bush years, when

supplyside, trickle-down policies created the fiscal debt we find ourselves in

today.

But the fact that my colleagues are

pondering a massive tax cut for the

wealthy at the same time they are proposing massive reductions in social expenditures reveals more about the majority’s priorities than their newfound

demands for fiscal responsibility.

Even if we accept the claim that

their priority is not to benefit the rich

but to eliminate the deficit, it is obvious that their strategy is fatally

flawed. For the proposed education

cuts will profoundly affect our future

economic viability and our ability to

compete internationally. Reducing investment in education, which is already low, will inevitably limit economic growth and undermine the

standard of living of middle-class

Americans in the twenty-first century.

And it will close the window of opportunity for the economically disadvantaged among us who are pursuing the

American dream.

Mr. President, reducing our commitment to an educated, skilled workforce

in the name of deficit reduction is

short-sighted and terribly misguided.

As this country struggles to find its

way in a global marketplace dominated

by cheap foreign labor and high technology, withdrawing our investment in

education is economic suicide.

This budget proves that Republicans

are more committed to protecting the

interests of the haves than in accommodating the aspirations of the vast

majority of Americans who want only

to improve the quality of their lives

through education.

Mr. President, nowhere does the impact of the proposed cuts in education

fall more heavily than on two areas,

Head Start and Student Loans.

IMPACT ON HEAD START

The resolution reported by the Budget Committee proposes cutting Head

Start by $600 million in 1996 and $3 billion over the next 7 years. This means

that as many as 100,000 children would

be denied the opportunity to utilize the

program and to be appropriately prepared for school.

Mr. President, it has been fashionable of late to criticize many of the

Great Society Programs that were established in the 1960’s; some of this

criticism is justified. But at least one

program, Project Head Start, has consistently received praise for its work.

Since its inception in 1965, the program

has helped 14 million underprivileged

children prepare for school. And this

year, Head Start will serve approximately 740,000 kids, roughly a third of

all poor children aged 3 to 4.

Why is this program so important?

Well, statistics demonstrate that children who enter the program score higher than comparable non-Head Start

kids in pre-school achievement tests

for cognitive abilities; they perform

equal to or better than their peers

when they enter regular school, and,

they experience fewer grade retention

and special class placements.

Reports also indicate that Head Start

has had a positive impact on children’s

motivation, self-esteem, socialization,

and social maturity. In addition, the

studies show that participation in the

program resulted in lower absenteeism

and better health. Head Start has even

had a positive impact on the attitudes

of parents toward their children and an

improvement in their employment and

education status.

But statistics and reports aside, I

think that all of us who are parents understand from personal experience why

the Head Start concept works. It is

simply this: During the preschool

years, children undergo an accelerated

phase of learning which is never again

duplicated.

The rapidity of a child’s development

is truly amazing. Seemingly, in the

blink of an eye, kids are running when

they were once crawling, feeding themselves when they were once fed, arguing when they were once crying. They

learn to drink milk from a glass rather

than a bottle; they begin to use spoons

and forks instead of their hands to eat.

They learn the alphabet and how to

brush their teeth. They learn what a

joke is and how to turn on the TV. If

they live in a multilingual household,

they become fluent in several different

languages. They acquire the rudiments

of moral and social behavior. In short,

well before they enter school, children

have acquired the basic motor skills as

well as the mental, social, and emotional attributes that they will build

on in later years.

However, it is clear that the economic and social circumstances of a

child’s family have an impact on this

crucial, peak learning period. If a child

is undernourished, if he does not receive proper health care such as immunization from childhood diseases or

treatment for a disability, if he is not

exposed to books or proper educational

materials, if he lacks parental attention or his mother or father are abusive or otherwise lack parenting

skills—all of these factors will probably have an adverse effect on his ability to socialize and acquire appropriate

knowledge and skills. And once a child

has been handicapped in this way, it

will be difficult if not impossible for

him to catch up with his peers.

Head Start’s comprehensive approach

to child development, which involves

education, physical and mental

healthcare, nutrition, parental involvement, and social services, has proven

to be an effective method of breaking

the cycle of poverty that has helped

millions of disadvantaged children and

has given them the opportunity to

achieve their full potential, which in

turn has had a salutary effect on our

economic well-being.

Until this year, Republicans appeared

to embrace the goals and philosophy of

Head Start, working side by side with

Democrats to support the program. Indeed, under President Bush, the program received its single largest funding increase. And only last year, Head

Start was reauthorized on a broad bipartisan basis. Yet we are now considering a budget plan that proposes to

undermine much of the work of the

last 30 years, a plan that balances tax

cuts for the wealthy against the future

of disadvantaged children, and finds

the children wanting.

How is it, Mr. President, that our

colleagues on the other side of the aisle

can tell us with straight faces that this

budget plan is good for the country?

How can it be good for America to take

away a resource that has the potential

to help a hundred thousand poor children grow up to be productive, educated citizens? This is a question that

Republicans have yet to answer.

REDUCTIONS IN STUDENT AID

Mr. President, on the other end of

the educational spectrum, the budget

measure calls for reductions of as much

as $20 billion in higher education aid

over the next 7 years. Of this amount,

$14.5 billion in cuts would be in Student Loan Program cutbacks alone,

mostly in the form of eliminating the

in-school interest exemption for 4.5

million student who receive Stafford

loans. I have been told that this represents the single largest reduction in

student financial aid in history.
S7114 CONGRESSIONAL RECORD — SENATE May 22, 1995

Again, I believe this is a penny-wise,

pound-foolish approach that will save

us money in the short term but will

cause us grief in the long run. Unlike

other education programs which are

largely financed by the States, postsecondary student aid programs account for 75 percent of all available

student aid, $31.4 billion of a total of

$42 billion during fiscal year 1994. Thus,

education cuts of the magnitude contemplated by the pending measure

would have a disproportionate impact

on these programs.

Mr. President, if the in-school interest exemption is eliminated, the individual indebtedness of Stafford loan recipients could rise to more than $3,000

for undergraduates and thousands of

dollars more for those who pursue advanced degrees. In fact, it could increase the total cost of college for students and their families by 20 to 50 percent, depending on the amount borrowed and the length of time a student

is in school.

According to the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities, this would mean an additional debt burden of $12 million over 5

years for the 4,900 Stafford loan borrowers in my own State of Hawaii.

Here, in the District of Columbia, the

debt would increase by $186 million.

And, in California, the total 5-year

debt incurred by students would rise by

more than a billion dollars.

Mr. President, this is an outrage.

Student aid now will be less affordable

to lower- or middle-income students,

especially when one considers the proposed reductions in the constellation of

other student aid programs, including

campus-based aid and Pell grants.

If this budget is implemented, students of modest means may have to

forgo a college education; others who

are fortunate enough to achieve their

baccalaureates may have to forgo their

dreams of pursuing graduate study.

And those students who exit college in

the future will be saddled with huge

debt burdens at the time when they are

least likely to be able to afford payments.

All of this means that our future

workforce is likely to be less educated,

less productive, and less well off. This

in turn will reduce the Nation’s

taxbase, placing further upward pressure on the deficit, exactly the opposite effect from the stated purpose of

this budget plan.

CONCLUSION

Mr. President, I have touched on only

two areas—Head Start and student

loans—that will be impacted by the

proposed budget plan. But, as I have indicated, the GOP budget calls for nearly $100 million in total education cuts

by the year 2002. This includes cuts in

many other important programs, such

as GOALS 2000, Title I, Safe and DrugFree Schools, Special Education, and

School-to-Work initiatives.

This wholesale disinvestment in our

most important resource, our young

people, is not merely shortsighted, it is

blind. Blind to the imperatives of the

new global marketplace, blind to the

effect that cuts in education will have

on our ability to prosper in an increasingly complex world, and blind to the

effect it will have on our deficit.

But competitiveness, economic viability, and individual opportunity will

not be the only victims of the proposed

cutbacks in education. Our sense of

civil community, of history, of tolerance, the ability to conduct informed,

rational discourse—these are also the

potential victims of this harsh and illconceived budget plan. For education is

not just about making enough to feed

the kids or to buy a new car or to own

a home—it is also about preparing ourselves to carry out the multiple responsibilities of citizenship in the world’s

oldest and greatest republic.

Mr. President, no sane nation embraces ignorance. Yet, this is what the

proposed resolution would have us do. I

urge my colleagues to reject this war

on knowledge by opposing the cuts in

education contained in this measure

that threaten our future.

Mr. DODD. Mr. President, I rise in

strong support of this amendment by

my colleagues, Senators HARKIN and

HOLLINGS, to restore funding for education in this budget. This amendment

would restore $40 billion to our most

critical national investment.

As a percentage of overall spending,

our Federal commitment to education

programs has fallen significantly over

the last two decades. Although recently these numbers have climbed

thanks to the leadership of the Clinton

administration, this budget resolution

would scale back those modest improvements and put overall spending in

this vital sector into a tail spin.

GROWING CHALLENGES IN OUR SCHOOLS

Even as our Federal commitment declines, the challenges to our schools

have grown. Children walking through

our school doors today are quite different from those of two decades ago—

fewer and fewer come from two-parent

homes, a growing number are poor and

many come from communities plagued

with violence and crime. Our classrooms are also seeing the first generation of crack babies, and far too many

of our children continue to enter

school unprepared to learn.

These social changes come on top of

wrenching economic transformations.

There was a time when blue-collar

workers formed the bedrock of the

middle class. High-wage jobs for people

without years of advanced education

were plentiful, and a high school education was a passport to a healthy future. That time is gone.

In less than one generation, the payoff for those with education and skills

has risen substantially, and the penalty for those lacking a high school or

college education has become more severe. These trends show no sign of

abating. The wage gap between college

graduates and high school graduates

doubled during the 1980’s. College graduates used to earn about 30 percent

more than high school graduates—they

now earn more than 60 percent more.

Every year of postsecondary education

or training boosts earning power by 6

to 12 percent.

But education does much more for

our economy than increase individual

earnings. It is also the fuel that drives

the engine of productivity. A recent

study by the Census Bureau and the

University of Pennsylvania commissioned by the Bush administration

demonstrated that education demonstrably increases productivity in the

workplace. In fact, increases in educational attainment produce twice the

gain in workplace efficiency as similar

increases in plant and equipment.

Education is clearly the best investment we can make in our economy.

Our future strength will be derived

from education for all, not tax cuts to

the most affluent. That is the alternative we offer in this amendment.

THE BUDGET RESOLUTION

This budget resolution takes a different course: It would abandon our

schools and our children. In the name

of eliminating the deficit, this budget

proposal would create an education deficit far more costly in the long run.

In real terms, the resolution cuts

education by an average of 25 percent

over 7 years. Because the cuts gets progressively larger in the out years, in

2002, we will have fully a third less

money to spend on education than we

will spend this year.

HIGHER EDUCATION

For millions of families, higher education has been the road to a better future for their children. Federal aid has

been the bridge that extended this road

across the high-priced gulf between

families and college. This budget resolution would wash out this bridge for

millions of American families. It would

cut college loans, freeze Pell grants,

cut college work study, eliminate other

campus-based aid, and broadly increase

student debt.

This budget resolution would increase student loan costs by $14 billion

over 7 years. Four million needy students a year could lost this in-school

interest assistance they currently receive on their student loans, raising

their personal debt from 20 to 50 percent. This would mean that a student

who completes a master’s degree and

borrows the maximum of $34,125—not

uncommon with annual college costs

rising above $25,000 at many schools—

would end up paying an extra $13,320

over the life of his or her loan. This is

not debt reduction. It is debt shifting.

The budget resolution promises to

freeze Pell spending—as if that is protection. Because of the annual increase

in eligible programs and losses to inflation, however, even at a freeze Pell

grants would lose 40 percent of their

purchasing power by 2002. And there

are no guarantees that Pell would not

be cut further—as we know, appropriators are in no way bound by the Budget Committee chairman’s promises.
May 22, 1995 CONGRESSIONAL RECORD — SENATE S7115

ELEMENTARY AND SECONDARY EDUCATION

The front lines of our educational

system—our public schools—are also

under attack. The severe reductions

proposed in this budget would have a

real impact on whether or not students

have such basic educational supports

as smaller class sizes, safe and drugfree schools, more teachers for reading

and math, access to computers, and

other services that make the difference

for millions of young students.

The cuts may seem abstract, but the

impact will be real—94 percent of

school districts in America would lose

over $1 billion that they use to keep

students safe and drug-free. With the

elimination of the school-to-work program and vocational education, 12 million students would see their opportunities to learn job skills curtailed.

States and localities could see losses of

$5 billion in Federal assistance for the

5.5 million special education students

if the chairman’s promised freeze does

not hold in the Appropriations Committee. Title I for disadvantaged students also is at risk of cuts that would

leave 2 million needy children without

these services.

HEAD START

Head Start is on the line as well. It

too is promised a freeze—although just

last year, 98 colleagues joined me in

passing legislation that promised fullfunding for this model Federal program. Does that promise mean anything now? Let’s assume that this

year’s promise of a freeze in Head Start

will hold—even though it isn’t binding

on appropriators. Even at a freeze,

350,000 fewer children would receive

Head Start by the year 2002. And if the

promised freeze doesn’t hold, over half

a million children would be out of this

program.

Our amendment today offers us the

chance to make a different choice in

addressing the education deficit as well

as our Federal deficit. Our amendment

does not increase the fiscal deficit; it

does not challenge the goal of a balanced budget by 2002. It simply puts

our investment in education before tax

cuts for the well off.

It ensures that our children enjoy the

benefit of a balanced budget without

diminishing their educational opportunities for diminishing the very foundation of our economy—education itself.

THE ANXIOUS MIDDLE CLASS

This is not an academic debate: It is

central to the future of this country. In

the past two decades, our economy and

our work force have experienced tremendous economic and structural

changes. Growing international economic competition and rapid advances

in technology have created a widening

gulf between those at each end of the

income scale. Income inequality is accelerating, and it is doing so faster in

the United States than anywhere else

in the world.

In 1976, 1 percent of the population

owned 19 percent of America’s wealth.

Today, 1 percent of the population

owns 40 percent of our Nation’s wealth.

In Britain, in contrast, the wealthiest 1

percent owns 18 percent of its country’s

wealth. Between 1979 and 1993, incomes

of the least affluent three-fifths of the

Nation’s families dropped by 3 to 17

percent.

There are no easy answers to these

problems, but I know that slashing

funding for education is not one of

them. We must come together as a nation to invest in our children, not turn

our backs on them. I urge my colleagues to support the Harkin-Hollings

amendment.

There are no easy answers to these

problems, but I know that slashing

funding for education is not one of

them. We must come together as a nation in invest in our children, not turn

our backs on them. I urge my colleagues to support the Harkin-Hollings

amendment.

Mr. BRYAN. Mr. President, I rise

today in support of the Harkin-Hollings Democratic Leadership’s amendment to restore $40 billion in funding

to the Federal student financial assistance program, and education programs,

such as Head Start, to be paid for out

of proposed tax cuts for the wealthy.

Cutting the student financial assistance program by $14 billion over the

next 7 years, and eliminating the inschool interest subsidy for graduate

and professional students is truly beyond my understanding.

Over and over again Senators come

to this floor and talk about how the

most important resource we have in

our country is our children. Over and

over again Senators lament that our

country’s children are behind the rest

of the industrial world in educational

achievement, and that we must focus

on educational opportunities to keep

this country competitive.

And yet, we are offered a budget resolution that would cut back substantially on student financial assistance. I

do not understand.

This Budget proposal would freeze

funding of Pell Grants. These are

needs-based financial assistance

grants. These are the grants that help

ensure approximately 4 million low and

middle income students have the opportunity to go to college or receive

vocational training. We have not yet

been able to provide funds for all of the

students who qualify for these grants.

Still this budget proposal would freeze

such grant funding.

What should I say to the low or middle income mother and father with a

child who wants to go to college? No

Pell Grant for your child. We had to

freeze those funds to pay for a tax cut

to benefit some of the most affluent in

our country—those making up to

$200,000. Do we really want to say the

need for the affluent to get a tax cut is

greater than a low or middle income

child’s need to go to college? I can

hardly believe such a message.

I know firsthand how important educational opportunity is for helping assure employment achievement. I have

three grown children, all of whom received bachelor degrees. I am particularly proud each has also gone on to

earn graduate degrees in medicine, law

and education. Thankfully all three of

my children have also been able to find

work in their chosen fields.

But not all children qualified to further their education get to do so, simply due to the lack of money. And yet

this budget proposal would end the

AmeriCorp program. The President’s

program allows people the option of

working in their communities to earn

financial credits to go to college or to

pay off school loans already incurred.

And why would we want to eliminate

that option for hardworking and dedicated students to earn their way into

college or out of their school debts, so

those making $200,000 can receive a tax

cut?

And not only does the budget proposal cut and freeze student financial

assistance, it would force graduate and

professional students to pay interest

that accrues on their student loans

while they are still in school. Under

current law, the Federal Government

pays the interest on student loans

while the students are in college. During a recent conversation, a Nevada

lawyer told me the recent law school

graduates he has hired quite commonly

carry a law school loan debt of $1,000

per month. This frequently is being

paid over a 10-year period. And yet this

Budget would require interest accrual

while the student is still in school.

Students could face increases in their

loan debt of 20 percent to 50 percent,

depending on how much was borrowed.

Why would anyone want to pay for a

tax cut for the affluent by requiring

young people to go further into debt—

while they are still in school—by paying interest on their school loans?

Additionally, this budget proposal

would freeze funding for Head Start

and special education programs. Like

Pell Grants, we have not yet been able

to provide funds to cover all of the

children eligible for Head Start—those

low income children most at educational risk. And once children start

school, this budget would freeze the

funding for their special education

needs. Again—why would we want to

pay for a tax cut for the affluent by

cutting off funds to the most vulnerable young children in our country who

are just starting to begin their education? Who needs the leg up here—the

person making $200,000 or the low-income child needing a lunch and a

chance to learn their colors and numbers before starting first grade?

I have a long record reaching back to

the beginning of my political career in

the 1960s of supporting balancing the

Federal budget. As a U.S. Senator, I

have voted twice for such legislation.

There are many cuts I will support,

some will be unpopular, some will take

a hit on Nevada. But I also have a long

record of supporting investing in our

children and their education as a top

priority for whatever funds we have.

We cannot maintain a viable economy
S7116 CONGRESSIONAL RECORD — SENATE May 22, 1995

at home, nor be a viable competitor

abroad if our children are not educated.

I have, and will continue to support

efforts to try to balance the Federal

budget by 2002—but through a fair

budget proposal. When efforts to balance the budget rely on eliminating

educational opportunities for our children, it is a most foolhardy way to accomplish.

I urge my colleagues support the

Harkin-Hollings amendment. We must

continue to invest in our children to

ensure they do not have the door to

educational opportunity slammed in

their faces.

Mr. ROCKEFELLER. Mr. President,

education is fundamental to our country’s future. If we are serious about

strengthening our country and staying

competitive in a fierce global marketplace, America must educate its children and offer continuous education to

working adults.

Previously, we might have differed

on some details and policies, but a tradition of bipartisanship support for

basic education programs was something Americans could count on—from

Head Start to Chapter 1 help for elementary schools to student loans for

college. Fairly recently, under the

leadership of President Bush, along

with the National Governors Association that included Arkansas Governor

Bill Clinton, that bipartisan commitment to basic education goals was visible and real.

I support those goals and am horrified to see a budget resolution before

the Senate that makes basic education

programs the victim of major cuts.

For example, how can we meet our

goal of having every child enter school

ready to learn if Head Start is cut by $3

billion?

How can we ensure that our schools

are safe and students steer clear of

drugs, if the Safe and Drug-Free

Schools program is virtually eliminated by a $1 billion budget cut? I

worked hard to establish this program

in 1986 with Republicans. Since then, I

have visited numerous West Virginia

classrooms and watched police officers

in the DARE Program, to cite one example, make a real difference with students.

How can we expect students to enter

the modern workplace with the skills

they need if we cut Federal funding for

educational technology? In today’s

Washington Post, there is an excellent

story about children signing up for

time to work on computers at the local

public library. What will happen if we

pave a new information superhighway,

but we don’t provide an on ramp or instructions for our schools and libraries?

Again, I have visited West Virginia

classrooms, libraries and community

centers and sat with children as they

show me what they can learn on the

Internet. Connecting students to technology is vital.

This resolution undercuts our national commitment to lifelong learning

by cutting college assistance and increasing student loan interest.

It undercuts the School-to-Work programs, just passed last year with bipartisan support. The School-to-Work initiative was endorsed by both business

and labor unions. It is a partnership between the Departments of Education

and Labor. It is where we should be investing our energy and efforts. With

Secretary Bob Reich, I visited a West

Virginia program and watched students

get hand-on experience to prepare them

for the challenges of work in today’s

world. But this budget resolution, instead, proposes a cut of $5.3 billion

from this relevant, needed program.

I am personally disappointed by the

suggestion of eliminating the

AmeriCorps program. National service

is something that works, and has won

the hearts, the minds, the support of

Americans everywhere. It is today’s

symbol and substance that stand for

responsibility and values like community. Just this past weekend in West

Virginia, I was with AmeriCorps and

VISTA workers and former VISTA volunteers at a special 30th reunion event.

The people in that room are committed

to making a real difference for West

Virginia, working in domestic violence

shelters and providing primary health

care through the Children’s Health

Van. This is important, meaningful

work that kindles the kind of community spirit we need. I know, because it

was VISTA that brought me to

Emmons, West Virginia years ago.

AmeriCorps has that same spirit, and

deserves the same support.

Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, there are

many things I do not like about this

Republican budget. But, one of the

most outrageous parts of this proposal

is the increased burden it would put on

college students.

Currently, students who take out

loans to go to college do not have to

pay interest on those loans while they

are in school. The Federal Government

pays it for them. This is known as the

in-school interest subsidy. And, it has

been a fundamental part of the student

loan program since its inception 30

years ago. Without this protection—if

the interest were to accumulate while

an individual is in school—the cost

would simply be prohibitive for many

families.

But, that is just what is about to

happen. The Republican budget in the

Senate would end the interest subsidy

for graduate and professional students.

That is bad enough. But the Housepassed budget is even worse. it would

end the interest subsidy for all students.

This comes at a time when a higher

education is increasingly important

and at a time when the cost of that

education is increasingly expensive.

Studies show that a person with a college degree earns about $12,000 more

each year than a person with only a

high school degree. The unemployment

rate for college graduates is 3 percent;

for those with a high school diploma, it

is 6 percent; and for those who are high

school dropouts, the unemployment

rate is 12 percent. And, yet, getting to

college—opening up that door to economic opportunity—has become harder. During the 1980’s, the cost of attending college rose 45 percent, while

disposable income rose only 15 percent.

Mr. President, we are not talking

about deadbeats. We are not talking

about those who default on their loans.

We are talking about middle class students from hard-working middle class

families. The average annual family income for those students who borrow

money to go to college is $35,000. These

are middle class students who have to

borrow money to get to college, who

work hard to get ahead, who are playing by the rules and just want a fair

shot. The Republicans are turning

their backs on these young people by

raising the costs of college loans.

The fact of the matter is this is a tax

increase on college students. Already,

for too many college students, when

they graduate, they are handed not

only a diploma but also a big IOU. This

Republican budget makes the IOU even

bigger. For example, a medical student

could see his monthly loan repayment

increase by more than $200 per month.

A typical graduate student could easily

see his or her loan increase by $5000.

Already, few young doctors who have

to borrow money to attend medical

school can afford to be primary care

doctors in underserved rural and urban

areas. Already, few young lawyers who

have to borrow money to attend law

school can afford to be public defenders. Already, it is hard for graduate

students to pursue degrees in math and

science—something we need desperately in this country for the Twenty-First Century—because, unlike doctors and lawyers, they do not have very

many high-paying job alternatives.

And, already, there are thousands upon

thousands of undergraduate students

who want to be policemen and teachers—but cannot because their loan repayment is too high. By removing the

in-school interest subsidy, the Republican budget would only make it worse.

Frankly, we should be moving in the

opposite direction—making college

more affordable. Higher education is

clearly an investment in our country’s

future, and it is without a doubt in the

national interest. We should encourage

parents to provide a college education

to their children by changing the tax

laws to make it easier for them. I am

cosponsor of a bill to allow Americans

who send their kids to college to deduct up to $10,000 of the cost of that

education from their taxes. That is a

real investment. That is a real tax cut.

That is a real benefit to the Nation and

to middle class families.

I disagree with some of my Democratic colleagues who argue that we

should not cut taxes. We should. But,

we should not cut taxes as proposed by

the House Republicans—where the cuts

overwhelmingly benefit the wealthy.
May 22, 1995 CONGRESSIONAL RECORD — SENATE S7117

We need and we can afford—in fact, I

would argue that we cannot afford not

to provide—a tax cut targeted to middle-class families for the cost of an

education.

This budget does not do that. It fails

to provide relief for families who pay

for their kids to go to college, and it

punishes those who must borrow to go

to college. The Republican budget, instead of making a college education

more affordable, makes a college education less affordable.

Mr. President, from the establishment of the land-grant university system in the late 1800’s to the GI bill at

the end of World War II to the creation

of the Pell Grant and Guaranteed Student Loan programs in the 1960’s, the

Federal Government has been committed to seeing that young people desiring to go to college would not be

turned away because of the cost. It was

a national goal to see a college education within reach of every American.

And, no matter who you talk to—

black or white, rich or poor—every

American family has the same goal:

that their children will go to college. It

was my dad’s dream for his children,

and it was my dream for my children.

It is the dream of the richest

businessperson and the poorest welfare

mother. It is the dream of every American parent. We have not always

reached the dream. But, we have always tried, and we have never turned

our backs. We should not now. But, I

am afraid that the Republicans are

about to.

Balancing the budget is important,

and it is important for our children.

But, balancing the budget for future

generations will be counterproductive

if in the process we slash the programs

like education that are an investment

in our future.

UNANIMOUS-CONSENT AGREEMENT

Mr. DOLE. Mr. President, I ask unanfimous consent that the vote occur on

or in relation to the Roth amendment

immediately following the first rollcall

vote occurring during Tuesday’s session.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without

objection, it is so ordered.

(During today’s session of the SenMORNING BUSINESS

fate, the following morning business

was transacted.)

TRIBUTE TO COACH HOWARD

fCHAPPELL

Mr. HEFLIN. Mr. President, this

year, one of Alabama’s most outstanding high school football coaches was inducted into the Alabama High School

Sports Hall of Fame. From 1934 until

1942 and again from 1951 to 1960, Howard ‘‘Chap’’ Chappell served as the

coach of the Deshler High School Tigers, of Tuscumbia, AL, compiling an

overall record of 110–52–2. But, Chap did

more than just coach. As State Representative Marcel Black once said,

‘‘My favorite stories of Coach Chap are

the ones involving his guidance and

support to his former players after

their careers as high school football

players had ended.’’ Chap was inducted

into the Hall of Fame on March 20,

1995.

After graduating from Sylacauga

High School in 1930, Chap accepted a

scholarship to the University of Alabama. He was a 3-year letterman on

football teams that went 24–4–1 and

won the first Southeastern Conference

Championship in 1933. He was also a

star player on the track team, lettering for 3 years.

Coach Chappell’s first tenure as

coach began in 1934. As a senior, he

made recruiting trips for the coach, encouraging outstanding high school students to go to the University of Alabama. ‘‘Coach Hank Crisp sent me to

Sheffield to see about a boy named

Jack Machtoff,’’ Chap recalled in an

interview. ‘‘I found out about a job

opening in Tuscumbia. I went to see superintendent R.E. Thompson. He didn’t

give me the job then * * * but he called

later and said I could have the job if I

wanted it.’’ So, Jack went to play at

Alabama and Chap became coach of

Deshler High School.

During his career as a coach, he managed to lead 3 undefeated teams. The

Tigers were the dominant team in the

Tennessee Valley. In 1938, they were

described as ‘‘striking with the swiftness of a marauding band of Vikings.’’

He left coaching in 1960 to become principal of R.E. Thompson School, a position which he retained until he retired

in 1975.

Howard Chappell’s many contributions have extended beyond his outstanding coaching. As Dr. James

Maples wrote: ‘‘I was never fortunate

enough to have played for Coach Chap

* * * but his spirit, his tradition, his

style and his attitude still to this day

blanket the stadium that bears his

name * * * What makes Chap great,

however, what lifts him to heroic status in the minds of his friends and

neighbors, is his presence in our everyday lives. That presence goes well beyond the confines of sports. There are

young people who think Howard Chappell absolutely hung the moon, who

have no idea he ever coached football

at Deshler.’’

During the war, Chap oversaw the

building of the stadium that was later

named after him. In 1975, the city of

Tuscumbia honored him with a 2-day

celebration of his career and contributions to the community. He has served

as president of the Alabama High

School Coaches Association and the

Tennessee Valley Conference. He is active in the First Methodist Church of

Tuscumbia and has been president of

the Kiwanis Club and member of the

Tuscumbia City Commission.

During his 84 years, Howard Chappell

has been one of the few who can rightly

be called pillars of the community. I

congratulate him on all of his achievements, and I wish him luck in continuing to shoot his age on the golf course.

Mr. DOLE. Mr. President, as PresiTHE PISCATAWAY CASE

fdent Clinton continues his review of

Federal affirmative action policies, one

of his top priorities should be to take a

very close look at the Justice Department’s brief in the Piscataway Board

of Education case. This case is now

pending before the third circuit court

of appeals.

In Piscataway, the Justice Department has taken the position that, when

an employer is laying off employees, a

worker can be fired from her job because of her race. That’s right: Our Nation’s top law enforcement agency says

that it is perfectly legal, as a way to

preserve workforce diversity, to tell a

person that she can no longer keep her

job because she happens to have the

wrong skin color.

This position is even too much for

the editorial writers at USA Today,

normally staunch defenders of affirmative action, who argue in a powerful

editorial that the Justice Department’s

actions in Piscataway are ‘‘a tale of

values misplaced.’’

Unfortunately, President Clinton has

publicly embraced the Justice Department’s misguided position. Hopefully,

the President will rethink this position

before he completes his affirmative action review.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the USA Today editorial be

reprinted in the RECORD.

There being no objection, the editorial was ordered to be printed in the

RECORD, as follows:

[From USA Today]

FIRING BASED ON RACE NOT REAL

AFFIRMATIVE ACTION

Can you legally lose your job because of

your race?

The answer seems obvious: No. That’s why

we have civil rights laws. But for high school

teacher Sharon Taxman, the answer was a

cavalier yes. And therein lies a tale of values

misplaced.

Six years ago, a financially squeezed

school board in Piscataway, N.J., laid Taxman off, citing her race, white, as the sole

reason. She sued, and the case has been

marching toward the Supreme Court ever

since. A ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals,

the last interim step, is due any day.

By next year, the case could affect affirmative action policies nationwide and even influence the presidential election.

Taxman’s story offers a clear-cut lesson in

the rights and wrongs of affirmative action—

a story of two teachers linked by fate and

separated by race.

It began on the first day of school in 1980

when Taxman and Debra Williams, who is

black, went to work as business teachers in

Piscataway. Both worked hard and earned

high marks for performance. They even won

tenure the same day.

Then came 1989. The school board, under financial pressure, needed to downsize, as so

many governments and businesses across the

nation have in recent years. The business

education department was required to cut