Date: 2003-07-10
Speaker: GEORGE MILLER (democrat)
Chamber: H
State: California

Mr. Chairman. I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time. I want to say there are no two people more committed to education of our young children than the gentleman from Wisconsin and the gentleman from Ohio . And the budget that we are presented today. or the funding that we are presented today. in this legislation is not of their doing. That decision was made a long time ago when the decision was made to provide for the tax cuts to go out and borrow $2 trillion and give it away in tax cuts. and the result is that we do not now have a sufficient amount of money to fund the promises that were made by this administration. by this Congress for the education bill of leaving no child behind. I am very proud to have been one of the four primary cosponsors of that legislation. to be one of the architects of that legislation. I believe that the reforms that we are asking to come about in that legislation are changing education in America. are giving children who never had an opportunity before. children who were lost in the system. an opportunity. But that legislation is the most significant reforms of the Federal role in elementary secondary education in 35 years. Constantly. as we met and talked with the President of the United States. we talked about whether or not if we did the reforms would we have the resources. and we were assured we would have them. But today is when the rubber meets the road because today this is the appropriations bill. This is when we decide the real money that we will spend. and of course what we now see is the money that was promised in Leave No Child Behind is not in this legislation. It is not here for teacher professionalization. it is not here for title I. it is not here for afterschool. all of which are key components to improving the educational experience and the success of Americas children. especially Americas poor and disadvantaged children. We make it a keystone of this legislation. and it is a key to improving education and that is that we have a qualified teacher in every classroom within 4 years. and yet. of course. we see here that the funding is not available. Just yesterday the Republicans promised an additional $300 million for the Ready to Teach Act and yet the money for current teachers for professionalization is not in this legislation. It is short over $200 million. $240 million that would go to taking those thousands of teachers who are not presently certified. qualified to teach the subjects they are teaching. and get them certified and get them qualified so they can teach our children what they should be learning and our children will have an opportunity to learn it. This appropriations bill. because of the budget decisions made by the Republicans and the administration. is a series of broken promises. promises made by the President of the United States when he signed this legislation. promises made by this administration and -made by this Congress to Americas parents. to Americas children. to our schools. our school districts. that we would provide the resources to carry out these reforms. the annual assessment of children. the determining of which children are doing well and which need additional help. All of that is now threatened by the failure to provide this funding. It is not enough to say we double the funding in past or we tripled the funding in past. This is a brandnew game. It is a brandnew game based upon these very significant. important reforms. The fact of the matter is there was a bipartisan agreement reached on the money that was necessary to carry out these reforms. and now we are reneging on that. and yet we are continuing to ask school districts to go forward with these reforms. We are continuing to ask school districts to make sure that every teacher is qualified. but we are not going to provide the resources to do that. We have here the smallest increase in the past 8 years in education. Yes. it is an increase. but the question we should ask. Just as we ask in many other parts. is is it sufficient to get the job done as the American public expects? The fact of the matter is this provision in education funding in this legislation is not sufficient to do that. It is not going to provide the outcomes that we want for Americas children. It is going to leave millions of children behind to a substandard education. trapped into results of that substandard education. and the loss of economic opportunity in Americas society.