Date: 2003-06-11
Speaker: CORRINE BROWN (democrat)
Chamber: H
State: Florida

I thank the gentlewoman once again for bringing this subject area to the American public. Wake up. America. To me. the cold hearted attitude of House Republicans can be summed up in a statement made just last week by the House majority leader. When asked about bringing up the Child Tax Credit bill. he said. and I quote: "There are a lot of other things that are more Important than that ..." Now. I humbly ask my colleagues on the other side of the aisle. "what exactly. on your agenda. is more important than the protection of the children of this nation?" In my state of Florida alone. the Child Tax Credit package benefits over a million children. And once again. the Republican leadership is catering its agenda to the rich. And after deciding just today that the only way they will agree to take up the Child Tax Credit bill is by adding on an $80 billion tax credit for the rich to the bill. And even though their selected leader. George W. Bush. is urging them to take up a clean bill. and even though they have followed his lead on everything from tax cuts for the rich to foreign policy. when it comes to funding children. they ignore even the plea of the White House. In addition. the House Republican leadership is planning to dismantle Head Start. one of the best education programs for children of working class families. by block granting program funding. You know. there was $900 million sent down to the Florida governor Jeb Bush. yet he put the money into the bank. as opposed to - helping the people of Florida. Block grants Is just not the way to go. In the past. everyone was telling me. send transportation dollars to the states. send the education dollars to the states. the states can best figure out how to use it. Theyre not telling me that now. when I talk to the Mayors in Florida. or to the County Commissioner. they tell me that. "whatever you do. whatever you do. dont send the money to Tallahassee. because we will never see a dime of it." That is what they tell me. they say it gets lost in Tallahassee. and it never trickles down to the areas. to .the first responders. to the Head Start programs. it Is just an empty hole. The Republican Head Start block grant plan will end Head Start as we know It. Even the new limited 8state block grant is risky. Why risk turning a successful program over to states with unproven expertise and without the federal program qu.lity standard requirements and oversight that are demonstrated to Increase school readiness. My colleagues. there is an old expression which really applies to this issue here: if it aint broken. dont fix it. You know. Head Start kids are very prepared and do better in school than lowincome children who dont receive Head Start. In addition. its been proven that Head Start narrows the readiness gap between Head Start kids and children from the more affluent side of the tracks. Head Start should help children arrive at school more ready to learnand it does. but for the adminis.ration to expect Head Start to completely protect children against the effects of poverty is just ridiculous. Moreover. block grants dont work. Block grants gut the quality of comprehensive services. And this block grant plan is particularly bad. and requires States to provide a bunch of services. but doesnt require the same nature. extent or quality of them. None of the thirteen areas of Head Start performance standards that lay out the comperhensive services and high level of quality that have made Head Start successful are required or even mentioned in the block grant. In fact. the block grant emphasizes comprehensive services being met through referral of families to outside services fQr assistance. which would end up encouraging States to provide a much lower level of services. In addition. the block grant does not specify any minimum requirements for teacher education levels. for childstaff ratios or for curriculum content. It simply calls on each State to come up with their own school standards and their own ways of measuring progress against those standards. But the problem is that those standards are not clearly defined in the block grant and vary greatly in content and quality among the States. As it is now. Head Start education standards are thorough and strongly based in standards of education. and having States come up with their own standards with no direction and no requirements will only serve to weaken education standards. Lastly. block grants weaken oversight and evaluation. States that meet the eligibility criteria have their applications deemed approved by the Secretary by defaultwhich means that there wont be any oversight or evaluation of the quality of the State plan. In addition. there is no minimum threshold required by States internal evaluations of their programsthey can just go ahead and define it on their own. No States monitor their programs as closely as Head Start is monitored. And under the block grant. outside evaluations of the State programs will likely not happen very often. Under the Republican plan. there.will be no more compliance reviews with regard to national performance standards. Gone will be meaningful Federal oversight and monitoring. Why. why. why. the Republicans are changing something that works. just does not make sense. Once again I repeat: if something isnt broken. dont bother fixing it.