Date: 2001-04-24
Speaker: GEORGE MILLER (democrat)
Chamber: H
State: California

Mr. Speaker. I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time. I want to also thank him f6r all of his work on our behalf as the ranking member of the Committee on the Budget. We all recognize that we have an urgent national need in this country to make a greater investment in our education system so that we can help a greater number of our children succeed within that system. I had the honor and the pleasure of meeting with President Bush before he was sworn in to talk with him and a number of our colleagues about education reform in this country. We talked about the things that needed to be done: to make schools more accountable. to make teachers more accountable. to improve the professional development of teachers. to make sure that we could direct the resources. as he said. to the poorest children in the poorest performing schools. But we also said in that meeting that it was very clear that those things would not happen unless we had the resources that were necessary to provide those schools the quality education that we all want. I had an opportunity to meet several other times with him and with Senator KENNEDY and Senator JEFFORDS and with the gentleman from Ohio . the chairman of the Committee on Education and the Workforce. and again we talked about the kinds of reforms and the results that this President genuinely wants. We said again. Mr. President. if we are going to have testing and we are going to require all of the States to go about this. we are going to have to provide the resources. We are going to provide the resources so that. in fact. it can be done in the right way. not in the wrong way. not in a way that is harmful. If we are really going to help these children and we are going to get qualified teachers in front of them on a daily basis. we are going to have to improve the quality of these -teachers. It is going to take resources. He assured us that he recognized that and he understood that. Now. when I see the budget. I am deeply disappointed. because a decision was made here between the times of those meetings and the times of this budget that those resources would be put off into the tax cut. Now we find that the amount of the tax cut that goes to the richest 1 percent of the people in this country is 13 times the amount we would spend on education in this budget. 13 times the amount on the richest 1 percent. and yet we have a huge number of children who are not getting access to a decent. firstclass education. who are not having the kinds of reforms that the President wants. that I want. and that many of my colleagues in the Congress want. will not bring about the results that we want. that every parent wants for their child in the American education system. Mr. Speaker. we urgently need these resources. We urgently need these resources because our schools are educating more children now than at any time in our history. They are educating more children with English as a second language. children with disabilities. These are expensive items. and we owe these children an education. and we have to make sure that they have an opportunity to participate in it. That is not what this budget does. It is not an 11 percent increase. as is well documented by the minority on the Committee on the Budget and our committee and the Committee on Education and the Workforce. We are talking about a 5 percent increase. We are talking about the smallest increase in many years. and that is simply not adequate to get the results that the President says he wants and to get them for the children that he has quite properly focused on in his discussion of education. the children that are in most need of these resources so that they can get the same access to an education that children get in the wealthier schools and in the middleclass schools. But we cannot do it on this budget. We cannot do it on this budget. This budget suggests that we are going to try to get firstclass. worldclass standards in education attainment on behalf of Americas children. but we are going to do it on the cheap. and that would be a horrible mistake. because that will lock us into another 5 years of spending without getting the results that the taxpayers deserve and that the children deserve in terms of their educational opportunity. So I commend the gentleman for the motion to instruct. to say that we should move toward the figures that the Senate has talked about and has suggested in their budget resolution. figures that will. in fact. provide us the kind of resources that are necessary for special education. for Title I. for English as a second language. so that we can hire the 100.000 counselors that are necessary. so that we can finish hiring the 100.000 teachers that have allowed us to reduce class sizes. Those are the urgent needs of the American education system. but they cannot be met in this budget without going with the numbers that are suggested in the motion to instruct.