Date: 2004-06-02
Speaker: VAN HOLLEN (democrat)
Chamber: H

Mr. Speaker. I thank mycoleague for the time. I think it is very important that the American people .understand the charade that- the Republican leadership is engaged -in here today. The two education bills -that are being taken up this afternoon. as my colleague has said. are identical to the education bills that this House has already passed by large -margins. They have simply been repackaged. dressed up and trotted outagain as if they were something new. but this bill we are considering now was passed last year by the House by an overwhelming vote of 404 to 17. I do not think anyone has changed their mind in the House. This is a good bill. and it should be passed once again. but those who are close followers of the House of Representatives will begin to see a pattern here. Just 3 weeks ago. the House leadership brought out three other pieces of legislation at that time which were ostensibly healthrelated issues. and. again. those were three pieces of health legislation that had already passed the House of Representatives. So what is going on? Why are we doing this? Why are we wasting taxpayer dollars? Why are we tying up the time of the House of Representatives on useless. unnecessary and -meaningless exercises? There is only one answer here. which is to create the illusion with the Amer"ican people that the House of Representatives. that the House Republican leadership is actually doing something new to improve the higher education system and expand access to college and universities. We should not be wasting taxpayer dollars on what is simply a PR ploy. a cynical ploy. We are facing many challenges in this country. We are facing challenges abroad. We are facing challenges here at home. In the area of education. we should get about the business of fully funding No Child Left Behind. This years budget is $9 billion short that was submitted by the White House. Let us fully fund that. Let us do something about the growing opportunity gap in higher education. We have got rising tuitions around the country. Federal support for students has been going down in real terms. Let us try and close that gap. but. instead. we are doing. as my colleagues have said. reruns. summer reruns. This bill today accomplishes nothing new. That is bad enough. What is worse is that we are trying to create the impression that we are doing something new. Sadly. it is a procedural hoax. It is an example of waste. fraud and abuse: waste of taxpayer dollars to be here and abusing the time of the House. a fraud on the American people in that we are trying to tell them we are doing something new when we just did this last year. We do not have to be doing it again. Abuse of process because we are taking the same bills. just giving them new bill numbers and telling people we are going to do something again. So I think that whether a person is a Democrat or a Republican or Independent they should be offended by this farce. We should get about the business of doing something new in the area of education. the area of higher education. do something about the big problems we face in this country and not going through meaningless exercises to try and create the impression that something is new. Madison Avenue would be very jealous of what is happening here today in terms of trying to create an impression that something is being done when it is not.