Date: 2002-07-16
Speaker: GEORGE MILLER (democrat)
Chamber: H
State: California

Mr. Speaker. I yield myself 6 minutes. Mr. Speaker. I rise in opposition to this legislation. not so much on its merits. It does a number of good things. technical changes to be done. but really. this is really about an important part of this institution. and that is. to whether or not the minority will be given an opportunity to affect and change hopefully. bills that come through this House or whether or not we will be disenfranchised by the manner in which the process is run. I say that as one who has had a very good relationship with the chairman of my committee where we were able to work on the Leave No Child Behind bill. and we have been able to work in the committee on an ongoing basis. but in this nn. nrtic.1]ar instance. where we had the one opportunity that we will have in this Congress. in this committee. to address a number of important issues. to meet other Members of the committee on the Democratic side of the aisle. we find that we were. in fact. closed out. Again. it is not about the language of this bill. but it is about the opportunity and whether or not we would have been able to offer amendments to this legislation that were important to us. and what we see is a continuing pattern in the House of Representatives. whether it is on the floor of this House. now that has drifted into the committee. on whether or not Democrats will be allowed to offer amendments. What we see is where we represent 49 percent of the country and the districts in which we have been elected. we find out that we are not allowed to offer amendments. We are not allowed to offer amendments if we can win those amendments. We are not allowed those amendments if it means the Republican must take a tough vote. if they disagree with it. We are not allowed to offer those amendments if it means the bill might take an extra few minutes of consideration. -and yet basically the Congress has been working on a TuesdaytoThursday schedule. Why the disenfranchisement of the Democratic Members? I think it is simply because they choose not to have us be able to articulate policy differences that we have with them. This was true on the welfare bill where simply amendments were not allowed. We were allowed a substitute. We all know that legislative gimmick. There are enough things in a substitute that everybody can justify a no vote or a yes vote but with amendments. The same was true on pensions. The same was true on the securities legislation where we just limited access to the Democrats to offer this kind of legislation. One would think this was a politburo. One would not think this was the peoples House where theoretically each and every Member should be given an opportunity to voice his or her concern as legislation moves through the House of Representatives. through the committees. to offer amendments that some of us may like or not like. where we take a vote. a person wins or they lose. This is the politics that rules the House. That is what people come to expect. Now we are simply prevented from raising these issues. This is not just about us and the process of the House. In this case. this was about whether or not we were going to be able to offer amendments to deal with whether or not there would be loan forgiveness for teachers that were trying to attract. that we recognize in the Leave No Child Behind Act. to try to attract teachers to high poverty schools. to try to attract teachers to come in and teach in math and sciences. to teach in special education. all of the areas that we know we have a shortage. Would Americas children. would Americas parents. would Americas schools have an opportunity to be able to attract additional teachers to those areas where there is the shortage. where there is a difficulty with the performance of Americas school children on testing in math and science where we were ranked in the world? We are foreclosed from having that debate and offering that opportunity. The gentlewoman from New York