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Page 52, line 18, after the dollar amount, insert the following: ``(reduced by $450,000,000)''.
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Page 53, line 5, after the dollar amount, insert the following: ``(reduced by $30,000,000)''.
Page 53, line 17, after the first dollar amount, insert the following: ``(increased by $1,011,000,000)''.
Page 53, line 17, after the second dollar amount, insert the following: ``(increased by $1,001,000,000)''.
Page 53, line 20, after the dollar amount, insert the following: ``(increased by $10,000,000)''.
Page 55, line 2, after the dollar amount, insert the following: ``(reduced by $3,000,000)''.
Page 55, line 10, after the first dollar amount, insert the following: ``(reduced by $22,000,000)''.
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Mr. BASS. Mr. Chairman, I would like to start by thanking the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. PORTER), chairman of the subcommittee, for his attention and his patience and, frankly, his extraordinary wisdom concerning the issues that all of us are concerned about here, most notably with this amendment, the issue of special education IDEA funding .
Now, this is the first of two amendments I plan to offer during the course of debate on this appropriation. Now, the bill before my colleagues, as we have previously discussed, raises special ed funding by $500 million from $5 billion to $5.5 billion a year. This amendment that I offer here now will increase that funding further by $1 billion for a total increase of $1.5 billion in the next fiscal year.
Now, at a subsequent time later on this evening, I intend to offer another amendment that will increase special education funding by an additional $200 million. It is my understanding that the gentleman from Wisconsin, (Mr. RYAN) plans to offer another amendment that will further increase this program by an additional $300 million, bringing the total funding for special education up to $2 billion, which is the amount that we agreed to try to attain in the resolution that we passed a couple of weeks ago.
The net effect of this amendment will be to bring the total funding for special education up to $6.9 billion. This amendment increases funding for this critical program to $6.5 billion, which would be a 16.5 percent total of the total cost of the program.
Now, I am not going to spend more than 30 seconds reviewing the need for this important program. All of us in this body share the need to adequately address the issues of IDEA and education for those who are less fortunate than all of us here in this body this evening.
As one who has been committed to attaining as much funding for this program as possible, I would like to see full funding of special education, the full amount, $15 billion a year. But I also understand the limitations under which we operate in this body, and I want to support this appropriation; but I want to support it with the maximum amount of funding that I can possibly find for this important program.
Now, there are 14 other programs that my amendment targets for reallocation in order to increase funding for special education. Not one of these programs, not one of these programs that I ever targeted for reductions would be reduced below the spending level for the fiscal year we are in today.
[Time: 17:45]
Some of them would still have significant increases.
I want to see us reach our goal of full funding of special education. I am proud of the fact that since I have been in Congress we have increased special education funding from about $2.3 billion, and, hopefully, after this amendment passes, up to $6.5 billion, or 16.5 percent of the total amount we need to provide in this body.
I just want to urge my colleagues to join me in passing this amendment, understanding that these funds will free up money on the local level for other programs, for property tax relief, for classroom construction, for hiring of teachers. It is a good amendment, its time has come, and I urge the Congress to adopt it.
Mr. PORTER. Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to the amendment.
Mr. Chairman, I know how strongly the gentleman from New Hampshire feels about the importance of the IDEA program, and I share those feelings. But in order to increase IDEA State grants by over $1 billion dollars, it would cut Job Corps $42 million, health professions $69 million, Ryan White $65 million, abstinence education $10 million, CDC by $130 million, SAMSHA by $60 million, mental health by $15 million, Impact Aid by $78 million, the Teacher Empowerment Act by $450 million, charter schools by $30 million, Indian education by $30 million, Gallaudet University by $3 million, vocational ed by $22 million, and Howard University by $7 million.
Now, Mr. Chairman, the reason these programs are funded above the budget request or above last year's level in the bill is that these programs are doing a good job of meeting the needs of people. We have increased funding for IDEA at a very, very fast rate. It has been a high priority for us. We have added $2.7 billion of new funding to IDEA during our tenure; and we have brought the additional per pupil percentage costs to serve disabled children up to 13 percent. It was at 9 percent in 1995. Other Federal funding brings it to 18 percent. We have put this particular account, IDEA , at a very, very high priority.
We have added a $500 million to the bill already. We would like to, and hope that in some time in the course of the process of considering this bill in conference with the Senate and in negotiation with the White House, we can add more. At this time, I think that the cuts that would be made in very important programs would be very severe and would not serve the interests of the persons served by those programs at all well. These are needed monies in every case.
For that reason, while I respect the gentleman's concern about IDEA , I believe that this amendment should not be adopted.
Mr. BASS. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?
Mr. PORTER. I yield to the gentleman from New Hampshire.
Mr. BASS. I respect the gentleman's concern about this, and I would only point out that we have time and time again in this body said that special education is, if not our very highest priority, it is certainly at the very top of the list. And I would only point out that at least five of these programs that the gentleman mentioned still have increases in them, and not one of them, not one of them is cut from the level of spending from last year.
I agree with the gentleman, it is not an easy job to propose an amendment like this, but I think special education is important enough to me that it deserves to be funded at a $2 billion increase.
Mr. GOODLING. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word, and I rise in opposition to the amendment.
As the leader of trying to get the Congress to put its money where its mouth has been for 20 years in the minority, and now 6 years in the majority, I have to rise to oppose this very effort for several reasons.
First of all, this takes money from the Teacher Empowerment Act. The whole purpose of the Teacher Empowerment Act is to get quality teachers in the classroom so that, as a matter of fact, we do not keep increasing the number of young people who get placed into a special needs class.
Charter schools. They are working, and they are working to make sure that we do not increase the number of children who end up in a special needs program.
Job Corps. Last chance for these young people. And let me tell my colleagues, if we do not succeed on that last chance, the cost of taking care of those people will even be far greater than the cost of meeting special needs.
Impact Aid. We take it from them one place and give it back to them in another. So I think this is positively the wrong way to go if we really want to reduce the number of special needs children.
Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words, and I rise in opposition to the amendment.
Mr. Chairman, I very much respect the gentleman from New Hampshire, and I respect his concern for special education. I have a special interest in special education which I have to confess. I have a nephew who is a Down syndrome child, and I know many other good friends who have children in need of the same kind of services. But
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This chart shows, as the gentleman indicated, that just 36 days ago this House promised that it was going to spend $7 billion on special education. This bill contains $5.5 billion for special education. We were trying to offer an amendment to add $1.5 billion to special education, not by cutting all of the programs that the gentleman from Illinois has just listed but by changing this equation.
We wanted the majority party to take 20 percent of the tax cuts which they are voting through this place this year, eliminate 20 percent of those tax cuts so that we could fully fund not only education for the handicapped but so that we could fully fund other education and health and worker training programs. We could have funded all of those amendments by simply scaling back the size of the tax cut by 20 percent. And before anybody has a heart attack, 73 percent of the benefits from those tax cuts are scheduled to go to the richest 1 percent of people in the country. The other 99 out of 100 are only scheduled to get 27 percent.
Now, that is a better way to finance this amendment than the way that the gentleman is proposing. A couple of hours ago, when the gentleman from Kansas (Mr. TIAHRT) was on the floor, he presented the House with a chart and he was bragging about how much the majority party has increased funding for the Job Corps. And I stood up and I said, hooray, Allah be praised, hallelujah, everything else I could think of, welcome to the club, because I remember fighting on this floor in 1981 when Ronald Reagan was trying to zero out the Job Corps. So I welcomed the gentleman and I welcomed the conversion of the majority party to support for Job Corps. This amendment, 3 hours later, would cut Job Corps by $42 million.
Job Corps has only a 50 percent success rate, but we are starting out in Job Corps with kids who have been losers 100 percent of the time. So a 50 percent rate of saving kids who otherwise are on a short route to nowhere is a whole lot better batting average than Babe Ruth ever had.
But this would cut Job Corps. It would cut nurses training. It would cut community health funding . That is where poor people go to get their health care because they often cannot go to a normal middle-class hospital and get that health care without begging. It would cut that back. It would cut back the abstinence aid that the gentleman from Oklahoma is so interested in. It would cut back public health funding in the Center for Disease Control. It would cut back funding to fight drug abuse. It would cut back Impact Aid. It would make a $450 million cut in the class size block grant.
The majority has asked us on this side of the aisle why we do not block grant this money instead of requiring that money be spent to reduce class sizes? And we have said because we have seen what happens when we block grant money. First, we block grant it, and then after it is put in one block, then it is cut; and you can escape the political attention that comes from having to cut the programs individually because they are all in one lump.
The CHAIRMAN. The time of the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. OBEY) has expired.
(By unanimous consent, Mr. OBEY was allowed to proceed for 2 additional minutes.)
Mr. OBEY. So we have evidence right here in this amendment, Mr. Chairman, to verify our fears. We do not even yet have the block grant put into law and already this amendment is trying to cut it by $450 million.
Then it cuts Indian education. It even cuts $3 million out of Gallaudet, the school for the blind. And there are some other cuts.
So, Mr. Chairman, I would point out that even the people who are the beneficiaries of this amendment are asking that it not be passed. The Council for Exceptional Children, that is the group that lobbies for funding for special education is saying, ``Do we want the money? Yes. But do we want it at the expense of cutting these other educational programs? No, we do not.'' PTA is saying the same thing. Our local school administrators are saying the same thing.
I do not blame the gentleman for offering this amendment, because he has a legitimate heartfelt concern. But what this amendment demonstrates is what we have been trying to say all year on this side of the aisle. It demonstrates there is simply not enough funding in this bill for education of all kinds and for health care and for job training. Sooner or later the majority will recognize that. Sooner or later it is going to have to change this equation so that we get a better deal for middle-class taxpayers; and, at the same time, sooner or later we will put back not only the money for special education but the additional money we need for Pell Grants, for Title I, and the list goes on and on.
It, unfortunately, is going to take longer than it ought. But, meanwhile, we should not complicate it by passing this amendment. So I regretfully urge its rejection.
Mr. CUNNINGHAM. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words.
Mr. GOODLING. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?
Mr. CUNNINGHAM. I yield to the gentleman from Pennsylvania.
Mr. GOODLING. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding to me.
I just want to talk a little bit about broken promises. It was not Republicans in 1975 that said to the American people that we will move this legislation and within a few years we will give 40 percent of excess costs. We were not in the majority.
During that entire time, while that majority was here, we never got anywhere near the 40 percent. We never got above 6 percent. At least in the last 5 years we have gotten up to 13 percent.
So do not tell me about broken promises. They were made from the other side of the aisle and they were made back in 1975, and nothing was done when they had a 2-to-1 majority in this Congress of the United States.
[Time: 18:00]
Mr. CUNNINGHAM. Mr. Chairman, reclaiming my time, I sympathize with the gentleman that is offering the amendment. I was chairman of the Subcommittee on Authorization when this bill came through for the first time on IDEA . If my colleagues have ever had a tangle where they put parent groups and school groups together, it is like putting a Persian and a Siamese cat together. It is a very difficult and it is a very complicated bill.
I rise in opposition to the amendment of the gentleman. And I was the IDEA man of the year that year for pushing the bill through. And then later we had a colleague take over that position when I came to Appropriations.
But if the gentlemen on both sides really want to help, and I think they do legitimately, Alan Bersin is the superintendent of San Diego City Schools. He was the appointee of President Clinton on the border. He did a pretty good job, and now he is a superintendent. His number one problem is IDEA in the schools.
Why? Not so much the funding , but we are losing good teachers that want to help special-needs children. They are being forced into the courts by liberal trial lawyers that form cottage organizations and go to these parent groups and demand super Cadillac systems when they may only qualify for a small portion.
We have a school in San Diego where it costs $200,000 a year for one child in special education. And the schools cannot afford that. Quite often, as we increase the money, the trial lawyers come in and steal that money.
I agree with the gentleman, special education does need more money. I would like to work with the gentleman on that. But some of these programs, for example Impact Aid, do my colleagues know how negatively that affects military families and Native American families? It really impacts them negatively. And so, I would say to the gentleman, I agree with the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. OBEY) that these are programs some of us feel are very, very important, Impact Aid, Galludet University. Republicans and Democrats play in a basketball game there every year just to raise a little bit of money.
Howard University. I went out and visited the president. When we talk about minority education, look and see the job they are doing. Over half of the new teachers hired in the last couple of
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We have test scores that are slightly rising. But yet, when a student goes to the university, they have to take remedial education. Why? Because in many cases in our inner cities those teachers are not qualified; and unless we bring up the quality of those teachers, then our students are always going to fall behind, and they are going to be left behind.
So it is with great reluctance I oppose the gentleman. I know it is in good faith. A large part of me wants to support him. But, overall, I have to oppose him.
Mr. BALDACCI. Mr. Chairman, I am a strong supporter of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. I strongly agree that every child deserves the opportunity to benefit from a public education and is able to reach his or her fullest potential.
In addition, I recognize the tremendous cost of this endeavor. If our schools are truly to serve all students, the federal government must increase IDEA funding .
During my years in Congress, I have worked tirelessly to support increases in special education funding . I continue to support increasing funding for special education, and would like to see us funding it at $7 billion this year.
But there is a right way, and a wrong way to go about this.
The right way is to increase overall funding for education so that, in this time of extraordinary budget surpluses, we are meeting the needs of all students.
The wrong way is what is proposed in this amendment--robbing Peter to pay Paul. This amendment takes money from other equally worthy programs in order to pay for IDEA . Simply shifting money around doesn't solve the problem.
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