John Ashcroft

Mr. ASHCROFT

Mr. ASHCROFT. Mr. President, I rise today to encourage my colleagues to join me in congratulating Arthur E. Kruse of St. Louis, MO, who will celebrate his 100th birthday on November 10. Arthur is a truly remarkable individual. He has witnessed many of the events that have shaped our Nation into the greatest the world has ever known. The longevity of Arthur's life has meant much more, however, to the many relatives and friends whose lives he has touched over the last 100 years. Arthur's celebration of 100 years of life is a testament to me and all Missourians. His achievements are significant and deserve to be recognized. I would like to join Arthur's many friends and relatives in wishing him health and happiness in the future.

Mr. ASHCROFT

Mr. ASHCROFT. I thank the Chair, and I yield the floor.

Mr. ASHCROFT. Mr. President, I rise today to address the state of United States-China relations as the summit with Chinese President Jiang Zemin approaches. President Clinton is expected to give a speech this afternoon on United States-China relations, a speech that will, no doubt, continue to defend the administration's policy of so-called ``constructive engagement'' with China. The policy generally posits that there is no alternative for the United States but to accommodate China in virtually any behavior in hope of establishing a good relationship with Beijing. I want to be clear that I certainly do hope that a stable and positive relationship can be established between our two countries, but the administration's China policy of engagement gives little regard to the behavior of China and is putting the prospect of a strong relationship with Beijing at risk. Rather than constructively engage Beijing, this administration's China policy has been advanced at the expense of discarded American principles and lost United States credibility in the international arena. For instance, China has a weapons proliferation record that is unrivaled in the world, distributing weapons of mass destruction in spite of previous nonproliferation commitments. Beijing also maintains trade barriers which continue to block United States goods and United States companies from being involved in the kind of free and open commerce we should have with China. And in the last several years, Beijing has had a human rights record that has resulted in the most intense religious persecution in several decades, and in the silencing of all active political dissidents. The latest State Department report on human rights noted that all Chinese political dissidents had been detained and imprisoned. We have to remind ourselves that there are 1.3 billion people in China and to be without any political dissent in a country that large is indeed a troubling matter. In spite of these distressing areas in our relationship with China, there is near unanimity in the administration that China must be embraced, that it must be accommodated, that it somehow must be honored. Betraying our country's history of leadership in defense of freedom and a stable international environment is not a way to enhance our relationship with China. I believe a strong relationship would be based on mutual respect and trust, but when we constantly compromise, when we constantly accommodate, and when we constantly ignore violations by the Chinese of their responsibilities in the international community and their responsibilities to respect human rights, I believe we don't provide a foundation for a good United States-China relationship. Nuclear cooperation with China is one of the issues for discussion during the summit, and it is an issue of particular concern to me. If the President allows nuclear cooperation with China to proceed, it may be the clearest illustration yet of the appeasement-at-any-cost approach in our present United States-China policy. The President is considering giving China advanced United States nuclear technology in spite of the fact that a CIA report identified China as the world's worst proliferator of weapons-of-mass-destruction technology. This CIA report is not a stale document. This report indicates that the Chinese have been the worst proliferators of weapons of mass destruction, and this report came out last June. The report says: During the last half of 1996, China was the most significant supplier of weapons-of-mass-destruction-related goods and technology to foreign countries. The Chinese provided a tremendous variety of assistance to both Iran's and Pakistan's ballistic missile programs. China was also the primary source of nuclear-related equipment and technology to Pakistan and a key supplier to Iran during this reporting period. The period the CIA report covers is the last half of 1996. In May 1996, just before the period for the CIA report was to commence, the Chinese made a commitment to stop their proliferation activities. In the face of one of their rather notable assurances that they were going to act differently, they continued to persist in their active nuclear technology proliferation and the proliferation of other weapons of mass destruction technologies. Of course, the definition of weapons of mass destruction includes nuclear, chemical and biological weapons. If there is any doubt as to what kind of nuclear-related equipment was provided, the CIA report goes on to state: Pakistan was very aggressive in seeking out equipment, material and technology for its nuclear weapons program with China as its principal supplier. The administration says China has honored its nonproliferation pledge of May 1996. But let me again make clear that the CIA report covers the last half of 1996, the period after China made its so-called nuclear nonproliferation commitment. How the administration can expect to be a credible actor in the international community by saying that the nonproliferation commitment of May 1996 was honored, when the CIA says that after May, China was the principal supplier to Pakistan of equipment, material and technology for a nuclear weapons program--how the administration can say that is consistent with the nonproliferation commitment is beyond me. Since 1985, no President has been able to certify that China's proliferation activities meet the legal requirements that would allow us to start designating them as a nuclear cooperator and to extend to them nuclear exports from the United States. I certainly don't believe China's recent activities warrant such certification now, not in the face of our own Government's report that they were the worst proliferators of components, equipment, and technology related to weapons of mass destruction, particularly nuclear weapons of mass destruction. I might point out that Ken Adelman, President Reagan's Director of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency and a key official involved in the formulation of the original 1985 agreement, also does not believe that China's recent activities warrant the certification for nuclear cooperation to proceed. China has made several nonproliferation promises in recent weeks to reassure the administration. While these commitments have the potential to improve China's proliferation record, China has made and broken nonproliferation commitments for a decade. I think we should first ask that China at least keep its word for some interval of time rather than blindly accept China's most recent nonproliferation promises even though the previous ones have been broken. We all know the potential for this nuclear technology to be used in a variety of settings and ways. I believe China must establish its commitment to nonproliferation in deeds, not just words. Chinese credibility should be established before nuclear-related trade takes place between the United States and China. The administration does not want Chinese President Jiang Zemin to return to Beijing emptyhanded. I think that is kind and generous and warm hearted, but I question the need to give China nuclear technology just to make President Jiang happy. Have we forgotten the summit itself is a major gift to President Jiang, and why are we so anxious to make concessions to China? I hope the President of the United States understands that at stake in the nuclear cooperation debate is the credibility of the United States in combatting the global spread of weapons of mass destruction. Rather than forcefully address this critical national security threat, our administration apparently is downsizing our counterproliferation apparatus and making life uncomfortable for key personnel who have dedicated their lives to protect our country from the spread of weapons of mass destruction. The recent announcement of the retirement of Gordon Oehler from the Central Intelligence Agency is, according to an article in the Washington Post, driven by the administration's disapproval of Mr. Oehler's candor and his honesty in informing Congress of the weapons proliferation activity, not only of China but of other nations. Is our administration so infatuated with charming China at any price that we are willing to ignore the facts presented by our intelligence personnel, and when the facts are troublesome to us, that we make these intelligence officers so uncomfortable that they resign? Government personnel like Gordon Oehler should be praised and thanked for helping defend our country and keeping Congress informed of rising threats to our national security. Mr. President, China potentially has broken every major commitment that it has made concerning the production or proliferation of weapons of mass destruction or the missile delivery systems to deliver such weapons. In light of China's behavior, it is difficult to understand why President Clinton is so eager to accept placebos and questionable promises in exchange for the transfer of valuable and potentially dangerous nuclear technology. The United States needs to be sober and vigilant in dealing with China. A stable and truly constructive relationship with Beijing will be established only when our national security interests are defended and when our commitment to the principles of liberty and freedom is preserved. There is something substantially different between our commitment to freedom and liberty and what is occurring in China. President Jiang's remarks recently indicate that he does not believe that freedom is for all individuals, that freedom is something that is negotiable. He said, ``The theory of relativity worked out by Mr. Einstein which is in the domain of natural science, I believe, can be applied to the political field.'' We in the United States believe in God-given rights that are not relative, and our policy with regard to China should be a policy which is based on credibility and integrity. Appeasement or engagement without integrity is nothing more than a surrender of American principles. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Washington Post article to which I referred earlier be printed in the Record.

Mr. ASHCROFT

Mr. ASHCROFT. Mr. President, I rise to address the United States-Hong Kong Extradition Treaty, a treaty which I have followed closely in its passage through the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. To most Americans, the seemingly nebulous topic of extradition treaties is not particularly important. But let us not be distracted by the complex legal jargon that accompanies this agreement with Hong Kong. Our extradition agreements strike at the very heart of equality before the law, one of our most cherished freedoms in America. Our judicial system seeks to protect the due process right of foreigner and native citizen alike, and our extradition treaties with other nations are based on the premise that any person we transfer to a foreign court system will receive similarly just treatment. The extradition treaty with Hong Kong is thus a very important consideration in assessing the future prospects for freedom in the former colony, now under Chinese rule. We need to consider this extradition treaty in light of China's overall behavior toward Hong Kong in recent months. China's actions to undermine democracy in Hong Kong cast doubt on the future of civil liberties in the British colony. China has declared the elected Hong Kong legislature invalid and appointed a hand-picked provisional legislative body. China's appointed chief executive of Hong Kong, Tung Chee-hwa, has announced additional measures to restrict civil liberties in the colony. Public protests will have to receive prior approval and could be banned to protect ``national security.'' Hong Kong political organizations will be required to register with the government and will be prohibited from seeking or receiving funds from overseas organizations. Under China's definition of a Hong Kong political group, international organizations that expose China's human rights abuses also will be banned from receiving critical foreign funding. In light of these troubling steps taken by Beijing, not to mention China's violation of trade agreements, weapons proliferation commitments, and human rights standards, there are few doubts in my mind that China will bend the rules of this extradition treaty we are considering today. The extradition treaty contains provisions that supposedly preserve due process and the ability of the United States to refuse extradition requests that are politically motivated. As with all international agreements, however, effective enforcement is essential to protect American interests. The strongest treaty language in the world is meaningless without presidential vigilance, a vigilance I find appallingly lacking in the Clinton administration. This administration has failed to confront China consistently on human rights violations, trade barriers, and weapons proliferation. I am concerned that the administration will adopt a similarly lax attitude in the enforcement of this treaty. The Clinton administration's defense of Hong Kong in other areas has been weak at best. The White House has been hesitant to meet with political activists from the colony, and Vice President Gore failed to include Hong Kong in the itinerary of his last trip to East Asia. The 6 million people in Hong Kong deserve better treatment from America. The fight to preserve liberty in Hong Kong could be the battle that determines the outcome of the overall campaign to cultivate democracy in China. Hong Kong serves as yet another example of liberty to over 1 billion Chinese, and the effective removal of that example would set back the march of freedom in China. In considering this extradition treaty, we need to be honest. We are not signing this treaty with Hong Kong alone, but with Beijing. By doing so, we could be placing our stamp of approval on a court system that will, by all appearances, increasingly be an extension of the Chinese Communist Party. The United States has never before signed a treaty to extradite human beings to a totalitarian Communist regime, and I hope this treaty will not turn into the first example of such policy. The United States has been given a great trust as the leader of the free world, and the international commitments we make should reflect our country's commitment to democracy and the rule of law. We in America need to realize that the forces of justice and liberty are at work in the Chinese people just as they have been at work with such stunning effect in other nations around the world. When China embraces democracy--just as South Korea, Taiwan, and Japan have done-- the rule of law will follow. Until that day arrives, it will be good to say we stood by the Chinese people in their struggle for justice and liberty. Effective enforcement of this extradition treaty will be an important step in ensuring that the example of freedom in Hong Kong is preserved for the benefit of all Chinese.

Mr. ASHCROFT

Mr. ASHCROFT. Madam President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. ASHCROFT. Will the Senator yield?

Mr. ASHCROFT. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. ASHCROFT. She had at one time wanted to speak. I don't know whether she would want to be included. I think it might be appropriate to name her in the request in the event she decided to do so.

Mr. ASHCROFT. I noted Senator Feinstein came to the floor earlier. Did you mean to include her in any way?

Mr. ASHCROFT

Mr. ASHCROFT. Mr. President, I rise to raise certain issues about the continuing resolution which is before the Senate. It is a plan to continue the operation of Government for the next several weeks while we finish the appropriations process. As you well know and as most of us are keenly aware, there are matters that are still in controversy in the committees which are convened between the House and Senate to try to arrive at a final appropriations measure or a series of final appropriations measures that we could send to the President. One of those contentious appropriations measures is the Labor, Health and Human Services and Education appropriations bill. In that appropriations measure are a number of important things that relate to the future of the country. I submit, however, that none are more important than the components of this measure that relate specifically to the education of young Americans. If I were to try to rank the responsibilities of a culture, I would have to rank very close to the top of the list the responsibility to prepare the next generation to be successful and to survive. I suppose survival is more important than success, but the idea that we have to prepare the next generation is a very important idea, and we want to do more than just prepare it for survival. I think we want to prepare it for success. The job of preparation has been labeled in a variety of cultures in different ways. I think we expect a lot of the preparation to take place in the homes of America. We expect a lot of parents, and I think we have found that over the course of time we succeed most when we expect a lot of parents and when we get high delivery from parents in terms of what happens to young people. Parents are not expected to do it all, however. We have a pretty substantial education system in the country, public education if you will, which is designed to help prepare young people for their lives in the next century. I think the way in which we address those issues related to education is fundamental. It is very, very important. As the father of three children, all of whom went to public schools, I know how important it is, and I am delighted to say they are all doing pretty well now, although my youngest is still in college so we want to make sure he continues that particular practice of preparation. Education is among the top priorities of a culture. The preparation of one generation, the development of the skills to survive and succeed in the next generation is a top priority, a top responsibility. That is one of the reasons it demands our focus when the Federal Government starts to expand its participation in or indicate its intention to interfere with education as conducted at the local level. When the President of the United States in his State of the Union Message this year indicated that he wanted to have a Federally developed test, that there would be a test given to every fourth grade and eighth grade student across the country and that that test would be used to measure the success or failure of education systems around the country, I think a lot of us sat up and began to take notice. When there is talk about having a Federal test, a sort of one-size-fits-all test, with a group of bureaucrats in Washington deciding what would be tested and what would not be tested and what teaching techniques would be honored in the test and what teaching techniques would not be honored in the test, you begin to raise questions about this most serious and fundamental part of preparing the next generation to both survive and succeed. As a matter of fact, I think there is a role for Government, but I am not sure about a uniformity that comes from Washington, DC, that ignores or displaces the responsibility of parents and local school boards and teachers at the local level. In my previous opportunities for public service, I had responsibilities at the State level. I was Governor of the State of Missouri for 8 years, and education was one of our top priorities. We wanted to do what we could to make sure that we got the best achievement. After all, we did not necessarily want education for the sake of the education community. The focal point of education is the next generation, and how well it prepares them, and so we want to target student achievement. We want to always be sensitive to what will be the operative set of conditions which will result in the greatest student achievement, because if we can get students to achieve and their preparation is high and their skill levels are strong, they will be survivors and succeeders in the next generation. They will be swimmers and not sinkers, and that is very important. One of the things that I had the opportunity to do when I was Governor of my State was to lead the Education Commission of the States. This is a group of officials, legislators, Governors, and school officials from every State in America, and they come together with a view toward finding ways to sort of exchange information. They are able to share about what is working in a particular jurisdiction-- it is a clearinghouse. It is a way to say maybe you ought to try this in your locality. Perhaps it would not work there but perhaps it would. What are ways we can improve? The information we began to develop, at least I began to be aware of, was that perhaps the single most important operative condition in educational achievement by students is the involvement of parents. How deeply involved in the education progress and product and projects are the parents? If the parents really care, if the community, meaning first the family, which is the fundamental building block of communities, and, second, the teaching community and, third, the larger community, which we think of as our towns or neighborhoods, if all of those institutions assign a very high value to education and are deeply involved in education and feel engaged in the educational experience, wonderful things happen to student levels of achievement. I think we could all figure out that would be the case just by using our common sense. But we never leave everything to total common sense when we are considering policy. We like to have surveys and we like to have education studies and control groups and the like. But it is true that when families are deeply involved, when the local culture assigns a very high value to education, when they feel they are engaged, student achievement goes up substantially. Let me give you the results of a 1980 report. It was published in ``Psychology in the Schools'', and it shows that family involvement improved Chicago elementary school children's performance in reading comprehension. Here is the data. One year after initiating a Chicago citywide program aimed at helping parents create academic support conditions in the home--in other words, involving parents in the schools--students in grades 1 through 6 intensively exposed to the program improved .5 to .6 grade equivalents in reading comprehension on the Iowa Test of Basic Skills than students less intensively involved in the program. Now, if you really talk about an improvement which is .5 to .6 over the other students, you are talking about a 50 percent better performance or a 60 percent better performance. That means if normal students went up 1 year of study, these students with activated home environments and engaged parents went up 1.5 years to 1.6 years. That is a real increase. I think some of our manufacturers, if they had the opportunity to get increases of 5 percent, not 50 percent, or increases of 6 percent, not 60 percent, in their output, they would have a tremendous competitive edge. But here is a study which says that when you actively engage parents, you get massive increases in the productivity in terms of the achievement levels of students. This happened when there was a contract signed by the superintendent, principal, teacher, parents, and student. Note the involvement here. The school officials, the principals, the teachers, the parents, and the students. They stipulated that parents would provide a special place for home study, that they would encourage the child by daily discussion, attend to the student's progress in school and compliment the child on such points, and cooperate with the teacher in providing all these things properly. This is real engagement by parents. More than 99 percent of the students in the 41 classes, grades 1 through 6, held such contracts that were signed by all the parties. It is a clear example of the fact that student achievement skyrockets when you have a culture at the local level which is engaged in the development of school improvement policies. This study was from ``School-Based Family Socialization and Reading Achievement in the Inner-City,'' by H. J. Walberg, R. E. Bole, and H. C. Waxman in ``Psychology in the Schools.'' National surveys also demonstrate this. Listen to this: a national survey reveals that parental involvement is more important in high school achievement than is the parental level of education. So what it is really saying is that having smart parents is not important in terms of your educational achievement. Having parents that care about what you are doing and that are involved in the educational process, that is what drives student achievement. A 1989 report found that, although parent education level and income are associated with higher achievement in high school, when socioeconomic status is controlled, meaning if you will take socioeconomic status out, only parent involvement during high school had a significant positive impact on achievement. So the real operative condition of student achievement in the high school years--we already talked about the Chicago study which showed in grades 1 through 6 you had a 50 to 60 percent improvement performance--but in the high school years what really makes a difference is whether or not there is parental involvement. The report documents that students who enjoyed the most parental involvement, the students who had the most reinforcement, the strongest input from their culture, the ones who had the parents who were most likely to be participants, were most likely to achieve higher educational levels than their counterparts who did not have such involvement. It's kind of interesting. They developed a chart there. When parents were highly involved during high school, 80 percent of their students got additional education after high school. You see what this does for students is to energize them. They think, ``Education is important. I am going to get it. I am going to be involved in it.'' When parents were only moderately involved during their children's high school years, 68 percent of the students went on to studies after high school. When parents were not very involved, only 56 percent continued their education after high school. It makes a big difference. These statistics show that students who have lots of involvement by their parents during their high school years were nearly 1\1/2\ times as likely to get some postsecondary education or a BS or BA degree, as students whose parents were not very involved. Further, students of highly involved parents are more than three times as likely to obtain a bachelor's degree than their counterparts whose parents were not very involved. This study used data from the 1980 ``High School and Beyond'' national survey conducted by the National Center for Educational Statistics, particularly focusing on 11,227 seniors who participated in the 1980 ``High School and Beyond'' survey, and in the 1986 followup documentation. What we really have here is a fundamental understanding that when parents are involved in education, when parents are engaged in the educational process, students achieve. What I want to point out is when you have the President of the United States starting to nationalize schools by saying we are going to have a test and we are going to ask that everyone do, in school, what will show well on this test, you begin to say that you are going to test for a particular standard. And you begin to say we are going to make that standard up in Washington-- not by parents, not by local school boards, not by interested parties in the community at the local level--but we are going to have a group of bureaucrats in Washington, DC, who are unreachable, uninfluenceable by local parents, who are going to design a test. Of course, you know in order to pass a test you have to know basically what the test is wanting and you have to teach what the test wants. Once our schools begin the process of responding to the drummer in Washington, DC, teaching what that drummer wants instead of what is wanted at the local level, what is going to happen to parental involvement? How involved, how engaged, how important are parents going to feel when local school boards are no longer relevant? How successful are our students likely to be when their parents lose interest because no matter what they say they can't affect or change or direct the approach of their educational institutions, their schools? I think the strong indication here is that when you start to dislocate parents from the process and put in their place a bureaucracy--one that is thousands of miles away in many instances--you pull the rug out from under student achievement. The ultimate objective we are talking about is preparing the next generation to be survivors in the next century; to be succeeders; to be swimmers, not sinkers. And they do that best when their parents and the community is directly involved, has confidence in and is engaged in the education process. The absence of parental participation in that is, I think, a real threat to the success of our students. Let me just take you to some more examples. California and Maryland elementary schools achieved strong gains in student performance after implementing partnership programs which emphasize parental involvement. If we say to the parents, ``You don't matter, you can't affect curriculum, you can't affect what is being taught, we are going to decide all that in a bureaucracy in Washington, you just do as you are told,'' how much parental involvement are we going to be able to expect? I think people will really respond if they have the opportunity to look carefully and participate in the development of curricula and the way the schools are run. Here is the data from California and Maryland, both of which show strong gains in student performance after implementing what are called partnership programs, which emphasize parental involvement. A 1993 study describes how two elementary schools implemented a partnership program which emphasized two-way communication and mutual support between parents and teachers, enhanced learning both at home and school, and joint decisionmaking between parents and teachers. Students at the Columbia Park School in Prince Georges County, MD, ``who once lagged far behind national averages, now perform above the 90th percentile in math, and above the 50th percentile in reading, after implementing the Partnership Program. Here is kind of an interesting thing. There are already ways to find out whether you are doing well, according to national averages. There are all kinds of tests that schools can implement in order to find that out. What we are really saying here is that the operative condition is not some set of new computers or new set of reading materials. The operative condition is a culture at the local level which assigns value to education and is engaged and is working to improve education. Instead of students that were below the 50th percentile, they are now operating above the 90th percentile. That is a formula for success instead of failure. That's a formula for survival instead of difficulty in the next century. Here is another example, one from the other end of the country. ``In its fourth year of the [partnership] program, the Daniel Webster School in Redwood City, CA, shows significant gains in student achievement compared to other schools in the district. Webster students have increased their average California Test of Basic Skills math scores by 19 percentile points.'' That means if they were at the 50th percentile before the partnership program, they were at the 69th percentile at the next testing period. They did this by having a situation in which parents were directly and substantially involved. ``In language,'' the study continues, ``most classes improved by at least 10 percentile points. `` What I am really trying to say here is that there is a fundamental truth that when local governments and local education officials and parents are working together to determine the curriculum and to energize student involvement and behavior, they produce success rates in school which are literally phenomenal. Remember the first of those rates we talked about in Chicago? That was a 50- to 60-percent improvement over the other group that had not had as much parental involvement in the local program. If we take the component of parental energy and parental involvement out of our schools by divorcing from local school boards the opportunities to shape curricula because we have a national test which requires that everyone teach material which will help them survive on the next national test, we will have done a grave injustice to the next generation. An increase in parent involvement leads to significant gains in student academic achievement in virtually every instance. Here is one from Mississippi elementary schools. According to a 1993 report of the Quality Education Program, which is designed to increase student success in school by increasing parental involvement, student success was strengthened in seven school districts in Mississippi in 1989. Between the 1988-89 school year, which was before the program was implemented, and the 1990-1991 school year, the 27 participating schools, which serve 16,000 elementary school students, showed a 4.5- percent increase in test scores over control schools. So, just implementing a program for increasing parental involvement resulted in a very important increase in test scores in Mississippi. That program provided, of course, a number of ways to engage parents in the process of being involved in schools. I think it is a real, serious threat to parental involvement, local control and a community and culture which cares about education when we say we are going to take the fundamental decisions about what is taught and how it is taught out of local hands and we are going to put it into the hands of bureaucrats in Washington, DC, who operate under a third level wing of the U.S. Department of Education, individuals appointed by the Secretary of Education but really accountable to no one. Even our U.S. Department of Education stated, in a 1994 report, that ``when families are involved in their children's education in positive ways, children achieve grades and test scores, have better attendance at school, complete more homework, and demonstrate more positive attitudes and behavior.'' That sounds like the ultimate in what you could want. Here you have children who achieve higher grades and test scores, have better attendance, they complete more homework and they demonstrate more positive attitudes and behavior. How do you get that? You engage parents and the local community in building a culture which reinforces student achievement. Sadly, Federal testing takes away local control and parental involvement. Education should be focused at the local level, where parents, teachers, and school boards can have the greatest opportunity to be involved in the development of school curricula and testing. The Federal Government should not impose its will on teachers, parents and school boards about the education of their children. We should not have a dumbed-down national curriculum imposed through the back door of a national test. There are ways to test. There are ways to test at the local level. There are ways to compare local achievement to the performance of individuals in other districts and across the Nation. There are tests which are given across the Nation on a voluntary basis. The Iowa Test of Basic Skills, the Stanford test, and a number of other tests are developed by private agencies. But they don't impose curriculum because they are selected at the option of the schools. The hallmark of the education proposals being considered by the Congress, rather than being proposed by the President, is a hallmark of local control and parental involvement. Look at the things that we have been discussing in the U.S. Congress. We have discussed the idea of scholarships for District of Columbia school children, giving parents more choice and more opportunity for assigning their students to schools that are productive and schools that are helpful to their children. That is empowering parents. It is putting parents in the driver's seat instead of the nickel seats. I believe we want parents in those front seats. We have proposed education block grants, which send dollars to the classroom instead of the bureaucracy and move decisions from Washington to the local school districts. The Senate of the United States voted not long ago to send the resources to the States, where the money could be invested in classrooms, where the money could be invested in teachers, where the money could be provided to make a real difference rather than to say that the power would be somehow drawn to Washington, DC, or somehow provided to bureaucrats in some part of the Department of Education. Here is another thing we are considering, A-plus accounts, that allow parents to save for their children's education and to make choices on spending resources for education. Another thing we have been talking about is charter schools, creating innovative schools that are run by parents and teachers, not a bureaucracy. We have had an effort moving schools away from bureaucracy towards more parental involvement, more and more active participation, hands-on control and engagement by parents. That is the design of what we have been talking about in the U.S. Congress. Then the President comes along and says no, we need a program where we develop a test nationally. The fact of the matter is, if you test nationally you are going to drive the curriculum nationally. You have to teach to the test, in order to do well on a test. National testing transfers power from parents and schools to Washington. It is exactly the opposite of what we are trying to accomplish in education. States, educators, and scholars all stress the importance of local control in education decisions, and many of them stress the dangers of losing such local control. Gov. George Allen of Virginia has developed widely acclaimed Standards of Learning for English, mathematics, science, history and social studies. And he stated the importance of educational reform at the grassroots level: If there is one important lesson we have learned during our efforts to set clear, rigorous and measurable academic expectations for children in Virginia's public school system, it is that effective education reform occurs at the grassroots local and State level, not at the federal government level. That was in a letter sent to Congressman Goodling on July 29 of this year. Here is Theodore Sizer, a liberal critic of the national standards agenda, who acknowledges that who sets the standard and controls the curriculum is crucial. Listen to Ted Sizer, a noted education authority: The ``who decides'' matter is not a trivial one. Serious education engages the minds and hearts of our youngest, most vulnerable, and most impressionable citizens. The state requires that children attend school under penalty of the law, and this unique power carries with it an exceedingly heavy burden on policymakers to be absolutely clear as to ``who decides'' and why that choice of authority is just. We are dealing here with the fundamental matter of intellectual freedom, the rights of both children and families. Who decides? Theodore Sizer asks the question and says it is critical. Very few times would we let someone decide what is done who is not paying the bill, not footing the tab. I mean, we usually say that the person who makes the order gets to select from the menu. Local governments and parents and communities pay 92 to 93 percent of all the bills for elementary and secondary education in the United States. The Federal Government pays about 7 percent. In most settings, we would say that the person who is picking up the tab should be able to pull the items off the menu to decide what he is getting. But through the back door of a national test developed by the Federal Government, we are in the position of saying to people, ``Yeah, you're going to have to continue with your 93 percent of the cost, but we're going to tell you what you have to teach and how you have to teach it; we're going to tell you we know better than you do, and we'll be able to figure out from a thousand miles away in a conference room in Washington what is better for you and your family and your community than you will.'' We have kind of gotten the genius of the democracy inverted. The genius of a democracy is not that the Government would impose its values on the citizens, it is that the citizens tell Washington what to do. I think in this instance, the citizens ought to say to Washington, ``Wait a second, we are picking up 93 percent of the bill here, we should make the decisions and we can make the decisions and we can make them effectively. To yield to the bureaucrats in Washington, DC, the right to say what is going to be taught and how it is going to be taught in our schools, no thank you.'' It would be a disaster. As a matter of fact, it has been known and understood to be a bad idea for a long time. Nearly 30 years ago, education Professor Harold Hand accurately framed the issue when discussing whether the Federal Government should institute a national testing program. ``The question before us then,'' Professor Hand said, ``is whether the national interest would be best served by embarking on a national achievement testing program in the public schools at the certain cost of relinquishing the principles of states and local control and of consent as these now apply to the public schools.'' He points out clearly that there is a certain cost and the cost is giving away your ability to control what is taught and how it is taught. This is being asked of the American citizens in spite of the fact we are going to say you still have to pay for it. ``Ninety-three percent of the tab is still going to be yours, but we want to make that decision.'' I don't think there is any question about the fact that national tests will lead to a national curriculum. Acting Deputy Secretary of Education Michael Smith has said: To do well on the national tests, curriculum and instruction would have to change. So what we have here is an admission by those who are promoting the national test. Their admission is that they would expect to change the curriculum and to change instruction in order for people to do well on the national test. That is one of the reasons I think the Missouri State Teachers Association, made up of 40,000 teachers in the State of Missouri, has stated: The mere presence of a federal test would create a de facto federal curriculum as teachers and schools adjust their curriculum to ensure that their students perform well on the tests. Here you have it, 40,000 classroom teachers from the State of Missouri saying, ``Wait a sec, thanks but no thanks. We don't need a nationally directed curriculum that disengages the community, that disengages the parents, that disengages the local school board, principals and teachers and mandates from Washington what to teach and how to teach it.'' Test researchers George Madaus and Thomas Kellaghan point out that some advocates for national tests advance the argument that ``a common national examination would help create and enforce a common national core curriculum,'' and that ``national examinations would give teachers clear and meaningful standards to strive for and motivate students to work harder by rewarding success and having real consequences for failure.'' What that really means is, if they are giving them a common national examination and help enforce a common national core curriculum, then the local level is no longer respected. It means that individuals at the local level are no longer meaningful. How long can we expect parents to stay engaged and to be active participants and to endorse and reinforce what their children are doing if the parents are told, ``No thanks, we don't care for your input, we'll settle this with a group of folks behind closed doors in a bureaucracy in Washington, DC.''? Prof. Harold Hand, speaking on behalf of the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development in opposition to the development of national tests, said: A national testing program is a powerful weapon for the control of both purposes and content of curriculum, no matter where in the nation children are being taught, and so leads to increasing conformity and restriction in curriculum. When President Carter was considering a national test proposed by Senator Pell of this body in 1977, here is what Joseph Califano, Carter's Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare, warned--Joseph Califano is not thought to be a person who was some kind of iconoclast, who was more interested or only interested in States rights, but here is what he warned: Any set of test questions that the federal government prescribed should surely be suspect as a first step toward a national curriculum. That is a substantial statement from a Secretary of Education. He goes on to say, and this is striking: In its most extreme form-- These are the words of Joseph Califano, President Carter's Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare. He says about a national test: In its most extreme form, national control of curriculum is a form of national control of ideas. I find that to be a rather striking statement. I don't know whether I would go so far as to say that, but I think it is pretty clear that we want parents and teachers and community members and local school boards to be in charge of what is taught and how it is taught in our local schools, especially when they are being asked to pay 93 cents out of every dollar committed and devoted to schools. I can't imagine saying to the parents, ``You don't matter anymore.'' I really don't like what that says to children when we tell them, ``Really, the kind of decisions about your future are so important we have to relegate them to Government in Washington, DC; we can no longer trust your parents to make those kinds of decisions.'' I think all of us know we want to say to children in their school system, ``Respect your parents; there are things you can learn from your parents, and if your parents are engaged with you in a partnership for learning, your test scores and your achievement will go up and your life will have a higher quality.'' It puzzles me to think that the President of the United States is suggesting that we should go to a national testing operation which would, as a matter of fact, drive curricula, and begin to take that control away from the local governmental entities and deprive parents of their participation in the development of educational opportunities for their young people. There is a fundamental responsibility of our culture to help provide a basis through education for the survival of our children in the next century. If we do that effectively, we will be successful as a culture. But if we destroy the capacity of our young people to do well by nationalizing our schools and pulling the rug out from under those who would otherwise at the local level be able to make good decisions regarding schools and be involved with their children's education, we will have done a disservice to this country, not only in this generation but in the next. H.D. Hoover, the director of the Iowa Basic Skills Testing program, has noted: There is a whole history of trying to use tests to change curricula, and the record there is not particularly sterling. So the point is with the idea of national tests, you drive national curriculum. Curriculum is, of course, the fundamental reason for school. It is what is being taught, and if we drive and we dislocate parents and we take people from the local community out of the situation where they can determine what is taught and how it is taught, we will have impaired the quality of our schools very, very significantly. I am not against tests, and I don't want it to be said that I am against tests because I don't think you can really have education unless you test to see whether or not you make progress. There was a time, there was a set of fads that came along that said we don't ever test anybody, we just hope they get excited about something and learn it and we don't give grades. You remember that. I unfortunately missed that. I was graded on almost everything I did. But while I was teaching in college--and I spent 5\1/2\ years as an associate professor, assistant professor--there were some of these fads that came through where students wanted to take things pass-fail; just be really vague about our performance here and don't tell anybody whether we did well or did poorly. Frankly, it was a cover for doing poorly. They would never ask that they take a course pass-fail if they thought they were going to do well in it. But, of course, they were going to slide by and, of course, suggest they take this pass-fail. I don't blame them. That makes sense. So I am not against testing. I am in favor of testing. I think you can overtest. You can spend all your time testing and do too little teaching. You can spend too much resource in testing and too little in teaching. But in a balanced program of testing and teaching, providing accountability both for teachers and students, and providing accountability to the community, I am in favor of that. But if you take that accountability and you impose it from a thousand miles away by a bureaucracy in Washington, DC, and you render powerless the people who are out there on the front lines, and particularly parents and school board members, and you basically have what you would call a national school board, so that they make the decisions in Washington--and the role of the local communities is to put up the money, but Washington decides what will be taught and how it will be taught--I do not think that really provides the energy and the incentive to get the job done well. As a matter of fact, I think it would be a disaster. It is kind of interesting. A few years ago we had a rush to impose national standards. I may talk about that a little bit later. People rejected national standards because they were afraid there would be a change in curriculum based on national standards. Well, that is kind of interesting. Terrance Paul of the Institute of Academic Excellence, has stated it this way: Standards don't cause change. . . . Tests with consequences cause change. Of course, some people may say, ``Well, the President wants to give this test, but there won't be any consequence.'' Well, why give the test? Frankly, we want something from our testing --and testing time is a precious resource--we should use it effectively. We should use it at the local level to test, to see whether or not we are achieving what we want to do at the local level. And to take that precious resource and to fill it up with tests from the national level, that you say will not have any consequence, makes little sense. And to use resources--it costs to make tests. The President's program, all told, is to be in the $50 to $60 million range to develop tests for reading and mathematics. I think I could develop a test to see if people could add, subtract, and multiply and divide, and if they could read for a little less than that. Be that as it may, I am not one of those that would be on this national testing development group that the President has suggested. The important thing is that no one should devise a test for the local community unless the local community asks for it. A local community has a great opportunity to purchase tests and to deploy tests, administer tests that are either developed at the local level or developed by some nationally known, well-reputed testing agency in the United States, like the Iowa Test of Basic Skills or some other analogous or similar organization. There are a number of States--48 as a matter of fact--that have developed or are developing State standards and State tests. To switch in midcourse from these would have a disruptive impact on those State tests and State standards, because you are going to have to teach to the national test if we have a national test. Teaching to that test will pull the rug out from under teaching that is designed to prepare individuals for the tests at the State level by supplanting or superseding State and school district efforts. A national test will undercut their efforts and impose a one-size-fits- all system. I have a little story I like to tell about one size fits all, because I think one size fits all is one of the greatest ruses in history. It is a joke. If you were to order pajamas for your family out of a catalog that says, ``one size fits all''--and for all five members of mine, if you were to send the same set, I guarantee you that we would rename ``one size fits all'' to ``one size fits none.'' The value of this country is that we have a lot of different approaches to things. It is a major strength of this country. What would happen, for instance, if we were to take our computer industry-- just an industry, for example--and decide that we were going to test all the computers in the same way, that they all had to have the same thing in them, they all have to meet the very same standards? We would end up without competition, first of all. And we would end up without improvement because once people learned what the test was going to be, they would teach to that test and everybody would be uniform. We would not want it in industry. And we would not want it in automotives because we know that when people compete and they do what works best for them, we get the kind of energy in the economy and get the energy in our culture that provides for improvement. Problems that would result from a national test are a national curriculum or national education standards. The National Assessment of Education Progress' science tests results show how the test can drive curriculum. Here is an article from today's Washington Post. Still, Education Secretary Richard W. Riley cautioned that the results may not be as dismal as they first seem. Student scores in science have improved substantially since the early 1980s, he said, and many schools are revamping how they teach the subject. He said that revamping it, because of the new science test that the national group put out, that they went down in performance and they went against the trend that they had been going up in. So we had a trend during the early 1980's of going up. Now they come out with a new test and they do not do well. And the Secretary of Education says, ``Well, they'll do better on the new test because they'll start teaching to this test.'' Well, first of all, if they were doing well on the other tests--or better--I wonder if we want to change and mandate the change through this curriculum or through a curriculum change that is imposed by this test, the National Assessment of Education Progress, the NAEP, test, which was in the paper today. The scores were reported yesterday by the National Assessment Governing Board. ``Education officials said the latest test results present stark new evidence of a problem in how science is being taught.'' They brought out a new test and they found out students did poorly on the new test. So they said: ``Well, we have got to change how things are being taught. Too many schools, they contend, still emphasize rote memorization of facts instead of creative exercises that would arouse more curiosity in science and make the subject more relevant to students.'' This whole endeavor suggests that they intend to shape how things are taught from the education bureaucracy. And they admit that that is the way change will take place. In discussing proposed changes to the National Assessment of Education Progress, back in 1991, Madaus and Kellaghan described the danger caused by the momentum of instituting a national test. Here is their quote. Current efforts to change the character of [the National Assessment of Educational Progress] carry a clear lesson regarding the future of any national testing system. That is, testing and assessment are technologies. . . . Further, the history of technology shows us that ``Once a process of technological development has been set in motion, it proceeds largely by its own momentum irrespective of the intentions of its originators.'' What it means is you put a test in place, and people have to teach to that test. It develops a momentum of its own. And we are seeing that confessed in today's Washington Post. Students have been going up in their science evaluation, and the National Assessment of Educational Progress program comes in with a new type of science exam that says, ``We don't care what you know, we want to find out different things about how creative you might be.'' And they all of a sudden say that the science performance falls off because they do not want to know what students have learned, they want to know how curious they are. I think it is important for us to do more than develop curiosity in students. It is important for us to develop learning in students. And the previous tests were showing that learning was taking place and the test scores were going up. So they changed the test, redirected the objective from learning to curiosity. And when it shows that they are not as curious as they wanted them to be, they say, ``Well, we're just changing the curriculum by keeping and giving this test over and over again, and pretty soon we will have curious students, although they may be ignorant of the kinds of facts we would want them to know.'' This is a serious problem. Experts point out that Great Britain's attempt to provide a national exam ``with a wide-achievement span seems to have been unsuccessful, not only in the case of lower-achieving students but is reported . . . to have lowered the standards of the higher-achieving students.'' These experts, Madaus and Kellaghan, point out that in Great Britain the attempt to provide a national exam with wide achievement span, meaning over broad areas, seems to have been unsuccessful not only in lower-achieving students--meaning that lower-achieving students are not doing better because of the exam--but also it is saw the standards of higher-achieving students go down. This is a lose-lose situation. It would be one thing if we were able to pull up the guys at the bottom at the cost of the guys at the top, maybe losing some, but this says that when you have these broad exams in Great Britain, not only do the people at the bottom do worse, the people at the top do worse. In assessing the Educate America program in their 1991 report, these same experts dispel the argument that a national test would not lead to a national curriculum: Educate America claims that their national test would not result in a national curriculum since it would only delineate what all students should know and what skills they should possess before they complete secondary school but would not prescribe how schools should teach. This assertion is disingenuous [according to the experts]. European schools have national curricula but do not prescribe how schools should teach. Through a tradition of past tests, however, national tests de facto constitute a curriculum and funnel teaching and learning along the fault lines of the test. Two acronyms describe what inevitably happens: WYTFIWYG--what you teach for is what you get--and HYTIHYT--how you test is how you teach. If you are going to test for something, that is what you end up teaching. These experts indicate that all over the continent of Europe, when you nationalize the testing you nationalize the curriculum. Dr. Bert Green, professor of psychology at Johns Hopkins University notes: The strategy seems to be to build a test that represents what the students should know, so that teaching to the test becomes teaching the curriculum that is central to student achievement. A nationalized curriculum dislocates parents. It sets them out of the operation, along with other members of the local community. They no longer have an influence on the central core of what a school is about, that is, what is taught and how it is taught. And once that is done, I think we make a very serious inroad into the potential for student achievement. Lyle V. Jones, a research professor in psychology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, fears that efforts to recast classroom curricula will focus simply on teaching what will likely produce higher scores on national tests. Let me quote Professor Jones: ``The pressures to teach what is being tested are bound to be very large and hard to resist,'' he said, ``Particularly in schools where the teachers and principals know the results will be published, the focus will be on getting kids to perform well on the test rather than meeting a richer set of standards in mathematics learning.'' Marc F. Bernstein, superintendent of the Bellmore-Merrick central high school district in Seattle, worries that a national test will lead to a national curriculum. Here is what he said: I know that the president has not recommended a national curriculum, only national testing, but educators know all too well that ``what is tested will be taught.'' The point here is the choice. Someone will decide what is tested; someone will decide what is taught; someone will decide how it is taught. Will it be a group of individuals made up of parents, teachers, business people, community officials, who want a local school board to have a sensitivity to what is happening in the local school, and when something goes wrong can try something else, can mediate a problem? Or will it be a group of individuals in Washington, DC, in some conference room in the Department of Education, inaccessible, who do not pay the bill but who will impose a national curriculum that is not correctable at the local level when it flops, when it does not work, when it fails students, when it fails the community but still is enshrined in either the egos or in the minds or in the theories of people 1,000 miles or 2,000 miles away? That is the question. It is simple. And I think we do not want to develop some backdoor entry to a national curriculum. These experts, expert after expert that I have been quoting, they say that if you develop the test, you develop the curriculum, you specify the curriculum. The superintendent of the Bellmore-Merrick central high school district in Seattle says: I know that the president has not recommended a national curriculum, only national testing, but educators know all too well that ``what is tested will be taught.'' President Clinton remarked on May 23, 1997, at an Education Town Hall meeting--these are the words of the President: The tests are designed so that if they don't work out so well the first time, you'll know what to do to teach, to improve and lift these standards. Let me read that again. This is a quote from the President of the United States. The tests are designed so that if they don't work out so well the first time, you'll know what to do to teach, to improve and lift these standards. Basically, you will know, says the President, to change your curriculum. You will know how to teach differently. You will know how to remove the opportunity to decide curriculum from the local level and forfeit it to those who make the test in Washington, DC. The Association for Childhood Education International notes, ``What we are seeing is a growing understanding that teaching to tests increasingly has become the curriculum in many schools.'' William Mehrens, Michigan State College of Education Professor, has noted that one major concern about standardized achievement tests is that when test scores are used to make important decisions, teachers may teach to the test too directly. Although teaching to the test is not a new concern, today's greater emphasis on teacher accountability can make this practice more likely to occur. While basic skills are the most important thing for kids to learn, the proposed national tests contain high-risk educational philosophies and fads. It would be one thing if we thought the test would work or this test would help us get to the basics. I am afraid that they do not hold such promise. John Dossey, chairman of the President's math panel to develop the math test, served on the 1989 National Council of Teachers of Mathematics group that criticized American schools' ``long-standing preoccupation with computation and other traditional skills.'' We have been too long preoccupied with addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. He is saying teaching kids the multiplication tables-- whether 12 times 12 is 144 or 15 times 15 is 225, or 6 times 7-- demonstrates our ``long-standing preoccupation with computation and other traditional skills.'' I believe that is what we need in our schools. We need to teach young people to be able to multiply, subtract, add, divide. His focus on what advocates call ``whole math'' would teach our children that the right answer to basic math tables are not as important as an ability to justify incorrect ones, to argue about incorrect ones. The ability to add, subtract, multiply and divide should be replaced, it seems, by calculator skills in students. These are ``whole math'' individuals, the people who want to start students with calculators so they are never encumbered by the responsibility of learning addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. They can always do it on a calculator. The proposed math test is steeped in the new, unproven ``whole math'' or ``fuzzy math'' philosophy, deemed by some as ``MTV math,'' which encourages students to rely on calculators and discourages arithmetic skills and has resulted in a decline in math performance. Now, this is the sort of approach to mathematics taken by a group that the President has had working on these exams for quite some time-- he has spent millions of dollars in trying to develop this, and we have talked about this previously. The last meeting convened at the Four Seasons Hotel here in Washington, DC. Their approach to mathematics is similar to this ``new-new math'' or the ``fuzzy math'' or ``MTV math,'' depending on how you characterize it. This fad was tried, unfortunately, on our Defense Department dependent students. The Defense Department has to operate schools all over the world in order to make it possible for the dependents, the children of people who work in our defense operation around the world, to get an education. Here is what happened when they implemented this program in the Defense Department schools. The median percentile computation scores on the Comprehensive Test of Basic Skills taken by more than 37,000 Department of Defense dependent students one year after the Defense Department introduced whole math dropped 14 percent for third graders, 20 percent for fourth graders, 20 percent for fifth graders, 17 percent for sixth graders--this is not a laughing matter-- 17 percent for seventh graders and only 8.5 percent for eighth graders. Now, that is the whole math, that is the new-new math or the fuzzy math. That is the kind of math that they want to test for in the new national test. It means you will have to be teaching it in order to survive on the test, and if we reorient the curriculum of this country across America to the so-called new math or fuzzy math woe be unto our ability in the next century for our young people to be able to make simple calculations. These are the folks who say that calculation is not important, we have been too long focused on calculation. I disagree as totally as I could with the statement that we have been too focused on calculation. I think the average parents in America know we have not focused enough on teaching kids to add, subtract, multiply and divide. We have not overdone it. The fact we are in trouble in terms of mathematic or arithmetic literacy in this country indicates we have not focused on computation of skills, not that we have. Five hundred mathematicians from around the Nation have written a letter to President Clinton describing the flaws in the proposed math test. They say that the committee members who developed the test relied on the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics standards, which represents only one point of view of math and has raised concerns from mathematicians and professional associations. No. 2 in their concerns, the test failed to test basic computation skills. The President said we want to have a national test, and the math teachers, 500 of them, took a look and said, wait a second, these tests fail to test basic computational skills under the assumption that all the students will know these things already. I think that would be a tragedy to try to drive a curriculum, try to test under the assumption everybody knows how to add, subtract, multiply and divide, so you give everybody a calculator in the test. One California parent's 11th grade daughter, who was in the whole math curriculum in a local district there, was diagnosed as having second-grade math skills. The mother panicked and got a teacher and began to teach at home what would not be taught in the schools. Parents in Illinois were advised to let their son work with a school counselor--and here is the reason they were told to do so--because ``he values correct and complete answers too much.'' I think counseling is indicated in a situation like that--but it is not for the student. There should be some counseling that goes on for the so-called educators. Lynne Cheney, former chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities, who, incidentally, tried to develop a national set of history standards and found out how difficult it was and how inappropriate it would be to try to impose the proposed standards on the students, has become an opponent of national standards and national tests. She wrote in the Wall Street Journal not long ago about Steven Leinwand, who sits on the President's math panel. Leinwand had written an essay, explaining why it is ``downright dangerous'' to teach students things like 6 times 7 is 42, put down the 2 and carry the 4. Simple multiplication. Such instruction sorts people out, Mr. Leinwand writes, ``anointing the few'' who master these procedures and ``casting out the many.'' Now we have people who are developing the national test who have such a low view of the talent pool in America that they say only a few students can learn 6 times 7 is 42, put down the 2 and carry 4. That kind of low understanding and low evaluation of America's future is not what we need in designing a curriculum through the back door of a national test. It is just that simple. Students all over the world have arithmetic literacy. They have the capacity to compute fundamentally. They have the fundamental capacity to do arithmetic, addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. And to say that only a few could do it in the United States and is to undervalue our most important resource--that's the students who will make up the population of this great country. I have to say this. If we have very, very low expectations of students, that will drive the levels at which they produce. There are books full of studies that say, if you have low expectations, you get low output; if you have high expectations, you get much better performance. Let's not turn this country over to a group of individuals who think that most American students are simply incapable of learning 6 times 7 is 42, put down the 2 and carry the 4. I was pleased to have an opportunity to speak with the Senator from West Virginia here earlier this afternoon. Senator Byrd made a speech in June of 1997, a speech on a whole math textbook called Focus on Algebra. After looking at the textbook, he called it ``whacko algebra.'' We have his entire speech. It is an interesting speech in which he points out some of the real problems we have with this approach. He says: A closer look at the current approach to mathematics in our schools reveals something called the ``new-new math.'' Apparently the concept behind this new-new approach to mathematics is to get kids to enjoy mathematics and hope that ``enjoyment'' will lead to a better understanding of basic math concepts. Nice thought, but nice thoughts do not always get the job done. Recently Marianne Jennings, a professor at Arizona State University, found that her teenage daughter could not solve a mathematical equation. This was all the more puzzling because her daughter was getting an A in algebra. Curious about the disparity, Jennings took a look at her daughter's Algebra textbook, euphemistically titled ``Secondary Math: An Integrated Approach: Focus on Algebra.'' . . . After reviewing it, Jennings dubbed it ``Rain Forest Algebra.'' I think the Senator may have been right when he said, ``I have to go a step further and call it whacko algebra.'' If that is the kind of new-new math, if that is the kind of whole math that this national test would impose upon citizens across this country and would literally say to individuals, ``This is what we will test, and you will have to take this test and you will be wanting to teach to this test,'' I think it is a terrible disservice to the next generation. Now, the President has not only indicated he wants to have a mathematics test or a test of arithmetic or skills in that area, he wants to have a reading test. What I fear about tests is that they not only drive what is taught but they drive how it is taught. How you teach reading makes a tremendous difference in terms of your capacity in your life-long endeavor with the written word. Of course, we know that being able to read instructions and being able to read things is far more important than it has ever been in history. One philosophy for teaching reading is what is called the ``whole language approach,'' which doesn't really focus on phonics. One of the real advantages of the English language is that we have letters. There are some languages that do not have letters. They just have pictures. Some of the Oriental languages just have pictures, and the picture, if you have never seen it before, really can't tell you how to pronounce it. It won't tell you what it might mean. It won't give you many clues of how to look it up because it is just a picture. If you don't recognize it, you don't recognize it. With English, on the other hand, if you understand it phonetically, you look at it and you know that there are certain sounds that are associated with certain letters and combinations of letters. As you sound words out, it also provides a pretty easy way to look it up because we have the ability to have the dictionary and it is in alphabetical order. There is an order. There is a logic to phonetically understanding the English language. It is the capacity to take the language, a word you have never seen before, sound it out, and deconstruct the word and figure out what it means. I think it would be a tremendous disaster if, instead of allowing schools to decide how they want to teach English, if we were to have a test constructed and from that test drive an approach to teaching English, for instance, that ignored phonics. Now, I have to say this, and I have said it before, and I guess I will be saying it many times: I don't think we ought to have a national test even if it were one that I thought perfectly represented what ought to be taught. The point I think we have to understand is that parents deserve the right to shape the curriculum and the way it is taught at the local level. When parents have that right and can be involved in it, they are far more likely to be engaged in the educational effort and we go back to our primary understanding that when parents are involved in the education effort, students' achievements skyrocket. The whole purpose of education is not for teachers. It is not for school boards. It is not for parents. The purpose of education is for students. We should be doing those things which drive student achievement and performance, and parental involvement in the system drives student achievement and performance. Now, the President of the United States has come before the American people and he has said that the test would be voluntary. He says that these are going to be voluntary. Well, frankly, he wants everybody to pay for the tests. So you have to pay for them whether you would use them or not. I think if he really wanted them voluntary, he would say, if you don't use the test, you could get the money that would be spent if you did use the test to do other things. So a school district that had plenty of tests and knew what its weak points were and how it wanted to advance the interest of its students could spend the money on something worthwhile to them from what they already knew. Most good school districts know where they are weak and where they are strong and they know what they need to do. The President said, though, this is going to be a voluntary test, you don't have to worry. Don't worry about a test that drives curriculum all over the country and makes it uniform and monotonous and dumbs down things to a single, low common denominator on the national level, because that won't happen. ``This is a voluntary test.'' That is the line, that is the statement, that is the oft-repeated sales pitch of the Department of Education. However, it is pretty clear that that is really not their intention. While the President has stated that it will be voluntary, and clearly indicated that in his remarks in the State of the Union message, he went to Michigan on March 10, 1997, just a couple months later, and said, ``I want to create a climate in which no one can say no.'' So much for your voluntary test. The President says he wants the test to be voluntary, but he goes to Michigan and says, ``I want to create a climate in which no one can say no, in which it's voluntary but you are ashamed if you don't give your kids the chance to do [these tests].'' I really think we need to get an understanding of whether this is voluntary or not. I think when you open the backdoor through national testing to the development of national curriculum and you displace the capacity of parents, teachers, school board members, and community members to develop what they want taught and how they want it taught, and to correct it when mistakes are being made at the local level, displace that with a national system of tests that directs curriculum and say they will be voluntary so there is not a problem, but then you go to Michigan and say you want to create a climate in which no one can say no, I will guarantee you that you properly raise suspicion on the part of the American people. When the President of the United States decides what is voluntary and what is not voluntary and he tells you in one instance he wants it to be voluntary, but in another instance ``no one can say no,'' you have to consider the fact that the President has a lot of power, a lot of resources and a lot of money, a lot of grants, and other things that are available to the President through his department. He can say, oh, that is one of those school districts that decided they didn't need our testing system. You know, that indicates they are not very progressive, so they should not be able to participate in this, that, or the other thing. Or we certainly would not want to favor them with a visit from governmental leadership from the executive branch--or any number of things. The President himself says, ``I want to create a climate in which no one can say no.'' Now, I have heard about choices where no one can say no, and I have heard about people who were so attractive that no one could say no. But I don't think we want to create a situation or a circumstance in education where we have a nationally driven, federally developed test by bureaucrats in Washington, to which no one can say no. William Safire talked about the ``nose of the camel under the tent.'' He wrote, ``We're only talking about math and English, say the national standard- bearers, and shucks, it's only voluntary.'' Safire said this: ``Don't believe that; if the nose of that camel gets under the tent, the hump of a national curriculum, slavish teaching to the homogenizing tests, and a black market in answers would surely follow.'' It sounds to me like he has listened to what the President said in Michigan. Voluntary? Hardly. It is the nose of the camel, and a nationalized, federalized curriculum--a Federal Government curriculum will follow. If a State chooses to administer the tests, all local educational agencies and parents will not have a choice whether they want to participate. The truth of the matter is that this is the dislocation of parents, school boards, and communities, and it is investing power in Washington, DC, in a new bureaucracy to control curriculum and testing across the country. Other Federal ``voluntary'' plans have ended up becoming mandatory. A Missouri State Teachers Association memo says: ``Experience in dealing with federal programs has taught us to be wary. For example, the 55 mph speed limit was voluntary, too--on paper, at any rate. In practice, the speed limit was universally adopted because federal highway funds were contingent upon states' `voluntary' cooperation. The point is that what is voluntary often becomes mandatory when you have federal programs and funds involved.'' The Department of Education stated in a September 16 memorandum that it is willing to use the leverage of Title I funds to gain acceptance for the proposed national tests--Federal funds linked to the proposed national tests. Voluntary? Hardly. The memo says that the Federal agency will accept the national tests as an adequate assessment of the proficiency of Title I/educationally disadvantaged funds. This offer is totally inappropriate. It demonstrates how desperate the Department is to gain acceptance for these flawed Federal tests. Use of the tests is being linked directly with Federal funds. Today, the use of the tests for Title I students is ``permitted,'' or suggested, perhaps even encouraged. It is only a matter of time before it could be required. An October 1990 study from the Ohio Legislative Office for Education Oversight revealed that 173 of the 330 forms, 52 percent of the forms, used by a school district were related to participation in a Federal program, while Federal programs provide less than 5 percent of education funding. Here is what we have already. We have a National Government that is intrusive. It is responsible for more than half of the paperwork load that teachers are struggling under, and that school officials are struggling under, which displaces resources that might otherwise go to the classroom. So you have 52 percent of the paperwork at the Federal level and only 5 percent of the funding, according to the 1990 Ohio Legislative Office of Education Oversight. I don't think we need additional invasion by Federal bureaucrats to displace what ought to be done, which can be done, what is being done and can be done far more successfully at the local level with a Federal bureaucracy. What happened when we tried this through a Federal bureaucracy in the past? What has been our success at imposing things we thought might be good? It is kind of interesting to look at the so-called ``National Standards for United States History,'' which were assembled in hopes of providing some sort of standard for history teaching. These standards were funded in 1991 by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Department of Education for just over $2 million. Here is what we got for our $2 million. If you think you want to invite the National Government in a bureaucracy, through a test, to begin to develop a curriculum and to set standards that have to be followed in every district, think about what happened to this effort to develop national standards. The National Standards for United States History do not mention Robert E. Lee, Paul Revere's midnight ride, and did not mention the Wright Brothers or Thomas Edison. Who made the grade with the revisionists, the educationists, the liberals who wanted to rewrite history? Well, Mansa Musa, a 14th century African king, and the Indian chief Speckled Snake had prominent display--but not these others. I would not be against adding some people to our history books, but I am against deleting the Wright Brothers and Robert E. Lee. The American Federation of Labor was mentioned nine times, and the KKK was mentioned over a dozen times. It was obviously an attempt to set standards that would make students ashamed of their country instead of giving them an awareness of what their country was all about. Lynne Cheney criticized the National Standards for U.S. History, in spite of the fact that she was the chairperson of the National Endowment for the Humanities when the Endowment contributed to the funding for the standards project. She said that the U.S. history standards were politically biased. She cited a participant in the process who said the standards sought to be ``politically correct.'' What a tragedy that we would take an effort to our classroom that we were trying to make politically correct and impose that instead of the truth to people about our history. Cheney also said that the standards slighted or ignored many central figures in U.S. history, particularly white males. The standards were uncritical in their discussions of other societies. The standards were unduly critical of capitalism. The economic system, which has carried the United States into a position where it is the best place in the world to be poor, not the best place to be rich. You can get richer in some other place, but the poor of America are better off than the rich in many places around the world. But, no, the standards were unduly critical of capitalism, so writes Lynne Cheney, chairman of the National Endowment for Humanities at the time it funded this effort to build standards. In testimony before a subcommittee of the House Economic and Educational Opportunities Committee, she reiterated concerns about the history standards and concluded that national standards were not needed in any subject area, much less any entity to certify or approve them. So that is what Lynne Cheney, who had experience with national standards, said when they tried a bureaucracy in Washington to dictate a history standard. She said it was a failure. She spent our money doing it, but she had the courage to stand up and say it ended up with a bunch of politically correct stuff that was inappropriate to use as teaching tools for our children. Finally, George Will attacked the failed history standards as ``cranky, anti-Americanism.'' The English/language arts standards were such an ill-considered muddle that even the Clinton Department of Education cut off funding for them after having invested more than $1 million dollars. Over and over again, when there have been national efforts to establish standards, create curriculum, to develop tests, they have to suspend the effort because they get bogged down in politically correct language, they get bogged down in the compromise of politics and end up not speaking to the students' real needs, which is for education. Can you imagine a politically driven math test that is not concerned about computing--adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing--but is concerned about making sure that we don't offend anybody? Frankly, we need to be able to add, subtract, multiply and divide. To say that it doesn't matter whether you get the right number, that if you just get close, sounds a little bit too much like Washington, where people around here mumble ``close enough for Government work.'' Well, if you are having your appendix taken out or you are having your teeth filled by a dentist, you hope they would not have that attitude toward mathematics or anything else. There are a lot of things that are relative in the world, I suppose. But one thing is not--we ought to be able to say to people that 2 plus 2 equals 4, and 2 plus 3 doesn't. It is hard to say to students that there are any absolutes left in the culture, but at least we ought to be able to say to them there are some absolutes. You can find them, at least, in the mathematics curriculum. Well, USA Today reported that according to Boston College's Center for Study of Testing, children are already overtested, taking between three and nine standardized tests a year. The truth of the matter is, States and communities are already testing students. They are keenly aware of the need to improve performance, and to subject students to a national test on top of the testing that is already being done is to basically impose a resource allocation judgment by the Federal Government on the people who are at the State level and at the local level, who know how much testing is appropriate. Can you imagine that the State and local folks have been testing too little purposely for a long time in hopes that there would someday be a Federal test arrive which could take a day of their activities, or 2 days of their activities, and take resources and funding away from the teaching curriculum and add it to the testing curriculum? No, I don't think that is the case. I think we have been having teachers and school officials deciding how much testing is appropriate, testing that amount, making sure that they had tests that could compare them to relevant groups. We talked at the beginning of my remarks today, and that was some time ago, about school districts that have moved up dramatically compared to the national average. National averages are available today and international averages are available today. As a matter of fact, when we went to the Washington Post to talk about the new science results in the United States, we found out that we fell against international averages. We fell in large measure because we decided we would test for something else instead of testing for the hard science that the international averages are involved with. If there is in this proposal for national testing--and obviously it is the one that is now being debated between the House and the Senate in the conference committee--a proposed national body which would develop a national Federal test with the Federal Government directing it through the Department of Education, it is important to note that this is still going to be Government. They may say that it is independent. It is not. It is the National Assessment Governing Board which would continue to get Federal appropriations for all of its activities through the National Center for Education Statistics, an arm of the U.S. Department of Education. This board, although it would have Governors and some local officials on it, would be a limited group of people that would operate in Washington, DC, under the direction and control of the Department of Education. The Secretary of Education would still make final decisions on all board appointments. The Assistant Secretary for the Federal Office of Education Research and Improvement would still exert influence as an ex officio member of the National Assessment Governing Board. While the House voted overwhelmingly by a vote of 295 to 125 to not allow one cent to go for national testing, the Senate-passed proposal would provide a new assessment governing board which would add a Governor, two industrialists, four members of the public and remove five individuals who are currently members of the board. But it would still operate in the U.S. Department of Education under the National Center for Education Statistics. The Secretary of Education would still make final decisions on all board appointments. The Assistant Secretary would be the person who drove the ship as an ex officio member of the board and as, obviously, a representative of the Department through which all the funding would flow. Now, the National Education Standards and Improvement Council, part of Goals 2000, was repealed April 26, 1996, a little over a year and a half ago, over concerns that it would function as a national school board, establishing Federal standards and driving local curriculum. I think it is fair to say that we had good judgment there. We said, wait a second, we don't want something that establishes a national curriculum, that establishes national standards. We saw how bad that was with the history standards. The history standards were repudiated unanimously by the Senate because they were just politically correct items that were revisionist history, designed, as I said, to make students ashamed of the country rather than to inform students about the country. And at the time the National Education Standards and Improvement Council was repealed, because there were concerns it would function as a national school board, it was said on this floor that ``it is logical to presume that once a national standard has been set and defined by some group which has received the imprimatur of the Federal Government, you will see that standard is aggressively used as a club to force local curriculums to comply with the national standards * * * it was a mistake to set up the national school board, NESIC.'' Well, if it was a mistake to set up a national school board under the nomenclature of an education standards and improvement council, it is a mistake to establish a national school board under the label of a test development committee. It was further said in the Chamber that ``the National Education Standards and Improvement Council should never have been proposed in the first place. It was a mistake and we should terminate it right now. The Federal Government does not have a role in this area, and it certainly should not be putting taxpayers' dollars at risk in this area.'' Well, if that was a mistake in 1996, where they had no authority to propose a national test to be imposed on every student in America to drive curriculum, it is certainly a mistake now. And the number of letters or the identity of the letters which label the federal bureaucracy doesn't change the facts. A single national test for students was rejected by the only congressionally authorized body ever to make recommendations on national testing. The National Council on Education Standards and Testing was authorized in 1992 by the Congress, and its final report concluded that ``the system assessment must consist of multiple methods of measuring progress, not a single test.'' Whether you allow test development and implementation through the Department of Education or through the National Assessment Governing Board, the fatal flaw is that we would be allowing the development of a test which would drive curriculum. When you drive curriculum from Washington and you make it impossible for people at the local level to decide what they want taught and how they want it taught and you deprive them of the ability to correct mistakes--if it is not working, they can't change it because it is all driven from the national level-- you are forfeiting a great opportunity to make the kind of progress educationally which will make those who follow us survivors and succeeders. As I said when I had the opportunity to begin making these remarks, the genius of America is bound up in our ability to hand to the next century, the next generation, a set of opportunities as great as ours. I firmly believe we have that opportunity and we have the responsibility to make sure that the next century is characterized by individuals who are capable. If we decide to spoil that opportunity by ruining our education system with a one-size-fits-all, dumbed-down curriculum that is driven by national, federalized testing that comes as a result of a bureaucratic organization in Washington that could only honestly be labeled as a national school board, we will have failed in our responsibility to protect the future of the young people in this country. Some have concluded that the public is demanding what the President says he wants to provide. Nothing could be further from the truth. I seldom cite polls in things that I say because I don't want to be poll driven. I do not want to follow polls around. I want to try to find out what is the right thing to do. Living by polls is like driving down the road looking in the rear view mirror to find out what people thought a little while ago. We need to be driving down the road finding out where we need to be and where we want to go. But there are those who say that, well, we can't say to the American people they should not embrace the President's proposal because the American people want the President's proposal. Here is what the Wall Street Journal said about that. This was quite some time ago: The Wall Street Journal/NBC national poll found that 81 percent of adults favor President Clinton's initiative, with almost half the public strongly in favor and only 16 percent opposed. But when asked whether the federal government should establish a national test--with questions spelling out the pro and con arguments of a standard national accountability vs. ceding too much power to the federal government--the public splits 49 percent to 47 percent, barely in favor. This is fewer than half the people. With just one moment of explanation, all of a sudden the so-called 81 percent endorsement crumbles. When the real facts of the proposed federalized national test mandated by a group of folks acting as a national school board, in effect, in Washington, DC, reach the American people, they are going to know that is not the recipe for greatness. That is a recipe for disaster. I have to say this is a little bit like the health care program that got so much support early on, but the more people knew, the less they liked it. One academic writer whom I will have an opportunity to quote when I speak again at another time says that the worst thing that could happen for the President would be for this plan for testing to be implemented because people would find out the disaster that it would really cause in the event it were implemented. Our primary objective must be preparing the next generation educationally for the future, and we cannot pull the rug from beneath the components that make education a success-- parental involvement, a strong culture supporting education at home, local control, the ability to change things that are failing, and the ability to adjust at the local level. A national bureaucracy cannot get that done. It is something that we must not embrace. National federalized testing is a concept that must be rejected if we are to save the opportunity for the future for our children. I yield the floor.

Mr. ASHCROFT

Mr. ASHCROFT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I be able to proceed as in morning business for up to 8 minutes.

Mr. ASHCROFT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. ASHCROFT

Mr. ASHCROFT. Mr. President, I rise today to address the disturbing prospect that President Clinton will make the necessary certification to Congress that would permit so-called nuclear cooperation between the United States and China. I really believe we should be honest with each other. This is a political decision, driven by the United States-China October summit rather than the facts of China's weapons proliferation record. The prospect of nuclear cooperation with China is perhaps the clearest illustration yet of the trust but don't verify approach behind the administration's China policy. The administration does not want Chinese President Jiang Zemin to return to Beijing emptyhanded. But I question the need to make concessions to China in the first place. China has a weapons proliferation record that is unrivaled in the world. Chinese trade barriers continue to block U.S. goods and companies. In the last several years, Beijing has had a human rights record that has resulted in the most intense religious persecution in several decades, and of course it has also resulted in the silencing of all political dissidents in China, according to our State Department reports. In spite of such behavior, nuclear cooperation with China could become a reality. Beijing has made a host of nonproliferation promises to acquire United States nuclear technology, and the administration is applauding China's efforts. Sadly, China's promises of all new export controls and assurance that no nuclear technology will be sent to unsafeguarded nuclear facilities will do little to stem China's proliferation activity. China has made and broken nuclear nonproliferation commitments for over a decade, and they have broken them with great regularity. Little confidence can be placed in China's new nonproliferation promises until Beijing backs up such commitments with action. Disregarding the issue of whether or not China can be trusted, each of China's nonproliferation commitments is deficient in important areas. China's new export controls are untested, and will be administered by agencies with close ties to the China National Nuclear Corporation-- that is the organization which has helped Iran prospect for uranium and that is the organization which transferred ring magnets used for uranium enrichment to an unsafeguarded nuclear facility in Pakistan. So we are alleging that we are going to have nonproliferation. Then we are going to put it in the hands of the organization which has been a massive proliferator of nuclear weapons technology and capacity. The ring magnet transfer was in apparent violation of United States law, although the Clinton administration did not impose sanctions as a violation of China's commitments--so we had a violation of our law--it was a violation of China's commitments under the Nuclear Non- proliferation Treaty and our administration refused to impose sanctions. I just don't think we can continue to turn our head away from the violations and then turn our head toward this country and say, well, in spite of all that we'll wink and establish a new level of cooperation. With regard to China, China has had great cooperation with Iran on nuclear issues. The administration is allowing China to use nuclear blackmail to obtain United States nuclear technology as it relates to Iran. China will consider forswearing new nuclear cooperation, it says, with Iran, such as the sale of a nuclear reactor and a plant for uranium conversion, if the administration will allow United States- China nuclear cooperation to proceed. They are threatening to proliferate more nuclear weapons and proliferate more nuclear technology if we don't give them additional nuclear information and additional nuclear technology with which they could violate agreements like they have regularly. China's pledge to join the Zangger committee says more about what China is unwilling to do rather than signaling a new commitment to nonproliferation. China has joined the Zangger committee and not the Nuclear Suppliers Group because Zangger members can continue to export nuclear technology to countries which keep some nuclear facilities from international inspection. If they were to pledge to join the Nuclear Suppliers Group that would be a different thing. But the Zangger committee has the loophole necessary to proliferate nuclear technology with the potential of nuclear weaponry to places that don't have international inspection. China is the only nuclear weapons power in the world that has not joined the Nuclear Suppliers Group and they remain unwilling to do so. The national security arguments for United States-China nuclear cooperation are far from compelling, and the economic rationale is exaggerated. As the Washington Post notes this morning, United States big business is lobbying hard for nuclear cooperation with China in hopes that this market will boost exports. I want United States businesses to benefit from possible export markets, but China is seeking nuclear cooperation with the United States to increase the number of bidders for and to lower the price of Chinese power projects. Once China obtains nuclear technology, they will reverse engineer our products and they will start building those products themselves and be our competitors in other export markets. As Dan Horner of the Nuclear Control Institute notes in the Post article this morning, China is only seeking enough technology to develop a domestic production capability. The United States should not enter into nuclear cooperation with China until real and observable progress is made in China's nonproliferation record. Before we send our nuclear technology to China, Beijing should cut off all nuclear cooperation with terrorist states, such as Iran. Before we send our nuclear technology to China, Beijing should maintain at least for 1 year an exemplary nonproliferation record for all weapons-of-mass-destruction technology, including technologies other than nuclear--chemical technologies and biological technologies. The threat of weapons of mass destruction has become a broader issue than that of nuclear-proliferation technology alone. Chemical weapons, biological weapons and the missile systems to deliver those weapons are all part of the weapons-of-mass-destruction threat. China's improvements in nuclear nonproliferation are questionable at best, but even the administration can't defend China's broader weapons-of-mass- destruction nonproliferation record. Even though the administration argues that China has honored its May 1996 pledge not to transfer nuclear material to unsafeguarded nuclear facilities, doubts persist about China's recent nuclear-proliferation activity. A June 1997 CIA report released this year states that: During the last half of 1996-- After its assurances of May 1996-- During the last half of 1996, China was the most significant supplier of [weapons of mass-destruction]-related goods and technology to foreign countries. The Chinese provided a tremendous variety of assistance to both Iran's and Pakistan's ballistic-missile programs. China was also the primary source of nuclear-related equipment and technology to Pakistan, and a key supplier to Iran during this reporting period. Clearly, the Chinese record does not develop a sense of confidence in those who observe her objectively, and it certainly does not justify a bill of good health that nuclear cooperation would signify. Therefore, I hope the President does not accord to China a standing it does not deserve in a way that would jeopardize our capacity to restrain the proliferation of nuclear technology. Mr. President, I yield the floor. Mr. BOND addressed the Chair.

Mr. ASHCROFT

Mr. ASHCROFT. Mr. President, I rise today to encourage my colleagues to join me in congratulating Ida Baird of Overland Park, KS, who will celebrate her 95th birthday on October 27. Ida is a truly remarkable individual. She has witnessed many of the events that have shaped our Nation into the greatest the world has ever known. The longevity of Ida's life has meant much more, however, to the many relatives and friends whose lives she has touched over the last 95 years. Ida's celebration of 95 years of life is a testament to me and all Missourians. Her achievements are significant and deserve to be recognized. I would like to join her many friends and relatives in wishing her health and happiness in the future.

Mr. ASHCROFT

Mr. ASHCROFT. Mr. President, families are the cornerstone of America. The data are undeniable: Individuals from strong families contribute to the society. In an era when nearly half of all couples married today will see their union dissolve into divorce, I believe it is both instructive and important to honor those who have taken the commitment of ``till death us do part'' seriously, demonstrating successfully the timeless principles of love, honor, and fidelity. These characteristics make our country strong. For these important reasons, I rise today to honor Jewel and Rudy Rush of Rolla, MO, who on October 19, 1997, will celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary. My wife, Janet, and I look forward to the day we can celebrate a similar milestone. The Rushs' commitment to the principles and values of their marriage deserves to be saluted and recognized.

Mr. ASHCROFT

Mr. ASHCROFT. Madam President, as I mentioned when I was last on the floor, the campaign finance reform bill we are debating will not produce meaningful political reform. The McCain-Feingold proposal will not lead to reform because it leaves the single greatest obstacle to competitive elections untouched. In fact, it will strengthen the single greatest obstacle to competitive elections. That obstacle is the advantage of incumbency, which is now and always has been the single greatest perk in politics. An incumbent has access to the podium, access to the news media, and the ability to create name identification. Any time you limit political spending, any time you limit what the competitor can generate in terms of information, you strengthen the incumbent. I submit that Hershey doesn't need to advertise that it sells chocolate, but a new competitor does. And those who inhabit public office are well-known for the fact that they inhabit it. But new individuals need to have the ability to create that same awareness in the mind of the public. Campaign finance legislation that restricts core political speech strengthens incumbents by limiting the ability of challengers to increase their own name recognition and to highlight the incumbents' voting record on issues of concern to the voters. So, if you say you cannot spend much money against an incumbent, and your supporters can't talk about his or her voting record, then you can't match the incumbent's advantages of being on C-SPAN in the Senate Chamber, of moving through the news industry with press releases. If Senators want true political reform, the answer is to limit terms, not to limit speech. Let's limit politicians, not the citizens. We should be talking about limiting the tenure of people in public office, not the first amendment rights of the citizens of this country. To this end, this afternoon, I have filed an amendment to the pending campaign finance reform legislation that would authorize States to impose term limits on their Senators and Representatives. However, my amendment will not come up for debate or a vote if cloture is invoked on the McCain-Feingold bill. Accordingly, a vote for cloture on McCain- Feingold is a vote against term limits. Let me just review for a second why term limits would provide the true reform. Incumbency is the real problem in our system. It is the single greatest perk. Committee assignments and the ability to control committees relates to incumbency, and committee assignments translate into big bucks. The value of incumbency is as strong or stronger, now that we have had modest reforms over the last several years, than it was before. As a matter of fact, when campaigning was wide open 100 years ago the value of incumbency wasn't anything like what it is now. Madam President, 94 percent of all Members who seek reelection get reelected, and an individual challenging them, if limited in what he or she can spend, is at a disadvantage. Madam President, 94 percent is 19 out of 20. That means that the only true elections are for open seats. Term limits are a tried and tested kind of reform: Forty one Governors, 20 State legislatures and the U.S. President have term limits. It is time that the Congress be term limited as well. Term limits mean no more politics as usual. As a matter of fact, studies done by research institutes indicate that we would have had the balanced budget amendment to the Constitution long ago if we had term limits, which would have brought new individuals to Washington who voted the way people do in their first two terms in office instead of voting the way they do after they have spent term after term after term here and begin to endorse the bureaucracy and to sanction it and to support it. I believe we should not limit the amount that citizens can spend on politics. We should limit the amount of time politicians can spend in Washington. I will ask that individuals vote against cloture on the McCain- Feingold bill so we would have an opportunity to vote on term limits. A vote for cloture on McCain-Feingold will be a vote against term limits. A vote against cloture will at least provide us with the opportunity to bring forward amendments. Those amendments, including my term limits amendment, hold the promise of giving us a real opportunity to amend and to otherwise change the election procedures for the benefit of the people. The people deserve honest elections. They first deserve enforcement. So much of what is being talked about these days is the violation of laws in existence. We don't need to proliferate the laws in order to enforce them. But we do need to give opportunity to individuals who are not a part of the system now. That cannot be done by limiting what they can spend to get known or limiting what their supporters can spend to expose the record of those who are in office. But it can be given to them if we decide America has enough talent to allow it to circulate individuals through the Senate and the House, and by term limits, to say that no individual should be a lifetime occupant here, that we should give individuals an opportunity to seek election and that is the kind of campaign reform which will really benefit America. I yield the floor. Mr. BINGAMAN addressed the Chair.

Mr. ASHCROFT

Mr. ASHCROFT. Mr. President, I rise today to salute a most deserving and life-affirming ministry, the Life Choices Crisis Pregnancy Center in Joplin, Missouri. This ministry began in 1990, and has provided a much-needed service to more than four thousand women and their families. Thanks to a strong commitment and dedication to life, they have saved at least 160 babies from abortion. Many of the services are aimed specifically at young people. One example is a program that encourages abstinence and uses trained counselors who provide information and support for teens and their parents through the Center's 24-hour help line. Additionally, the Center provides free confidential counseling, basic medical services, and lifestyle assessments at its newly constructed facility. America needs more organizations which, like Life Choices Crisis Pregnancy Center, encourage communities to help their own, rather than rely on government-funded programs for assistance. I ask that you join with me today in recognizing not only the achievements of this center, but also the compassionate individuals who give of themselves so selflessly, helping others in their time of need.

Mr. ASHCROFT

Mr. ASHCROFT. Mr. President, families are the cornerstone of America. The data are undeniable: Individuals from strong families contribute to the society. In an era when nearly half of all couples married today will see their union dissolve into divorce, I believe it is both instructive and important to honor those who have taken the commitment of ``till death us do part'' seriously, demonstrating successfully the timeless principles of love, honor, and fidelity. These characteristics make our country strong. For these important reasons, I rise today to honor Betty and Bob Shea of St. Louis, MO, who on November 30, 1997, will celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary. My wife, Janet, and I look forward to the day we can celebrate a similar milestone. The Sheas' commitment to the principles and values of their marriage deserves to be saluted and recognized.

Mr. ASHCROFT

Mr. ASHCROFT. Mr. President, families are the cornerstone of America. The data are undeniable: Individuals from strong families contribute to the society. In an era when nearly half of all couples married today will see their union dissolve into divorce, I believe it is both instructive and important to honor those who have taken the commitment of ``till death us do part'' seriously, demonstrating successfully the timeless principles of love, honor, and fidelity. These characteristics make our country strong. For these important reasons, I rise today to honor Margaret and Ralph Bender of Garden Grove, CA, who on October 11, 1997, will celebrate their 70th wedding anniversary. My wife, Janet, and I look forward to the day we can celebrate a similar milestone. The Benders' commitment to the principles and values of their marriage deserves to be saluted and recognized.

Mr. ASHCROFT

Mr. ASHCROFT. I would like to make a statement regarding the transfer of FUSRAP to the Army Corps of Engineers. Mr. President, yesterday I cast a vote in favor of the Energy and Water Development Appropriations Conference Report for FY 1998 with hesitation. Missouri has a major FUSRAP site in St. Louis which contains nuclear contamination from the Manhattan project and other hazardous waste. For 15 years we have worked with the Department of Energy to clean up this site. During such time I have expressed concern over the delays but in just the past 2 weeks we have come to the point where DOE has begun preliminary cleanup efforts. Given this recent progress, the news of the FUSRAP program's transfer out of DOE has, quite understandably, caused a great deal of distress in the St. Louis community. While I am not questioning the corps' ability to handle the FUSRAP project, concern has been expressed that further delays will be caused by the transfer and undo much of the recent progress. With site recommendations already made, feasibility studies concluded, and contracts let, it is encouraging that the corps will honor the preliminary groundwork laid by the St. Louis community. The plan designed by the community further illustrates their ability to continue to administer the program from St. Louis. Further, I was pleased to learn that the cleanup and restoration of contaminated sites falling within the purview of FUSRAP shall be managed and executed by the St. Louis area Civil Works District of the Corps of Engineers, ensuring that the local community will continue to be very involved in designing cleanup plans at the FUSRAP site and effectively maintain community input in the process.

Mr. ASHCROFT

Mr. ASHCROFT. Mr. President, families are the cornerstone of America. The data are undeniable: Individuals from strong families contribute to the society. In an era when nearly half of all couples married today will see their union dissolve into divorce, I believe it is both instructive and important to honor those who have taken the commitment of ``till death us do part'' seriously, demonstrating successfully the timeless principles of love, honor, and fidelity. These characteristics make our country strong. For these important reasons, I rise today to honor Elsa and James Woodall IV of Springfield, MO, who on October 18, 1997, will celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary. My wife, Janet, and I look forward to the day we can celebrate a similar milestone. The Woodalls' commitment to the principles and values of their marriage deserves to be saluted and recognized.

Mr. ASHCROFT

Mr. ASHCROFT. Mr. President, I rise today to acknowledge and honor the achievement of Mr. Donald J. Babb of my home State of Missouri. Mr. Babb recently received the Shirley Anne Munroe Leadership Development Award from the American Hospital Association and the Hospital Research and Education Trust. Mr. Babb is the chief executive officer of the Citizens Memorial Hospital and the executive director of Citizens Memorial Health Care Foundation in Bolivar, MO. The national award recognizes leaders in executive management positions in small or rural hospitals who have improved health care delivery to rural areas through innovative and progressive steps. Donald has been an instrumental part of the Citizens Memorial Hospital since before its opening in 1982. Under his leadership, the hospital was recognized as one of the ``Top Ten Small Rural Hospitals'' in the Nation, as determined by the American Hospital Association, and has become a fully integrated health care delivery system. Mr. Babb stated that, ``Meeting the needs of the communities we serve has been my No. 1 priority. We have expanded services so that patients have access to quality care for every stage of their lives.'' His dedication to the good health of the people in rural southwest Missouri is obvious through his efforts directed toward improving the quality of health care available in this area. For the past 17 years, Mr. Babb has dedicated his life to the betterment of his community and the people he serves. His work embodies the spirit of the American dream. Mr. President, I ask that Members of the Senate join me in recognizing and honoring the work and lifetime achievements of Mr. Donald J. Babb.

Mr. ASHCROFT

Mr. ASHCROFT. Mr. President. This week, the American Tort Reform Association is holding a series of events to mark the National Lawsuit Awareness Week. Since it was founded in 1986, ATRA has played a valuable role in the effort to restore fairness, balance, and predictability to the civil justice system. To commerate this week, ATRA is hosting a 5k ``Tort Trot'' to benefit the Hydrocephalus Research Foundation. Patients who suffer from hydrocephalus--excess fluid on the brain--particularly have been impacted by law suit abuse. Such patients require brain shunts to drain the excess fluid from the brain. While these shunts have saved the nearly 75,000 hydrocephalus patient's lives, they are made out of silicone which is becoming scarce. The silicone supply used by implant manufacturers is threatened by deep pocket liability lawsuits. Rather than take a risk over a product which they did not design or manufacture, some suppliers are exiting the medical device market. Congress can fix this problem. We can pass meaningful tort reform to make sure that our system no longer lines the pockets of special interests at the expense of those in need of life-saving medical devices. Americans deserve a system of justice, not justice delayed. Those wrongfully injured should have access to a timely remedy from the responsible party. A recent study found cases take about 2\1/2\ to 3 years to be resolved, and even longer in appealed cases. In our present--overburdened--system, 50-70 cents of every jury-awarded dollar goes to lawyers and legal costs. I want to focus my remarks on reforming the product liability system; however, I also want to mention a case which illustrates the need for overall civil justice reform. This case, coined the ``Great New Orleans Train Robbery'' by the national media, resulted in a $2.5 billion punitive damages award against a company found to be only 15 percent at fault in an accident that did not result in loss of life, serious injuries, or major property damage. On September 9, 1987, a railroad tank car containing butadiene, a volatile compound used in making synthetic rubber, was located in a rail yard in New Orleans on tracks that belong to CSX Corp. Since the fire involved hazardous materials, the officials involved made a determination that the best approach was to let the fire burn itself out. In order to avoid any possible harm to nearby residents, an evacuation of those living near the yard was undertaken. The fire lasted 36 hours. By all accounts, fire officials, and corporate representatives undertook heroic efforts to protect life and property. As a result, and as I said earlier, no deaths or significant injuries were involved, and there was only minimal property damage. One year later, the National Transportation Safety Board--the Federal agency charged with investigating transportation accidents--determined that CSX had not caused this accident. In fact, other than providing the track over which the tank car was operated, CSX had no connection to the car. The very day of the fire, a group of law firms brought a class action suit against CSX and other companies alleging various kinds of physical and mental anguish. A jury has now decided that the 8,000 plaintiffs should be awarded $3.5 billion in punitive damages. Although CSX was only found to be 15 percent responsible--presumably because they owned the track--its portion of the punitive damage award is $2.5 billion. How can it be that a Federal agency determines that a company has no responsibility for an accident, another agency declines to assess any safety violation against that company, and yet, this enormous verdict is awarded? The case in New Orleans is but the latest example of why we need to reform the entire civil justice system. We need to place some limits on verdicts. We need to modify the laws regarding joint liability. Finally, we need to provide disincentives for lawyers to sue the deep pocket every time they can. Before I begin talking about product liability reform, Mr. President I ask unanimous consent that articles appearing recently in the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post relating to this almost unbelievable case, appear in the Record at this point.

Mr. ASHCROFT

Mr. ASHCROFT. Go ahead.

Mr. ASHCROFT. Mr. President, I thank you for this opportunity to express myself regarding a challenge which faces the United States of America. It is the challenge of making sure that our political system operates to allow the real representatives of the people, representatives who will express the view and the will of the people, to inhabit the positions of responsibility in Government. The American people, I think, are convinced that the current political system is flawed, and I believe they are right. But I do not believe that the answer is some sort of broad campaign finance legislation that restricts core political speech; or even that says we will penalize people who are wealthy if they want to spend their own money so only the people who are even more wealthy can pay both the penalty and finance their campaign. I believe the focus should be on enforcing existing laws, not creating new ones. This administration's concerted policy of selling access to the White House and using any and all means to raise money is reprehensible. As a matter of fact, I think it is illegal. And the answer to such law breaking is law enforcement, not law proliferation. No doubt the administration's disregard for the law has contributed to public discontent. But at a deeper level, I believe that the sentiment that the system is broken stems from the fact that elected representatives of the people are out of touch with the people on all manner of important issues. I am reminded of Federalist Paper No. 57 in which James Madison emphasized that legislators must be given ``a habitual recollection of their dependence on the people.'' The best way to solve the problems we face, in my judgment, and to provide the much-needed ``recollection of [our] dependence on the people,'' is not through making it impossible for people to express themselves, not by limiting what people can say, not by calling our opponents special interests. It is, though, by doing something that Americans have found to be a workable solution all across this country, and they have embraced it from the very highest office in the land to the very lowest office in the land. It is the concept of term limits. Term limits will provide true reform. I believe that incumbency is the real problem in our system. Incumbency is, and always has been, the single greatest perk in politics. It is the single greatest obstacle to true political reform. It is the way in which people obscure the view of the political universe by inhabiting the podium themselves, and the challenger does not have a chance. Committee assignments translate into campaign contributions; bills mean big bucks; and over and over again, no matter how you structure it, no matter what you say about it, the incumbent continues to win. People who have been on this floor throughout the debate so far as it relates to the so-called campaign finance reform talked about the fact that sometimes incumbents are outspent, sometimes they are not. But if you look at the data, the data are that in 90 percent of the cases-- more than 90 percent of the cases in the Congress--incumbents win. The value of incumbency is as strong as ever and, in my judgment, after witnessing what happens when you have campaign reform, you almost inevitably elevate the value of incumbency. One of the speakers who spoke not long ago here on the floor indicated he wanted to limit the amount of money that would be spent in a campaign. He would have done so voluntarily. Well, of course. People who have 100 percent name recognition will always want to limit the amount of money that is spent. Hershey's doesn't need to advertise that it sells chocolate. It is the new company that needs to advertise. Kleenex doesn't need to advertise that it sells tissues. It is the new one that does. And the incumbents will always want to put limits on challengers. Because whenever you limit what someone can say about you, and you are an incumbent, you have the only access to the marketplace. You have the only access to the podium. It is no revelation to find that those who inhabit public office want to keep the expenditures down. They don't want competition to be able to talk about what they have done or how they have performed, or to compete with them for a position in the marketplace. They don't want the competition to be able to walk in and say, ``We can do a better job.'' We have watched it over and over again. In the 1996 congressional elections, which were heralded as highly competitive, here is the data: 94 percent of all Members who sought reelection were returned to Washington. Incumbency remains the biggest perk of all. The best way to get reelected is to be elected and then to stay here. And if you have a chance once you are here, vote for campaign reform, which makes it harder and harder for anyone else to challenge your message or the information you send out under your frank on the letter that you don't have to pay postage on, financed by the Government. What competition there was, in 1996, came as a result of voluntary departures, not any weakening of the power of incumbency. Term limits, in my judgment, are a tried and tested reform. I happen to be a person upon whom term limits have operated. I was the Governor of my State. It's an awful good job being Governor. If anybody ever offers you the chance to be Governor, take it. I know a number of you in the Senate have previously been Governors. They are such good jobs that people would struggle to keep those jobs. Sometimes jobs are so good that people will do illegal things to keep them. I won't cast any specific aspersions, but we saw an awful lot of activity in the national election in 1996, where people were apparently willing to have dealings with some pretty shady characters, even folks from overseas, even overseas governments, in an effort to keep jobs. It seems to me one of the things we ought to do is to say to people: These jobs don't belong to you. They belong to the people of this country. We ought to level the playing field, occasionally, and make it possible for people to come in. If we are really interested in offering the opportunity to new individuals and to people who have not traditionally had access to power--for example, minorities and women-- we ought to have term limits. Term limits will open the door and we will find out something important about the American people, and it is this: The American people are capable. There is kind of a myth around here that the Senate is an exclusive club of 100 people; somehow 100 people who are exclusively endowed with the capacity to run the U.S. Senate and our country. It is the idea that we are the only smart ones who could get this job done. That is probably as close to coming to real humor as we get in this body; it is laughable. The American pool of talent is not shallow. It is deep. There are millions of people in this country--yes, there are millions who could do the kind of job that is necessary to run America. That is the virtue of a democracy. The virtue of a democracy isn't that you get a few people at top and you keep them there to impose their will on the country. The virtue of a democracy is that the will of the people is imposed on those who govern. We are not here to impose our will on them. We are here to reflect the will of the people. I don't think making sure we can stay here forever and retire here, or be carried out feet first, is what this country is all about. Let's try what has already happened in a number of other settings politically. Mr. President, 41 Governors are subject to term limits. Why? Because the people want a fair system. They want public officials who are reminded constantly of their responsibility to the people--20 State legislatures have term limits, countless State and local officials nationwide; the President, since 1951, has been term limited. As a result, term limits are enormously popular. People know they work. This is not a proposed sort of reform about which people know nothing. This is a proposed reform with which people are intimately familiar. They have seen it work in 40-plus States for Governor. They have seen it work in their city councils, they have seen it work in the Presidency of the United States. They think ``give someone else a chance'' is a good idea, and so do I. In Maine, 64 percent of the public voted in favor of term limits. In my home State of Missouri, voters have supported every term limits proposal ever placed on the ballot, by majorities as high as 2 to 1. In California, 63 percent of the people voted for term limits. In Florida, term limits passed by better than a three-fourths majority. Even most incumbents do not win by these margins, and rightly so. Most incumbents don't reflect the will of the people as dramatically as term limits do. Term limits mean no more politics as usual. What do I mean by that? It is just this simple. A think tank known as the Cato Institute issued a study that compared the voting behavior of recently elected Members, those who have just come from the people, and compared it with long-serving Members who have been ensconced as incumbents. They concluded that term limits would have made an enormous difference. Here is what it said. The study concluded that, recently elected Members exercise greater fiscal restraint--were more careful with the public's money--and were more responsive to voters. Why am I not surprised? Those findings were confirmed by a study of the National Taxpayers' Union. Specifically, the Cato study found that based on the voting patterns of recently elected Members, a term-limited Congress would have defeated the tax increases of both President Bush and President Clinton, and would overwhelmingly have supported the balanced budget amendment to the Constitution. No wonder people want term limits as a way of restoring confidence in government, because it would do what we really need to have done, and that is that we need to make sure that the will of the people is what is reflected here. You know, low-cost elections are not the ultimate objective. The ultimate objective is that the will of the people should be the supreme law of this land. Above all else, term limits serve the much-need function of providing legislators with this awareness that they need to have, according to Madison in the Federalist Papers, ``a recollection of their dependence on the people.'' Term limits provide a reminder that the power of legislators comes from the people, and that it is no hardship to return to live as one of the people. As a matter of fact, it would be a condition to be imposed on everyone, were we to embrace term limits. Experience has proven that we do not need a professional legislature. It has been a professional Congress, on the other hand, that has brought us such successes as the House bank, the midnight pay raises, and the savings and loan debacle. What is wrong with the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform proposal? I will say this, it will make matters worse by strengthening incumbents. The McCain-Feingold proposal, scaled down or not, is an incumbent protection proposal masquerading as reform. This should not come as a surprise to us, because it is certainly no surprise to the American people. Laws written by incumbents in Washington cannot realistically be expected to have any effect other than to entrench the incumbents in Washington. The McCain-Feingold proposal does nothing to address the problem of incumbency. Indeed, it makes it worse. The proposal would actually strengthen incumbents by regulating the one route by which challengers can hope to offset the advantages of incumbency, and that is free and open discussion of the issues. No matter how you slice it, McCain- Feingold is a restriction on the ability of people to discuss public issues, some of which could be substantial embarrassments to incumbents. I think it is fine to restrict the politicians, but I am not in favor of restricting the people. Perhaps that is the difference between these two proposals. McCain-Feingold would restrict the people in their ability to speak. Term limits would restrict the politicians in their ability to perpetuate themselves in office. The trappings of office provide an incumbent with a highly visible lectern. You can get to the podium easily if you are in the Senate or the House, and you can address the voters. The incumbent's voice can be easily amplified from this position of power to drown out all others. Any proposal that limits the ability of challengers and their supporters to present a different vision--whenever you say that the guy on the outside can't speak clearly, can't speak effectively, can't speak loudly, can't compete with the guy on the inside--impoverishes the very foundation of America, which is public debate. You exacerbate the problems that exist within the system that we have, and that is that incumbents are already too strong. They should be limited. We limit the President. We limit Governors. We limit members of the houses and senates of many States. We limit city councils. We limit terms in the PTA. We ought to limit terms in the U.S. Congress. Let's put limits on the politicians, not limits on the people. Let's limit the perpetual service of politicians, not the political activity of our citizens. Nothing--nothing--is more threatening to an incumbent than an informed individual who votes on the basis of principle rather than on the basis of personality. What good is an incumbent's name recognition with voters who want to focus first and foremost on the issues? And what does the proposal do? This proposal would limit the ability of people to express themselves and spend money to talk about issues. Of course, if it is all just down to name recognition, I bet there are a lot of incumbents who would like a proposal that would just eliminate the ability of people to talk about issues. Cutting back on issue advocacy limits the ability of voters to inform themselves and to discuss the issues. Here we have a proposal that is going to cut down on the ability to form groups, to feel free about being involved in those groups, cut down on the ability of people to make contributions to those groups, cut down on the ability of those groups to discuss the issues. The McCain-Feingold proposal is not just bad policy, though; it is, in my judgment, unconstitutional. Proponents of campaign finance reform talk in terms of reforming the campaign finance system because they are afraid to say what they are really advocating. What they are really advocating is the banning of political speech. I know everybody gets tired of political speeches, and we all make our jokes about political speech, but there is nothing closer to the heart of liberty itself, there is nothing closer to the core of what it means to be free people than to have free, uninhibited, unbridled capacity in the culture and among its citizens to speak politically. Political speech is noble. It is the opportunity to put feet to freedom, to actually make a difference. In a world in which it costs money to reach voters, if you limit spending, you are going to limit the ability of people to speak. It is that simple. Oh, we limited spending before, and what did it do? It meant that the nonincumbent had a tough time, and it also meant that people who were very, very wealthy could find their way into the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives. I submit to you that we have our share of very, very wealthy people here. Of course, we know that there is no way ultimately to limit what a person spends out of his or her own pocket because the Constitution has been so interpreted. So all we do when we limit everyone else is to say we want the wealthy to have more and more advantage as they singularly and uniquely can approach the podium and be heard in a society which ought to hear the voice of every man and every woman based on merit rather than based on their own personal wealth. These proposed limits on speech are flatly unconstitutional. The Supreme Court said as much 20 years ago in Buckley versus Valeo. The text of the first amendment has not changed and cannot be changed in this Chamber. The scaled down version of McCain-Feingold still violates the first amendment, in my judgment. The only thing truly scaled down by this new version of the legislation is the people's right to free speech. The people's right is scaled down, their right to speak freely, to express themselves, those on the outside to challenge those of us on the inside. It is compressed. I sometimes wonder why I wouldn't want to stop people from being critical of me. But you know, I think we ought to be above and beyond our own personal interests here. We ought to be talking about the public interests, not the personal or political interests of incumbents. Specifically, the law attempts to limit the ability of groups to associate a candidate with his record on issues that matter most to the group. Now wait a second. The law attempts to limit the ability of groups to associate a candidate with his record. I can understand how there would be a lot of folks in this Chamber who would not like for groups of people to know what they have done or to be able to tie a candidate for reelection with his record.