Tom Allen

Mr. ALLEN

Mr. ALLEN. The gentleman reminds me of a point I wanted to make. Fully funding special education by the Federal Government would help special ed students obviously. It would also help regular students because, frankly, State and local money that is now being diverted to fund special education would be available for textbooks and additional programs for regular students. Third, it would really help relieve pressure in the future on local property taxpayers. There is no question in my mind if we have a $1.6 trillion tax cut, the pressure on local property taxpayers is going to go up much faster than if we have a more responsible tax cut, balanced with investment in education and health care and with a reserve left to shore up Social Security and Medicare. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend, the gentleman from Wisconsin, and my colleagues for being here tonight to talk about this budget resolution. At last it seems like we are going to be discussing at least the beginnings of an overall budget resolution with a few numbers; not a lot of numbers, not the kind of detail that apparently we may not see until May or June, but at least we are starting to engage in an important debate here. I want to follow up on what the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Price) and the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Kind) have been saying about the need to pay down the national debt and to meet our responsibilities. That word ``responsibilities'' seems to have been lost in terms of our friends on the Republican side of the aisle as they get into the debate on this budget resolution. We have several responsibilities. I am struck by one in particular. That is the responsibility to meet the authorized Federal share of funding for special education. This is a program that was created in 1975, and within a few years the Congress authorized the Federal Government to pay up to 40 percent of the cost of special ed. I suspect that it is as true in Wisconsin as it is in Maine. When I go out and talk to educators in Maine, the business people involved in education, the teachers, the superintendents, the members of the school boards, their number one concern, their number one request, is full funding of the Federal share of special education. In Maine, that would be an additional $60 million per year. It is a huge amount of money. Yet, in our districts, over and over again, the local taxes and State taxes are being used to pick up the abdication of the Federal Government for its responsibility to fund special education. So local money and State money is being put into educating special ed students, and a good many of our regular students are finding that they do not have textbooks. They are in classes that are too large, and they are in schools that are run-down. Before we have dessert first with a tax cut of this size, we really ought to meet our responsibilities. We ought to pay down a larger share of the national debt, and we ought to fully fund special education. Today I went before the Committee on Rules with a proposed amendment that I hope will be approved to come to the floor tomorrow, but I cannot count on that, an amendment that would take this historic opportunity to fully fund the Federal portion of special education. It would mean an additional $11 billion. It has nothing to do with a new program. This is an old program that deserves a new promise, or, rather, the fulfillment of an old promise to fully fund special education. That sum, $11 billion, is something we could not have conceived of except for this year, only with the kinds of projected surpluses that we see in front of us. I believe that we have the right approach. We can have a tax cut about half the size of what the President proposes, and if we do that, we can do a Medicare prescription drug benefit, we can fully fund special education, and we will still have close to $800 billion to shore up Medicare and Social Security, and to have some sort of cushion against the possibility that these projections just will not work out as they are projected to be now. We need balance. The final thing I would say is this: the President came up to the State of Maine last Friday, and he made his usual pitch. To hear him describe and to hear our friends on the other side of the aisle describe what is going on, they say, well, we have met our responsibilities, and we have a trillion dollars contingency fund, which my colleagues and I know is not there; and then they say we are dealing with the money that is left over. Mr. Speaker, I ask, does anyone in the country believe that the President's last priority is tax cuts? We all know that is the first priority. That is where the money is coming from. As the American people begin to understand, as they see real numbers, they will realize that a tax cut of $1.6 trillion is so large that we cannot deal with other priorities fully funding old programs like special ed or dealing with new emergencies like the high cost of prescription drugs for our seniors. It seems to me we have to take account of the fact, as all of my colleagues have been saying, that we do not know that these projections will come in as promised or as projected and, therefore, we have got to be disciplined. This is the time to shore up Social Security and Medicare, to prepare for a future when we will have more claimants in those programs and be responsible about our budgeting. The Republican budget resolution is not responsible and, therefore, it should be rejected. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding to me.

Mr. ALLEN

Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding to me. I appreciate the gentleman holding this Special Order to discuss one of the more disturbing incidents of the early weeks of the Bush administration. The President has broken his promise to the American people on the environment and, in doing so, he has evidenced a real disregard for our health and for the long term consequences of the policies that we adopt here in the Congress today. I really think we need to look at this example. I have had legislation in each of the last two Congresses and will introduce legislation very soon to deal with these old coal-fired and oil-fired power plants that are the major source of man-made carbon dioxide emissions in this country. I think it is worth noting that these old power plants which were grandfathered under the Clean Air Act and the Clean Air Act amendments are not subject to the same standards that a new power plant would be in this country. Yet, they emit 33 to 40 percent of all man-made carbon dioxide emissions in this country. The President tried to say that well, carbon dioxide is not a pollutant, and certainly it is not a pollutant like mercury or sulfur dioxide or nitrogen dioxide because those are pollutants in all cases and in all circumstances. But carbon dioxide, because there is so much of it being emitted now, is transforming the globe in a way that we can no longer ignore. During his campaign and even until last week, President Bush had committed to reducing carbon dioxide emissions from power plants. For example, in a speech last September in Michigan, President Bush said, we will require all power plans to meet clean air standards in order to reduce emissions of sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide, mercury, and carbon dioxide. That is the four-pollutant strategy that the EPA administrator, Christy Whitman, was discussing in the early weeks of her new job. Mr. Bush made this promise to protect people from the effects of climate change and when it was made, it was a serious and substantial part of the appeal that he was making to the American people to suggest that he was a moderate on the issues related to the environment. But that is not the case. He has broken his word to protect the American people and has instead given in to the oil and gas industries who, not surprisingly, are among the largest contributors to his campaign. Now, Christy Whitman, the new administrator of the EPA, was traveling through Europe and saying in radio and television interviews that the President would work to protect people by cleaning up power plants and further, that he was really concerned about this issue of global climate change. Now, over the last few years, we have had this debate, both in this Congress and around the country, as to whether this climate change phenomenon is real, is it serious, and is it immediate. Well, every time the group of scientists working through the United Nations take another look at this, the evidence is clearer and clearer than it was before. Now, there is a consensus. There is a consensus in the scientific community that climate change is real, that the problem is serious, that it is driven by man-made emissions from automobiles and power plants and other sources, and that we need to do something about it. The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the IPCC, is a group of scientists from around the world. They have agreed that climate change is a real issue and we need to act in response. This is not a small group. More than 2,500 of the world's leading climate scientists, economists and risk analysis experts from 80 different countries have contributed to the panel's third assessment report on climate change. These scientists are projecting that we will see temperatures rise from 2.7 to 11 degrees over the next 100 years. Particularly at the upper end of that scale, that could have a phenomenal impact on this country and on the globe. There would be a broad range of different impacts. Sea levels will rise, and on the coast of Maine, we care about that; we do not want to see our beaches disappear. But particularly in tropical areas of the world and in places like Bangladesh which are low-lying countries, the effects on the globe and the resulting movement of populations could be substantial. Glaciers and polar ice packs are melting. Already the area covered by sea ice in the Arctic declined by about 6 percent from 1978 to 1995. Ice thickness has decreased 40 percent since the 1960s. Droughts and wildfires will occur more often, and as habitat changes or is destroyed, species will be pushed to extinction. Despite the scientific consensus, what the President said in his announcement was that there is uncertainty. Well, there is not. One can always find someone who disagrees with an emerging consensus, but this is a very strong emerging consensus in the scientific community. The oil and gas industries, as important as they are in this country, as much as they may have contributed to various people, are a source of the problem that we need to get a grip on. I also wanted to mention, just in terms of the warming issue, the year 1998 was the warmest year ever measured globally in history. The top 10 warmest years ever measured worldwide over the last 120 years all occurred after 1981, and the sixth warmest of these years occurred after 1990. As I mentioned before, I have this legislation, the Clean Power Plant Act, which I will introduce again, and the interesting thing about this legislation is we are not talking about Kyoto here. What I am suggesting in this bill is that carbon dioxide emissions in this country be set at the level authorized by the Rio Treaty in 1991, when the former President Bush was President, a treaty that he signed, a treaty that was ratified by the U.S. Senate. And the way my legislation works, it allows emissions trading in carbon dioxide among different plants, but overall, it sets a national limit consistent with the Rio Treaty, and then we work to set caps for individual plants and to make sure that we get down to the overall national goal. As I said, it is possible to do emissions trading because carbon dioxide does not have an adverse local impact. It has an adverse global impact. The last thing I want to say on this point, right now the President's failure to act is extremely disturbing, because any action that we take today is not likely to have a significant effect on the upper atmosphere for 100 years, for 100 years, and that means that we have to act before we have anyway of knowing exactly what the impact of our actions will be. We just know that we have to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in this country. Carbon dioxide is the principal greenhouse gas; 33-40 percent of it comes from these old coal-fired and oil-fired power plants. And we can do it. It is possible to develop the technology. Environmental cleanup will never get easier than when you have 33-40 percent of all of the emissions in the country coming from about 500 plants. It cannot be easier than this. The President also said that he thought the costs of dealing with the climate change issues would be too much. He never said beside the costs of cleaning up 500 power plants, the costs of the weather patterns, the changes in weather patterns that we are going to face as the globe becomes warmer. He never factored in the costs that it is going to have on our agriculture areas as they find they are unable to grow in one part of the country and have to move to another part of the country. The costs of not acting are far greater than the costs of acting, and putting off for 4 years any effort to deal with the primary greenhouse gas is a fundamental mistake for the health of the planet. It a fundamental mistake in terms of our relations with the rest of the world, because other countries around the world are proceeding. We are the problem in this case. We are the problem. Here we sit in the United States, 5 percent of the globe's population and we have met 25 percent of all the greenhouse gases in the country, and we are trying to suggest that China and India and other people need to act before we do. It is time to put our own house in order. It is time for people in the Congress to get the President to reverse his position and to tell the oil and gas industries that this country, this planet cannot be held captive to their special interests for the next 4 years. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding to me.

Mr. ALLEN. The gentleman makes a very good point. It reminds me of another thought here. Part of the concern is that India and China, as they develop their own energy resources, are going to be relying on coal, among other sources, because both of those countries have coal. We are developing in this country clean coal technology, clean coal technology that if this is transferred to China and India, if we help them with the development of their electrical infrastructure will have far less impact on the environment than otherwise. It is not just carbon dioxide. It is also mercury. I mean, mercury is one of those pollutants that does not go away; and we are having substantial problems in the Northeast, as the gentleman knows, with mercury pollution. Frankly, we have to figure out how to take some of this mercury out of the air, and the best way to do it is changing how we deal with these old coal-fired and oil-fired power plants. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman again for yielding.

Mr. ALLEN

Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Speaker, I rise here today to support full funding of special education, not next year, not the year after, not 10 years from now, but this year. I want to begin with a few comments that should be obvious. First, the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act of 1975 authorized Congress to cover 40 percent of the cost of special education in order to provide students with disabilities a free and appropriate education. That was in 1975. It has been a long time, but we have not come close to fully funding special education. The points I want to make at the beginning are these: First, the mandate to provide a free and appropriate education to students with disabilities was a Federal mandate. It was passed by this Congress, and it required the States and local school districts to spend more than they had on students with disabilities. It was a Federal mandate that has never been matched by appropriate Federal funding. Second, the funds that pass through our special education program are not spent in Washington, D.C. They are spent in local school districts in local schools for teachers, for supplies, for all those things that help strengthen our local education programs. Third, this year the money is available. No one can say that we cannot find the money to fully fund special education this year because the size of the surpluses that are in front of us make it clear that if we do not fully fund special education it will only be because there are other priorities. Now, when I listen to some of the rhetoric from my Republican friends on the other side of the aisle, I sometimes wonder, for this reason. We learned in school that the thighbone is connected to the hipbone, and we learned as adults that expenditures are connected to revenues. What we have coming into our family, our business, our government is matched, is related to, what our family, our business or our government spends. But we hear our friends say that it is not the government's money, it is our money. They say things like, we do not want money spent in Washington. Well, special education funds are spent in local school districts. Our education systems belong to all of us. It is our education system, just as it is our national debt, our air traffic control system, our Medicare, our Social Security. These are the things that we own and we cherish in common. When I have been traveling around my district back in Maine holding meetings. The number one priority of educators in Maine, of people who care about improving our public schools, is full funding of special education: Get Federal funding up to that 40 percent level. Where is it right now? It is 14.9 percent, the highest level it has ever been since 1975. It is today at 14.9 percent. That is after 3 successive years of billion-dollar increases. We have done more in the last 3 years for special education than ever before. But today, if the tax cut that the President has proposed goes through, we will not be able to fully fund special education. In all probability, if the projections hold, we will not be able to fund it this year or next year or any time in the next decade. So that is why we have a unique opportunity today to fully fund special education. If we do, it will help special education kids, it will help regular kids, because it will free up funding for improvements in our regular education programs; and it will provide real relief in the future for our property taxpayers, who right now, certainly in my State of Maine and around the country, are really under a great deal of pressure to fund students that they are required to fund and should be funding, but because of a mandate passed by Congress, by the Federal government, in 1975, we have never, we have never lived up to our responsibilities. The other two items that I hear a great deal about from people in Maine who care about education have to do with how we are going to find teachers, how we are going to find, hire, and retain teachers to teach these children and how we are going to renovate and build new schools when we need to do that. But, always, special ed is at the top of the list. I urge my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to take this historic opportunity that may not come again to fully fund special education, not next year, not 10 years from now, but this year. We can do that with $11 billion; and $11 billion as compared to the $1.6 trillion tax cut, that is no comparison at all. There is no reason why we cannot fully fund special education this year. I urge my colleagues to do just that.

Mr. ALLEN

Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Speaker, President Bush has broken his promise. During his campaign and even until last week, President Bush had committed to reducing carbon dioxide emissions from power plants. In a speech last September in Michigan, the President said, and I quote, ``We will require all power plants to meet clean air standards in order to reduce emissions of sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide, mercury and carbon dioxide.'' He made this promise to the American people to protect the health of our children and the environment and to protect them from the effects of climate change. Yet now he has given in to the oil and gas industries who were his biggest contributors. The scientific community has concluded that climate change, global warming is real and serious. Mr. Speaker, I will soon reintroduce legislation to require oil and coal-fired power plants to clean up their emissions, including carbon dioxide. In America today, dirty power is cheap power, and we need to act this year to pass my legislation to clean up these emissions, to clean up these old power plants and to get control of climate change carbon dioxide, which is threatening this country.

Mr. ALLEN

Mr. ALLEN. Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I rise tonight to participate in a discussion with my Democratic colleagues on the subject of special education. All of us have been traveling through our districts talking to teachers and parents and students and school administrators, and we have found over and over again that the number one concern is the failure of the Federal Government to live up to its responsibility to pay the full 40 percent of the special education costs that were mandated by the Federal Government 26 years ago. But we need to set this debate about special education in context, and particularly in the context of the debate over taxes we had here today. For all of the sound and fury of the debate this afternoon, the differences were fairly simple. On the one hand the Republicans were advocating for an important part of what is an overall $1.6 trillion tax cut over the next 10 years. $1.6 trillion. On the other hand, the Democrats were arguing for a corresponding part of what overall would be an $800 billion tax decrease over 10 years, half the size of the Republican tax cut. Now, the reason the debate was so intense and the reason Members on the Democratic side of the aisle felt so strongly about this subject is that the numbers were not being put forth accurately. For example, if we are going to give back either $800 billion as the Democrats proposed in terms of tax cuts or $1.6 trillion in tax cuts as the Republicans proposed, those are not the amounts by which the debt is reduced because if you have a substantial tax cut, then that money is not available to pay down the Federal debt and, therefore, interest on the Federal debt would be higher than it would be otherwise. On the Republican side, that $1.6 trillion tax cut, if enacted as passed by the House today, means that we will have over 10 years $400 billion of interest that we have to pay on the national debt that we would not have to pay if that tax cut were not enacted. On the Democratic side the corresponding number is about $100 billion to $150 billion extra in interest that we will have to pay, and what is true for tax cuts is true for spending. Here is the fundamental problem. If you set aside the Social Security trust fund and the Medicare trust fund, the Bush tax cut, $1.6 trillion in tax cuts plus $400 billion in additional interest on the national debt plus $300 billion in order to fix the alternative minimum tax, very quickly you find that the Bush tax cut reduces the surplus by about $2.4 trillion to $2.5 trillion. If that tax cut passes the other body in the form that it passed here today, we are in trouble as a country because that tax cut slams the door on any effort to provide a Medicare prescription drug benefit for our seniors any time in the next 10 years if current projections hold. That tax cut, the Republican tax cut, slams the door on the use of general revenues at any time in the next 10 years to shore up Medicare and Social Security and extend the life of those two vital programs. Mr. Speaker, with respect to the program that we are here to talk about tonight, the Republican tax cut slams the door on any ability to fully fund special education. I know we have a number of Members on our side wanting to speak, but just to lay this in context and say it simply, right now in the year in which we are in, we spent $6.3 billion on special education. The mandate that we required the States to meet 26 years ago to provide a free and appropriate education for children with disabilities, and when we said 26 years ago that the Federal Government would meet 40 percent of the cost of that program, we do not even come close. This year $6.3 billion represents just under 15 percent of the total cost of special education in this country. That is a long way from the 40 percent that this Congress talked about when the mandate was imposed. In our districts, teachers, school administrators, parents, and even students understand that there is not enough money for special education, that local funds are being drained out of regular education programs in order to pay for special education, and that the local property taxpayers are taking a hit. We can help all of these groups if we would simply step up to the plate this year, reduce the tax cut and fully fund special education. The last thing I will say is this. If we do not do it this year, it is not likely to happen any time in the next 10 years. The reason is that full funding is an extra $11 billion. We do not run surpluses most years. It has taken a hard climb to get to them, and now we have the opportunity to use some portion of this Federal surplus to meet the Federal Government's obligations. This is not a new program. It is simply doing what we are obligated to do, what we ought to do for our children and for our school districts, our parents and teachers around the country. Mr. Speaker, I am joined tonight by a number of Members, and it is a particular pleasure to recognize the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Holt) who helped organize this special order tonight.

Mr. ALLEN. I thank the gentleman for his comments. His point about the Committee on Veterans' Affairs, looking at the proposed budget for veterans and finding it falling short is a real lesson to all of us. The one thing that is absolutely clear about this tax bill that the Republicans brought to the floor today is they brought it to the floor before the needs of our veterans, the needs of our kids, the needs of our transportation infrastructure, our defense requirements. None of that has even been laid out by this administration. Yet they are rushing through a tax cut which would basically eat up all, when you make the proper, reasonable assumptions, eats up all of the surplus for the next 10 years. I think a lot of the debate today was the concern that that is simply going at this backwards. It is dessert first, as some have said. We needed a much more responsible, more fiscally disciplined approach. We did not get it today, but we will hope for the best. I thank the gentleman for coming down here. I would like to yield again to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Holt) for additional comments that he may have.

Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Holt) for his contribution to this discussion tonight. It might be worth just revisiting sort of the basic numbers. Right now the current level of funding for special education from the Federal Government to the States, through the grants to States program, is a bit over 14 percent. It is the highest it has ever been, largely because in the last 3 years we increased that number by about $1 billion a year to get to the $6.3 billion in the current fiscal year. Now, to do full funding, what we mean by full funding is that the Federal Government would fund 40 percent of the costs of special education. We would need an additional $11.4 billion in fiscal year 2001 for a total of $17.7 billion. The reason this is appropriate to be discussing tonight is, we just passed, over our objection, a trillion dollar component of a $1.6 trillion tax cut with no effort, no discussion, and nothing in the President's proposed outline of a budget that would suggest there is going to be anything like full funding of special ed. Here we are at a moment of our history when we could meet that mandate, help out our towns, help out our cities, help out our kids, parents and educators, and we are just passing it by as if this topic were not to be discussed until the tax cut was passed. If the Republican tax cut passes in the form in which it went through this House today, I think it is safe to say that it will be a decade before we will be close to full funding of this mandate. I would like now to turn to the gentleman from Guam (Mr. Underwood), who has been actively interested in this particular area and with whom I sit on the Committee on Armed Services.

Mr. ALLEN. I yield to the gentleman from New Jersey.

Mr. ALLEN. I thank the gentlewoman for her comments, and I appreciate the point she has made, which is so important, that when the Federal Government fails to live up to its funding responsibilities there are real consequences for real people. The tensions the gentlewoman describes between parents of special ed kids and parents of other kids in a school district can be really quite serious. In my State of Maine we have about 230 or 240 school districts. We only have 1.25 million people in the State of Maine; but we are geographically so large, we are so spread out, we have relatively small school districts, certainly compared to Virginia or Maryland or California. It is a tremendous burden. I really thank the gentlewoman for making that point.

Mr. ALLEN. I thank the gentlewoman. Mr. Speaker, I yield now to the gentlewoman from California (Mrs. Capps), who has been a real leader on this issue, fighting for her constituents back home, trying to make sure that we can make some real progress and get full funding for special education. I yield to her.

Mr. ALLEN. I thank the gentlewoman very much. Her comments certainly are correct. There are certainly many on the Republican side of the aisle who believe this is an important issue and who have joined with us in legislation to encourage full funding. The problem is that when it comes time to do the appropriation bill, the money turns out just not to be there. Now for one of the few times in our history as a country, we are sitting with a surplus, driven by the hard work of the American people and the fact that this economy has been growing extraordinarily rapidly by historical standards over the last 8 years. This is a moment of opportunity, a moment of opportunity to meet our obligations as a Federal Government to the States, to the school districts, to the children, to the parents and to the teachers to provide a better education not just for special ed students but for all students. If the Republican tax cut becomes law in the form in which it passed the House today, that opportunity will be lost and it may be lost for a decade. That is why this is such an important issue. I really thank the gentlewoman very much for being here today. I would like to turn now to my good friend the gentleman from Arkansas (Mr. Snyder), who has been a real leader on a variety of education issues and a variety of other issues in this Congress. I yield to the gentleman.

Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for her commitment to this issue. The gentlewoman was talking about the importance of driving the special education to full funding either this year or over a period of years. All of us would love it to happen this year. It may or may not. The important point that I want to make right now is that if we look at the proposal from the Bush administration, there is only one sentence dealing with special education and it says special education will be increased. Maybe by $10. Who knows? Maybe by $100; maybe by $10 million. Who knows? What is clear is that in his proposed increases for the education department there is not enough money to even come close to what the Clinton administration did in each of the last 3 years. Because in each of the last 3 years we increased special ed funding by about $1 billion a year, and that simply cannot happen unless we finally get some real numbers. Maybe we will be pleasantly surprised. But looking at what the President has sent to us so far, it looks like this is an area that could easily be shortchanged when, in fact, it should be fully funded.

Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Guam (Mr. Underwood) for his support. Mr. Speaker, I would just like to add a few comments about my recent experience. In the first 2 months of this year, I organized a couple of forums with educators who are expert in K through 12 in Maine and we had conversations. Some of them were principals. Some of them were businessmen and women. Some of them were university professors, and we talked about the problems in Maine with special education. Sixteen percent of our kids in Maine are identified as special ed. We take the obligation to give them a free and appropriate and excellent education very seriously, and, in fact, they are doing well. I mean, by the measures of the tests that we use to assess progress as students go through, our special ed kids are doing very, very well. We are proud of what they are doing. As a number of Members tonight were saying, the cost of educating special ed students is really substantial. On average, it may be about twice, that is $12,000 as compared to $6,000 per year but, in fact, some students require very special services and one can be looking at $40,000 or $50,000 or sometimes even $100,000 a year to provide that free and appropriate education to someone with significant disabilities. I then went out into my district and organized four forums in four different communities through the local PTA or through other volunteer groups, groups of volunteers in our schools. I sat at these meetings with parents who were volunteers typically, with school administrators, with superintendents of schools, a few teachers and a few students. It was interesting. When one goes back to the grass-roots and talks with people involved in education on a day-to-day basis, they really are not talking about testing as much as they are talking about three things. Number one, always number one, is the plea to give full funding for special education because so many other things fall into place if they can simply use some additional amount of the increased funds each year at the local level for the regular education programs and not have so much drain-off by special education activities. The second plea they made over and over was a plea for assistance in finding, recruiting and retraining teachers, particularly in the math and sciences. Our school districts in Maine are having a very hard time finding, recruiting and holding teachers. The salaries are not high enough in many cases to attract the kind of people they want. Third, school construction, we have a lot of snow up in Maine. Our buildings need to be very solid, very secure and they need to be well insulated. The fact is that many of our schools are old. As I mentioned earlier, we have about 230 school districts and we have some excellent schools in terms of facilities, some new schools. Then we have some which, frankly, really need help. So the proposal that President Clinton made in the last couple of years of his term that the Federal Government pick up some of the interest costs on bonds that are floated for school renovation or construction was something that really resonated among people who are involved in education in my home State of Maine. I am not sure we are going to see the same kind of interest or commitment from this administration, but I will reserve judgment until we see a budget in some detail.

Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for his comments; and I appreciate all that the gentleman from New Jersey has been doing in his State to try to, there as well as here, to try to get full funding for special education students. I do not know if you heard during the debate how many times our friends on the other side of the aisle said what they were trying to prevent was having the Federal Government spend money here in Washington. Special education funds are not spent in Washington, they are spent in our districts and States across this country. They are not wasted and put away here in Washington. Special education funds go to teachers, school districts, in our States in our districts across this country. They make it better and easier to provide a good education for special education students, provide a good education for regular students, and they help. If we could ever fully fund this program, they would help to relieve the stress that property taxpayers feel all across this country right now. And it is not even a new program. This is money that goes back to our States and back to our districts. But when we listened to the other side during the tax debate today, it sounded as though this money is buried somewhere here under the Capitol and never gets out to the districts. Mr. Speaker, I yield to my good friend, the gentlewoman from Oregon (Ms. Hooley). It is very good to have her here tonight.

Mr. ALLEN. I thank the gentlewoman for her comments. That is also why we did not hear our friends on the Republican side of the aisle mention special education today, because they really do not want it to be part of this debate. But in truth if you pass a tax cut, as we did today, if the tax cut passed today by the House Republican majority becomes law, where will we ever in the next 10 years find the money to meet our responsibilities created when the Federal Government laid down the special education mandate 26 years ago? I yield now to one of our outstanding freshman Members on the Democratic side of the aisle, Mrs. Susan Davis, who now represents San Diego, California.

Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Speaker, I thank all of my colleagues for participating.

Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Speaker, we have been joined by the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Inslee), and we are very pleased to have the gentleman here at the tail end of this Special Order on special education, and I am happy to yield to the gentleman.

Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Holt) for his comments. Mr. Speaker, we started this conversation about the discrepancy between a tax cut of $1.6 trillion over 10 years and what that does to all of our other priorities. I thought that Democrats on our side of the aisle made the case very well today for a more balanced approach so that some money was there, both to protect against the uncertainty of future projections but some funds there to pay down the debt more than the President proposes, some funds there for spending priorities like a Medicare prescription drug benefit and for special ed. This is an opportunity that we will lose, we will lose for years, if we do not deal with it right now, before a tax cut is passed that will just simply slam the door on the opportunity for full funding for special education.

Mr. ALLEN

Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Speaker, Abraham Lincoln called on the better angels of our nature. President Franklin Roosevelt asked us to set fear aside. President Kennedy asked for sacrifices to enhance the common good. But the rallying cry of the Bush administration is, ``It's not the government's money, it's your money.'' That is a shriveled-up vision of what the American people care about. We are better than that. The American people want and deserve lower taxes, but not a cut so large that seniors still cannot afford their drugs, our kids are stuck in inadequate schools, and baby boomers lose benefits under Social Security and Medicare. This Republican tax cut is a clarion call for more spending on luxury goods by the wealthiest Americans. To those seniors who cannot afford their prescription drugs, this bill says forget it, they are on their own. To those students, teachers and parents who know that our schools need full funding of special education, this bill says, forget it, they are not a high priority. To the baby-boom generation not far from Medicare and Social Security, this bill says forget any help from general revenues any time soon. Support the Democratic alternative.

Mr. ALLEN. I rise in opposition to this excessive, unfair Republican tax cut that will block our best opportunity to improve our education and health care systems for years to come. Abraham Lincoln lifted America's spirits by calling on ``the better angels of our nature.'' President Franklin Roosevelt inspired a nation to set fear aside. President Kennedy and others asked for sacrifices to enhance the common good. But the rallying cry of the Bush Administration is different: ``It's not the government's money. It's your money.'' What a shriveled up vision of what the American people care about! We are better than that. This tax cut is a clarion call for more spending on luxury goods by the wealthiest Americans. Those earning over $300,000 per year can buy a Lexus every year with this tax cut. Those earning about $35,000 would have difficulty getting a muffler. This tax cut slams the door on spending for the common good. To those seniors who cannot afford their prescription drugs, this bills says forget it, you're on your own. To those students, teachers and parents who know that our schools need full funding of special education, this bill says forget it, you're not a high priority. To the baby boom generation not that far from Medicare and Social Security, this bill says forget any help from general revenues any time soon. The Democratic alternative is half this size and is fair to middle income Americans. A tax cut half this size would allow us to put the medicines they need in the hands of our seniors. A tax cut half this size leaves room to fully fund 40 percent of the special education mandate we imposed on the states. A tax cut half this size leaves room to shore up Social Security and Medicare instead of privatizing both for the benefit of insurance companies and brokerage firms. The American people want and deserve lower taxes, but not a cut so large that seniors still cannot afford their drugs, our kids are stuck in inadequate schools, and baby boomers lose confidence in Social Security and Medicare. I urge my colleagues to reject this bill.

Mr. ALLEN

Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Speaker, after President Bush's speech last night, it is time, as Paul Harvey would say, for the rest of the story. To those who have prospered the most in the last 10 years, who earn over $300,000 a year, President Bush gives almost $1 trillion of public money. But to those seniors who are desperate for a Medicare prescription drug benefit, the President says, in effect, forget it. He proposes to give subsidies to HMOs and insurance companies in the hopes that they will offer seniors private insurance. To those parents, teachers, and educators who want full funding of special education, the President said, in effect, forget it. To those who built Medicare and Social Security, brick by brick over 65 years, President Bush said, in effect, tear down these buildings. He wants to turn Medicare over to insurance companies, and he wants to privatize Social Security. That is the rest of the story; and unfortunately, it is not pretty.

Mr. ALLEN

Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Speaker, on Monday evening, October 2, the Maine Women's Fund held its annual ``Evening to Honor Maine Women and Girls'' and celebrated the Fund's tenth anniversary year. At this year's dinner, the Maine Women's Fund honored four women for their extraordinary efforts to eliminate gender barriers. Odelle Bowman, of Portland, uses theater to teach life and social skills and strengthen self-esteem for at-risk young girls through ``A Company of Girls,'' sponsored by the East End Children's Workshop. Many of the girls are from low-income single parent families, many have survived a traumatic past, almost half are young women of color, and many are refugees. The productions are different and challenging. They range from Romeo and Juliet to a play deconstructing the Cinderella myth. Odelle produces all productions for ``A Company of Girls,'' from lighting and costumes to directing and coaching. Elise Brown, of Liberty, is a firefighter with the Portland Fire Department, as well as a Captain and training officer with the Liberty Volunteer Fire Department. Elise taught a carpentry course for Women Unlimited, where women learned carpentry, and also were encouraged to challenge traditional gender barriers in employment. She has been the positive role model many women long for as they explore areas outside the realm of presumed acceptability. Elise has built wooden boats, a post and beam barn and managed a vegetable farm. As assistant to the Director of the Miane Women's Development Institute, she designed and developed a database system, was responsible for the bookkeeping, correspondence and grant requests. As Co-Director of Portland Adult Education, Larinda Meade of Portland has changed the lives of thousands of women, many among the state's poorest citizens. She has been a classroom teacher, an educational counselor, an administrator of a statewide literacy program, a Dean of Women, and since 1990, co-director of Maine's largest and most diverse public school education program. She has worked to establish a ``first- of-its kind'' Family Workshop on Munjoy Hill. Larinda has served on the board and as President of Women Unlimited, on the Advisory Council for the Maine Centers for Women, Work and Community and is a founding member of the Coalition for Women in Trades and Technology. Dancer, dramatist, poet, athlete, artist, and feminist activist Caitlin Schick of Mount Desert Island has accomplished a great deal in her eighteen years. As a poet, her work often deals with subject of eating disorders, loving oneself, speaking up. As an artist, her paintings are striking. One painting is of a woman's face with phrases behind it such as ``we can never be beautiful enough * * * we can never be enough * * * we can never be good enough.'' Caitlin wrote and starred in a skit for National AIDS Day, which dealt with sexual issues facing young people. I salute the contributions of this year's honorees and appreciate the work of the Maine Women's Fund in advancing the cause of gender equality.

Mr. ALLEN

Mr. ALLEN. Yet if we listen to the debates, George W. Bush said during the debates that he wanted to do a Medicare prescription drug benefit. Three months ago there was no plan from the Republican nominee George W. Bush. He did not have a plan for prescription drugs. Now he has one. He adopted it based on what the Republicans in this chamber did. And what was that? That was a plan that the pharmaceutical industry loves, and only the pharmaceutical industry could love, because it was a plan that provided government subsidies to insurance companies so that they could provide private sector health insurance to cover prescription drugs. Little detail. Small problem. The health insurance industry has said loudly and clearly and repeatedly, we will not provide stand-alone prescription drug coverage for seniors. So who is the prescription for? The answer: It is for Republican candidates. Get them past November 7 and then we will deal with it. But by then it will be too late to deal with seniors to give them what they really need. They keep coming back. The way to do this is real simple. Follow the money. Follow the money. And the special interest money from the pharmaceutical industry through Citizens for Better Medicare, through the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, through other business groups is not reliable. Basically, we have been fighting for seniors to get them lower prices and coverage for prescription drugs for 2 years with no help from Republicans on the other side of the aisle. And now the effort is, of course, by the pharmaceutical industry, they can spend enough money on confusing television ads maybe. Maybe they can confuse the American people enough as to who is really on their side to get them through November 7.