Lamar Alexander

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Reserving the right to object, I ask unanimous consent to follow the distinguished Senator from Vermont.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Thank you, Mr. President.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, the majority leader has said that after the first of the year we would turn our attention to immigration, and well we should. Some estimates show that 10 to 20 million people living in the United States may be here illegally. Whatever one may think about immigration, one has to start with the idea that our Nation is based on a few principles, and one of the most important of those principles is the rule of law. This is a problem we need to address and the American people have a right to demand we address. The buck stops here. This is not something Governors can deal with or school districts can deal with. It stops here. Not long ago in Nashville I gave a speech in which I attempted to say I believe there are three parts to a comprehensive solution to immigration, the kind of comprehensive solution President Bush has talked about. Part No. 1 is border security. I had no more said the words ``border security'' than the whole room rose and began to applaud; they were not interested in the rest of the story. I would like to say a word today about the rest of the story, what our immigration debate needs to include in addition to border security. Let me turn to a lesson we are learning from across the ocean, from Great Britain and France. Last month, the British Government instituted a citizenship test that immigrants to Britain must pass before becoming British citizens. When he announced a number of related measures regarding British citizenship last August, Prime Minister Tony Blair said: People who want to be British citizens should share our values and our way of life. These new rules were spurred by the terrorist attack in London last July in which four young men, three of whom were British-born children of Pakistani immigrants and the fourth who was a Jamaican immigrant, bombed the London subway system. In addition to taking new security precautions, the British Government recognized the need to ensure that immigrants to their country, and especially those who become citizens, integrate into British society and demonstrate loyalty to their newly adopted homeland. France is similarly facing a period of self-examination on integrating immigrants and the children of immigrants following the 2- week violent civil unrest that spread across many of France's poor suburbs last month. That violence resulted in 126 policemen being injured, 9,000 cars burned, and $250 million in damages, according to the French Government. Like their British neighbors across the English Channel, the French are trying to figure out how to integrate this dissatisfied population--the children of Muslim immigrants--into French society. According to the French Ambassador: [T]hese teenagers feel alienated and discriminated against both socially and economically. They don't want to assert their differences. They want to be considered 100-percent French. We should learn a lesson from our friends across the ocean. As we in the Senate begin to debate our immigration policy next month in the Senate, we would be wise to consider their quandary. Too often discussions on immigration reform begin and end with securing our borders. Securing our borders is step No. 1, but there are two additional, essential steps to any comprehensive solution to our immigration problems. Step No. 2, once we have secured our borders, is to create a lawful status for those whom we welcome to work here and those we welcome to study here. We should remember who we are. This is a nation of immigrants. President Franklin D. Roosevelt began one of his addresses, ``My fellow immigrants.'' Once we secure the borders, once we deal with the rule of law problem, we need then to remember step No. 2, which is that we have millions of people whom we welcome to work here in all aspects of our society. They need a legal status that respects our rule of law. We welcome the 572,000 foreign students who come here to study. We hope many of them stay here. They are helping to create a higher standard of living for us. If they go home they become ambassadors for American values. Recently, Dr. Steven Chu, an American who was the cowinner of the 1997 Nobel prize in physics, pointed out to me that 60 percent of Americans who have won the Nobel Prize in physics are immigrants or the children of immigrants. That is a second point--a lawful status for workers, and a lawful status for students and researchers, whom we want to come here. We want them here because their being here helps raise our standard of living. The third part that is essential to comprehensive immigration reform is an examination of how we help new immigrants to this country become American. In short, we need to have a discussion about fulfilling the promise to the national motto that is right above the head of the Presiding Officer: E pluribus unum; from many, one. How do we do that? We do that by reminding ourselves that while we have all of this magnificent diversity in this country, that is not our greatest accomplishment. Our greater accomplishment is that we have turned that magnificent diversity into one nation; that while we are proud of where we came from, we are prouder of where we are. We are united by principles, not race. We are united by a common language, English, and by our history of constantly struggling to reach high ideals which our Founders set for us as a nation. We welcome new immigrants to join in that struggle toward becoming Americans. We have an advantage, therefore, over our European friends. We have been doing this through our whole history. We are unique in our world in our attitude toward welcoming others. We are different because under our Constitution, becoming an American can have nothing to do with ancestry. America is an idea, not a race. One can see that in the various naturalization ceremonies which occur in courthouses all around this country, as new citizens raise their hands and take an oath that George Washington first administered to his officers at Valley Forge when he declared that he had no allegiance or obedience to King George III, and he renounced, refused, and abjured any allegiance or obedience to him, and swore he would support, maintain, and defend the United States. That is what George Washington and his officers said. That is the standard for every American citizen who comes to this country. Once we secure our borders, once we establish a lawful status for workers and for students we welcome here, then we should set about helping prospective citizens become American. Senator Cornyn and I have introduced a bill that we hope will be included as part of comprehensive immigration reform legislation. Our bill, the Strengthening American Citizenship Act, would do the following: provide $500 grants for English courses; allow prospective citizens who become fluent in English to apply for citizenship 1 year early; provides for grants to organizations for courses in American history and civics, and authorize the creation of a foundation to assist in those efforts; codify the oath of allegiance that George Washington gave to his officers and took himself, and which is substantially administered to every new citizen today; direct the Department of Homeland Security to carry out a strategy to highlight the moving ceremonies in which immigrants become American citizens; and establish an award to recognize the contributions of new citizens to our great Nation. Real immigration reform must encompass all three important steps: First, securing our borders. Second, a legal status for guest workers and guest students. Third, I hope I have reminded us of the importance today of remembering that motto we see when we are here in the Senate chamber that indispensable to immigration reform is helping prospective citizens become American.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record a statement I made to the Secretary of Education's Commission on the Future of Higher Education on December 9, 2005, in Nashville.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. I believe the Senator from Rhode Island had an inquiry.

Mr. ALEXANDER. It calls for a Federal research plan. I thank our colleagues for joining us in this effort. We hope the legislation will pass Congress this year. With the permission of the Senator from Rhode Island, I ask unanimous consent that the Senator from Connecticut have a minute to make his comments on the legislation.

Mr. ALEXANDER. The March of Dimes is our partner, a strong advocate for the PREEMIE bill. It is leading the prematurity campaign. It will sponsor a symposium on prematurity research here in Washington, DC, on November 21 and 22.

Mr. ALEXANDER. I ask unanimous consent to add the name of the Senator from South Carolina.

Mr. ALEXANDER. While my friend, the Senator from Connecticut, is on the floor, I would like to change the subject for just 2 or 3 minutes and talk about the issue of babies born prematurely, an area he and I have been working on together. Premature infants are 14 times more likely to die in the first year of their lives. This is Prematurity Awareness Month. Tomorrow is Prematurity Awareness Day. It is the No. 1 cause of infant death in the first month of life in the United States. Premature babies who survive may suffer lifelong consequences, including cerebral palsy, mental retardation, chronic lung disease, vision and hearing loss. Half the cases of premature birth have no known cause, and any pregnant woman is at risk. That is why the Senator from Connecticut and I have introduced the Prematurity Research Expansion and Education for Mothers Who Deliver Infants Early Act, which we call the PREEMIE Act. It expands research into the causes and prevention of prematurity and increases education and support services related to prematurity. I ask unanimous consent that the following Senators be added to our legislation in honor of Prematurity Awareness Day, which is tomorrow: Senators Bennett, Bingaman, Clinton, Bond, Cochran, Collins, Hagel, Inouye, Lieberman, Lugar, Obama, Lautenberg, Lincoln, and Talent.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Three minutes.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. This week we have honored the memory of Rosa Parks, a woman whose quiet stand for her individual rights reverberated across this country. We often discuss how far we have to go as a country in terms of race relations. Thinking of Rosa Parks reminds me how far we have come. In 1955 when she refused to give up her seat on the bus in Montgomery, African Americans in the South could not eat in the same restaurants, go to the same colleges, sleep in the same motels, be cared for in the same hospitals or compete on the same sports teams as other Americans. Rosa Parks' actions that day in Montgomery helped spark a movement that changed our country forever for the better. Condoleezza Rice, one of the bright minds leading our country today, rightly noted at the memorial service in Alabama, ``. . . that without Mrs. Parks, I would not be standing here today as Secretary of State.'' Rosa Parks and those who took up the call inspired me, too. As editor of the student paper at Vanderbilt University, I wrote editorials urging desegregation of that school in 1962. We made great progress in those days, as we continue to do today. Our Nation has always been a work in progress, ever since our Founders signed the Declaration of Independence declaring that ``all men are created equal.'' We're still working to achieve that noble goal of recognizing our equality. But thanks to Americans like Rosa Parks, we've come a long way. Rosa Parks' courage has earned for her a noble place in the history of our Nation's struggle for equal opportunity. We will miss her.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I appreciate what the Senator from Nevada is seeking to do, but let me see if I can put his amendment in a broader perspective. I agree, as a general rule, we ought to prevent the Government from directly competing with the private sector for a variety of reasons, but the E-Language Learning System is a unique case, and we ought to treat it as such. There are three reasons. This is not just some program somebody cooked up and put in the budget; this is a program that was initiated directly by President Bush as a result of a summit meeting with President Jiang Zemin in China in October of 2001. This was a President Bush and Jiang Zemin summit proposal from 2001. The President announced the intent of our Government to implement this program at the APEC summit in Shanghai after meeting with President Jiang. Secretary Powell reiterated the importance of the program at the APEC summit 1 year later. We do a lot of talking around here about the importance of public diplomacy, how do we do a better job getting the American image, the American voice, the American culture and values seen around the world. This is an important part of our public diplomacy since it will help Chinese children learn English and learn more about the United States of America. Of all of the foreign ``aid'' we have ever promoted since World War II, the most effective has been in education where their students study here or our students study there. This can be utilized to help American children learn Chinese and other critical foreign languages in the future, something that is important to our national security, according to the Hart-Rudman Report and the 9/11 Commission Report. This is the first and most important point, this agreement between the President of the United States, George W. Bush, and the President of China. It is in our national interests. The other two points, quickly. There has been some argument that the contract awarded to implement this program that was agreed upon by the Presidents of our two nations is somehow unfair. It is important for my colleagues to know that this contract was openly competed and conforms to the research and development requirement of the STAR schools legislation following the same rules followed on similar programs for the last 17 years. It was awarded in open competition to Northrop Grumman and subcontracted to a company called Little Planet, a company in Nashville, TN. That is how I happened to know about it. Some of the unhappy companies, I am told, met with the Department of Education to talk about how to cooperate with the program and are now complaining. Mr. President, $2.5 million of the taxpayers' dollars have already been spent in this program, more than one-third of the total contract. So we will be pulling the plug and wasting $2.5 million of taxpayers' dollars a third of the way through a program that was agreed to by the President of the United States and President Jiang Zemin of China and flushing the money right down the drain. Finally, this fairly awarded contract was the result of the agreement between the leaders of our country and China and is being managed so it will help, not hurt, the private sector. In an effort to prevent unfair competition with the private sector, the Department of Education tells me it has agreed to share the results of its research to promote further development of the language software. In fact, the Department hopes the private sector will ``adopt [the program's] unique and advanced feature that [the Department is] researching and carefully testing, including authentic voice recognition, gaming, and research- based learning environments delivered through low-cost web-based technology.'' So the goal is, in the long run, to help the private sector. In conclusion, while the amendment is well-intentioned, and I understand the Senator's point, it is the wrong approach. It is wrong because it stops a program agreed to by the leaders of two countries, a commitment that is in our national security interest, a commitment that is part of our public diplomacy. It was arrived at fairly. It was competed. A third of the money has already been spent. And the Department of Education has agreed to share the results of its research with the private sector. I hope my colleagues will oppose this amendment and support it because it is in the national security interest of our country.

Mr. ALEXANDER. China is a pretty big country. There are several hundred million children there who might have an opportunity to learn English. If our President, George W. Bush, in a meeting with the leader of China, thinks it is a good idea to bid out a $9 million contract to improve the ways we help Chinese children learn English, if he believes that is in our national security, I don't think we ought to pull the plug on it a third of the way through it. There is plenty of opportunity for the private sector in the United States to help hundreds of millions of Chinese children learn English, and I hope they will do that. I hope my colleagues will vote against this amendment.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Certainly.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, it would be my purpose to introduce an amendment that would increase funding for title I to the level President Bush has recommended. I propose that we set aside the pending amendment so that I may introduce that amendment. Perhaps we could vote on those two amendments.

Mr. ALEXANDER. I thank the Chair. I thank the Senator from Pennsylvania. I thank the Senator from West Virginia for his courtesy of allowing me--and the Senator from Iowa and the Senator from Connecticut--allowing me 10 minutes to speak. Mr. President, I am here in support of the budget point of order of the Senator from Pennsylvania to the Byrd amendment. Let me see if I can say in just a few minutes why I support that. I would like to ask the Chair if he will let me know when I have 1 minute remaining.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, the question is funding for the title I program, Federal funding for our public schools across the country that helps disadvantaged children. It is a very important program. I heard the Senator from West Virginia describe the importance of it. I agree with him about the importance of the program, but to try to put things into perspective, let me make a few points. First, the Senator from West Virginia, if I am not mistaken, is suggesting we spend $5 billion more, $2.5 billion a year on this important program. But he has not found some other place in the budget to reduce the spending. So this is $5 billion beyond the budget, and this comes at a time when all of the committees of the Senate have been working hard on deficit reduction. In the agriculture committee, in the education committee, in almost every committee, we are working at deficit reduction. Because we are at war, because we have had three terrible hurricanes, because we have new homeland security needs, and because entitlement spending--mandatory spending--is growing out of control, we are all trying to do a good job of living better within our means. So we are working to have a deficit reduction of $35 billion, and this would add another $5 billion in the opposite direction. The second point I would like to make to put this into perspective is that, as important as this program is, the Federal Government is not the principal source of funding for K-12 education. We only spend 7 or 8 percent. States don't spend money for national defense by and large, and we don't spend much money for K-12. We spend 7 or 8 percent. The State and local governments have the major responsibility for our elementary and secondary schools. The third thing I would like to mention to put things in perspective is that money isn't everything. The top five State spenders in terms of dollars, total dollars for kindergarten through the 12th grade, have the widest achievement gaps between White students and Minority students, Hispanic students and African-American students. For example, in Massachusetts, a State which spends about $9,500 per student, there is a 33-percent gap between White and Minority students. In Connecticut, which spends even more, more than $10,000 per student, there is also a significant gap between White and Minority students. So even the States that spend the most money do not get the best results. Money is not everything. Another point to put this in perspective: we are spending more on education in our country today than at any time in history--more than we did when we had a surplus, more than we did when we were not at war, more than we did when we didn't have big hurricanes and a terrorist attack and homeland security concerns. And Federal increases for K-12, even though they are a smaller part of the pie, have gone up more rapidly than State increases over the last several years. For example, in Tennessee, my home State, there is $50 million a year, $25 million of it new money, for teacher training, to help teachers become highly qualified. Now, that is a lot of money. Those are Federal dollars. It would be enough money to give every teacher about an $858 pay increase a year. So the State could choose to use that money to help all of those teachers go to the community college or some other program to become better trained teachers, or the State could use those Federal dollars to give every Tennessee teacher an $800 pay raise based on some merit program. So there is a lot of new Federal money. The other argument that I heard a great deal about was that we are not funding up to the level of authorization. Mr. President, that is a convenient political argument, but let us think about what we mean by that. I do not have the figures--I wish I did--of how much money we have authorized to be spent for all the programs of the federal government. But if we spent all the way up to that authorization, which thankfully we don't, there would not be enough printing presses in Washington, DC, to print that much money. We almost never spend up to the authorization for every defense program or for health or for HIV/ AIDS or for any other part of the Federal budget. We have set an authorization level as sort of a top, a maximum, and then we appropriate every year what we can afford to spend based upon the needs that we see. So the idea that we are not appropriating to the authorization level is not a valid basis upon which to cast this vote. Also, I think it is important to note that there is a lot of money already appropriated by the Federal Government that is unspent. The Department of Education has some figures on that. The most conservative estimate is that prior to this year, so not even counting money appropriated in this fiscal year, there is 1.7 billion Federal dollars that we have appropriated to State and local governments for schools that is waiting to be spent, which raises the question: Shouldn't we be cautious about how much more we spend? Now, the budget that we are acting on would add $100 million to title I, bringing the number up to 12.8 billion Federal dollars, or a 47- percent increase since the last year of President Clinton. That is a big increase, and just to put this in perspective again, I have this chart. I think to be fair about it we would have to say President Bush, this President, and the Congress with which he has served in the last 2 years, have been good friends to title I. During President Clinton's time in office, 8 years, the increase was $2.4 billion. President Clinton cared about education. I know that; I served with him when he was Governor. We worked together on those things with other Governors, too. And he felt it was important over his 8 years to increase title I by $2.4 billion. I salute him and those past Congresses for having done that. But if we are going to salute him and those past Congresses, I think we ought to pat ourselves on the back a little bit, and this President, because in this President's first 4 years he increased funding by $4 billion. And so did the Congress. So it is $4 billion for the first 4 years of Bush, $2.4 billion for the 8 years of Clinton. Now, one may say, well, this was after No Child Left Behind was enacted; it should have gone up. And that is correct, it should have gone up. I was not here when that happened, but the Congress looked at that and said we made a new commitment. We need additional dollars for title I. We need additional funds for IDEA. We need additional funds for teacher training. We need additional funds for some of the things we have asked the States to do. So we have increased funding for title I over 4 years by 47 percent--over 5 years. So including this budget, title I would be up to $12.8 billion, or 47 percent since the last year of President Clinton. I am here today agreeing with the distinguished Senator from West Virginia that title I is an immensely important program. I am proud of the fact that the Congress and President Bush have over the last 4 years increased it by $4 billion. That builds on significant increases in title I that have been approved by Congress during the time of President Clinton and even before that. It may be that as time goes on and we see the need, and we are not in the middle of a war and we don't have three hurricanes of Titanic proportion and homeland security becomes less of a risk, we will have more money available. But in these times I believe the proper thing to do is to devote this amount of money to title I and support the budget point of order of the Senator from Pennsylvania. I thank the Chair, and I thank the Senators for giving me this opportunity to speak before the vote.

Mr. ALEXANDER. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I join the majority leader in the resolution that I have cosponsored honoring the Grand Ole Opry on its 80th birthday. I ask unanimous consent to bring on the Senate floor this piece of demonstrative evidence which I hold in my hand and to which I will refer in a moment.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Those of us of a certain age will recognize this straw hat with a garland of flowers and a price tag that says $1.98 as the kind of hat that Minnie Pearl wore on the Grand Ole Opry on Friday and Saturday nights every year for about 40 years. Most of the time, Minnie Pearl was the Grand Ole Opry, along with Roy Acuff. She welcomed people with: Howdy, I'm so proud to be here. I didn't say it the way she would always say it. Thousands and thousands of Americans sat on the uncomfortable wooden pews in the back of the Ryman Auditorium and later at the Opry to watch this radio show. One of those was a young man from Minnesota named Garrison Keillor, who, in the 1970s, sat back there and imagined the show which we call today ``The Prairie Home Companion.'' A couple weekends ago, I was the guest announcer on the Grand Ole Opry. They didn't trust me with the Goo Goo candy bar commercial or with the 7 p.m. show which is nationally televised, so I was on at 8. But I did get to do the Martha White flour commercial and to introduce Porter Waggoner three times. There is nothing quite like the Grand Ole Opry. There are 3,400 people out there every Friday night, every Saturday night, now sometimes on Tuesdays. Flashbulbs are popping. Everybody is having a good time. There was Jimmy C. Newman from Louisiana who next year will be on the Grand Ole Opry for 50 years. There was Susan Haynes, the daughter of my law school roommate. This is her first year on the Grand Ole Opry. There was Carol Lee and Nora Lee, the back-up singers. They have been there a long time, too. At 7 o'clock, there was Vince Gill who ended his hour-long session with a piece of jazz music. The Grand Ole Opry is getting more diversified. There was Keith Bilbrey backstage interviewing people. He was explaining what Charlie McCoy, the great harmonicist, once said about the four stages of being a country music star which sound a lot like being a politician. Stage No. 1 is, Who is Charlie McCoy? Stage No. 2 is, Get me Charlie McCoy. Stage No. 3 is, Get me somebody who sounds like Charlie McCoy. And stage No. 4 is, Who is Charlie McCoy? The Opry was started so that the National Life and Accident Insurance Company could sell debit insurance. They got a big tower in Nashville. I think it is 50,000 watts. So all the people who were on little radio stations came to Nashville so they could be on the big radio station. That is when Roy Acuff and Chet Atkins and Archie Grandpappy Campbell and Dolly Parton all moved from east Tennessee to Nashville. If you understand how important the Alamo is to Texas, you will understand how important the Grand Ole Opry is to Tennesseans, not just Tennesseans but many Americans, the 3,400 who every Friday and Saturday night have gone to thousands and thousands of these radio shows. No one represented the Opry in its spirit better than Minnie Pearl. There is a photograph of Minnie in dressing room No. 1 backstage, which was Roy Acuff's dressing room until he died, which was the dressing room that Vince Gill was using on the night I was there as the guest announcer. There on the wall was a picture of a young Minnie Pearl in the early 1940s with this hat or a hat similar to this one. Where did this $1.98 price tag come from? I heard the story that night for the first time. Minnie was performing on the Opry. She pinned a garland of flowers to her hat. And during her performance, this price tag wiggled down and started dangling from her hat. She left it there for the next 40 years as a reminder that anybody can make a mistake and it is all right to make one. Minnie Pearl was a talented woman who wanted to be Katharine Hepburn. As she said, that was already taken. She set a standard of conduct and style for the Grand Ole Opry that lasts and persists until today, and that style was simply that she was just a very nice person. She would sign the last autograph; she would say hello to anyone; she would pay a call on a Grand Ole Opry family member who was sick; she would see the last fan who had waited for 2 hours after the show. Minnie Pearl told me one time: I have gotten to the point in life where I have decided if people are not nice, they are not so hot in my book no matter how big they are. So in the spirit of Minnie Pearl and all of the thousands of Americans who have created and enjoyed the Grand Ole Opry, happy 80th birthday, Grand Ole Opry. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I join the majority leader. The President has made a wise decision. I respectfully say, in choosing Sandy Mattice, by scholarship, by experience, by integrity, by background he should be an excellent judge. I should say, also, that he follows an excellent judge, Al Edgar. We are contemporaries. We grew up at the same time, same age, in towns close to one another. Sandy Mattice has big shoes to fill, but he will fill them well; he is well-qualified. I salute the President for his outstanding appointment and I join the majority leader in expressing my pride in the nomination and look forward to his confirmation.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Will the Senator yield?

Mr. ALEXANDER. Wi11 the Senator yield?

Mr. ALEXANDER. Certainly. The bill creates one-time only emergency aid for the 2005-2006 school year. The bill explicitly states that the funds provided can only be used for expenses incurred during the current school year, and the entire bill sunsets on August 1, 2006.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, Hurricane Katrina displaced more than 1 million people, at least 20 times more than in any other disaster handled by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and 372,000 of those displaced by Katrina are school-aged children, in kindergarten through the 12th grade. According to the U.S. Department of Education, schools in 49 States and the District of Columbia have opened their doors to help these children. The legislation that Senators Enzi, Kennedy, Dodd and I introduce today will help all of Katrina's 372,000 displaced school children. Katrina did not discriminate among school children, and neither do we. We propose providing up to $6,000 per student during this school year to help States, school districts and schools defray the costs of receiving any child displaced by Katrina. In the case of children with disabilities, the maximum amount will be $7,500 per student. This legislation will help children attending both public and nonpublic schools. Our bill is temporary, one time impact aid, makes no permanent change Federal education laws and will not be extended after this school year. It minimizes costs by making payments quarterly, taking into account the fact that during the year many children are returning to their home communities. It also requires the Secretary of Education to verify head counts of students eligible for aid, and the States must return to the U.S. Treasury any unused funds. States, as part of their application process, will be able to look at the income of families attending nonpublic schools when determining what aid should be available, although it is my strong hope that in doing this, the States will remember that almost any displaced family is suffering hardship and that burdensome means testing requirements could slow down much needed humanitarian help. Nine States have received more than a thousand of these displaced students, with the largest number being in Louisiana and Mississippi, the two States most heavily damaged by Katrina. In addition, Texas has enrolled as many as 60,000 students. Houston Independent School District, which has enrolled roughly 4,700 displaced students, has hired 180 new teachers, added 37 new bus routes and ordered about 10,000 new textbooks to accommodate the students. Georgia has accepted more than 9,000 students, Alabama almost 5,400 students, and my home State of Tennessee has enrolled almost 4,000 students. While most of these children are in public schools, private schools have also been essential to this humanitarian effort. This should not surprise us because in the four Louisiana parishes hit the hardest by Katrina nearly one third or 61,000 of the 187,000 students attended nonpublic schools. According to the Department of Education, immediately after the hurricane, 50,000 students from the Catholic Archdiocese of Greater New Orleans were displaced. In Texas 4,000 of the 60,000 displaced students enrolled in private schools. In Tennessee, about 3,500 were in public schools and 500 in nonpublic schools. In Baton Rouge according to a report on National Public Radio, immediately after the hurricane there were suddenly 5,000 to 10,000 displaced private school students who had no school to attend. To accommodate them, the Catholic Diocese in Baton Rouge struggled to establish satellite schools--some located great distances away--which these students attended at night. In Memphis, where so many displaced students have gone, the willingness of private schools to accept these students is an enormous help to overcrowded public schools. The Memphis City schools have enrolled over 650 students and the adjacent Shelby County Public School District has enrolled over 600 new children, a difficult burden in a school system already growing by 1,000 students and one new school building each year. The Memphis Catholic Diocese has enrolled over 250 students to help share the load. During the last 6 weeks, some of these children are returning home as schools reopen. But severe problems of displacement remain. For example, school officials in Baton Rouge and Livingston, LA, expect to receive a new influx of children moving to shelters in Houston and other locations. The schools in the three hardest hit parishes-- Orleans, St. Bernard and Plaquemines--enrolled 81,196 public and 27,886 private and religious school students. Many of these schools are expected to remain closed for the entire school year. In additional to helping all of Katrina's displaced school children, in fashioning this proposal we have sought to respect traditional State and local education prerogatives, to meet Federal constitutional requirements, to make the provisions simple enough that this aid could be administered quickly, and to avoid spending more taxpayer dollars than absolutely necessary. This is how our proposal would work. To begin with, a State would submit to the U.S. Department of Education an application identifying the number of Katrina displaced students attending public schools, Bureau of Indian Affairs--BIA--schools, and nonpublic schools in that State. The application will also describe the process for establishing and providing payments to student accounts for displaced students at nonpublic schools. After receiving Federal dollars, States would in turn make payments to school districts based upon the number of displaced students temporarily enrolled in public schools or nonpublic schools in that district. These payments would be up to $6,000 annually for each displaced student, except that for students receiving IDEA services the total payment would be as much as $7,500. In the case of students enrolled in nonpublic schools, school districts would make payments to student accounts on behalf of each such displaced student. The amount of the payment to each of these student accounts would be the same as that for each student enrolled at a public school unless the tuition, fees, or transportation expenses for the nonpublic student are less than $6,000, or $7,500 in the case of a student receiving IDEA services. This has not been an easy piece of legislation to write because the four of us do not agree on whether or how Federal dollars should follow children to private schools, including religious schools. But we do agree that there must be a one-time, temporary solution to help all of Katrina's displaced children. Therefore, we have found a way to create this one-time temporary impact aid that makes no permanent change in Federal education law and, insofar as we are concerned establishes no precedent--except perhaps for some other hurricane that displaces 372,000 children. In other words, we have set aside disputing our ideological differences for another day and hope that our colleagues will do the same. We have done this in the spirit suggested by a Washington Post editorial last month which appeared shortly after the hurricane: Just as it's important not to sneak in an enormous new federal program for ideological reasons, it's also important that neither Democrats, teachers unions nor anyone else rule out for ideological reasons what could be a useful tool for distributing relief funds. There could be pragmatic reasons to put displaced students in private or parochial schools: if, say, school districts are overcrowded, if students have special needs or if that happens to be where they ended up. So it might make sense to attach a sum to each student-- whether it's called a voucher or something else--as long as that sum is given out in a limited number of places and for a limited time, certainly not longer than the current school year. . . . any solution that would allow students to finish the year with a minimum of fuss and disruption to themselves and their families, and that would prevent school districts in Texas and elsewhere from unduly burdened, should be welcomed. If each of us maintains our traditional positions, there would be no way to help all of Katrina's displaced children. There was nothing traditional about what happened in Hurricane Katrina. We urgently need to help all children on a one-time, emergency basis.