Barbara Boxer

Mrs. BOXER

Mrs. BOXER. I move to reconsider the vote.

Mrs. BOXER. I thank my friend from Nevada. I tell the Senator from Georgia, I have no problem voting on his amendment that deals with getting drugs out of the schools. But let's be clear, friends; this Coverdell amendment has nothing to do with the Boxer amendment. So don't think, if you vote for Coverdell, it somehow is a version of the Boxer amendment. They are two different things. The Boxer amendment calls on the Senate to act responsibly to pass reasonable, sensible gun laws. We call on the Congress to do so not on an arbitrary date but on the anniversary of the Columbine tragedy. The Boxer amendment is not about the incident in Michigan. It references it in a string of incidents of school violence. This Senate should be commended for acting 8 months ago to pass five very reasonable, very responsible gun control amendments. But this Senate should be chastised for not doing anything about it at all since that time. What we do in this very simple sense of the Senate is call on the Congress to bring those amendments back here so we can send a bill to the President for his signature. I want to tell you we are dealing with a harsh reality in America. I am going to show you just two charts. The first one shows you how many of our men and women tragically perished in 11 years of the Vietnam war: 58,168 tragic losses for our Nation, and those families have been hurting and suffering ever since. No matter on what side of this conflict you find yourselves this is the tragic reality of Vietnam. In the last 11 years, the same amount of time as the Vietnam war, we have seen over 396,000 deaths on our streets, in our schools. This is just handgun violence. That is the tragic reality we are talking about in the Boxer amendment. Here is another tragic reality: How about this for an ad in a gun magazine. It says: ``Start 'Em Young! There's no time like the present.'' Here is a young teenager with a handgun in his hand: ``Start `Em Young!'' We know about starting them young. All you have to do is look at what happened in Michigan. How young do they want them to start? I could not understand why we could not walk, hand in hand, down the Senate aisle and vote for the Boxer amendment. But when I got back to my office, I found out why because there waiting for me was a letter from the Gun Owners of America attacking my amendment, saying, essentially, that I was taking political advantage of a horrible tragedy in Michigan, when, in fact, my resolution isn't about that. It is about the tragic realities we face in this Nation and calling on the Congress to act. The Gun Owners of America has every right to take this position. They have every right to do it. We should look at what their logo says: ``Gun Owners of America, 25 Years of No Compromise.'' That is their slogan. That is their logo: ``25 Years of No Compromise.'' My friends, when we voted out those sensible gun control amendments 8 months ago, we did compromise. We compromised between the right of law- abiding citizens to have guns versus the right of children to have guns, mentally disturbed people, people with criminal records; and we found a balance there. We did it in a bipartisan way. All this Boxer amendment is saying is it is time to bring those sensible gun control measures--those compromises that withstood the division in this body and passed this body--back for a vote. We have a very harsh reality in this Nation. Fifty percent of children ages 9 through 17 are worried about dying young; 31 percent of children ages 12 through 17 know someone their age who carries a gun. I do not understand why on earth there would be opposition to simply saying, we are proud of what we did 8 months ago. Let's bring those sensible gun laws back here. Let's act before the Columbine tragedy anniversary is upon us. Let's do the right thing. I support this amendment. I hope my colleagues will as well.

Mrs. BOXER. Five minutes for me.

Mrs. BOXER. I wonder, since the Senator yielded back his time, if we can have an extra 2 minutes for Senator Reid on my side?

Mrs. BOXER

Mrs. BOXER. Equally divided.

Mrs. BOXER. Absolutely.

Mrs. BOXER. Reserving the right to object--and I will not object--I simply want to understand. I have been waiting since last night to offer an amendment on safety in schools related to gun violence. Originally, I was told I would have the first Democratic amendment up today. There was some objection on the other side. I wonder if I could get some idea from the other side of the aisle, if not from my own side--Senator Reid has been trying to give me assurances of time--when I could finally get to offer that amendment.

Mrs. BOXER. Mr. President, I thank the managers for accommodating me. I have been waiting for a while. Amendment No. 2873 (Purpose: To express the sense of the Senate on improving the learning environment by ensuring safe schools)

Mrs. BOXER

Mrs. BOXER. If the Senator will yield, I want to say to my friend, his education was very good. I went to public schools from kindergarten all the way through college. Even in college it only cost, in those days, $12 a semester in the State of New York university system. What an amazing thing. We had several people wind up going to Congress from that public education system. So in my heart I understand when my friend from Connecticut says we have an obligation to the 50 million children who walk into those public schools every day--5 million go to the parochial school, 55 million in all--but we have an obligation in the public school arena. It gets down to yet another choice. The Senator from Connecticut has given us a choice between a tax break that is predominantly going to go to the wealthiest, that is going to be very minimal, and special education. That is the choice he has laid out. My friend also will win my vote, frankly, if he took that $1.2 billion and put it into school construction or put it into more afterschool slots or early education, early childhood development, preschool, and child care in which my friend has been so involved. We are looking to bring home a very important choice. The Governors said: Here is the choice, Senators; before you take care of any other new programs and new bureaucracies, take care of special ed. My friend from Connecticut is listening to them and doing that, and he is further saying that before we do any of these newfangled accounts, which will be interpreted and reinterpreted by IRS agents up and down the line and may be very confusing, let's take care of our public schools. What I am saying is, not only will I support the amendment of the Senator from Connecticut, but I will also support amendments to come that will take this money and put it into lower class sizes, to do some new construction, to train our teachers better, to get technology in the schools, to make sure we have room for every child who wants afterschool care which we know is the best crimefighting program around. I thank my friend for coming today. His voice on this issue is very important, but I think on this one, with his interest in education and his views of concern about it and his success in it, I hope the Senate will listen to the Senator from Connecticut and do first things first: Take care of our public school kids--that is 95 percent of our kids K through 12--before we set up some newfangled ideas on which there is even debate over the facts as to who it helps. The Senator has a paper that says to me it is only going to help the very wealthy. Senator Coverdell says it helps if one makes $75,000. Common sense tells me if we start setting aside $2,000 a year, it ``ain't'' going to be my working-class people who are going to do that, I can tell you right now. They tell me they can barely make ends meet. I know what this is about. I thank my friend for bringing more clarity to the debate. I will be supporting him.

Mrs. BOXER. My understanding on the $2,000 is there are fewer people in that category who could participate; and therefore, it would not benefit the middle class.

Mrs. BOXER. I don't understand. I am saying to my friend that it is a second bureaucracy, if you will--a new account that can be used for college in addition to the account we are looking at for college that we already have. I think it is getting confusing. I think if we want to let people set aside funds and get a tax break for college, this is crucial. I think at this point to expand this idea to get to K through 12, as Senator Dodd pointed out, if this is on the level and people start spending it when the child is 5, they essentially have 5 years to save, whereas what we are suggesting is that people can do much better. They can take that money and use it, say, long term for 18 years, have more of a buildup and have more of a fund. What I am fearful of, if we start with all of these, is that only the wealthiest people will be able to do it. They will do it for both. Again, we start rewarding the people in our society--God bless them, and I have nothing but respect for people who manage to make it. We are rewarding them and we are not doing a thing to help the average person. That gets me back to where Senator Dodd started with his amendment. If this is not going to do much for most of our kids--it is confusing, I agree. I started wondering--if they can get a band outfit, if that is workable, yes. I argue that is part of the school. Or a uniform? But, wait a minute, that is giving a benefit to one child. What about the kid who doesn't make the band? Then the IRS is going to have to confab and figure whether this is a discriminatory benefit. I think we are opening up a can of worms a little bit. I think Senator Dodd offers us a cleaner way to spend this $1.2 billion, which is to ease the burden on the local districts. I daresay it is only common sense. Our school boards have a certain amount of money. If they cannot meet their budgets, they are going to have to raise your taxes. Maybe this is going to help them. I assume it is going to help them. In California, we have a lid on our property tax, so this is a huge benefit for us because there is just so much we can raise in property taxes. Since we have a finite amount of money, I think the Senator from Connecticut is offering us a chance to step back and say let's not create a new program, which now I understand you could roll into a college account, which really gets me confused, and keep it simple and use this money for special ed. I thank my friend for being so generous in yielding to me. I thank my friend from Connecticut for, I think in many ways, bringing us back to what we have to do, and that is to make these hard choices. He is saying: Listen to what the Governors are saying. Let's take care of this problem first.

Mrs. BOXER. The college account.

Mrs. BOXER. Yes, because the Senator said there could be an addition to----

Mrs. BOXER. Then we have some disagreement. But we will check our chart. I wanted to say on the issue of why this is different than the college account--I think Senator Dodd very eloquently made the point-- our side of the aisle has been pushing for a long time to help parents send their children to college, whether it is through Pell grants, loans, or education saving accounts for college. I remember way back during the days I was in the House I was supporting these education IRAs, but the point is that it is quite different now. To go to a public college in California costs $5,000, $6,000, or $7,000 a year. Fortunately, we have free public schools. What we are looking at here is quite a different situation. We know on the face of it that 95 percent of our children go to public schools. I know the Senator says this is going to help the public schools, but our research indicates this is disproportionate. We are talking about a couple of dollars in benefits. It comes down to a choice. If I had a menu of things, I am sure I would rank money higher on the menu of things, but it doesn't compare my money to the substitute, or to the amendment which keeps a lot of good in the Senator's bill. But it just says ``revenue lost'' instead of being dissipated in the $7 per family over a period of time--a year--and maybe adds up to $7. It would be much better to go to our States and help with special education, whereas Senator Dodd says it means it is going to result in lower property taxes because our local school districts will benefit.

Mrs. BOXER. It is the time of the Senator from Georgia. Sure.

Mrs. BOXER. May I ask my friend a question on this point because this is a good debate. What the Senator is essentially saying is somebody can open up one of these Coverdell plans.

Mrs. BOXER. Doesn't it sound great? I will give the Senator that. It is his idea. Come up with a Coverdell account, and they start it, say, when the child is first born. Then the child is 5. If this is for real, they start using it, but if it isn't for real, they will hold it. Who gets the tax benefit? Because they can afford to, they have another account for $2,000 for college. Now we are saying this is a family now setting aside $4,000 every year. I ask my friend.

Mrs. BOXER. Will the Senator yield?

Mrs. BOXER. First, I commend my friend because life in the Senate is about choices. I think what the Senator from Connecticut has done for this debate, in my opinion, is to have given us a very clear choice of how we want to proceed. We have known for, let's say, the last 20 years that there is not an endless cookie jar; we are going to have to make the tough choice. What the Senator from Connecticut is suggesting is this: We have a program that is vital to perhaps the children in this country who need more help than almost any other group, children who have special ed needs. We have not met our commitment; we haven't fulfilled our promise. So I would appreciate it if the Senator from Connecticut can tell me if I am right in sort of summing up where he is coming from. He has taken the floor and has not said everything in the pending bill is bad, not at all. I know personally he agrees strongly with a couple of things.

Mrs. BOXER. Those provisions would still stand. What the Senator is basically saying is that the billion-plus would go to people who essentially, for the most part, send their kids to private schools, K through 12, and rather than give them this tax writeoff, if you will, we should use the money to fulfill our commitment for special education. That is the bottom line. I want to ask my friend two questions. I don't know if he spoke about the meeting with the Governors today, but if he has not, I think it would be an important point, since he spoke to many of us about this today--what the message of the Governors is vis-a-vis this special ed and what it would mean. He has already said what it means to my State to get more funding for special ed. We are in the hole now by several billion dollars. So this amendment is very important. The second question, perhaps, is a more philosophical one but one to which I would be interested in hearing an answer. I think if we are honest with ourselves, we know the people who could afford to set aside $2,000 a year in our society each and every year are the ones who are living or earning more than, shall we say, most middle-class people because we know the figures. If we are honest with ourselves, to set aside $2,000--and that is after-tax money--in an account where, by the way, you don't get any real tax benefit, except the buildup is not taxed, so it comes out to roughly a few dollars a year--who are we really helping? Are we helping 95 percent of public school kids? Are we doing one thing or are we giving a nice, sweet tax benefit to people who already can set aside the money? I think there are two questions. One, if my friend can talk about the Governors and how they feel on this issue of reimbursing the States for special ed; and, two, philosophically, what is going to help more families?

Mrs. BOXER. Mr. President, may I say to my friend I understand that completely. But that was for the analysis on the $500.

Mrs. BOXER. Then scratch the other part of it.

Mrs. BOXER

Mrs. BOXER. Mr. President, it is my pleasure today to inform my colleagues of the recent achievement of a friend and former member of this body, Senator Alan Cranston. On Tuesday March 14, 2000, in San Francisco, Senator Cranston will receive the prestigious W. Averell Harriman Award from the Lawyers Alliance for World Security for his tireless efforts to achieve a safer, more peaceful world. Alan Cranston served the people of California in the United States Senate, in the seat I now occupy, for 24 years. During this time he distinguished himself as one of this institution's most passionate and effective voices for the rights of ordinary people. From protecting a woman's right to choose, to fighting for adequate and affordable housing, to making certain our veterans are treated with the respect they deserve, Senator Cranston devoted his career to making this nation a stronger, more decent place. One of the most important ways he set about making his vision for a better America a reality was by not limiting his efforts to these shores alone. Alan Cranston is very much a citizen of the world. Having witnessed the devastation of war in Europe and Japan, he has always acted on the belief that America's future cannot be guaranteed unless the world's is. And nothing threatens global security more than the continuing prevalence and proliferation of nuclear weapons. There are few people who are more dedicated to the reduction and elimination of nuclear weapons than Alan Cranston. So deeply does he feel about this issue that he has made it his life's work. In 1995, with the guidance of President Mikhail Gorbachev and others, he launched the Nuclear Weapon Elimination Initiative. From this initial blueprint sprang the Global Security Institute. As its president, Senator Cranston and GSI are committed to educating the people of the world and their leaders about the enormous threats posed by nuclear weapons. It is for his work with GSI, and indeed his literal lifetime of commitment to global peace, that Senator Cranston so richly deserves the W. Averell Harriman Award. Few men or women have done so much to secure a safe future for all the people of the world.

Mrs. BOXER

Mrs. BOXER. Mr. President, will my friend yield for a colloquy?

Mrs. BOXER. I see.