Daniel Coats

Mr. COATS

Mr. COATS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Labor and Human Resources be authorized to meet for a hearing on tobacco settlement during the session of the Senate on Thursday, September 25, 1997, at 10 a.m.

Mr. COATS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs be authorized to meet during the season of the Senate on Thursday, September 25, 1997, to conduct a markup of the committee print to reauthorize the transit provisions of ISTEA.

Mr. COATS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Rules and Administration be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Thursday, September 25, 1997, at 9:30 a.m. until business is completed, to conduct a hearing on Capitol security issues.

Mr. COATS. Mr. President, the Finance Committee requests unanimous consent to conduct a hearing on Thursday, September 25, 1997 beginning at 9 a.m. in room 106 Dirksen.

Mr. COATS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Subcommittee on African Affairs of the Committee on Foreign Relations be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Thursday, September 25, 1997, at 10 a.m. to hold a hearing.

Mr. COATS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent on behalf of the Governmental Affairs Committee Special Investigation to meet on Thursday, September 25, at 10 a.m. for a hearing on campaign financing issues.

Mr. COATS

Mr. COATS. Mr. President, there has been either a printing error or technical omission in the current pending amendment--the line 22 on page 34 was omitted, as well as line 23. It simply is a section reference describing the language that follows in the section, plus the line ``Notwithstanding any other provision of law.'' Everything else is as submitted. And it is a technical change to offset a printing error. I ask unanimous consent that the amendment be modified to reflect this change.

Mr. COATS. Mr. President, I yield the floor. Mr. WELLSTONE addressed the Chair.

Mr. COATS. I thought it was cleared. It is a printing error, a descriptive--I tell you what. We will talk to them about it. If there is any problem, we will reset that.

Mr. COATS. Mr. President, I would like to yield myself 3 minutes to briefly respond to the Senator. I know the Senator from Rhode Island has been waiting patiently. I don't want to take away from his opportunity. We have speakers on our side, too. The Senator from Rhode Island is next in line. I want to respond to some comments made by the Senator from Minnesota, to whom I want to return the compliment. The Senator from Minnesota has been passionate in his efforts to reach out to the disadvantaged in this country and address many of their concerns. I know he comes at this issue--even though it is different from where I come in terms of the solution, I think the goals are the same for both of us. I know he comes at it from a different perspective, but with great sincerity, and he matches his sincerity and his rhetoric with his actions. I noted that the Senator came and paid rapt attention to particularly the comments by the Senator from Connecticut, Senator Lieberman. Senator Wellstone and I have discussed this and have exchanged our views. I just appreciate the Senator's commitment to this and his sincerity about that commitment. I would like to comment on a couple of things briefly. There have been different figures thrown around here about per pupil spending in the District of Columbia. We have tried mightily to find out the exact figures. Estimates range from $10,000 to $5,000, as the Senator has mentioned. It is probably somewhere in between. One of the sad things about the D.C. Public School System is that they can't tell us. The accounting is so bad in the District of Columbia--whether it is on roads, housing, police salaries, or public schools--they can't tell us how much they spend per pupil. They can't even tell us the number of pupils. We said, ``We know how much we give you; tell us the number of pupils you are educating, and we will divide that into how much we give you.'' They say, ``We don't know exactly. We can't tell you the number of pupils.'' That is kind of a sorry comment on the inefficiency and really incompetence of the D.C. Public School System as it currently exists. Just two other things, real quickly. I want to make sure my colleagues know that the money--the $7 million for this program --does not take one penny out of the money allocated to the D.C. public schools for education. In fact, it will increase the money per pupil because they will have 2,000 less students to divide the pot of money they get to educate those students. The money comes from an extra appropriation over and above the President's request, and that money is specifically designated for debt reduction and doesn't go to any operating expenses. So Delegate Norton is wrong when she says this comes out of textbooks, teacher salaries, and operating expenses. It doesn't come out of operating expenses; not one penny less will go to D.C. schools. Finally, let me just say the Senator seems to imply that if we can't fix it all, we should not fix anything. We acknowledge that there are a lot of things that need to be fixed in the District of Columbia and around this country. Housing is in deplorable shape, roads are in deplorable shape, early childhood education probably could use funds, food stamps and, as he said, fix the buildings, and so forth. Well, we are not able to do everything, but we are able to do something, something that is focused not on fixing roofs, not on collateral problems--and they are problems that need to be addressed--but we are able to funnel funds directly to parents and students who can improve their educational opportunities. As important as it is to fix roofs, buildings, infrastructure, and so forth, more important and the highest priority ought to be to provide education to those children so that they then can become part of the solution. Maybe this 3 percent will become part of the 100 percent solution, if they can get an education that would allow them to participate in this. If we were talking about public housing, which is in a disastrous state in this country, particularly in this city, and someone came along with an alternative that was tried elsewhere and would really improve the housing situation, and we said, can we test it here to see if it works here and it will improve housing for those 2,000 people? would you say, no, if we can't do the whole thing, we are not going to do it for anybody? All we are asking for is a test that will help 2,000 kids get a better education, but will prove, right or wrong, whether or not school choice is a viable opportunity and viable program to do two things: First, give kids a chance and, second, put pressure on the public school system to reform and change. They have had decades to do this. We keep talking about these alternate solutions, but it doesn't happen. In the meantime, generations of children are being condemned to an inadequate education. Mr. President, how much time is available on each side?

Mr. COATS. Mr. President, we had said Senator Reed, who was waiting, is next. We are not exactly alternating because we didn't have people available on both sides. If we can get back to the alternating system, we would be happy to do that.

Mr. COATS. Mr. President, I would like to yield 5 minutes to the Senator from Missouri.

Mr. COATS. Mr. President, I very much want to respond--and so does Senator Lieberman--to some of Senator Kennedy's remarks. But our colleague, Senator Craig, has been very patiently waiting. I yield to him up to 7 minutes or as much time as he consumes short of that.

Mr. COATS. I yield such time as she may consume to the Senator from Texas.

Mr. COATS. Mr. President, I yield 5 minutes to the Senator from Arkansas.

Mr. COATS. Mr. President, I yield 5 minutes to the patient Senator from Oklahoma, who has been waiting a long time to speak.

Mr. COATS. Mr. President, I promised the Senator from New York he could get a statement in. I yield to the Senator from New York.

Mr. COATS

Mr. COATS. Mr. President, I think under the previous order I am to be recognized for 15 minutes.

Mr. COATS. Mr. President, I rise to address this question of the defense appropriations bill with some degree of disappointment. First of all, I am disappointed that an appropriations bill is going to be passed out of this Congress ahead of the authorization. That is not the way it is supposed to work. It renders much of the work done by the authorization committee this year of no effect in some of the critical areas. I do not blame the Appropriations Committee, however. There are 4 days remaining before the end of the fiscal year. The clock is ticking. Senate Armed Services and the House didn't get the job done in time, and the Appropriations Committee was patient in giving us that time. I regret that we were not able to get our authorization act together. So I am not here to condemn the Appropriations Committee. I do, however, want to express my disappointment, sincere disappointment, that as chairman of the Air and Land Subcommittee the actions that we have taken in the Senate Armed Services Committee to address the question of TACAIR and where we are going in the future were forfeited in the negotiations with the House; that the Senate deferred to the House position particularly on the issue of F-22 funding, and I want to discuss that because there are consequences, I believe, to that decision. First, a little bit of history. Our committee withheld approximately $500 million in development and advanced procurement funds, and I want to state the reasons why we did so. It was not done on a whim. It was not done on a number picked out of the air. It was done as a result of a process of our methodical oversight of the F-22 program that dates back at least to the 103d Congress. Here are the facts. The F-22 program as we speak today is approximately $2.2 billion over budget for development alone. There is speculation that F-22 production could also run several billion dollars over program estimates. In fact, in just the last 2 years, the Air Force has cut the number of aircraft to be bought in the next 6 years from 128 to only 70, and yet there has been no decrease in program costs to the taxpayer or money freed up for Department of Defense expenditures in other areas. Yet we have not been told by the Air Force or the contractors how the F-22 program got to be in this situation. Those of us on the Armed Services Committee felt it was time to definitively put this program on notice, and that is what we attempted to do. Now, Mr. President, I say that as a supporter of the F-22. I think it is fair to say our committee is a strong supporter of the F-22. I have visited production facilities and engine facilities for the F-22. It is a leap ahead in technology. It lays the basis for our crucial joint strike fighter program. It will give us air dominance in the future. Had I thought that the actions we had taken in any way jeopardized further development of the F-22, I would not have considered them. But to those who have argued that we must fully support the F-22 air dominance fighter because it is the No. 1 procurement priority of the Department of the Air Force without any questions, without any reservations, without any reports, without any event-based decisionmaking, I think those people are missing the point. They are missing the point of the consequences of doing so and the consequences to other systems. Let me also say that I, in addition to supporting F-22, I support the importance of air dominance as a joint warfighting capability. But, we have to remember that the F-22 is just one piece of the Department of Defense TACAIR recapitalization strategy. We are acting like it is the whole thing. As a matter of fact, the Navy's F/A-18EF is the Navy's No. 1 priority, and the Marine Corps has placed its priority on the joint strike fighter yet to be developed. So we are looking to balance our approach in joint warfighting capability across the full spectrum of military operations. If the F-22 program is not brought under control, it will severely jeopardize a prudent balance in TACAIR recapitalization. So the issue before us is not support for the relative priority of the F-22 program. The issue before us is, does that support imply that we should blindly throw billions of dollars at the program without some accountability? The issue is the viability of the F-22 program, and it is exactly because of the high priority of the F-22 that we need to send a powerful message to the Air Force and to the contractors that the Senate is watching, that we are watching the restructuring, and we are watching for schedule slippage, and we are watching for cost overruns. It is time to hold F-22 to a realistic level of accountability. It is time to end the promises of performance and cost control and instead focus on results. We do so because we want to protect the F-22. We want it to be a viable program, and we do not want it to go the way of other programs that have not been held accountable. So, therefore, I regret deeply that the Senate yielded to the House, that we were not able to get the authorization approved, that we yielded to the House in the appropriations process and we are simply giving the Air Force and giving the contractor exactly what they asked for without any explanations, without any details, and without any accountability features built in. Let me explain a little bit about why the Armed Services Committee's actions on the F-22 are good policy. In the National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal year 1995, the Senate requested the Department of Defense and the General Accounting Office assess and provide us a report on the degree of concurrency-- that is the testing-while-you-are-buying process that goes on sometimes in these programs; you are buying the planes at the same time you are testing them; many of us would argue that you need to test first and make sure that what you are buying is what you think you are buying-- and we asked them for this report on risk, also. In April 1995, we received those reports and the Department of Defense report concluded, just a little over 2 years ago, ``there is no reason, based upon risk/ concurrency considerations to introduce a program stretch at this time.'' So we thought, fine, everything is on track. At the same time the GAO conclude that the F-22 program involved considerable risk and that there may be adverse consequences from concurrent development and production. Furthermore, they felt the need for the F-22 program ``is not urgent,'' it quoted, based on the threat and viability of the F-15 program. Then we went into 1996. We held hearings. In those hearings surfaced additional concerns about the level of concurrent production and development, projected F-22 weight and specific fuel consumption. We came back in the National Defense Authorization Act for 1996 to, once again, require the Department of Defense to respond to 21 specific questions. And they did respond and indicated, again, that the level of concurrency in the program was acceptable using departmental risk criteria. In short, less than 2 years ago, the Senate was being told the program was on track, no problems. Now in 1997, we held hearings and surfaced still yet other concerns about the F-22's transition from this engineering, manufacturing and development phase to production, based on what one witness calls an ``event driven program that ensures that key production criteria are met as a prerequisite for production decisions.'' That gave us some assurance. Correspondingly, the Senate then included in the 1997 National Defense Authorization bill a requirement that the Department of Defense undertake a cost analysis and report on their events-based decisionmaking criteria. We took them at their word. We said fine, give us a report. Within the last year, the Air Force commissioned a Joint Evaluation Team which concluded that the F-22 development program was $2.2 billion over cost, and that much more time would be needed for testing. This was the first time that we had been notified that the F-22 was in trouble, despite numerous years of hearings and reports back from the Air Force. So, based on this information the committee held--I chaired--two additional hearings in 1997, on tactical aviation. And we learned then that the Air Force canceled four preproduction vehicles that it previously indicated were a key to the program going forward. And then it took that money, $700 million, and put it back into development. This action, to infuse hundreds of millions of dollars into development, was taken by the Air Force again without specifying how the program had been changed, identifying cost-control measures, and describing the level of risk that remains. They have not told us how the program got in this shape. They have only told us that they have found the funds to fix it. They found the funds to fix it by canceling four preproduction aircraft, thereby jeopardizing a necessary step testing for most development programs, which they say now is not necessary, and taking that money and pumping it into engineering and manufacturing development. They also promised that event-based decisionmaking would keep the F- 22 program on track. We asked them to report on this aspect of the program. The Air Force said it would give us a report on it. They did. That report, 6 months late: 18 words. Here is the Air Force report. Specific exit criteria: First EMD aircraft first flight complete. Complete engine initial flight release. Air vehicle interim production readiness review complete. What does that tell us? This is the report that it took them 6 months to put together to respond to what we asked for, what we thought was legitimate? Furthermore, each of these three events were supposed to have been completed before the fiscal year even started. What kind of confidence does that provide, for a program with nearly $20 billion in development and well over $40 billion in procurement? We are talking about $60 billion here. Consequently, the Senate Armed Services Committee came to the conclusion that, if tactical air modernization is going to be viable in the future from both a technical perspective and the perspective of affordability, that we had to take some action now in the F-22 program to achieve and ensure performance and cost-control goals. Therefore, I recommended to the Senate, and the Senate agreed, that we not permit the infusion of an additional $420 million into F-22 research and development until we understand how this program came to be in this present condition. Some people are going to argue that these actions are too severe. But I think it is just the opposite. We believe the actions that we have taken help to ensure the program's success. Remember, this is just the development phase and it is more than $2 billion over budget. It was not that long ago that then Secretary of Defense Cheney canceled the Navy A-12 program because it was $1 billion over cost. Now we have a plane more than $2 billion over cost. I have deep concern over whether we can maintain continuing support politically for the F-22 program here in Congress, and with the American people, if we cannot adequately address these cost overruns and explain to the American people that we are taking prudent steps to make sure that this does not continue. The steps that we have taken are not designed to put the program in jeopardy. They are designed to save the program. They are designed to demonstrate that we recognize there are problems and we must hold the contractors accountable. We are told the Air Force and the contractors have this agreement. They don't have an agreement. All they have said is that they have agreed to agree; they have agreed to agree that there will not be any more cost overruns, that they will deliver on time. And I pray and hope--and maybe have some confidence--that they can do that. But the agreement has not been negotiated. It is not in print. It does not have signatures on the bottom line. And until it does, I think it is reasonable to withhold some funds so we know that those agreements are going to be guaranteed and performed. What is in jeopardy if the F-22 does not get on track? I suggest four very important things. We may end up treating the F-22 like we did the B-2, producing far fewer than we need but only what we can afford, and then we have an inadequate tactical air program for the future. Also, we could lose support for the next aircraft carrier, the CVN-77. In fact, I believe it's the advanced procurement for the smart-buy initiative that was to save taxpayers $600 million on this carrier that was taken by the appropriators to fund the F-22. We may not get that carrier. Third, we may lose the Joint Strike Fighter. We cannot consider throwing more money at three TACAIR programs, given the low levels of procurement for land and sea systems. F-22 cost growth cannot be permitted to eat the lion's share of the funding pie. The Navy is absolutely counting on the Joint Strike Fighter to complement the F/A- 18E/F. The Marine Corps has put their entire TACAIR future solely in the hands of the Joint Strike Fighter. If the Joint Strike Fighter does not come through on time, then we are going to have to radically rethink whether or not there will even be Marine Corps TACAIR in the future. We all know that from a political standpoint there will not be a Joint Strike Fighter if we cannot control the F-22 cost. This places the Navy and the Marine Corps in deep jeopardy. Finally, continued F-22 cost growth could rob funds from other key Air Force modernization initiatives, whether they be TACAIR, strategic airlift, or the communications and intelligence programs which the entire joint force will have to rely on for information superiority in the 21st century. In short, we need to be confident and ensure ourselves that the F-22 program is under control. We don't know how else to get their attention. I found that the best way is to say: No performance, no money. No, Mr. President, we did that some time back. We were confronted with a very similar cost and performance problem with the development of the C-17--a marvelous airplane, but they could not get their act together. So we told the manufacturer you either come in at cost or you are not going to building more planes. As a result, there was a huge banner erected in the production plant, which said, ``Build 40 at cost, or no more.'' Guess what, they built 40 at cost and now we have a multiyear procurement of 120 C-17's. This is a success story because Congress held the line, and I am disappointed that we have lost that opportunity with this action. We should all ask ourselves whether the F-22 program would benefit from a similar policy from this body.

Mr. COATS

Mr. COATS. On the part of the Senator from Florida.

Mr. COATS. Mr. President, parliamentary inquiry. I do not mean to drag this out here. I don't understand the procedure. I thought anything other than the pending amendment was out of order without unanimous consent, that recognition had nothing to do with it.

Mr. COATS

Mr. COATS. Mr. President, Gen. Julius Becton has been charged with reforming education in the District. He deserves our support. But by his own estimates, it will take 5 or 10 years to test his approaches. Similar changes have been promised by five new superintendents in the last 15 years. I suspect that many District parents are skeptical. I believe they have every right to be. Put yourself for a moment into their shoes. What good does it do a parent who fears for the current safety and future prospects of their 13-year-old child to wait 10 more years for the results of public school reform? By admitting that public school reform in the District will be accomplished in decades, we are saying that the sacrifice of a generation of students is unavoidable. But what if that child were our child? What if that child was the child or the grandchild of a Member of this body who was assigned to a school where physical attacks and robberies and drug sales are rampant, where education is failing, where the one opportunity they have to escape the poverty that they are living in, a decent education, is unavailable to them? Would we be content to sit back and let the bureaucrats tell us it will take a decade to reform these schools? Would those of us who have a 10- or 12- or 13-year-old be content for one moment to allow that situation to exist if there was anything we could do about it? We are asking poor inner-city children and their parents to tolerate circumstances for years that most middle-class and affluent Americans would not tolerate for a moment. And we expect them to be satisfied and gratified with tinkering changes and symbolic votes on funding which have shown no history of results at all--nothing but failure, endlessly repeated, mindlessly accepted. This city should be ashamed of its incompetence. And we in Congress should be ashamed of our failure to deliver some hope, some measure of improvement for these children. This is not an issue of whether or not local or State governments have a right to control education. We in the Federal Government have the responsibility for this Federal city. We have a responsibility for the conduct of affairs in this city and in particular for the educational system in this city. That educational system has failed. It is time we offered some remedies. With this bill we have set out to turn this justified embarrassment and shame into something productive, something immediately helpful, something hopeful, not something 10 years down the line, but something that can be hopeful immediately to children caught in this tragic situation. The argument in favor of low-income school choice comes down to a single question which I hope every Member of this body will seriously ponder. Is it just, is it fair, is it compassionate to insist on the coercive assignment of poor children to failed schools? It is a question which answers itself. No, it is not just, it is not fair, it is not compassionate, if there are alternatives that work, that can provide hope to these students, that can provide opportunity for these students to escape the failed education system that they currently are forced to comply with, alternatives that teach care and discipline. Right now in the District of Columbia these alternatives exist but they are rationed by cost, distributed by wealth. And that is not just, that is not fair, and that is not compassionate. Yet we can do something about it, at least in the District for at least some of the District's children. Mr. President, I am entirely confident about two things in this debate, two facts that I think are beyond dispute. First of all, the children of our cities, even from broken homes in desolate neighborhoods, are capable of educational achievement. This should not be necessary to say because it is obvious to so many of us, but it is not obvious to the educational establishment. The educational establishment argues exactly the opposite. They claim that schools fail because parents and students are failures themselves, complicating the work of educators with personal problems. I am sure you have heard this excuse that the jobs of teachers are impossible because families and communities refuse to help. But, Mr. President, we know this is not true. We know that disadvantaged children are not educational failures by birth or circumstance or destiny. We know this as a matter of hard social science. We know this because of the success of nonpublic schools, primarily Catholic schools, that admit the same pool of urban students. The late James Coleman of the University of Chicago found lower dropout rates and higher test scores among disadvantaged Catholic school students than their public school peers. William Evans and Robert Schwab, of the University of Maryland, came to similar conclusions, recording disproportionate gains by disadvantaged kids in Catholic schools. Other studies reveal that Catholic schools are more racially integrated than their public counterparts and succeed at about half the cost. I want to repeat, studies have indicated that the Catholic schools are more racially integrated than urban public schools and they succeed where public schools fail, at half the cost of public schools. These efforts succeed--with the same group of at-risk children-- because Catholic education begins with an entirely different premise than the educational establishment: that every student can succeed if properly guided, and that 8 hours a day is a significant, even decisive, intervention in a child's life. This is not skimming. This is not creaming. This is faith and tenacity. I pointed to Catholic urban schools because they have done such a remarkable job in our inner cities. There are other non-Catholic but religious schools and private schools that are secular schools that have demonstrated an ability to take the same students from the same areas, at half the cost or less, and do a better job in preparing those students for educational opportunities for the future or for employment opportunities for the future--an astoundingly better job. So this argument that what can you do with these kids, ``After all, look at the families they are from, look at the disadvantages that they have, there is nothing that we can do except provide some kind of a baby-sitting service during daylight hours,'' that is untrue. We have side by side with these failing public schools in our urban areas, side by side, schools that are accomplishing success and not reaping failure, that are taking the same students and providing that success at less than half the cost of our public schools. The second fact I am sure about is that low-income, inner city parents support school choice in growing and overwhelming numbers--75 percent in Philadelphia, 95 percent in Milwaukee. The Milwaukee and Cleveland school choice programs, the only ones of their kind, were not started by Republicans. They were started by parents fed up with their schools that their children were compelled to attend. They were sponsored and supported by an emerging element of African American leadership. Councilwoman Fannie Lewis of Cleveland, Annette ``Polly'' Williams of Milwaukee, Anyam Palmer of Los Angeles, State Representative Glenn Lewis of Ft. Worth, State Representative Dwight Evans of Philadelphia--these are not black Republican conservatives; they are activist Democrats who view school choice as a matter of equity. They are men and women who have come to resent a nanny state in which the nanny has grown surly and arrogant and abusive and unresponsive. Alveda King, niece of Martin Luther King, Jr., in this Capitol just 2 weeks ago, referred to school choice as a matter of civil rights. She says: In the name of civil rights, some oppose relief for religious parents who want their children to attend a religious school. In the name of helping poor and minority children, opponents of ``opportunity scholarships'' want to continue business as usual in the Washington schools. . . . U.S. citizenship guarantees all parents an education for their children. This is a true civil right. Yet some children receive a better education than others, due to their parents' abilities to pay for benefits that are often missing in public schools. This inequity is a violation of the civil rights of the parents and children who are so afflicted by lack of income and by the mismanagement endemic to so many of the country's public school systems. Ms. King concludes: The District of Columbia Student Opportunity Scholarship Act was designed specifically to alleviate this inequality-- to restore parents' and children's civil rights. To Alveda King and to many African-Americans today, this is a civil right, the opportunity for equality of opportunity in the education of their children. In July of this year, the Labor and Human Resources Committee, on which I proudly serve, held a hearing on the school choice issue. It was particularly instructive. One witness was Howard Fuller, former superintendent of Milwaukee public schools--former superintendent of Milwaukee public schools, an outside-the-box thinker on education. He began by asking a fundamental question: What makes a school public? This is the answer he gave: What makes a school public is that it functions in the public interest. That interest involves high standards, consistently met--not the provision of services by one group or another. The public interest is to ensure that this happens, through whatever mix of public policies which make it happen. He goes on to say: Although there must continue to be strong support for public education, it is, in the final analysis, not the system that is important; it is the students and their families who must be primary. We must ask the question, what is the best interests of the children, not in the best interests of the system. And in my professional opinion, the interests of poor students are best served if they are truly given choice which permits them to pursue a variety of successful options, public and private. Fuller testified that the most basic problem with the current system is a structure of power relationships that leads to inertia: If you do not somehow change the existing power relationships, the existing configurations, no matter how deeply you might feel about making change, it is not going to occur, because the dynamics of the system are a curb to the kind of change you want to make. If you leave it intact, and you operate under its current form, we are not going to make the difference that we want to make for all of the children. But this need not be the end of public education. I want to repeat that for my colleagues, the former superintendent of the Milwaukee Public School System, who is talking about the need to change the structure of public education so that it truly can begin the real process of reform, this man says that it need not mean the end of the public school system. Opponents of this opportunity scholarship program say, ``You really want to do away with the public school system.'' Not at all. We absolutely need a public school system in this country to begin to touch and educate the millions of children who live in this country, but we need a system that will provide them with equal opportunities for education, and they are not getting that now, particularly in many urban areas, and particularly among our minority children. As Howard Fuller says: This need not be the end of public education. It is redefining what is a public educational system in 1997--not what it was in 1960, but what it should look like in 1997, 1998, the year 2000--[and beyond]. This shift in power and philosophy that Dr. Fuller describes involves a mix of approaches: strengthened public schools, low-income scholarships and charter schools. I am a supporter of all of those things. They are not mutually exclusive. Senator Lieberman and I are not here today to say undo the public system and replace it with choice. We are saying we support a mix of things. They are not mutually exclusive. In fact, they are necessary to one another. Dr. Fuller concludes: I think you have to have a series of options for parents. I support charter schools. I support site-based management. I support anything that changes the options for parents. But I am here to say that if one of those options is not choice that gives poor parents a way to leave, the kind of pressure that you need internally is simply not going to occur. Dr. Fuller, who supports a range of choice for parents, says if one of those options is not choice then poor parents have no way to leave the system and apply the kind of pressure that has to be applied internally if any major change is going to occur. His points were buttressed by several inner-city parents who telephoned. Listen to Pam Ballard of Cleveland: After being in the Cleveland public schools and having a child who attended Cleveland public schools, my daughter was listed a behavior problem. She was listed a ``D'' or ``F'' student in all subjects. She did not want to go to school. She had no interest in school. The students would hit her, kick her, mistreat her. But Pam Ballard got a scholarship for her child at Hope Central Academy: It made a difference. I see that difference every time I watch my daughters at play, studying, reading, learning. . . Please keep the scholarship and tutoring programs alive. It is a beginning, and we all need new beginnings. It has helped keep me and my daughters alive. Listen to Barbara Lewis from Indianapolis, who got similar help for her child: My son began to struggle in school. He was not getting the attention he needed. At no time did a teacher ever try to set up a parent-teacher conference to see what we could come up with to help my child. I requested extra credit work, and I tried to set up meetings with the teacher, to no avail. I began to lose hope. I felt that my child's gifts were being wasted. Then an individual provided Ms. Lewis with a scholarship that the Indiana State Legislature failed to provide: The values I was teaching him at home were finally reinforced at school. My son blossomed into an honor roll student, a student council leader, and a football standout. School choice is not a new issue. People of financial means have always had this choice of where they would send their children, to what school. They could afford to move where they wanted, and they could afford the tuition for private schools, while lower-income families with the same hopes and dreams for their children and their children's futures are denied the choice, and they should not be. Mr. President, it is my hope that the Senate will listen to these quiet voices rather than the strident voices of the education unions-- voices of hyperbole and hypocrisy. The hyperbole comes in the accusation that we are destroying public education in the District with this measure. On the contrary, we are not even touching it. These scholarships are not deducted from District education funds. They represent entirely new money. The only challenge to public education in the District that they provide is the challenge of example--the example of at-risk students succeeding and private and religious schools where they have not succeed in public schools. The hypocrisy is equally clear. While education unions oppose school choice, many inner-city public school teachers send their children to schools other than those which they teach. They are, in fact, two to three times more likely than other parents to send their children to private schools. In Milwaukee and Cleveland, for example, more than 50 percent of public school teachers send their own children to private schools. In the District, that figure is 28 percent, still twice the national average. I don't blame them. They are doing what is in the best interests of their own child. But I do blame education unions for actively denying that choice to others. The hypocrisy of the educational unions and the hypocrisy of those who say we must maintain the public school system and not allow opportunities for low-income people when they, themselves, send their children away from the public schools that they teach in so that they can get a better education at a private school. We are not talking about sending children to St. Alban's or Sidwell- Friends. We are talking about sending young, fragile kids to schools with a little order, a little sanity, a little discipline, a little individual attention, a little love--schools like St. Thomas More in Anacostia, or the Nanny Hellen Burroughs School in Northeast, islands of nurture and learning. I visited those schools. Senator Lieberman and I have taken the opportunity to visit those schools. What a remarkable, remarkable difference at a fraction of the cost of the public schools. We cannot even begin to imagine the fears of a mother in the District who is forced to send her child through barbed wire and metal detectors, into a combat zone masquerading as an education institution. If we do not take the side of that mother with immediate, practical help, we will betray her yet again. I, for one, intend to take the side of these parents without hesitation or without apology and without delay. I urge my colleagues to do the same. I yield the floor but reserve the remainder of my time.

Mr. COATS. Mr. President, we will now for about the next 5 hours be discussing an issue that I believe is important to every Member of the U.S. Senate and important to this country and important to the future of education. The amendment is titled the ``District of Columbia Student Opportunity Scholarship'' amendment. It is being offered by myself and Senator Lieberman from Connecticut. We will be presenting the case for this amendment to our colleagues who we trust they will be listening carefully to what is said, and I think the important debate that will ensue as a result of our offering this amendment. The amendment is fairly basic. It provides opportunity scholarships for children in grades K through 12 for District of Columbia residents whose family incomes are below 185 percent of the poverty level. Scholarships may be used to pay tuition costs at a public or private school in the District of Columbia and in adjacent counties in Maryland and Virginia. Scholarships are also available under this amendment for tutoring assistance for students who attend public schools within the District. We establish a District of Columbia scholarship corporation that will determine how the money is distributed. Student eligibility goes to those, as I said, whose family incomes are 185 percent or below of the poverty line. For those at or below the poverty line, these scholarships can total $3,200. For those who are between the poverty line and 185 percent of that, they can receive the lesser of 75 percent of the cost of tuition and monetary funds and transportation to attend an eligible institution of up to $2,400. The tuition scholarship is also available for tutoring in amounts up to $500 for students who stay in D.C. public schools. The election process is designed to not discriminate in any way. All eligible applicants will be considered. If there are more applicants than scholarships available selection will be on a random basis. The funding in no way takes one penny out of funds available for D.C. public schools. In fact, the $7 million in spending for fiscal year 1998 comes out of the Federal contribution to the District of Columbia that is earmarked for deficit reduction. That total contribution--$30 million more than the President requested--we will deduct $7 million out of that. So no, the District is not denied any funds, schools are not denied any funds. This is taken out of a fund that was added by Congress in addition to the President's budget. Mr. President, there is one unavoidable fact at the center of the school choice debate. When education collapses, it is generally not the middle-class children who suffer the most. Their parents, in response to that collapse, have already chosen other private schools, other public schools or moved to the suburbs or away from that particular school, leaving only the low-income, often minority children, in these dysfunctional, often drug- and crime-infested institutions, with little pretense of learning or educational opportunity. We have seen this happen in large cities across our country--in Philadelphia, New York, Detroit, and others. We have seen it happen around us. Every day as we meet here in the Capitol, every day surrounding us in the District of Columbia, our Capital City, we see this happening with tragic results. The D.C. public school system spends more money per pupil than any other district in America. I am going to be repeating that phrase. The District of Columbia public school system spends more money per pupil than any other school district in America. In 1996, 12 percent of the classrooms in the District of Columbia did not have textbooks at the beginning of the year and 20 percent lacked adequate supplies. The D.C. public school system spends more money per pupil than any other district in America, and yet 65 percent of all D.C. public schoolchildren test below their grade level. And 56 percent who take the Armed Forces qualification test--one of the few ways out of poverty in America for low-income students--56 percent who take the Armed Forces qualification test fail. The D.C. public school system spends more money per pupil than any other district in America, yet only about 50 percent of education spending--that money that is available in the District of Columbia-- goes toward instruction. The system has 1 administrator for every 16 teachers while the national average is 1 administrator for every 42 teachers. That fact alone gives us an explanation as to one of the primary reasons for the failure of D.C. students, mostly minority students, to learn in the D.C. school system--a bureaucracy which consumes an extraordinary amount of money, over 50 percent of education funding in the District. The D.C. public school system spends more money per pupil than any other district in America, and two-thirds of the teachers report that violent student behavior is a serious obstacle to teaching. And 16 percent of students report carrying a weapon to school. Over 1 in 10 avoid school because they fear for their safety. It is safe to say, Mr. President, that if these results were found in suburban schools, the education reform movement would more closely resemble the French Revolution. But because these children are powerless and distant from our experience, because of the color of their skin and the size of their parents' bank accounts, we seem content to debate and delay help for those students. We are content to promise reforms that never arrive. There is a price for our patience, a cost to our inertia, measured in squandered potential and stolen hope, measured by the advance of rage or retreat into apathy. Privilege Of The Floor Mr. President, at this point I would like to offer a UC that I omitted to offer earlier. I ask unanimous consent that Brent Orrell, my legislative director, who has been very instrumental in putting all this together be granted floor privileges.

Mr. COATS. Mr. President, I would like to yield as much time as the Senator from Connecticut, coauthor of this provision and partner with me in this effort, may consume. I appreciate his support and help in this effort.

Mr. COATS

Mr. COATS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that at 4:30 p.m. today, the Chair lay before the Senate the conference report to accompany H.R. 2266, the Defense appropriations bill. I further ask unanimous consent that the conference report be considered read and there be 60 minutes of debate on the report, divided as follows: Senator Stevens for 10 minutes, Senator Inouye for 10 minutes, Senator McCain for 10 minutes, Senator Roberts for 10 minutes, Senator Coats for 15 minutes, and Senator Reed for 5 minutes. I also ask unanimous consent that following that debate, the Senate proceed to a vote on the adoption of the conference report with no intervening action or debate.