Duke Cunningham

Mr. CUNNINGHAM

Mr. CUNNINGHAM. If I could just finish this one thought, that recently, this month, they did an exam, international exam. The United States was 28th in math skills, internationally, that we score 15 of 15 industrialized nations in almost all core courses. So is there an emergency? Yes. We want more than 50 cents on a dollar down to the classroom. We want local parents and teachers to take care and support, we want the dollars to upgrade the classroom instead of bureaucracies back here. So that everything we are talking about, the other side demonizes as radical. It is not radical to empower people. What is radical under a socialist communist government is to take that power away from the people and put it in the hands of the government alone.

Mr. CUNNINGHAM. Who has been patiently standing by. I don't know of my colleagues, how many of you, it is difficult to pass a school bond even on a local district. In California it takes like two-thirds to pass a proposition. It has been very difficult. And if we get less than 50 cents on a dollar down to the classroom, where are we going to get the money to upgrade those schools? First of all, when you ask the public, more than a majority of the public feels that the education system, even though we have good schools, the majority feels that our public education system does not even rate a C grade. If that is the case, I would ask most of the majority to expect our schools to have nothing less than an A grade in what it teaches our children. Remember a gentleman named Jaime Escalante, I mentioned his name once before? They thought he was radical when he thought he could teach children mathematics; it was calculus. And the teachers thought he was crazy. This was in a minority district, gang-infested, where the kids were low achievers, high risk. I would say that the parents thought he was crazy; the teachers thought he was crazy. He got no support from the administration, and he said I am going to teach those kids. And he set out to do that as an individual. What a difference he made. Ninety-seven percent of the kids went on to college in mathematics. Then he got the support of the teachers. He got the support of the students. He got the support of the administrators, and made a difference. I think when we turn this around that we get the support of people to say, listen, if we invest our dollars into education and there is a tangible result from that, that is going to make my child's life better, I am willing to give more. Part of that is giving them the tax dollars back to their pocket instead of the Federal Government. But I would say one of the ways we found out besides just the Federal dollar, the State dollar, is the 21st Century bill that my colleagues supported, goes in and lets private enterprise invest into high-tech systems into the classroom. They get to write off, say a computer that is less than 2 years old. We have a nonprofit organization called the Detweiler Foundation that when you take that computer, the school cannot use it, they upgrade that computer with software and hardware. Guess what? They use prison labor and they use military brig labor. It gives them a skill so maybe they are not going to end up back there. Then they turn around and give that computer, ready to use, to the school. We are putting California schools on an 18-month cycle so that we can upgrade and keep those schools up to speed. There is much more that needs to be done. Libraries, I think, should be, because we are asking people to come off welfare, they have to have a place to access modern technology so that they can upgrade their skills.

Mr. CUNNINGHAM. I got one of those, and he is doing great in charter school.

Mr. CUNNINGHAM. Would the gentleman agree, though, that nationally we have a system where computers are given to the schools, and they are ending up in a corner because they do not have the technology to upgrade? This is fantastic.

Mr. CUNNINGHAM. I think the gentleman's crossroads program is one of the most important programs we are working on in Congress.

Mr. CUNNINGHAM. Think what we can do if we get 90 percent of the Federal dollars there, eliminate bureaucracy, and get private investment into our schools. That is a vision for the future of education.

Mr. CUNNINGHAM. Mr. Speaker, they demagogue and say it is a cut. A classic example: Last year the President's direct lending program cost $3 billion to administer, another $4 billion to collect. GAO study. That was when it was capped at 10 percent.

Mr. CUNNINGHAM. Certainly I will yield to the gentleman.

Mr. CUNNINGHAM. Mr. Speaker, I would like to, first of all, thank the gentleman, who is the chairman of the Subcommittee on Oversight. I think it is fair to take a look at the education programs to see if they are good or they are not. A good example is the President wanted a $3 billion new literacy program. We failed, were last of the industrial nations in literacy here in the United States of America. The President wanted a $3 billion literacy program. It sounds good. But there are 14 literacy programs within the Federal Government. Title I is one of those. I would think it would be fair to look and say which of the 14 are good? Can we take one or two, get rid of all the bureaucracies, all the pay for all of those staffs and all of those buildings and focus and say, that is wasted money? Let us put the money in the one or two programs that really work. Mr. Speaker, if it is title I, fund it. But do it fully instead of just halfway doing it. And the gentleman from Michigan [Mr. Hoekstra], and the gentleman from California [Mr. Riggs] and the gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Goodling] are doing that. They are going through the over 760 programs, now, and identifying which are correct and which ones that we should absolutely support. But my colleagues on the other side of the aisle would demagogue to say well, the Republicans are cutting education if they eliminate those programs, even though we are getting more money down to the classroom and to the Zip Code. Mr. Speaker, I would say this, that this last weekend I attended public school teachers' outstanding teachers in San Diego County. I saw parents lauding those public teachers. I saw children lauding their teachers like we would want. I was a teacher myself in high school, and a coach. I was a college teacher and a coach and a dean of a college. My children went through public schools. I still have a daughter in a public school, a sophomore. I truly believe that one of the keys for this great country is a solid public education program and the investment in that. But is it not fair, Mr. Speaker, to ask what programs that we can put into those school systems and fully fund and the Jaime Escalantes of this country to encourage teachers and pay teachers finally what they are worth, instead of paying some bureaucrat in Washington, D.C. that is wasting the money? The average is less than 48 cents per dollar that gets down to the classroom. Is it not fair to say we want at least 90 percent, which this body is going to have a chance to vote on? We want 90 percent of the money from the Federal Government to go to the classroom.

Mr. CUNNINGHAM. How about the teachers? Were the teachers involved?

Mr. CUNNINGHAM. Mr. Speaker, if we take this dollar and we only have half of it--and I carried this dollar for 40 years because of a lesson that my father taught me, I am not going to get into that today. But if we take half of this dollar and leave it here in Washington, then we are cutting education. That is what has been happening. The liberals that claim that they support education are actually cutting education every single day.

Mr. CUNNINGHAM

Mr. CUNNINGHAM. Mr. Speaker, the last gentleman who spoke in the well states his own opinions as fact. The gentleman is factually challenged. Let me go with some specifics. First of all, it is a fact that every voter was looked at, not by surname, but every single voter. I am of Irish descent, but I would want to make sure that every voter that voted, whether they are Irish or of any ethnic background, had a legal right to do that. That is the issue. They cannot win over the majority based on issues. They want bigger government, they want higher taxes, they want big government control. They do not want a balanced budget. They do not want tax relief. They want a centralized Federal Government. So what do they do? They try to scare up the minorities to think the Republicans are going after them. Every single voter was looked at, not by surname. That is incorrect. Second, for 7 months, 7 months, they refused to comply with subpoenas both from an individual, Mr. Dornan, which the Supreme Court held up, or from the committee. So now they are even bucking the Supreme Court decision to comply with the subpoenas. What were the subpoenas for? To find out the information, to find out the facts. Seven months, and it went into 8 months, and now they are saying a year is too long. Yes, it is too long. If we would have been able to get the facts, then it would have been over by now. The rights of the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Sanchez), her rights have not been violated. She is a sitting member of this committee and of this House. But until we find out the facts, and from the facts that have been found, there was fraud. That is fact. It is documented. It is documented over and over and over again. The amount of fraud is the question. We have facts and we have figures that were delivered to the minority and to the committee. All we are asking before we go forward is to make sure that the State verifies the facts. We will live with those facts if they are verified, or not. That is the question. But yet the gentleman over there, they cannot win, so what do they want to do? They want to scare people with surnames, to think that the Republicans are bad people, so they can take over a majority. Well, it is not going to work, because they are smarter than that, Mr. Speaker. I resent, I resent the racist implication. I resent the other side of the aisle making this a racist issue. The issue is that every single American, as few of them that show up at the polls, want to know that their vote counts, that it is not being canceled out by someone that is not qualified to vote. That is the issue. It is not just in California, it is in Texas, it is in Arizona, it is in every State of the Union. This is bigger than Dornan and bigger than Sanchez. This is that the American people want to know that their rights count, and that it is not going to be taken away by someone that is fraudulently voting. They do not want that. They want to win at any means, whether it is the DNC taking money from Charlie Huang and Trie and Riady and Chinese money, or the Vice President doing Buddhist monk fund-raisers and the money going to DNC, or whether it is from illegal contributions from the Teamsters, who two people have already pled guilty of laundering money to the DNC for campaigns for the Democrats. They do not want us to know that. All we are doing is asking, when people go to vote, they want to know that the campaign laws are upheld and not violated, and that someone that wants to vote, their vote counts. I do not care if it is an Irish American that is voting that should not be, or someone from Ireland that is a citizen, that vote should not count and that individual should be taken a look at. Another fact, the State--the alleged fraud, where the gentleman said, show us the fraud, we have. There is fraud. One liberal group alone had over 300 votes verified, documented by the State. That is why we are asking for these others. The other thousands of votes and fraudulent, allegedly fraudulent votes, we are asking the State to verify that. That is fair, Mr. Speaker. There is nothing racist about that. Guess what, they are not by surname. They are not by any surname. They are looking at every single vote. But yet my colleague on the other side would like you to think, so he can get the support of certain minorities in his own election and other Democrat elections so they can retake the majority. But yet they will not support a balanced budget, they will not support tax reform. They will not support welfare reform. They cannot win on the issues, so they will play the ``R'' word, and I resent that, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I had not planned on speaking about that. I was going to speak with the gentleman from Michigan [Mr. Hoekstra] on education, which I will continue to do. But I cannot sit here and let facts be disillusioned before this body, the challenged facts go uncontested, because they are wrong and they are incorrect.

Mr. CUNNINGHAM

Mr. CUNNINGHAM. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to address the House for 5 minutes.

Mr. CUNNINGHAM

Mr. CUNNINGHAM. Mr. Speaker, my colleague across the way said that it is not amnesty. It allows illegals to remain in this country. That is amnesty. I do not care what semantics are, but it allows them to stay here and we are opposed to that. If you are here illegally, if you come into the United States illegally, we will legally deport you to whatever country of origin that you have, and that is our position. That is what we are sticking to. I would also say to the gentleman when he talks about extreme Republicans that cause the President to veto bills, we passed Medicare over to the President. It was vetoed. The DNC through the unions and the White House, thousands of negative ads on the Medicare, and the Government shut down. It is the same Medicare bill that was passed in the balanced budget, but there are still extremists on the other side that do not want the Medicare reform. The same was true with the welfare reform, vetoed, and Government shut down, but yet welfare reform untraps people and we passed that. I would also look at direct lending. The President wanted 100 percent of direct student loans in 1 year capped at 10 percent. It cost $7 billion annually more through the President's direct lending. But that was a pet program, so the Government shut down and the President said, ``We're not going to let the Government go until the extremists allow me to have 100 percent of the direct loans.'' There was a negotiation. Forty percent went forward. In 1 year, they could not account, the Department of Education, for $50 million, and we said, ``That's wrong.'' Also capped at 10 percent, $7 billion additionally a year. What happened with the 40 percent? We just so happened to put it in where you cannot grow the bureaucracy. We saved $10 billion. We increased IDEA, we increased Pell grants to the highest level ever. And you call those extremist ideas, but you want to keep adding big Government, you want big bureaucracy. It takes higher taxes to go forward and support it. We are not going to allow that to happen. When you talk about a rule that allows illegals to stay in, that is also not an extreme position. Legals, yes. Illegals, no. I will support this rule. I had planned like the gentleman from California [Mr. Rohrabacher] on Friday to vote against the rule because of 245(i). But I would also say to my colleague on the other side, for whom I have a lot of respect, when they want to get up and demagogue about the misinformation of the left, 100,000 cops. There are not 100,000 cops out there. You know it and I know it. But yet you say it over and over. When the DNC fights Medicare and welfare reform and a balanced budget was vetoed twice by the President and then comes forward and supports it, yes. But do not call us extremists for a balanced budget, for welfare reform and tax relief for the American people.

Mr. CUNNINGHAM

Mr. CUNNINGHAM. Madam Speaker, I rise today in support of the Asian Elephant Conservation Act (H.R. 1787). This important piece of legislation will continue America's commitment to worldwide elephant conservation. I would also like to congratulate Chairman Saxton for introducing and promoting this important legislation. H.R. 1787 will authorize the Asian elephant conservation fund to receive $5 million each fiscal year from fiscal year 1998 to 2002. This contribution will be matched with private funds from outside interest groups committed to preserving Asian elephants. Our investment will coordinate and leverage private sector support for elephant conservation and fund projects that focus on antipoaching efforts, elephant population research, efforts to mitigate elephant-human conflict, habitat restorations, and identifying new techniques for elephant management. The creation of this important and successful program will continue to promote America's leadership to conserve and restore elephant herds in their native habitat. The future survival of Asian elephants depends upon America's leadership, and our small but crucial amount of financial support. The Asian elephant conservation fund is based on the very successful African Elephant Conservation Act [AECA], which has been responsible for rescuing African elephants from the path to extinction. The AECA has stabilized elephant populations across Africa, tremendously slowed poaching, and provided important incentives to native people to preserve elephants. The need for this legislation is clear. Asian elephant populations living in the wild have fallen dramatically. Right now only about 40,000 animals exist in the wild. The major cause for this decrease is shrinking habitat and expanding human populations. However, passage of this act will reverse the downward trend to elephant populations. This fund will help local villagers, who often live in fear of elephants, to coexist and benefit from the long-term conservation of elephants. This is an important step. Over time, this will reduce the high cost of conservation and save elephants from extinction. Madam Speaker, the African Elephant Conservation Act has been a tremendous success. Let us now authorize the Asian elephant conservation fund and continue America's leadership to promote worldwide elephant conservation. I encourage all my colleagues to vote for H.R. 1787.

Mr. CUNNINGHAM

Mr. CUNNINGHAM. Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of H.R. 2535, the Emergency Student Loan Consolidation Act. Millions of American college students and graduates depend on the Nation's student financial aid system to work reliably for them. Unfortunately, the bureaucracy at the U.S. Department of Education is letting down our students and graduates time and time again. And Congress must act to remedy the Clinton administration's failure. The most recent problem is that the U.S. Department of Education's Direct Lending Consolidation Loan Program has collapsed. In August, it stopped accepting applications from students and graduates to consolidate their direct student loans. Loan consolidations allow students with multiple loans to simplify their finances by combining their many monthly loan payments into a single loan. Often, students can consolidate at a preferred rate that lowers their monthly payments. At the end of August, some 84,000 student borrowers found their consolidation applications delayed by as much as 10 months. And since then, when this crisis first broke, the U.S. Department of Education bureaucracy has made headway on a mere 12,000 consolidation applications. In San Diego, this failure is having a significant and negative impact. We are working very hard to encourage young people to advance their education in institutions of higher learning. Our local, high technology economy depends on a growing stream of qualified graduates. But the failure of the direct lending consolidation system causes students to question whether their system will work for them. Is it causing students to reconsider whether they will pursue their college education? I hope not, but the failure of the U.S. Department of Education to keep its promises may cause people to make that decision. This collapse is forcing student borrowers to pay more, and undergo more hassle, for no good reason, just because the Clinton bureaucracy failed. Now, what does this mean in practical terms for American student borrowers? Students typically participate in several student loan programs at once, as their education institutions prepare individual packages of financial aid involving grants and many types of loans. Simply put, thousands of American students and graduates are in a credit crunch. They expected consolidations that the Department's bureaucracy failed to deliver. They are having to make several student loan payments every month, instead of just one. They are paying higher rates of interest than they need to. In all the confusion, some students face damage to their credit ratings, jeopardizing their ability to buy a home or a car. All of this has occurred because the bureaucratic U.S. Department of Education has failed to do its job, again. One may reasonably ask: Can't students consolidate their loans elsewhere? The answer is that some can. But in 1993, the Clinton administration and the Democrat Congress passed a Washington-knows-best type of law. It requires students that use the Direct Lending Program-- in which student loans are made directly by the U.S. Department of Education and not by private sources--to use only the U.S. Department of Education to consolidate their loans. Because educational institutions, not students, often make the choice in what loan programs to offer, this choice was not the students; to take. As a result, students whose schools are direct lending have simply been led off the edge of a cliff. And that's wrong. The Clinton administration has failed to adequately remedy this situation. Congress must act. And we do today, by moving H.R. 2535. H.R. 2535 simply allows direct lending borrowers to consolidate their loans using a private sector student loan provider. It was approved on a unanimous, bipartisan 43-0 vote in committee. And now, it falls to use in the House to promptly adopt their legislation today. Mr. Speaker, the Clinton administration's U.S. Department of Education has time and time again let America's students and our children down. Its bureaucracy is failing our young people, burdening our schools with paperwork and needless regulation, and costing us too much money for too little good. Let the record show that this Republican Congress will continue to fight for better education for our young people. We will work to bring accountability and good management to those programs that are important, and to eliminate wasteful programs that are failing. We will fight for the bottom line: better student achievement, better results, better teacher training, better technology, and less bureaucratic overhead. We have already made progress in this area by enacting HOPE scholarships and other incentives for citizens to expand their education, and by moving my 21st Century Classrooms Act to expand private investment of technology in our schools. If we do nothing, our young people and our country will suffer. We can and will act. We will put our citizens, our students, and our children first--ahead of big government bureaucracy, ahead of the status quo special interests, and ahead of partisan political agendas. The American people demand nothing less. This Emergency Loan Consolidation Act is just one more step in our long journey forward.

Mr. CUNNINGHAM

Mr. CUNNINGHAM. I did not say it was not used, I said it was not restricted to private use; that you can choose to go to another public school if you desire.

Mr. CUNNINGHAM. Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of the D.C. appropriations bill, and first of all I would like to commend the chairman, the gentleman from North Carolina [Mr. Taylor]. The gentleman underwent a stroke, and he fought through a very difficult situation, and he is back to 100 percent now, but during that time he persevered. I would like to go through a couple of things. My colleague on the other side said this is a bad bill. The reason that the Democrats do not like this bill is because it is the unions that support their particular issues. The unions, with the voucher system, and the unions with Davis-Bacon, both hurt, and both are opposed by the National School Board Association and the majority of the residents in every category. Now, the District of Columbia only has about 14 percent Republicans, yet over 60 percent of the parents with school age children in the District support removing Davis-Bacon, which inflates the cost of construction between 20 and 30 percent. Now, if they really care about children, like the other side purports all the time, they will do this for the children, waive Davis-Bacon, because it saves over 20 percent. The average age of a school in Washington, DC is 86 years. They had trouble even getting the roofs repaired so that the children could go to school this year. There are safety hazards. We need the dollars to be infused after generations of neglect in the D.C. school system. That is why the residents of Washington, DC, want to waive the Davis-Bacon Act. The bill gives D.C. schools the authority to waive the act. It does not do anything with Davis-Bacon. It just gives Washington the right to waive the act themselves. Congress does not do that. But it reduces the inflationary cost if they do that and they have chosen that exact thing. The National School Boards Association supports this provision. The study by Dr. Thiebolt found that States with Davis-Bacon laws pay 13 percent more for their classrooms than the 20 States without them. Yet I say to my colleague that just spoke, who is working with the DNC, the unions have, time after time, and time again, infused illegal money into the campaigns of Democrats. That is under investigation right now. Of course, they do not want this. This is their power base, both in construction and with the teachers unions. They do not want it. My wife is an elementary school principal with a doctorate degree. The last thing we want to do is hurt public education, but this program is needed. Of the over 20 Members of Congress that live in the D.C. area, not a single one have their students in public schools. They put them in private schools. Why? There are good teachers in Washington, DC, and there are some good schoolhouses as well, but the great majority are failing and the teachers are not credentialed. I would not put my children here. I do not think many of my colleagues would either. All we are asking for is an opportunity for these parents to have their children go into a school that is free of drugs, that is free of crime, where they have a shot at the 21st century. That is not the case now, Mr. Speaker. That is why the gentleman from North Carolina, in this bill, has done everything he can to help the schools. Now, if the other side really wants to help the children instead of their union bosses and support the DNC and their fundraising, then they will support this. They say this is a terrible bill. What they mean to say is it is terrible against the unions, their big supporters. I would say that time and time again we have our groups that are like a domino effect. We feel that if something passes, that it will domino the rest of the issues that we support. And I am sure that that is what it is with the unions and Davis-Bacon, but this is an emergency situation, Mr. Speaker, an emergency situation with schoolhouses that are over 86 years old. The schoolchildren have almost zero chance at the American dream. This is a chance where we can help them instead of helping the unions for once. And, again, it does not waive Davis-Bacon, it just gives the city the right to waive it because it saves between 20 and 30 percent in construction costs. That is not asking too much, I do not think. Yet that is why my colleague says this is a terrible bill.

Mr. CUNNINGHAM. Mr. Speaker, besides thanking the chairman, the gentleman from North Carolina [Mr. Taylor], there is another gentleman that should be thanked, and that is General Becton. General Becton has taken on an enormous job in saving the schools in Washington, DC. He did so where he came before. But I would say that, speaking to the bill itself, who supports removing Davis-Bacon? Sixty-five percent support allowing D.C. officials to repair the D.C. schools without mandating higher Federal wages, 53 percent of union households support it, 60 percent of the Democrats in the District agree, 68 percent agree it is more important to remove Davis-Bacon, and 56 percent give D.C. schools a D or an F. It is time, and it is an emergency. Here is what ``20/20'' said: ``That's the argument: We need Davis- Bacon to guarantee good wages to make sure Government buildings are well-built. Sounds logical, 'til you realize that most buildings in America are not Government-built buildings. In fact, three-fourths of construction is private work. Are these buildings lower quality than Government buildings? Of course not. They may be better built. In most American life, we do quite well without Government setting wages and prices.'' That is John Stossel and ``20/20.'' We would also say that, who supports it? The National School Board Association, for vouchers and for both removing Davis-Bacon, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Associated Builders and Contractors. D.C. Board chairman Dr. Andrew Brimmer told the Committee on Education and the Workforce that, ``Waiving the Davis-Bacon Act would be helpful in our ability to attract donated services.'' And 65 percent of D.C. residents support this provision. Florida eliminated its State Davis-Bacon law in 1974 for schools. They saved 15 percent. Kentucky, likewise, they reinstated it and increased their construction cost by $35 million. Ohio is saving millions. We ask for the support of the opportunity scholarships and removal of Davis-Bacon and support the rule.

Mr. CUNNINGHAM. Mr. Speaker, the gentlewoman from Connecticut [Ms. DeLauro], states her own opinion as fact, and I would say that the gentlewoman is factually challenged in the fact that it does not go just to private schools, the opportunity scholarship. If a parent in the D.C. school system finds that there is an unsafe school where it does not offer a fair education, then that parent, like anyone that would want their child to get a good education. Second, the gentlewoman says Republicans cut education. Mr. Speaker, $10 billion we saved. We cut the President's direct lending program out of bureaucracy, $10 billion, because it inflated $5 billion capped at 10 percent, but yet we increase scholarships by 50 percent, we put money into the IDEA program for special education, we increased the Pell grant to the highest level ever, we increased Eisenhower grants for teacher training. What we cut is the liberals' precious bureaucracy. That is the same thing that they are trying to do here, is fight for the unions. We are trying to fight for the children.

Mr. CUNNINGHAM. Mr. Speaker, will the gentlewoman yield?

Mr. CUNNINGHAM. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. CUNNINGHAM. Mr. Speaker, I would say to my friend, the issue is not private versus public schools. It is trying to bring a school system that is in an emergency up to a level to help. Sure, we would like more money than for just the 2,000, but if we take a look, and I would like to submit, it is a civil right, fighting for school choice, per Dr. King. Here, school choice finds satisfaction, parents are pleased and pupils improve scores. If we look at national scores, the African-American community supports school choice. Bishop McKinney in my own city takes at-risk children, and 97 percent of them end up going to school.

Mr. CUNNINGHAM

Mr. CUNNINGHAM. Mr. Chairman, I think the diligence of the chairman, the gentleman from North Carolina [Mr. Taylor], is extraordinary, especially in the case of his medical problem, and he has fought back, and I want to thank the chairman. I would also like to thank the ranking minority member, the gentleman from Virginia [Mr. Moran]. As he knows, I just gave Mary a box of candy from California and there is another one where that comes from, I would say to the gentleman, to sweeten him up. I would also like to thank the gentleman from Louisiana [Mr. Livingston], the chairman of the full committee. I have never voted for a D.C. bill in the 6 years I have been here, because it has been general practice to just have business as normal. The gentleman from Louisiana [Mr. Livingston] says, ``Well, Duke, you complain about it. If you think it is broke, fix it.'' So I get my pittance on the D.C. appropriations bill, but I want to tell my colleagues something that is rewarding: The gentleman from California [Mr. Dixon] has been wonderful, and I even thank the gentleman from Wisconsin [Mr. Obey] for his mellowing in his later years. Mr. Chairman, I have spoken to Members, and I realize that on the political side of this, it is difficult. It is difficult in some cases for our Republican Members to go against the special interests of the unions. I understand it is difficult for Members on the other side at the same time, and I have talked to them about it. The actual issues, they wish they could support, but they cannot. Mr. Chairman, when we talk about campaign finance reform, we talk about the essence of it is taking out special interests so that we can actually help. I would also like to thank the gentlewoman that represents the District [Ms. Norton]. Although we may disagree on issues, she was there, she participated with her city. She had hearings, she was present, she is not on the subcommittee, but yet she took the time to show up and do that. I think it is just a shame, though, that in the case of special interests that we cannot pass legislation, or we may have difficulty passing legislation that will actually help the city, will help children, will help parents, and I think that the gentleman from North Carolina [Mr. Taylor], the chairman of the subcommittee, has done a good job. But what have we tried to do? I want to assure my friends on the other side, although we may talk about ideology, and there may be some portions in this, I want to tell my colleagues that my motives are pure. I want to get the most amount of dollars down to a school system to where the school, the average is 86 years old, and they have to replace school roofs. A lot of the schools, the fire department has had to take over because they are dangerous. And if we can get the maximum amount of dollars into those schools, and it has been proven time and time again in many, many States by waiving Davis-Bacon for school construction that we save a lot of dollars, and that is the intent. This is an emergency situation. It is not ideological to me. To look at charter schools, in which many cases the unions blasted charter schools, but I think the sweeping, overwhelming good that they do and allowing the District of Columbia to go into those, I think it is a benefit. There is an union group that is exempt from taxes. It will get $1.3 million a year into the school system. That is good. It gets more money to upgrade the computers, because when we have schools that age, I guarantee my colleagues that the technology and the science equipment, the math, and we have large amounts of students that do not even finish and graduate from those schools, we have to do something to help that and to get the most amount of dollars to do that. We recognize the Jime Escolonti type of teachers by increasing the funding for those teachers that are credentialed. There are many, and I have met them because I live in the District of Columbia, and there are many good teachers in Washington, DC, but yet they are plagued by teachers that are not, like in many of our innermost cities, and we want to recognize those that do a good job and reward them for that. But I think most of all that there is an area in which parents feel like they are hopeless. Children do not have a chance, and I would like to read this. It is from Dr. King. He said, In this spirit, House Majority Leader Dick Armey of Texas and Representative Floyd Flake, a Democrat from New York, and several other Congressmen have proposed the District of Columbia Student Opportunity Scholarship Act. Low-income, low-income parents that feel denied will have a chance, for the first time, to offer their children a chance at a good education.

Mr. CUNNINGHAM. Mr. Chairman, I wish to thank the gentleman from Minnesota [Mr. Sabo], and I agree that we need more than 5 minutes to discuss this issue. It is a very important issue. Sixty-five years is too long. That is what this House is about, taking antiquated wasteful spending out. If we look at Florida, Kentucky, Ohio, Montgomery, Preston County, all of them have saved money. The one institution of Utah, the study was paid for by the unions. All other studies show that Davis-Bacon inflates costs. A poll, this is Washington, DC, 65 percent support the bill of local option, Davis-Bacon, to a take it out. Sixty percent of Democrats agree. Sixty-eight percent agree that it is more important to create entry level jobs than to have Davis-Bacon. Seventy-two percent agree that the law should be changed to permit volunteers to take part in construction and repair work, which Davis-Bacon prevents. We are trying to get the most amount of money to fix schools that are 86 years old. It is a sad day, Mr. Chairman, when special interests, when we talk about campaign finance reform, stops good legislation.