Susan Collins

Ms. COLLINS

Ms. COLLINS. Mr. President, I rise to offer an amendment to the Affordable Education Act on behalf of myself, the Presiding Officer-- Senator Coverdell--and my good friend from Arizona, Senator Kyl. We worked together to craft this amendment to help our public school teachers when they either pursue professional development at their own expense or when they purchase supplies for their classrooms. Our legislation has two major provisions. First, it will allow teachers to deduct their professional development expenses without subjecting the deduction to the existing 2-percent floor that is in our Tax Code. Second, it will grant teachers a tax credit of up to $100 for books, supplies, and other equipment they purchase for their students. That is very common. As Senator Kyl noted earlier today, a study by the National Education Association indicates the average schoolteacher teaching K through the 12th grade spends more than $400 annually on supplies for the classroom. Our amendment would reward teachers for undertaking these activities that are designed to make them better teachers or to provide better supplies for their students. It is an example of a way that we can say thank you to teachers who do much for our children. Provisions similar to both of these components of our amendment were included in last year's tax bill. In this amendment, the definition of ``acceptable professional development activities'' has been changed to reflect the definition included in the Teacher Empowerment Act that Senator Gregg of New Hampshire and I introduced last year, and which we expect to be included in the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, which the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions is about to mark up. This definition sets high standards for the quality of professional development activities covered by our amendment, ensuring that such programs will help teachers truly excel in the classroom. While our amendment provides financial relief for our dedicated teachers, its real beneficiaries are our Nation's students. Other than involved parents, which we all know to be the most important component, a well-qualified and dedicated teacher is the single most important prerequisite for student success. Educational researchers have repeatedly demonstrated the close relationship between qualified teachers and successful students. Moreover, teachers themselves understand how important professional development is to maintaining and expanding their levels of competence. When I meet with teachers from Maine, they always tell me of their need for more professional development and the scarcity of financial support for this very worthy pursuit. The willingness of Maine's teachers to reach deep into their own pockets to fund their own professional development impresses me deeply. For example, an English teacher in Bangor, who serves on my Educational Policy Advisory Committee, told me of spending her own money to attend a curriculum conference. She then came back and shared that information with all of the English teachers in her department. She is not alone. She is typical of teachers who are willing to pay for their own professional development as well as to purchase supplies and materials to enhance their teaching. Let me explain how our amendment would work in terms of real dollars when it comes to professional development. In 1997, the average yearly salary for a teacher was about $38,000. Under current law, a teacher earning this amount could not deduct the first $770 in professional development expenses he or she paid for out of pocket. So imagine, you are a teacher who is making about $38,000 a year and you are spending more than $700 in order to take a course to improve your teaching to help you be a better teacher. Yet because you don't reach that 2- percent floor that is in the existing Tax Code, you don't get a tax break for that first $770. You have to spend more than that before you can get the deduction. Our amendment would change that. It would see to it that teachers receive tax relief for all such expenses. Under our amendment, that $770 would be a deduction on the teacher's income tax form. I greatly admire the many teachers who have voluntarily financed the additional education they need to improve their schools and to serve their students better. I greatly admire those teachers who reach into their own pockets to buy supplies, paints, books, all sorts of materials that are lacking in their classroom. We should reward those teachers. Let us change the Tax Code to recognize and reward their sacrifice and to encourage more teachers to take the courses they need or to help supplement the supplies in their classroom. I hope these changes in our Tax Code will encourage more teachers to undertake the formal course work in the subject matter they teach, or to complete graduate degrees in either a subject matter or in education, or to attend conferences to give them more ideas for innovative approaches to presenting the course work they teach in perhaps a more challenging manner. This amendment will reimburse teachers for just a small part of what they invest in our children's future. This money will be money well spent. Investing in education helps us to build one of the most important assets for our country's future; that is, a well-educated population. We need to ensure that our public schools have the very best teachers possible in order to bring out the very best in our students. Adopting this amendment is the first step toward that goal. It will help us in a small way recognize the many sacrifices our teachers make each and every day. I am very pleased to have had the opportunity to work with the Senator from Georgia and the Senator from Arizona on this amendment. They have both been great leaders in education and in coming up with innovative ways to use our Tax Code to encourage better teaching. I urge all of my colleagues to join us in support of this modest but important effort. I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Ms. COLLINS. Mr. President, improving education for all American children is our No. 1 priority in the Senate. It is No. 1 on our Republican plan. Education is more important than ever before in our history. While education has always been the engine of social and economic progress, today it assumes more importance than ever before. Education is critical to allow people to fully participate in our increasingly technological society. Education is critical to narrowing the gap between the rich and the poor in this country, which is largely an educational gap. In fact, an individual with a college degree can expect to earn, on average, $17,000 more a year than an individual who only has a high school degree. Increasingly, education is important not only to our quality of life, not only to technological and medical breakthroughs, but to narrowing the gaps in our society and ensuring that everyone is able to have the quality of life he or she wishes to have. By working with our parents, our teachers, our communities, and our States, our goal is to strengthen our schools so that every American child has the opportunity for a good education, so that no child, in the words of Texas Governor George Bush, is left behind. That is our goal. A good education is a ladder of opportunity. It turns dreams into reality, it is responsible for improvements in our quality of life, and it enables a child to achieve his or her full potential. That is why I am a strong supporter of the Affordable Education Act, the legislation we are debating today. The Presiding Officer knows I am a very strong supporter of public education. I would not support a bill I thought in any way weakened public education. The last time this bill was debated on the Senate floor--and again today--I heard suggestions that somehow this bill was a backdoor attempt at vouchers. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, this legislation will allow American families to save for their children's future education--to save for college, for example. It will allow them to use the money they put aside to supplement public education in K through 12, to hire a tutor, for example, to pay for a school trip, to help to afford extra help by way of buying a computer. This will help parents help their own children with their own money that they are putting aside in an educational savings account. I am particularly interested in this legislation because I think it will help parents afford higher education, which often seems to be an obstacle that many families question they can afford. Creating the educational IRA, as this Congress did, was an important first step in encouraging families to save for higher education. But we need to go further, and the Affordable Education Act contains significantly improved benefits for families using educational IRAs to save for postsecondary education. In the State of Maine, we have a terrific record of encouraging our students to complete high school. We have one of the best records in the country. But, unfortunately, we don't do as well encouraging students to go beyond high school. In that area, we lag behind other States. Yet we know how important higher education is. It is more important than ever before. As I talk with students and their families, school administrators, and teachers, I find that too many Maine families believe education beyond high school is simply beyond their means. This legislation will help them save for the cost of higher education. It will increase the annual amount a family can contribute to an educational IRA from $500 to $2,000. Now, let's look at what that means and the difference that can make. That means if a family were saving the maximum amount of $2,000 each year for 18 years, starting at the child's birth, at a return of about 8 percent per year, they would have about $75,000 to pay for a college education. Now, that contrasts sharply with the $19,000 they would have under current law. That is important because $75,000 is an awful lot closer to the average cost of attending a private college for 4 years than $19,000 would be. The Affordable Education Act also makes some important changes and improvements in prepaid tuition plans. That is another way we can help American families better afford higher education. Some of the provisions in this bill were originally proposed in legislation I introduced called the Savings For Scholars legislation. For example, families will be allowed to roll over accounts without incurring tax liability from one prepaid plan to another. So if they move from one State to another with a different variation, they don't lose the benefits of that plan. The legislation includes first cousins among the family members to whom a plan can be transferred should it not be needed or used by the child who was the original beneficiary. It will provide greater incentives for grandparents to establish prepaid tuition or to participate in prepaid tuition plans. Another provision of this legislation, which I think is very important, is that it will eliminate the 60-month limit on the deduction of student loan interest. The second bill I introduced as a new Senator in 1997 allowed students to deduct the interest on their student loans. I am very pleased that a version of my legislation--and there were many others supporting that approach as well--was incorporated into the 1997 Tax Relief Act. But we found that there was a 60-month limit put on how long someone could deduct the interest on a student loan. This legislation eliminates that 60-month limit. That is going to be very important to students who attend graduate or professional school or who otherwise have incurred a large debt burden. The impetus for the legislation I introduced back in 1997 came from my experience while working at a small college in Maine. Most of the students of this college--Husson College in Bangor, ME--were first- generation college students, the first members of their family to attend college. Eighty-five percent of them received some sort of student loan in order to be able to afford college. What I found is that many of them were graduating with a mountain of debt. They were worried about how they were going to be able to pay off those student loans. Allowing them to deduct that interest every month when they write that check, knowing they will be able to deduct that interest, is an enormous help to them. By eliminating that 60-month limit, we will help even more students and help make higher education that much more affordable. Another important provision of the Affordable Education Act is the provision dealing with the National Health Corps scholarships exclusion. Because Maine is underserved in many of our rural areas for health care providers, this provision is particularly important to our State. What it would do is allow health care providers who had received these National Health Corps scholarships to exclude the cost of that scholarship from their gross income. I have touched on just some of the very important provisions of this legislation. We know that investing in education and making it easier for families to afford education, whether it is helping at the K through 12 level or making higher education more affordable, is a good investment, that it is the surest and best way for us to build our country's assets for the future. We need to help more American families afford higher education. We need to strengthen our educational system. That is what this legislation will accomplish. I urge all of my colleagues to join in supporting this legislation, which will make a real difference to so many American families. Thank you, Mr. President. I yield the floor.

Ms. COLLINS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Ms. COLLINS. I thank the Presiding Officer for his generosity in assuming the Chair so I may debate this extremely important issue. The Senator from Georgia has been such a strong leader in the Senate on education issues. I have been very pleased to work with him on a number of education issues. I know how committed he is to improving education for all American children. I am delighted to join in this debate today.

Ms. COLLINS

Ms. COLLINS. Mr. President, I would like to announce for the information of the Senate and the public that the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations of the Committee on Governmental Affairs, will hold two days of hearing entitled ``Day Trading: Everyone Gambles But The House.'' This subcommittee hearing will focus on the practices and operations of the securities day trading industry. The hearings will take place on Thursday, February 24, 2000, and Friday, February 25, 2000, at 9:30 a.m. each day in room 342 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building. subcommittee on water and power

Ms. COLLINS

Ms. COLLINS. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Wyoming for his graciousness. I rise in support of the provisions of the manager's amendment that strikes the take title language from the Nuclear Waste Policy Act amendments. I express my great appreciation to the committee chairman, Senator Murkowski, for his willingness to work with us to address the concerns of a number of States, including my home State of Maine, about the take title provisions. Our States feared that the take title provisions would grant the Department of Energy a license to permanently store nuclear waste where it now sits--on the very vulnerable riverfronts, seashores, and lake borders of many States. The take title provision was a fatal flaw in this otherwise necessary and sound legislation. This provision was based upon an ill-advised effort by the Department of Energy to shirk its responsibilities to store nuclear waste. The take title provision would have allowed the Department of Energy to take ownership of the nuclear waste at each individual nuclear plant across the Nation. At first blush, that sounds very reasonable, but we have to look at the record. Given the Department of Energy's dismal record of missed deadlines and its utter failure to deal with the nuclear waste issue, new waste storage facilities created under the take title provision would run the very real risk of becoming de facto permanent waste sites. Moreover, this administration has simply done a miserable job of allaying the fears of the Governor of my State and the people of many other States who all fear the take title provision is a ruse to create permanent repositories at each site. Residents of my State of Maine have been paying into the nuclear waste fund for years with assurances that the radioactive waste from the State of Maine and from Maine Yankee, in particular, would be moved to a permanent repository, not left in Wiscasset, ME, where the plant once operated. Since 1982, the ratepayers of Maine have paid nearly $150 million into the fund. Yet we have seen no progress, no results. What to do with our Nation's nuclear waste is, indeed, a difficult question, but creating semipermanent storage at over 100 facilities across the Nation is clearly not the answer. Similarly, allowing the Department of Energy to continue to dodge its responsibilities is not the answer. The answer is a safe, consolidated facility. The answer is for the Department of Energy to fulfill its obligations. The answer is for the Department of Energy to take possession of the waste, not just in Maine but by physically removing it from these sites across our country. I urge my colleagues to support the manager's amendment. I believe it will solve the problems with the take title provision and thus improve this important piece of legislation. Mr. President, I yield the floor and thank the Senator from Wyoming for yielding. Mr. DASCHLE addressed the Chair.

Ms. COLLINS

Ms. COLLINS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table, and any statements relating to the resolution be printed in the Record.

Ms. COLLINS

Ms. COLLINS. Mr. President, I believe we have now completed our business today. When the Senate completes its business today, it will stand in adjournment under the provisions of H. Con. Res. 235 until the hour of 12 noon on Monday, January 24, 2000, for the opening of the second session of the 106th Congress. I ask unanimous consent that following the quorum call and the routine housekeeping matters, the Journal of the proceedings be approved to date, the morning hour be deemed to have expired, the time for the two leaders be reserved for their use later in the day, and the Senate then begin a period for the transaction of routine morning business until 2 p.m., with Members permitted to speak for up to 10 minutes each.

Ms. COLLINS

Ms. COLLINS. Mr. President, if there is no further business to come before the Senate, I now ask unanimous consent that the Senate stand in adjournment under the provisions of H. Con. Res. 235.

Ms. COLLINS

Ms. COLLINS. Mr. President, for the information of all Senators, a cloture vote will occur at 12 noon on Tuesday, January 25, 2000, on the pending bankruptcy bill, in an effort to keep the remaining amendments to the bill germane to the issue of bankruptcy. Other legislation and executive calendar items could be considered during the session of the Senate on that Monday. However, votes are not expected to occur. I deeply thank all of my colleagues for their patience and cooperation in the final hours of the first session of the 106th Congress. I think we are very fortunate to have the leaders that we have in the Senate. On their behalf, and on my own behalf, I wish everyone a safe and happy holiday season.

Ms. COLLINS

Ms. COLLINS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table, and that any statements relating to the resolution be printed in the Record.

Ms. COLLINS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of S. Res. 241, submitted earlier by Senator Lott.

Ms. COLLINS

Ms. COLLINS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate concur in the amendment of the House.

Ms. COLLINS. Mr. President, I ask the Chair lay before the Senate a message from the House of Representatives on S. 416, an act to direct the Secretary of Agriculture to convey to the city of Sisters, Oregon, a certain parcel of land for use in connection with a sewage treatment facility. The PRESIDING OFFICER laid before the Senate the following message from the House of Representatives: Resolved, That the bill from the Senate (S. 416) entitled ``An Act to direct the Secretary of Agriculture to convey to the city of Sisters, Oregon, a certain parcel of land for use in connection with a sewage treatment facility'', do pass with the following amendment: Strike out all after the enacting clause and insert:

Ms. COLLINS

Ms. COLLINS. Mr. President, we are awaiting one final legislative measure that we expect to clear tonight. In the meantime, I thank the floor staff for all of their assistance with this legislative flurry this evening and earlier today. I also express my thanks to the staff of the Senate for their ongoing assistance to me and to other Senators. I take this opportunity to also praise my own staff, which has worked so hard during this last legislative session. It has been a very productive one, and I feel very fortunate to have such a talented and hard-working staff to support me in my efforts to serve the people of Maine. I thank the presiding officer for his patience as we have proceeded through this last-minute flurry of legislation. We can be proud of the fact that we have been able to clear a great deal of legislation today that will make a real difference for the families of America.

Ms. COLLINS

Ms. COLLINS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the bill be considered read the third time and passed, the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table, and that any statements relating to the bill appear at this point in the Record.

Ms. COLLINS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of H.R. 3443, which is at the desk.

Ms. COLLINS

Ms. COLLINS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Ms. COLLINS. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Ms. COLLINS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate now turn to H. Con. Res. 190, regarding the Seattle, WA WTO meeting, the resolution be considered agreed to, and the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table, all without any intervening action or debate.

Ms. COLLINS

Ms. COLLINS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the joint resolution be considered read a third time and passed, the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table, and that any statements relating to the bill be printed in the Record.

Ms. COLLINS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of H.J. Res. 26.

Ms. COLLINS

Ms. COLLINS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table, and any statements relating to this resolution be printed in the Record.

Ms. COLLINS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate now proceed to the immediate consideration of calendar No. 413, S. Res. 216.

Ms. COLLINS

Ms. COLLINS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the resolution, as amended, be agreed to, the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table, and that any statements relating to this matter be printed in the Record.