Michael Enzi

Mr. ENZI

Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, I rise to announce the introduction of legislation that would make a technical correction to Chapter 44 of title 18 of the United States Code which would ensure that the rights of law-abiding gun owners are not further eroded by the Federal Government when it performs background checks for the purchase of firearms. My heart goes out to the families who have suffered harm or death at the hands of persons who have chosen to break State and Federal gun statutes. There is no excuse for violence. When one citizen suffers the effects of violence, all of America should be outraged and should demand the violation be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. Unfortunately, many people have lost sight of the reason for these tragedies, and rather than focusing on preventing further gun violence by working to resolve the violent nature of modern society, the debate over gun control has deteriorated into an argument over ways to punish law-abiding citizens for the criminal actions of others. This leaves us far too often confronted with legislation that attempts to make people feel safer without providing any real security. Because of the extreme seriousness that surrounds incidents of gun violence, and because of the deep grief and horror that accompanies those times when the value of a human life is taken so lightly, I cannot in good faith support any legislation that makes empty promises and then does nothing to protect America's children. Events during the past two years clearly show that no number of laws or statutes will protect our children if those laws are not enforced. The key to curbing gun violence is stricter enforcement of existing laws and teaching our children that it is wrong to kill. No legislative action in the world will keep anyone safe if it is not enforced. By that same token, taking away the rights of law-abiding citizens does nothing to protect America's children from the illegal ownership or use of a firearm. As in all social problems, the solution to ending gun violence lies in addressing the cause of the disease and not in picking away at its symptoms. Moral and social changes must take place throughout the nation. People must become more involved in their communities. Parents must become more involved in the lives of their children. Our society must reinforce the importance of treating others as you would like to be treated yourself. The legislation I am introducing today would correct a misguided oversight that has occurred in the enforcement of the background check requirements by first, prohibiting the Federal Government from imposing a tax on federally mandated background checks conducted for the transfer of a firearm; second, it would require law enforcement agencies who conduct background checks to immediately destroy the records of those firearm purchasers who, as a result of the background check, are determined to be a legal purchaser; and finally, it imposes civil penalties for Federal agencies who fail to comply with this requirement. The United States stands out as the example of democracy and freedom for the rest of the world. We hold this position because of our unswerving dedication to the Constitution, and to a Federal court system that has diligently worked to uphold the individual rights created by that historic document. This legislation makes it possible for law enforcement agencies to prevent conflicts that have arisen between an individual's right to privacy and an enumerated right to own a firearm. These conflicts have arisen as a result of a bad policy decision that allows Federal agencies to hold onto background check records for up to 90 days for ``Internal Audit'' reasons. Because of an inability to monitor what agencies do with those records during that time, the immediate record destruction requirement is absolutely necessary to prevent abuses that could place the rights of our citizens in further conflict. Once again, this does not apply to persons whose background checks show they are attempting to illegally purchase a firearm but only applies to law-abiding citizens whose background checks demonstrate that they can legally purchase a firearm. The underlying background check statute that this legislation amends authorizes federal agencies to conduct background searches for one reason and one reason only, to determine if the applicant can legally purchase a firearm. Once that purpose has been fulfilled there is no further authorization to retain the records of legal and law-abiding gun purchasers for any other agency actions. I realize that the question over the rights of gun ownership is an emotional issue for many people on both sides of the debate, but until the United States Constitution is overridden and our citizens' rights to own a gun are taken away, then our Federal agencies have no authority to impede or prevent law-abiding citizens from purchasing or possessing legally-acquired firearms. This legislation would retain those rights and restore equity to the implementation of the firearm background check statute.

Mr. ENZI

Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, I rise to announce the introduction of legislation that would make a technical correction to Chapter 44 of title 18 of the United States Code which would ensure that the rights of law-abiding gun owners are not further eroded by the Federal Government when it performs background checks for the purchase of firearms. My heart goes out to the families who have suffered harm or death at the hands of persons who have chosen to break State and Federal gun statutes. There is no excuse for violence. When one citizen suffers the effects of violence, all of America should be outraged and should demand the violation be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. Unfortunately, many people have lost sight of the reason for these tragedies, and rather than focusing on preventing further gun violence by working to resolve the violent nature of modern society, the debate over gun control has deteriorated into an argument over ways to punish law-abiding citizens for the criminal actions of others. This leaves us far too often confronted with legislation that attempts to make people feel safer without providing any real security. Because of the extreme seriousness that surrounds incidents of gun violence, and because of the deep grief and horror that accompanies those times when the value of a human life is taken so lightly, I cannot in good faith support any legislation that makes empty promises and then does nothing to protect America's children. Events during the past two years clearly show that no number of laws or statutes will protect our children if those laws are not enforced. The key to curbing gun violence is stricter enforcement of existing laws and teaching our children that it is wrong to kill. No legislative action in the world will keep anyone safe if it is not enforced. By that same token, taking away the rights of law-abiding citizens does nothing to protect America's children from the illegal ownership or use of a firearm. As in all social problems, the solution to ending gun violence lies in addressing the cause of the disease and not in picking away at its symptoms. Moral and social changes must take place throughout the nation. People must become more involved in their communities. Parents must become more involved in the lives of their children. Our society must reinforce the importance of treating others as you would like to be treated yourself. The legislation I am introducing today would correct a misguided oversight that has occurred in the enforcement of the background check requirements by first, prohibiting the Federal Government from imposing a tax on federally mandated background checks conducted for the transfer of a firearm; second, it would require law enforcement agencies who conduct background checks to immediately destroy the records of those firearm purchasers who, as a result of the background check, are determined to be a legal purchaser; and finally, it imposes civil penalties for Federal agencies who fail to comply with this requirement. The United States stands out as the example of democracy and freedom for the rest of the world. We hold this position because of our unswerving dedication to the Constitution, and to a Federal court system that has diligently worked to uphold the individual rights created by that historic document. This legislation makes it possible for law enforcement agencies to prevent conflicts that have arisen between an individual's right to privacy and an enumerated right to own a firearm. These conflicts have arisen as a result of a bad policy decision that allows Federal agencies to hold onto background check records for up to 90 days for ``Internal Audit'' reasons. Because of an inability to monitor what agencies do with those records during that time, the immediate record destruction requirement is absolutely necessary to prevent abuses that could place the rights of our citizens in further conflict. Once again, this does not apply to persons whose background checks show they are attempting to illegally purchase a firearm but only applies to law-abiding citizens whose background checks demonstrate that they can legally purchase a firearm. The underlying background check statute that this legislation amends authorizes federal agencies to conduct background searches for one reason and one reason only, to determine if the applicant can legally purchase a firearm. Once that purpose has been fulfilled there is no further authorization to retain the records of legal and law-abiding gun purchasers for any other agency actions. I realize that the question over the rights of gun ownership is an emotional issue for many people on both sides of the debate, but until the United States Constitution is overridden and our citizens' rights to own a gun are taken away, then our Federal agencies have no authority to impede or prevent law-abiding citizens from purchasing or possessing legally-acquired firearms. This legislation would retain those rights and restore equity to the implementation of the firearm background check statute.

Mr. ENZI

Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, I yield up to 10 minutes to the Senator from Ohio.

Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, I yield back the remainder of my time.

Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, while I am awaiting the arrival of the Senator from Arkansas, I will take a couple more minutes on this amendment. What we are doing today, through one of the three amendments--or maybe all of the three amendments--is setting up a new school renovation and construction program. The question is, Do you want to just give the money to the States or do you believe there ought to be some constrictions on the money? Under the amendment I have offered, there is a first priority. That first priority is that the Federal Government shall first meet its existing obligation to fund the construction and renovation needs of Indian schools and federally impacted schools before any other construction needs are addressed. That is an area that we have underfunded in the past. It is an obligation we already have. That obligation stands at $2 billion. There is a second priority; that is, once we have assured the funding of the Indian schools and the federally impacted schools, which is already a Federal obligation, then we would have two mechanisms for funding schools, both of which would require that they be targeted toward the neediest districts in the States. Those would be determined by the States, but they have to be the neediest schools in the States. There are two ways of funding that. One of them is Senator Snowe's ``bricks'' approach, which is a revolving loan fund that is set up to pay the interest on the school bonds that are done to build the schools. The other one is the proposal that I have put forth that targets the 10 percent for the neediest schools and requires that there be a 90-percent effort at the local level. We keep talking about the local level. There are no provisions for funding to get to the local level for an obligation. A needy area has very little capability to raise money through bonds. States have requirements. Bonding companies have requirements on how much money they will allow a district to bond. Some of those districts have already reached their entire capacity. As I mentioned before, some have exceeded their capacity. How does that happen? If the value of the property in the district goes down, and they already have existing obligations, then they exceed the capacity they are allowed. There is no penalty for exceeding the capacity. The bonds are not as valuable and they won't sell with any kind of premium. They will probably sell with a discount, but it is a mechanism that is out there for local school districts to provide funding for their schools. And one of the things I have been concerned about through the whole process is how we make sure there is money available for the neediest schools, for those districts that do not have a very high bonding capacity but still to make sure they do some local effort. There is a tremendous difference in the kind of a school that is built if you get to use somebody else's money as opposed to your own money. So we need to make sure there is still that local obligation involved. The other part of it is that States have always had an obligation to do this. In fact, the Federal Government, outside the two areas I mentioned, which are the Indian schools and the Federally impacted schools, has not had a role in school construction and renovation. We have made that a requirement of the States. As a result, in order to make sure there is still some State participation, there is a 50-percent match requirement. I do not think we ought to pass any bill out of this Chamber that does not assure we have the local participation and State participation before we do a brand new Federal spending program that assures we are going to build schools for all of the school districts in the United States. I can see the cash register ringing up out there as the wish list for new schools goes up. I can tell you that in Wyoming, we have been working under an equalization process so that the rich school districts, those districts that have a higher property valuation, and other resources, help to pay for the schools in poorer areas of the State. That is always under some court review to make sure that there is some equalization. There is a rating system for the school. There are some requirements on how big of a school, the fact that it has to go to classrooms, that it cannot go to athletic facilities. Athletic facilities have to be provided by outside sources in that district--100 percent by the district. So they have gone through a lot of difficulty to arrive at a formula. We are talking about launching a new Federal program with no constraints. Once you do it with no constraints, it is pretty hard to go back and say: Whoops, we bit off a bigger chunk than we can ever afford. After everybody in the country is figuring that their school can be replaced by Federal dollars, how do we back off of that kind of a position? I am suggesting that if we get into this kind of a position at all, we be sure that we nail down some of the requirements. Something that I did not even address is, what size school do you build? If they are going to have 16 students, do you allow them to build for 1,000 students on the possibility that it might be a growth area? No, you cannot do that either. You cannot afford unlimited schools. I heard someone say that the amendment of the Senator from Iowa does not force money on anybody. That certainly is true; It does not force money on anybody. It passes it out by the bushel basket, with no constraints whatsoever. Can you imagine some school district saying: No, no, we would rather take care of the problem ourselves; don't give us any money? No. What they are all going to say is: You started a program. You said you would fix schools. It is underfunded. It is not funded. Whatever you want to say, there will never be enough funds to take care of the kinds of schools that everybody will be able to envision. Architects will be staying up late dreaming of new ways they can build logos for schools, let alone the schools, because there are no constraints in the Harkin bill. This amendment puts in some modest constraints, constraints that say they have to have 90 percent bonding capacity in their area; they have to be making a local effort. They just have to have the local folks, even though it is not much, participating in their own program. Then the States have to make sure that 50 percent of it comes either from the local districts or the State, in any combination the State chooses, before any Federal dollars kick in. We have the other solution that provides a revolving fund for States. That would provide the money to cover construction bonds. It is another alternative, another way that we can do the process. I hope people will look at this amendment as being one that is a logical way to start the process. I ask that my colleagues consider the amendment carefully, and then support the amendment that I have offered. Another amendment that takes another approach that can have an impact on schools is one that the Senator from Arkansas is proposing. So at this point, I yield the floor, and I yield the remainder of my time to the Senator from Arkansas.

Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, under the previous agreement, I send an amendment to the desk.

Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, I am pleased to be on the floor today to discuss an amendment that deals with the area of school construction that Senator Harkin has been talking about. I bring forward a proposal along with Senator Snowe, Senator Hagel, and Senator DeWine. I would like to take this opportunity to thank them for their hard work, as well as the hard work of their staffs. I know that we can all agree that there are schools across the Nation that are in need of repairs and renovation. Just because we can agree on the problem, however, does not mean that we can agree on a solution Senator Harkin's proposal to create a new Federal program to fund school construction is a good example. While I understand that a need exists in many of our Nation's schools, I do not believe there is a Federal responsibility to address that need, especially if States and local school districts have not made every effort to address the issue on their own. I also believe that it is extremely important that we do not ignore pre-existing Federal school construction obligations in favor of new school construction programs. It is for these reasons that I have drafted this amendment, which will target all Federal school construction funds toward existing obligations to fund the construction and renovation needs of schools on Indian reservations and schools impacted by Federal land holdings. This amendment would also make construction and maintenance of high-poverty schools a priority and create a revolving loan fund that States could use to help schools make interest payments on school construction bonds. I would also like to emphasize the importance of appropriately targeting limited resources where they are needed most. That is why my amendment requires that any grant funds available after existing Federal obligations are met should be highly targeted to the schools most in need. In addition to identifying the truly neediest schools, the local districts and States must demonstrate that they are already doing all they can to meet the needs of those schools. I believe that a tier of schools does exist where traditional school construction financing is extremely difficult for a local community. The capacity of the local tax base, particularly in rural communities, is not as flexible or far-reaching as urban or suburban districts. In high poverty districts, the bonding capacity may fall dramatically short of the cost to renovate or construct a school. In those cases, the States should be doing more. And, in providing direct Federal support for school construction, we should never extend that reach beyond such schools. Some of my colleagues have cited several studies that claim that our Nation's school construction needs range from $112 billion--according to the Government Accounting Office--to $125 billion--according to the National Center for Education Statistics. We all view these numbers as a national disgrace, but for very different reasons. My colleagues on the other side of the aisle would suggest that these numbers indicate that the Federal Government has failed to fulfill its duty to fund school construction. I, on the other hand, believe that these numbers suggest that State and local communities have abandoned their responsibilities and allowed our schools to fall into disrepair. As a former member of both houses of the Wyoming State Legislature, I understand that school construction has always been the responsibility of State and local governments. I also understand how hard some States, such as Wyoming, are working to make sure that they are fulfilling their responsibility to equitably distribute school construction funds. I have been troubled to see some of the data that indicates that States and local governments have the capacity to do more to fulfill their own construction needs. During the last session of Congress, members of the Congressional Research Service testified before the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, that I serve on, that between 1990 and 1998 State and local budget surpluses grew from $80.1 billion $148.7 billion. A December 2000 press release from the National Governors' Association revealed that States cut taxes and fees by $5.8 billion in fiscal year 2001. This is the seventh consecutive year States have reduced taxes and fees. That is from a National Governors' Association press release from December 12, 2000. According to the American School & University's 24th Annual Construction Study, school districts allocated 9.4 percent of their net current expenditure for maintenance in 1997, a substantial drop from the 12.75 percent allocated 10 years earlier. You can see from this data that if the current level of expenditures on school construction by States and local governments are deemed to be inadequate it is not because of a lack of capacity to do more. I also think it is important to inform my colleagues who try to assert that the Federal Government is doing nothing to deal with the issue of the declining quality of our Nation's schools that according to the Congressional Research Service the overall estimated cost or revenue loss for the total of tax-exempt bonds--that is taxes the Federal Government does not get--in 1999 was $25 billion. The most recent data for bonds that specifically support school construction comes from 1996, with an estimated cost/revenue loss at $3.7 billion. In other words, albeit indirect, there is clearly currently Federal support of school construction through the tax exemption we provide on construction bonds. In addition to having very strong reservations about introducing a new Federal education responsibility in the face of calls to prioritize existing Federal obligations, I am very concerned about creating inequities among States. As I have said, I firmly believe that funding school construction is a State and local responsibility. To that end, there are some States that are making tough decisions and dedicating the resources needed to fulfil their obligation to children in public schools. Wyoming is not alone in having experienced years of legislation and litigation in an effort to ensure that all children are provided an education in safe, appropriate classrooms. The State will soon dedicate significant new resources towards school construction. A lot of time and money has already been spent assessing every school in the State to determine which communities are the neediest. The State of Ohio has undertaken a similar effort. For those States that are not as far along in prioritizing school construction, why should they get a better deal under a Federal grant program? The proponents of the Harkin amendment may argue that there is a provision requiring the funds to be a supplement to existing resources. However, if a State is not already dedicating meaningful resources, and doesn't have a plan or initiative which calls for additional resources, it looks to me like they would be eligible for funds under this new program. That is simply not fair. If they are not doing something, they get money. If they are, they do not. It is not an appropriate use of Federal tax dollars. And it forever lets the entities responsible for school construction off too easily. That bring me to my most important point. The neediest schools are not being targeted enough by States. They will not be targeted sufficiently under the proposal by the Senator from Iowa. It is imperative that any additional Federal support we provide be strictly linked to the highest need schools. There will never be enough money to address the estimated $127 billion in construction needs, even if we did all agree that Federal funds should be expended. In fact, in 2000, almost $26 billion was spent on public K-12 construction, with nearly $27 billion in spending forecast for this year. A similar amount is also forecast to be spent each year through 2004. All of this data is available through the National Clearinghouse for Educational Facilities, which Congress established after the General Accounting Office released a series of studies on school construction over the last few Congresses. In addition to providing basic data on facilities financing, the clearinghouse is intended to serve as a resource for schools and public officials on how to properly assess their construction needs, how to develop a model school construction proposal, and how to meet the unique needs of their community. We should not be embarking on a path that either displaces this effort or discourages States and locales from meeting the school construction needs of their communities. This is vitally important in rural communities. Those communities face hardships in meeting their construction needs as it is, but we cannot set them up with the false hope of erasing their need to pass bond initiatives or to pressure the State for more help. There are roughly 80,000 public schools in this country. Half are in rural areas or small towns. As we consider the Enzi-Snowe-Hagel-DeWine amendment and the Harkin amendment as a whole, I should like to remind my colleagues that we do not serve any of our Nation's children by ignoring the commitments we have already made while making new promises that we can't keep. We owe our children more than that, and I hope as we move forward with the legislation we will keep that in mind. I reserve the remainder of my time and yield the floor.

Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, it is my understanding that other Senators will be down shortly to make a presentation--the Senator from Iowa and the Senator from Colorado.

Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, answering on their time, of course, as I have said throughout this whole process on the authorization bill, this is an authorizing process, and we have an appropriations process that comes up later. The amount of dollars allocated would be allocated as part of the appropriations process. There is money that can be done on this. We are getting into a brand new program. This isn't something that has been a continuing program. We are getting into something new. Since it is new, I was hoping we would handle that through the appropriations process. Whatever money is allocated in the process, 20 percent would go to that.

Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, if I can use their time, under this bill, the $1.2 billion that was appropriated last year would come under the formula for this, which would become the current school foundation construction program. So, yes, the $1.2 billion the Senator from Iowa is talking about would be included in this particular amendment.

Mr. ENZI. Mr. President----

Mr. ENZI. The purpose of this amendment is to place some constraints on Federal school construction so we are not opening up a brand new program that will fund any school that needs to be constructed or renovated in this country without any requirements. That is why the provision is included, for the 90-percent bonding capacity in a district to make sure the local district is participating to the level it can. My colleagues will find that there are school districts across this country that are already perhaps at 200-percent bonding. They are doing a maximum effort. Ninety percent would be considered a maximum effort. It requires a match by the State. The other amendment does not require any participation by the State. There is some wording in there about supplanting some State funds, but it does not have any requirements. The purpose of this amendment is to show there needs to be some constraint on how fast the Federal Government gets into a school funding program. We are not there yet. We are on our way there, and there needs to be some local recognition that they need to have some participation and States need to be a part of it. We cannot wipe out that obligation under a new program.

Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. ENZI

Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, I am pleased today to discuss the Better Education for Students and Teachers Act, the BEST Act. We can never have too much debate on education. It is the future of our country. This legislation achieves the simple yet powerful goal of ensuring no child is left behind. It does this by strengthening accountability for how Federal dollars are spent, by increasing students' access to technology, by improving teacher quality, and by making the schools safer for all students. It also fulfills an important commitment to States such as Wyoming that are already heavily invested in improving student achievement by allowing them the flexibility they need to continue to innovate. I want to address a series of amendments we have and will be offering. I will be concentrating on quality of teachers, but I want to mention that yesterday we had two sense-of-the-Senate amendments. I am not going to go into what those amendments were about, but I do want to mention that I voted against both of them. It had nothing to do with the content of each of the sense-of-the-Senate amendments. It was because it was a sense-of-the-Senate amendment. Sense-of-the-Senate amendments take a great deal of time, including if there are requested rollcall votes, which we know take 30 to 45 minutes. When we are done, they get discarded because the sense of the Senate doesn't have anything to do with the House. So they are just making a statement, and we have a lot of different ways we can make a statement. Since I have not seen any value to a sense-of-the-Senate amendment since I arrived in the Senate some 5 years ago, I will be voting against sense-of-the-Senate amendments. Sense-of-the-Senate amendments are often agreed to. It is because of a mixture of approaches to sense-of-the-Senate amendments. A number of my colleagues say: They never go anywhere, they don't mean anything, so I'll vote for them. Then I will have a good recorded vote. Some people turn in sense-of-the-Senate amendments so they can have a good recorded vote. I prefer to concentrate my efforts on those things that will wind up in a final bill, in final legislation that will affect the country, if we are going to have votes. Today we had a technology amendment. It passed on a 50-49 vote. Something people might not be aware of is that technology is built into the bill, but it is built in with a great deal of flexibility. The $100 million to which we agreed pulled out money from the big technology pool and put it into a very specific area. Let me tell you what happens when that gets down to Wyoming. We don't have enough money to do a project. But if it is left in the big pool and we can utilize the technology as the school districts see fit, with a bigger pool of money, it can make a difference to every kid in Wyoming. We have to be very careful in this legislation that we do not put in little protections, because we were asked to, that destroy the flexibility of the bill. Flexibility is the key philosophy of this bill that allows the decisions to be made closest to the child and involve the parent, the teacher, the school board, and the community. That is where education works best. The amendment before us now is on testing. I am not sure what all the fuss is about having some testing required. When I was in grade school, we had annual testing. I know the kinds of tests we had were called into question because they were multiple choice, which doesn't allow people their full expression. It puts some limitation on the value of the test as it comes out. But let me tell you, my parents looked at those results. They expected to see my results. They expected to see how it fit in with the rest of the class and the other students in the district who were in my grade. They used that as a comparison. I can tell you, if everybody had been off the chart, they would not have been pleased. They wanted to know how I was doing. That resulted in parent involvement, which we have said is one of the big keys to education. When I was in the Wyoming Legislature, I headed up an education task force at one point. It was interesting to hear teacher after teacher essentially say that the biggest problem they had in the classroom was getting kids to show up, do their work, and behave. That is basic education. The way it was handled when I was growing up was it was, again, parent involvement, discipline at home. If my teacher would have told my parents I did something wrong, the discipline would have happened first and then the explanation of why I felt justified. The teacher was right. I had an opportunity to appeal after the punishment because discipline in the classroom was important. When I was in fourth grade, I had the unique experience of being in a class that was half fourth graders and half fifth graders. We do not have a lot of class size problems in Wyoming. We definitely did not at that time. To have about 15 students in the class, they combined the 2 classes. It gave those of us in the fourth grade a little added advantage because we were always hearing the things that the fifth graders were being taught at the point that their particular lessons were being taught. But I also had the unfortunate situation of living about a half block from the school. I had this delightful teacher who said: As soon as you finish your work, you can go out to recess. My dad happened to notice I was out at recess a lot. I was a fast worker. So he asked to see some of my work. When he checked it, he found out it was not correct. So we did a little discipline at that point, too. He found out I was writing extremely small and that made it difficult for the teacher to check my work. I do remember him saying I would never write small again. It embarrassed him. He could afford the paper, and it looked as if he could not, and he was not going to put up with that. And we moved. We moved to another school so I would not have the same opportunity for recess. My parents always said ``when you go to college.'' They didn't say ``if you go to college.'' Parents make a huge impact on students by their faith in their child and their encouragement for their child. My dad was a traveling shoe salesman most of his life, and I got to travel with him in the summer. When we were making those trips, people would say: Are you going to grow up and be a salesman like your dad? Before I could answer, my dad would always jump into the conversation and say: I don't care whether he is a doctor or a lawyer or a shoe salesman or a ditch digger. But what I always tell him is, if he is a ditch digger, I want that ditch to be so distinctive that anybody can look at it and say, ``That is a Mike Enzi ditch.'' Parental encouragement, parental faith--one of the unfortunate things for us around here is we can't legislate that. There are just some things that should not be legislated and can't be legislated. But they can be encouraged. Today we are talking about one of these things. We are talking about the subject of teachers, which we can do something about, and we are doing something about that in this bill. Some of the most important provisions in this bill concern our Nation's teachers. As we all know, one of our Nation's greatest educational resources is our teachers. Quite often our teachers spend more time with our kids than we do. I say this not only because my daughter is a teacher but because research has found that with the exception of the involved parent, no other factor affects a child's academic achievement more than having knowledgeable, skillful teachers. While I have been very interested in ongoing negotiations over some of the provisions in this bill, there is one area that is not negotiable, and that is ensuring that our children have high-quality teachers, especially when it comes to reading and math. I would like everybody to think back through their past to people who influenced them the most. I suspect as you go through that little exercise--I hope you will spend some time doing that--that many of the people who will be on your list will be former teachers, ones who had some kind of an influence on your life. I hope you will not only list them, but I hope if there are any who are living, you will write them a little note and mention the effect they had on your life. At this point I have to mention a couple that were my teachers. When I was in eighth grade I had a home room teacher who made us concentrate on where we were going to go to college and what we would take, and even had us follow a curriculum and write to colleges, get their course book, and outline the exact courses we would take through a 4-year college education in the field of our choice. I learned a great deal about how to plan for college. She also involved us in a lot of interesting discussions and later served in the State legislature with me. I have to mention that she quit teaching and became an administrator. After she retired, she ran for the State legislature. It was a great deal of fun to be in the State legislature with a former teacher, particularly one with a voice that attracts people's attention, gets their attention, and drives home a point. I always did like the way she started a speech just after I had spoken where she said: Mike Enzi was a student of mine, and he knows what he is talking about. Do what he says. You just can't have that kind of backing in legislation you are doing and with quite as much effect as she had. I had a math teacher in eighth grade, Mr. Shovelin. He introduced us to slide rules. Kids today don't know what slide rules are. He helped us form a future engineers club so we would be able to compete in math. He did anything he could do to get us excited about math. Teachers do that. Later I had Mr. Popovich in high school, another math teacher, who was probably the most enthusiastic teacher I ever had. He made sure that everybody in our math class understood each principle we covered, and he did that by asking questions. If you got it right, he was enthusiastic and jumped in the air. If we got it wrong, he was enthusiastic, and he would literally climb onto the chalk tray saying, No, that is not it, and giving another version of how it could be. I also liked his explanation of geometry. He said that is really the only course that you get in high school that is logic. Today, I think there are some courses that are actually logic courses. But he pointed out how geometry is logic, and approached it as the old Greeks did, trying to prove verbally and through pictures very basic concepts by starting out with the most basic and building on it. Mrs. Embry is a lady who is about 4-foot-nothing with bright red hair. She taught international affairs. I needed an elective, and I didn't think I would have any interest in it. Before I left high school, I applied for college at George Washington University and was planning to go into international affairs. She had a tremendous effect on my life. She also happened to be the lady who was part of the team that decoded the messages when Pearl Harbor was being bombed. Mrs. Sprague, an English teacher, had an impact on me. She said, ``Why don't you use more humor in what you write? You do very well with humor.'' One little sentence such as that changes a student's perspective on themselves and their future. There are thousands and thousands of teachers out there who are doing that every day. I am pleased that title II of S. 1 addresses the issue of teacher quality. Unlike more restrictive proposals that require States and local school districts to use Federal funds exclusively for the purpose of hiring new teachers, this legislation provides maximum flexibility to States. It will allow them to develop high-quality, professional development programs, provide incentives to retain quality teachers, fund innovative teacher programs such as teacher testing, merit-based teacher performance systems, or alternative routes of certification, or hire additional teachers if that is what they believe is necessary. It would authorize a separate program to support math and science partnerships between State education agencies, higher education math and science departments and local school districts, and activities for these partnerships through the development of rigorous math and science curriculum; professional development activities specifically geared toward math and science teachers; recruitment efforts to encourage more college students majoring in math and science to enter the teaching profession and summer workshops; and follow-up training in the fields of math and science. When I was in junior high, Russia set off Sputnik. It launched a whole new interest in science in the United States. A group of boys, who were my friends, and I formed a rocket explorer post. It was the flexibility in the Boy Scout Program that allowed us to do career investigation. The reason I mention this is because I personally had a teacher named Tom Allen who was the biology teacher at the high school who worked with me on my special project. Many of us have seen the October Skies movie of young men who were encouraged by this great Russian event, and then the American challenge that was issued at that point. That is the group of people with whom I worked. This biology teacher worked with me to design a nose cone for our rocket that would take a mouse up and safely return it. We never put a mouse in the nose cone, but I designed space capsules for them, put mice in the capsule, spun them on a centrifuge, and then had to evaluate the way they came out of it. I learned a lot of math. I learned a lot of science. I learned a lot of biology. He was a special teacher. There are two teachers in Gillette, who are retiring now--Nello and Rollo Williams. They are brothers. One runs the planetarium. One of them runs the adventurium. The adventurium is a science lab that invites kids from all over northern Wyoming to do actual experiments and special projects. They can see a series of events that give them a better understanding of science. Each of them taught during the summers for science camps, kids doing extra school work, learning through extra special teachers. It isn't just limited to the generation that is retiring. My daughter is a teacher. She is part of the new generation. While she has been teaching, she has been working on two master's degrees so that she can be a better teacher, although one of those gets her a certificate in administration. I mentioned Mrs. Wright, who went to administration, Mr. Shovelin, who went to administration, and Mr. Popovich, who went to administration. My daughter is looking to go to administration. Part of the reason is that that is where the money is. All of those people liked their classroom work better and believed they made more of an impact on the kids as a teacher. My daughter emphasizes school-to-career. She does some of that summer teaching. When she finishes a major assignment, she calls the parents of the kids who did not turn in the assignment. That sounds fairly simple. Check and see how many teachers do that. If they don't, let me suggest to you the reason they don't. Her biggest discouragement was the first time she did it, and then she called us in tears. She called the parents, told them the assignment had not been turned in, and the parents said: So, what are you going to do about it? Not a very good parental involvement activity. But she persists in it. She also catches them doing things right, writes a note to their parents, and slips it in their book or their backpack, where sooner or later the child discovers it, and rather than delivering this missive to their parents, they open it first to see what it is, and find out that it is something good, and it does get delivered to the parents. But whatever she notes that they are doing well--better than anyone-- they do the rest of the year, perhaps the rest of their life. Teachers do have an impact. This bill will affect teachers. This bill does allow States to pursue alternative routes of certification, to encourage talented individuals from other fields to enter the teaching profession. There are many qualified individuals who might be willing to teach if it were easier to become certified. Although the Federal Government should never dictate certification standards to individual States, we should make it as easy as possible for interested States to recruit midcareer professionals, and perhaps retired members of the military, into the teaching profession. Title II of S. 1 goes a long way toward achieving that goal. Of course, it has some very good rural possibilities, too. I know of one very small community in Wyoming where there was a lady who grew up in France who had a good command of the French language. She wanted to teach French to the very few students--fewer than 15--who were in the school district. Sometimes certification can get in the way of that. I think we also need to bring professionals from all careers into the schools to help the kids understand that what they are learning will be valuable later in their life. I do not think I have ever learned anything that did not turn out to be valuable sometime later. Good teachers encourage that kind of participation. Despite all these efforts to improve teacher quality, there are some who say: All we really need to do to improve student achievement is to hire more teachers. I have to tell you, for small rural States such as Wyoming, that is not the answer. While I certainly recognize that our Nation is facing a teacher shortage in the coming years, Wyoming currently has a declining student enrollment which is forcing some districts to eliminate teaching positions. More money specifically earmarked for hiring new teachers will be of little help to the schools in those areas with declining enrollment. In addition, rural States such as Wyoming often have difficulty recruiting and retaining teachers, especially highly qualified teachers. Money that is earmarked for hiring new teachers will not help Wyoming keep our best teachers from leaving the State. Congress must provide States and local school districts the flexibility to pay good teachers more money or to provide them with other incentives in order to get them to continue teaching. This bill provides flexibility. I think it may be helpful to provide my colleagues with some hard data on Wyoming to illustrate that this is not simply lip service to a particular philosophy on education. The variations in education staffing needs across the country are real, and they are very dramatic. For example, Wyoming has 48 school districts, with a total of 378 elementary and secondary schools. Here is the important part: Of those schools, 79 have an enrollment of fewer than 50 students. I am not talking of a classroom size of 50 students, I am talking of a total enrollment in the school of 50 students. I am not kidding when I say, in Wyoming 79 schools are defined as ``rural.'' Then we have what we call the ``small schools.'' Those are the schools with an enrollment of 50 to 199 kids. There are 122 such schools in Wyoming. There are 143 ``medium-sized'' schools, with an enrollment ranging from 200 to 599 students. And we have a whopping 34 schools with an enrollment exceeding 500 kids for grade school and 600 kids for high school. Districts often have to incorporate several grade schools to form a big high school. Let me tell you, nothing gets the good people of Wyoming more agitated than suggestions that they ought to consolidate those small or rural schools into a medium-sized or big school. It takes away the community. It takes away the emphasis. It takes away the way we have done things in Wyoming. Now let me put this in context. The total enrollment in Wyoming's 378 public schools was 91,883. That is 1999 data. In New York State, 2.8 million children were enrolled in public school. That is 1997 data. So both of those would have changed a little. As for teachers in Wyoming, they are our heroes. There are 6,887 of them. Based on aggregate teacher salary expenditures reported for the State last year, the average salary of a teacher in Wyoming is just under $29,000. Those teachers are underpaid. This bill can do something about that. If we adopt the flexibility in title II of this bill, the teacher quality provision, then schools in Wyoming can use funds to give teachers a raise or reward outstanding teachers or provide incentives to recruit highly qualified teachers to our great State. When educators from Wyoming visit me, the resounding message is usually not: Make our schools and class sizes even smaller; it is: Help us recruit good teachers and keep good teachers--with a lot of emphasis on the ``keep good teachers,'' and the need for higher pay and flexibility. If you can believe it, there have been teachers hired in Wyoming under the Class Size Reduction Initiative that was appropriated but never authorized for the past 2 years. If they so choose, the schools that hired those teachers can retain them under this bill. However, the question I ask, on behalf of all the schools that were not eligible for that money because they already had small school size, is: Are the struggles they face in recruiting and retaining quality teachers any less important in ensuring that every child receives a quality education? Do not forget the variations in this country, the fact that we cannot have one-size-fits-all Government. When it comes from Washington, it is too little, with too many regulations. We are not suggesting it ought to be more, with more regulations. The research shows that while a small class size may have an effect on student performance and achievement, having a highly qualified teacher has an even greater impact. That was shown in a study by Rivkin, Hanushek, and Kain in 1998. And, according to the Department of Education's National Center for Education Statistics, we still need to invest in figuring out how to best help current and new teachers to be highly qualified. Massachusetts provided the perfect example of that, that assisting schools in having great teachers is as important, if not more so, than meeting federally targeted class size goals. I hope this background about Wyoming's uniquely rural public education system, juxtaposed on that of ``big'' States, can help my colleagues to appreciate why the flexibility in this bill is so important to meeting the needs of all our children. I will not see a bill enacted that doesn't provide as much support for Wyoming students' success as it does for the students in big cities. Our children are our most valuable resource, and we must prepare them to face the challenges of the 21st century. We cannot do this by allowing Washington politicians to implement a one-size-fits- all approach to education. The Better Education for Students and Teachers Act allows States to decide how to best serve their students and teachers. I strongly support this legislation and encourage my colleagues to do the same, and to maintain the flexibility that it has. I yield the floor.

Mr. ENZI

Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Amanda Farrish from my staff on the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee be granted the privilege of the floor for the remainder of this debate.

Mr. ENZI

Mr. ENZI. I rise today to support S. 1 and to talk about the motion to proceed on which we have gotten cloture and are now debating, with some limitations on each Senator's time, but still debating whether to proceed on debating education. I haven't heard anybody who hasn't said that education is the most important thing on which we have to work. For a week we didn't get to debate education. Now we are only getting to debate proceeding to education. We ought to be talking about the issues and the amendments and getting a bill done and through here. Talking to the folks back in my school districts, right now what they are concentrating on is the end of the year, graduation for seniors. Immediately after that happens, they need to be planning for next fall. We are talking about elementary and secondary education reauthorization, which is where we outline in what programs schools can be involved. Don't you think they kind of need to know that when they start planning for fall? If they do not know by the time they start planning for fall, then they have to delay what we are talking about for a year. So it could be a year and a quarter before any of the reforms that all of us agree on can go into effect. When I listened to the debate this morning, the discussion was over how much money would be put in this bill. This bill is not an appropriations bill. This is an authorization bill. This is where we talk about what programs can be done. Later we talk about how much money to spend on those programs. One of the reasons I find it particularly fascinating that the Democrats have done a little filibuster on the amount of money is that this is the first time the Republicans have been in charge when we have gotten to do a reauthorization of education. I have to tell you, we are really excited about it because there is some tremendous potential in education out there. We are talking about the amount of money in the authorization bill. I find that particularly interesting because I went back to see how much they talked about money the last time this was authorized. The last time this was authorized the Democrats were the majority and the President was a Democrat. Do you know how much additional money they insisted be put in for the authorization of programs? No additional money. Money was not part of authorization. The Democrats have been in the reauthorizing lead for 35 years, and the amount of money has not been the issue in the authorization bills. So what is the difference now? A little chance to pound on the Republicans and reduce the amount of civility and bipartisanship that has already been shown on this bill. That should not happen. The plain truth is that without reform any increase would be just another drop in the $400 million--$400 billion; I have to start thinking in these Washington terms--a drop in the $400 billion education bucket. If money were our answer, we would not be here today. So we did not talk about it for 35 years. We did not talk about it the last time. The Federal Government provides 6 percent of the education dollar. We force 50 percent of the paperwork. We are the time waster generators. So we are going to increase that a little bit. Even under most circumstances it will not get much higher than that, and that is because we do expect the States to make the major effort. That is where the people live. That has been the tradition and the method for funding education. This is a difficult area. One of the reasons it is difficult is because everybody has been to school, so that makes each of us and everybody who listens to any debate on education an expert. We do have people in our lives who have influenced us tremendously. Some of the greatest influence we get is in that period of time we spend in school, which is some of the most contact we get with adults when we are kids. Besides having gone to school, I also get some input from my daughter, who is a seventh grade English teacher in Gillette, WY, an outstanding English teacher. I am really pleased with the progress she makes with her students. I get to see that firsthand and hear about it. I have to say, while she has been teaching, she has also earned two master's degrees. She just finished up the master's degree in administration so she can at some time be a principal. She would much rather be a teacher, but she has seen where a lot of the money goes. We do need to get more money into the classroom for teachers so we can recruit and retain good teachers. My wife has a master's degree in adult education and emphasizes education quite a bit. Some of my best mentors in my life have been people with whom I worked in the legislature who worked in education. On the State level, it is a much bigger deal than it is here because that is where the money comes from and that is where the decisions are made for the kids. Even at the State level what they do is defer the decisions, some of which we are trying to do, to the school boards themselves. That is a very important trend, and that is provided for in this bill. We are not talking about the amount of money, although some would like to distract the discussion so it talks about the amount of money. We need to be talking about how we are going to educate our kids, how we are going to reform the process. I do, first, want to applaud the entire committee for unanimously advancing this important bill before the full Senate. We did invest tremendous resources in attempting to reauthorize ESEA last year, and I am pleased we made it our first priority this year. I am also impressed with the support of the new administration in seeing President Bush's No. 1 priority take the next step in the legislative process. In the history of Presidential initiatives, I believe the work of this administration will serve as a model for bipartisanship on policies of national significance. Frankly, I was stunned to hear the suggestions last week that our President has not taken any bipartisan initiatives. At both the staff and principal level, the White House has been actively engaged for weeks on negotiating this powerful education reform bill that we have before us today. I applaud the product. I thank all the parties for their investment of time, energy, and willingness to compromise--the necessary ingredients for bipartisanship without which we would not be advancing the bill today. This is my fifth year on the Education Committee. The normal Education Committee process is to have a markup that lasts 2 to 3 weeks and then come out along party lines. This, one of the most innovative bills that we have worked on, took 2 days and it came out unanimously. That has to be a record for the Education Committee on any of the bills with which we deal. That is bipartisanship. Unanimous is about as close as you can come. This education reform bill, the BEST Act, reflects an understanding of the variation in needs between urban, suburban, and rural schools. The bill arguably addresses the concerns of all stakeholders in our children's education, and it does so in a bipartisan way. I believe the bill has struck meaningful compromise and reflects a strong but appropriate role for the Federal partnership in elementary and secondary education. The State of Wyoming has invested tremendous amounts of time and money in developing high standards for learning. That has been a priority for quite a while--high standards of learning, reliable assessments, strong parental involvement, and other research-based education innovations. The BEST Act builds upon that work and solidifies the shared commitment to academic achievement for all children. The State of Wyoming also has a Web site where you can check on the grades of any of the schools. They take the testing they do and they show how well, by school, the report cards come out for those schools. So they have had strong assessments. The State of Wyoming is currently facing a crisis in education. We call it a teacher shortage. It is not about class size. It is about teachers' salaries and a dwindling supply of qualified educators, particularly in light of the new high standards which the students must meet, which are on this Web site. But this is a problem for which the Federal Government can help provide a solution. Under title II of our bill, the focus is not only on preparing teachers but on helping schools recruit and retain high-quality teachers. Reducing the class sizes will be an allowable use of funds under this title, if that is the unique need of the particular school. I have to say, in Wyoming a lot of the schools have small class sizes. Even if they combined all of the classes into one class, it would be a very small class. We have some very small towns in Wyoming. It has been very important through this process to maintain the capability for those small schools to operate as well. This bill also emphasizes the need to improve the access to education technology and to use it in the process of improving academic achievement. I like to think our State is a forerunner in that. Again, that is because of our distances. It is a way that kids who are not in our urban centers--and our biggest urban center is now 53,293 people-- will still be able to get a diversified education. The goal of eliminating the duplicative administrative application process and allowing schools to have one pot of funds for the range of technology uses, including teacher and administrative staff teaching, will make a difference. The digital divide will shrink and technology will become even more relevant as an educational tool. I have to divert for a moment and talk about some of the innovations in technology. About 10 days ago I happened to tour a school that deals with migrant workers. I found that they had received a grant for laptops. The laptops are assigned to these children of migrant workers, and I suspect to other workers as well. But it has all of the course work on it. It plugs into a modem that dials an 800 number to give their homework to the teacher to grade. It allows them to talk on line with the teacher. There is also an 800 phone number they can call to talk to the teacher. It is a very successful program. It was started with an old blue school bus that went around to migrant worker camps and followed the migrant workers. They gutted the bus. They put in a desk and some folding chairs. They started a school. They have progressed now to the point where they can accommodate a lot more kids using this laptop network and some teachers who can be accessible at any time the students have an opportunity for it. There are some technological innovations out there that will help rural students and ones who move a lot. They are included in this bill. Very importantly, the bill clarifies the purpose of the President's requirement that States expand existing assessments and take on the new practice of participating annually in the NAEP test, which is the National Assessment of Educational Progress test, which many States, including Wyoming, currently administer to students. These clarifications go a long way in addressing the fundamental concerns by all parties that the Federal Government not enact additional unfunded mandates and that the States continue to retain the flexibility to design their own standards of learning for students versus nationalized standards or tests. We will have to debate a little bit this interaction between anything that looks like a national test and a State test which follows the things kids in that area of the country need besides their basic education. While it is not a part of the reauthorization, we would be remiss in meeting our commitment to the education of all children if we did not also prioritize funding of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. As we advocate meaningful education reform, I look forward to the continued support for strong increases in funding of IDEA but recognize that is part of the appropriations process and not part of the authorization process. Fully funding this important but costly Federal requirement is as critical as requiring academic success in our classrooms. It is something we have been working toward and will continue to work toward. Throughout the consideration of the different elements of the BEST Act, I plan to discuss in more detail those that will most help Wyoming's children succeed. In spite of increases in the Federal investment in elementary and secondary education, it does remain a fraction of the overall expenditures--less than 10 percent. I think the figure being used here is 6 percent, and also 7 percent has been used. I remind people that 50 percent of the paperwork is generated by our very small funds. We force people to spend a lot of time for the money that comes from the Federal Government. I had a high school principal who took a leave of absence and came back to Washington to work in my office for a semester. He spent most of that time down at the Department of Education. He had been filling out these Federal forms for what seemed to him a lifetime, and he wanted to know what happened to them. Let me tell you what the results were. He was pleased to find out that the forms are scrutinized in detail, that every ``t'' has to be crossed and every ``i'' has to be dotted; everything has to be on the form. He was disappointed to find out that was the last use of that form. It isn't used to help any kid anywhere, but it maintains a job in the bureaucracy in Washington for that person who is making sure the form is completely filled out. That is not helping any kid in my State. If they do not put that information together and package it somehow so it is helpful to them, we ought to eliminate the form--actually, a lot of forms. I mentioned that 50 percent of the paperwork is generated in Washington. We have to help the schools maximize their dollars. I believe we can help improve our kids' academic experience because of this. Planning for next year requires quick passage. I mentioned that. If we don't have quick passage, we are getting past the planning stage for the next academic year; we will be forced to have the reform kick in 1 year later. We need to get on with this process. I hope we can have everybody get on board, end the filibuster that is in process, compromise on some time, and get the bill debated and move on to a better treatment of the kids of this country. I look forward to seeing this bill overwhelmingly adopted by the Senate and signed into law as quickly as possible. We cannot afford to shirk our commitment to reform and putting children first. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. ENZI

Mr. ENZI. I am beginning to see the problem. We have ignored page 183 which is the section that, when we went through those extensive negotiations, we added that supersedes all of these 18-month, 6-month paragraphs about which we have been talking. Those are options. But undoubtedly the option the President would take would be the one on page 183, which allows the President to override anything in section 204, which are provisions that deal with components we have heard about earlier, and 211, which is the foreign availability and mass market status determination. This is a much easier section for him to use. It does mention significant threat, but the President gets to determine significant threat. Nobody has the right anywhere in this bill to override whatever the President thinks. There is a reporting requirement, but that is all it is. He reports to the committees that have some jurisdiction on foreign availability and mass marketing. It doesn't say that the committee can challenge anything he says. There is no recourse for the Congress other than knowing that he did it, and we asked for the transparency through the process. That paragraph overrides, at your request, the sections on foreign availability and mass marketing. I was hoping that had taken care of the problem and was of the understanding that that did eliminate the problem.

Mr. ENZI. We had the language in section 212 in the versions when we were discussing it before. The President could use that. It is a mechanism. We thought that that provided Presidential control, even before we had our discussions. But we were specifically asked for sections 204 and 211, that we do something that was more overriding and more comprehensive, and we did.

Mr. ENZI. It wasn't our intent to make it contradictory, but it was language that was already in there. The request was to override those sections, and we did that by putting in another one. Perhaps there could be a way to address this.

Mr. ENZI. The criteria you mentioned of foreign availability is current law. That is what the President is forced to do at the moment.

Mr. ENZI. We were trying to get the administration, whatever administration it was, to work more on multilateral controls because everybody agrees that multilateral controls have more impact than unilateral controls. That is why we were encouraging the President to negotiate with the other governments to get them to fall in line on the controls so that we would have an effective multilateral control process as well. That was covered in the report we put out last Tuesday.

Mr. ENZI. Section 211 covers both foreign availability and mass market status. You are talking about the set-aside of the mass market status.

Mr. ENZI. Yes.

Mr. ENZI. We are hoping that adequate information will be given to the Senate for their oversight and their understanding of what is going on. We have always wanted that.