Barney Frank

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Why did they reject that?

Mr. FRANK

Mr. FRANK. I will tell you what, I thought the gentleman, usually when people stand, they want to respond. I will tell you, I will have trouble sleeping tonight, because I am still trying to figure out why they cannot go in the same check, and I thought maybe the gentleman from New Hampshire was going to enlighten me. I thought maybe my neighbor was going to say I am so perplexed, because I tend to think I am of reasonable intelligence. And here is the issue. We are going to send people a check, and they need to know two things, other than the check itself. They need to know that it is not taxable, and I think that is right; and they need to know how it is calculated, if they are interested. They do not need to know that, but that would be useful. I cannot figure out why that cannot go in the same envelope. I do not understand.

Mr. FRANK. Mr. Chairman, I want to start in a spirit of bipartisanship with congratulations. I congratulate the chairman of the Committee on Appropriations on the restraint he says he showed in not having Members individually send out the checks to the constituents. It might have been a violation of the separation of powers. I admire his doing that. Until he just smiled, I was going to congratulate the gentleman from New Hampshire for keeping a very straight face during this entire proceeding. Were I he, I could not have done so. I welcome this in some ways. Let us be clear what we are talking about. It is a letter that begins not with telling you that it is not taxable or how it was calculated, but by telling you that this is a present to you from George Bush. It comes to you from George Bush and the Congress. Now, I in one sense must tell you for self-interests welcome this. For some time I have been distressed that politically self-serving mail is known as ``franked'' mail. I have been upset to be a synonym with the use of taxpayer money to send out blatantly self-serving mail. But, from now on, that mail will no longer be thought of primarily as franked mail. It will be ``bushed'' mail; not bush mill, bushed mail, because the $30 million in this one fell swoop will be a greater exploitation of the taxpayer's money for political purposes than ever before. Now, I had this question as to why it could not be included, there are two important pieces of information; how it was calculated. By the way, according to the letter, how it is calculated is on the back of the letter, so that none of the things on the front of the letter are relevant to that. Secondly, people need to know it is not taxable. Well, that could have been put in the same letter, I thought. But then I read what the gentleman said to the New York Times about it, and maybe this explains it. My question is, why could you not simply put into the same envelope, ``this is not taxable,'' and then include that about how it was calculated? Why do you have to tell them that President Bush did it, and Congress did it, and it is part of the long-term tax relief? There are a number of things in here that have no relevance to that. The New York Times article is very interesting, because Mr. Keith, a spokesman for the wholly autonomous Internal Revenue Service, which apparently decided on its own to do this favor for the President, and that is a degree of loyalty that he inspires in his employees that is truly inspirational in itself, but he says, ``I would point out that the letter contains the information that we believe the taxpayer needs.'' But then in an indirect quote, ``including the size of the check.'' Now, I had thought that meant the dollar amount. But, on the other hand, that would be too stupid even to try and pretend, because the way the average person would tell what was the amount of the check would be to look at the amount on the check. It says it right on the check, ``amount.'' Most people would probably be able to figure out when it said amount of the check $300, that the amount of the check was $300. But, no, we have to tell them in advance of the size of the check. And why can we not put it in the same envelope? Then I suddenly realized, these are going to be really big checks. There will not be room in the envelope. They want to really make an impression. You are getting this from George Bush, and we do not want some little dinky piece of paper that you can read it, $300, that is nice, put it in my pocket, I will spend it, that is good for the economy, which we suggested. Instead, we are going to send them really big checks, and we have to warn them. We have to warn them, so that people, for instance, may have to widen their mail slots. They may have to empty out their mailboxes, because what we are telling them is, listen, you are going to get a really big check. Now, to some people, $300 would not be a big check in dollars, so it must mean a big physical check. So we are going to send them such a big check that we have to warn them in advance that it is coming, do not let your kid, if you have got a small child, do not have your child walking under the mail slot when the mail comes. He may get whacked in the head with a really big check, and that is not worth $300. And, we also then cannot fit it in that envelope, because I cannot think of any other reason. Here is what we are told; the reason for doing this is, one, to tell them the amount of the check. Now, as I said, nobody believes that. Some people have said it; I do not think many people believe it. The fact is that you will see the amount of the check when you get the check. We are told you should be told it is not taxable. Well, that could be put in the envelope along with the calculation. But I have to say, if this works, why stop here? We know that many older people who live isolated lives like getting mail. They get Social Security checks. Social Security checks are not, for many people, taxable. For some they are. People may not know that. Why not 2 weeks before the Social Security check comes send them a letter telling them that they are going to get a Social Security check? Why not alert them to the size of the impending Social Security check, and they can be warned about it and they can be told it is not taxable, or that it is, and how it was calculated. I mean, if we are in fact going to have a policy where we not only provide a benefit to the public, but we tell them in advance who gave them the benefit, I think we should not stop here. I think the gentleman has a policy we ought to extend. If the gentleman wants me to yield, I will be glad to yield, unless he just was kind of standing up because he was, you know, adjusting something. Does the gentleman want me to yield?

Mr. FRANK. Because it costs $30 million is why.

Mr. FRANK. Mr. Chairman, I hate to leave so many Members on the other side dangling over the pit of uncertainty. Would it be in order to make such a motion in the full House?

Mr. FRANK. Why could not it be put in that same envelope that the check came in? Do they need a lot of advanced notice to prepare them for it?

Mr. FRANK. Mr. Chairman, I would ask the gentleman from New Hampshire (Mr. Sununu), he says some of this information, for instance, whether or not it is taxable and the amount, have to be told to people. I would guess most people would be able to tell the amount when they looked at the check. As far as whether or not it is taxable, why could a little thing in the same envelope not be included in the rebate check that said, this is not taxable? Why does there have to be a separate mailing?

Mr. FRANK. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. FRANK

Mr. FRANK. I thank the ranking member for yielding me this time. Mr. Speaker, the Committee on Financial Services, on which we serve, has jurisdiction over at least two sets of fees. When we were doing our budget reviews, they both came up. One set of fees are the fees that go to the SEC, which we are substantially lowering. The other set of fees are the fees that go to the Federal Housing Administration, the FHA. The Bush administration has announced that they are going to raise those. Now, I hope that when some of us try to contest this fee raising, that all of this fervor against stealth taxes and excessive fees will not have totally dissipated, although I would not want to bet on it, even if betting were legal, which it is of course not. In fact, the FHA is a net contributor to the Federal treasury. We had a hearing called by the chair of the Subcommittee on Housing, the gentleman from New Jersey, in which all of the Federal auditing agencies made it clear, the FHA is in very good shape. So how do we respond to the FHA, which has the mandate of helping housing, helping particularly nonrich people, because there is a limit on how much house you can get under the FHA, so the FHA is a middle- class and moderate income housing program. The fees on multiple family housing, a commodity in very short supply in much of this country, will be raised. Why will they be raised? Apparently in part so we can reduce the fees on the SEC, because we are talking about a fungible part of money. So the people who are engaged in stock trading, a perfectly reasonable and honorable occupation but not one I had previously thought as being in the ranks of the oppressed, will get relief. Most of the people involved have already gotten relief through other tax measures, but the FHA fees will go up. If Members wonder whether or not I am violating the rule of germaneness, the answer is no, because these are both fee structures within the jurisdiction of the Committee on Financial Services. Indeed, under the instructions we get from the budget authority, raising one and lowering the other, these are offsets. I agree there is a case for lowering the SEC fees. But by lowering them to this extent, we are also making multiple family housing for moderate- and middle-income people more expensive. That is not my choice, that is the choice of this administration, because there is a proposal pending from Secretary Martinez to raise the FHA fees. Under our budget structure, there is an offset here. Now, it is not simply in this particular instance that I think we err by raising the fees for people of moderate income who are seeking multiple family housing. By the way, the administration has asked us to enhance the ability of the FHA to finance units in some parts of the country. That is their major housing production program right now, the FHA multiple family housing area, and they want to raise the fees on it. On the other hand, they want to reduce, more than I think is justified, the fees on the SEC. It is not simply this particular instance that troubles me. We have an economy which has been doing better during this past decade than any economy in the history of the world. I am delighted with that, as we all are. We are all working to keep that going. It has produced wealth in amounts beyond what people thought possible. That is a very good thing. But we also know that there have been inequities in the distribution of it. And what has this Congress consistently done? We have seen inequity and decided to make it worse. We have seen a gap and tried to widen it. That is what we do today. To the people who are in the financial industry and the stock part of the economy where things have over the decade done well, although there is obviously a slight drop now, we give them more benefits. In the area of housing, under the FHA, where we have a national crisis and many people, working people, middle- income people in great distress, this administration wants to raise the fees. I would hope that we could pass this amendment, not reduce the fees as much, and then turn to the legislative measures that would be necessary to prevent the steep increase in FHA fees that we may be facing. So I am grateful that we have had a chance, because we like to talk about priorities. Here is the chance. You have two sets of fees. As we speak, the administration is preparing to raise FHA fees and we could reduce the necessity for that. It would take some legislative changes but it is all a fungible part of money, if we were to not lower these fees as much. For people who say, well, why should one subsidize the other, the fact is neither one is being subsidized if you look at the fee structure the way we do it. The FHA fees in fact are in surplus. So the FHA fees will be increased so they can make a bigger contribution to the tax cut and the SEC fees will be substantially reduced, further exacerbating inequality. The Congress should not try to get rid of all inequality. It could not if it wanted to. But for Congress to take a set of actions, Congress and the administration together, that make this kind of inequity and maldistribution worse rather than better is absolutely the wrong way to go.

Mr. FRANK

Mr. FRANK. Mr. Speaker, the town of Dighton, Massachusetts has been steadfast in its commitment to honoring those who have served our country in time of war. Originally the Veterans Memorial in Dighton covered the Civil War and World War I. The people of Dighton, led by the veterans, have admirably decided to expand, to recognize fully the veterans of all of our wars for their gallantry, patriotism, and sacrifice. Thus, on Saturday, June 16, at 10:00 a.m., the Town of Dighton will dedicate the Dighton Veterans Memorial Common, which will feature seven flag poles in a semi-circle commemorating each branch of the U.S. military, as well as the flag of the United States and the POW flag. There will also be four granite benches listing the names of all of the residents of Dighton who died in the wars of our country in defense of freedom. World War II veteran John Pimenta spear headed this effort, which was coordinated by Alice Pimenta, a tireless worker for this cause. And we are all grateful to the Dighton Power Charitable Fund for financial assistance in this very worthy project. Mr. Speaker, I was pleased to facilitate the flying of a flag over the Capitol that will now take its permanent place in this important memorial. The dedication will take place under the leadership of Commander Ronald Louis Naro, of Rapoza/Knott VFW Post 2094 of North Dighton. Mr. Speaker, this is an important event of which the citizens of Dighton are justifiably proud, and I am proud to have played a small part in it, and to be able to call the attention of the nation to this important act of memorial.

Mr. FRANK

Mr. FRANK. Mr. Speaker, we are all grateful to our colleague, the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. McGovern), for the grace with which he is carrying out what is for him a personally difficult process, as he has for the past couple of months. Speaking of personal, people have talked about Joe Moakley. It is impossible to convey what he was like. All I can say is that he was a walking antidepressant. You could be in the worst possible mood and you walked in here and you went to talk to him. For those of us who had the privilege of being his friend, it is just not going to be as much fun to do this job for a while. But that is personal. We are here in the Congress of the United States, and we have to talk about what is public. People have said over and over, correctly, that Joe Moakley never forgot where he came from, and he deserves credit for that. People become important sometimes, and they forget where they came from. Joe Moakley did not forget where he came from. But there was another element of Joe that I think explains what, to me, constituted greatness. He was able constantly to remember where he came from and also to remember where he and the rest of us ought to be going. Human nature being what it is, when people are very good at a certain set of skills, when they are very rooted in a particular set of circumstances, when they are based in an ethnicity, a political tradition, a particular way of doing things, inexorably they become resistant to change, because when you are the master of a given set of circumstances, change can seem threatening to you. It is a rare individual who can be as good at the existing set of arrangements as Joe Moakley was and still be one of those who uses the power he gets from that to help bring new things into being. He represented a tough, somewhat insular, political tradition in Massachusetts; and he became its undisputed champion. In an area where people fought with each other, in an area that was fractious, he was everybody's idol; and he used that power, not simply to perpetuate himself, but to help the people he represented and others reach out. In other words, he took the values which he represented in his particular area and taught people how to apply them to new situations. He represented an area where, frankly, race relations were troubled; but I would venture to say that the members of the Congressional Black Caucus counted him justifiably a close friend. He dealt with prejudices of various sorts, prejudices that he and his friends and neighbors grew up with, and he was a leader in combating them. He took his prestige into foreign territory: El Salvador. As he himself joked, an area that when he grew up he knew nothing about and cared nothing about, and what he did was to recognize that the same set of values that reminded him where he came from ought to be motivating him to where we should go in the future, and that is greatness. That is a man who was secure in himself, able beyond what most people are gifted with in terms of his insight, his personal dealings, his ability to read the situation and move forward; and it is precisely that he never preached to people. This was a righteous man who was never self-righteous. This was an example of morality at its best, who made sure that no one ever thought that he felt he was somehow better than they are; and by the force of his personality, which was considerable, and his example, which was even greater, he helped move this country and this House into a new era. I do have to note in the end that Joe Moakley was several things that are not fashionable. He was a career politician. He was a longtime Member of this House of Representatives. People who denigrate politics, people who think that after you have served here for a few years, you somehow become soured, I guess they are going to have to forget that Joe Moakley ever lived. Because in his person, he repudiated more stereotypes of the area that he came from, of the profession that he had, of the whole way he lived; he transcended differences that people have used to divide us. So yes, personally, all of us who had this wonderful man as a friend will miss him. We will console each other by telling stories. I dare say that we are sad to lose Joe Moakley, but people watching television and I will ask for unanimous consent to violate the rules by referring to them, they have seen us laughing and smiling, not because we are not sad, but because we console ourselves and our loss by remembering how much fun it was to be around him; and if we cannot be around him, we can suffuse ourselves in his memory. My thanks to the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. McGovern) and to all of us for giving ourselves this opportunity to celebrate this man and, even more important, to celebrate what he stood for and exemplified.

Mr. FRANK

Mr. FRANK. Mr. Speaker, the gentleman from Florida claimed inaccurately that Ronald Reagan had a Democratic Congress. In fact, for 6 of the 8 years under Ronald Reagan, the Senate was Republican, so he was not faced with a Democratic Congress. I would have to say, however, that the gentleman's economics makes his history look good. He says under this tax scheme we will have enough for Medicare to restore it. In fact, that is the heart of what we are talking about. People talk about the money belonging to the people, and of course, it does. People have two sets of needs. They have needs that can best be dealt with individually, but they also have needs that can only be dealt with if we do them together. In my own district, I am often asked about funding for Superfund, for transportation, for law enforcement. All of these are being cut in the President's budget. The President tells people that he cannot afford, under his budget with this tax cut, to provide any help on prescription drugs for people who make more than $17,000 a year. He canceled, because of the need to pay for the tax cut, the Public Housing Drug Elimination program that provides police officers to be in the public housing projects. In fact, we have a terrible crisis in the provision of medical care, nursing homes, and home health care agencies. Hospitals all over the country are in difficulty, and it is getting worse. We underpay the hard-working people in these facilities. We have a terrible nursing shortage because women are no longer coerced into nursing; and now that they have a better choice of professions, we are not paying enough to attract them. This bill takes away from the people the funds that they could use to adequately fund Medicare, a prescription drug program, nursing homes, long-term care. None of those can be addressed without the revenues that this bill does away with. Now, I do understand that it sunsets the tax cuts. That is odd. When the Republicans were facing Bill Clinton as President, they said if they got in power, they would sunset the Tax Code. Apparently they misunderstood themselves, because this bill does not sunset the Tax Code, it sunsets the tax cuts.

Mr. FRANK

Mr. FRANK. Mr. Chairman, the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Andrews), the preceding speaker, kept stressing the virtue of letting the States make a decision. He stressed that this leaves it up to the States. Well, why not follow the logic of this? I agree, the States are the ones who should be making these decisions. Why then mandate as a part of a Federal bill as a condition of getting the Federal money that the States have to test the students in five grades every year? I want to be clear this is not an argument about testing. This is an argument about the Federal Government deciding today that every school has to test students. Now, yes, the States get some flexibility, but within a very rigid mandate. There was a problem about whether or not we are ready to do this testing. I read in the New York Times that some of the testing entities pay $9 an hour for people to grade essay tests. I want to say to my colleagues, pass a law now whereby the Federal Government mandates that every State get into the testing business, ready or not, and the results will be so unpleasant that pretty soon my colleagues will be answering a lot of letters on it. They better pay the people on their staff who answer those angry letters more than $9 an hour, because they are going to be difficult letters to answer.

Mr. FRANK

Mr. FRANK. Mr. Speaker, the House is about to vote on a plan to make annual testing of students from grades 3-8 mandatory throughout the nation. I hope that no one will vote on that proposal before reading the following excellent report on the great difficulties involved in implementing a national program of annual testing. [From The New York Times, May 20, 2001] Right Answer, Wrong Score: Test Flaws Take Toll (By Diana B. Henriques and Jacques Steinberg) One day last May, a few weeks before commencement, Jake Plumley was pulled out of the classroom at Harding High School in St. Paul and told to report to his guidance counselor. The counselor closed the door and asked him to sit down. The news was grim, Jake, a senior, had failed a standardized test required for graduation. To try to salvage his diploma, he had to give up a promising job and go to summer school. ``It changed my whole life, that test,'' Jake recalled. In fact, Jake should have been elated. He actually had passed the test. But the company that scored it had made an error, giving Jake and 47,000 other Minnesota students lower scores than they deserved. An error like this--made by NCS Pearson, the nation's biggest test scorer--is every testing company's worst nightmare. One executive called it ``the equivalent of a plane crash for us.'' But it was not an isolated incident. The testing industry is coming off its three most problem-plagued years. Its missteps have affected millions of students who took standardized proficiency tests in at least 20 states. An examination of recent mistakes and interviews with more than 120 people involved in the testing process suggest that the industry cannot guarantee the kind of error-free, high- speed testing that parents, educators and politicians seem to take for granted. Now President Bush is proposing a 50 percent increase in the workload of this tiny industry--a handful of giants with a few small rivals. The House could vote on the Bush plan this week, and if Congress signs off, every child in grades 3 to 8 will be tested each year in reading and math. Neither the Bush proposal nor the Congressional debate has addressed whether the industry can handle the daunting logistics of this additional business. Already, a growing number of states use these so-called high-stakes exams--not to be confused with the SAT, the college entrance exam--to determine whether students in grades 3 to 12 can be promoted or granted a diploma. The tests are also used to evaluate teachers and principals and to decide how much tax money school districts receive. How well schools perform on these tests can even affect property values in surrounding neighborhoods. Each recent flaw had its own tortured history. But all occurred as the testing industry was struggling to meet demands from states to test more students, with custom- tailored tests of greater complexity, designed and scored faster than ever. In recent years, the four testing companies that dominate the market have experienced serious breakdowns in quality control. Problems at NCS, for example, extend beyond Minnesota. In the last three years, the company produced a flawed answer key that incorrectly lowered multiple-choice scores for 12,000 Arizona students, erred in adding up scores of essay tests for students in Michigan and was forced with another company to rescore 204,000 essay tests in Washington because the state found the scores too generous. NCS also missed important deadlines for delivering test results in Florida and California. ``I wanted to just throw them out and hire a new company,'' said Christine Jax, Minnesota's top education official. ``But then my testing director warned me that there isn't a blemish-free testing company out there. That really shocked me.'' One error by another big company resulted in nearly 9,000 students in New York City being mistakenly assigned to summer school in 1999. In Kentucky, a mistake in 1997 by a smaller company, Measured Progress of Dover, N.H., denied $2 million in achievement awards to deserving schools. In California, test booklets have been delivered to schools too late for the scheduled test, were left out in the rain or arrived with missing pages. Many industry executives attribute these errors to growing pains. The boom in high-stakes tests ``caught us somewhat by surprise,'' said Eugene T. Paslov, president of Harcourt Educational Measurement, one of the largest testing companies. ``We're turned around, and responded to these issues, and made some dramatic improvements.'' Despite the recent mistakes, the industry says, its error rate is infinitesimal on the millions of multiple-choice tests scored by machine annually. But that is only part of the picture. Today's tests rely more heavily on essay-style questions, which are more difficult to score. The number of multiple-choice answer sheets scored by NCS more than doubled from 1997 to 2000, but the number of essay-style questions more than quadrupled in that period, to 84.4 million from 20 million. Even so, testing companies turn the scoring of these writing samples over to thousands of temporary workers earning as little as $9 an hour. Several scorers, speaking publicly for the first time about problems they saw, complained in interviews that they were pressed to score student essays without adequate training and that they saw tests scored in an arbitrary and inconsistent manner. ``Lots of people don't even read the whole test--the time pressure and scoring pressure are just too great,'' said Artur Golczewski, a doctoral candidate, who said he has scored tests for NCS for two years, most recently in April. NCS executives dispute his comments, saying that the company provides careful, accurate scoring of essay questions and that scorers are carefully supervised. Because these tests are subject to error and subjective scoring, the testing industry's code of conduct specifies that they not be the basis for life-altering decisions about students. Yet many states continue to use them for that purpose, and the industry has done little to stop it. When a serious mistake does occur, school districts rarely have the expertise to find it, putting them at the mercy of testing companies that may not be eager to disclose their failings. The surge in school testing in the last five years has left some companies struggling to find people to score tests and specialists to design them. ``They are stretched too thin,'' said Terry Bergeson, Washington State's top education official. ``The politicians of this country have made education everybody's top priority, and everybody thinks testing is the answer for everything.'' The Mistake--When 6 Wrongs Were Rights The scoring mistake that plagued Jake Plumley and his Minnesota classmates is a window into the way even glaring errors can escape detection. In fact, NCS did not catch the error. A parent did. Martin Swaden, a lawyer who lives in Mendota Heights, Minn., was concerned when his daughter, Sydney, failed the state's basic math test last spring. A sophomore with average grades, Sydney found math difficult and had failed the test before. This time, Sydney failed by a single answer. Mr. Swaden wanted to know why, so he asked the state to see Sydney's test papers. ``Then I could say, `Syd, we gotta study maps and graphs,' or whatever,'' he explained. But curiosity turned to anger when state education officials sent him boilerplate e-mail messages denying his request. After threatening a lawsuit, Mr. Swaden was finally given an appointment. On July 21, he was ushered into a conference room at the department's headquarters, where he and a state employee sat down to review the 68 questions on Sydney's test. When they reached Question No. 41, Mr. Swaden immediately knew that his daughter's ``wrong'' answer was right. The question showed a split-rail fence, and asked which parts of it were parallel. Sydney had correctly chosen two horizontal rails; the answer key picked one horizontal rail and one upright post. ``By the time we found the second scoring mistake, I knew she had passed,'' Mr. Swaden said. ``By the third, I was concerned about just how bad this was.'' After including questions that were being field-tested for future use, someone at NCS had failed to adjust the answer key, resulting in 6 wrong answers out of 68 questions. Even worse, two quality control checks that would have caught the errors were never done. Eric Rud, an honor-roll student except in math, was one of those students mislabeled as having failed. Paralyzed in both legs at birth, Eric had achieved a fairly normal school life, playing wheelchair hockey and dreaming of become an architect. But when he was told he had failed, his spirits plummeted, his father, Rick Rud, said. Kristle Glau, who moved to Minnesota in her senior year, did not give up on high school when she became pregnant. She persevered, and assumed she would graduate because she was confident she had passed the April test, as in fact, she had. ``I had a graduation party, with lots of presents,'' she recalled angrily. ``I had my cap and gown. My invitations were out.'' Finally, she said, her mother learned what her teachers did not have the heart to tell her; according to NCS, she had failed the test and would not graduate. When the news of NCS's blunder reached Ms. Jax, the state schools commissioner, she wept. ``I could not believe,'' she said, ``how we could betray children that way.'' But when she learned that the error would have been caught if NCS had done the quality control checks it had promised in its bid, she was furious. She summoned the chief executive of NCS, David W. Smith, to a news conference and publicly blamed the company for the mistake. Mr. Smith made no excuses. ``We messed up,'' he said. ``We are extremely sorry this happened.'' NCS has offered a $1,000 tuition voucher to the seniors affected, and is covering the state's expenses for retesting. It also paid for a belated graduation ceremony at the State Capitol. Jake Plumley and several other students are suing NCS on behalf of Minnesota teenagers who they say were emotionally injured by NCS's mistake. NCS has argued that its liability does not extend to emotional damages. The court cases reflect a view that is common among parents and even among some education officials: that standardized testing should be, and can be, foolproof. The Task--Trying to Grade 300 Million Test Sheets The mistake that derailed Jake Plumley's graduation plans occurred in a bland building in a field just outside Iowa City. From the driveway on North Dodge Street, the structure looks like an overgrown suite of medical offices with a small warehouse in the back. Casually dressed workers, most of them hired for the spring testing season, gather outside a loading dock to smoke, or wander out for lunch at Arby's. This is ground zero for the testing industry, NCS's Measurement Services unit. More of the nation's standardized tests are scored here than anywhere else. Last year, nearly 300 million answer sheets coursed through this building, the vast majority without mishap. At this facility and at other smaller ones around the country, NCS scores a big chunk of the exams from other companies. What the company does in this building affects not only countless students, but the reputation of the entire industry. Inside, machines make the soft sound of shuffling cards as they scan in student answers to multiple-choice questions. Hand-written answers are also scanned in, to be scored later by workers. But behind the soft whirring and methodical procedures is an often frenzied rush to meet deadlines, a rush that left many people at the company feeling overwhelmed, current and former employees said. ``There was a lack of personnel, a lack of time, too many projects, too few people,'' signed Nina Metzner, an education assessment consultant who worked at NCS. ``People were spread very, very thin.'' Those concerns were echoed by other current and former NCS employees, several of whom said those pressures had played a role in the Minnesota error and other problems at the company. Mr. Smith, the NCS chief executive, disputed those reports. The company has sustained a high level of accuracy, he said, by matching its staffing to the volume of its business. The Minnesota mistake, he said, was not caused by the pressures of a heavy workload but by ``pure human error caused by individuals who had the necessary time to perform a quality function they did not perform.'' Betsy Hickok, a former NCS scoring director, said she had worked hard to ensure the accurate scoring of essays. But that became more difficult, she said, as she and her scorers were pressed into working 12-hour days, six days a week. ``I became concerned,'' Ms. Hickok said ``about my ability, and the ability of the scorers, to continue making sound decisions and keeping the best interest of the student in mind.'' Mr. Smith said NCS was ``committed to scoring every test accurately.'' The Workers--Some Questions About Training The pressures reported by NCS executives are affecting the temporary workers who score the essay questions in vogue today, said Mariah Steele, a former NCS scorer and a graduate student in Iowa City. In today's tight labor markets, Ms. Steele is the testing industry's dream recruit. She is college-educated but does not have a full-time job; she lives near a major test-scoring center and is willing to work for $9 an hour. For her first two evenings, she and nearly 100 other recruits were trained to score math tests from Washington State. This training is critical, scoring specialists say, to make sure that scorers consistently apply a state's specific standards, rather than their own. But one evening in late July, as the Washington project was ending, Ms. Steele said, she was asked by her supervisor to stop grading math and switch to a reading test from another state, without any training. ``He just handed me a scoring rubric and said, `Start scoring,' '' Ms. Steele said. Perhaps a dozen of her co- workers were given similar instructions, she added, and were offered overtime as an inducement. Baffled, Ms. Steele said she read through the scoring guide and scored tests for about 30 minutes. ``Then I left, and didn't go back,'' she said. ``I really was not confident in my ability to score that test.'' Two other former scorers for NCS say they saw inconsistent grading. Renee Brochu of Iowa City recalled when a supervisor explained that a certain response should be scored as a 2 on a two-point scale. ``And someone would gasp and say, `Oh, no, I've scored hundreds of those as a 1,'' Ms. Brochu said. ``There was never the suggestion that we go back and change the ones already scored.'' Another former scorer, Mr. Golczewski, accused supervisors of trying to manipulate results to match expectations. ``One day you see an essay that is a 3, and the next day those are to be 2's because they say we need more 2's,'' he said. He recalled that the pressure to produce worsened as deadlines neared. ``We are actually told,'' he said, ``to stop getting too involved or thinking too long about the score--to just score it on our first impressions.'' Mr. Smith of NCS dismissed these anecdotes as aberrations that were probably caught by supervisors before they affected scores. ``Mistakes will occur,'' he said. ``We do everything possible to eliminate those mistakes before they affect an individual test taker.'' New York City did not use NCS to score its essay-style tests; instead, like a few other states, it used local teachers. But like the scorers in Iowa, they also complained that they had not been adequately trained. One reading teacher said she was assigned to score eight- grade math tests. ``I said I hadn't been in eight-grade math class since I was in eight grade,'' she said. Another teacher, said she, arrived late at the scoring session and was put right to work without any training. Roseanne DeFablo, assistant education commissioner in New York State, said she thought the complaints were exaggerated. State audits each year of 10 percent of the tests do not show any major problems, she said, ``so I think it's unlikely that there's any systemic problem with the scoring.'' The Demand--States Pushing For More, Faster Testing specialists argue that educators and politicians must share the blame for the rash of testing errors because they are asking too much of the industry. They says schools want to test as late in the year as possible to maximize student performance, while using tests that take longer to score. Yet schools want the results before the school year ends so they can decide about school financing, teacher evaluations, summer school, promotions or graduation. ``The demands may just be impossible,'' said Edward D. Roeber, a former education official who is now vice president for external affairs for Measured Progress. Case in point: California. On Oct. 9, 1997, Gov. Pete Wilson signed into law a bill that gave state education officials five weeks to choose and adopt a statewide achievement test, called the Standardized Testing and Reporting program. The law's ``unrealistic'' deadlines; state auditors said later, contributed to the numerous quality control problems that plagued the test contractor, Harcourt Educational Measurement, for the next two years. That state audit, and an audit done for Harcourt by Deloitte & Touche, paint a devastating portrait of what went wrong. There was not time to test the computer link between Harcourt, the test contractor, and NCS, the subcontractor. When needed, it did not work, causing delays. Some test materials were delivered so late that students could not take the test on schedule. It got worse. pages in test booklets were duplicated, missing or out of order. One district's test booklets, more than two tons of paper, were dumped on the sidewalk outside the district offices at 5 p.m. on a Friday--in the rain. Test administrators were not adequately trained. When school districts got the computer disks from NCS that were supposed to contain the test results, some of the data was inaccurate and some of the disks were blank. In 1998, nearly 700 of the stat's 8,500 schools got inaccurate test results, and more than 750,000 students were not included in the statewide analysis of the test results. Then, in 1999, Harcourt made a mistake entering demographic data into its computer. The resulting scores made it appear that students with a limited command of English were performing better in English than they actually were, a politically charged statistic in a state that had voted a year earlier to eliminate bilingual education in favor of a one-year intensive class in English. ``There's tremendous political pressure to get tests in place faster than is prudent,'' said Maureen G. DiMarco, a vice president at Houghton Mifflin, whose subsidiary, the Riverside Publishing Company, was one of the unsuccessful bidders for California's business. Dr. Paslov, who became president of Harcourt Educational Measurement after the 1999 problems, said that the current testing season in California is going smoothly and that Harcourt has addressed concerns about errors and delays. But California is still sprinting ahead. In 1999, Gov. Gray Davis signed a bill directing state education officials to develop another statewide test, the California High School Exit Exam. Once again, industry executive said, speed seemed to trump all other considerations. None of the major testing companies had on the project because of what Ms. DiMarco called ``impossible, unrealistic time lines.'' With no bidders, the state asked the companies to draft their own proposals. ``We had just 10 days to put it together,'' recalled George W. Bohrnstedt, senior vice president of research at the American Institutes for Research, which has done noneducational testing but is new to school testing. Phil Spears, the state testing director, said A.I.R. faced a ``monumental task, building and administering a test in 18 months.'' ``Most states,'' Mr. Spears said, ``would take three-plus years to do that kind of test.'' The new test was given for the first time this spring. The Concern--Life Choices Based on Score States are not just demanding more speed; they are demanding more complicated exams. Test companies once had a steady business selling the same brand-name tests, like Harcourt's Stanford Achievement Test or Riverside's Iowa Test of Basic Skills, to school districts. These ``shelf'' tests, also called norm-referenced tests, are the testing equivalent of ready-to-wear clothing. Graded on a bell curve, they measure how a student is performing compared with other students taking the same tests. But increasingly, states want custom tailoring, tests designed to fit their homegrown educational standards. These ``criterion referenced'' tests measure students against a fixed yardstick, not against each other. That is exactly what Arizona wanted when it hired NCS and CTB/McGraw-Hill in December 1998. What it got was more than two years of errors, delays, escalating costs and angry disappointment on all sides. Some of the problems Arizona encountered occurred because the state had established standards that, officials later conceded, were too rigorous. But the State blames other disruptions on NCS. ``You can't trust the quality assurance going on now,'' said Kelly Powell, the Arizona testing director, who is still wrangling with NCS. For its part, NCS has thrown up its hands on Arizona. ``We've given Arizona nearly $2 of service for every dollar they have paid us,'' said Jeffrey W. Taylor, a senior vice president of NCS. Mr. Taylor said NCS would not bid on future business in that state. Each customized test a state orders must be designed, written, edited, reviewed by state educators, field-tested, checked for validity and bias, and calibrated to previous tests--an arduous process that requires a battery of people trained in educational statistics and psychometrics, the science of measuring mental function. While the demand for such people is exploding, they are in extremely short supply despite salaries that can reach into the six figures, people in the industry said. ``All of us in the business are very concerned about capacity,'' Mr. Bohrnstedt of A.I.R. said. And academia will be little help, at least for a while, because promising candidates are going into other, more lucrative areas of statistics and computer programming, testing executives say. Kurt Landgraf, president of the Educational Testing Service in Princeton, N.J., the titan of college admission tests but a newcomer to high-stakes state testing, estimated that there are about 20 good people coming into the field every year. Already, the strain on the test-design process is showing. A supplemental math test that Harcourt developed for California in 1999 proved statistically unreliable, in part because it was too short. Harcourt had been urged to add five questions to the test, state auditors said, but that was never done. Even more troubling, most test professionals say, is the willingness of states like Arizona to use standardized tests in ways that violate the testing industry's professional standards. For example, many states use test scores for determining whether students graduate. Yet the American Educational Research Association, the nation's largest educational research group, specifically warns educators against making high-stakes decisions based on a single test. Among the reasons for this position, testing professionals say, is that some students are emotionally overcome by the pressure of taking standardized tests. And a test score, ``like any other source of information about a student, is subject to error,'' noted the National Research Council in a comprehensive study of high-stakes testing in 1999. But industry executives insist that, while they try to persuade schools to use tests appropriately, they are powerless to enforce industry standards when their customers are determined to do otherwise. A few executives say privately that they have refused to bid on state projects they thought professionally and legally indefensible. ``But we haven't come to the point yet, and I don't know if we will, where we are going to tell California--Where we sell $44 million worth of business--`Nope! We don't like the way you people are using these instruments, so we're not going to sell you this test,' '' Dr. Paslov said. Besides, as one executive said, ``If I don't sell them, my competitors will.'' The Expectations--Bush Proposal Raises the Bar President Bush explained in a radio address on Jan. 24 why he wanted to require annual testing of students in grades 3 to 8 in reading, math and science, ``without yearly testing,'' he said, ``we do not know who is falling behind and who needs our help.'' While many children will clearly need help, so will the testing industry if it is called upon to carry out Mr. Bush's plan, education specialists said. Currently, only 13 states test for reading and math in all six grades required by the Bush plan. If Mr. Bush's plan is carried out,--the industry's workload will grow by more than 50 percent. Ms. Jax, Minnesota's top school official, says she is not close to being ready. ``It's just impossible to find enough people,'' she said, ``I will have to add at least four tests. I don't have the capacity for that, and I'm not convinced that the industry does either.'' Certainly the industry has been generating revenues that could support some expansion. In 1999, its last full year as an independent company, NCS reported revenues of more than $620 million, up 30 percent from the previous year. The other major players, all corporate units, do not disclose revenues. Several of the largest testing companies have assured the administration that the industry can handle the additional work. ``It's taken the testing industry a while to gear up for this,'' said Dr. Paslov of Harcourt. ``But we are ready.'' Other executives are far less optimistic. ``I don't know how anyone can say that we can do this now,'' said Mr. Landgraf of the Educational Testing Service. Russell Hagen, chief executive of the Data Recognition Corporation, a midsize testing company in Maple Grove, Minn., worries that the added workload from the Bush proposal would create even more quality control problems, with increasingly serious consequences for students. ``Take the Minnesota experience and put it in 50 states,'' he said. The Minnesota experience is still a fresh fact of life for students like Jake Plumley, who is working nights for Federal Express and hoping to find another union job like the one he gave up last summer. But despite his difficult experience, he does not oppose the kind of testing that derailed his post-graduation plans. ``The high-stakes test--it keeps kids motivated. So I understand the idea of the test,'' he said. ``But they need to do it right.''

Mr. FRANK

Mr. FRANK. Mr. Speaker, one of the most significant events in World War II other than those which took place on the battlefield was the cracking of the Germans' Enigma code. This great contribution to our victory in the war against Hitler was recently highlighted because of the theft of one of the Enigma machines last year in England. This led to some discussion in the newspapers about this event, and there are extremely well informed people who believe that the newspaper discussions of the event were inaccurate, particularly in not giving sufficient credit to the work of brilliant analysts from the University of Poznan in Poland in cracking this code. According to Edward Piwowarczyk of New Bedford, an authority on this matter, and the Program Director of the Polish Happy Time on WNBH radio, ``by 1937, the Poles deciphered nearly three-quarters of all intercepted German military communications,'' and ``in July 1939, the Poles offered their accomplishments to the potential allies.'' Because it is important for us to get history right, and because the brilliant achievements of the Polish analysts who did this work deserve recognition now that this matter has once again come to the fore, I submit Edward Piwowarczyk's brief discussion of this history to be printed here. [From the New Bedford (MA) Standard-Times, Oct. 13, 2000] Enigma Code Broken Mainly by the Poles (By Edward L. Piwowarczyk) One can say that Poland's most significant contribution to the Allies winning World War II was cracking the masterful German war code Enigma. According to an Associated Press story in the Oct. 11 Standard-Times, ``Historians say the codebreakers' work shortened the war by as much as two years.'' The British contribution was only to improve the Polish analytic machine called Bombe, which would process intercepted Engima-based communications and enable decipherment of them. Here's the story. In the late 1920's, Polish radio monitoring stations of German messages started to receive a new type of machine code. The BS-4 section, department of German codes at the Main Staff in Warsaw, were helpless. So, the University of Poznan was chosen as an organizer of a cryptological course for military purposes. Through a combination of hard work and brilliance, three members of this class, namely, Marian Rejewski, Jerzy Rozycki and Henry Zygalski, solved the puzzle. The cryptological success was also a scientific success of the Poles. A command of higher mathematics useful for investigation on code systems, especially the so-called permutation and cycle theory, was a prerequisite to master the Enigma Cipher Machine. By 1937, the Poles deciphered nearly three-quarters of all intercepted German military communications, a tremendous aid to Allied forces. Major Maksymilian Ciezki, head of the German Department of the Polish Signal Intelligence, along with the group of Polish mathematicians mentioned, were responsible for decoding Hitler's enigma: the code name for their operation Wicher (Gale). In July 1939, the Poles offered their accomplishments to the potential allies. Delegations from the French staff, Lt. Col. Gustave Bertrand and Capt. Henri Bracquentie, and the British staff, Commander Dillwyn Knox and Commander Alistair Denniston, arrived at the secret BS-4 Center situated in the Kabacki Forest outside of Warsaw. The Polish specialists acquainted them with the method of breaking the Nazi codes. Each delegation was presented with one Polish-made Enigma coding machine called Bombe. Just this further note: Recently in Poland, the Polish government honored Marian Rejewski, Jerzy Rozycki and Henry Zygalski, posthumously, for their outstanding achievements. The eminent English historian Ronald Lewin, in his book ``Ultra Goes to War,'' details the indispensable Polish contribution to World War II. The dedication at the beginning of Lewin's book reads: ``To the Poles who sowed the seed and to those who reaped the harvest.''

Mr. FRANK

Mr. FRANK. Mr. Speaker, I was very interested to read in the May 9 issue of The Hill an article by David Silverberg which sounded an important warning about excessively unilateralist tendencies in the Bush administration foreign policy. Coming from the perspective from which Mr. Silverberg writes, I think this is an especially interesting article and I hope that it has a favorable impact on the policy makers in the Bush administration. [From The Hill, May 9, 2001] America's Course Toward Splendid Isolation (By David Silverberg) Late in the reign of Queen Victoria, Britain, possessing the world's most powerful navy, owning an empire on which the sun never set, described its diplomatic strategy as one of ``splendid isolation.'' By that Britons meant that they remained above the passions and rivalries of the European continent. As one charts the course of President Bush's foreign policy today, one gets the uncomfortable feeling that the United States is heading toward its own version of ``splendid isolation.'' This is not the same as the isolationism of the 1930s, which would have had the United States withdraw from the world stage. Nor is it neo-isolationism, which would revive the 1930s doctrine in a new guise. It is something different. It also comes as we stand on the edge of a new defense era. In the coming weeks, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is going to unveil a new overarching defense strategy. This plan, formulated in great secrecy, is expected to go beyond the strategy created in the Bottom-Up Review of 1993 which has since then governed American defense. Early indications are that the Rumsfeld policy will be a policing strategy, aimed at maintaining the status quo against possible violent efforts at change. That's fine as far as it goes, and an informed critique will have to await its unveiling. However, it's likely to follow the general foreign policy outlines of this administration. As war is politics by other means, strategy is policy by other means. To date, this administration has consistently taken a unilateral approach in foreign policy. It is abandoning the Kyoto Treaty on Global Warming. In a brusque departure from previous policy--White House denials notwithstanding-- President Bush has declared that the United States will defend Taiwan and the United States will sell it a significant arms package. He did this without consulting allies or the potential rival, China. Now, in pursuit of a missile defense shield, the United States is seeking to abandon or significantly modify the Antiballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty of 1972. In the interests of fairness, instances of multilateralism have to be noted: The United States is promoting the hemispheric Free Trade Area of the Americas, and relations with Mexico have never been better. So what does all this add up to? The Bush administration appears to believe in muscular unilateralism everywhere but in the Western Hemisphere and on trade issues. The United States will depart from the international consensus on the environment and its commitments on ABM, and will build a missile shield behind which it will withdraw, while jousting to contain China. If this is to be American policy, American strategy and American military means will have to follow it. The United States will spend billions on a missile defense shield. The United States will have to have very robust naval forces to protect Taiwan and the American mainland from attack, but will also have to be able to reach far afield for pinpoint attacks should they be necessary. While President Bush specifically rejected isolationism as a policy during the campaign, a form of isolationism appears to be taking shape on a day-to-day basis. The United States will not withdraw from the world, but it will act unilaterally when it feels the need. Of course, any country has this right--it's inherent in sovereignty. But during the previous administration the United States exercised its rights judiciously and made real efforts to work in concert with partners, allies and even competitors like China. The world is not accepting American unilateralism passively. The United States has been voted off the United Nations' Human Rights Commission in a small, but telling, gesture of disapproval. Such gestures are likely to become more significant and more pronounced if things don't change. Perhaps the problem is simply one of style. The world was more accustomed to Bill Clinton's more ingratiating ways and is having trouble adjusting to a more brusque manner. If style is the difficulty, it's easily corrected. But if the administration is determined to be an unrestrained unilateralist it will court, literally, a world of trouble. As President Theodore Roosevelt counseled, ``Talk softly and carry a big stick.'' The world knows about America's big stick, perhaps George W. Bush and his administration should speak a bit more softly. What we may end up with is an American version of ``splendid isolation'' where America stands proud but very alone in the world. We can achieve isolation if we want--but it certainly won't be splendid.

Mr. FRANK

Mr. FRANK. I appreciate it. When we say not before 6:00, not like today, that will not mean, we hope, at 3:00 in the morning, but in fact 6:00 p.m., and I appreciate that. I just also want to say to my friend, the gentleman from California (Mr. Dreier), who appears to be keeping track, that he should put me down as leaning against on the budget.

Mr. FRANK. Mr. Speaker, reserving the right to object for a legitimate scheduling question here. Nothing about today has struck me as being remotely legitimate, except that it is the day in which incompetence came to the rescue of democracy. We will all remember that. I would like to ask the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Goss), we have had some concern here, does that mean that votes will still be at 6:00? There was some suggestion that votes might be earlier. Will we still have a 6:00 p.m. vote at the earliest on Tuesday?

Mr. FRANK. I yield to the gentleman from Florida.

Mr. FRANK

Mr. FRANK. I apologize. A half-hour ago the Committee on Rules got to see the budget that we were supposed to have voted on 10 or 12 hours ago. I would just say to the gentleman, I think we ought to be clear. We have here a problem not of complexity but of basic physics. The majority has, as many of us have been saying for some time, constructed a budget in which the whole is significantly smaller than the sum of the parts and in the process of trying to jam those parts into that small hole, apparently things came apart. It is unfortunate that Members' time was so wasted all day and that we have accomplished nothing and we have to come back next week. I hope you find the pages, I hope you master the complexity and I hope that this kind of performance is not again repeated. I withdraw my reservation of objection, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. FRANK. Mr. Speaker, reserving the right to object, we have been here for a very long time for what is no longer today, but yesterday and today. We have been told we were going to have the budget. Members have been around since about 10:30 or 11 this morning when we had a vote. We were told we were going to have a budget. It does seem to me that minimal respect for the opinion of mankind would call for some explanation of why we are, having spent the day doing nothing, why we are now going to end it by waiting until Monday. I would be glad to yield to the gentleman from Florida, or anyone else, not what happened, but what did not happen, why it did not happen, and what might happen on Monday or Tuesday. Mr. Speaker, I would yield to the gentleman.

Mr. FRANK. No, I was waving some whip notice just for the heck of it. That was purely a dramatic gesture. Nobody on our side has seen the budget, including the missing pages.

Mr. FRANK. Could I ask the gentleman, was it the other body that lost the two pages that resulted in our not being here or who lost the two pages, I would ask the gentleman? I do not mean the human pages, I mean the paper pages. I want to assure all parents that all pages are present and accounted for. It is pages from the conference report that apparently were too complex for the majority to keep track of.

Mr. FRANK. Mr. Speaker, I am sorry that the gentleman is saddened. I hate to see my colleague's discountenance. There are a few other people not too thrilled about spending about 15 hours here while people fiddled with this thing. I was struck by his telling us there is a complexity here. In the first year of the gentleman being in the majority, I would have understood that, but at this point, was there any unexpected complexity? We had a budget and a conference committee. It is very hard to understand what new complexity suddenly descended upon you which left you unable to cope with what has heretofore been a fairly routine set of procedures. Perhaps there is some new show on which the ship of state might be sailing that has resulted. This has not happened in my experience, this sort of nonperformance. Mr. Speaker, I would yield to the gentleman. Would you tell us what this complexity was? Was there something new that happened?

Mr. FRANK

Mr. FRANK. Mr. Speaker, on Tuesday of this week I expressed my strong disapproval of the Navy policy of scheduling potentially dangerous military events solely for edification of those civilians that the Navy is seeking to turn into lobbyists for the budget, and I also expressed my disappointment at the failure of the House so far to hold the Navy-- and the rest of the Pentagon--to a reasonable standard of behavior in this regard. Subsequent to my statement I came across the accompanying editorial from the New York Times, appropriately entitled An Incomplete Investigation. In the editorial the Times notes ``testimony indicated that the only reason the ship went to sea that day was to entertain sixteen civilian guests as part of a Navy program aimed at cultivating good will. One of the shortcomings of the Navy's public court of inquiry was that none of these civilians was summoned to testify . . . the civilians might well be asked to appear at any court martial, and their testimony in turn could discredit the civilian visitor program.'' The Navy has refused to deal honestly with the role of these civilians in this terrible tragedy, and has announced that it intends to continue this program without any correction. We in the House have a responsibility not to allow this to happen. And I ask that the very thoughtful editorial from the New York Times on this subject be printed here. An Incomplete Investigation Unless Adm. Thomas Fargo decides otherwise, the Navy's investigation into the collision of an American submarine with a Japanese vessel near Honolulu in February is likely to end on a premature and unsatisfactory note. A report by Elaine Sciolino in Sunday's Times quoted senior Pentagon officials as saying that the public court of inquiry into the incident had recommended that the submarine's skipper, Cmdr. Scott Waddle, not be tried by a court-martial. Instead the commander would receive some lesser punishment, like a reprimand, that would effectively end his career but spare him the military equivalent of a criminal trial. The final decision rests with Admiral Fargo. The officials cited in the Times report said that he was unlikely to act against the panel's recommendations. Nevertheless, we urge him to consider a court-martial. We have no wish to prejudge the outcome. A court-martial affords defendants a chance to explain their behavior and to present mitigating evidence. In this instance, a court-martial is also justified by the nature of the case. Nine people were killed in the accident, which triggered widespread resentment in Japan that could well flare up again. According to testimony presented to the court of inquiry, the operations of the submarine, the Greeneville, were riddled with mistakes and violations of safety rules. Commander Waddle himself testified that he had cut short or omitted several safety precautions, failed to reassign duties to compensate for the absence of a third of his normal crew and rushed the periscope search conducted just before the surfacing drill that caused the accident. The testimony also identified serious mistakes by a petty officer who failed to notify the commander that the Greeneville was dangerously close to the Japanese ship. The testimony indicated that the only reason the ship went to sea that day was to entertain 16 civilian guests as part of a Navy program aimed at cultivating public good will. One of the shortcomings of the Navy's public court of inquiry was that none of these civilians were summoned to testify, though they could have been. The civilians might well be asked to appear in any court-martial, and their testimony in turn could discredit the civilian visitor program. Three of the civilians were seated at controls on the submarine at the time of the collision. This has not been an easy time for the Navy, and it has been a grievously difficult time for Commander Waddle. But the fundamental issue here is accountability--the commander's, his crew's and the Navy's. A truncated inquiry cannot inspire the public confidence that would come with a full court-martial proceeding.