Tom Harkin

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I move to reconsider the vote and I move to lay that motion on the table. The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I send my amendment to the desk on the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act.

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, there has been a lot of misperception about IDEA. That misperception is amplified in statement after statement until it almost becomes a state of fact that IDEA is a Federal mandate on the States. I hear it all the time: a Federal mandate that is not fully funded. IDEA is not a mandate of the Federal Government on the States. The fact that the Federal courts have said if a State provides a free and appropriate public education to its children--and States don't have to do that--but if a State provides a free and appropriate public education for all of its kids, it cannot discriminate on the basis of race, it cannot discriminate on the basis of sex, or national origin, and in two court cases the court said it cannot discriminate on the basis of disability. Simply because a child has a disability doesn't relieve the State of its obligation under the equal protection clause to provide that child a free and appropriate public education. In 1975, the Congress said because this would be such a burden on the States, we will pass national legislation to help the States meet their constitutional obligation to educate kids with disabilities. That is what IDEA is. The Federal Government said, OK, if you meet these certain requirements, you will be eligible for IDEA for this money. If we had no legislation at all, if there were no Individuals With Disabilities Education Act, the States would still have to fund the education of kids with disabilities--not because the Federal Government says so, but because the Constitution of the United States says so. As long as a State is providing a free public education to other kids, they have to provide it to kids with disabilities. It is not a Federal mandate. It is a constitutional mandate. We have said in the Federal Government, when we passed IDEA, we will help. Furthermore, we said in the authorizing legislation, that it would be a goal of the Federal Government to provide for 40 percent of the cost of the average per pupil expenditure for all other kids. We have never reached that 40 percent. It was a goal then. It is still a goal. Senators on both sides of the aisle talked about meeting this goal. Now we have the opportunity to do so. My amendment is a win-win situation for everyone. We are able to fully fund both the IDEA and our general education priorities so that all kids, with and without disabilities, get the education they deserve and they are guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States. Over the past 5 years, I have worked hard with my colleagues on the Appropriations Committee to more than double the appropriation for Part B of IDEA. This year we have included an additional $1.3 billion. Senator Specter and I, in a bipartisan fashion, worked very hard to get this increase. Because of the amendment offered by Senator Jeffords yesterday and the statements made on the floor, it became clear to me that there is a strong will on both sides of the aisle to fully fund IDEA to meet that 40-percent obligation. Now we can step up to the plate and do it. This week the OMB informed us that the non-Social Security surplus will reach up to $1.9 trillion over the next 10 years. I believe we ought to use these good economic times to prepare for the future. So, Mr. President, as I said, OMB has informed us we are going to have $1.9 trillion over the next 10 years in non-Social Security surplus. That means we can use some of this for a lot of different things: Pay down the national debt, shore up Social Security, Medicare, and make appropriate investments in education. One of the most appropriate investments we can make is to fully fund the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. But there are a lot of other ways we can help pay for this. For example, we could save dollars by cracking down on Medicare waste fraud and abuse. The HHS Inspector General said last year, Medicare made $13.5 billion in inappropriate payments. Eliminating that waste alone would more than pay for the entire IDEA expenditure. Yet the House-passed Labor-HHS bill actually cuts the funding for detecting waste, fraud and abuse. I hope we can take care of that in conference. My point is we have a lot of waste, fraud, and abuse in Medicare we can cut out to help pay for this. We have a lot of other things we can do also: Cutting out Radio Marti, and TV Marti; spending by Government agencies on travel, printing and supplies and other items could be frozen. This could save $2.8 billion this year, about $12 billion over 5 years. Pentagon spending could be tied to the rate of inflation. This would force the Pentagon to reduce duplication and other inefficiencies. This change would save taxpayers $9.2 billion this year alone; $69 billion over 5 years. Enhancing the Government's ability to collect student loan defaults would be $1 billion over 5 years. The reason I cite these examples is to show there is a lot of waste and a lot of spending we can tighten down on to help pay for IDEA. We have the surplus, however. All this money that we found out there--as we go through this year, you wait and see, transportation will take a little bit of that money; housing will take a little bit of that money; defense will take a big chunk of that; the Finance Committee will have tax provisions--they want to do away with all the estate taxes now. That will take away a big chunk. I hope we don't pass it but I assume something will come through. There is a big surplus out there and bit by bit special interests are going to come and take some of it away. Now is our time to get in there and say we are going to take enough to fully fund the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. We can do it. We have the money to do it. And, if I listened correctly to my friends on both sides of the aisle, we seem to have the will to do it. I just point out a range of organizations fully support full funding. It is one of the National Governors' Association top priorities. The Education Task Force of the Consortium for Citizens With Disabilities advocates full funding. The National School Boards Association just sent me a letter last week requesting an increase in funding for IDEA. In January of 1997 the majority leader, Senator Lott, announced that fully funding IDEA was a major component of the Republican agenda. Later, Senator Gorton said that failure to fully fund IDEA is fundamentally wrong--Congressional Record, May 13, 1997. In January of 1998 the majority leader and other Republican Senators held a major press conference to announce they were going to introduce a bill, S. 1590, that would, among other things, fully fund IDEA. Senator Coverdell said the resolution of the issues in that bill were: As important a battle as the country has ever dealt with. On his Web site, Senator Gregg from New Hampshire, who has always been a proponent of fully funding IDEA said that: He will continue to lead the fight to have the Federal Government meet its commitment to fund 40 percent of the special education costs. On his Web site, Senator Santorum of Pennsylvania supports full funding for IDEA. Last night, Senator Voinovich of Ohio said it is about time we paid for 40 percent of IDEA. That was last night. And last night Senator Jeffords, with whom I have worked many years on this issue, said: This body has gone on record in vote after vote that we should fully fund IDEA. Senator Jeffords also said: If we can't fully fund IDEA now with budget surpluses and the economy we have, when will we do it? I do not believe that anyone can rationally argue that this is not the time to fulfill that promise. The reason I opposed the Jeffords amendment last night, and I said so openly last night in debate, is because his amendment would have taken money out of class-size reduction and out of funding for school modernization and construction to fund IDEA. I said we should not be robbing Peter to pay Paul. We need to reduce class sizes. We need school construction money. In fact, some of the biggest beneficiaries of school construction and modernization are kids with disabilities. Now we have an opportunity to fully fund IDEA because we have these big surpluses, as I said, $1.5 trillion on-budget surpluses over the next 10 years, not counting Social Security. To fully fund IDEA would amount to less than 6 percent of that over the next 10 years. And, like I said before, we wouldn't have to touch the surplus if we just implemented one of my proposals to close up special interest tax loopholes, eliminate wasteful government spending, including Pentagon waste, or deal with Medicare waste, fraud and abuse. If you want to give a gift to the States this year, if you really want to help our local school districts, this is the amendment with which to do it, to fully fund IDEA once and for all. I yield for any comments or suggestions my colleague from Minnesota might have.

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I am supporting the amendment of the Senator from South Dakota because I have been involved in this issue for a long time. In 1989, when I was chairman of the subcommittee that my good friend, Senator Specter, chairs now, we started funding for the Human Genome Center at NIH. So I have been involved in this effort for a long time and am very supportive of it. I could not have been happier with the announcement that came out this week that we have now completed the map, and they will be completing the sequencing of the human genome. With that, we are going to have a very powerful diagnostic tool that will allow medical practitioners to more accurately assess the health of an individual and their proclivity to come down with an illness or a disease, or to be more predictive of what kind of illnesses to which a person might be subject. Well, that is a very powerful diagnostic tool, and it is going to do a lot to help millions of people all over this world. There may be other spinoffs in terms of gene therapy, and things such as that, but I wish to focus on the diagnostic tool that will help people get better control over their health care. That is the upside. The downside is that in the hands of the wrong person this information could then be used to discriminate against a person who may have a genetic predisposition toward a certain illness. As I understand it, both of the amendments we have before us--the one by the Senator from Vermont and the one by the Senator from South Dakota--prohibit discrimination when it comes to insurance. Well, that is all well and good, but that is only a part of it. Why the amendment of the Senator from South Dakota is the one we need to adopt is that it also prohibits discrimination in the workplace. Why is that important? I understand that earlier my friend from Vermont said we didn't have to be too concerned about this because the Americans With Disabilities Act covered the workplace. Well, as the chief sponsor of the Americans With Disabilities Act, and one who has lived with it since its inception back in the 1980s, I say to my friend from Vermont that some lower courts have ruled, for example, that breast cancer is not a disability, so the ADA really does not cover the workplace when you come to genetic discrimination. Some lower courts have held that breast cancer is not a disability and not covered by the ADA. If they rule that, are they then going to rule that the gene for breast cancer is covered? Hardly. So that is why I wanted to take this time to make it clear that genetic predispositions and disorders should be covered in employment, because of some of these lower court rulings regarding the Americans With Disabilities Act. So that is why it is so important that we have it in the workplace. Secondly, we need to have better enforcement. The penalties that are in the amendment offered by the Senator from Vermont are toothless-- $100 a day. Well, a large business concern can factor that into their cost of doing business. That is not really a stiff enough penalty. It seems to me that if I am discriminated against, under the law, I ought to have a private right of action; I ought to be able to go to court and say, wait a minute, my rights are being abused, my civil rights are being abused. And if we have this law that says you can't discriminate against someone because of their genetic predisposition, that person ought to have a right of action. That person ought to be able to go to court and seek redress. So that is why I say the Daschle amendment is the only one that really protects people both in the workplace and in insurance.

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I thank my colleague for his words of support, not only tonight but for all the time I have known him and all the years he has been in the Senate for making kids and education, especially special needs kids, one of his top priorities. I could not help but think when I was listening to the Senator speak, this vote on this amendment--I do not mean to puff it up bigger than it is. We are going to be faced the remainder of this year with vote after vote on what to do with that surplus. We may disagree on whether it is the estate tax cut or marriage penalty--whatever it might be. There might be other things coming down the pike, and we will have our debates and disagreement, but it seems to me that before we get into all that, we ought to do something for our kids with disabilities and we ought to do something that is right and is supported broadly, in a bipartisan way, and supported by our States. I can honestly say to my friend from Minnesota, if every Senator voted for this amendment, they would not get one letter, one phone call taking them to task for their vote in support of this amendment. I believe I can say that without any fear that I would ever be wrong; that no Senator, whoever votes for this amendment, would ever get one letter or one phone call from anyone saying they voted wrong. I believe that because it is so widely supported. Then we can go on with our other debates on tax cuts and other issues with the surplus and how we will deal with it. At this point in time, let us say we are going to take this little bit and invest it in the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act and, once and for all, meet that 40-percent goal, and we will not have to be talking about it anymore. As I said, this is a very simple and very straightforward amendment, but I will admit, for the record, it is going to take 60 votes. I understand that. It will take 60 votes, but I believe if Senators will just think about what they have said about IDEA and fully funding it and think about that big surplus we have and all of the demands that will be made on that surplus in the future, they just might think: Yes, we ought to carve out a little bit right now and put it into IDEA. It would help our States and our schools and, most of all, help our families who have special needs children who may not have all of the economic wherewithal to give their kids the best education. As I understand it, this is the first vote up or down vote on fully funding IDEA ever. Let's make it our last. I thank the Senator from Minnesota for his support. I yield the floor.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, what we have before us is a genuine lockbox amendment by the Senator from North Dakota, and we have a ``box'' amendment offered by the Senator from Missouri. Now, notice I said ``lockbox.'' A lockbox is what has been offered by the Senator from North Dakota; no lockbox by the Senator from Missouri. That really is the difference. What do I mean by ``lockbox''? What I mean is that we are trying to treat Medicare as we treat Social Security; that we are going to say that in the future, the Medicare trust fund should be off budget, should not be counted in budget totals, that it should be off budget and should not in any way be able to be tapped into by this Congress or any succeeding Congress to pay for any deficit, to pay for any tax cuts, to pay for any other kind of spending in which this Congress or any future Congress wants to engage. That is really what a lockbox is. You take funds and you set them aside; you put them in a box and you lock it. That means you cannot tap into it. That is what the American people want us to do with Medicare and with Social Security. This is money that they have paid into out of payroll taxes. This is money that has been set aside for them for Medicare--and for Social Security, if we are talking about Social Security. We are only talking about Medicare here. The American people believe very deeply about this; that no Congress ought to be able to say: We want to give a tax cut to the wealthy, and we are going to pay for it by taking it out of the surplus. And if the only surplus we have is Medicare, we will take it out of there, or, if the only surplus we have is Social Security, we will take it out of there. What we are saying on the Democratic side is, no, no deal. We are going to take Social Security and Medicare off budget, lock the money away, you cannot tap into it for tax cuts or spending or anything else. The Senator from Missouri may think that is what he is doing. I heard him describe his amendment as a lockbox, taking it out, but that is not what his amendment does. His amendment does not do that. It does not protect the Medicare trust fund from procedures that might be used by a future Congress to pay for spending or tax cuts totally unrelated to Medicare. I could get into the jargon used around here by talking about points of order and sequestration and stuff such as that. Who understands what all that means, unless it is just a few of us around here. And I am not certain all of us understand it either. But just to put it in simple lay terms that the American people can understand, the amendment offered by the Senator from Missouri sort of puts the Medicare surplus in a box. It closes the lid. That looks pretty good, but the next Congress or two Congresses from now may decide: Hey, we have had a downturn in the economy. We might want to give a tax cut to a group. We might want to do some spending. We don't have enough of a surplus in our budget, but we do have a big surplus in that box. In that box there is a big surplus. We will just go open the lid and scoop a little bit out. That is what the Ashcroft amendment allows. It allows a future Congress to open the lid on the box, put the scoop in there, and dig some money out for whatever that Congress wants. What the Conrad amendment does is take the Medicare money our people have paid out of their payroll taxes and puts it in a box, just as Ashcroft does, closes the lid, locks it, and throws the key away. That is the difference between the Conrad amendment and the Ashcroft amendment. What the Conrad amendment says to a future Congress is, if you want a tax cut for the wealthy, if you want to spend on some programs, go somewhere else to get the money. You can't pry open the box in which we have Medicare and Social Security funds; that is to be used only for Medicare and only for Social Security. That is what the Conrad amendment does. Don't be misled that these two amendments are the same. They are not the same. The American people should not be misled. If your goal is to set aside Medicare funds and put them in a box but if a future Congress wants it can go in and open the lid and scoop some money out, vote for Ashcroft. Maybe some people think that is legitimate. Maybe some people say: Well, we should not tie the hands of future Congresses. If they want to take some of that Medicare surplus and use it for something, let them open the lid on the box and take the money out. Maybe some people here believe that. I don't believe that. Senator Conrad does not believe that because it is his amendment. What he says is, we will put it in that box and lock it. The only thing you can use that money for is Medicare, just as we should only use Social Security for Social Security.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. The Senator asks me a legitimate question. As I understand it, under the Voinovich amendment, IDEA is an allowable use under title VI. I believe that is well covered in the Voinovich amendment. Again, the Senator wants to restrict the use of the construction and modernization money. A lot of it will be used for accessibility. Some may not be. Some may be used to repair a ceiling. A ceiling is leaking, and they need to repair it. It might not just help kids with disabilities, it would help all kids. I would not want to narrow it this way.

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, how much time do I have remaining?

Mr HARKIN

Mr HARKIN. A child? Then the Senator is correct. Usually it is stated the other way around. The Senator correctly stated the law. But back to the point I wanted to make. Should we reach that 40- percent goal? Absolutely. We should have reached it a long time ago. I agree the Federal Government has fallen down on its effort to reach that goal. What I rise in opposition to is how my friend from Vermont does this. What my friend is doing is he is taking money out of title VI, which was put in there for school construction and modernization--$1.3 billion. He is taking that money and saying it should be used to help meet our goals on IDEA. Again, it is a classic case of robbing Peter to pay Paul. Do we have a need for the Federal Government to educate kids with disabilities and meet its goals to our States? Yes. We ought to fully fund IDEA. Do we also have a responsibility to help States and our local school districts rebuild our dilapidated and crumbling schools? I believe the answer to that is yes. The average school in America now is over 40 years old. They are crumbling. They need to be modernized. They need to be updated. I say to my friend from Vermont--and he is my friend and he is a great supporter of education, I know that--but I ask my friend to consider this: When we modernize schools and rebuild schools, one of the biggest beneficiaries is a kid with a disability. I want the Senator to consider that because when many of our old schools were built, they were not accessible. The doors are too narrow, the bathrooms are not accessible, and even the drinking fountains are not accessible, especially for someone who uses a wheelchair. When we talk about school construction and modernization, we talk about $1.3 billion, which is a mere pittance of what is required. What the Senator from Vermont is actually doing by taking that money and putting it into IDEA, is penalizing kids with disabilities who need these schools modernized and upgraded. But then the Senator proposes that he is putting the money in IDEA to help kids with disabilities. Please, someone make some sense out of that for me. As I said, the Senator's intentions are very good and laudable to increase funding for IDEA. If he were to do this in an open way and say we ought to increase money for IDEA, I would be on his side, but not at the expense of school modernization and construction because it is kids with disabilities, maybe above all others, who need to have some of these schools modernized, I say to my friend from Vermont. Second, we just adopted an amendment offered by Senator Voinovich from Ohio. I said: Yes, we will accept it. The amendment of the Senator from Ohio says the schools can use title VI money, an allowable expense, to meet the requirements of IDEA. I submit to my friend from Vermont that the acceptance of the Voinovich amendment takes care of that. It leaves the money in there for school modernization and construction. However, out of the total pot of title VI money, the Voinovich amendment says that one of the allowable uses would be to use it to meet the requirements of IDEA. I hope that will satisfy the Senator from Vermont. It still leaves the money in there for construction and modernization. I want to make that clear. Because this is where I differ with my friend from Vermont. Under his amendment we will have zero dollars for school construction and modernization. Zero. At least with the Voinovich amendment, they will be able to decide what they want to do. They will have money in there for school modernization and construction. I hope the Senator from Vermont will perhaps reconsider this amendment. I know the goal is laudable. Heck, I support that. We ought to fund IDEA, but not take it out of school construction and modernization. I hope we can move beyond this and meet our obligations to all our children in this country in education and not penalize one group to help another group. In this case, we penalize kids with disabilities to help kids with disabilities. That does not seem to make much sense to this Senator. I yield the floor.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. I am happy to yield to the Senator.

Mr. HARKIN. I just heard my friend from Vermont say some magical words with which I totally agree. I wrote them down as he said them: ``Take budget surpluses and meet our commitments.'' I agree with that. Do you know what? Just this week we now found out we are going to have $1.9 trillion over the next 10 years we didn't know we were going to have in surplus. If my friend from Vermont wants to offer an amendment to fully fund IDEA, and to take it out of the surpluses, I am with him 100 percent of the way because he would be right on. The Senator just said that: ``Let's take our budget surpluses.'' I agree with that. That is not what my friend is doing. He is taking it out of school modernization and construction. I say to my friend from Vermont, if you want to rewrite the amendment and take it out of surpluses in the future, I am with you.

Mr. HARKIN. Sure.

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, back to the point at hand, I want everyone to understand what this mischievous motion is all about. All it does, in order to save the money, is move the date from October 1 to September 30. Last year, we moved it up to October 1; we moved it back to September 30. The motion of the Senator from Texas says, no, you can't do it September 30; you have to do it on October 1. In fairness and in reality, the SSI checks should go out at the end of the month. If the Senator has an objection, he should have filed it last year because we moved it from September 30 to October 1. SSI checks are to go out the end of the month. All we are doing is bringing it back to where it really ought to be, at the end of the month. Be that as it may, we are only talking about 1 day. I don't think too many people are hurt by 1 day. The Senator moves it back to October 1 when it ought to be September 30. What does his motion do if it is upheld? We will have almost a $3 billion cut in education, a $1.4 billion cut in NIH, a $210 million cut from the Centers for Disease Control, a $300 million cut from Head Start, a $77 million cut from community health centers. I heard some talk earlier about going to conference and taking care of it there. The House bill is lower than ours. If we cut these numbers here, when we go to conference, we will be locked into the lower numbers. So it has a great impact. We have a lot of amendments that have been filed--not only on the Democratic side but the Republican side as well--from Senators Collins, DeWine, Smith, Lott, Hutchison, Coverdell, Ashcroft, Helms, Nickles, Smith, Gramm, and a whole bunch on our side, too. How can we debate these amendments in any kind of a legitimate fashion, if, in fact, we don't even know what kind of money we are talking about? Some of the amendments add money; Some take it away; Some modify. If we go ahead and have the amendments, we don't know whether the motion from the Senator from Texas is going to hold or whether it will be waived, so we will be debating these amendments in a vacuum without the full knowledge of exactly what dollar amounts we are looking at. Are we going to cut it by 6.75 percent across the board or not? We don't know that yet.

Mr. HARKIN. I believe the hour of 7:45 had not arrived at that point, and that Senator Jeffords had made his remarks. I believe the Senator from Pennsylvania was moving to table the Jeffords amendment.

Mr. HARKIN. I ask the Senator from Pennsylvania, I believe the Senator from Pennsylvania was moving to table the Jeffords amendment and not the Landrieu amendment.

Mr. HARKIN. Who knows if it will fail? Wouldn't it be nice to try?

Mr. HARKIN. We should not be taking it out of school construction and modernization--not at all. Our local school districts need this money. Go out and talk to your school districts. The people who are paying our property taxes are getting hit pretty darn hard. Ceilings are falling down. They are leaking. They need this help from the Federal Government. We have the wherewithal to do it. And that is what we ought to stick with. If the Senator wants to offer an amendment to fully fund IDEA, take it out of the $1.9 trillion budget surplus--``take it out of the budget surpluses,'' as my friend said, I am in lockstep with him because that is what we ought to be doing with that surplus. We ought to be meeting this basic goal of our Federal Government. Of course, while I believe some of the surplus should be invested in quality education, we don't need to touch the surplus to meet the goal of fully funding IDEA. There are many savings we could achieve that could more than pay for the investment. For example, look at Medicare fraud, waste and abuse. While we've cut it over the last few years, the HHS IG testified before our Subcommittee this March that last year Medicare made $13.5 billion in inappropriate payments. Eliminating that waste alone would more than pay for IDEA. Yet, the House passed Labor-HHS bill actually cuts funding for auditors and investigators. That means we would lose hundreds of millions more to fraud and abuse. In addition, I've introduced The Fiscal Responsibility Act of 1999 to promote greater fiscal responsibility in the Federal government by eliminating special interest tax loopholes, reducing corporate welfare, eliminating unnecessary programs, reducing wasteful spending, enhancing government efficiency and requiring greater accountability. This bill would result in savings of approximately $20 billion this year and up to $140 billion over five years. For example, by enhancing the government's ability to collect defaulted student loans, the bill would save $1 billion over five years. By ending tax deductions for tobacco promotions that entice our children to smoke, we'd save $10 billion. And by limiting the foreign tax credit that allows big oil and gas companies to escape paying their fair share of royalties, we'd save about $3.1 billion.

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, how much time do I have?

Mr. HARKIN. The Senator from Pennsylvania may want a minute.

Mr. HARKIN. That was on the budget. This is on appropriations. I say to my friend, offer an amendment. The Senator can offer an amendment right now to fully fund IDEA and take it out of budget surpluses. I will support him on it right now.

Mr. HARKIN. I want to see if the chairman wants to say anything.

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I rise in opposition to the amendment offered by my friend from Vermont. I want to make it clear I am not rising in opposition to his goal. Senator Jeffords' goal is the same goal I have. We both want to do everything we can to fully fund, on the Federal level, our stated goal of paying 40% of the costs of special education. We should do it. So I agree with the Senator on that. Senator Jeffords has been a stalwart supporter of that goal. I believe I have been, too. So I do not rise in opposition to what my friend from Vermont is trying to do Just like me, he wants to educate kids with disabilities and ensure the Federal Government meets its authorized funding goal that was stated in the bill, in IDEA, when it was passed 25 years ago. I do, however, feel compelled to clarify once again, as I have every year that this issue has come up, usually presented by the Senator from New Hampshire, the terms of the 40 percent. The stated assumption that the Federal Government is to fund 40 percent of the cost of educating children with disabilities is not correct. You must look at the legislation. The authorizing legislation of 25 years ago authorized the maximum award per State as being the number of children served times 40 percent of the national average per pupil expenditure. It was not 40 percent of the cost of educating kids with disabilities.

Mr. HARKIN. I say to my friend from Montana, who is a strong supporter on the Finance Committee of the permanent normal trade relations with China--and he has worked very hard on this issue--I know he desires, as many others, to get on with that, debate it, have a vote and move on. The Senator is asking this Senator a question on which I do not feel qualified to make an answer. I am not involved in this issue or on the Finance Committee. Right now my interest is getting this bill through. I am trying to help and do what I can to get the amendments through and get adequate funding for education, for NIH, for health care, for human services, to try to educate our kids, and attend to the human needs of our people. We are trying to get this through. I have not had time now to consider when the PNTR should be brought up. I know my friend from Montana is obviously well versed in this subject. I probably would accede to his knowledge of this issue and when it ought to be brought up. As to my own view, I don't think this Senator is qualified to respond.

Mr. HARKIN. I don't know the answer to that question. I was not involved in the appropriations bill for defense. I will leave that to others. I have no knowledge of that. I accept the Senator's insight into that. I don't know the answer as to whether the Senator from Texas objected to that. The Senator from Texas can certainly speak for himself in that regard. But I guess the Record will show one way or the other.

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Just let us see it. I have no objection.