Tom Harkin

Mr. HARKIN

Mr. HARKIN. Will the Senator yield?

Mr. HARKIN. Let me ask the Senator----

Mr. HARKIN. I want to tell him he is right.

Mr. HARKIN. They have to provide services for him. They have to provide services.

Mr. HARKIN. If I might interject myself into this a little bit?

Mr. HARKIN. Will the Senator yield?

Mr. HARKIN. If the Senator will yield.

Mr. HARKIN. If the Senator from Vermont will yield for a question.

Mr. HARKIN. Will the Senator yield to me to elaborate a little further?

Mr. HARKIN. I say to my friend from Missouri that prior to the two 1972 cases, the PARC case and the Mills case, it was found by the courts, and by others, that there were millions of kids in our country who were denied an education simply because of their disability. In both the PARC case--that is the Pennsylvania Association of Retarded Children--and the Mills case here in the District, the courts said, basically, look, if a State provides a free public education to its children--now, a State does not have to, States do not have to provide a free public education; there is no constitutional mandate for that, by the way. But the court said, if a State provides a free public education, under the 14th amendment to the Constitution it cannot deny a free public education, just as it cannot deny it to a child who is black, because of race, color, creed, national origin, sex, it cannot deny a free public education to a child with a disability; and, furthermore, the court said, because of the disability, the education must not only be free but appropriate. So I say to my friend--and I will just go through this a little bit longer--the States, then, were faced with a constitutional mandate that they had to provide a free appropriate public education to kids with disabilities. The States were panic stricken. How were they ever going to afford to do this? They came to Congress. Congress said: OK. We will set up a law. We called it the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, passed in 1975. Both the Senator from Vermont and I were in the House at the time. We set up a law, and we said: OK. We want to have some national standards. We do not want to have 50 different standards. We want to set up national standards for providing services to kids with disabilities. We do not want 50 different things out there. So we set up IDEA. We said our objective was to provide 40 percent of the funding. By the way, we haven't, and we ought to.

Mr. HARKIN. I always have. We ought to fully fund IDEA. But I just want to walk through this. So we set up IDEA, and we said, if you, State of Missouri, would like to have the money we can provide, then you have to adhere to IDEA. No State, including the State of Missouri, has to abide by any of the provisions in IDEA if they do not want to accept any of the money.

Mr. HARKIN. I just wanted to point out, the Senator was questioning about whether or not this was a constitutional mandate. It is a constitutional mandate on the States that they have to provide a free and appropriate public education. IDEA says to the States: We will help you with money. Here are the rules of the game.

Mr. HARKIN. Will the Senator yield?

Mr. HARKIN. I wanted to respond to my friend from Alabama. It seems to me the argument is, it costs too much money to take care of kids with disabilities. I remind my friend from Alabama, that Supreme Court right across the street, less than 2 months ago, had a case from Iowa, the Garrett F. case. Here was a kid who was on a breathing device in school every day, had to have a nurse with him every day because they had to clean the phlegm out of his throat and his lungs. He was on a breathing device, severely disabled. His mind was fine, mind was great--the kid knew what was going on, a good student. The school didn't like it because it was costing them a lot of money--I say to my friend from Alabama--so they took the case to the Supreme Court. That Supreme Court over there, in a 7-2 decision, including some of the most conservative Members of that Court, said that under the Constitution of the United States they had to provide that opportunity. We can argue about how we provide it, but, please, don't tell me that somehow, because these kids cost a lot of money, we have to give them less in their lives than kids who are not disabled. I yield the floor.

Mr. HARKIN. What was the date of that case?

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I want to say to my friend from Missouri--

Mr. HARKIN. I say to my friend from Tennessee, I use his own words. He said this is a ``double standard.'' I say no.

Mr. HARKIN. Where is the Senator reading from?

Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, we have had a pretty good debate, and it has been said that it has taken 2 hours. That doesn't bother me. I have spent years on this bill. I spent years on it. I spent my entire lifetime with a disabled brother. Do you think 2 hours means anything to me? It doesn't mean anything to me. We spent 3 years on this bill--3 years--bringing IDEA up to date. Do you think 2 hours bothers me? Not a bit. I am going to say something to my friend from Tennessee. He is a good man; he has a good heart. I am going to read back to my friend from Tennessee his words spoken on the floor May 14, 1997. The issue then was a Gorton amendment, which would basically have turned back to the local school districts the power to basically discipline kids with disabilities. I want to read back to my friend from Tennessee what he said then: Mr. FRIST. Mr. President, I rise to speak in strong opposition as well to this amendment before the Senate, put forth by the Senator from Washington, an amendment which would instruct local education agencies to set out their own policy--a potentially very different policy--in disciplining students with disabilities. In short, under his amendment, each school district potentially would have its own distinct policy in disciplining disabled children. And with 16,000 school districts, the potential for conflicting policies is very real. And I am afraid this would be a turn-back to the pre-1975 era before IDEA. Is this a double standard? I say no. Clearly, we have outlined a process whereby students, if there is a manifestation of a disability, would go down one process. And if a discipline problem was not a manifestation of a disability, that student would be treated just like everyone else. I am continuing to quote from the statement of the Senator from Tennessee on May 14, 1997: I think this is fair, this is equitable. Remember, if behavior is not a result of that disability, all students are treated the same in this bill. If behavior is secondary to a disability, there is a very clear process which is outlined in detail. Yes, it does take several pages to outline that, but it sets up a balance between the school, between school boards, between parents, and between children. Senator Gorton claims this amendment is about local control, and I feel that it will be used, I am afraid, to turn back the hands of the clock to the pre-1975 conditions where we know that children with disabilities were excluded from the opportunity to receive a free and appropriate public education. I say to my friend in Tennessee that he was right then. Mr. President, he was right then. Now we are caught up with the issue of guns and bombs.

Mr. HARKIN. The Senator was always kind enough to yield to me. I would certainly respond with the same kind of favor in response to the Senator from Tennessee.

Mr. HARKIN. Again, I ask my friend from Tennessee, was that under the old law or the new law?

Mr. HARKIN. I will respond to my friend from Utah, and he is my friend and someone I like a lot, and respect a lot.

Mr. HARKIN. He has made a very impassioned plea here, and I know he feels strongly about the bill. But I just have to respond this way. This bill may be cited as the Violent and Repeat Juvenile Offender Accountability and Rehabilitation Act of 1999.

Mr. HARKIN. I say to my friend from Tennessee that the example he keeps using in Tennessee did occur under the old law, not the new law. I hope we can forget about using that example. Under the new law we passed, we do provide that 45 days can be extended indefinitely if the school officials feel that child is a threat either to himself or herself or to the school. Again, I just hope that example is not used because it confuses people. We shouldn't be confusing people when the new law is different than the old law. I take a back seat to no one when it comes to the issue of safety in schools. I just put two daughters through public schools all their lives. One just graduated from college; my second daughter is a senior in public high school--student body president, too, I might add. Why not brag? If you can't brag about your kids, what can you brag about? Both my wife and I have always been concerned about safety at school. We have talked a lot about it with our daughter, Jenny, so I don't take a back seat to anyone in terms of safety. There are few things as critical to any parent as making sure the kids are safe when they go out the door in the morning and when they come home in the afternoon. I think the recent tragedies in Colorado are the culmination, the end result, of eight school shootings in 39 months--Oregon, Kentucky, Mississippi. I point out, again, to my friend from Tennessee, the kid in Oregon was expelled, went home, got a gun and came back and shot kids. I don't know if expulsion helped in that case. If you want to base this on the fact that expulsion will make the kids safer in school, I say look what happened in Oregon. It didn't seem to work there. I do believe that what has happened during these 39 months and what happened in Littleton is, indeed, a call to action to our families, to our churches, schools and communities.

Mr. HARKIN. I am just getting on a roll.