Pete Hoekstra

Mr. HOEKSTRA

Mr. HOEKSTRA. I thank the gentleman, and I think it is about time to wrap up this debate, although we have not had much of a debate. But we ought to also remember and say, you know, why did we do this discussion tonight? We did this discussion tonight, number one, to prepare our colleagues for the debate that we are going to have tomorrow and also because we know it is going to be a vigorous debate because talking to the chairman of the full committee, Mr. Goodling, and asking him, you know, do we have time to talk about all of the points that we want to talk about on Dollars to the Classroom tomorrow, and he said, boy. He said I already got 30 to 40 people who are asking to speak on this bill tomorrow, and you know there may not be enough time to get all of the points in, and so we have had an opportunity, I think tonight, to prepare our colleagues for this debate and to lay the framework about the alternative visions for education, the bureaucratic vision which says move accountability to Washington, move standards and testing to Washington, you know move dollars to Washington, move almost everything to Washington. And that is the debate. Or are we going to be in the debate on opportunity and freedom? So we have had the opportunity tonight to lay the groundwork for that debate, to get that information on to the record and to prepare our colleagues for this debate which is going to be so critical tomorrow on a very important issue, a very important issue. I will yield.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Reclaiming my time, absolutely. It will be a spirited debate, and there are, you know there will be spirited communications from these interest groups because what we are going to try to do tomorrow is take 31 programs and put them into a single educational opportunity grant to local school districts. Well, for each one of these 31 programs right now, there is a constituency where people have applied for and, you know, where this 35 to 40 cents of every education dollar just does not vanish into thin air. There are people who are taking that money and who are benefiting from it, and they are not going to want to give that up for the sake of efficiency and streamlining. But you know it is going to be a very spirited debate, and we will be accused of hurting kids. We are accused of that with the food lunch program when we said we want to streamline it. You are going to hurt kids. And it is kind of like, no. There are going to be people who are not going to benefit from this, but they are in these buildings, and the bureaucrats I met are talented and they are good people, but they are located at the wrong place to be making these kinds of decisions. It is going to be the people in these buildings, and it is going to be these bureaucrats, and it is going to be those people that believe in the vision that was highlighted in that memo that said Washington bureaucrats and Washington politicians know more about educating our children in Colorado and Michigan than what parents and teachers and school administrators do at the local level. That is the debate.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. What this really does and what we are going to try to do tomorrow is we are going to try to implement the vision for the Education Department that a lot of these people in 1979 said the Education Department should be; that we should streamline the bureaucracy, we should get dollars into the classroom, and we should consolidate Federal education programs. So the vision was right in 1979. The implementation was terrible. So the Education Department in and of itself was not a bad thing because it was addressing, it was supposed to address the right kinds of problems; but what you and I have found as we have gone around the country is that rather than implementing a Department of Education that empowered parents, empowered the local level, streamlined the process and got dollars to the local level, this bureaucracy took on a life of its own and created more programs and more rules and more regulations. One of the things that we found was that the first time that you sent me, the first time that you sent an application to this bureaucracy to process a grant request, it had to go through 487 different steps that took 26 weeks to complete. Think of how many people that request touched, how long it was in every in-box and then in every out-box, and how many different offices it would go through in this building before you ever found out back at a local level whether you were going to get a dollar or not.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. It is not just in Colorado, it is not in Michigan, it is in New York, it is in Cleveland, it is in Milwaukee, it is in Georgia, it is in L.A., it is in San Jose. We have been there. We have been in Iowa. You know we have been around the country and the story is always the same. The message comes back and says, it is bureaucratic. You notice that almost this whole dialogue was between the school administrator and Washington. The dialogue that is most important which is between the school administrator and the parent, who is paying for the taxes, gets lost in the process. We have also identified that when we go through this process of taking that tax dollar and then you and I going through this exchange of, I got the money, you get it, you send it to me, I verify, you send in reports, I audit, that when you go through that whole process, we lose about 30 to 40 cents of every educational dollar that came from that taxpayer, we lose 30 to 40 cents in the work that you do in your local school district, and the work that bureaucrats need to do here in Washington. So we lose 30 to 40 percent of the money. The other thing that we have found, one of the key findings and that we are going to be working on tomorrow, on dollars to the classroom, is that the leverage point for education spending, as much as I would like to say this bureaucrat and this bureaucracy are adding a lot of value to the education of our kids, what did we find? We found that the leverage point for educational spending is getting the resources to a teacher, to a principal, to a classroom. When we are losing 35 to 40 cents of every dollar, we are hurting our kids. We are not helping them learn. Tomorrow we are setting up the objective that for 31 programs, that is roughly $3 billion of spending, instead of getting 65 to 70 cents of every dollar to the classroom, we want to get 90 to 95 cents of every Federal education dollar into the classroom out of those 31 programs, which I believe will give every classroom something like, what, $400 and $425 more. That is leverage. That is not spending more on education. That is not asking the taxpayer to send us more money. That is just saying, with the money that you are sending us, we are going to spend a little less time talking to each other, or, you know the school administrators in Washington are going to spend a little less time talking to each other, a lot fewer rules and regulations, a lot less paperwork and we are going to open it up because we are going to say, if these four programs are the most important to you for what your kids need, spend the money on those four programs. Do not worry about the other 27, because the 4 programs that you maybe need to do in Colorado are very different than probably what he saw in the Bronx and what the kids in the Bronx need, and it is very different from what we saw in Louisville, Kentucky or what we saw in West Michigan, because the needs are different. We need to empower the local administrators and the parents and the teachers to spend that money. We need to get more money in their hands and we really believe that as much as we like these bureaucrats in Washington, they cannot substitute for a loving home; they cannot substitute for a parent and they cannot substitute for a teacher or a principal at a local level who knows what their kids need.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Just a couple of points, because as we have gone through education with the Crossroads Project, our subcommittee, we have gone to 15 States, we have had 22 different hearings and we have heard this over and over and over from I think over 220 witnesses in 15 states and the message is consistent, because they outlined this process for us; they said this is exactly what we go through.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. I yield to the gentleman from Colorado.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. I go through all of these reports in Washington, all the reports that go into this building, and people read them, they do not really know where your district is in Colorado, they do not know why my district is in Michigan, but they read my reports, is that the end of the saga? I do not think so, because I kind of believe that maybe some of the people that have gotten some of this $30 billion have not quite spent it the way that I wanted them to. So I have another department here in Washington. They are called auditors. So I send them around the country and send them to you and say, I know you sent me the report but prove it. I want to see your paperwork that says that you spent the money exactly the way that I told you to. So I send the auditor to you and you go through another process.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Here is the evidence. Here are the reports.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Reclaiming my time, what the gentleman has said is you have received the dollars and you implement the program and I know that you are not going to spend the money the way that I told you to. So you have to send me a bunch of reports saying, I did what you told me to do.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. That is correct.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. The gentleman has presented a proposal. So your people have done the screening, they have had the dialogue with the department in the different agencies and we tell you you might qualify. So you send your application to Washington, and I am looking at it and saying, I have got about $30 billion but you are not the only one that has applied. I have all of the rest of the country that has now applied for this. So I now need to hire people to go through the screening process, because I have gotten more requests for dollars than what I have funds for. So I now need to go through and say, you qualify, you qualify, you qualify, you do not, you do not; I am sorry. So the people that do not qualify have put in all of this work, they have done all the surveying, they have put in the work and writing the grant application and they do not get any money. You now get some programs so I now notify you that you have won the award, you get the money and you are getting a check. What do you do next?

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Reclaiming my time, the gentleman has now applied to Washington, to me.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. You then need to go through a process, and do what, and find which programs that you might qualify and then what does the gentleman have to do?

Mr. HOEKSTRA. I collect the taxes so the taxpayer who is over there has sent the dollars to Washington and I now work with the Congress or I am instructed by the Congress and I have created these 760 programs. So I need to communicate this to the local school district and say, all right, I have 760 programs. I need to communicate to you and tell you what they are. What do you need to do at that point?

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Reclaiming my time. Maybe you remember the numbers. It is 39 different agencies with over 760 programs. In 1979 they recognized that they had a problem. We have too many programs and we have too many agencies dealing with education. We need to consolidate it in a Department of Education so that we really get a focus on education. I have another quote here. Secretary Rubin testified before the Committee on the Budget on March 11, 1997. At that hearing, I asked him who the point person is for education strategy in the administration. Mr. Rubin replied, ``I would say the President, who is enormously knowledgeable.'' So the President is the point person on education. He must be the point person on defense, foreign policy, welfare reform. The benchmark was consolidation and streamlining in 1979 and efficiency. In reality, we have continued to create more programs. We have continued to create and allow more agencies to deal with education and we have never consolidated the strategy at the Department of Education level. The creation of this new department will reduce the size of the bureaucracy. In reality, the Washington bureaucracy here, the Education Department is one of the smaller bureaucracies. It has somewhere in the neighborhood of 4,000 to 5,000 employees, which I think is still a pretty good size bureaucracy. It has three times that many people who are on State payrolls enforcing Federal regulations. So we did not streamline the bureaucracies. Mr. Bayh said, ``The individual appointed to the position of Secretary of Education will coordinate all educational activities for the Federal Government.'' Mr. Rubin has already said that has not happened. Mr. Levin said, ``I believe that the creation of the department can have a streamlining effect on the multitude of Federal education programs currently spread out through various departments within the Federal Government.'' It has not happened.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Reclaiming my time, I think the clearest example of that is the debate that we had last year, and the fight on the floor of this House and the fight that we had with the administration about testing our children, recognizing that if we develop national tests we open the door to Federal tests and Federal standards. And if all of our kids are to be tested on a national basis, it really moves into developing curriculum, which means we want to train our teachers. And so we saw the first steps of that. And I think we have been effective in stopping that and moving towards our vision, which says let us not consolidate more power here in Washington, in these buildings here with these bureaucrats, who are very knowledgeable and very talented people, but they do not know Colorado and they do not know the State of Michigan. Let us go back, and we will go through a little bit of what we did with Education at a Crossroads, but before that, and I know some will say, oh, there they go again, they want to get rid of the Department of Education. That is not the debate. The debate is how do we take a Department of Education and make it more effective; and, also, what is working in America in education today. I have some quotes here about what people said about the Department of Education when it was created in 1979, and we can benchmark what people expected in 1979 when they voted for a Department of Education and what we now have almost 20 years later. Twenty years later do we have what we thought we were going to get? This is a benchmark; this is what we need to measure against. Mr. Brooks said, September 27, 1979, ``It creates a cabinet level Department of Education to provide more efficient administration of the wide variety of education program now scattered throughout the Federal Government.'' I yield to the gentleman from Colorado if he can tell me how many Federal agencies today administer education programs? Have we seen consolidation?

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Let us do a little process here. Let me represent the bureaucrat and the bureaucracy in Washington and the gentleman will represent the school district. Let us go through this process of what happens.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Reclaiming my time, the gentleman has opened himself up to perhaps some criticism; to someone saying, look, we have never seen those proposals. What is outlined in that memo has never come to the House. That is not what was going on at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue. But then we take a look and say, no, the gentleman is right. The gentleman has clearly outlined the vision, because steps moving us in that direction have come from the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. It is a tax, and they call it a levy.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Reclaiming my time for just a second. It is interesting that, once again, they will not use the word of what it really is. They come up with another word.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Reclaiming my time for a minute, and I will let the gentleman get back to that, but I want to set the context for this, because some of the things the gentleman is going to talk about have not come out in concrete proposals that have come from the White House. What I want to do is lay out for the gentleman a litany of what the administration has proposed. And this goes to what the gentleman has in his hands, but goes a little further. Washington has been involved in training teachers, we have been involved in providing breakfast, we have been involved in teaching our kids about sex, we have been involved in teaching our kids about the arts, providing lunch, teaching them about drugs, teaching them about violence, providing after-school snacks, and providing after-school activities. These are all things that the Federal Government has gotten involved in in education. But let me just point out the specific types of programs that this administration has already proposed and the types of things that they want to move from the local level and the State level. They say, no, it is the responsibility of a building in Washington and a bureaucrat in Washington; that they can make these decisions better than what can be done at a local level. What have they proposed? They have proposed building our schools, they have proposed hiring teachers, they have proposed developing curriculum, they have proposed installing technology, they have proposed developing Federal tests and Federal standards for our kids. Remember the debate and the fight that we had last year so that we would not have national testing? They want to test our children. They want to make midnight basketball available. All from Washington. It does not mean these things are not important. They are all very important. But the myth of the magical bureaucrat says we think those decisions should be made by a bureaucrat in Washington rather than at the State and, most importantly, at the local level. The bottom line is, what do they want to do? Here is the litany when we put it all together: They want to build our schools, hire our teachers, train our teachers, develop the curriculum, install technology, develop Federal tests and standards, test our children, provide breakfast, teach them about sex teach them about the arts, provide them lunch, teach them about drugs, teach them about violence, provide an after-school snack, provide after-school activities, and make midnight basketball available. Other than that, it is the local school. These are Washington responsibilities, but other than that they really believe in local education. I yield back and the gentleman can talk about the other things that they have had on their mind and where they would be going next if they got this whole agenda.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Reclaiming my time, Mr. Speaker, this letter that you showed me tonight as we were preparing is unbelievable. It clearly points out the difference between a bureaucratic vision of America, where control is moved to Washington, where we believe that this little bureaucrat in this building here in Washington does all kinds of good things, and the more power we can move to this bureaucrat and to this building in Washington, the better off we will be.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Reclaiming my time, Mr. Speaker, just to set this in a context again, there is a difference between the bureaucratic mentality that we see in a lot of institutions here in Washington and the free market actions and energy that we see. Actually, just for my colleagues, on a monthly basis my office publishes what we call a ``Tale of Two Visions.'' What a tale of two visions does is it really portrays the two different visions for America, one of which is the vision of bureaucracy. The IRS admits to taxpayer abuse. That is a vision of bureaucracy. No kids at a 2.4 million day care center. Government creates private company windfall. Start time will improve education, legislators claim. Another strange IRS determination, but that is a vision of bureaucracy. We contrast that to what we think is a vision of opportunity, where we do what my colleague from Colorado said, we move authority and responsibility either back into the free market system or we move it back to local and State government, the levels of government that are available to the people. We do this on a monthly basis. Other tales of two visions. A vision of bureaucracy. Remember the $600 toilet seats? Now they are $75 screws. A vision of bureaucracy. Billions missing Federal audit, another expensive Federal building project. Contrast that with the vision of opportunity. A parent goes the extra mile to help children read. Volunteers help the poor save on tax bills. Private group offers educational opportunities for low income kids. Program provides alternatives to gangs. What we do is we highlight those each and every month, the difference between the bureaucratic vision, which is, when they ask this question, they say, can this bureaucracy substitute for a loving home? The bureaucratic vision says yes. We say no. Does spending money in this building and a building in Washington equal positive results for America? Bureaucrats and the bureaucratic vision says us spending money in Washington is a positive thing. The opportunity vision says, spending at the local level through parents and the free market works better. The bureaucratic vision says, can a one-size-fits-all program run out of this building solve every problem? The bureaucratic vision says yes. It says that we can develop a program that works in my district in West Michigan and we expect to it work in Colorado. And as much as I liked Colorado when I went out to visit your district and we had a great hearing out there, the needs and the opportunities in your district are very different than mine. I just wanted to let my colleagues know that if they are interested, we have this tale of two visions as well as journal of ideas, talking about how from an opportunity vision standpoint we can change the arts, we can change education, we can change regulatory and tax reform and campaign finance reform, there are alternative visions to the bureaucratic vision in America. And the journal of ideas and the tale of two visions, these are all available on my web page. For my colleagues, if they are interested, they can just go to WWW.HOUSE.GOV/ HOEKSTRA/WELCOME.HTML, and they can have access to a tale of two visions and they can have access to the journal of ideas and other information that really contrasts a bureaucratic vision of America, which I think is the myth, and the real strength of America, which is the private sector.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, tonight we want to begin a dialogue that we hope sets the framework for tomorrow. Tomorrow, there is going to be limited debate on a bill that is coming to the floor. It is called ``Dollars to the Classroom.'' This piece of legislation, which was authored by a colleague of mine from Pennsylvania, builds on a previous resolution that this House has passed. What that resolution said was that when we send a dollar to Washington for education, instead of getting 60 to 70 cents of that dollar back to the classroom, back to the local level, we are going to strive to get that up to 90 to 95 cents of every education dollar getting back to a local classroom. Before I do that, and before I begin that discussion on education, I want to set the framework. A while back, we did a proposal out of my office, or we did kind of an analysis, and we started addressing an issue which I think is very important. The question was: Why is it that everyone has so much faith in Washington? Why is it that people believe that if they send their money to Washington, Washington is better at building their roads, Washington is better at educating their children, Washington is better at creating jobs than if we left that money at the State or local level or if we left that money in the pockets of the American citizens? We identified a phenomenon which we call ``the myth of the magical bureaucracy.'' What we said is, we really should ask some questions. Do we really believe that a bureaucrat in Washington can raise our children? Do we really believe that this magical bureaucracy here in Washington can build and strengthen our communities, that it can create economic growth, that it can create economic opportunity and that it can prepare America for the information age? It is kind of interesting, my colleague from Colorado and I today had the opportunity to ask that question, not can the magical bureaucracy here in Washington prepare America for the information age, but the question that we asked today is whether the magical bureaucracy, not whether it can lead us into the information age but whether this magical bureaucracy here in Washington, in the two departments we had testify today, the Education and Labor Departments, whether they are even prepared to move into the information age and whether they are prepared to deal with the year 2000 issue. And the answers that we got were fairly frightening. The Education Department, this is a group that sends out money to our schools; it does Pell grants. It does the direct student loan program. In reality, the Education Department is perhaps one of the largest banks in the country. Its loan portfolio or the loans that it manages are close to $150 billion. It has roughly 93 million customers, 93 million people who have loans with the Education Department. In a recent scoring or a grading, which I think is very appropriate for the Education Department, one of my colleagues from another committee in the House of Representatives said that they, the Education Department, deserved an F. They are not ready for the year 2000. It means that we are not quite sure what happens to the $150 billion of loans that are outstanding. We are not quite sure what will happen to our students who in 1999 begin applying for loans or start going to school and believe they are approved for loans and start actually looking for the money and do not receive their checks. It is kind of scary what is going to happen potentially with the Education Department. It was heartening to see that on a bipartisan basis my colleague from Hawaii, who is the ranking member, indicated her serious concerns about where the Education Department was and what they could do. It is not about whether they can lead us into the information age. I am not sure if the gentleman from Colorado would have anything to say about his observations on the hearings today, but when we talk about the myth of the magical bureaucracy, we really saw a myth today, the myth that this organization that we think is educating our kids cannot even deal with the information age. I yield to the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Bob Schaffer). General Leave

Mr. HOEKSTRA

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?