Pete Hoekstra

Mr. HOEKSTRA

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, today I am introducing the Citizen Service Act of 2002 to reauthorize programs under the Corporation for National and Community Service. I would like to thank the Ranking Member of the Subcommittee on Select Education, Mr. Roemer, for working with me to put together a bipartisan bill to reauthorize and reform the national service laws. On April 9, 2002, President Bush unveiled his ``Principles and Reforms for a Citizen Service Act'' to guide the reauthorization of the Corporation for National and Community Service and its programs, which include AmeriCorps, Senior Corps, and Learn and Serve America. Since then, the Subcommittee on Select Education has worked in a bipartisan manner with the Administration to craft legislation to reform and enhance national service. The major federally funded community service and volunteer programs in this country are authorized under two statutes: the National and Community Service Act and the Domestic Volunteer Service Act. The bill I am introducing today provides reforms and improvements to these national service laws. The improvements in the Citizen Service Act of 2002 will allow organizations and volunteers assisted under these acts to maximize their efforts and will greatly benefit those assisted through volunteer efforts. The Citizen Service Act of 2002 focuses on four major objectives for reauthorization. This legislation will: (1) support and encourage greater engagement of citizens in volunteering; (2) make federal funds more responsive to State and local needs; (3) make federal support more accountable and effective; and (4) provide greater assistance to community-based organizations (which include religious organizations). This legislation also addresses several specific issues that will help to improve national service provisions found in current law. Prohibition on Grants to Federal Agencies--Prohibits the Corporation from making grants to Federal agencies. Literacy Programs--Requires literacy programs to be based on scientifically based reading research and ensures that programs provide instruction based on the essential components of reading instruction as defined in P.L. 107-110, the No Child Left Behind Act. Funding Allocations--Allocates funding for AmeriCorps programs as follows: up to 20 percent of funds for national direct competitive grants; and at least 35 percent of funds for State competitive grants; and 45 percent of funds for States by formula based on population. Pilot Authority--Authorizes the CEO of the Corporation to reserve funds to support pilot programs, such as member-based national service positions that allow participants to select community service activities. Referrals for Federal Assistance--Prohibits funding for programs under the national service laws that only refer individuals to Federal and State assistance programs. Sex Education Programs--Prohibits funding for sex education programs under the national service laws that do not meet the general prohibitions of P.L. 107-110, the No Child Left Behind Act. Parental Consent--Requires consultation with the parents of children when developing and operating programs that include and serve children and requires the provision of the reason for, and permission of, parents before transporting minor children (consistent with State law). Accountability Measures--Requires the Corporation to work with grantees to establish performance measures; requires grantees to design corrective plans if they fail to meet performance measures; and provides authority for the Corporation to reduce or terminate grants if corrections are not made. Limitation on Program Costs--Caps Federal costs for programs under the national service laws at $16,000. Permits the CEO of the Corporation to issue a waiver to assist grantees in meeting compelling needs (up to $18,000 for costs related to such things as the participation of individuals with disabilities and initial start-up costs for religious organizations and up to $20,000 for residential programs). Requires the CEO of the Corporation to report to Congress annually on all waivers granted. Senior Scholarships--Authorizes a senior scholarship to support tutoring, mentoring, and other service by seniors, who may receive or transfer a $1,000 scholarship. Senior Corps Income Eligibility--Provides that a stipend may be made available to a Senior Corps participant with an income that is 200 percent of poverty (under current law it is 125 percent of poverty) and allows the Director to use up to 15 percent of funds for participants with incomes above 200 percent of poverty as long as the program, following innovative efforts to recruit, is not able to effectively recruit and place low-income participants. The spirit of community service in our country is stronger than ever because of the tragedy our Nation has endured. Since so many Americans are looking for a sense of community and looking for ways to contribute constructively to their communities, we must take this opportunity to reform our Nation's service laws. The principles outlined by President Bush and included in the Citizen Service Act of 2002 seek to build on this spirit and will help to sustain it in the future. I urge my colleagues to join me and the other original co-sponsors in support of the Citizen Service Act of 2002.

Mr. HOEKSTRA

Mr. HOEKSTRA. That money is going to stay there. Matter of fact, it has been growing rapidly. It will probably continue to grow at a pace that is higher than the rate of inflation. And as my colleague well knows, as we have worked together on the subcommittee dealing with oversight on the Committee on Education and the Workforce, up until the last year or so the folks at the Department of Education here in Washington, who get $40 billion per year, could not even get a clean audit. Tells you how much they think about the money. But we have a better system, or an ancillary or companion system to that bureaucratic model, that bureaucratic model that funnels about $40 billion from Washington, trying to get it down to our children but losing about 30, 35 cents of every dollar, and that is what we call an education scholarship plan, or an education investment plan. This is where the taxpayer, the person making the living and contributing to growing the American economy, the person that really makes America special, the person who goes to work each and every day, that person having the capability of saying our public education system in our community is a great public education system, they have some special needs, and I want to give them some money. So this person can write that public school, his local public school, where his kids go to school, where he knows the teachers' names, he knows the superintendent, knows the principal, and he says, these guys are really doing a good job, they want some more technology, or they have some special programs, they have some kids where English is a second language and they really need to help those kids, so I am going to give them $1,000. I am going to put it directly into that school, directly to my kids, or my neighbors kids; and I am going to help them out. So this taxpayer gives them $1,000. And none of it gets siphoned off by bureaucracy. The taxpayer gets a tax credit for $500. So that system, that inverted pyramid the gentleman is holding up, where we start with the dollar from the taxpayer in Washington and it finally gets to the classroom where it has shrunk down to 65 cents, what we are doing here with this model is we are taking the dollar and actually growing it because we are giving a dollar tax credit for $2 of investment in education. Or this individual can say, you know, I want to put this into an investment scholarship fund, an education scholarship fund where there are kids who, for whatever reason, are going to a different school, maybe another public school, where some States have it if a child goes to a public school that is outside of the geographic boundary where they live, they have to pay tuition to go to that school, so this taxpayer is going to give money to that scholarship fund for public school students who want to go to a school outside their district and they can get a scholarship to help pay their tuition. This, by the way, is not a revolutionary idea. This has been implemented in a number of different States and it is putting new money into public education. It is putting money into these education investment funds so that kids, some kids will have the opportunity, who choose to do so, can go to private or parochial schools. We are also trying to find a way to make this system work for home schoolers. It is really kind of tough. Today, it was kind of exciting. You know we talk about some of the kids that we have the opportunity to meet in our jobs. Today, we had a young man from Jenison, Michigan, Calvin McCarter, 4-foot-6, 10-year- old Calvin McCarter, who won the geographic bee today, being able to, I guess, take a look at that globe and identify places that some of us did not even know existed. He is 10 years old. He is in the fifth grade. He was competing against eighth graders, up to eighth graders. He won the national geographic bee. His parents have chosen to home school him. So here is a home schooler. It is not costing the government any money to educate him. And his parents cannot receive any kind of a financial break to provide the resources and the materials that they would like to use to educate Calvin. Obviously they are doing a great job. Congratulations to Calvin, to his parents, to his older brother who I guess was his first geography teacher, but just an absolute testimony to the diversity of education models that we have in America today. We have got great public schools. We have great private and parochial schools. We also have a growing number of parents and adults who are choosing home schooling. What this system does is provide some kind of an education investment fund, it allows taxpayers to significantly increase the money that is going to education, but when they do that, these education dollars can flow to our public schools, they can flow to our private and parochial schools and can help our home schoolers out.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. I think it holds great opportunity. It is not a perfect system, and it is not going to fix it by itself. Tax credits are not going to reform the system. But when you can combine the tax credits with H.R. 1, more parental choice, cutting some of the rules and regulations out of the bureaucratic model so that, again, more than a dollar or more than 60 cents can make it into a local school, when we start combining all of those things and we can really get some dynamic or exciting form in all of our schools for all of our kids to make sure our kids are the best-educated kids in the world, that is the goal that we should have. Until we reach that goal and that objective, we should not stop working.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. It also gives a great liberty to our public school system, because what it does in our State of Michigan, basically, our public school superintendents who care passionately about the kids in their districts have become beggars to Lansing, our State capital, to get the money to flow into their districts. They are always going to Lansing to get the money. What this now really does, it empowers them, because so many of the schools in my district have such a loyalty from their constituents and their parents and the kids, but there is no effective way for these people in these communities to put more money into their public schools. Tax credits will enable them to do that so that, again, there will be some more balance in the system so that these public school superintendents will be able to get some of their money from Lansing, but when they are doing a great job and their test scores come in and say, man, look at how we are doing, in our district some of the public school students have gone to the military academies, and they go there and they are in the top 10 percent of their class at the military academies. When people see that kind of performance, they are going to say, I am willing to give more money to that superintendent because he or she is doing a great job for our kids, and I think they are going to spend that money wisely. So it gives a tremendous degree of flexibility, like the gentleman said, to the parents, to the kids, to the taxpayers, but also to the traditional public school system. This should not threaten them because it really will enable them to enhance their relationship with their community and enhance their education programs to take those schools to the next level, as well.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. I think what will happen in the business world is that individuals drive the business community by the decisions they make as to where they work, where they buy their products from, what they invest in, who they loan their money to. Those same kinds of dynamics are what we are trying to introduce into the education system with this tax credit. We are going to leave the bureaucratic model in place, allowing a significant portion of money to flow through the bureaucratic process, but what we want to do is open up some level of entrepreneurship in a strengthening of the relationship between educators at the local level and the communities that they serve so they can raise money at the local level for the special needs that communities, those schools, and those kids have. I am very excited about that. I am also excited about the placard that the gentleman holds up where the President says that we need to do this, because it is very much the complement to H.R. 1 that we passed last year. The gentleman and I were not all that pleased with H.R. 1. We embraced the concept at the first part, but as the bill went through the process, we found out how powerful that bureaucratic process was. That is where much of the emphasis of H.R. 1 ended up being. H.R. 1 ends up cleaning up that process, putting more accountability into it, but not empowering parents or local communities in the way that the President articulated in his ``leave no child behind'' vision, saying that we are going to improve that system, but at the same time, we are going to empower parents and we are going to put more money into the system. What the tax credits really do is they fill out the President's total agenda on education that he outlined in the year 2000.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will yield, what I think it points out also is how fragile the system is, and the fragility of the system is based on the very fact that it is based on trust. As soon as people start abusing that component, it threatens the entire system, and then we become a bureaucratic system, because we cannot trust, we cannot trust the system any more. It becomes trust and verify, and verify means bureaucracy, more cost, more cost in doing business. I think this Congress and I think we as Republicans need to stand up and really go after it the way the gentleman said, that these individuals, they are the minority, they are grabbing the headlines, but they threaten and imperil the very future of the capitalistic system by these kinds of abuses.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. The other reason that I bring it up is I was with a group of business people on Monday, and we both know how business people complain about rules and regulations. They said, Are you guys doing anything to lift the burden of rules and regulations? I basically said to them, as long as we continue seeing headlines like this, and I do not know how many of the energy companies were involved in this round-tripping, but I think a number of them; but as long as we keep seeing headlines and stories like this, the role of Congress is probably disappointingly going to have to be to put more rules and regulations in place, rather than fewer, because there are some businesses and some business leaders who have decided that they are going to push the envelope as to what is ``technically'' legal, although it is clear that the end result is that they are presenting information that does not clearly represent the condition of their business and the volume and the activity or the health of their company at a given time, and I can only deduce that it is being done to deceive investors, customers and shareholders; and it is outrageous.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, if my colleague will yield, I just want to go to a different subject for a couple of minutes, and I thank the gentleman for yielding. I just want to focus on something that I think the gentleman from Colorado and I are both very concerned about as being members of the Committee on Education and the Workforce, but it is also the Committee on Education and the Workforce, so we do a lot of work on oversight and business practices and those types of things. A few months ago we were all exposed to the fiasco at Enron, and then I could not help but to take a look, just with amazement, taking a look at the front page of the business section of The Washington Post on Tuesday. Here is what is happening in our business community today. We have a large energy company in Michigan that was doing round-tripping. What is round-tripping? You sell energy to somebody and you buy it back immediately for the same price that you sold it to them for, and all it basically does is it allows you to escalate your trading activity. The comment was, no harm, no foul. It is kind of like no harm, no foul; no harm no foul, but no benefit, so if there is no benefit and it did not hurt anyone, why would you even do it? But they did it, and for one of their trading units, it was almost 80 percent of their business. I think that is very questionable. But then we get to the front page of this business section on Tuesday. Headline: ``Ernst & Young ties decline improper,'' and I think this has to do with the accounting firms doing both accounting and consulting. Then we go down to the follow-on story, the Enron saga, ``Anderson tape shows order to clean files.'' And then here is another one, ``Former software executives charged.'' Mr. Speaker, so much of our business system and the free market system is based on trust, that the numbers that we get that represent, that have been audited, that tell us about the performance of a company, we trust that the auditors in the company have given us accurate information by which we can make decisions. The buying and selling of bonds and companies going public, there has to be a certain integrity in the process. The reason I bring this up is that I think that these are very disturbing trends.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. We try to figure out why the student in Colorado gets maybe $650, or the State gets $650 per child, and Michigan gets $635, and some other State maybe gets $675. It is how did this all happen and why does one State get more? We go through this debate. Then you get the large States coming together to pass an amendment to make sure that the large States with large urban areas, well, we deserve more. Then the rural States try to come together, but they do not have as many votes, because all of Montana has one Representative, so it is pretty hard for them to come out and say even though the cost of education may be more there, it is kind of like, you know, you collect this money and this bureaucratic process tries to reallocate it in somewhat of a fair model. But it is based on political clout, seniority within the system, and the whole debate takes place, focused on the process, forgetting about where the money came from, from the taxpayer, and forgetting about who we are trying to help, the child.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. My colleague brings out a critical point. When we are dealing with the funnel, starting with the Federal bureaucracy and running through the Department of Education, running through the States, running through the State Department of Education, what happens is we end up focusing more on the process, the bureaucratic process, than we do on the child at the end of the process and making sure that that child gets the results. My colleague knows the debates that we go through here. We come up and say, what is the funding formula? What State is going to get what? If you identify a higher number of kids as having disabilities with learning, you get more money. So you actually create sometimes an incentive to label kids in certain ways. And if you label them in certain ways, you get more money, and if you label them in different ways, you get less money. You have got to keep score of what kids fall in what box. You go through that whole process, and at the end of the day you spend so much time and energy on the process, the forms, the rules and the regulations, you lose sight of the child at the end of the process, and the tax credit model is very, very simple.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. This is people voluntarily writing a check to their local school district and saying, here, I will take the tax credit. Arizona is 100 percent tax credit. But, again, it is new money, and people are willing to let the schools decide where that money is going to be spent, rather than them spending it on their own discretionary items.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Again, one of the criticisms that may come up, this will be a great program for your middle class suburban areas, for your wealthy school districts and those types of things. But when you take a look at what is happening at the State level, again, it is pretty amazing, and it shows the true character of America, because a tremendous amount of this money that is being driven by tax credits at the State level is not going to the local public school. There is a significant amount going there, but there are significant numbers of individuals and corporations who are willing to say, ``I am going to put that money into a scholarship fund, and I do not know who the beneficiary is going to be.'' And those scholarships are maybe going to go to, and a lot of them have the funds, have them limited to kids who come from families who are 200 percent of poverty or whatever. So they are willing to put that money into a scholarship fund which may go to a child who lives on the other side of the State, who lives in one of our large urban areas, and they are fully willing to write that check, knowing that that money is going to leave their community, but they are going to help some child out somewhere else in the State, and they may or may not ever know the name of that child. But they know it is an investment to make sure that we do not leave a single child behind in education. I think that is kind of a common goal that we have in America. When you take a look at the tax credit model, this money is flowing to all of our kids. It is not just going into certain pockets within the State. There is a tremendous amount of opportunity. There is a tremendous amount of interest in making sure that every child has the opportunity to get a good education. And for those kids that are locked into schools where there is a high level of violence or where there is drugs or where there is crime, these kids are the ones that may be applying for a scholarship. One of the things we like to say is the only thing that a child should be afraid of when they go to school is the test in the afternoon, the exam they are going to have. No child should be forced to go to any school where they feel threatened or where there are drugs in the school or where they believe that they are in an unsafe environment, because we know that kids cannot learn in an unsafe or insecure environment. Again, what is happening in the States that have these plans in place, dollars are flowing into scholarships that are intended to help those kinds of kids.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. It is exactly what we are finding at the State level. The important thing here at the State level, it shows the tremendous commitment that the American people have to education. Because there is significant money flowing, new money flowing into education through this model. Again, all of our kids are benefiting, kids in public schools are benefiting because people are writing that extra check to their local public school saying, absolutely, this is a worthwhile expenditure, you are doing a great job with our kids. You got some special needs, you got some special promise, we are going to write you a check.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. The beauty of this system, and the example that I used is probably wrong because I said if a local public school squanders that money and does not use it wisely, they will not get the check the next time. I think what would happen, I think what we would expect to happen, is because of the close connection that our public schools have to their communities, that when they get these dollars for a specific cause, such as in my hometown they want to rebuild or renovate the performing arts center, I think they could raise the money for it through this process, both through corporate and private gifts. I think they would do a whale of a job working with our local contractors to have that thing come in on budget, we would end up with a beautiful facility, it would be great for the kids and maybe the next year if they do not have something or maybe in 2 years they have got another need, they will go back to our community and when the community sees the investment that they are making in our kids, that they are spending the money wisely, these people will ante up again and they will give them a check the second time.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Really, we get three times the bang for our buck. Because when it goes through the system, it ends up with 60 cents. When you go with the tax credit model, you end up with $2 in your local classroom. Three times the 60, 65 cents, gets you to the two bucks. This is a much more effective way to invest in education. The other thing is the model of the pyramid that you are outlining; there is a tremendous amount of accountability in there. Because when we in Washington give people some of their money back, we do not trust them to do exactly what they are supposed to do so we put together a whole set of rules and regulations telling these folks exactly how the money should be spent. And then once they spend the money at the local level, they have got to go back up the reporting chain to tell everybody that the thing we got the money for, that is what we actually spent it for. Of course then again the Federal Government will not believe them, so then we will send an auditor back to make sure the reports they sent back to us are exactly right. That is an inefficient model; but as we have said, that model is going to stay. We want to come up with a companion piece where the accountability becomes the accountability directly between a local school, a scholarship fund and the taxpayer. So for this individual who is very pleased or has been convinced that his local public school needs some help, writes them the check and finds out 6 months later or 9 months later that they have taken his money and that this fund they have put it in, they have squandered it, he does not write a check the next year.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Well, Mr. Speaker, I think the other thing I want to reinforce with the chart my colleague was holding up is that that system not only exists for education, but we had a remarkable display of how powerful the system is last week when we tried to put more flexibility into the welfare system. We were going to just move some control within that pyramid, moving control from Health and Human Services in Washington and actually moving some of the decision-making for how the money would be spent down to the State level, to help those people who need help by having decisions made as close to them as possible. And some folks just about shut down the House on the welfare reform debate because they said no way are we going to move decisions from Washington to somewhere else in this pyramid. Heaven forbid we move it closer to the people that actually would understand the kinds of concerns and the issues that people on welfare would have in their local State. But we do have a proposal, a solution. The first thing that it does is it allows for more money to go into education. So we are not talking about taking some of the money that goes through that system and taking it out of it and redistributing it. As my colleague indicated, that is a sacred cow.

Mr. HOEKSTRA

Mr. HOEKSTRA. This becomes a visionary system. That system does not understand vision. It says, no, I can only write them a check if they have filled out this form correctly. And if they after they have spent the money, if they have sent the forms back in correctly telling me that they spent it exactly the way I have told them to, then they have done a good job. They do not ask whether children's performance has actually improved. This is a visionary system where the school board or a superintendent or a local principal or teacher can lay out a vision for their schools and for their kids, and if the community buys into that vision, they will embrace it and they will donate into this system because we have seen it happen at the State level. So they have become visionaries and cheerleaders for their kids and their local school district, and they know if they are successful it will continue.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. The real question is where does accountability flow in that model? In that model the accountability flows from the school, to the politicians, to the school district, to the State Department of Education. It flows away from the local community. And it flows away from the people who care most about the kids. It starts flowing to the Department of Education. We have always said, I am from Michigan, I wonder if we start with Secretary Paige and you start going down through the hierarchy when we will find the first person from Michigan and then when we will find the first person from the Second Congressional District who really knows my communities, who knows the difference between the needs in Muskegon and Muskegon Heights and Holland and Baldwin and Ludington and Cadillac, and says they are all a little bit different. But where is that person versus a tax credit? The accountability flows immediately from the child through the school to the taxpayer. So the accountability flows into the community, not away from the communities. It flows to the people who care most about the kids and they care most because they know the kids' names.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. If my colleague will yield, it is not only that bad. It is probably worse than what people actually think.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. When we went to the 20 States with the Education at a Crossroads, every time we brought in a parent or a local school principal or a teacher, they always focused on the child. And the parents would come in and say, please, do this because we have to help Johnny, we have to help Mary. They would come in with the names, or they would come in with their kids and say this is what it is all about. When we have the hearings with the bureaucracy, it is all about forms, rules, regulations, mandates, and there is not a name or a face or a child attached to it. And that was the power of going around the country and spending the time. Because when you bring the parents in, our colleague from Pennsylvania is exactly right, parents and teachers and local principals talk about that bureaucratic structure not very fondly. But they get passionate when they start talking about the kids in the classroom, because these principals and these teachers, that is why they went into education. They have got a passion for these kids. What they do not have a passion for is the paperwork, the rules, the mandates and the bureaucracy.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding. I would like to point out the contrast between the chart that he outlined, which is the money that flows through the Federal Government, where it comes to Washington, goes through this funnel, the dollar gets whittled down to 60 to 70 cents on the dollar, and then that 60 to 70 cents that is left that actually makes it to a child's classroom, not only is that dollar whittled down to 60 to 70 cents, but it also comes with strings attached, meaning that it comes for a reading program, it comes for a math program, it comes for a science program, it comes with a very specific set of requirements attached to it, and then the school has to report back to the Federal Government that they actually spent the money exactly the way that the Federal Government mandated that they use that dollar to help our kids. The gentleman from Colorado is absolutely correct. That system is going to stay in place. We may reach the same point that we reached finally a few years ago in welfare reform where we found out that it was a failed system and that what we needed to do was to give States flexibility in how they dealt with the individuals who are on welfare to give them hope and to actually structure programs that would move them off of welfare, and that may happen with that system. But what we want to do is we want to put in a system, that number one, takes the dollar from the taxpayer and moves the dollar directly into a classroom, so we do not see that whittling down, and what we also want to do is we want that dollar to get into the classroom, we want that dollar to get into the school and give local officials a great degree of discretion as to exactly how they will spend that money, whether they will use it for a math program, whether they need to use it for English as a second language program, whether they want to use it for a science program, whether they want to use it for class size reduction, or whether they want to use it for technology, but the local school district will have a tremendous amount of flexibility in terms of how they will spend that money. Here is how it works. We have the one system that says, on April 15 your taxes are due, send in a check to Washington and eventually some of that money will get back to your local school districts. This is much simpler. Here is our taxpayer, a local parent, someone in the community who is passionate about education in their community, they are passionate about the kids in their community, a local business that is passionate about the kids in their community. They are approached by the local school and they say, hey, we have this need in our school district. We want to keep this school open. We want to develop this technology program. We have done an analysis of our kids and we are really weak in this area. We have a program that we want to design for this. Will you help us? Joe Taxpayer, ABC Business, decides, man, I love this community. This community is built on values; this community is built on each of our kids getting a solid education. They have laid out, the school has laid out a great case for what they want to do for the kids in our community. I am going to write them a check for $1,000 and they get a $500 tax credit. So instead of whittling that dollar down from a dollar to 60 to 70 cents, what an education tax credit does is it takes the taxpayers' dollar and it grows it. This person says, I am going to invest $2 in education, but I am only going to get a reduction in my taxes of a dollar. That money then goes directly to that school and that school can spend that money on a program as they have identified it to the taxpayer. If they do a great job, guess what? They can go back to Joe Taxpayer, they can go back to ABC Corporation the next year and say, wow, look at the kind of results and the kind of performance that we are getting. The accountability is directly back to the people in the community. They say, we really want to build on that program, or we have identified another need, and here we get the greatest accountability. Joe Taxpayer of ABC Corporation, they can make the decision as to whether they are going to invest in that school district again. We have structured this program in such a way that individuals and businesses can contribute to their local public school, a traditional public school, to a local public charter school; they could also contribute to an education scholarship fund, and this scholarship fund would enable parents to apply for scholarships for sending their kids to a nontraditional school, perhaps a private or parochial school. But what the gentleman from Colorado and I and many others in our conference are trying to do is we are trying to get a significant new investment in education that grows the investment, that grows every dollar of investment into $2 of education investment, make sure that it is under local control, and is available for all of our kids, is available for those kids that go to public schools, private, and parochial, so that these new dollars going into education are driven at the local level, the decisions are made at the local level as to how they will help our kids out, and it is going to be for all of our kids. There are a lot of advantages to this system, and it has been, as my colleague may want to explain, this has been implemented in a number of States. What we have seen is that there is a significant inflow of new money into education, so that it is not a reallocation of the money that is already being paid into a State government. This is new money coming into education, and it is benefiting all of our kids and putting some local control back into our schools as they have seen local control being eroded by States taking more responsibility and now the Federal Government reaching back into a local school district, reaching back into the States, telling States and local schools exactly how they are supposed to run their local school districts. Mr. Speaker, I yield back to the gentleman from Colorado.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will yield, the other thing that is different between what we are proposing here in Washington versus what is happening in Arizona is Arizona is a 100 percent tax credit, so it is $30 million of new money flowing into education, and it is a reduction in these individual's taxes of $30 million. What we are proposing here in Washington is if we get $30 million of new money invested in education that is actually, or if we get $30 million in tax credit, it is actually $60 million of new money that is flowed into education and flowed into our schools at the local level. It is a significant difference in that it shows the power, the multiplier effect of this that says, I am going to put 2 bucks in, but it is only going to reduce the tax bite by $1.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. If my colleague will yield, at the bottom level here, if you do not believe the system as my colleague and I are describing it, all you need to do is go to your local school and go to the administration building and ask them if they have got a couple of people. Do you have a grants writer? I mean, the gentleman and I, when we went to I think 20, 21 States and we had the hearings around the country on what is wrong with this process, they all said we have to get grant writers. What is a grant writer? A grant writer works at the local school district level. They take a look at this whole arrangement, an assortment of Federal education programs, and they go through there and they figure out which one their school may qualify for, and they start filling out the grant applications.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will yield, we talk about the accountability. In fact, through the tax credit models, as we outlined, if the school district goes back to Joe Taxpayer or goes back to ABC Corporation a second year and asks for a tax credit, or asks for a donation, and they have mismanaged the funds, Joe Taxpayer at ABC Corporation says, are you kidding me? No. I gave last year, and you mismanaged it. Until you can demonstrate to me that you are going to use my money wisely, I am not going to give you any more. That is a great accountability measure. On my colleague's chart here, the third line down we see the Department of Education. Now, I applaud what President Bush is doing in the Department of Education. But as the gentleman and I know that from 1996 on, as he and I are on the Committee on Education and the Workforce, year after year after year we would call in the officials from the Department of Education and ask them where the money went, and that third layer where that $120 billion or $40 billion a year flows through could not even get a clean audit, and the price for not getting a clean audit was what? How much did we cut their spending? We did not cut their spending.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. The least we could have done is we probably froze it.