Pete Hoekstra

Mr. HOEKSTRA

Mr. HOEKSTRA. If my colleague will hold the chart up for a minute, the contrast between the two charts is absolutely phenomenal. My colleague's chart is exactly the way the system here in Washington works. The total emphasis here is on the stuff in red: the Treasury Department, the Department of Education, the State, the politicians, the State Department of Education, the school district and politicians. That is where the whole focus is on the bureaucratic model. What is the process that the dollar is going to make it from Washington down through Lancing to Holland to Lincoln School? What is the process? What are the rules and the regulations that are going to follow it? What are the mandates that are going to follow it? And the child is kind of the footnote, the asterisk at the bottom, saying, oh, yeah, this is about kids; but most importantly this is first and foremost about process. And what happens with the tax credit, it becomes very, very clear, the focus is on two people. The focus is on the person who has the ability and the desire to contribute to the schools and the focus is on the child. The middle people are cut out. And as soon as the school can demonstrate to the taxpayer that the child is going to benefit, the dollars will flow in because that is exactly what we have seen at the State, that States that have this, the school districts convince Joe Taxpayer that if you give money to this school for that purpose, that child is going to benefit, and this person sees the value, they write the check and that is exactly what we want to have. We want to build that connection between Joe Taxpayer, the local parents and people who are passionate about education in their community and they want to give more money, but they do not want to send it through that process. They want it sent directly to their school, directly for the purpose that that has outlined; and if that school blows it, they will not get a check the second year, but they will have the opportunity to come back in future years and say we have addressed those concerns and these issues. We will fix and improve the system.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. We increased their spending each and every year, even though they could not get a clean audit, and that is the bureaucratic model that says, well, being able to go back to the American people and getting a clean audit, that is not an essential requirement and, as a matter of fact, even if we do not get a clean audit, they are going to give us more money. There is a whole list of scandals and fraud within the Department of Education, so it is not only that they could not get a clean audit, the systems that they had in place were actually an open invitation to theft and corruption between the Department of Education. Now, that is rapidly changing under this President and Under Secretary Paige. But it was accepted in the Clinton administration for 4 years, and it was a major disappointment, and the biggest disappointment was when they did not perform. Rather than having their spending frozen or their spending cut, the bureaucratic, the Washington model said, that is okay, we are going to give you more money. That would never happen with the tax credit.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. I think the language, they do not become beggars. This is a beggar system because it is a bureaucratic system. You have to fill the forms out right. You have to check the exact number of boxes. You have to dot the I's and cross the T's. If you do all that, that really is a beggar system.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. If the gentleman will yield for just a second. We had a great example today. The House was in recess for, what, 7 hours today, as we debated welfare reform, or certain people debated welfare reform. And the focus on the debate was not about what is good for the individual recipient at the end of the welfare stream, to give them a helping hand up, the whole debate was between the politicians as to who was going to control the spending and who was going to put the accountability measures in. We spent a whole day waiting as politicians fought not about what was best, but who was going to be in control, whether it was going to be politicians in Washington or bureaucrats and politicians at the State level. The debate was in the red parts here, without any consideration to the people at the bottom and without any consideration to the people at the top, the taxpayers.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will yield, I think this really points out a couple of things. Number one, whatever we do in education, the focus has to be on the kids. It has to be focused on Joe Ray. It cannot be focused on the bureaucracy or the system. So we have to keep the focus on the kids. The second thing is we have to keep the focus on every child. We cannot afford to leave a single child behind. The third thing is we really have to drive for parental involvement, or adult involvement with every kid to enable them to learn. Somebody has to ask them at the end of the day how their day was at school, what they have to get done, and what they have to get ready for for tomorrow. And the other thing we need to do is what Joe Ray pointed out here, is that every child has the right to go to a school where the only thing that they have to worry about and be afraid of is the test, the next test, the next exam, not about the drugs or the violence that is going on. Every child deserves and has a right to go to a safe and drug-free school, where the only thing they fear is the exam they are going to get in the afternoon and not walking from class to class or from their locker to their next classroom.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, I think what the gentlewoman from Pennsylvania is pointing out, in Pennsylvania they have the tax credit and they have seen this kind of explosion of new funds moving into education. Even in the State of Michigan, where we do not have a tax credit, what we have seen is that some people will say that the tax credit, that money is only going to stay in the wealthier suburbs and those types of things but in education. I think, again, one of the great things about America, we recognize the importance of education, that a child get a good education. The other thing that I think is happening in a State like Michigan where there is a potential of leaving too many kids behind, the community and really the State is stepping up and businesses are stepping up and saying it is not just okay for kids from this side of the State, to make sure that no child is left behind in this side of the State. We need to make sure that every child in Michigan has the opportunity for a good education. So even without a tax credit, proposal or model in place in Michigan, there are dollars flowing into education in Michigan because people want to step up, and those dollars are going into Detroit. They are going into all different parts of the State, and what we want to do is we want to accelerate that, and we want to grow that number through a Federal tax credit, and I wish we could do it through a State tax credit so that we could get the same dynamics kind of going on as in Pennsylvania. We know that when a State does it, we get an infusion of new dollars, and what we want to do is we want to accelerate that process and accelerate the number of dollars and new dollars, and I think that is also the difference between what we are talking about with a tax credit versus a voucher. Too often vouchers are viewed as being, rather than what they do is they say okay, here is the education pie, now if the State does vouchers, it means some people are going to win because they are now going to get a croucher and they did not get one before, and there are going to be certain people that lose because that education pie is going to be split more ways than what it was before. What a tax credit does it takes this education pie and grows it so that there will be more dollars invested in it, and basically our public schools will win, our kids that go to public schools will win. Our private and parochial schoolers, home schoolers, just they will all now have an opportunity, and we have a much better probability that we will not leave a child behind than what we have under the current system.

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

Mr. HOEKSTRA. If the gentleman will yield, the beauty of this and the amazing part of this is in the States that have established this, these are voluntary contributions to your local public schools, to these education scholarship funds. And it is amazing to watch Americans willing to invest that kind of money in education. As long as they are willing to, as long as the opportunity is there for your local public schools and for all of our kids, different school districts and different schools have different constituencies, but to watch a potentially new massive infusion of dollars into the educational system that builds the linkage between that local school and their community again that they have just seen erode over the last few years. So what is happening in Pennsylvania, what is happening in Minnesota, what is happening in Arizona, Illinois, Florida, this is one of those areas where Washington really ought to take heed. We are going to keep continuing to feed that beast, the bureaucratic beast, but let us complement it with this tax credit proposal that is working so well and has passed in a number of places on a bipartisan basis.

Mr. HOEKSTRA

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Remember, Mr. Speaker, this is for a very narrow purpose. This is for scholarship funds to assist kids to go to a private school, a private or parochial school. Just imagine what happens now when we expand this to a tax credit and they get a tax benefit. These are all people who are willing to pay more money into education than what they do today; and if we expand it, think of all of the people that would be willing to pay into their local public schools, to their private, to the scholarship funds, for tutoring, and those are all people who are willingly today paying more to improve education. That chart would be fully red if we would allow tax credits to go to public education, because there are strong constituencies and supporters of public education around the country that, with a tax credit, would be really motivated to say, I am going to help my local school, and this is going to be the thing that is going to push me over.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. They are not giving up on their local public schools. They are passionately involved in fixing their local public schools. They are passionate about helping the kids out that are falling through the cracks right now. So there are a number of different ways that they are approaching it, but in no way has this become public versus charter versus other forms of education, versus home schoolers. This is really a national movement of people saying, I want to improve education and I want to make sure that we do not leave a single child behind, and there is a whole range of strategies that we need to embrace and take a look at for making sure that that is what happens.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. What we are finding then in each of these areas is we are finding people who are going out and embracing these kids and trying to give them an answer to make sure that they will enter adulthood well prepared for high-quality, high-paying jobs. The other thing that we will find is that in Detroit and these types of places, if they have identified that the schools are part of the problem, many of these people are also passionate about improving their local public schools.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, I think we have to be a little careful about calling them failing schools. I think what we have identified is that in those areas and other areas there are kids, for whatever reasons, that are falling through the cracks. It could be a problem with the schools, or it could be other issues that are affecting it; but in each of those areas, there are people that are saying, man, what I need and what I need for my kids just is not matching what I am getting.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. What this is not about is about process. It is not a debate about process. What this is about is making sure that we put our children at the forefront and their education. That is what the whole debate always should be about. It should not be about all these other things. It should be how we are making sure that every child gets a good education, that they can all do reading, writing and math. How do we make sure that we do not leave a single child behind. That is one of the things, and that is why in the States that they are moving to the tax credit as a complement to the bureaucratic model is that they recognize that in too many areas we are leaving too many kids behind. Republicans, Democrats, liberals, conservatives, African Americans, Caucasians are coming to the conclusion together that, just like testing in and of itself is not the total answer, just like more money through the bureaucratic model is not the total answer, tax credits, you and I, I do not think, believe that tax credits in and of themselves are going to revolutionize education. More parental involvement is not by itself going to do it. But if you take each of these, if you allow for more local control, if you put in some accountability measures so that parents get a better indication as to exactly how a school is performing and how their school is performing versus their neighboring schools, that you put more money into the bureaucratic model and that you put money into the tax credit model which builds the relationship between a community and their schools, all of these things together should move us forward more rapidly than what we have. The disappointing thing, and I do not have the statistics, but is it not like during the last 20 years, we have really not improved at all in our test scores and maybe in a number of areas we have actually decreased? We have got all this technology, we have got all of these new capabilities and understanding how kids learn, and the end result is that after learning everything about how kids learn, you would think we would have developed methods that you would have seen our test scores skyrocket. But they have basically stagnated or, in some cases, they have decreased, and that is unacceptable. There is no reason why they should be stagnating or decreasing. So there is not a single silver bullet that will fix this. But what it is, it is taking a mixture of these things; and in Colorado, a certain mixture may work, or maybe in Denver a certain mixture will work, and in other parts of Colorado, something else will work, depending on exactly what is in the community, the state of the schools and those types of things; and that is what we are trying to do, is to allow people at the local level to tailor their educational system to meet the needs of their students. It is not like this is a free-for-all. They are going to have the State regulations and the new Federal mandates and those types of things, but it is going to give them more opportunity to reach for and achieve high standards.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. The other thing that happens and like we said earlier, we do not threaten this system. We are not taking money. We are not shrinking this funnel. This funnel is going to continue to grow and expand. This funnel will be there for people who like the guarantee of, yes, this money is coming in and some of it is going to filter its way down here and when it gets here, they are going to tell us how to spend it. If they like that kind of model, this model is going to stay around. What we want to do is we want to complement this model which you and I have questions about, but this model stays in place. But we are going to complement this model with the local control model, the parental and local involvement as an additional infusion of money so you will have money flowing into this model and then you will have that other chart with this person. This is confiscation. This guy has no choice. He has got to put the money into here. He or she will also have the opportunity whether they want to send some money directly through here, bypassing that system. And, like I said, what we have found in the States that have introduced the tax credit proposal, this person when they have got the direct ability to make a decision as to how that money is going to be spent and when they know the children, they know the schools, they know the people who are running those schools and when those people have built up their confidence with their constituents, this person will write them a check to make their school better and to make their kids better educated.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Yes, I know Joshua.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. If my colleague will yield, because the other thing that we know is we know what the difference is. In your model, it goes directly from the taxpayer, it can go directly down to the school district. We eliminate all this and we save that 33 percent. Actually what we do is we double it. We take the dollar, and rather than taking the dollar in this model where it shrinks it down to 67 cents, what we do in that model is we take the dollar and we multiply it to two, so it is a great contrast. If the gentleman will leave the chart up for just a second because the other contrast is, you and I have worked pretty hard over the last 4 or 5 years, I think we have finally made some progress now that we have a new administration, but for a number of years the money going into this system could not be tracked. We did not know where it went. This organization right here, the Department of Education, could not get a clean audit. They could not tell us where the money went. There were all kinds of cases of waste, fraud and abuse, well documented. I think at last count, 18, 21 people are pleading guilty and have been sentenced for the crimes that they have committed but the accountability system really was not here. With Secretary Paige and all that, we are very optimistic that they are going to get a clean audit so they can tell us exactly where that 33 percent goes and we will be able to determine whether we have value or not. But we are not threatening this system. The accountability model over there is very simple. If the principal or the superintendent or the local school board cannot convince the local taxpayer that the purpose that they need the money for is an appropriate purpose, they do not get the money. And if at some time in the future they get the money and they waste it, they will have broken trust with their constituencies and they will not get another check; whereas, if they spend it wisely and the people say, wow, what a great investment, they will get more.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. That is exactly the point that I was going to make. That system, with the tax credit, is going to stay in place. We are not going to take money out of that system, although that system takes out about a quarter to a third of every dollar that we commit to spending on education. When the dollar starts here in Washington, before it ever gets into a classroom, we think we lose a third. We are not going to get into that argument as to whether that system is effective, efficient, and whether it is working or not because the other thing that comes along with that is when that 67 cents get into that local classroom, the local teacher, the local principal, the local superintendent, they have been told pretty much how to spend this money and what they can spend it on. We are not threatening that system. We are leaving that system intact. We have tried that before, saying we do not think that system works and all of that. We are just saying that, hey, there appear to be a lot of people in Washington and maybe even at the State level and a lot of people in this Chamber would like that process that says, ``We are willing to have 33 percent of every dollar bleed off just so that we can use that money here in Washington to tell people what to do in their classroom at home, we think that is a good deal.'' We are not going to argue with them on that, although we probably at times have, but that is not what this is about. This is saying you can keep that sacred cow, you can keep that system intact. What we want to do is we want to have a system that is not going to even come nearly as big as that one, but one where the relationship and the linkage is directly between the people in the community and the school and the children, where the local carpenter, the local contractor, the local plumber when they go out and do their work, get paid, pay their taxes to Washington, if they have a little bit of extra left, they can write a check directly to their school and we know that they are doing that in the six States that have passed tax credits. They are willing to put more money into their kids.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, the difference between what we are trying to do and how Members characterize vouchers, vouchers are typically viewed as taking the educational pie, the amount of money that we are investing in education and redistributing it so that means that there are some people that are going to get less money; and since there are new people getting money, they are going to be getting more money, so somebody is going to be left out or they are going to go home with a smaller check than they got before. That is not at all what we are doing here. We are saying that there is the money coming into Washington, about 7 percent of all the education dollars come into Washington, and what we are doing is saying that money is going to stay there. We are going to keep increasing that. That money has been going up, but now we are going to create a new educational investment fund that is going to be driven at the local level and not at the Washington level. Basically, this is new money where people are saying I am willing to contribute extra money to education if I can determine where it goes and what it is going to be used for, and if I can build that relationship with my local public or private or local charter school; and if they can come to me and make a compelling case as to how this is going to benefit the community and the children in our community, I will write that check. The states are finding that they are doing it.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, as we try to help young people like Joshua, last week I had an opportunity to go through a public charter school in my hometown and explain to some of the parents and some of the teachers and the principal exactly what we were looking at with the tax credit proposal. There was a tremendous amount of enthusiasm because they recognize that not only would it help Joshua in this case, but it would also help the students at that school, a public charter school, to get some additional resources for some things that they felt that they desperately needed; and it would not require them to go to the taxpayers and raise the tax. It allows them to go directly to the people who have a vested interest in that school. Whether it is a public charter school, whether it is a traditional public school, or whether it is the kind of school that Joshua goes to, these tax credits, number one, will provide for a significant infusion of new money into our local schools for all of our kids and will get everybody vested in improving education for every one of our kids. The gentleman and I go through this process each and every year where we have the opportunity to nominate kids to the military academies. We know that there are some tremendous kids coming out of our public schools. We know that there are some tremendous kids at the school I went to, the charter school; there was someone leaving there on June 27 to go to the Naval Academy. They are doing a good job. There are kids coming out of our private and parochial schools that are going to our academies. When I speak with students as to why they are in private school, they will often say that this one just kind of fits me better or fits what we need to get done and what my parents thought that I needed. I think that these different kinds of educational alternatives are tremendous, and then allowing parents and others in the community to invest in these schools, to increase the amount of money that is going into education, without the red tape, without the great sucking sound which is a dollar coming into Washington, us taking our cut and feeding it back. Actually it is a two for one. They invest $2, and it costs Washington $1 because that is the ratio. It is a $500 donation, but it is only a $250 tax credit. It is a real win/win for the school, for the child, for the parent, and for the taxpayers because what we are doing is moving more money into education, which we have identified as one of the most important priorities that we have in the Nation today.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, this is what we are talking about, bringing a massive infusion of new money into education. This is nontax credit money going into education for a very specific purpose. If we do a tax credit, we will see an entire map being red and dollars going to help all of our kids at the local level to make sure that we do not leave a single child behind.

Mr. HOEKSTRA

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will let me have the chart for a minute, I think the interesting thing about this chart is as soon as the step takes place from the individual working, the taxpayer, putting the money into the Treasury Department by paying their taxes on April 15 or through Mr. FICA, which they pay on a weekly basis, this all of a sudden so many people no longer refer to as the taxpayer's money but as soon as that goes into here, this becomes a government dollar. So people will talk about government dollars and they will forget that really this should not be the top, this should be the foundation of the chart. The foundation of the chart is 280 million Americans paying taxes in to Washington, D.C. with private dollars, and then all of the sudden somewhere in between the taxpayer and the Department of Treasury, this becomes a government dollar. Let me tell my colleagues why I brought that up. There is a great story this week in USA Today talking about churches heed a calling to educate poor children. We all recognize that perhaps some of our lowest performing schools or lowest performing areas are in the inner city urban areas, but in their first paragraph, ``for an expected flood of neighborhood children who may soon have government dollars.'' So in the first paragraph they are talking about government dollars. These are not government dollars, and the article spends a lot of time talking about vouchers. That is not what my colleague and I are talking about. What we are talking about is allowing individuals with their private dollars to make investments in schools and education and make it in every type of school, a learning opportunity that is available today in America, so that if somebody wants to make a donation to their local public school for a specific program or a specific endeavor that they have at their local public school, they can do that. If they want to make a donation to a private school or parochial school or to an education investment fund that offers assistance to low income students to receive the kind of education that they might want, and really what it does is, as Secretary Rod Paige says, he says, here it is kind of interesting for our parents today. A quote, Parents pick out everything from book bags and haircuts to clothes but then their children march off to a school that some bureaucracy has chosen for them, not to a school that the parents have said this is my child, I know this kid pretty well and this is the kind of environment that they are going to learn best in. It goes on to talk about Mr. Sullivan, who is the mayor of Indianapolis or, excuse me, he is an Indianapolis pastor and a former teacher, established his own Northstar Christian Academy because, ``I saw the need for spiritual, moral values being taught as a foundation on which to build the academics I felt that was the key to a lack of motivation for learning.'' Now, is that the appropriate model for every child in America? Probably not. Is that the appropriate model for the individuals that Pastor Sullivan knows? It may be exactly what that community and what his parishioners may need. He goes on, and talking about, ``Churches are probably one of the most stable black-owned institutions in this Nation, and black churches have stayed in the community,'' Sullivan says. ``Anything short of operating our own schools and having access to these children is going to show minimal results because the schools have them for seven hours a day, the church has them for a couple of hours a week. It is not realistic to think we can turn a student around in a couple of hours.'' Some would argue that it is hard to determine whether the churches are the answer, but what is happening around the country today is that some parents are saying it is worth the gamble. For example, the story goes on to talk about security guard Trinidad Casas of San Antonio. He began selling blood four times a month to make up the difference left from the privately financed scholarship. That is exactly what my colleague and I are talking about is that individuals would have the opportunity to receive privately financed scholarships, to make up the difference his son gets to attend the Christian Academy of San Antonio. He also tries to work as much overtime as possible to earn tuition money. It is just incredible, says Yolanda Molina, principal of the 2-year- old academy, which has doubled in size in 1 year and has a waiting list of 85. That is just one story of many. And, again, think about this. We are not only expanding the dollars in education, we are growing the education investment in America's schools, again for public schools, for private schools, for parochial schools, and for tutoring. So we are growing the education pie. We are not talking about saying, hey, this money right now goes to public schools and we are going to take some of that and give it so kids can go somewhere else. We are saying to the public school folks that have a great tradition in America and do a great job that we are going to allow them to raise more money and we are going to allow others to raise more money for their things. And what we will see then is we will increase the education investment in America, and we also will increase educational opportunities and choices in America; so that the school that Pastor Sullivan wants to start in his community in Indianapolis, he can do it. We will get more people involved in education; we will get more folks focused on kids, and that is what this is all about. It is all about the kids.

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

Mr. HOEKSTRA. If the gentleman will yield, it would be very similar to the significant cash infusion that we did today for child care in the welfare reform bill.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. If the gentleman will yield.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Well, basically, in the work my colleague and I have done in the Committee on Education and the Workforce, we have found that when a dollar goes into the Federal Treasury and then goes through the Department of Education and goes through all those steps, we think that through that process we lose somewhere in the neighborhood of 25 to 35 cents. So that only about 65 cents ever makes it down to your local school to Johnny's classroom. I do not know if the gentleman has a dry marker with him or not, but what we are talking about here, if we go to an education tax credit--