Pete Hoekstra

Mr. HOEKSTRA

Mr. HOEKSTRA. That is it. That is what we are taking about, a $500 tax credit per individual, $1,000 for joint filers. That thousand dollars does not go through that bureaucracy any more; it goes directly from the taxpayer directly to Johnny's school. They get full benefit of that thousand dollars.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. I thank my colleague for yielding. Let me give an example in Michigan. In Michigan, we passed a proposal called Proposal A. What Proposal A did is it led towards equalized funding so that if you are a student in Highland, Michigan, or Detroit, or whatever, you are going to get relatively the same amount of money per student enrolled. That has been very, very positive because we had great discrepancies between one school district versus another. So we have narrowed that gap. One of the sides effects of that has been that the public school administrators have now kind of, I like to call it, become Beggars de Lansing. If they get some special needs in their community or whatever, they no longer have that direct connection to the taxpayer and to the parents in their community that says, hey, we have a special need and we need some extra money for the next 3 to 5 years for an English as a second language program, or we really want to keep this school open. They cannot do it anymore. They have to go to the State legislature. And the State legislature does not really understand that community. What tax credits will now do, the money that will be there with the taxpayer, that is new money going in to education, money not being invested in education today; and that will help our public schools as well to be able to go into their community and say we have this special need; we want to do this, and the folks at the State capital do not have the latitude or the flexibility to give us this money. Will you give us that money? And if they have built up a credible relationship and they are well respected in their community, they can expect an infusion of additional money to meet some of the needs that they may have. I think the gentleman is absolutely right that the case in Florida is that this raises all of education. It raises public education and provides them an important link back into their community. It can raise private and parochial education, and that is what we are trying to do here. I talked to kids from Hudsonville, Michigan, and I have three children, and I am very selfish. When those kids come out of college and high school, I want them to have the best education of any kids in the world. I want that to be available to every kid in America. I do not care if the kids in Japan match our kids' education. I hope they do. We want good educational opportunities for all of our kids around the world, but the one thing that I will not accept is that our kids will come out of our educational system with a second-rate education, that they will be second, third, fourth or fifth to kids somewhere else in the world because that means that the jobs that they will have, the life-style that they will have, and the opportunities that they will have will become diminished. We need to make sure that every single one of our kids gets the best education in the world. This is one other step, and combining it with accountability and with more money going into education and then raising every type of education, private, parochial and public, to raise education.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. If the gentleman would yield, they are not going to have a choice. That is going to stay there.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. And money is still going to go through this system.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague, and when we introduce the concept of a tax credit at the Federal level, that is new money going into education. The typical local school district will only receive 7 percent of their money from Washington. When we introduce the concept of a Federal tax credit, this is new money going into the local schools, directly from the community, this is not a redirection. This is growing the pie, and allowing the pie to grow for our public schools and allowing the pie to grow for all of our kids. That is a little different. And Americans have some concerns about tax credits at a State level because they think we are just redirecting it. We are not just redirecting it. We will have the history soon from Arizona, Pennsylvania and Minnesota to see whether it grew the educational pie or whether it redirected it. Clearly, when we talk about Federal education tax credits, we are talking about significant amounts of new money being directed into education, and it is being directed by the community, the parents and the individual at the local level. They are making the choice as to whether they want to invest more money into their local public schools, which is a wonderful opportunity.

Mr. HOEKSTRA

Mr. HOEKSTRA. I think there are two features that make it especially attractive to our local schools. Number one, when we do this in Washington, it clearly is a new stream of money. It is not a diversion of money that would have been coming from Washington for education, anyway. It is a new stream of funds which I think can get to be a relatively significant amount of money into our local schools. The second thing is that it is nondesignated. It can be crafted and used in such a way to meet the needs of a local school district.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. $58 million. I think, going along the trend, you might be able to extrapolate that roughly the same if not more money will be flowing into traditional public schools. So that talks about the strength of this idea, $160 million flowing voluntarily into the school systems that otherwise would not be there. And that is why this is a powerful idea; people having the freedom to invest more money into education that otherwise would not.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Was that number 59 million?

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Does that analysis also take into account or talk about how much money they are projecting will be invested into the public schools, not into the investment scholarship funds?

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Tampa. We were down in Tampa. And we talked to a lot of parents and we talked to a lot of kids. And so we have seen hundreds and we have seen thousands of Joshuas around the country, and not everyone has an Ace scholarship, but what we see is thousands of Joshuas, many of them who are succeeding in traditional public schools, some who are succeeding in charter schools, and some who are succeeding in private or parochial, and others who are succeeding as home schoolers. So there is not one model that does fits all. The important thing is that every child be given an opportunity. This does not even come close to equating funding for one to the other. This really is, it will be the only pot of money that becomes available for all of our kids and does not discriminate against any of them.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Right. I think in fairness now to what is going on with H.R. 1, we are hoping that the results of H.R. 1 will be less focused on process and more focused on results, and so we will have much less of a process debate. But this gets to be, again, it gets to be a wonderful commitment to the pieces that we are already putting in place in many ways. And this is why the President supports the concept of a tax credit and why he had it in the budget that he proposed that he wants to invest more money in education and he wants more flexibility and he wants children to have a range of options for education, recognizing that perhaps one size does not fit all of our kids. And when the focus continues to be on our kids, that is exactly where it needs to be. So often we talk in the aggregate. But, again, you and I have been in schools around the country. We have been in inner-city New York, Detroit, Cleveland, Kentucky, Columbus, Cincinnati, Los Angeles, Phoenix.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. For two purposes; again, for education investment funds and for investments in traditional public schools.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. For two purposes.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. It becomes an investment. Whether they want to invest it in education or whether they want to put it in a savings account, whether they want to go out and buy a personal watercraft, whatever. It becomes personal money that they have the discretion as to where it is going to go. Also with government money, one can make the argument more effectively, well, if it is government money, then you are taking it from this pot and giving it to this pot. This is not. This is private money where people are making the decision as to whether they are going to invest more in education or whether they are going to spend it somewhere else, but it is the freedom for them to choose what they are going to do. And what we have seen in the States that have done this, people choose to a certain extent to invest more money into education voluntarily, and that is a great direction to take.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. I think the gentleman becomes very, very clear when he says government money. I think that came up at the hearing. What exactly is government money? Government money is only that money we have claimed and taken from the American people. Once it gets to Washington, it is still the people's money, but they have entrusted it to us. But that is probably the clearest definition of what government money is when people have paid the taxes to us. That is exactly what a voucher is. A voucher becomes government money, and we just redistribute it. What we were talking about here is the people's money in its pure sense. Those folks have the opportunity to choose as to whether they are going to write that check for an educational purpose or whether they are going to go use it for something else.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. I was going to say, we need to get that clear. In the State of Arizona, more than half of the money is going to public schools, and it is not following one student who may decide to go to another public school, so it is not even following that. That money is being given by parents to invest in that school, or a limited number of programs and ideas that the State has identified that that tax credit can be used for. So it is the farthest thing from the V word. More than half the money in Arizona is going to local public schools because of the connection between the schools and their parents and their community at large saying, invest in our school. We have these kinds of needs, and people ante up and are saying, you are doing the job. You need these extra funds and we are going to help you out and support you.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Madam Speaker, I cannot believe Pennsylvania would have done it.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Madam Speaker, if the gentleman will yield further, I will give this example. It was a year and a half or 2 years ago in my local community. There is a school, Lincoln School. This is a landlocked community, so they are suffering from a problem that, again, the technocrats call ``declining enrollment.'' There are just not as many kids around. This was a critical school in a critical part of the community. Because the enrollment was going down in the entire school district, the folks in Lansing said, sorry, this is the amount of money that you are going to get. Deal with it. Deal with it. And there was nothing that the local school board could do. They had to make some choices. One of the choices that was not even on the table was, can we go to the community and can we appeal to them and say, we know that this is not the most efficient and effective decision if you are running the school as a business, all right? And maybe we really do not need that school. We can move some kids here and there, and that is a better and more effective and more efficient way to run it. But they could not even go back and say, having that school there was right for the kids. It is not the most efficient, but it is the right thing to do. We do not want to take those kids out of their neighborhoods, and we want to leave that school open until maybe it gives us a little bit of time to deal with some other issues, or whatever. They could not go and say, we are going to have a fundraising effort. Take your education tax credits and go to some of the corporations and say, hey, we need to raise X amount of dollars, and then the community could have had a say as to whether Lincoln School was going to stay open to help those kids because the community believed that that was the best educational investment that the community could make at that time, even though the green eyeshades people, the accountants, were saying, sorry, you have to cut. Those are the kinds of decisions that we want to empower communities to make. We want to get cheerleaders, cheerleaders for our public schools to go out and say, this is what we need. We want to get cheerleaders for the education investment funds. We want to get cheerleaders saying that our educational system is so good, but we can make it better, and we want you to help. We want you to contribute to it. When you contribute to it, every dollar is going to find its way into a classroom and is going to help a Joshua or is going to help a child at Lincoln School, and is going to make a real difference.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. We have to make sure we always come back to the point that this is a balanced approach, that this is available for public schools and it is also available for education investment funds. Mr. Speaker, I could talk about my home district where we have a lot of good schools, but what has happened with our superintendents, the money rather that being raised locally through the property tax is now raised statewide through a sales tax. It is a very positive thing. It has lowered our property taxes and it has created a consistent funding stream across the State. Again, we have kind of taken out the differences between schools. But what the situation reduced many of our superintendents to do is to kind of become almost beggars to Lansing, to go to Lansing and make their case with their State reps and their State senators that they deserve more or they need money for this or they need money for that; or in this district they have a very specific need, and over here they have another specific need. They kind of feel like they have lost control and their life now gets to be managing the rules and regulations that come from Washington and the rules and regulations that come from Lansing. With a State tax credit, or if we did a Federal tax credit, it now allows them to supplement the income that they are getting from the State and get that money to go to some perhaps very targeted and specific needs that they may have identified. It is really exciting, because then the community who wants to embrace their schools because of the great job that they have done can now write that extra check to their local public school and build that public school. In the States where they have adopted this, it is exactly what communities are doing. Communities are embracing their schools with the Ace program, they are embracing kids. So what this does is it gets to be, as I would say, a win-win. It increases the funding in education, but it makes, at least for this pot of educational expenditures, it makes it available to all of our kids. That I think is an exciting proposition. We know that the idea is ripening here in Washington. As the gentleman and I did the survey of all the different types of tax credit legislation that has been introduced here in Washington in regard to education, there are a whole series of different ideas that are flourishing or are being proposed by both sides of the aisle. I think what the gentleman and I and others are doing is to try to come up with a consensus piece of education tax credits that can be embraced by a diversity of Members here on the floor of the House to address some of the needs that we have identified in education. Will it be the total solution to everything? No. The President and this Congress has passed H.R. 1. That is a step forward. There will be increased funding as a result of H.R. 1, the No Child Left Behind Act. That is part of the puzzle. There is more testing. The gentleman and I are not necessarily assured that that is part of the solution, but we hope it is. We hope that as it is implemented through the States, that it becomes a part of the solution package. I really believe that as we lay these different things out, increased funding, the changes in the rules and regulations as a result of H.R. 1, the new testing protocol, then really the tax credits really fit with the President's vision, because what he really talked about was having accountability and more flexibility. This tax credit component really now provides an additional opportunity for investment, but different than some of the other items that have been talked about for education funding, it does not take from one pot and say, okay, we thought we were going to give them this much, but they are going to get a little bit less and we are going to move it over here and give it to somebody else. This pot, this educational investment area, is going to stay the same. It is probably going to grow, and it is probably going to grow significantly. And then over here there is going to be another one, but this one is going to be much more flexible as to where it is going to be used and who contributes, who does not. When we put that whole package together, it actually gets to be a fairly comprehensive package of reforms that can be kind of exciting.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. He not only testified, he not only read his statement, he also took questions and answered questions.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Madam Speaker, what we have is the evolution of our public schools, and they were called public because they reflected the community. The public schools evolved into government schools, okay, like the gentleman said, with the local school board now having to appeal to the State legislature for funds, and the State legislature appealing to the Federal Government, so they become kind of government schools. What we have done is we have seen the breakdown in that critical link between superintendents and school boards and their local community. We have weakened that. It is not through any fault of the principals or the superintendents or the school boards. As a matter of fact, they want to focus on the parents. They want to focus on the kids. But because of where the funding stream has gone, and the mandates and the directives, they have found that more and more of their time and attention has been pulled away from the children, has been pulled away from parents, has been pulled away from the community, and has been directed to the people in the State capital or the State board of education or the Department of Education. This really now kind of moves it back a little bit more in balance. It says, keep that strong link with your community, the thing that has made you so successful, the thing that has always led people to say, there may be some problems with public education, but we have a good public school in our community. Now all my money goes to Lansing, but if I had an opportunity through a Federal tax credit, I will write another check to my local public school because I know the principal, I know the teacher, I know the school board, and these folks are doing a good job. In other parts of the State or the country, they may say, we know that does not work for everybody, that some kids are not going to be successful there, so we are going to contribute to this education investment fund.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, I think it is exactly what the people have found in the State of Arizona, where the numbers clearly indicate that there is an eager group of people who are willing to, and have a desire, and are willing not to be taxed, but to say, if I can steer that money to our local public schools without any strings attached to assist that public school, I will write the check. And there are others who are saying, I really want to go out and help some special kids, so I will steer my funds to an education investment fund. With that kind of flexibility, a State like Arizona is finding that they do not have to go to the legislature and raise taxes to get more money into education for all of our kids, or for all of their kids. They provide the tax credit and then people willingly go out, pay their taxes, and then willingly go out and voluntarily contribute an extra certain amount to their public schools and other funds.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. His brother. That they both have the opportunity to attend a particular school. And Joshua's grandfather saying, if it was not for the scholarships or these types of things, he would not be able to fulfill this wish and give Joshua and his brother the skills, put them in a school where they could get the skills that they would need to be successful, and that anything that would complement the current funding stream in education that would allow individuals to steer some money to the local public school or to steer it to an education investment fund, that that would be okay, and that would be really good for certain kids who maybe had specific needs or one school just was not working out for them, so that they could use that investment fund to perhaps transfer to another public school or to transfer to some other school. These things have been set up in a number of different ways around the country. Or, that they could be used to provide specific tutoring. But there are a number of different kinds of opportunities that these education investment funds could be set up for to help kids be successful. I think that is where, when we talk about education, the important thing that we always have to keep the focus on is the kids. And the criteria that we as policymakers have to really embrace is we need to put together a system that enables every child to get a good education. We cannot afford, not from a monetary standpoint, but from a moral standpoint, we cannot leave a child behind. We have to reach out and do everything that we can to make sure that every child has the opportunity to go to a high-quality school where they can get the learning that they need. Part of that is kids can only learn in safe schools. We cannot have kids going to schools where they are afraid to walk to their locker, where they are afraid to walk to their next class. The only fear that a kid should have while they are going to school is the fear of the next exam. That is the only fear that they should have: What is that teacher going to do to me now with the next exam, and am I ready? But other than that, it has to be a safe and drug-free school for every single one of our children.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, what Joshua had to say was awesome. I mean, here we have a 10-year-old kid who is looking up at three rows of chairs and a row of Congress people up at the top, and very eloquently goes through his testimony and very eloquently answers the questions. His mom had passed away, so his grandfather was there with him at the hearing, talking about his mom's dream and his mom's vision that he attend a particular school, and that this school was providing him with all of the necessary training and skills to be successful in life. And I think it was one of her last requests to his grandfather to say, make sure that Joshua and, was it his brother or sister?

Mr. HOEKSTRA

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, this evening I rise to pay special tribute to a very special school, Holland Christian Schools, as they prepare to recognize and celebrate their centennial. For a century, Holland Christian Schools, located in Holland, Michigan, has provided a quality, Christ-centered education for students from preschool to grade 12. More than 11,000 students have graduated since its founding, and with a current enrollment of approximately 2,400 students in grades K-12 representing more than 110 different churches, including more than 20 different church denominations, Holland Christian Schools is one of the largest, parent-governed Christian schools in our country. Holland Christian Schools has a wonderful history of accomplishment and teaching. Holland Christian Schools' educational philosophy finds its basis in the words of Deuteronomy 6:6,7: ``And these words which I command you this day shall be upon your heart and you shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise.'' Mr. Speaker, I am a proud graduate of Holland Christian High School, as is my wife, Diane, and my daughter, Erin. My other two children, Allison and Bryan, are students there currently. On the special occasion of their 100th-year anniversary, I am pleased to stand and recognize Holland Christian Schools and their fine tradition of academic excellence and commitment to Christian values. Mr. Speaker, I would also like to address another topic this evening. This is taken from ``Samuel Adams: The Character of Conviction.'' Mr. Speaker, it was said by the American preacher, Dwight Moody, ``If I take care of my character, my reputation will take care of itself.'' America's founders were men and women who cared not so much for their reputations as they did for their character and the character of the Nation. Such was the case for an American who came to be known as the Father of the American Revolution, Samuel Adams of Boston. He was respected because of his great character and strong Christian faith. Samuel Adams' passion and presence commanded not only the respect of his fellow citizens, but of the British authorities as well. It was his Christian faith that was the foundation of his character; and this character was the foundation of a reputation that enabled Samuel Adams to stand firm in the face of British opposition, as well as prepare a young Nation to secure the blessings of liberty. His quest began some 6 years before the Declaration of Independence when the seeds of revolution were being planted across the colonies. Adams was the clerk of the Massachusetts court, but that did not stop him from leading an uprising against the Governor of Massachusetts, demanding the removal of British troops of Boston. The showdown left five colonists dead and quickly earned recognition as the Boston Massacre. The other patriots had died for freedom, but the Boston Massacre became a rallying cry echoing through city streets and rural farms. The citizens of Boston were enraged by the massacre and the stationing of troops within the city limits. The morning after the massacre, the citizens of Boston met and appointed a committee, which included Samuel Adams. Their charge was clear: present to the acting Governor of Massachusetts their demand that the troops be removed from the city. Governor Hutchinson equivocated, telling Samuel Adams that the troops were not subject to his command. Samuel Adams replied that unless the troops were removed from Boston, the blood of revolution would be on the Governor's hands. The following morning preparations began for the troops' removal. What led the Governor to bow to the demands of Samuel Adams and the citizens of Boston? Governor Hutchinson was in a difficult position: either face the angry mob outside of his gates or the angry British authorities across the sea. But more than mobs and massacres, the Governor was influenced by the words and reputation of Samuel Adams. He was well aware of Adams' character and his wisdom as a loyal and upstanding citizen. Years earlier, the British authorities had attempted to bribe a poor Adams with political power and wealth, if only he would join their cause. Governor Hutchinson had said of Adams, ``Such is the obstinacy and inflexible disposition of the man that he can never be conciliated by any office or gift whatever.'' Governor Hutchinson was wisely unwilling to test Adams in his demand for the removal of troops. This small, but important victory, inspired the colonists and began the erosion of British domination in the New World.