Pete Hoekstra

Mr. HOEKSTRA

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, pursuant to clause 7(c) of rule XXII, I hereby notify the House of my intention to offer the following motion to instruct House conferees on H.R. 4577, a bill making appropriations for fiscal year 2001 for the Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education. The form of the motion is as follows: Mrs. Hoekstra moves that the managers on the part of the House at the conference on the disagreeing votes of the two Houses on the Senate amendment to the bill H.R. 4577 be instructed to choose a level of funding for the Inspector General of the Department of Education that reflects a requirement on the Inspector General of the Department of Education, as authorized by section 211 of the Department of Education Organization Act, to use all funds appropriated to the Office of Inspector General of such Department to comply with the Inspector General Act of 1978, with priority given to section 4 of such Act.

Mr. HOEKSTRA

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, how much is enough? When we talk about education, it is about where the decisions are going to be made. There are those in Washington who would like to take primary responsibility for building our local schools, wiring our local schools, buying the technology for our schools, hiring our local teachers, developing our curriculum, testing our kids, feed them breakfast, feed them lunch and develop after-school programs. When they get done with taking that decision-making to Washington, they are very willing to step back and say, the rest is now under your control. But in fact, what they have done is they have moved the focal point from our local teachers and our local administrators from taking a look at the needs of our children to taking a look at the bureaucratic requirements coming out of Washington. How much is enough? We have enough. Local schools get 7 percent of their money from Washington, 50 percent of their paperwork. That paperwork goes to an agency here in Washington that cannot even get a clean set of books, that every time we give them $1 for education spending at a local level, they consume 35 cents of it before it ever gets back to a local classroom. I yield to the gentleman from Georgia.

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

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, I yield to the gentleman from South Dakota (Mr. Thune).

Mr. HOEKSTRA

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, we are in Washington today talking about some very important issues. Over the last 3 years, my subcommittee has had the opportunity to travel around the country and take a look at education to see what is working in America and what is not working in America. It is exciting to go down to the State and local level and see what parents, teachers, and local administrators are doing to bring about excellence in education. We need to reinforce those efforts and let people at the local level continue to innovate and move forward. We contrast that with what is going on here in Washington. We have a Department of Education that has failed its audit for the last 2 years, has numerous cases of waste, fraud, and abuse. And now the President wants to put additional programs under the jurisdiction of the Department of Education so that there are more Washington programs and bureaucrats telling our local parents and administrators what to do in education. This is a discussion and a debate about who controls our local schools. Let us stand up for parents and teachers at the local level.

Mr. HOEKSTRA

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman would yield, I think what we are finding, especially in the area of education, where I have spent a lot of time and our subcommittee has spent a lot of time, it is no longer an issue about money, but, for the President, how much is enough? How much more authority does he want to move from a local and State level to Washington? We know that he would love to start getting Washington involved in school construction, get Washington involved in hiring teachers. So for the President, it is not an issue of money anymore. Republicans have said we will match him on money. ``Enough is enough'' now for the President is only when we move the decision-making for how we spend those dollars from the local level to the Department of Education here in Washington. That is now where the President is saying, ``I need more and I want more.''

Mr. HOEKSTRA

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for yielding. Mr. Speaker, one of the things that we found as we went and talked to local school districts, but also as we talked to the different State education boards, is that they typically get about 7 to 10 percent of their money from Washington, but they get 50 percent of their bureaucratic paperwork from Washington. So, for all of these 760 programs that come out of 39 different agencies that are targeted at our local classrooms, with each one of those there come costs, burden, and red tape and strings attached, telling local officials, this is what you need to do in your schools. So what we wind up doing is focusing on process, rather than on what is good for our kids. The people who know our kids' names no longer have full control over what goes on in that classroom. It is time we put our kids before process, that we put learning before bureaucracy; and those are the kinds of issues that we are wrestling with with the president at this time.

Mr. HOEKSTRA

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, pursuant to clause 7(c) of rule XXII, I hereby notify the House of my intention to offer the following motion to instruct House conferees on H.R. 4577, a bill making appropriations for fiscal year 2001 for the Department of Labor, Health and Human Services and Education. The form of the motion is as follows: Mr. Hoekstra moves that the managers on the part of the House at the conference on the disagreeing votes of two Houses on the Senate amendment to the bill H.R. 4577 be instructed to choose a level of funding for the Inspector General of the Department of Education that reflects a requirement on the Inspector General of the Department of Education, as authorized by section 211 of the Department of Education Organization Act, to use all funds appropriated to the Office of Inspector General of such Department to comply with the Inspector General Act of 1978, with priority given to section 4 of such Act.

Mr. HOEKSTRA

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, I think we need to build on the progress that we have made. I think we would all agree that getting to a surplus for 3 years now and on our way to a 4th year of a surplus is great progress and great work. Having worked on the Committee on the Budget, if we had said that a few years ago, we would have said, by the year 2000, if we would have gotten that kind of track record, people would have said, no way. But we have done that. So we need to build on that record. We have stopped the raid on Social Security and Medicare, so let us focus on the good things that we have done here as well. Let us build on those things. The same thing for education. Let us build on the positive progress that we have seen at the local level and then at the same time on a parallel track, let us fix the broken bureaucracy here in Washington.

Mr. HOEKSTRA

Mr. HOEKSTRA. I thank my colleagues from Illinois for pulling together the special order to recognize the accomplishments of our colleague, Mr. Ewing. Before I do that, I cannot help but acknowledge the contributions of the gentleman sitting in the chair this evening, who has been my chairman for the last 6 years, who was my ranking member for the 2 years before that, who still every once in a while pulls me aside for a couple of words of wisdom, especially on one project that we remember so fondly from 1993 where he continues to say I told you so, in a very good-humored way, the gentleman from Pennsylvania, (Mr. Goodling). Thank you for the contributions that you have given to this Congress, to this House, to the Committee on Education and the Workforce, to me personally for the last 8 years and trying to keep me under your wing, sometimes being successful, sometimes wishing you had a little bit of a tighter rope to pull me back. But we have had a great colleagueship and a good friendship over the last 8 years, and I want to again express my appreciation to you for that, and to wish you Godspeed as well as you move into your retirement, which probably will include some work, probably will commit some time to the passion that you have for education and public service, and probably will continue some time for your passion with the horses and that side of your business, and the orchards, the apples and those types of things, and the peaches, I think. Thank you very much for the contributions that you have made. I could not start talking about another friend of mine without recognizing your service and seeing you in the Chair tonight. So thank you very much. Mr. Speaker, Tom and I kind of developed a special friendship over the years that I have been here. Tom came in to the Congress in a special election in the Congress before I did. I got elected in 1992. Tom had served here a short period of time prior to me coming here. We came here in different routes. Tom having had experience of 25 years, 26 years, or at that point in time 17 years, 18 years in the State legislature, and before I came here, I came directly from the private sector. When I came here, Tom, I think, still regrets the day that he came to his office on the third floor of the Longworth and found out that he had this freshman Republican from Michigan next door, and for the next 2 years, I constantly would just kind of move. I would come into my office. As I faced an issue or whatever or just had a little bit of extra free time, we just kind of meandered and roamed over to that guy next door and to his staff. And we really developed a very good and, I think, a very unique friendship that I cherish over the last 8 years. Tom was a great neighbor. I have gotten to know at least part of the family having met them here in Washington or having spent some time with them back in the district. I have had the opportunity to go back into Tom's district a few times and spent some time with Connie and also with their son Sam. I have not had the opportunity to meet all the other children. But it is a great district that has been very, very well represented, and the time that I spent going back through the district, recognized that he is as well liked in his district as he was here by his colleagues. I think that is a great testament to the work that he has done. I also recognized that his golf game is not a whole lot better than mine, it is not a whole lot better than the Chairman of the Committee on Education and the Workforce. I think what we all have in common is we have a pretty mediocre game of golf. That is the thing that I have cherished most in the 8 years that I have gotten to know Tom, is the hospitality, the friendship, some of the other things that the gentleman has talked about, just a great fun spirit, always an open heart and a willing hand to help a new Member to the political process get done what we needed to get done. Mr. Speaker, it is more than just about friendship. It was also about mentorship. Tom took the time, the energy and the effort, sometimes the tremendous effort that it would take to teach me the ropes, explain to me how things worked here, explain to me how things would not work here, and how some of the things that I thought might be important in the way that I might want to get them done, was very willing to provide some minor suggestions on how I might modify some of the things that I would do to maximize the impact that I could have in here, that I could have here in Washington, taking the time to introduce me to his friends, both the staff here in the House, his friends in the Congress that he knew, and also friends outside of the Congress who are very knowledgeable about the issues that Tom and I would have to work on. The second thing I remember is the mentorship and the caring that he took, not only with me, but I think with a lot of other new Members who were coming into the House. Recognizing that we had a huge class that came into the House in 1992, I think we ended up with 47 new Members on the Republican side of the aisle in 1992, joined by another 80-plus Members in 1994. So there was a tremendous need for the friendship and the mentorship that someone like Tom Ewing could provide. Then the tremendous background. I think some of the other Members tonight have talked about his background and his depth of experience on some of the issues, his depth of experience on the Committee on Agriculture, the way that he dealt with those issues, and the effectiveness with which he would take ideas and move them through the political process. The same type of depth and background that he has on the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure. He and I spent a short period of time together on the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure. I then moved off of the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure and had been on the Committee on the Budget for 5 years out of the last 6 years. But again he had the same kind of depth of background and experience again that he was very, very willing to share, and again with something that he has in common with the gentleman who is presiding tonight, the gentleman tonight of course presiding with his experience and the whole area of education. So they in their background and experience were very willing and are willing to lead us through the maze and the complexity of the issues that they had to deal with in those areas. So in closing, I would just say, Tom, you will be missed. We have had a great time here together. I appreciate the friendship, the mentorship, the colleagueship, and the experience that you have shared with me and that you have shared with other Members in the House. I wish you Godspeed on your retirement. I recognize that your retirement will include some work. I bet it will include some overseas trips. I know how much Tom likes to travel, how much Tom and Connie like to travel, and I am sure that it will include some work on that pretty mediocre game of golf that you have at this point in time. You will be missed. Thanks to Tom. Thanks to Connie, and thanks to the family for sharing him with us here in Washington for the last 8 years to 9 years.

Mr. HOEKSTRA

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to welcome the Reverend Norman Steen, pastor of the Christian Reformed Church of Washington, D.C. as a guest chaplain for the House of Representatives. The Washington, D.C. Christian Reformed Church has a proud history of more than 50 years in the District of Columbia. The church was founded during World War II by members of the Christian Reformed Church who came to Washington from Michigan, Iowa, New Jersey, Washington, and California and from throughout the United States in order to serve our Nation. Since that time, the church has rooted itself in Northeast Washington and has seen many changes in this city, all the while serving its members and the community around it. Reverend Steen has been the pastor of the church since April of 1999. Prior to moving with his wife, Barb, he was a minister at a church in my hometown, the 14th Street Christian Reformed Church of Holland, Michigan. During his distinguished 25-year career as a minister, Norm has also served churches in Ridgewood, New Jersey, and Parkersburg, Iowa. I hope the entire House will join me in welcoming Reverend Norm Steen as our guest chaplain today.

Mr. HOEKSTRA

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Absolutely, and maybe knowing it and maybe not knowing it. Student financial programs are annually cited. And while we are talking about real money, this is now talking 70 to 80 billion dollars of loan portfolios that they manage. The General Accounting Office calls these high-risk programs most susceptible to waste, fraud, and abuse. And what do we know when outside experts come in and highlight these programs? They are right. Ernst & Young says the $40 billion that you spend is right for waste, fraud, and abuse. We have got a long list of it. Now GAO comes in and says your loan programs are high risk for waste, fraud, and abuse. And we have got all kinds of examples in that area, as well, and it gets to be real money at a time when we really ought to be focusing on getting those dollars into a classroom.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, when we take a look at it again, when we see the waste fraud and abuse, I mean, it is really scary. But then it also gets to be scary when we take a look at some of the places where we consciously make the decision to spend the money. My colleague, the gentleman from South Dakota (Mr. Thune), talked about the mural. Somebody in Federal Government made the conscious decision that spending $20 million of taxpayer money in that area was a good idea. Someone also made the decision consciously that taking people and busing them to these events was a good use of taxpayer money. The Department of Education's closed captioning. We pay for this. We can watch The Young and the Restless; The Bold and the Beautiful, I never heard of that one; Days of our Lives; Sunset Beach; Men in Tool Belts; the New Maury Povich Show; Dukes of Hazard; Bewitched; Gomer Pyle; Dynasty; WKRP in Cincinnati. The Federal Government is paying for closed captioning, all of those programs, to the tune of almost $9 million dollars. At the same time, we recognize that a lot of our kids are not reading by third grade, they are not reading by fourth grade, they are not reading by fifth grade. But we are doing these types of things, and it really is time, I think, for us not only to wipe out the waste, fraud and abuse but to take the dollars and focus them on the programs and the efforts that will make the biggest difference.

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

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, I mean, when we think about this process and we got involved in this issue, when the Department of Education failed its 1998 audit, which means the auditors came in and said the way that the numbers are reported in their financial statements, we have taken a look at their internal processes and procedures, and there is not a clear indication or there is not a high degree of confidence that the numbers that they are reporting accurately reflect what happened within the Department of Education. They did the same thing for 1999. They put some qualifications on it. The Department of Education made some progress. The interesting thing in the 1999 audit, which bears directly on the Impact Aid that the gentleman just brought up is that, in the 1999 audit statement, which came out earlier in the year 2000, but it was as they were taking a look at how the Department of Education was processing their checks and their payments in 1999, they said in the audit report that there is no integrity in the process; that individuals within the process had too much latitude and too many responsibilities so that perhaps the same person entering the data would have the opportunity to change the data and those types of things. It appears that may be exactly what happened in this case. But it was brought out in the 1999 audit. So what we find is they failed the 1998 audit. They failed their 1999 audit. Specifically in the 1999 audit, they raise questions about the integrity of the way that Impact Aid funds are distributed. Then we end up with the gentleman from South Dakota (Mr. Thune) here and a couple of school districts in his State not getting their Impact Aid funds. Why? Precisely the reason that was identified in the 1999 audit. So even when these things are highlighted and specifically highlighted within the audit reports, the Department of Education has demonstrated an inability or a callousness to actually making the changes and responding to the auditors.

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

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, here is the quote out of the Ernst and Young report on internal control fiscal year 1999 audit of the Department of Education: ``During testing of grant expenditures for the Impact Aid grant program,'' which is the program that affected the school districts of the gentleman from South Dakota (Mr. Thune), ``which incurred approximately $1 billion of expenditures during fiscal year 1999, we,'' that is Ernst and Young, ``noted that two individuals were able to process drawdown requests for funds and then subsequently approve their own processing of the drawdown request. Furthermore, we noted that several other individuals performed incompatible functions in the processing of Impact Aid payments. For example, certain individuals have the authority to initiate payment requests, approve payment requests, and subsequently batch the requests and authorize payment by the finance department. Inadequate segregation of duties in sensitive areas such as payment processing can greatly increase the risk of errors or irregularities.'' I guess they are using nicer English here to talk about exactly what went on. But I would guess that errors or irregularities is transferring the payment from the gentleman's two school districts in South Dakota and say let us put them into a bank account, into a personal bank account that we can use to buy SUVs or a Corvette or purchase a house. But that is what Ernst and Young said in 1999 in their financial audit. The thing that we find is the Department of Education does not respond.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. I think we ought to take a little bit of time talking about where we are with kids. We know our kids are not tested enough, but we also have proposals to fix these problems. We have a series of objectives that say here is what we would like to do. We have got a program called Dollars to the Classroom. It says we want to get 95 cents of every Federal education dollar back into a local classroom. We have got Ed-Flex. What is Ed-Flex? What Ed-Flex says is we know that as we have gone around America with our project called Education at a Crossroads, the States have consistently come back and said, we get 6 to 7 percent of our money from Washington; we get 50 percent of our paperwork. Ed-Flex says we are going to allow school districts and States to eliminate part of the bureaucratic nightmare that we have imposed on them. We have a program which we call Straight A's. So we are going to get more dollars into the classroom, we are going to get rid of the red tape, and then what we are saying is we are going to allow you more discretion so that in a school district in Colorado, if they need to buy technology, they can go out and buy computers. But if a school district in my area of west Michigan says we really want to do teacher training, they can take those dollars and use the dollars for teacher training, so that we recognize that the needs of west Michigan are very different than the needs of Colorado or South Dakota, so we are going to give school districts flexibility. The other thing that we want to do is we want to fully fund our commitment to the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act. The Federal Government committed to paying 40 percent of this mandate that was placed on our local school districts. I think this year we are going to be all the way up to a high, and that is under a Republican Congress, the other side was never able to achieve this kind of funding for IDEA, we are paying 13 percent. But that means, the other part of that mandate, the other 27 percent which we committed to pay now has to come out of a local school district's taxes. What we need to do is we need to fully fund our commitment and when we do that, we will free up local dollars to use for school construction, hiring teachers, technology, other improvements, what they believe their kids need.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Creating a Government That Works Better and Costs Less, Report of the National Performance Review. We can speak from experience that the redesign or the reinvention of the Education Department has been a failure. Al Gore dropped the ball at the Department of Education. The American taxpayer is paying for this. More importantly, America's children are paying the price for this failure of reinvention at the Department of Education. It was promised us in 1993 and the conditions are as bad if not worse in the year 2000 than what they were in 1993.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. I wanted to build off the comments that our friend from South Dakota made in talking about the amount of money that comes to Washington and how Washington responds. Obviously, the Congress appropriates this money to the executive branch. What this chart points out is that there are nine major agencies or cabinet level offices that cannot get a clean audit. It means that the auditors come in and say that their internal procedures are not good enough to give a high degree of confidence that their reporting in their financial statements accurately reflects what is happening. The first thing we ought to be really scared about is the one we have listed first, the Treasury Department. Our Treasury Department cannot get a clean audit. We have talked about education. The interesting thing here is that neither Treasury nor Education can get a clean audit, and one of the problems that we have highlighted in the education department is that they have the authority to write checks and at the end of the month, when they check what they have written against what the Treasury Department has reported as being cashed, they cannot reconcile these two numbers. So we have two major departments, Treasury and Education, which cannot get clean audits. The Justice Department cannot get a clean audit, the Defense Department cannot get a clean audit, the Agriculture Department cannot get a clean audit, EPA, HUD, OPM, and AID. None of these agencies can get clean audits. And we know by the work we have done by taking a close look at the Department of Education, when these agencies cannot get a clean audit, they are creating an environment that is ripe for waste, fraud and abuse. We have found all of that within the Department of Education. And I think as the gentleman from South Dakota mentioned, real problems and real mistakes impact real people. In this case, the fraud within the Department of Education impacts young people in some of the neediest schools in the country.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Ernst and Young predicted.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. If the gentleman will yield, there are a couple of other quotes the Vice President wrote in his reinvention booklet here. Remember, now, he is talking about a department that has failed its 1998 audit, failed its 1999 audits, and has projected it will fail its next three audits. ``The Department of Education has suffered from mistrust and management neglect almost from the beginning. To overcome this legacy and to lead the way in national education reform, Ed must refashion and revitalize its programs, management, and systems. Al Gore, Report of the National Performance Review.'' And it is dated not 2000, but ``Al Gore, 1993.'' Another quote: ``The Department is redesigning its core financial management systems to ensure that data from accounting, grants, contracts, payments and other systems are integrated into a single system. Al Gore, Report of the National Performance Review, 1993.'' The end result is that we are now in the year 2000, the Department of Education is still failing its audits, and the litany of waste, fraud and abuse within this department is getting to be an embarrassment to the department and actually an embarrassment to the executive branch.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Well, I just wanted to mention that not only did they buy cars, they bought a Lincoln Navigator, a Cadillac Escalante, they bought a house, and they were going to try to actually buy a Corvette. So it is interesting. I was going to say we have to get to this before our time is up. We ought to go through some of these other cases of abuse, but we should also talk about what is actually happening with our kids. There is a lot of information out there. Our kids are not testing well when we compare them to international standards. It is kind of interesting. A number of the newspapers have been running an ad this week saying we are lucky this is not the Olympic scores, and they list 21 countries and the U.S. is 18. What it is is on educational achievement, on the third international math and science study. And it is disheartening. Not enough of our kids are testing at proficiency grade level. The fastest growing program in our colleges today, we had a hearing today on overseas studies programs, that is not the fastest growing program on college campuses today. The fastest growing program on college campuses today is remedial education, taking kids who have graduated from high school, but cannot perform at basic levels in reading, writing and math so they get in college and they have the colleges and the universities to do remediation. But that is the problem and that is the sad part here is that we have got a Department of Education with all the kinds of problems that we have outlined and at the same time we are leaving too many kids behind. And so, if the gentleman wants to take a look at some of the other examples of waste, fraud and abuse, we can do that.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, if we just go through them quickly: The Department of Education, September 1999, prints 3.5 million financial aid forms. One problem, they printed them incorrectly. It cost the American taxpayer $720,000. There is one that we call ``dead and loving it.'' The Department of Education improperly discharged almost $77 million in student loans. We have a policy in place that, if a person, a borrower, dies or they become disabled, their loans are forgiven them. In this case, we forgave $77 million of student loans. Even better news for these young people is that they were not dead and they were not disabled. We just forgave them the loan improperly. This again, where we talk about I think what we saw in South Dakota, this affects real people. Thirty-nine students were selected to receive the Jacob Javits Fellowship. This is an award given to students that are graduating from undergrad that the Federal Government agrees to pay for 4 years of graduate schoolwork for them. Having a daughter that is just going to college, I can imagine how excited the parents would be that the tuition is covered. I can imagine how excited the student would be, and I can also imagine how excited her friends and also her academic institution would be for that kind of recognition. The good news is we had 39 winners. The bad news is the Department of Education notified the wrong 39 young people and said, you are the winners, and 2 days later they had to call back and say, sorry, we got it wrong; you did not win. That was February of 2000. This year alone, the Department of Education has issued over $150 million in what I think my colleague was talking about earlier, duplicate payments. We pay you once. We pay you twice. And that is the $150 million of the contractors who have notified us or that the Department of Education caught. Who knows how much they have not caught.

Mr. HOEKSTRA

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, I think we know how and why we lose 45 to 60 cents when we create a program here in Washington. There have been hundreds since we have been here. They were here when we got here, but there are hundreds of programs. We have to tell a local school district that, hey, we have a program for this to buy computers, a technology program. So we pass a program. The Education Department has to notify these school districts. These school districts then have to apply for the money. So they have to go through the process of filling out these forms. We then have the people within the Department of Education who sort these applications out and say this group over here gets them and, sorry, you do not. So we send a check to this local school district. That local school district then has to track that money. So if it is coming in for technology, they have to segregate that money, they have got to make sure that it is spent on computers and nothing else, technology. They then send the forms back to the Department of Education and say, yes, we spent it on exactly what this program was for. And then the Department of Education knows that they cannot trust those people at the local level, so they send their auditors in to make sure that the way the money was reported spent is actually the way the money was spent. It is kind of interesting, I have talked to some of my school districts who have gone through an audit by the Department of Education. They say it is absolutely brutal. They have to document every penny, every dime, and all of this. And these are the people that know our kids' names. And they are going through this process when we have a Department of Education that cannot keep its own books here in Washington.