Pete Hoekstra

Mr. HOEKSTRA

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, if we build off of how education is being reinvented around the country, recently my colleague and I were in Minnesota where they are talking about a plan that really reinvents some of their spending and focuses it around parents by giving them tax credits and tax deductions. So Minnesota is working on a reform plan. Then we have been to Arizona, Michigan, California, at least three States and two of them leading the way on charter schools, Arizona and the State of Michigan. And that is helping to improve all of education within those States. But they are experimenting with charter schools. Then my colleague and I were in Florida together for a hearing. We were in Tampa. The State of Florida has taken it one step further where they are now actually creating charter school districts so that a whole school district can apply for a charter which says, our relationship now with the State is very, very different. We are not going to focus on bureaucracy and paperwork and process for a greater degree of freedom. What we are only going to focus on is learning. And then Illinois has reached a unique arrangement with the Chicago public school system, which is one of the largest school systems in the country; and for all intents and purposes, they have created a large charter school relationship with the City of Chicago for their public schools. And again, what they said is, let us forget about all these categorical programs, because the only thing that we really want to focus on, so the State of Illinois rather than now funneling a whole bunch of separate checks to the City of Chicago, now really sends them two, sends them one for general operating and one for special education. And then what they say, on a yearly basis, we are going to come back and we want to review with you the actual results of kids' learning. So those are the kind of reforms and the reinvention that is taking place at the State level. We have tried to do the same thing here in Washington by creating charter States where States can have a different relationship with the Federal Government that says we are going to do this as a pilot program, hopefully with 10 States, by giving them freedom to move dollars around from program to program; and Washington is no longer going to be going through these 219 steps for grants and audits and those types of things. What they are going to do is they are going to say, as a Federal Government, we are going to reinforce what you are trying to do at the State level, which is to focus on learning with children. That is where we need to go.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. If the gentleman will yield for a moment, I will just correct one thing. My children are in a parochial school. So that is a little bit different. But if we are talking about reinventing, I go back to this other account that the gentleman and I have had some real frustration with, which is the grant back account. The gentleman and I have on occasion, may have called it, or I think others have referred to it, as a slush account. This is a $700 million account. The General Accounting Office went in and took a look at it, and out of this $700 million, which is supposed to be designated only for money that comes back from schools that have misused grants and it goes into this account and then those schools can reapply once they get things straightened out, out of the $700 million that is in this account, only $12 million of it was there under legitimate circumstances. The rest of it just kind of happened to find its way there. And when GAO said, how did it get here, they could not say how it got there. And when they spent it, they could not say where they had the authorization or where they had actually spent the money. Then, when we compare that definition of reinventing government, I mean where the real reinvention and the real excitement and energy in education is happening today, it is at the State level and it is our local schools who are integrating technology, who are focusing on the needs of their kids. I do not think my colleague was in the Bronx with me in New York when we went to Cardinal Hayes High School, but this is one of the toughest areas; and here is a school that has reinvented itself and is doing some great things. They are turning out some great students in one of the toughest areas of New York City. And there are local schools all over the country each and every day that are reinventing themselves. A lot of times, when we have talked to some of these schools, they tell us that the only thing that is standing between them reinventing themselves to the extent that they would like to, to meet the needs of their kids, a lot of time it is Federal rules and regulations that say they cannot go where they want to go. So we have got a department in Washington that has reinvented an agency that cannot deliver. If the Vice President is really interested in reinventing education and reinventing government, what the Vice President needs to do is the Vice President needs to take a look at the reinvention and education that is going on at the local level. We have been to 21 different States. That is where the excitement is. That is what the focus is on, kids and learning, rather than bureaucracy and paperwork.

Mr. HOEKSTRA

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, just to make sure there is no misunderstanding between us and our colleague from California, currently a W-2 form does not require the employer's share to be reported, so the W-2 form only lists the employee's share. What this legislation will require is that on the W-2 form, both the employer and the employee's share of the FICA tax will be listed. This will allow employees to fully understand the true cost of their employment. This is a process that a number of people have already taken steps toward; that this is good government. Hundreds of companies are doing this. The State of Michigan has added this in. Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from the other side of the aisle for encouraging a ``yes'' vote in support of this.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Sam Johnson), for yielding me this time. Mr. Speaker, for 7 out of 10 households, the FICA tax, also known as the payroll tax, is the greatest of all taxes that they pay. Yet half of the payroll tax is hidden from the employee's view. Current law requires employers to annually issue all of their employees a W-2 form, a written statement that shows their total wages and the amount withheld in taxes for the previous year. However, the information on American workers' W-2s does not tell the whole story. The 12.4 percent Social Security tax and the 2.9 percent Medicare tax are split equally between employers and employees. Current W-2s disclose only the employee's half of the cost of these programs. Many workers are probably unaware of this employer contribution to Social Security and Medicare, which my colleague from Texas just pointed out, which also makes them unaware of how much their employment actually costs. It is possible that if the employer were not required to pay payroll taxes, or if the payroll tax was reduced, a portion of this money might go to the employee. Not only does this lack of information hide from employees the true cost of their employment but it also makes them uninformed about how much of their paycheck funds two government programs which are vital for their retirement security, Social Security and Medicare. The Right-to-Know National Payroll Act would require employers to simply disclose their share of both Social Security and Medicare taxes on each employee's annual W-2. Implementing the right-to-know payroll form is as simple as changing the format of a current W-2 form because employers actually calculate these costs annually. For employers, the right-to-know payroll form helps workers understand the constraints employers face when seeking to create jobs, increase pay and compete effectively in a global economy, and shatters the myth that taxes and mandates can be placed on employers without affecting the workers themselves. For workers, the right-to-know payroll form allows them to compare the benefits and costs of various government programs and helps to raise the awareness of employment-related public policy and how it affects their jobs. Language from the Right-to-Know National Payroll Act was included in the Financial Freedom Act of 1999. The concept has been endorsed by the Cato Institute and The Heritage Foundation. I thank the Committee on Ways and Means for bringing it back up today. The Right-to-Know National Payroll Act came out of discussions I had several years ago with the Mackinac Center of Public Policy in Michigan. The Mackinac Center thought it was important for workers to know the total cost of taxes and government programs and developed the right-to-know payroll form for use by employers. The right-to-know payroll form is now being used by hundreds of businesses across the country and by the State of Michigan. The purpose of this legislation is simple. For too long, the government has taken taxes from employers and hidden this information from employees. It is time to give employees information about the full cost of their Federal benefits. I urge my colleagues to support H.R. 1264.

Mr. HOEKSTRA

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for yielding time to me. I also applaud my colleague, the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Gutknecht), for introducing this legislation and bringing it to the floor this evening. Mr. Speaker, there is no doubt that U.S. consumers are paying a premium for their prescription drugs. It is wrong. U.S. consumers have no problem paying for the product that they consume. They have no problem paying for the research and development costs that the companies incur. They do not mind paying a fair return to the investor and the drug companies. What they do object to is paying the profits and the research and development costs of our colleagues and our neighbors in Mexico, in Canada, in other parts of the world. We are subsidizing the consumption of prescription drugs in Canada, Mexico, and Europe. It is not fair to the American consumer, it is not fair to our American taxpayer. What this bill does is it says that if our consumers find these drugs, prescription drugs, available at a lower price in Canada, Mexico, or somewhere else, these drugs, prescription drugs, will be made available to the American consumer. It is the fair thing and it is the right thing to do.

Mr. HOEKSTRA

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Chairman, how much time is remaining?

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, it is interesting to take a look at the funding and the taking away from different groups to fund others. Title I since 1998 increased 19 percent. Impact Aid since 1998 increased 22 percent. Indian Education since 1998, an increase of 80 percent. School improvement programs since 1998, an increase of 110 percent. What we are saying is these programs have been funded and increased over the last 3 years, but let us meet and fulfill the commitment that this House said, which was special education funding is our number one priority. Let us fully meet our commitment as we fully met our commitment, then let us take a look at the other programs. But these other programs have been receiving increases. What we are saying this year is let us take a focused approach, and let us put our money where our promises and our commitments were. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, when Congress passed the Individuals With Disabilities Act in 1975, the Federal Government made a commitment to pay 40 percent of the special education budget and required States to pay the other 60 percent. The Federal Government, however, currently only pays roughly 12.6 percent toward the IDEA budget, and the States are forced to make up the rest of what is an unfunded mandate. This amendment takes a more targeted approach by eliminating increases in four programs and moving the money into funding for the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. This amendment would move about $383 million in funding, still far short of the $2 billion in increase necessary to move IDEA funding to the target that was outlined in the budget resolution. The amendment is not a criticism of the programs where we are taking the money out of. Rather, it is a transfer of funding to a program which Congress has said should be our number one funding priority. This is consistent with the budget resolution. It is also consistent with the resolution that passed the House of Representatives identifying IDEA as our most important funding priority. It is also very consistent with what educators, school administrators, and parents have said at the local level as we have gone around the country, because what this mandate does, without fully funding it, is it saps resources from local school budgets. Governor George Ryan in Illinois: ``The support of increased Federal funding is a key element in assuring successful compliance with IDEA in the future.'' Representative Alice Seagren told us this last week in Minnesota: ``One of the most positive things Congress could do is to fund the Federal Special Education mandates before you consider any new programs.'' Bob Selly who is superintendent of the East Yuma County School District in Colorado: ``My suggestion, if it is going to be mandated by the Federal Government, figure out what is it is going to cost the schools and fully fund the Federal mandate.'' Eric Smith, superintendent of the Charlotte Schools in Charlotte, North Carolina: ``Based on a lack of funding, there are systemwide struggles which directly affect the quality of service we can provide to our students.'' From a parent in Pennsylvania: ``I believe that a lack of funding is a major detriment to fulfilling the promise of IDEA giving children with disabilities access to a free and appropriate education in the least restrictive environment.'' This amendment seeks to move us in the direction that the budget resolution has said we should go, that this House has said we should go, and that Congress in 1975 said that we should go by funding 40 percent of the mandate that we imposed on some State and local schools. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. HOEKSTRA

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, H.R. 4079 is a bill that in many ways we would probably rather not be dealing with today. We are dealing with this issue because of the Department of Education's inability to receive a clean audit. Each year, the Department of Education, like other Federal agencies, is required to undergo an audit. For fiscal years 1998 and 1999, the Department of Education could not receive a clean audit opinion. In plain English what that means is that the financial analysts who have gone in and taken a look at the books as prepared by the Department of Education do not have a high degree of confidence that the figures and the numbers that are reported in their financial statements are an accurate reflection of the actual conditions at the Department of Education. Now, there are a number of reasons why this has occurred. There are also a number of instances where this lack of financial control has exhibited itself. One of the reasons why the Department is unable to get a clean audit is that it lacks an accounting system that meets generally accepted standards or complies with Federal financial management standards. That is why it could not get a clean set of books for the last 2 years. The disappointing thing here, and I think this is why we need to take this step today, is that the Department also does not expect to have an effective account system in place until at least October 2001, more than a year out. Thus, the fiscal year 2000 and 2001 audits will most likely result in the same results as 1998 and 1999, an inability to get a clean audit. Now, it would be one thing just to say they cannot get a clean set of books. It is another when the General Accounting Office and other groups have identified that because of the weaknesses within the financial control system, this Department has experienced a number of cases of waste, fraud, and abuse. Let me just highlight a couple of these. The Inspector General and the General Accounting Office have identified a number of examples. One is that the Department over the last 2 years has issued about $175 million in duplicate payments to grantees. These payments continue to occur despite the Department's avowed attempts to crack down on them. What is a duplicate payment? Well, we have here a list of duplicate payments that occurred in October of 1999. What a duplicate payment is, is that it means the Department recognizes that it has a liability, that it owes a State, it owes a contractor, or a supplier a certain amount of money, it cuts a check and it pays them. A duplicate payment means that it cuts a check and pays them again. This is to the tune of over $175 million of duplicate payments, one as large as $71,425,000 that occurred on 10/20/1999. As I said, these payments have continued through 2000. So that is one area that the Inspector General and the GAO have said this is perhaps an area that we need to take an additional look at. Why? We need to identify whether, number one, we have captured all of the duplicate payments and we have identified all the contractors or suppliers who have received a duplicate payment. If not, let us find them. The second thing we need to do is we need to identify whether for all of the duplicate payments that have been made, whether the American taxpayer and the Federal Government have been reimbursed for this duplicate payment. And then, thirdly, we need the General Accounting Office to go in and identify the problems that the Department of Education has in their system that allows this problem to continue on for 2 years. So this is not a single occurrence. This is a series of occurrences over a period of 2 years that have resulted in over $175 million in duplicate payments. Last month, a contract employee at the Department became the second person to plead guilty in participating in a theft ring. This is, again, disturbing because this builds off of recommendations that were not followed in previous audits. Previous audits, previous work by the Inspector General and by the General Accounting Office had indicated that the Department of Education did not have an effective way of managing its inventory, meaning that it would go out and buy capital assets, but had no way of tracking what assets were purchased and the location of each of those assets. The result is, that with a lack of a good system in place, we created an environment where employees understood that there was a lack of these controls in place and, actually, created an environment that became inviting for waste, fraud and, in this case, abuse and fraud. Because what happened is that this Department of Education employee, along with outside contractors, and there are still additional people that are being investigated in this process, they put in place, we will use the word that is kind of in vogue today, they used a scheme to defraud the Department of close to a million dollars. The scheme worked like this: someone within the purchasing department at the Department of Education would issue requisitions for certain kinds of equipment, and, in this case, it included computers. It included telephone equipment. It included a 61-inch TV, that is one big TV, and a whole series of other electronic equipment. They would issue the requisition, the equipment would be purchased, and it would be delivered somewhere other than the Department of Education, perhaps to the employee's home or other locations ensuring that the equipment never came to the Department of Education. Roughly $330,000 worth of equipment was defrauded from the Department through this mechanism. Now, these purchase orders were supplied to an outside contractor. What was then in it for the outside contractor? The benefit to the outside contractor was that this outside contractor would be allowed and the purchasing agent would approve for the billing of hourly work and overtime by this outside contractor. It is estimated that in this case close to $600,000 in phony overtime was paid to this and other outside contractors. When we combine the fraud of purchasing this equipment and the overtime, we have close to a million dollars in fraud from the Department of Education. These are just two examples of why I think on a bipartisan basis we have recognized that when we are talking about some of the most important dollars that we spend in Washington today, those dollars that we invest in our young people, that we invest in our educational system, that when those are going into a Department we need to ensure that we have got the highest standards of integrity and accountability to make sure that those dollars are being spent where they will make a difference and that they are not being siphoned off through either waste and, in these cases, fraud and abuse. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, I have no further requests for time, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 4079) to require the Comptroller General of the United States to conduct a comprehensive fraud audit of the Department of Education, as amended.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for working together on this issue. We have outlined some of the problems within the Department of Education. Hopefully through this effort, by having the General Accounting Office go in and take a more in-depth analysis, hopefully they will go in and they will not find additional fraud or abuse and they will find that the Department is operating appropriately. At this point in time, we just do not know. We have enough cases that indicate on a bipartisan basis that we need to go in for a closer look. This is a targeted approach. This is an approach that we can work with the General Accounting Office on and make sure that we are dealing with the appropriate issues at the right time and that we then can move on to the other things that my colleague from Wisconsin was alluding to, as to the effectiveness of the spending participating here in Washington, are we getting the maximum effect for the dollars we are spending. That will be a debate for another day, or hopefully that will be a debate or a process that we can build a bipartisan consensus as to the best way to move forward, empowering local officials and parents to make the decisions for the education of their children because that really is the leverage point, empowering parents and local officials to focus on basic academics, delivered in a safe and drug-free school, so that our children can get the best education of any kids in the world. I think that is a vision that we share on a bipartisan basis, at least getting the best education for our kids. We may have some disagreements as to what the best process is, but we have the same long-term goals and objectives in mind.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks on H.R. 4079.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague, the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Kind) for his words and also his highlighting that hopefully some of the work that we have done on the subcommittee can perhaps be a stimulus for the House as a whole. We are currently in the process of drafting a piece of legislation where we apply the same standard to other Federal agencies that we have applied here to the Department of Education that says if, for 2 consecutive years, a Department or an agency cannot get a clean audit that it should be a fundamental requirement that a more in-depth analysis or a quote, unquote, a fraud audit or a targeted fraud audit should take place within these agencies because what we do know is that when an agency cannot deliver a clean audit, the auditors have some concern about their internal controls as to how they are measuring and recording the various expenditures. So the same standard that we apply to the Department of Education should apply to all of the other agencies that we have, whether it is the Department of Defense, the Department of Labor or whatever we are working on, and propose this one because of the work that the subcommittee has done in this area. Mr. Speaker, I also would like to thank my colleague, the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Kind), because I agree with him the more time that we can spend on exploring educational policy and what is going on at the State and local level as to what works and what does not, the more effective we can be in spending the billions of dollars that we are allocating here at a Federal level so that we can move away from purely the measurement of where the dollars are going, but actually be taking a look at the effectiveness and are we getting the impact for the dollars that we would like to have. I have to applaud my colleague. I think we have been in 21 different States and had 23 field hearings, and my colleague consistently is there with us. He has been in New Mexico with us. He has been in Colorado with us. Last week he was in Minnesota. He has been in my district in Michigan; and consistently when we are at a State in a local level having a field hearing, he has been there and participating in that process to make sure that we are getting the best bang for our buck. The other thing that I would like to also say is that we have had a very good working relationship, developing a good working relationship with the new Inspector General and with the General Accounting Office. The General Accounting Office has completed an audit of the Department's grant back fund where there were some questions about how these dollars were being used and what was moving into the account and whether that was appropriate or not; and as a result of the work that they have done with us, I think, again, in a bipartisan way, the Department, I think, has returned over $700 million back to the Treasury. I think that is a very good, cooperative way of us moving through this process and dealing with this ugly side of the financial management part of the Department of Labor. I also think that as we move through this process in a more targeted approach, one of the ways that the Department or one of the areas that the Inspector General and the General Accounting Office have agreed with us that they will take a look at is the security of the computer data systems that the Department of Education maintains. These systems contain student loan and grant records for tens of millions of students, and what we want to do is we want to make sure that the safeguards are in place to maintain the integrity of these systems to make sure that no one can get into these files and either steal data or manipulate the data that are in these files. It is a wide-ranging effort that we have undertaken, and I think we have had good cooperation from both sides of the aisle as well as with the Department, with the Inspector General and also with the General Accounting Office to get to the bottom of these issues. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. HOEKSTRA

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigation of the House Education and the Workforce Committee conducted an oversight field hearing last Monday in the State of Minnesota. Among the most informative presentations made before the member participants was one delivered by Mr. John H. Scribante, a Minnesota businessman and honorable American. Mr. Scribante's passion for children and their need for first-rate learning opportunity was most impressive and we hereby submit for the Record the remarks of Mr. Scribante regarding the important topic of school reform. Mr. Speaker, we commend the excellent observations and conclusions made by Mr. Scribante to our colleagues. Educational Fascism in Minnesota (A statement submitted by John H. Scribante--Entrepreneur) (Respectfully submitted to the U.S. House of Representatives Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations Committee on Education and the Workforce, June 6, 2000) statement We're gathered here this morning at a very interesting time . . . 56 years ago today, D-Day, 2,500 Allied soldiers died in Normandy fighting Fascist Germany for the freedom for Americans to pursue liberty. This offers us a unique perspective on this monumental issue of educational change. We're poised at the beginning of the 21st century, and while the rest of the world is abandoning central labor planning, Minnesota is driving through School-to-Work programs for central control of its economy against the will of the people. Consider that in just over 200 years, this country became the Greatest Nation on Earth. We've had more Nobel Prize recipients than any other industrialized nation. We've sent men into outer space and brought them back alive; we've pioneered open-heart surgery, and our science and technologies are copied worldwide. Those who accomplished these incredible feats were the product of an education system that emphasized academics, not life-long job training. I've been to Eastern Europe, `I've seen the life destroying results of governments trying to plan the economy and control education, and I've spoken to people who have been subject to their central controls. This is not what America was founded on . . . and besides; it has been proven not to work. Those of you who have sworn to uphold the United States Constitution will be hard pressed to support such a system of tyranny. Today in Minnesota, the best interests of children have become secondary to the interests of bureaucrats, un-elected non-profits, and economic forecasts. In many districts, The world is open-ended. We don't know what we will learn tomorrow. We can be sure that at any particular time, we are overlooking valuable information and opportunities. Our knowledge is incomplete and resources are, undoubtedly being misdirected. However, we have a 225-year proven method for discovering and correcting these errors called Capitalism. Entrepreneurs search out instances where resources are being underutilized and redirect them to those that produce profits . . . nothing else approaches its power to stimulate discovery. The application of this principal in education should be obvious. Since we don't know today what we may learn tomorrow about educational methods and knowledge, we need entrepreneurship in education. Government is not equipped for the task. History has proven, time and time again, that where competition does not exist, mediocrity ensues. Nowhere is this truer than in many of America's public schools. If you must have government-funded education, at least leave the private schools and home schools alone to compete for ideas and innovation. Businesses have been duped Businessmen and women are being told that they can and should become partners in the education of our children. With tax funded incentives, subsidies, reimbursements, and free training . . . how can these businesses resist? According to the Minnesota School to Work publication called Making Connections, page 11: the SCANS report instructs business to ``look outside your company and change your view of your responsibilities for human resource development. Your old responsibilities were to select the best available applicants and to retain those you hired. Your new responsibilities must be to improve the way you organize work and to develop the human resources in your community, your firm, and your nation.'' The Minnesota STW program seeks 100% employer compliance and further provides a ``Work-Based Learning Coordinator'' to ``help'' me in my ``responsibilities'' of complying with this lunacy. Who is running my business anyway? I've got all the capital at risk . . . Just leave me out of this mess. This experiment may be very attractive in the short run . . . but business will pay in the long run in higher taxes to fund these programs, in less educated people and a loss of economic freedom. Productive labor is their goal, not an educated populace. This will be the end of a free America. My company needs entrepreneurial minds and intellectual capital. People who can think, read, write, and add. I interview many young people who are products of Minnesota schools, and they cannot solve simple conversion equations. Who is training students for what I need? What is wrong with teaching people how to think? I don't need work skills . . . I need people who can think of great ideas and be willing to put their knowledge to the test! Why is it that government vigilantly looks for predatory pricing, anticompetitive, and monopolistic behavior in the private sector, and yet it is the greatest offender? To quote Ralph Moore ``The REAL credit in life should go to those who get into the ARENA--if they fail, they at least fail while DARING TO BE GREAT. Their place in life will never be with those COLD AND TIMID SOULS who know neither victory nor defeat.'' In a free market economy, consumers ultimately determine what is produced. What school or government bureaucrat could have predicted ten years ago how many webmasters we would need today? From the information I've seen from the Department of Labor's SCANS reports, they're planning on teaching manure spreading, car washing, working the fryer at the diner and how to take a message off an answering machine. In St. Cloud, MN, the STW program has already put a company out of business and severed off the arm of a 17-year-old student running a machine on a STW assignment. School-to-work is a dangerous shift in education policy in America. It moves public education's mission from the transfer of academic knowledge to simply training children for specific jobs. And most tragically, the job for which it will train will have little or nothing to do with that child's dreams, goals, or ambitions. Parents, however, in this three way partnership with business and the State may be troubled knowing that their children are the pawns that the educational system trains to meet the needs of industry. The economic goals of education should never be promoted over the virtue and importance of knowledge itself. School to work transition issues would disappear if schools focused on strengthening core curricula, setting high expectations, and improving discipline and forgetting about retrying failed ideas. The Result The sad truth is, in exchange for federal chump change, the state of Minnesota sold out it's commitment to high academic standards and agreed to follow national standards based on moral relativism, politically correct group thinking, and getting kids out of the classroom to work in local businesses, beginning in kindergarten. Our state threw out a system of education that worked brilliantly for most all Minnesota youngsters. It worked brilliantly, that is, until approximately 35 years ago when Minnesota public education started flirting with the progressive, trendy movement away from high academic standards. Under the Profile of Learning, high academic standards are practically banned from the classroom. In 1993, the Minnesota legislature repealed 230 education statutes, thus creating a structural vacuum to make way for the new federal Goals 2000 system already in the works. This left Minnesota without tried and true standards. There are no longer any course requirements for any child in Minnesota. No 4 years of English, no 4 years of history, no 3 years of math, or a year of geography, or years of science. Most public schools don't have a copy of the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution and few even mention them in classes. This system is really nothing new. Tyranny has always waited in the wings, ready to step to center stage at the first hint of apathy towards freedom. For over 230 years we've enjoyed the finest freedom and prosperity the world has ever known. Yet we were warned by Edmund Burke that, ``The eternal price of liberty is vigilance.'' As a people we've been asleep at the switch, and now our entire nation, not just Minnesota, has signed on to this crazy new system of totalitarianism, where everyone is under government's control, from cradle to grave. This system has been tried around the world, across the centuries. But it is radically new for those of us used to freedom. This new system has more to do with fascism than freedom. Now we need to work to eliminate the entire STW & Goals 2000 system, while there is time. As Sir Winston Churchill wrote to convince the British to join in the fight against Nazi Germany: ``If you will not fight for the right--when you can easily win without bloodshed, if you will not fight when your victory will be sure--and not too costly, you may come to the moment when you will have to fight--with all the odds against you--and only a precarious chance of survival. There may be even a worst case. You may have to fight--when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves.''

Mr. HOEKSTRA

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, I also wanted to build on the comments of our colleague from Wisconsin (Mr. Ryan) because he said some very nice things about us in awakening the call for educational reform. I do not think we have done that. What we have done is we have kind of provided an echo chamber for what people at the local level are demanding. They want their schools back. They know the names of their kids. They know what is best for their kids. Governor Carlson today talked about going back into his public school in the Bronx. We have been to the Bronx. We have had hearings there. I do not know if we went through the litany with the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Ryan) of the places where we have been; but it was almost every place that he outlined, we have been there. I mean, we have been in to Albuquerque. We have been into L.A. We have been to the Bronx. We have been to Chicago, Milwaukee, Minneapolis. We have been all over the place. The response we continually get is from local officials and local parents, and they do not exactly say it this way; but what they do say in so many words is Washington has gotten to the point where you want to build our schools, you are going to give us 6 percent of what it takes to build a school, but we will give you the regulations to tell you exactly how to build the whole thing. You want to hire our teachers. You want to train our teachers. You want to develop our curriculum; you want to teach our kids history, set history standards; you want to teach them about art. You want to have school health clinics. You want to buy our technology. You want to feed our kids breakfast. You want to feed our kids lunch. You want to do after-school programs. You want to develop safe and drug free programs, and this is just a small litany of the programs. But after you give us 6 percent of each of the dollars required for each of these programs and you burden on a whole set of rules and regulations, then you step back and say, but other than that, it is your school. I think, again, one of the witnesses today said that, and we were talking about the school-to-work program, it is like we have received $16 million from Washington to conduct our school-to-work program, but receiving that $16 million has really driven about a half a billion dollars of State spending, State spending that came from the Minnesota taxpayers and went to the State government. And I think this is what Mr. Scribante was talking about saying, we love our kids. We want control of our schools, and we want our schools to be focused on developing the skills of each and every child in our community. And the quote that he had from Winston Churchill, I think he is going to get us that so that we get it right, but maybe my colleague from Minnesota (Mr. Gutknecht) has it, but it is really saying, this battle of who controls our schools is important enough to fight and debate today, because now is when we can still have an impact, where there really is still a lot of local control, but where that has been eroding. I will yield to my colleague from Minnesota, who maybe has the quote right there. He is smiling. He must have it. I appreciate the gentleman very much being a wonderful host today, helping us get an excellent set of witnesses. I think we had 10 or 11 witnesses in Bloomington, I guess we were at today, and just excellent testimony that I think really helped us. I yield to my colleague.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Ms. Seagren said, Before you go off on this construction program, giving us construction money, let me tell you what we are doing here in Minnesota. We do not build schools. We do lease plans. So if you come up with a construction program for charter schools in Washington, D.C., I am telling you right now that here is one State where this only does not work, it flies directly in the face of the strategy that we have put in place for charter schools in our State. So what is going to happen is people from Minnesota are sending money to Washington, and we are not going to be able to get any of it back unless we let you in Washington change our strategy for funding charter schools. We think we have got a pretty good system. We think it makes sense. It is not perfect, but this works for us, and this is what we want to do. Now, all of a sudden, to get our money back, we are going to have to change our program. Well, up until today, we did not even know that Minnesota had that kind of a strategy in place.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. If the gentleman will yield, I thought he was a wonderful breath of fresh air in how he viewed that job, in saying, I am a superintendent for all the kids; and I recognize that, you know, my traditional public school may not be the best for all of the kids in this district each and every day, and so what I am doing is, in the business world we call it mass customization. He says, I am using the resources that I have been given and I am going to help parents put together a structured program that matches the needs of every child. And so, if some of the parents believe that home schooling, for whatever reason, is best for their kids, you know, if they come through and they want to use the school for band, for some extracurricular or advanced science classes, we are going to be there and we are going to open the door and we are going to work that out for the parents. And it is the same for the charter and the parochial. It really was a demonstration of what he said, a superintendent for all of the kids in the district. And what I would guess they are doing in that district is just building a phenomenal partnership and a phenomenal loyalty in that community with all of these groups coming together, with the focal point being the kids, not home schooling, not charter schools, not public schools, not parochial schools, but they are developing a trusting relationship between all of the providers of services to these kids that says, let us keep the kids and learning at the center, let us put aside our differences and let us come together and make sure that we have a relationship that enables us to be creative to meet the needs. I thought it was awesome testimony.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, and that is going on at the same time. I still remember the first hearing or one of the first hearings that we did. We did a run through California. And then as we were doing the education at a crossroads hearing, we also did a hearing and we did it in California and we met with a number of the college presidents or the deans of various universities in California. And it was right after this process had started and as we were gathering the data. In one of these initial hearings, the deans came in and said, you know, one of the programs that we need more funding for is for remedial education. And we kind of get a startled look on our face, and these are from some prestigious colleges telling us that they need more money for remedial education. And we hear that from two or three of these experts from the colleges and we finally say, excuse me, why does a prestigious university with high academic standards and high entrance requirements, what do they need money from us for for remedial education? The answer is, well, 25 percent of the students that are coming to college today are not ready for college requirements. And what does that mean? It meant that they were not at an 8th or 10th grade level for reading, writing, and math. And so, it is one of those key criteria again for successful schools is, rather than overlaying a whole new system on to our education, which is focusing on developing the skills to work, the emphasis should be on teaching our kids and getting them basic academics. We have seen that on international standards, international comparisons. We are not doing well enough on our kids learning the basics. So before we go off and try to dilute this process any further, let us focus on basic academics. I do not know if the gentleman was in Arkansas when we went to Arkansas in Little Rock when we were at Central High School.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Again, it was fascinating. The school in Arkansas that gets some of the highest test scores, we asked them the question, Why are you getting such high test scores? Because they were the lowest funded school in the State? The answer was, We only have the time, energy, and money to focus on basic academics.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. For those who may be observing or watching this discussion, not knowing what is PS36, it is a public school. It is Public School 36 that Governor Carlson went to in the Bronx. When we were there, we were not at Public School 36, but probably a very rough neighborhood, probably low income; and he talked about some of the kids who would come to school and the first thing they would get from their principal each and every day was kind of talking about what happened at night because a number of them may have had a rough night. So it is a tough part of New York City, and this principal and this public school has gone in and they have embraced these kids and are really making a difference; and what the gentleman said, what the gentleman saw today in Minnesota, I think that is what the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Schaffer) and I have had the opportunity to see around the country, is that you get to the local level, these parents, these administrators, these legislators, they have got a passion for their kids. They absolutely have a passion for their kids, and they are kind of, you know, wanting us to get out of the way so that they can really do and help for these kids, and Governor Carlson's public school 36 is just one phenomenal example where they are having great success, not because of what we are doing, but because they are going in and taking the leadership.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will just yield, PS36 is Public School 36.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Will the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Schaffer) yield?