Pete Hoekstra

Mr. HOEKSTRA

Mr. HOEKSTRA. I do not think the gentleman needs to worry about that, because we are fairly efficient here in Washington, because when you send that dollar to Washington and we figure out how to send it back to you, remember, also when you get the money, we do not let you just spend it. You have to send back to us a report on how you spent it.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. That costs money. We know you are probably not going to tell us the truth, so that means we have to send auditors into Wisconsin.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. It costs money, but it is not that much. Really, we have taken a look at it. When you sends a dollar and we send it back, for every dollar you send us, we only take 30 to 40 cents, to make sure you spend the 60 cents left in the way we want you to spend it.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. We do know what works in education. We do know that if we move responsibility back to parents, to the local level, the teachers and local administrators, we can make it work. Now we need to start implementing the steps to make that happen. I thank the gentleman for sharing his time with me today.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. I do not know if that study identifies how much money is spent per student in each of these countries. That was a question that we had asked, and we are going to go back and try to get that information because the question that we asked, is it an issue of money? You know, that if America just spends an extra $500 or $1,000 per child, we will see better results. I can tell you as we have gone around the country, it is not an issue of spending more money. We have gone, and the best example is taking a look at what is going on outside of this building in this city where we in Congress really have control over the school system. We spend on average about $10,000 per student. Now I come out of west Michigan. We spend about 56, $5,700 per student. It varies throughout my district, but in that neighborhood. Here in Washington, D.C. we spend about $10,000 per student. And you say, wow, we must have some of the best schools, the best technology, the best buildings, the best teachers, and we ought to be getting great results in this school system here in D.C. It is not what is happening. We are getting terrible results. We are failing 60 to 80,000 children each and every year who are getting substandard education, and they are not going to be prepared to go out and compete. It is a huge problem.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Well, let me give you another couple of statistics, and we can maybe reach a conclusion today. That was a question that we asked earlier in the process. We went out and we went to local schools and we talked to parents, we talked to teachers and we talked to administrators, and they said tell us what is working in your schools. And there are some phenomenal success stories around the country that schools are working well, teachers are doing a great job, classrooms are being effective. So you ask them why is your school working, and they give us great reasons: parental involvement, technology, and the answers vary from one school district to another because the needs in one school district and the students coming in are very different from one school district to the other. The interesting thing was nobody ever said this Federal program, and you would think that when you have 760 different education programs coming out of Washington, and you know that is maybe one reason you and I would say, hallelujah, it is a good thing we have got an education department so that we have got one place that coordinates all 760 programs. You take a look and say, whoa, no, that was the vision of the Education Department when it came out, that it would be the focal point of education in the Federal Government. But with 760 programs, they go through 39 different agencies, and they spend $100 billion per year out of Washington. This system also ensures that when your parents from Wisconsin send a dollar here to Washington, they would like to get it back. So to get it back, we develop all these programs and forums, and we send the programs back to Wisconsin. And guess what the people in Wisconsin have to do?

Mr. HOEKSTRA. They have to fill out some papers. So they send fill out papers, and send them where?

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Back to Washington. We go through them and say whoa, you might have been lucky and got it all through the first time. We say, it looks like Wisconsin is qualified to get X amount of dollars, so we send the dollars back to you and you can do what you want with them, right?

Mr. HOEKSTRA. That is why so often we are viewed as being controversial, that we cannot see the logic in this system. I drive through my district, and I have seen lots of new schools opening up. I am saying these people are taking the lead, and they will be punished for taking the lead. Next time they will be better off not solving the problem and waiting for Washington to come in.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. I thank my colleague for yielding. I cannot tell you the excitement that I feel to see first term Member, a second term Member, and it is my third term, and just reflecting back on when I came to Washington in 1993, if we had projected in 1993 that we would be approaching the point where we would be talking about what to do with the surplus and that we would be there by 1998 or 1999 people would have said you are crazy, because if you remember back.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. And I would propose that the same kind of focus and enthusiasm and energy that we have put behind the problem in 1995 of addressing this deficit and addressing the debt, we have come a long way and we got a long way to go, but we are on the right road, is the same kind of energy, enthusiasm and commitment that we need to put behind education. In 1993, the early 1990's, the deficit was identified and the debt was identified as critical long-term problems that if we did not address them we were going to give our children an America that was not going to be as good as the one that we got from our parents.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Well, I do not think so. We, you know, what I have been involved in and almost all of 1997, I think we have had 22 different hearings around the country. We have been in 14 different States taking a look at what works and what does not work in education. We have also taken a look at how our children are scoring on international tests. A study came out again this week. I think out of 21 countries we are near or at the bottom in a number of different categories. That is unacceptable. We cannot expect to compete on an international basis in a number of global industries if our kids are continuing to score at the lowest levels of any kids in the world.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. That makes me senior, that is right. But you know we came here in 1993, and within, I think, you know, the first 6, 8 months, the deficits were projected to be $200-$250 billion per year as far as the eye could see. The only way that we were going to stimulate the economy was by increasing Washington spending, and the only way to even try to get the surplus would not be by putting a discipline into Washington spending, but by increasing taxes because obviously Washington would know how to spend your money better than what you would. And now 5 years later, I mean, you know, Mr. Neumann came in and helped us take the majority. You are helping us and setting us on a new agenda or implementing this agenda where we are now close to being at surplus, and now what we need to do is we need to put the discipline in place and make it an institutional criteria that every year we will have a surplus and every year we will work on paying down our debt, reforming entitlements and reducing the scope and the influence of Washington government. But we, you know, made a major step on a problem in 1993. We thought we could not solve, $250 billion deficit, spending of about 1.6 trillion per year, and people said you cannot get there from here or you got to have a 10 or a 15-year plan.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Does the gentleman have a problem with that? I will yield.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Yes.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. If the gentleman will yield, the reason we do not is because we believe that bureaucrats here, and you and I had this discussion a couple of years ago when Wisconsin took the lead on reforming welfare, where in Wisconsin the legislature and the Governor said this is what we want to do, and people in Health and Human Services who had never seen a cheesehead said--

Mr. HOEKSTRA. I know, but the Lions are going to get you next year. But they said no, you cannot do that. And the people in Wisconsin are saying, wait a minute. If our Governor and State legislature want to do that, why are people in Health and Human Services saying no? We have the same problem with education. You have things you are experimenting with, trying to help the kids in Milwaukee and in your district, trying to get money into the classroom, and, like I said, when we have gone around the country, that is where the focal point is. That is where the rubber hits the road. You have got to get the money into the classroom to help the teacher, to get the technology there, to get the textbooks there. But that is the critical link. All of this other stuff, of the paper flying back and forth, has not helped one child one bit, and that is why I think the gentleman is supporting this, and that is why we passed the resolution last year. That is a step in the right direction. It does not get us where we need to be, but it was the Pitts Resolution that said we have to strive to get 90 of 95 cents of every Federal education dollar into the classroom, helping the teacher improve the skills of the child in that classroom.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Absolutely. What we want is we want parents and teachers and local administrators deciding what they are going to do for their children and their school, based on their needs, and that is a very different vision than the vision that our President has of education. The President believes that the responsibilities for these types of programs need to be moved to Washington. This president wants to build our schools, and he want to build them according to Federal regulations, which means we cannot really get competitive bidding, so the price of construction goes up by 10 to 15 percent. He wants to certify our teachers.

Mr. HOEKSTRA. That is right. For education, we know that the Federal Government has to be defining the standards for our schools and our local districts, because we have never built a school before, right?

Mr. HOEKSTRA. How crazy that we would do that, and we would do it here in Washington and set the standards from Washington, when we have been building schools for years at the local level, and that is what we need to do.

Mr. HOEKSTRA

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding me the time. I would also like to congratulate the chairman on leading the fight on this issue. I think there is at least three issues we need to talk about today. The first thing is that the executive branch is moving outside of the intent of Congress. They are moving forward in defining the Federal Government's role in education without an agreement and without a consensus having been developed between the executive branch and Congress. This is a key issue and we should not move forward on this issue without an agreement between the executive branch and this Congress. This Congress and this committee should set the direction for national testing. A second issue that we really need to have a national debate about, beginning in this committee, is exactly what is the role of the Federal Government in education. Last year we went to 14 States, had hearings, had 22 different field hearings, and what we are hearing at the local level are some tremendous progress being made in education. It is not because of what we are doing here in Washington, but it is because of what parents, teachers and administrators are doing at the local level. They are not sure that at the local level they want the Federal Government building their schools, hiring their teachers, feeding their kids, developing their curriculum, putting in their technology or determining their class size. They would like to have something to do at the local level as it regards to their schools and their children. The third issue is even if we did testing, is this the right way to do it? We had hearings in Delaware, my colleague from Delaware described the process that they have gone through in that State. It is a difficult process. In Delaware I believe it took about 3 years. They worked aggressively at the grassroots level to involve parents, to involve teachers, to involve administrators, and to involve elected officials. That is the way to do it. We do not do testing, we do not make this kind of change by one branch of government moving forward and saying, this is what we are going to do, and leaving the rest of us behind.

Mr. HOEKSTRA

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, to begin with tonight, I rise today to recognize the congregation of the Graafschap Christian Reformed Church of Graafschap, Michigan, as they celebrate 150 years of service to God, family, and their community. On April 4, 1847, 14 pioneers left Rotterdam, the Netherlands, with the hope of finding religious freedom and economic opportunity in America. They arrived in New York harbor on May 23 and settled on the south shore of Macatawa beach in Holland, Michigan, on June 20. The settlers soon founded the Graafschap Christian Reformed Church, dedicating their first log church in 1848. As Graafschap Christian Reformed Church grew in numbers and strengthened her spiritual roots, its vision expanded beyond its own congregation and extended into its community. In the past 150 years, the church has been a strong supporter of Christian education. As a leader in community ministry, the congregation has supported and participated in mission projects around the world. The past and present members of the Graafschap Christian Reformed Church have had a profound impact on the Holland, Michigan, area. Now with more than 500 members, the church is dedicated to continuing its spiritual mission far into the future. I would like to extend my thanks to Graafschap Christian Reformed Church for 150 years of service and commitment to God and the community, and offer my congratulations on the celebration of their anniversary. May God continue to bless the congregation and their work in the years to come. The American Worker at a Crossroads Mr. Speaker, I would like now to move on to another topic, a topic that I feel very strongly about and that I have a high degree of interest in. The project is called the American Worker at a Crossroads, because I think we recognize that the American worker is at the heart of our economy. It is not what Congress does, it is not what the President does, it is not what the Federal Reserve does, it is the American worker that is at the heart of our economy and determines whether we will have a thriving economy and whether we will move forward or whether we will move backward. What is the purpose of the American Worker at a Crossroads project? Very simply, we want to promote the most effective workplace on the planet. We want to develop a system of laws and rules and regulations, an environment where the American worker has the opportunity to thrive and to be successful and to truly develop and contribute with all of their skills. We want a workplace and a workforce and an economy that provides for the American worker when they assume their responsibilities, that when they step forward and assume their responsibilities that they will have security, that they will have flexibility, and because of the opportunity that is provided and because of their taking advantage or their taking responsibility for their future, they can have prosperity well into the 21st Century. The process that we are going through as we take a look at developing a strategy is we are stepping back and we are taking a look at where the economy was in 1938, the 40s and 50s, but we have picked 1938 as a classic year because this is when many of the labor laws were originally developed. And we are saying, what was 1938 like and what was the environment and what was the economy like in 1938 and how does that compare to where we were in 1988 and where we are in 1998 and where we expect to be after the year 2000? And as the set of laws and rules and regulations that developed out of the 30s and 40s is that the kind of framework that is going to allow the American worker to be successful in the future? We are also taking a look at whether the programs and the activities that are currently taking place in the Department of Labor, an agency that has a budget of somewhere in the neighborhood of $35 billion per year, which makes the Department of Labor bigger than all of the expenditures in the State of Michigan, are the expenditures in the Department of Labor helping the American worker to achieve their dream and their vision, or is it a barrier to the American worker to compete in this new environment? So, under the Results Act, which says we are going to every agency in government, and I have oversight specifically for the Department of Labor, we are asking them to meet the Results Act. Where are they going? How are they going to get there? And how will the Department know whether they got there or not? Those are some very basic questions that we should be asking of any agency that gets over $30 billion per year. Also, as we take a look at the future of the American worker, we are going out into America and we are taking a look at the American workplace. In the last 2 months we have had 22 roundtables in five different cities where management and where workers, where academics, where public policy experts, business owners, managers, workers, union members, nonunion members, locally elected officials, have all told us about what is working and what is not working in the private sector, what is working in regards to American labor law and what is not working, where we are facilitating and where we are a barrier. We have had a great response. We have learned a lot, and I will share a little bit of that with you as we go through the special order tonight, but it has been fascinating. American workers are being successful. They are competing on an international basis; and many of them are doing it very, very successfully. That is what this project is about. It is about each and every American worker. It is about each and every American who wants to work and to contribute to this country. It is about the single mom. It is about the young father. It is about the young couple who are saving for their first house or for the middle-aged couple that is facing the task of helping their children go through college. It is about the kids who are in college, the skills that they are going to need to make sure that they can become successful. It is about the young people that are out there that are making the decision as to whether they are going to go to college or whether they are going to go into a trade or technical school, because we need a balance of those occupations filled in this country if we are going to be successful. This is about the real world. This is not about sitting in Washington and reading documents. This is about going to the actual workplaces, going to the American worker and going to the different communities around this country to find out what is working. This is about trying to connect what Washington is doing to what is going on at the grassroots level. It is about trying to see whether there is a connect or whether there is a disconnect between Federal labor policy, Federal labor law and what we really need to do to be successful. As we go through this process, I think it will lead to a dialogue about change, about how do we create a more favorable environment for the American worker that recognizes perhaps that the economy of 1998, but more importantly the economy of the year 2000 and beyond, is very, very different than the economy and the society that we had in 1938 and 1948 when many of these laws were first created. Let us take a look at 1938. What was 1938 like? Remember, this is the era when the Federal Government started to exert a more powerful role in to the relationships between employer and employee. You really cannot judge whether that was good or bad. That was 60 years ago. But let us take a look at 1938 and recognize that many of these laws are still on the books and take a look at 1938, take a look at 1998 and say, would you, is there still a match or have we changed? In 1938, 20 percent, 20 percent of all American workers were unemployed. Today the national unemployment rate is in the neighborhood of 4 to 5 percent. What kind of workers did we have in 1938? What were the American people doing? The employment picture for America in 1938 reflected that one out of every five, 22 percent of the American workers, were agrarian, worked in agriculture, 78 percent were nonagrarian. Where are we in 1998? Today we have 2.5 percent of the American work force involved in agriculture, and 97.5 percent of us work in something other than agriculture. What about in manufacturing? Well, man if we lost all these jobs in agriculture, they must have moved into manufacturing. No. In 1938, 33 percent of the nonagrarian population, the nonagrarian work force, 33 percent worked in manufacturing. What is it in 1998? It is 15.4 percent. We went from 33 percent of our work force in 1938 working in manufacturing to today where it is 15.4 percent. Where did they go? Retail is up from 15 percent to 18.1 percent. Services is up from 11.4 percent to 28.8 percent. So we have seen a dramatic increase in services. Another fast-growing compared to manufacturing or agrarian which went down in employees is the size of government. In 1938, 13.1 percent of all American workers worked in some level of government. In 1998, it is 16.3 percent. What else is different about 1938 versus 1998? In 1938, the average life expectancy for Americans was 59.7 years. Today it is 75.8 years. Interestingly enough, 70 percent of the Members of the United States Congress were born after 1938. Most of the Members or a good number of the Members in this chamber were born after some of the most significant labor laws were developed in this country. Those laws are still in effect today. In 1938 is when the Fair Labor Standards Act was signed. Also if you take a look at 1938, there was no television, no computer chip, no personal computer, no e-mail, no nylon, no compact disk, no Home Depot, no Intel, no Wal-Mart, no Microsoft. For some there was also no Bill Gates. Probably also no telemarketing, which probably would have been a blessing for all of us. The question now becomes do those changes encourage us to take a look at labor law and say, does it fit or does it need to change? Since American workers are doing different things in different types of occupations, do we really need to take a look at whether the labor laws that were put in place still match these new industries? What is one of the fastest growing sectors in our economy today? It is the high tech industry. It is about $866 billion per year. It is 50 percent higher than the construction sales. How big is it? It is bigger than the sale of all food products. It is bigger than the automotive industry. The high tech industry is 866 billion; the automotive industry is about 433 billion. What we need to do, this is what the American worker project is about, is we are stepping back, we are taking a look at American labor law. We are taking a look at the agencies that have oversight over our workers and over the workplace. What we are intending to do as we step back and analyze what we have, where we want to go, we are deciding that we are going to develop a plan and a strategy to create a playing field that is clearly proworker, taking into account what do we need to do to provide security and flexibility, recognizing that workers first have to step up and assume some responsibility themselves, but provide security and flexibility also in a rapidly changing world. How do we make sure that employees today, where rather than the expectation being you are going to be in one job and you are going to be there for 30 years and retire from that firm, you may go through four career changes in your lifetime, in your professional career? It means that we really need to take a look back and say, how do we prepare or how do we provide and encourage or create a greater opportunity for workers to participate in training, for education to make sure their benefits move with them from one job to the next? How do we allow them to prepare for anticipated technological changes? How do we provide an environment where the American worker can prepare himself or herself to compete in a global economy? We need to create a proworker agenda because it is the American worker that is the driving force in our economy. We have to create an environment where the American worker has the opportunity to be successful so that as companies choose where they are going to locate their plant, whether they are going to locate it in Michigan or whether they are going to locate it in California, which is the decisions that many times are being made today, but we also know that in a global economy, companies are going to be making the decision as to whether they locate in Michigan or whether they are going to locate in England or whether they are going to locate in China. We need to make sure that as organizations go through the process of making those decisions that it becomes very difficult for them to come anywhere, to go anywhere else but the USA because we will have the best-skilled workers. We will have the best infrastructure in place. We will have the best learning environment. It is where people will want to work. It is where organizations will want their products and services produced because we will have the most talented work force. We will have labor law in place which allows those workers to be the most productive workers on the planet. That is what a proworker agenda is about. It is not an agenda that is supporting business. It is not an agenda about supporting unions or bashing businesses or bashing unions. The focus needs to be on the American worker because it is the American worker that each and every day gets up and goes to work and works under the rules and regulations that we have put in place. And we need to make sure that those rules and regulations enable that worker to be the best-trained and the most productive worker in the world. Let us take a look at some of the other trends that are going on, that have implications for the American worker. What kinds of trends do we see going on? We know that by the year 2000, the American, the population will reach about 270 million people. But we also recognize that the annual growth rate of our population continues to decrease. Back in the early 1900s, we were growing at roughly 1\1/2\ percent per year. By the year 2020, 2030, we will be growing at about 6/10 of a percent per year. What this means is that if we want to continue to grow and to expand economic opportunity, we are going to have to work to make sure that our workers can increase their productivity. A second trend that will have implications for the American work force is that in 1995, we have about 4, 4.1 workers for every person who is over 65. So that means for the people who are between the ages of 25 and 64, we have about 4.1 for every person who is over 65. In 35 years, that ratio will switch. That ratio will move from 4.1 to about 2.3, meaning that there will roughly be 2.3 workers for every person who is over 65. Obviously as the number of people in the work force versus the number of people who are over 65 creates a number of different challenges. There is an inevitable explosion in the cost of entitlements such as Social Security. The need for greater participation rate of people over 65 in the work force, that is a possibility. Do they want to work after they are 65? Does American labor, does American tax law encourage participation of people over 65 in the work force? Do we provide a neutral situation where there is really no tax advantage or disadvantage to participating in the work force or not participating in the work force? This tells us that perhaps by 2030, we ought to provide tax incentives to encourage seniors to participate in the work force. Today the situation is much different. I do not know what the answer is, but I believe it is a dialogue that we ought to be having in 1998 rather than in 2025, because the sooner we start discussing this issue, the sooner we can start reaching a consensus on how we want to evolve tax law and American labor law in a way that will enable us to be productive in this country. What is another trend that we are aware of? I think this is a positive trend. There is going to be a greater diversity in the American population. There will be a decrease in the number of white non-Hispanics from 76 percent of the population to 68 percent. There will be an increase in Orientals from 4 percent to 6 percent of our population. The Hispanic population is projected to grow from 9 percent to 14 percent. This can be a challenge, or it can be an opportunity. But I believe a growing diversity of the Nation's population in the work force is likely to create some very interesting opportunities. We will bring a greater diversity of skills and backgrounds into this country for us to learn and grow from. What is another trend that we see? A change in the traditional family structure. In 1940, 67 percent of families consisted of a husband who worked and a wife who did not. Only 9 percent of families had two working spouses. By 1995, the man was the sole earner of only 17 percent. So from 1940 to 1995, we went from 67 percent to 17 percent. Two parents working in the family now is the reality for 43 percent of our families. In 1970, 11 percent of our families with children under 18 were headed by a single parent. By 1996 that number had risen to 27 percent. By the year 2005, women are expected to represent 48 percent of the work force. More than 70 percent of mothers today are in the work force. It is not a value judgment about whether those statements are right or wrong, good or bad. It is kind of like this is the reality that we have in America in 1998 and we need to take a look at what used to be nontraditional families or work styles or work patterns in the family and does American labor law recognize that kind of reality? Or was it set up to support and reflect the reality that most of the time there was a parent at home. That is not the case today. Do we provide the flexibility, the opportunity for adults to have flexibility in their job schedules so that they have a greater degree of latitude in making sure that a parent is home with a child, if that is what they choose to do, so that parents can adjust their work schedules perhaps to a greater degree of flexibility in relationship to when their children are at school, when their children are on vacation or perhaps when their children have a day off of school? Do parents have the kind of flexibility to match their work schedules to their children's schedules? Those are some questions that we ought to ask. How do we support a family to make different kinds of choices about how they will support their family? There is a couple of other interesting trends. This relates to how we work. I mean technology is going gang busters. It is unbelievable what technology is doing in the workplace. I have been out of the private sector for a little over 5 years, and going back and touring different plants and going through different facilities it is amazing that even in 5 short years how much technology has changed work environments and really enhancing the skills and the capabilities of American workers. What has happened to the cost of telecommunications? They have decreased significantly. What used to cost $9 in 1950, this is a charge for a 3-minute call from New York to the United Kingdom, in 1950 that 3-minute call cost $9. By 1996 we were down in the neighborhood of $3. But I think even more interesting than the reduction in the cost of telecommunications is the change in processing capability. How many transistors can be packed onto a single microchip? It doubles every 16 or every 18 months. It is expected to reach 125 million by the turn of the century. What that means is the number of transistors packed onto a single Intel microprocessor. In 1971, a little over, roughly 2,000. By 1978, model number 2, we moved up in the area of perhaps 50,000. By 1997, we are approaching 10 million. And they are expecting by the end of the century to reach 125 million. And that has a very huge impact on the workplace. And the amazing thing is they keep packing this stuff onto a transistor while lowering costs. We would all like to own a Rolls Royce, perhaps. Coming from Michigan, I would prefer to own a car built in Detroit. But if Rolls Royce or anybody who makes a hundred thousand dollar car had applied the same increases in productivity to producing a car that Intel and other chip manufacturers have put into their processing, a hundred thousand dollar car in 1975 today would cost $4.50. The cost of technology is going down, which is enabling us to increase the productivity, the effectiveness of the American workplace and will have a significant impact on the workplace of the future. Let us talk about some of the places that we have visited. We have gone to a number of high-tech areas. We have been in Seattle, we have been in Silicon Valley, we have been in Dallas and Houston and Atlanta. Twenty-two roundtables. I think we have talked to 187 different people, most of the time in the area where they work, if not specifically in the facility that they work. One message keeps coming back. We need skilled workers. We need a system that allows our workers to receive training, training, training, training, because the very nature of their jobs continues to evolve. We need an environment where we have skilled people entering into the work force and when they are in the work force they keep enhancing their skills. Now, some workers may think that that's threatening, but in the workers we talk to it is exhilarating. The ability to take a job and grow it and grow it and grow it rapidly is exciting, because each time they learn and expand their job it is an opportunity to more fully utilize their God given skills. What numbers do we see? Occupations requiring a Bachelor's Degree or above will average a 25 percent growth, or double the projected growth rate for occupations requiring less education and training. We need more skilled workers: Systems analysts, computer engineers. These are the third and fourth fastest growing occupations from 1994 to 2005. We need systems analysts; we need computer engineers. This is a fast growing industry. There are great opportunities. This is also a kind of an interesting thing. When we are talking about software and we talk about the nature of competition, if you are a software engineer, we need you. And if we do not provide skills and opportunity for individuals to get those skills, what happens? We will have software engineers in other parts of the world, because when you are writing software, you are not limited by time or distance. If you write a program in Indonesia, if you write it in China, if you write it in India, you can probably get your product to the office next door faster than I could if I was in the office next door and just kind of walked over. You can get it over. Remember the cost we talked about in telecommunications? Right now 11 semiconductor companies they had open requisitions for 17,000 employees. Nearly 40 percent of surveyed manufacturers said skill deficiencies prevented them from introducing new technology or enhancing their productivity. Manufacturers are saying we can increase productivity, lower the cost of our products, increase the value of the American worker but we need workers with more skills. Twenty percent of surveyed manufacturers said that they are potentially stopping business expansion because they do not have enough workers with the skills that they need. Eighty-eight percent of surveyed manufacturers reported a shortage of qualified workers in at least one job category. What have we found in our site visits? We have gone there, we have invited people on the other side of the aisle to participate with us. The Department of Labor has been at all of our events. Remember the opportunity and what we are trying to do is obtain input from individual Americans on how they view their jobs, their companies and their workplace to better understand what is working and what is wasted. All of this with the intent of getting more money back into the pockets of the American worker and developing an American worker agenda; to encourage candid discussions; to make sure that America is globally competitive in the 21st century; to pinpoint and identify innovative practices; to identify emerging trends; to make sure that we can measure those trends versus the restrictions that may be placed on them in labor law; and to obtain an overview of the future. We have had some wonderful success stories. One of the places we visited, we met with a group of management and union employees dealing with the maritime industry, an industry that has seen its work force decline from 30,000 to 3,000. They are going to come back to us with a proposal and say, you know, some of the labor law and some of the Federal restrictions, some of the problems were self-inflicted but some of it was the result of American labor law. We are going to come back to you with a recommendation from labor and from management on how we might modify that labor law because we would like to get those jobs back in America. We have gone to a job training site and we have heard success stories about people who have gone through this. A welfare mom, for 13 years, tried to get into an apprenticeship program, constantly excluded. Finally got into another job apprenticeship program. She is 33. She is off of welfare. She has bought her own home, has her child enrolled in a private school. She is now living the American dream. She got the skills that were required, moved into a job, bought a home and is helping her child now get an education. Here is an example one of the corporations we visited and one of the colleges that we visited. There is a lot of good stuff going on in America's community colleges. But this community college said before we do anything to give them, our students, advanced skills or college level skills, 60 percent of our students who are coming in are not ready for college level work. Think about this. How can we be globally competitive if 60 percent of our students who are entering community college do not have the basic skills to do college work? The constant theme we get is the shortage of workers. Another success story. A small waste management, wastewater management plant, an excellent story of union and management coming together creating an innovative work environment, a team environment. We hear about participation, teaming, blurring the lines between management and employees to focus on the success of the corporation. Employee involvement. The result? The gain sharing plan. Because of this team effort between union personnel and management, $2,000 in the pocket of each worker in 1996. Another thing people are talking about, different work styles. Telecommuting. People working from their home because of the change in technology. The need for flatter, more flexible work environments. The nature of work in many industries is changing and management and workers are recognizing that they need to work together to be successful in a global economy. Another community college that we visited talks about in their program they formed a partnership. Key word: Partnership, teams. Whether it is between business and college, whether it is between management and workers, whether it is between unions and management, the marriage of labor and education is their theme, recognizing that the skills that they teach within their community colleges have to be directly translated and transferable into a job. Talk about rapid change. We visited with a company, a high-tech company. Their planning year, they talk about a web year. I did not know what a web year was. They told me, ``Well, our planning horizon is about 90 days.'' I said, ``That is kind of short-sighted. Why do you not plan longer?'' In their industry they have as much change going on in 90 days as perhaps other people have going on in a year. As a matter of fact, this company, this high-tech company, 80 percent of their product volume in 1998 will come from products that were introduced in the last 3 months of 1997. Talk about a rate of change. Think about this: 80 percent of your product volume comes from products that were introduced in the last 3 months of 1997. And you say, it must be a small start-up company. Wrong. They have 15,000 employees, 15,000 employees, who now recognize that they have to compete in four areas. They have to be the most advanced and most skilled in technology. They have to be very good at marketing. They have got to keep their costs down. And they have got to develop an organizational capability. Because not only do they have to get it right, but they have to do it over and over and over again because of the shortness of the life cycles in the products that they are dealing with. Does American labor law recognize this kind of environment when we go back to 1938 and it took, like, five and a half days to build a car? Today, General Motors can build a car in 26 hours; and a company like this recognizes that they have to produce new products because, next year, 80 percent of that volume will come from the products that they just introduced and they have the future of 15,000 employees in their hands. Another corporation talked to us about areas of low unemployment. They have new challenges. Drugs in the workplace. We need to address and solve the drug problem. Workers who enter the workforce with a drug problem are not fulfilling their key responsibilities to their employer when they have this problem. Workers need more flexibility. Different family styles, two parents working, they need more flexibility to be able to support their children at home. What does that mean? That is something we are going to have to debate and work through. Every place that I have gone to has had a low unemployment rate. They take a look at our Federal programs and they say, have you got training programs for this and for that, training programs for this group? It is not what we need. We need the opportunity at a local level to address the workers' skill issue, that for those communities that have low unemployment the issue of training workers is very different. When we have got 4 percent unemployment, the type of work, the type of skills and the type of effort we need to bring to those 4 percent in the workforce may be very different than if we are in an area that has 8 or 10 percent unemployment, may be very different in an area where we just had a major manufacturer leave and we are trying to retrain the workers that were in this business and attract new businesses. It is a very complex economy that we work in, and we need to design flexibility within our programs so that the leaders at the local level can identify the problems and the opportunities that they have, and we have to recognize that they are best able to identify what they need to do about that. Again, we have seen wonderful examples. Sometimes they say we are not maximizing what we can do because we have got so many rules and regulations coming from Washington. A lot of talk about alternative work styles. What I am talking about here is we have got full-time permanent employees, we have got part- time permanent employees, we have got temporary workers, we have got contract employees, we have got leased employees. There are all kinds of different work arrangements. Should Federal labor law reward one or recognize one as being better than others? Some of the highest paid workers in the high-tech industry love being contract employees or love being independent contractors. They love being independent workers who maybe work from their home and go and work for certain companies on a specific project for a specific period of time and then move on to another challenge or do that as perhaps they are developing a business. Is that better or worse than being a full-time permanent employee? Current labor law would lead us to believe that one is better than another. I am not sure that is the right case. We need to recognize that people want different work styles because the type of jobs and the type of family structure and the type of challenges that they want and what is important to them may be very different than what they were in 1938 or 1948. We met with a group of individuals who have disabilities. We have a decreasing rate of population growth. We should do everything we can to enable those people to be fully employed as well. Whether we have high growth rates or whether we have low growth rates, they deserve an opportunity to contribute in our society. Then why is it that current Medicare and Medicaid assistance provides disincentives for these people to go to work? One person mentioned that he has the opportunity to do this, to take a $30,000 a year job. If he takes the job, he will lose $29,000 a year attending care assistance. Maybe there is a better way to do that, a compromise that says, we really want you in the workforce. You want to contribute. We know that this is not a good trade-off for you. As a matter of fact, this trade- off does not work for you, that if you go out and take a job and earn $30,000, the first $29,000 goes to replace what otherwise you would have got from Medicare or Medicaid. How do we fix that? How do we solve that? It is the best solution for this individual. I think we can reach a compromise that would save taxpayers money. Why are some of these things happening? It comes back to technology. Technology is opening up a whole new world for individuals with disabilities to contribute. We need to recognize that, and we need to modify American labor law to take that into account. Finally, we cannot go around America and talk to workers and business without hearing about bureaucracy, red tape, and the Federal Government wasting money. Too often, these companies are burdened with costs placed on them by the Federal Government that add no value. We have got to recognize that there are American workers and American businesses that are trying to be globally competitive, who each day are going out there; and they are pinching pennies; and they are finding pennies; and they are saving nickels; and they are glad they do it. And when they do it, that money either goes to the employee or it goes back in investment or it goes to a shareholder or goes in lower prices. But that is a positive thing to do when we find waste. What we are saying with the American working project is saying to the American worker and to American business, help us find that waste in government regulations. How can you save pennies and nickels in Federal rules and regulations that add costs to your business but do not add any value? What would you like to do in your business but cannot because Federal labor laws are in the way? We need help to identify what works and what is wasted. We need help in identifying where we need to go and how we are going to get there, and we need help from the American worker. We need help because we are developing an agenda for you that will help you be successful, will help you be competitive and will enable you to be the most productive worker on the planet. When we combine high productivity with high skills and a favorable economic climate, those high-paying jobs will be in America. That is where we want them to be. That is where we need them to be. And, by partnering together, that is where we will be. My colleague from Pennsylvania (Mr. Weldon) is not here. I was going to yield the last 10 or 15 minutes of this special order to him. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. HOEKSTRA

Mr. HOEKSTRA. I would very much look forward to working with my colleague. I realize that it is a complex issue, and I really think that where we are beginning with a macropicture really allows us to go through a learning process in very much a bipartisan way. So thank you very much, and I look forward to working with you.

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

Mr. HOEKSTRA

Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman from California for yielding me this time. Let us take a look at what H.R. 2616 does. What the bill does is it increases funding for charter schools, reduces the amount of money that stays in Washington, directs the Secretary and the States to ensure that charter schools receive their fair share of other Federal funding dollars. As we have gone around the country, one of the things that we have experienced when we have taken a look at charter schools is that charter schools seem in too many cases not to be getting their fair share of Federal dollars, so we are addressing that issue, and it also then amends title VI so that in this program, money that is used for professional development, computers and technology, curriculum development and magnet schools, that there is now one more use that is allowed. If a local school district or a State wants to use the money, they can use it for charter schools. Why is this so important? As we have gone around the country, we have visited around 13 States, 15 different field hearings. Charter schools is an experiment that many of the States are working on to improve education for our children. In every State it is slightly different. What this says is we want to encourage this development at the State level. We want to support this innovation. We have seen charter schools in California, we have seen them in Arizona, we saw them in Delaware, we have seen them in Michigan, we have seen different types and experimentation of similar types of programs in Wisconsin and Ohio. There is a lot of innovation going on, and this really is a fundamental role where the Federal Government maybe does have a legitimate place in being involved in saying, this is a research effort, we need to fund this research effort, we need to learn from this process, and we then need to share this learning and understanding with the other States and become kind of a clearinghouse so that other people can see and learn from what we are finding around the country. As I have said, we have gone around the country. We have seen so many exciting things in education. We have seen in some of the toughest school districts in some of the toughest parts of the country, we have seen real improvement, because States have empowered people at the local level to do what they feel needs to be done at the local level. Charter schools along with some of these other experiments is something that the Federal Government should be supporting, something that we should be encouraging, and something that we should be learning from and then disseminating the information around the country so that other local school districts and States can learn from it and put together the most effective education package for that local community and for that State.