Jim Jeffords

Mr. JEFFORDS

Mr. JEFFORDS. Mr. President, I yield 10 minutes to the Senator from Tennessee.

Mr. JEFFORDS. I yield the Senator from Minnesota 5 minutes.

Mr. JEFFORDS. Reserving the right to object, I would like to just get us out of the situation we are in and then be happy to turn it over to morning business, if that is all right with the Senator.

Mr. JEFFORDS. I yield back the remainder of my time.

Mr. JEFFORDS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that with respect to the amendment offered by Senator Smith, there be 1 hour for debate, equally divided between Senator Smith and myself. I also ask unanimous consent that no second-degree amendments be in order.

Mr. JEFFORDS. Mr. President, I make a point of order that a quorum is not present.

Mr. JEFFORDS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. JEFFORDS. Mr. President, I send an amendment to the desk and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. JEFFORDS. I ask unanimous consent the pending amendment be laid aside.

Mr. JEFFORDS. I offer the amendment.

Mr. JEFFORDS. Mr. President, I would make a point of order that a quorum is not present.

Mr. JEFFORDS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. JEFFORDS

Mr. JEFFORDS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. JEFFORDS

Mr. JEFFORDS. I ask unanimous consent that there now be a period for the transaction of morning business with Senators permitted to speak up to 5 minutes each.

Mr. JEFFORDS. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. JEFFORDS

Mr. JEFFORDS. Madam President, I thank the Senator from Washington for a very detailed and very well-done discussion of the bill that we are considering, IDEA. However, I have to differ and would like to explain some of the areas where I think there may be confusion, if it is not explained. First of all, I reiterate the situation that we have with respect to the requirements of States to provide an education to children with disabilities. This matter was brought up in the late sixties, early seventies in some 26 courts. Two decisions finally were utilized to define what was required. First of all, there is no constitutional requirement to provide an education by a State. However, if a State does provide a free education to students, it cannot discriminate, and, therefore, it must provide an appropriate--and that is the keyword the courts used--an appropriate education for a child with disabilities. Because this was nationwide in its decision, and since the States all provided a free education, it became necessary to define, in a sense, what was appropriate, and the courts labored to do that. In the consensus decree developed by the parties involved, those kinds of requirements and specificities were defined in that court decree. As a result of that, the Congress decided that since this affected all the States, that it be wise if they assisted the States in being able to meet the mandates of the court regarding the requirements of the States to provide an appropriate education. We did that, taking the words from the courts' decisions which defined appropriate education must also, when appropriate, have a mainstreaming component and, thus, we have set out in the early version, 94-142, what was to be done to reach the courts' mandates, not the Congress' mandates but the courts' mandates of constitutional law. The Senator from Washington brings up a problem of which we should all be aware, and that is there are limited funds available for our school systems to utilize, and any time that the courts mandate that certain things must be done, that necessarily is going to utilize those additional resources to handle those that are being discriminated against in order to give them an appropriate education. That was done. Whether it affects the other young people by having resources not appropriately assigned to the various groups, that is a question which is of interest and of importance for us to take a look at. I personally feel strongly that right now in our country, we have to look at all of the young people and determine that question ourselves. I would say that the results of those that are noncollege bound and those that are not under the law with disabilities may have an argument that they are not getting a qualified education, because when we graduate 51 percent of those young people--frankly, all of the young people in that forgotten half group who are graduating from high school functionally illiterate don't have the standards necessary to meet the needs, as the Senator from Washington pointed out, of our society for the next century and may have an argument. That is another case. We are here looking at how to protect children with disabilities in conformance with the courts' mandates regarding States which offer free education. Also, he grossly overstated the cost of this in the public school systems. If you take a look at what the costs are, I think the total cost for all of special education is over $30 billion--$38 billion. That is nowhere near what we spend totally on education in this country; certainly nowhere near what perhaps one would think we spend. I do not know what the total is we spend, but it is far in excess of that. He also got into the question of uniformity, that there is a double standard. He thinks the States should decide, that they don't need the Federal Government to give them any uniformity. I think that would have been totally disruptive to the system. I think the courts were appropriate to bring the consensus decision they did, and I think the Federal Government appropriately stepped in with this law to say let's have uniformity, let's establish what the standards are that must be met to take care of those children with disabilities. A great deal of time was spent on lawyer's fees. I am not going to spend much time on that. I could read the requirements. First of all, there is no requirement for any attorney's fees. There is nothing in the law that says you have to pay. It says the courts may order--they may order--attorney's fees under certain circumstances. If you look at those circumstances, you will see they are all very reasonable ones. It is all may, may, may. There is no requirement that any attorney's fees be paid. I don't want to spend much time on that one. I just have to comment on District of Columbia because I love this city, but they do have terrible problems all the way down, it is not just in special education. They have terrible problems up and down. We are trying to correct those. Actions have been taken. But as far as the amount of litigation, there were only 100 cases brought in 1993. We don't have the figures since then. That is hardly any. You have 110,000 schools. There has been a court case in a tenth of 1 percent of the schools. It is not a huge problem in that respect. I am personally appreciative of the effort of the Senator from Washington at explaining his position. I think it helps elevate the understanding of the people as to what is in this law. But I disagree with most of the comments made. We do represent--I know from going around--the feelings and opinions of a number of people, and it is appropriate, therefore, for us to discuss, as best we can, these concerns and to alleviate these concerns. I think we have done an excellent job with respect to trying to take care of the problems. The final thing I will mention is with respect to discipline and a child that may be dangerous in a school room. I think as has been pointed out, there is a very substantial change to protect the children in a disrupted classroom. A child may be removed now and may be removed continuously, following appropriate procedures, until such time as that child really settles down and is no longer dangerous. So it is not the kind of a situation we had before this bill which left, in many cases, the school system pretty helpless when dealing with a disruptive child. I believe we have done an excellent job of taking care of that and, hopefully, my colleagues will read those provisions and agree with me that we have made a great step forward in undoing what has happened in so many of the classrooms in some areas where a child is dangerous and disrupted the school setting. Madam President, I yield the floor. Mr. ASHCROFT addressed the Chair.

Mr. JEFFORDS. Mr. President, I want to take a moment to explain where we are. We have one amendment pending, the Gregg amendment, which has been offered and which we all would love to do. Again, I want to explain to my colleagues why we are in a position where it is difficult, if not impossible, for us to accept any amendments, notwithstanding how much we would like to do so. The House will be passing in the morning the same bill, identical. We hope to pass here the same bill. The reason for that is one that is hard to explain because I don't like to have this kind of a situation. But as I explained this morning to my colleagues, last year, we came very close to passing the bill which was almost identical to what we have, but we have made some changes to reconcile some of the problems that were raised. At the time, we tried to do that, the word got out and erroneous statements were made about it. This is such a volatile area, where you are dealing with young people with disabilities and educational settings and the concept of mainstreaming and all these things. It is a very emotional subject. The whole thing fell apart. What we have done this year with the leadership in the Senate pulling together, with David Hoppe and the groups from all over the country, we finally reached, the other night, the final, final agreement. Everybody is holding hands. Notwithstanding that, there are people today spreading incorrect information around the country that certain things have happened and people are getting concerned. We are trying to make sure we don't have any opportunity for this bill to fall apart. It is so important, so emotional, and so difficult, so we are trying to do that. At times, I will have to speak against things that I agree with. We have the Gregg amendment pending right now. It is a concept I think everybody in the Senate agrees with. In fact, they voted 93 to 0 to do what he wants to do some time ago on the Goals 2000 bill. To do that again would create a problem. I have already announced my support for us to reach the goal of 40 percent to fund the total cost of problems with disabilities in this bill. We started off when we passed it back in 1975 with funding at 12 percent. It went down as low as about 5 percent. We are now back up to about 8 percent, around the efforts of Senator Gregg, primarily, last year. I hope we will get that kind of a commitment. I agree with everything Senator Gregg is doing, but I have to oppose it because it would create a problem we don't want to create. With that piece of knowledge, as soon as the Senator from Washington is ready, he can speak; he has an amendment. I wanted to lay out what I will do when he is finished. I thank the Chair and yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. JEFFORDS. I want to thank the Senator from Missouri for a very articulate explanation of the most difficult area that we faced, and that is how to handle disruptive children in the school. That has been a very, very troubling problem for schools to handle. It has been one which has led to considerable concern about the effectiveness of special education. The Senator's help in producing this amendment and in these things, I think, has done more to get this bill quickly in shape where I think it will have close to unanimous passage. I deeply appreciate all the help the Senator has given.

Mr. JEFFORDS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. JEFFORDS. Mr. President, I understand the Senator from Washington desires to speak shortly. I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. JEFFORDS. Mr. President, what is the pending business?

Mr. JEFFORDS

Mr. JEFFORDS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate now proceed to the consideration of Calendar No. 46, S. 717.

Mr. JEFFORDS. Mr. President, this amendment clarifies that the obligation to make a free appropriate education to children with disabilities does not apply with respect to children age 19 through 21 to the extent that State law does not require special education-related services under part B of IDEA. We provided for children with disabilities who, in the educational placement prior to incarceration in an adult correctional facility first, were not actually identified as a child with a disability under section 6023 or did not have an individualized educational program. This is a technical amendment to clarify for which children a State does or does not have an obligation to provide special education- related services relative to incarcerated individuals. The same technical amendment is to be incorporated as a technical amendment when it is to be considered by the full House when it considers its companion bill tomorrow. This is agreed to by both Houses, as well as by both sides in this. I ask the amendment be considered agreed to.

Mr. JEFFORDS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. JEFFORDS

Mr. JEFFORDS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.