Jim Jeffords

Mr. JEFFORDS

Mr. JEFFORDS. I yield the floor. Mr. BINGAMAN addressed the Chair.

Mr. JEFFORDS. I send an amendment to the desk on behalf of Senator Lott, Senator Jeffords, Senator Gregg, Senator Collins, Senator Frist, and Senator Sessions.

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

Mr. JEFFORDS. Mr. President, I now send to the desk an amendment for Mr. Lott on behalf of himself and Senator Jeffords, Mr. Gregg, Ms. Collins, Mr. Frist, and Mr. Sessions.

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

Mr. JEFFORDS. Mr. President, I ask on behalf of Senator Lott and others I send an amendment to the desk.

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

Mr. JEFFORDS. Mr. President, at this time I would just like to make some brief comments on the amendments which have been presented by the minority. I would like to again reiterate for my colleagues that the process we are going into was an agreement reached in order to move this bill along. This bill, which is known as the Ed-Flex bill, is relatively noncontroversial. I think the only vote in opposition in committee, and may well be in the Chamber, was by Senator Wellstone. But we are in the process to move this bill along, to move it along with the House bill, which I believe was passed, or will be passed today in order to get it into law in time so that States may have a maximum benefit from its passage. It is a bill with which all 50 Governors agree, a bill with which the President agrees, and the Department of Education has been sending the guidelines out for its utilization. All of this is ongoing. However--and it is understandable--the minority has a desire to be able to put amendments on the bill because they feel strongly that these initiatives ought to be put into law. However, as chairman of the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, I must say that we are in the process now of reauthorizing the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. That act is where most of these amendments should be. Some of them are perhaps relevant. For example, part of the Wellstone amendment is relevant to the Ed-Flex bill. If we are going to assure that the committee system works--where evidence is presented at hearings, where we have people from the local schools all the way up to the States' Department of Education testify, where we can be absolutely sure of what we are doing in this incredibly important bill, the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, which has some $50 billion in Federal dollars, I believe it should not be done in this kind of ad hoc process of attaching amendments. Well-intentioned as the amendments may be, some of which I would agree to, some of which I have even offered in the past, we can not offer them in a way that does not make sense when you are trying to be more effective with the expenditure of Federal funds. There is $50 billion included, and yet, as I mentioned earlier, over the last 15 years, ever since we understood we had some serious problems in education in this country, we have seen absolutely no measurable improvement in the test results of our young people. That is an intolerable situation. It does not make any sense to reauthorize a bill, which has obviously not had much impact on improving education in this country, without holding hearings or before fully examining it. I am put in the very difficult position of having to allow these amendments to be presented in order to move the bill along, and then I will be the one to have to move to table. A motion to table means you do not allow the amendment to be voted on, and I will do this because the amendment should be offered when the Elementary and Secondary Education Act is before us. But, my move to table will give the political argument that I killed all these amendments. I am just trying to help this country's education system improve and not to do it in this ad hoc, messy way. Therefore, I must oppose the amendment offered by my colleague from California, Mrs. Feinstein. I have long advocated that we, as a Nation, need to address, head on, the issue of social promotion. In fact, we made some progress in this area last Congress. Funds made available for title II of the Higher Education Act, teacher quality enhancement grants, may be used by States to develop and implement efforts to address the problem of social promotion and prepare teachers to effectively address the issues raised by ending the practice of social promotion. ``Social promotion'' is a term which educators know, but I am not sure everyone does. It simply means that we sort of gave up on young people saying, well, it is not really that important that they know how to read because there are jobs that you can get without having to read. That situation has changed. We are going into the next century, and we know that unless a child has an excellent education when they graduate, they are not going to be able to get a good job. The literacy studies show that 51 percent--this is an incredible statistic--of the young people who graduated from high school, when measured for their performance, were functionally illiterate. We have to stop that. Ending social promotion is what that is all about. However, the amendment by Senators Feinstein and Dorgan is one I will reluctantly have to move to table, in order to make sure that we can move on in an orderly process on the ESEA reauthorization. The other amendment, by Senators Bingaman and Reid on school dropouts, is in a similar situation. We all know that we have to do something about school dropouts. We know that the so-called forgotten half in our educational system for years has been ignored, and when they get to sixth, seventh, and eighth grades they do not see any relevance to education in their lives. Everybody is pushing: You have to go to college; You have to go to college. And now we know there are many high-paying, skilled jobs that young people can get, and that young people would have the ability for if they had the proper schooling efforts in order to learn those skills that are necessary. And so we have to accommodate that. We have to make sure that the young people in the sixth and seventh grades understand that if they do things to get the education, they will be able to get a good job. There has been a tremendous move in that direction in some States. In Mississippi, with one of the worst records in the sense of educational performance, they are spending millions of dollars making sure that young people start looking at careers in the sixth grade so that they know there is a relevancy to the education and they won't drop out. It is very important. But it should be considered on the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, which is now before the committee, and on which we are holding hearings. I certainly agree with Senator Bingaman in what he is doing. There is another amendment that has to do with report cards that we have listened to, and that is fine, as well. But that is an issue for the States to address, not for the Federal Government to mandate. In many cases, the States are ahead of us in addressing the quality of their schools. Mr. President, 36 States already require report cards. We need to also remember that funding for education is primarily a State and local responsibility. So, again, that is another good approach, but it is something we should do in the orderly committee function. Senator Wellstone has amendments. I have to say at least one of them is relevant to the underlying act. He is on the committee. He had an opportunity to offer it, but did not. Under the present situation, Ed- Flex demands accountability of States that are participating. It is important to keep in mind that accountability has been part of Ed-Flex since its inception, and the managers' package builds on those strong accountability provisions. So, again, this one could have been offered in committee. He chose not to offer it in committee, so I must oppose that one as well. Mr. President, I again want to put everyone on notice that I have the responsibility to protect the ability of this committee to work in an orderly fashion. Because of that, I will have the unpleasant duty of probably moving to table these amendments when they come up, or to oppose them. I would like to also refer to the Boxer amendment. This is another one that is very familiar to me. The 21st Century Community Learning Centers is a program that I created back in 1994 as part of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. I fought hard to include this program in the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, and was successful, in spite of opposition from the very same administration. Getting the program funded was not easy in the face of the administration's opposition to this program. In fact, the administration proposed rescinding the fiscal year 1995 funding for the 21st Century Community Learning Centers. All of a sudden, the administration woke up and said: Hey, Republicans sometimes have a good idea. It is an amazing thing for this administration to recognize. But anyway, all of a sudden they put $750,000 into the program--I am sorry they asked to rescind it at another time. More recently, the administration decided that they now like this program, and in fiscal year 1997 they recommended $15 million for this program. Now they are increasing it even more. So, obviously, I am a great friend of that one. It was a bill I got passed back in 1994 in the last reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. I have enormous interest in changes to any of this legislation, certainly changes as dramatic as proposed by this amendment. This amendment almost completely rewrites the 21st Century Community Learning Centers. It changes its purpose, use of funds, and other aspects of the legislation. Last year, the administration, through the competitive grants process, substantially changed the focus and, indeed, the very nature of it by rewriting regulations. That was an unfortunate matter. Overnight, an act to expand the use of existing school facilities became an afterschool program--retracted it. All these other things are just as valuable. Certainly I understand the desires of Senator Boxer to work on that bill. We will have plenty of opportunity. She will have all the opportunity she wants when the bill comes out of the committee later this year. So, I could go on and on. But right now I again want to reiterate, in order to get this bill through we have been forced to go into this kind of amendment process, which some will say gives them the opportunity to do something constructive, knowing full well at the end of the day they on the other side of the aisle will not prevail because they do not have the votes. Fortunately, I believe my colleagues in the Senate, at least the majority of them, will say: Yes, let's use the orderly process, the one this institution was designed to utilize, in passing out legislation, passing out bills. And the process of offering amendments should be done first in the committee where they can have a good review after hearings and then secondly done on the floor. Mr. President, I reserve the remainder of my time.

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

Mr. JEFFORDS. Mr. President, for the convenience of all Members, I would like to let them know that, as far as I know, at least on the majority side of the aisle, there are no speakers desiring to come to the floor. I put them on notice that if I do not hear from them within 10 minutes, we may end up drawing the session to a close. As far as the other side of the aisle, I also inform them. I believe we have notified the minority that if they have no further speakers, we would appreciate knowing that. If we hear from no one within 10 minutes, we will presume they have no further people to be heard and then yield the remainder of the time back so that tomorrow we can start on schedule. I also notify Senators that the order of the amendments tomorrow will be the order that was originally delineated and not as they may have been presented, so that Senators will know exactly when their amendments will be coming before us. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum, and I ask unanimous consent that it be charged equally to each side.

Mr. JEFFORDS. Mr. President, I think we are down to two speakers. We have agreed that Senator Coverdell will speak for 5 minutes, and then I believe Senator Baucus will speak for about 6 or 7 minutes. I want to commend the Senator from Arkansas for his very eloquent discussion of the differences on how money ought to be spent. I appreciate him coming and sharing those with us.

Mr. JEFFORDS. Mr. President, I will yield time as he may consume to the Senator from Montana.

Mr. JEFFORDS. Mr. President, I have a modification at the desk for amendment No. 60, which I offer on behalf of Senator Lott. I ask unanimous consent the amendment be modified.

Mr. JEFFORDS. I ask unanimous consent to add as cosponsors to amendment No. 60, as modified, Senators Gregg, Collins, Frist, and Sessions.

Mr. JEFFORDS. Mr. President, I make a point of order that a quorum is not present and ask the time be charged equally to each side.

Mr. JEFFORDS. I thank the Senator from Oklahoma for an excellent statement. He has certainly put in perspective what we are trying to do here. We started out with a very simple bill, and now we have--well, we have the monster pared down somewhat by getting agreements on both sides. But I just remind everyone that we will be voting tomorrow on these amendments. There will be some debate time tomorrow morning for that purpose.

Mr. JEFFORDS. I yield.

Mr. JEFFORDS

Mr. JEFFORDS. Mr. President, I will use a little of the morning business time myself to just bring everyone up to date as to where we are at this point. This concludes the debate time for today. Tomorrow there will be, I believe, 1 hour evenly divided for Members to talk on the amendment process. The purpose of that time will be to try to make sure everybody understands the amendments, because we have a number of amendments. They seem low in number--there are about eight or nine amendments--but some of those are complicated by combinations of amendments. So I urge all of our Members to make sure that they understand the amendments. Because this is an important piece of legislation, which I want to get through, and the leader does also, we will be using probably a tabling situation for many of the amendments. I want to explain why that is. That is because most of these amendments should be on the Elementary and Secondary Education Act reauthorization which is being worked on at this time. That is a very important bill. It is a $15 billion bill. It has most of the Federal programs. And we will be looking at it very closely to determine whether there should be a paring down of programs, how effective the various agencies and departments have been, and we will be spending the time of deliberation to better utilize and to make sure we can maximize our improvement. As I said earlier today, the evidence is very clear that we have made very little improvement in our schools over the last 15 years, although we have been trying. Thus, it is important we take a close look at the Department of Education to see that those funds are being well spent.

Mr. JEFFORDS

Mr. JEFFORDS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate now proceed to a period of morning business with Members permitted to speak for up to 10 minutes each.

Mr. JEFFORDS

Mr. JEFFORDS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry be allowed to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, March 10, 1999. The purpose of this meeting will be to review the nature of agricultural production and financial risk, the role of insurance and futures markets, and what is and what should be the Federal Government's role in helping farmers manage risk.

Mr. JEFFORDS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Armed Services be authorized to meet on Wednesday, March 10, 1999, at 2:30 p.m., in open session, to examine lift requirements versus capabilities for the Marine Corps and the Army.

Mr. JEFFORDS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation be allowed to meet on Wednesday, March 10, 1999, at 10:00 a.m. on pending committee business.

Mr. JEFFORDS. Mr. President, the Finance Committee requests unanimous consent to conduct a hearing on Wednesday, March 10, 1999 beginning at 10:00 a.m. in room 215 Dirksen.

Mr. JEFFORDS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Foreign Relations be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, March 10, 1999, at 10:00 a.m. to hold a hearing.

Mr. JEFFORDS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Select Committee on Intelligence be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, March 10, 1999 at 2:30 p.m. to hold a closed hearing on Intelligence Matters.