Jim Jeffords

Mr. JEFFORDS

Mr. JEFFORDS. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. JEFFORDS

Mr. JEFFORDS. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. JEFFORDS. I am sure the Senator shares this with me, too. There were some staff members--Pat Morrissey on my staff had been working on this for 20 years or more, I guess. I know on the Senator's staff, members have had similar input. I think we ought to remember who it really is sometimes that moves this legislation along.

Mr. JEFFORDS. Mr. President, I thank the Senator for bringing that to my attention. I enjoyed working with the Senator. We introduced it jointly together, and your support, although you are not on the Finance Committee, has been most helpful in ensuring its success. We had a good hearing. There are a couple amendments which may come about, which I think can be taken care of without any serious diminution of the impact of the bill. I say on behalf of all the Senators on the committee and those that have signed on, we now have 62 cosponsors to that bill. This is an incredible step forward for people with disabilities who desire to work. I do not think there are very many who don't desire to work. They have been placed in this incredibly terrible position of, if you go to work, you lose your health care and you lose your SDI benefits or other benefits that you have to help you live. You just cannot do it except under very unusual circumstances. Thus, we have finally opened the door, after many years. The Senator worked on all these issues, too, starting with the bill that we have been talking about, special education, back in 1976, when we passed what is called IDEA. That opened the first big door, and that is to get an education. Without an education, you do not have any hope of being able to be employed. Since then, we have marched up through with ADA. I remember one of the amendments I had, which probably created the most stir, was when I was with John Brademas on his committee. I said, John, do you realize that the Federal Government is exempt from 504, which removes barriers for people with handicaps? He said, No. He said, Well, let us fix it. So over in the House, you have the day when you put all these unimportant amendments through and nobody looks at them. We had a little committee amendment on that which affected all the Federal buildings. I remember it well because when I got back to the office a couple days later, somebody had finally read the bill. It was filled with the head of the Post Office and everybody else asking me if I knew what I had done. I said, well, I didn't know how important it was until now, but that got the Federal Government by. Then we worked together on assisted technology as well. That bill we reauthorized last year, which is incredibly important at this time, to assist all those people with disabilities to have a better opportunity of getting employed because they have the assistance of technology to do that. It is a great day. I am confident that we certainly will prevail on the Senate floor. I think that the two Senators who have some problems we can take care of, but I thank you for your tremendous support over all the years we have been working together.

Mr. JEFFORDS. Mr. President, just very briefly, I thank the Senator from Massachusetts for his desire to join us in trying to push for more funds for special education. I hope we can be successful with our joint efforts.

Mr. JEFFORDS. Mr. President, the Senator from Massachusetts has made an excellent point. I do not argue with him. I, in fact, would have supported those appropriations and have supported the appropriations that have been recommended for education totally. I think the point Senator Gregg was making was that this administration does not place high enough priority on IDEA. I think the record bears this out. While the administration's proposed new programs increase funding elsewhere, it has shortchanged IDEA. The funding we are charged with under our promises and under the law as it reads--to fund 40 percent of the cost of special education--those costs are going up and are really making it difficult for our local communities to carry out other programs that have been recommended to help them. So I just wanted to make sure everyone recognizes that. Mr. President, I make a point of order a quorum is not present.

Mr. JEFFORDS

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

Mr. JEFFORDS. Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. JEFFORDS. Mr. President, I am sorry for not being successful in getting the Senator from New Mexico to withdraw the amendment. I understand the feelings. But to me, the best way right now that we can help immediately without having to wait through the whole process is to be dedicated to ensuring that we fully fund the money that is used for special ed. If we can use all of these funds that we want to be used otherwise just to do that, we would free up the States and local governments to be able to handle some of these problems. So I want to make it very clear that the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act is so important that we cannot prematurely adopt amendments which would put us in the position of having to undo things which this body does. It should be done in a very coordinated way that will allow us to thoroughly understand the impact of what we do. I also bring to the Senate's attention the front page of the Washington Post this Monday. The Post carried a story regarding the months of delay which learning-disabled students in Prince Georges County are experiencing in obtaining educational services. This is important to know, that we should take action now in this area. Antonio Martin, a 15-year-old resident of Prince Georges County, has been sitting home for a year waiting for placement in a school that can meet his needs. Today's Post carries a story regarding a Supreme Court decision requiring that schools pay for full-time nursing care in some situations, which will undoubtedly increase costs for any school which finds itself in this situation. But this is not just a Washington problem. This is a problem in every school in every State in the country. When I visit with school board members or principals in Vermont, funding IDEA, special education, is the first, second, and third thing they want our help on. The amendments that my Democratic colleagues are proposing are all well-intentioned, but they are not responding to what I am hearing from Vermont educators and educators around this whole country. Vermont's legislators are telling me the same thing. I visited the Vermont educational communities during the recent recess, and time and again they asked that the Federal Government uphold its commitment to fund IDEA. They did so without regard to party. Democrat and Republican legislators agreed that funding IDEA is easily the most important thing we can do by far. Last month, when our committee held hearings on education budget priorities, a representative, Al Perry, a Democrat from my good State of Vermont, was very persuasive on this point. In 1975, the year I came to Congress, we promised that we would provide funding that would be 40 percent of the national average per pupil expenditure for each school- age child with a disability. We have not delivered on that promise. In fiscal year 1998, we provided 10.8 percent of the excess costs of educating children with special needs. If we follow through on this promise, we will free up critical local funds. Once we do, local communities, and not the Federal Government, will be in the position to decide how to spend their local dollars--for teachers, for textbooks, for technology, or for some other locally determined educational policy. Senator Wellstone, yesterday, talked about listening to community needs. Anyone who has done so has probably heard the same thing that I have. The President certainly has--from school boards across the country and from the Governors. Yet the President has ignored their plea. In his budget request for fiscal year 2000, the 25th anniversary of IDEA, there is no increase in funding. In his public statements on education, he has ignored IDEA entirely. At a time when no educational issue seems to escape the administration's purview, special education seems stuck in the White House purgatory. A year ago I urged President Clinton to join Congress and keep the promise that we all made in 1975. He declined. Again, in December 1998, I implored the President to join us in meeting our commitment to children with disabilities. He ignored it. Instead, the President has made many new promises in his budget for fiscal year 2000. But what good are all these new promises if past promises are empty in the area of greatest need? Year after year we have seen budget requests from the administration that represent no real funding increase for special education. This constitutes a pattern of neglect and a lack of concern that cannot be defended. Children suffer, families suffer, and school districts suffer. In each of the last 3 years, Republican Congresses have increased Federal funding for special education by over 85 percent. We are fully committed to reaching that promise made 24 years ago. I show you a chart. What we have done has been fine, but look at what is left to do. In the orange there is what we should be paying but we are not paying. That is shown on that chart. If the President thinks Congress will take care of business and increase funding for special education, he is right. We will, through this amendment and other amendments. If he thinks because we will, he can put his funding priorities elsewhere, he is wrong. School districts are demanding financial relief. Children's needs must be met. Parents expect accountability. There is no better way to touch a school, help a child, or support a family than to place more dollars into special education. I urge my colleagues to support my amendment. If we put money into IDEA, school districts will be in a position to address class size or whatever they determine to be local priorities. They can ensure that children like Antonio Martin won't sit in education limbo for months on end. I yield the floor.

Mr. JEFFORDS. Mr. President, I send an amendment to the desk.

Mr. JEFFORDS. First, I thank the Senator from Ohio, who has had great experience in this area with respect to being Governor of that State. And watching what they have done makes me happy to know that we have a Senator with us now who has that experience in the immediate past. I look forward to looking to him for guidance.

Mr. JEFFORDS. I thank both Senators for raising this issue. There is no question but one of the most severe problems we have--probably the most severe problem we have--is the large number of dropouts in the schools. Certainly they have delineated their feelings on that very accurately. But I also point out, however, we are dealing this year with the Elementary and Secondary Education Act reauthorization. These programs, and I am sure there will be others which will be offered on this bill, are all worthy of a very substantial examination. In fact, we have already started holding hearings on reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. Those hearings are going well. We will be holding many more. Two-thirds of all the money we spend in education at the Federal level is on the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. That is where the money is. Thus, that is where these amendments are appropriate. I want to assure both Senators that it is my intention to give top priority to such programs as those for dropouts. This Nation, however, has a very serious problem with respect to education. The Senator from New Mexico and I sit on the Goals 2000 Panel. We have been there, frustrated, because over the period of time we have been on it we have not had any measurable change in the statistics in this country about the state of our education. The President has appropriately also pointed out the difficulties of social promotion. We are looking into that, obviously. There are programs that are required for that, but it is not easy to do it program by program. That is just not the way it should be handled. It should be handled in a coordinated effort, which we are doing, with hearings, to fully understand why, for instance, there are dropouts, why kids are dropping out, before we suddenly come up with a program that is going to attempt to alleviate the problem. So I want Members on both sides to please refrain from offering amendments that should be appropriately considered in the Elementary and Secondary Education Act's reauthorization, because only with coordinated hearings and sitting down and working together can we come up with a coordinated plan to handle all of these very serious issues which we have. I am hopeful the Senators would withdraw this amendment at this time. They have my assurances that we will be discussing fully the matter of school dropouts when we get into the hearing process. We are already into the hearing process. They are all tied together. We did pass, this past year, at least one or two efforts: The Reading and Excellence Act, which gets into the questions of why people drop out; and we have others that we passed last year that we are studying in terms of professional training and all that. There will be other amendments, I am sure, that we have heard about, that will also be right in line addressing the problem. There is one, I understand, on principals, principal training, and there will be a number of other amendments which they will offer. But I want to say I am not willing to accept amendments which will do what may be a good idea because of our purpose right now. Every 5 years we reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. We should concentrate on this right now. We have to have a coordinated effort on it. First, we must delineate specifically what the students should have when they leave the school. We know they should read. We have the social promotion situation that if they don't read, we just push them on through. The statistics are startling in that regard. Over half of the young people who have graduated from high school have graduated functionally illiterate. The primary cause of that is social promotion. What we do to try to alleviate that through ESEA is something we have to look into. Why do students drop out? We need to look into that very thoroughly. Obviously, a great deal of that usually occurs in the middle school area where young people come through and they don't see any relevance of education to their lives. We have to look into how to alleviate the middle school problem. One of the problems there is the lack of training of principals. That is another area we should be looking at in the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. But right now I want to be very clear: I do not think we should be using this bill to do that. This bill is one which will just help the States now to be able to deal with some of these problems with more flexibility in the way they can handle their school systems in the allocation of funds. They need that flexibility now to handle these problems. We should concentrate on the reauthorization and not try to do it piecemeal on this bill, which is left over from last year. We got 10 good bills out. We didn't get this one out. The committee handled the bill. I don't think these were offered as amendments at that time. Certainly I had the same attitude then as I do now. With that, I urge Senators seriously to consider not offering these at this point and wait for the Elementary and Secondary Education Act to do that. Several Senators addressed the Chair.

Mr. JEFFORDS

Mr. JEFFORDS. Mr. President, I object to further consideration of this measure at this time.

Mr. JEFFORDS. Mr. President, a bill is at the desk due for its second reading. I ask it be read.

Mr. JEFFORDS

Mr. JEFFORDS. I yield back all our remaining committee time.

Mr. JEFFORDS. I yield to the Senator 5 minutes.

Mr. JEFFORDS. Mr. President, I understand the Senator from Oregon desires some time.

Mr. JEFFORDS. Would the Senator mind yielding his time to the Senator?

Mr. JEFFORDS. The Senator from Oregon is desirous of speaking for 15 minutes.

Mr. JEFFORDS. Will the Senator yield?

Mr. JEFFORDS. Mr. President, I have no intention at this time to speak. I will obviously at a later time. I will do it when it is appropriate. But I desire to expedite our situation so that we can get to the bill as soon as possible.

Mr. JEFFORDS

Mr. JEFFORDS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the pending committee amendment be agreed to and be considered as original text for the purpose of further amendment.

Mr. JEFFORDS. I send a substitute amendment to the desk and ask for its immediate consideration.

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

Mr. JEFFORDS. Today, Mr. President, we are taking up what I would call ``unfinished business'' from last Congress. Our bipartisan efforts in the last Congress resulted in nearly 30 public laws, about a third of them in the area of education. However, there was one bill that was reported from the Health and Education Committee with broad bipartisan support, the Ed-Flex bill, that was not enacted into law. A year ago, the President told the Nation's Governors that passage of this legislation--and I quote him--``would dramatically reduce the regulatory burden of the federal government on the states in the area of education.'' Six months ago, Secretary Riley wrote me to reiterate the administration's support for the Ed-Flex bill and urged its passage. The Senate Health and Education Committee heeded his advice and passed it with only one dissenting vote. The National Governors' Association, under the chairmanship of Governor Carper from Delaware, has strongly urged the Congress to pass Ed-Flex this year. Last November, the General Accounting Office looked at this program in detail, both at the dozen States that now participate in the Ed-Flex program and the 38 that potentially could participate under this legislation. It found that views among the current States varied, but it was seen as modestly helpful. It would be a gross overstatement to suggest that this bill will revolutionize education. It will be a sensible step in making our limited resources go further toward the goal of improving our education delivery system. The Department of Education, under the leadership of Secretary Riley, has stated that Ed-Flex authority will help States in ``removing potential regulatory barriers to the successful implementation of comprehensive school reform'' initiatives. I would like to take a moment to briefly review the history of Ed- Flex. The original Ed-Flex legislation was first conceived by former Senator Mark Hatfield, as many of us know, an individual deeply committed to improving education. His proposal had its roots in his home State of Oregon which has long been a role model in education. Under Ed-Flex, the Department of Education gives a State some authority to grant waivers within a State, giving each State the ability to make decisions about whether some school districts may be granted waivers pertaining to certain Federal requirements. It is very important to note that States cannot waive any Federal regulatory or statutory requirements relating to health and safety, civil rights, maintenance of effort, comparability of services, equitable participation of students and professional staff in private schools, parental participation and involvement, and distribution of funds to State or local education agencies. They have no authority to waive any of those. The 1994 legislation authorized six Ed Flex states, three designations were to be awarded to states with populations of 3.5 million or greater and 3 were to be granted to states with populations less than 3.5 million. These states were not chosen randomly nor quickly--the selection process was 2 and one-half years in duration. The Department of Education sent out a notice and a state interested in participating in Ed Flex submitted an application. In the application, each interested state was required to describe how it would use its waiver authority, including how it would evaluate waiver applications from local school districts and how it would ensure accountability. The original six are: Kansas, Massachusetts, Ohio, Oregon, Texas, and my home state of Vermont. Another six states came on board between May 1996 and July 1997. Those additional states are: Colorado, Illinois, Iowa, Maryland, Michigan, and New Mexico. Vermont has used its Ed Flex authority to improve Title One services, particularly improving services for those students in smaller rural areas. In addition, my home state has also used Ed Flex authority to provide greater access to professional development, which is a very critical area and perhaps has the greatest impact on enhancing student performance. The Department of Education has stated that the 12 current Ed Flex states have ``used their waiver authority carefully and judiciously.'' In last November's GAO report on Ed Flex, several state officials from the established Ed Flex states, said that ``Ed Flex promotes a climate that encourages state and local educators to explore new approaches . . .'' The bill before us today, S. 280, under the sponsorship of Senator Bill Frist and Senator Ron Wyden, has significantly improved the accountability aspects of the 1994 Ed Flex law. S. 280 is very specific regarding a state's eligibility under Ed Flex authority. The bill makes it clear that a state must have state content standards, challenging student performance standards, and aligned assessments as described in Title 1 or the state must have made substantial progress, as determined by the Secretary, in implementing its Title 1 state standards. This legislation also emphasizes the importance of school and student performance. Each local education agency applying for a waiver must describe its ``specific, measurable, educational goals'' regarding progress toward increased school and student performance. As I indicated earlier, this legislation is not meant to serve as the sole solution to improving school and student performance. However, it does serve as a mechanism that will give states the ability to enhance services to students through flexibility with real accountability. I urge my colleagues to support S. 280 and to withhold extraneous amendments that will delay and complicate its enactment. I take this opportunity to thank Senator Bill Frist and Ron Wyden and their staff for their hard work on this legislation. They have done an outstanding job and I commend them for their efforts. I yield the floor.