George Miller

Mr. MILLER of California

Mr. MILLER of California. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words, and I rise in support of the amendment. Mr. Chairman, this amendment is about an individual, Mr. Hurwitz. It is about corporate ethics and corporate policy, and it is about special legislation that if you are rich enough, you are strong enough, you have enough lawyers and you have enough lobbyists, what you can get done in the Congress of the United States. It was not about the families who are on the poster board here, because if they wanted to take care of those families, they could have. The driving force for this amendment is Mr. Hurwitz. Mr. Hurwitz, who would get exempted not 145 acres or 165 acres on the family spread. Not that, but 32,000 acres of California's redwood forest heritage that he seeks now to log in violation of the law. But that is not anything new from Mr. Hurwitz. Because when Mr. Hurwitz had a pension fund, he ran the pension fund in violation of the law. When Mr. Hurwitz had an S&L, a savings and loan, he cost the taxpayers of this country a billion dollars, because he ran that in violation of the law. When Mr. Hurwitz had employees, he ran his company in violation of the law with respect to the labor law.

Mr. MILLER of California. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself the balance of my time, and in 30 seconds I would say that I always knew the gentleman from Ohio was never a rubber stamp for our President, but let me just say that in this budget we do an awful lot for local communities, because the forest monies we talked about earlier go to schools and public maintenance out west. We may not want to talk about that in the rest of the country, but the fact of the matter is this entire budget deals with local governments and we can choose. This is a priority. The gentleman may not like this priority, but this is a priority of the American people because this is about their neighborhoods and about crime. All of the evidence is starting to emerge that these are facilities that our neighborhoods need. That is why this program is included in the crime bill, too. The gentleman might have voted against that, but the fact of the matter is that is what the police chiefs and others have said they wanted in their arsenal to fight crime and to work with young people. I would hope the gentleman would take this and support this amendment.

Mr. MILLER of California. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of the amendment. Mr. Chairman and Members of the House, I rise in strong support of this amendment, and I would hope that the committee would look upon this as a friendly amendment because clearly this committee, the chairman of the committee and the ranking minority member struggled long and hard to try and meet the priorities of this Nation, of the Members of this Congress in dealing with the status and the quality of our national parks, our wildlife refuges and the forests of this Nation. In 1964, when we passed the Land and Water Conservation Act, we kind of make a bargain with the Congress and within this country that we would trade the exploration and the development of our offshore energy resources off the coast of California and the Gulf of Mexico and elsewhere in this country, that we would trade the development of those resources to generate a pool of revenues to protect and to provide and to expand the public lands system within this country, that we would take a portion of those royalties and set them aside so we could buy lands for additions for new parks, for additions to existing parks and for our wildlife refuges, in some cases for forests and other public land units. What has happened now because we have gone and spent ourselves into a deficit position, we now use this sacred trust, if my colleagues will, to protect the assets of the public lands of this Nation. We are now using that as a gimmick to balance this budget. Every dollar we do not take out of the Land and Water Conservation Fund that is reserved for the acquisition of public lands we divert, whether it is to the military budget, to the education budget, to infrastructure, to some other purpose. But that is not what we told the people of this country we were going to do with this money, and that is not what the people of this country expect us to do with this money. Mr. Chairman, what we have now is we have a situation where by deferral of land acquisitions, deferral of the protection of the parks, deferral of the protections of the wildlife refuges and the other public lands, we are now subsidizing other activities in the Government where we do not have the courage to say no. It does not mean they are a higher priority, it does not mean they are a better priority. It just means this committee has less money to work with. I think by adopting the Farr amendment, we have the opportunity to suggest that perhaps the priorities ought to be changed. Unfortunately, we can only deal with it within the context of the budget that is given to this committee. The gentleman from California [Mr. Farr] has sought to go to the energy research, the fossil fuel research portions of this budget that clearly do not have as high a priority as they might have had at one time, clearly do not have as high a priority at a time when the energy companies were not doing as well as they are doing today, clearly do not have as high a priority at a time when we were struggling to fill the strategic petroleum reserve, and now we are selling off portions of the petroleum reserve kind of willy-nilly. The President wants to sell off parts of it, this committee has made a decision to sell off parts of it. Obviously this is not as high a priority. But what is a high priority with the American people is the additions to and the protections of the public lands, and most importantly, I think, as we start this summer season, the protections and the additions to the crown jewels, the national park system of this country that so many families will spend time this summer visiting with their children and with other members of their family. This amendment is about setting those priorities. Mr. Chairman, this amendment does not mean that fossil fuel research will not take place. This amendment suggests that those who will benefit by the fossil fuel research perhaps shoulder more of the burden, now that they are doing better as a result of the run-up in gasoline prices and a stabilizing of world oil prices. That is what this amendment suggests: that we share the burden; that the other luxuries that we want to put into the spending of this budget not be subsidized by the trust. This is a trust fund, a trust we created with the American people to protect the national parks, to preserve the national parks, to expand the national parks, and to protect the other public lands of this Nation. The Farr amendment gives us an opportunity to do that. I know that the chairman of this committee believes strongly in the protection of the national parks, but he has to play the cards that he is dealt. I would hope that he would understand that this is hopefully a statement by a majority in this House that is deeply concerned about those cards and would perhaps play them in a different fashion, in a way in which the committee was incapable of playing them during the committee deliberations. I would urge support of this amendment.

Mr. MILLER of California. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding me time. Mr. Chairman, I think the gentleman makes an important point. There is in fact a right way to do business and a wrong way to do business. My family, interestingly enough, logged in this area and logged for this company and settled in this area in the 1840's and taught school and were workers in the mills in Eureka and Scotia and that whole surrounding area for many, many years, before they moved down to the San Francisco Bay area. Our family is legend with the culture of the woods and what it meant to work in those woods, and it is a very important part of our state. As the gentleman pointed out, at one time this was a company that people pointed to with great pride, not only because it took very good care of its resources, but because its schedule of cutting was based essentially on sustainable forestry before we knew the term here in the Halls of Congress. But all of that changed one day when this company was subject to a leveraged buyout and the bottom line and interest rates took precedence over the workers, over the forest resources, and, unfortunately, also over the laws of this Nation that are there to protect workers, protect pension plans, protect labor rights, and to protect the futures of those families. That is long and legendary, and we have had some heated debate about that today. But the fact of the matter is as we close this debate, this House of Representatives cannot be used in this fashion, because this is deciding simply you no longer want to play by the rules, as does every other company in California and the Pacific Northwest and many other areas of our country, as they struggle with endangered species. Rather than try and reform that legislation, all that we have had so far is these extreme proposals that say ``you can't kill the species, but you can destroy the habitat.'' These extreme proposals that have caused Speaker Gingrich now to announce that the Endangered Species Act changes are dead for this year, they will not be passed. So now we are back with this kind of extreme proposal, that says simply you get yourself a lobbyist, you get yourself a lawyer, and you opt out of the system. We really cannot present to the American people that that is the way you do business, because there are a lot of businesses in my area, there are a lot of home builders in my area, there are a lot of land developers in my area, that are struggling to put together habitat conservation areas. That is the way they do business. They will be able to build fewer homes or in different places or use parts of land and not other parts of land, because that is what they are required to do to present compatibility with the species and with the protection of our environment. That is the way those people are doing business. They do not all get to run to the Congress and say ``Take us out.'' If this is about endangered species and this is about reform, we can talk about reform. What we were not able to talk about in the last session was the gutting of the Endangered Species Act. We should not allow Mr. Hurwitz and Pacific Lumber Company to unilaterally, only for his purpose, to gut the Endangered Species Act. That is what this amendment does, for one particular party, for one particular purpose, that has been unable, unable, to decide to play by the rules and to obey the law. I want to thank the gentleman very much for offering this amendment.

Mr. MILLER of California. Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. MILLER of California. Mr. Chairman, if I may have regular order.

Mr. MILLER of California. Mr. Chairman, I object. I ask the gentleman's words be taken down because he has no evidence that any of this is suggestive slander. It is a matter of public record what Mr. Hurwitz has done to the people of this company, the people of the community, and the people of our State.

Mr. MILLER of California. Mr. Chairman, I do. The gentleman from Arizona [Mr. Hayworth] informed me I was wrong, that the gentleman said I was ``slender.'' That is what I took offense at.

Mr. MILLER of California. Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent to proceed for 2 additional minutes.

Mr. MILLER of California. Mr. Chairman, reserving the right to object, can we do 15 minutes? I may not use it, but I do not have any idea. I had other requests for time and I do not know if Members will be here or not.

Mr. MILLER of California. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume, and I want to thank the gentleman for his consideration. For the second time in a row, the committee has recommended zero funding of the urban parks and rehabilitation program. As a result, once again we are seeing a long backlog of restoring the deteriorating urban recreation facilities and that backlog will continue to grow. In 1995, there were almost 200 applications filed for this inexpensive but important program. Failure to provide any funding for the urban parks program is unacceptable at a time when after-school recreational opportunities for millions of children have disappeared from our cities and suburban communities. We know the hours of 3 to 6 p.m. now are some of the most dangerous times not only for our children, but for our neighborhoods and for our families. The prime hours for gang activities, crime and violence are when children are without school, parental supervision, or constructive opportunities. A Carnegie task force report entitled ``A Matter of Time'' found that, other than infancy, the period of early adolescence is the most critically important time for the development because so much physical, social, emotional, and moral development is compressed into such a short period of time with our adolescents. The National Urban League just recently reported that the hours from 3 to 6 p.m. is the peak time for violent youth crime and sexual activity among adolescents. Parents throughout this Nation are rightly concerned that during these critical hours of each day while these parents are working, and working out of necessity, their children have nowhere to play, nowhere to receive instruction, nowhere to learn proper values and behavior. All of us can hearken back in my generation to the time when we had after-school recreation programs, where we had city recreation programs, where we would go to the ball field or go to the arts center and do these programs. We could all hearken back to people who helped us, coaches and mentors and people who talked to us about life, talked to us about sportsmanship, talked to us about cooperation. The facilities to provide that in many of our urban areas has fallen into disrepair. What this program is is a program of partnership where the cities put up 30 percent of the money and make application to the Federal Government to reclaim, to reconstruct, to repair many of the recreational facilities that are in their communities. The communities that have made application are from the entire spectrum across the landscape. They are small towns, they are small cities, they are large urban areas, they are parts of counties that are seeking this kind of effort. This effort, when we presented it 2 years ago to the Congress, was approved overwhelmingly. It was approved overwhelmingly on a bipartisan basis. It was approved because it had the interest of the private sector, it had the support of major league baseball, it had the support of the MBA, it had the support of the sporting goods manufacturers, and it had the support of law enforcement agencies. It had the support of many of the agencies, of nonprofits, Boys Clubs and Girls Clubs, the Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts, other agencies that provide these services, Big Brothers and Big Sisters to the young people of this country. We see these crisis hours in our community growing. We see them growing in concerns among parents, parents who unfortunately, because of economic need, are not able to be home in their communities after hours. They are not able to be there to supervise their children. They are looking for alternatives. We see national summit after national summit. We have seen discussions between the President and young people, between congressional leaders and young people, and always we get back to the fact there is not much to do. When we couple that with what we now see in the crime statistics, this program is a small but important and effective effort to try and to change the destiny of these young people and to reclaim these facilities. That is why this program has received such overwhelming support. This is not just about big recreational facilities in a few big cities. These cities run from Hialeah, FL; Peoria, IL; Kokomo, IN; Lynn, MA; Grand Rapids, MI; Kalamazoo, MI; Poughkeepsie, NY; Marietta, OH; Chattanooga, TN; Bellingham, WA, and when I have the handout, the list goes on and on and on. What are these cities asking for? They are asking for this Federal Government to serve a partner and a catalyst because, in fact, this is the money around which an additional effort can be organized to try to reclaim our communities and our neighborhoods. This is part of the war on crime. This is part of the war on drugs. This is a part of the socialization of our young people. This is a part of getting our young people to appreciate teamwork, participation, and constructive engagement with others. This is a part of transmitting values from adult populations to an adolescent population. This is a part of one generation, an older group of people, mentoring and coaching a younger group of people, about building teams, about building communities, about building volunteer spirit. These are grants. These grants do not keep these facilities open. These grants allow us to reclaim them, the disuse, the lack of repair and turn them into a catalyst for community action, for community organization and for youth activities. So I would hope that what we are asking is that we would take $10 million out of the fossil fuel accounts, and many Members who voted against those early amendments have suggested to me that they will vote to support this amendment. This in only 4 percent of that account, but the multiplier effect of these projects that have been submitted from every State across the Nation, the multiplier effect far exceeds, far exceeds that small amount of money and its contribution to the fossil fuel accounts. We have heard the arguments about the fossil fuel account. We are at a time when that industry clearly has the ability to shoulder an additional burden. Make no misunderstanding about it, this is an American priority. This is about our streets, our neighborhoods, our children and our families. This is about where we live, it is about where our constituents live. A woman said to me the other day in a town hall meeting, I am so afraid of my neighborhood, an elderly woman. She said, Because they are home, but their parents are not home. There is no nowhere for these children to go. That is when the trouble starts. That is what the urban parks and recreation program is about. That is what was recognized by the private sector, who joined in their support, and by the sports organizations and by the police organizations as they joined in their support for this effort, as well as many of the oldest nonprofit service organizations that have supported our children throughout the history of this Nation. Mr. Chairman, I would urge my colleagues to support this amendment. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. MILLER of California. Mr. Chairman, reclaiming my time, it is not about denying those facts. That is a historical record. As we see on this floor, we have had historically very strong bipartisan support for roads in the forest. That is how the parks have suffered. Because as your committee has had its allocation and it has had to divvy it up, the forest interests have been here with their special interest hands out and they have garnered most of the money, and the parks have fallen further and further behind, and we have listened to this in our committees. It is not a question of which party is in power or not, it is a question of whether we will meet our obligation to the parks. And try as the gentleman might, we were still unable to meet our obligations in terms of the construction requests necessary for the maintenance of these parks. And I do not fault the gentleman, but I think it is a question, as we started out this afternoon, and it seems like 3 days ago that we started talking about setting priorities. We are suggesting this is a higher priority to the American public than the continuation of these roads in the forests would be to in fact provide for the proper maintenance of roads and other facilities inside of the national parks. I thank the gentleman not only for his comments but for all his hard work and for making all these horrible and terrible and tough decisions.

Mr. MILLER of California. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. (Mr. MILLER of California asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. MILLER of California. Mr. Chairman, I object.

Mr. MILLER of California. Mr. Chairman, reclaiming my time, the point is we can continue that loss or we can make up a shortfall. This deals with the national parks, this deals with the presentation of these national parks, this deals with the experience that our constituents and their families expect when they go to those parks. In our Committee on Natural Resources we constantly listen to the concerns about the backlogs in maintenance and effort, and people constantly are coming to our committee and passing authorizations for this program and handing it off to you and the Committee on Appropriations. That is why there is a shortfall. But nobody considered that when they asked us to pass those bills and expand those parks and participate in that.

Mr. MILLER of California. Mr. Chairman, this may be a painful biography to point out, but it is an important one, because it goes to the character of this amendment and it goes to the character of the company behind this amendment. Because every time this company has engaged a regulatory agency of this Government, the FDIC, who is worried about his banking practices, he has encountered them in court. The Office of Thrift Supervision, which was dealing with the taxpayers money, he has encountered them in court. The California Forest Practices Board, he has encountered them in court. And the Federal judge on forest practices, he has encountered them in court. This man has engaged every law that he has been involved with in his company, and he has essentially violated them all or been charged with violating them all by regulatory agencies and the courts of this country. So what good does he do? He comes to the Congress of the United States, and to suggest that somehow the Members of this body, the Members of this body can be conned into allowing him to do something which nobody else gets to do in California, the Pacific Northwest, in dealing with the problems of our environment, he simply gets to escape his responsibility under the law. He simply escapes his responsibility under the law. Now, they put a couple of families in the lifeboat with him to decorate it up, but the captain and the crew is Mr. Hurwitz and Pacific Lumber Co. They are the driving force, because they are the 33,000 acres that are being exempted here. So what? So he can start practicing the forest practices that brought him in violation of the State law and the Federal law? No. We cannot have that in California. We treasure our redwoods, and so does this Nation. And you know why he is lumbering these woods? Why he is timbering these woods? He is timbering because he sold junk bonds and now he cannot pay the interest on those junk bonds that he destroyed a pension plan with, that he destroyed a wonderful company with, a company that used to take care of its employees' children by giving them college scholarships, a company that used to take care of you at Christmastime and Thanksgiving. Those employees were thrown out. They were bought an annuity and the annuity collapsed. But now he has to pay those bonds off. He has been in my office, he has been in everyone's office, or his representatives have. He tried to shop one deal after another to avoid obeying the law. This is the court of last request. This body should not dignify this request. This body should turn down this request in the name of decency, in the name of this institution. This is so far out of the realm of responsibility it should not even befoul the aisles, befoul the aisles of this Congress, that this man would come here in the name of his not wanting to obey the law, to desecrate the redwoods, to desecrate forest practices, to desecrate these lands. No, that should not be allowed. And when we talk about private property, let us talk about the small businessman in terms of the fisherman, the people that are fishing off of your coast and my coast, because when this man gets done logging on the streams, the salmon fisheries go to hell. What about those small business people? It is all entertwined. That is why it is called an ecosystem. That is why we are using Federal, State, and private lands to share the burden, to share the burden. This is not the answer. This is wrong, it was wrong when it was introduced in the committee, and it was wrong when it has been brought to this floor, and it is wrong that you should have to take your time with it. Because this is not fair to the people in Oregon and Washington and California who are playing by the rules, the people who are trying to amend their practices.

Mr. MILLER of California. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. MILLER of California. I yield to the gentleman from Minnesota.

Mr. MILLER of California. That is not an allocated cost.

Mr. MILLER of California. Mr. Chairman, reclaiming my time, those payments to the State government under our budgeting procedures are not considered a cost to the program. I appreciate that. If you say that is not a cost and you take it off the books, then you are running a surplus.

Mr. MILLER of California. I yield to the gentleman from North Carolina.

Mr. MILLER of California. Mr. Chairman, I rise in strong support of the Vento amendment. The fact of the matter is, we are sitting here with somewhere in excess of 350,000 to 370,000 miles of roads in our forests, and we claim that we have closed 2,300, and we have built 500 miles in the last year. And 600 years from now perhaps we will have closed those roads. All of those roads should not be closed, but let us not pretend by a huge amount of money currently being spent is being spent on road closure, and let us not pretend that all of this money all of a sudden is here for the purposes of recreation. In fact, there is a line item within the bill that provides $26 million for recreation roads. Not all of the roads that are built in the forest are necessary for hunting and fishing, because in fact if you come with me to the Sierras, if you four-wheel across the Sierras, you have roads that are 50 or 60 yards from one another. Not all these roads are in fact necessary. But what we have is a situation where if you want to buy timber from the Federal Government, the Government says, ``Come in and get it; we will build you the roads or give you a credit for building the roads.'' That program is costing us $109 million a year. Now, if you are a private landowner and you have 500 acres or 1,000 acres or whatever to sell of timber, the person who buys the timber comes in and builds the road. The gentleman from North Carolina might be right that they deduct that from the price of the timber, so that is the real value of the timber. We are like the auction house that says, ``You can either pay $100 or $90. Do you want us to ship it or not?'' We say, ``Pay us $90 and we will pay to ship it.'' That is what is not fair about this. What you do not have is you do not have reflection of the real value of timber, because you have the Federal Government subsidizing the activity to extract it. Even if we provide a credit or we build the road, the fact is that 20 and 30 years later we are maintaining those roads. So the cost of that timber far exceeds and continues far beyond the harvest of that timber. So that is why we find ourselves stuck with more than $1 billion to log these forests over the last several years than the timber sales brought in. And what does that mean? That means that as this committee struggled to meet the demands of the National Park System in this country, they fell $23 million short. As they struggled to repair the elevator in the Washington Monument, as they struggled to do health and safety repair work at some of our parks, as they tried to provide a transportation system and all that, they still fell $23 million short. Let us not pretend that there is an equivalency here about the maintenance and the care of these national parks and these forest roads. There simply is not. We had that fight last session when we had a park commission bill on this floor. I was a supporter of that. That was one of the worst bipartisan drubbings we had. Why? Because the American public sent a message to every member of this Congress, except me, I guess, and a few others, that somehow they did not even want to consider the closure or the reconstitution of those parks and monuments. What they want us to do is have them open and available and put forth in first class shape. We cannot report to the American public this summer that that is the condition of our national parks. In California and elsewhere, we have campgrounds that are closed, we have campgrounds that are not accessible, we have repairs that are not made, we have bridges that are not safe, and we have trails that are unsafe for families to walk in those national parks. That is not to pit the national parks against the national forests, because that is not fair, because in many areas they serve essentially the same purpose. But the suggestion that somehow all of this money is really there so that we can keep the national forest open for hunting, fishing and recreation, just is not the case. The fact of the matter is, what we have here is a very substantial subsidy that does not exist in the private sector in the timber world. It does not exist in terms of providing us a true reflection of the real cost of these timber sales, and that is why the GAO and others have come to us time and time again and talked about the loss of revenues for the taxpayers in the presentation of this. We can better use that money in an area of much higher priority for the people of this Nation, and that is to present to them their parks in the seasons that they use them in first class shape for the use by them and their families.

Mr. MILLER of California

Mr. MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me the time. I thank the chairman of the committee, Mr. Hyde, for yielding and both of my colleagues for bringing this matter to the floor and rise in strong support of this legislation. I join those of our colleagues and so many across the Nation who have voiced their strong, strong objection to those who would take actions of violence against our houses of worship in this country and hope that this legislation will be some small beginning in mending these horrible actions against the churches in the South and elsewhere. I thank the gentleman for bringing this legislation to the floor.

Mr. MILLER of California

Mr. MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, all Members of this House should be saddened today by the remarks yesterday of majority leader Dick Armey in his criticism and his remarks about the President's visit to South Carolina today to dedicate the new chapel at Mount Zion A.M.E. Church, a church that was firebombed and burned to the ground, 1 of 49 black churches burned to the ground in this country. For the majority leader to turn this into politics is exactly the kind of politics that we do not need in this country: the politics of insensitivity, of extremism and of race. The President is doing what any President of this country must do, and that is to bring us together to heal this Nation and to get us to face this national horror. The President is doing what any President must do to bring the full force and effect of law enforcement against these crimes, against these bombings. The President is doing what any President of this nation must do, and that is to get this Nation to challenge, to challenge us against these horrible crimes. The gentleman from Texas [Mr. Armey] is doing what no majority leader should do, and that is to make politics out of a national terror.

Mr. MILLER of California

Mr. MILLER of California. Madam Speaker, I would like to express my qualified support for H.R. 3268, the IDEA Improvement Act of 1996. While this bill makes some important changes in the 20-year-old law providing special education and related services to 5.8 million disabled children and youth, I have some serious reservations about several aspects of the bill. Nonetheless, I believe it is very important to move this legislation forward with the hopes that some of my remaining concerns will be satisfactorily resolved in conference with the Senate. I would like to especially thank Chairman Goodling for the spirit of bipartisanship that marked the latter days of our negotiations over this bill. The majority came a very long way in accommodating concerns that I shared with other members of the minority on the Opportunities Committee as well as with the parent, disability, and education groups that have such a vital stake in the future of IDEA. This legislation contains a number of provisions, many of which were taken from the administration bill, that will improve IDEA and bring the education of disabled children into the 21st century. These include requirements that schools hold disabled students to the highest possible standards and that they be accountable for educational results. The education of disabled children must be part and parcel of school reform. The bill also strengthens and improves provisions relating to the evaluation of disabled children and development of their individualized education programs, [IEP] to promote the participation of the child in the general curriculum while ensuring that the range of necessary services to address that child's needs remain available. I believe that provisions making the classroom teacher a fuller participant in the design as well as the implementation of the child's program are particularly valuable. In this regard, amendments added in committee by Mrs. Mink and Mr. Greenwood are well-crafted responses to concerns about disruptive disabled students that should ensure that the classroom teacher's concerns are taken into consideration. These amendments rightfully place the responsibility for addressing the disruptive disabled student in the IEP process. The purpose is to ensure that children with behavioral problems receive the proper support and services. It is imperative, however, that children with disabilities not be considered disruptive based on a lack of understanding of the nature of the disability or its effect on behavior, disruption caused by devices, accessibility, auxiliary aides, or services used by the child, a failure to provide services, including behavioral management, or behavior inherent to the disability itself, such as seizures. I have been particularly concerned about changes affecting due process rights of children under IDEA, those core protections that make this law work and provide the key balance of interests between parents and school districts. While I am pleased that a number of changes were accepted by the majority that increase my comfort level, including my amendments increasing due process protections for children who face cessation of services as a result of disciplinary actions, I remain troubled about several remaining issues. First and foremost is that the bill authorizes States to cease services for disabled children as a disciplinary measure, albeit on a highly restricted basis. This is wrong and the vast majority of education and disability groups agree. In California, the legislature recently passed a law that requires the provision of educational services to all expelled students. If the California Legislature can conclude that this sound educational and social policy does not compromise school safety then Congress should. Unfortunately, the Senate bill gives us no leeway to change this provision. Second, I believe that when an offense that will result in serious disciplinary action is the least bit subjective, only an objective party--a hearing officer--should have the authority to order a change in placement. The bill allows a principal to change a disabled child's placement for up to 55 schooldays under the loosely defined category serious injury, which means, among other things a verbal assault. Not only does this definition need to be tightened up, but the decision to change placement should certainly be that of a hearing officer rather than a school official. There are other areas I would like to see addressed in conference. For example, I am not convinced that a change in the interstate formula is merited or will resolve problems with overidentification. I do think that schools need to have a certain stake in child-find and that the current child-based formula provides this. I am also concerned about provisions allowing personnel standards to be waived, and would prefer to see the issue of personnel shortages to be handled with measures to increase the capacity of States to meet personnel needs. I am also very concerned that critical technological research and development for disabled children will come to a halt with the bill's ending discretionary authorities for such activities. We will have the opportunity to address most of these issues in conference, and it is with this confidence that I urge my colleagues to support this bill.