George Miller

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. I will not yield. I want to thank you very much. As to this amendment, ACORN gets, I believe, no money under this bill, but that's not the issue. The issue is that I will support the gentleman's motion to instruct. We have a world-class bill here. We have a bill of opportunity for families, for students, for employers, for our country, and for our economy. I hope you will support it. Vote for the motion to instruct. Vote for this bill on final passage.

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, pursuant to the instructions of the House in the motion to recommit, I report the bill, H.R. 3221, back to the House with an amendment.

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the staffs of the Education and Labor Committee on both sides of the aisle for all of their hard work, and I ask unanimous consent that the Clerk be authorized to make technical corrections in the engrossment of H.R. 3221, to include corrections in spelling, punctuation, section numbering and cross-referencing, and the assertion of appropriate headings.

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Madam Chair, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Woolsey), a member of the committee.

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Madam Chair, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. Sutton).

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Madam Chair, I yield myself the balance of my time. Madam Chair, just to quickly run through the manager's amendment, in addition to the technical changes, my amendment would also refine provisions regarding grants authorized under title I of the bill. It ensures that services for veterans are coordinated with those existing under current law, and it provides educational financial assistance for children of public safety officers and other first responders killed in the line of duty. It creates a program to promote teacher excellence, and it requires the Secretary to consider a State's financial commitment to early learning when evaluating certain grant renewals and specifies that Tribal Colleges and Universities are eligible to receive American Graduation Initiative grants. I would urge all the Members to support the manager's amendment. I would also like to draw attention to one part of this legislation, and that is really the unprecedented $10 billion investment to make community colleges part of our economy's recovery. For years, business leaders have told us that there weren't enough workers with the knowledge and the expertise for their specific industries. Community colleges do and can play an even more significant role in addressing this shortage. This bill will help us build a 21st century workforce by strengthening partnerships among community colleges, businesses, and job training programs that will align community college curricula with the needs of high-wage, high-demand industries. It will help provide community colleges with the tools to replicate programs that are successfully educating and training students and workers for these skilled jobs. And it will fulfill an important priority for the business community, which has continually understood the value community colleges have in training highly skilled workers and meeting local employment needs as economies change and move from one kind of economy to another. That's why this historic initiative has strong support from the business community, including the Business Roundtable. The Business Roundtable recently wrote to me and to the members of the committee, ``On behalf of the Business Roundtable, I want to commend you for inclusion of the Community College Initiative in H.R. 3221. This Community College Initiative and the President's American Graduation Initiative reflect the fact that community colleges have emerged as important institutions where acquiring skills for new jobs and new careers will take place . . . That is why the Community College Initiative is so important. For community colleges to reach their potential and become more effective, they need to increase graduation rates, adopt innovations to help them better serve their customers, and develop partnerships and closer cooperation with the private sector.'' For that reason, they support that provision of the bill, and I'm delighted we worked long and hard on both sides of this committee with the business community to try to develop a program to strengthen our community colleges. Madam Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. I rise in opposition to the amendment.

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. I yield myself 2 minutes. What this amendment would do, while the author has talked about a lot of other things he doesn't like in the bill, this amendment would strike the school construction money that is in this legislation for elementary, secondary, and for the community colleges. I think this is a very important part of this legislation. Many, many Members have supported the efforts that we have had before to try to have the Federal Government help local communities address school construction needs. When we see now that the community colleges are under tremendous pressure because of the economic dislocation from the recession that has taken place and continues to take place in so many communities and so many families, as people are going back to the schools, we recognize the shortage of facilities that are there and what we are saying is this time we will lend a hand to those community colleges and to those K-12, elementary and secondary school districts so that they can modernize their school facilities and make the investments that will save them money. As we see reports of schools making investments in solar and insulation and energy-efficient buildings, what we see is a dramatic drop in the ongoing operating costs of those schools in terms of the utility bills that are really quite dramatic. We ought to do what we can to facilitate. We have the opportunity with this legislation to help facilitate local school districts meeting that demand. This also comes at an important time for these local school districts because, as you know, they are under siege from the loss of revenues in many local districts because of the economic downturn. In some cases they have had to postpone these projects even though they are desperately needed. They have had to postpone these modernizations that are desperately needed. And we know the fact that when children have the availability of a clean, well-lit place, modern facilities, they in fact do better in school. It is a statement of values and also a statement about their community and their children. I would hope we would vote against this amendment. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 15 seconds. We should not punish local school districts or schoolchildren because a Republican President, George Bush, broke his promise to this country, to families, and to students and teachers when he failed to deliver on his promise of 77 billion additional dollars that school districts had to make up while living under No Child Left Behind. Let's not punish our kids today because a President could not keep his promise. I yield the balance of my time to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Bishop).

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. I thank the gentleman for yielding. I rise in support of his amendment. I think he makes a very important point in terms of the priority that we have to give to those areas that have really received very harsh treatment in this economic dislocation. We know and we believe and the President has made it clear that community colleges are one of the engines to change those outcomes and to reinvigorate those local economies. So I strongly support the gentleman's amendment and thank him for offering it.

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. I rise in opposition to the amendment.

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. I yield myself 1 minute. This is really sort of a redo of where we were with the previous amendment to strike the construction funds that would be available--in this case, the K-12. The gentlewoman's amendment, as it's drafted, would, if they receive those funds under the Recovery Act, of which one of the allowable costs originally started out with the line item for construction, it became an allowable cost--if they received any of those funds, they would be ineligible to receive these construction funds. The fact of the matter is the record is starting to develop that very few if any of the school districts were able to use those funds for construction because of the fact of the cuts that took place in almost every State across the country where those funds have been used to try to mitigate the firing of teachers, to continue to try to develop a reasonable class size, and all of the other costs that were going as local school districts were really very hard hit in this economic recovery from the downturn in local revenues, in State revenues. And that's why this amendment is necessary. The opposition to this amendment is important so that these school districts can receive these funds to build clean, modern, and energy- efficient facilities. I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson-Lee).

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. I yield myself the balance of my time. It's a very clever amendment. What it says is, if you got money from the stimulus package, you cannot get money for school construction. Mind you, the money in the stimulus package did not provide for school construction. It provided it as an allowable expense. But whether you used it or didn't, under this legislation you wouldn't get it because it was an allowable expense under that legislation. The fact of the matter is that we have far too many children in this country and every region of this country going to antiquated, outdated, unsafe schools. And the backlog for school modernization, for energy modernization, for trying to clean schools up and repair them and renovate them is as long as the road from here to the West Coast. And the fact of the matter is that this government has the ability to help those schools to do that. So that those children that you're worried about learning, we know that they learn better if they're in a clean, well lit, warm place to learn, as opposed to a place where the rain is coming through, the lavatories don't work, the windows are broken. That sounds like that's extreme. No, that's the case in far too many schools all across this country in all different settings. We should reject this amendment. I would urge my colleagues to vote ``no.''

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. I want to thank the gentlewoman for offering this amendment. I know how hard she has worked on this problem and the impact that a BRAC closure can bring to all of our communities. Many of us have experienced that in the past and even again currently. I want to thank her for this amendment, and I would hope that we would accept it. We plan to accept the amendment on this side, and apparently the Republicans will accept it on their side. Thank you so much for offering this.

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to the amendment.

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Andrews), a member of the committee. (Mr. ANDREWS asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Miller).

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Chairman and Members of the House, this amendment should be overwhelmingly rejected. Not only does it destroy the Obama administration's initiative on community colleges, but it destroys what almost every Member knows, that as much as the community colleges are doing today, as many students as they help, they're being asked to do even more. And the fact of the matter is we need them to do more, and we need them to do a better job. We still have too many students who are starting community colleges but are not successfully completing it, either with a certificate for a career or an AA degree or transition to a 4-year school, whatever path they take. We have got to strengthen those pathways that those students take. We have got to strengthen the ability of the community colleges to make sure that they can provide that kind of opportunity. They are becoming the catalyst for economic innovation, economic change, economic revitalization and flexibility in all of our communities. And what the Obama administration is suggesting with this initiative is that we should help them do that because we're vitally in need of their success so that people can change the careers as we move from one economy to another. As energy becomes modern and innovative and new, we need a different type of energy worker. We must defeat this Foxx amendment. We must stick by this initiative and support the community colleges.

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

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Chairman, I move that the Committee do now rise.

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Madam Chair, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Hinojosa), the Chair of the Subcommittee on Higher Education.

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. I yield the gentleman an additional 30 seconds.

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks and insert extraneous material on H.R. 3221.

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. I thank the gentleman for yielding, and I thank the Rules Committee for reporting this legislation to the floor with the amendments that have been made in order. And I want to thank the gentleman from Colorado for his strong support for this legislation not only in the Rules Committee but in our committee, the Education and Labor Committee, where he led a number of efforts to improve this legislation. This rule will allow for the proper input and amendments from Members from both sides of the aisle on legislation that will be transformative for our students, families, and taxpayers. The Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act will allow us to invest $87 billion to make college more affordable, to build a world-class community college system, and to improve the opportunities to help our youngest students succeed. This represents the single largest investment in Federal college aid in history. We will be able to do this at absolutely no cost to the taxpayers by undertaking long overdue student loan reforms. The Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act is a win-win. It's a win for students. They'll have dependable access to Federal college aid, and it will make these programs more effective and efficient for families and for taxpayers. It will help rebuild our economy that is cutting edge, innovative, and it will help again regain our global leadership in both competitiveness and in college graduation rates. I would like to especially make clear that this bill is, in fact, fiscally responsible. Not only will we be able to take and substitute the subsidies that we now pay out for institutions to lend the government's money to the students for the government to buy back, we will take those subsidies and we will invest that money on behalf of students and their families and institutions to improve the education that they will receive, to improve the access, to try to improve the retention rates so that students that, in fact, take out and borrow money end up with a degree and not as a dropout with a lot of debt, and we will also return about $10 billion to the Treasury to help reduce deficit spending. Every aspect of this bill speaks to the future, to the future of our economy, to the future strength of our families, to the future needs of students who seek to acquire and are fully qualified to benefit from a college education. Again I thank the Rules Committee, and I urge my colleagues to support this legislation when we debate it on the floor later today and tomorrow.