George Miller

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Polis).

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Chair, I yield myself 2 minutes. I rise in opposition to this amendment to remove the requirement that States and school districts implement teacher evaluation systems. We put $17 billion into this system every year, and we ought to at least see if we can make sure that those who are responsible for implementing it have the opportunity to improve their skills, to improve their talents, to collaborate with one another so that they can improve the teacher and learning environment. That is the goal of the evaluations: to take the skills that teachers bring to the classrooms and see, in consultation with others, with the principals, with their peers in that school district, whether or not we can improve their skills to deliver the education that we know that our children need. We know that all teachers are not of the same talent, but by having evaluations, you, in fact, have the ability to then raise the skills of those individuals. If you would travel the country, and if you would talk to younger teachers all across the country, they would tell you how excited they are about evaluation systems, how excited they are about the collaboration--about their working with one another. I have visited teachers in the process of doing that, in developing that information--in developing the skills and in watching one another teach and in presenting the various lesson plans and curriculums, and then weighing back and forth what was more effective and what was less effective, what they would change, and how they would do it differently the next time. Under this legislation, under our legislation, we encourage local districts to do that. We want them to take control of it. We want teachers to be in the design of those systems. Yet now the idea that you would not require some evaluation of the people who are delivering this education is just to go back to a time when it didn't matter, I guess, who dropped out of school or who didn't thrive or who didn't do well--but that's not this economy; that's not our social structure; and that's not the desire and the hopes and aspirations of the parents and of the students in those schools. So I would hope that we would oppose this amendment and that we would defeat this amendment. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. I yield back the balance of my time.

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

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

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. I yield myself 2 minutes. Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to this amendment offered by the gentleman from Utah. I just don't quite understand it. If a State doesn't make application for various funds that are available under title II, I don't know why you would prohibit a district from doing so. I don't know the rationale for the State's decision not to make application, but that may have very little to do with the needs of a particular school district. In my State, it might be a large district like Los Angeles or it might be a small rural district in the northern corner of the State. If they feel that these funds would help them and they have a need for those, I don't know why and I don't know that we're interfering with any great relationship here between States and the Federal Government. I don't pretend to be familiar with the exact governance in the State of Utah, but in California the districts are pretty darn autonomous and our county offices of education are very autonomous, and very often a county office will apply for these kinds of funds in an area of smaller school districts to bring them together to utilize those funds in the most efficient way to continue. Most of title II is about the development of teachers and professional development. I oppose this amendment. I think it just makes it much more difficult and more bureaucratic for local school districts. We've heard time and again here that these are the people who know best, so apparently they know better than the State officials, but we're going to let the State officials block them from doing what they know is best when they decide what is best is to try to access title II. So I oppose this amendment, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. I didn't say they were autonomous. I said that they operate nearly autonomous. I guess if the State wanted to rein them in in California and Utah, they would rein them in. But they make applications all the time for title II funds, and apparently California and Colorado may want to do something about that. That sounds like a State problem. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent that my request for a recorded vote on amendment No. 12 be withdrawn to the end that the Chair put the question on the amendment de novo.

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Will the gentleman yield?

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Chairman, I want to commend the gentleman for his amendment and thank him for all of his work and leadership that he has brought to the committee on charter schools. And I will vote for the amendment if the gentleman can say again five times ``starter charter startup funds.'' If you can say that really quickly five times, then I will vote for the amendment.

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. I want to commend you so much for offering this amendment. In touring schools my entire time in Congress and talking to parents and talking to school officials where we have these kinds of resources available to engage parents, the outcomes of the students are very often dramatically improved. The participation by the parents is dramatically improved. The participation by the parents at home with the students is changed in a very dramatic fashion. Just recently, in the North Bay in the San Francisco area up in Napa County, the participation of the parents with English learning students who are in kindergarten with the use of an iPad and getting the parents to come together and understand this technology, how it could help their children learn English, how it could help them learn English, and then imparting with the parents that they could also use it for job search, the engagement was just phenomenal, and these students continue to soar as they now are in the third grade. So these kinds of possibilities where you bring parents and get that kind of involvement, it changes it so much. Helms Middle School in my district, we not only tore it down and rebuilt it, but we made it a community school with family engagement, and there are parents on that campus all of the time engaged with their kid's education, with their neighbor's kid's education, and their own education. I really commend you. I think this is a very important amendment as we seek to have parents involved in schools, and thank you so much.

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Chair, I claim time in opposition to this amendment.

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Chair, I rise in opposition to this amendment. This is some kind of political exercise. I don't know what the value of this is to the public. It is to take Federal officials in the Department of Education, including the Secretary, and somehow going to create a lot of make-work for them. I think it is unnecessary. I don't quite understand the theory behind it. There is program consolidation going on, so we are going to learn the average wage of the people whose jobs were unfortunately, I guess because of sequestration at the moment, eliminated, and I don't know how that will help the education of the young children. Then we are going to figure out the average salary. All this information is available to the Appropriations Committee. It is a matter of public record. It is available to the public. But we will go through some kind of computation then, those who are left making more than $100,000. I really don't know, again, what this has to do with the education of young children across this Nation. Again, I know we had to pass an amendment to say this, but it's already the law. There is nothing that requires any State, any school district to accept these programs. You have to sign up. You have to make applications for programs. If you don't make applications, you don't get them. This isn't forced down your throat. It's very hard to make sense out of this amendment.

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. I would be happy to yield to the gentleman.

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. In reclaiming my time, I understand transparency when it's of value. I understand transparency when it's directed to a specific purpose. This is transparency in the sense that the general knowledge of these wages is a matter of public record, as your salary and my salary are a matter of public record. When you get it all compiled, then what are you going to do--send out notices to everybody in the United States as to where this resides and how they can get ahold of it? Put it online? That's what you're going to spend your money doing? It's already available. They can look up somebody in the Department of Education at any time.

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. I would be happy to yield to the gentleman.

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. In reclaiming my time, why doesn't the Appropriations just tell the Congress the results of sequestration? They're involved in sequestration every day. Why don't they just file a report and tell the Congress and tell the public and put out a press release and tell the people, ``This is what happened''? Why do you have to mandate all of this sort of ``make work''? I thought the purpose was to try to eliminate unnecessary work for people.

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. The gentleman has time remaining, and I don't have much time. I would just say that, again, this really doesn't address the major concerns underlying this bill, and that is that this bill continues to let students down and that this amendment does nothing to ensure that students graduate from high school. If you want to talk about serious transparency in this bill, students with disabilities become invisible in terms of the accountability by school districts as to how they're doing with their education and if education has been offered to them and if they've had a chance at assessment so they can demonstrate what they've learned. This legislation doesn't do that, and this amendment doesn't help that in terms of transparency. It's some mindless transparency about the wages of government officials that's already transparent and all a matter of public record. It doesn't do anything about what the impact is of sequestration on the poorest schools in some of the poorest districts in the country--in trying to educate some of the poorest kids in this country, kids who need those additional resources. This bill grinds away on those, and this amendment doesn't change it. This amendment doesn't change the block grants that now allow money to leave the public sector, to leave public schools that are in desperate need of these resources--taking care of the title I students and schools--and then send that off to the private sector. So the transparency here is all wrong. The real transparency is what this legislation does, and the American people ought to understand how damaging this is to our local schools all across this country and how exceptionally damaging this legislation is to the poorest schools in our country and in our States and to the students who are going to those schools and who are trying to achieve a first-class education. That opportunity is being denied to them under this legislation. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to this latest Republican attempt to sabotage our Nation's health reform law. If these bills pass today, fortunately, they will not become law. It is just another waste of this body's time, and Americans are sick of it. The 38th time will not be the charm--the 38th time that we've redundantly voted to try to repeal the Affordable Care Act. Rather, these votes underscore the lengths the Republicans and other opponents will go to take away the basic health insurance protections of the American people. For 3 years, many of the opponents of ObamaCare have invested heavily in its failure. They've tried to deny funding to agencies to do their jobs as instructed by Congress. They've spread outright lies and misinformation to purposely confuse the American people. They've obstructed education efforts to make sure that their constituents don't understand the new rights and benefits under the law. But investing in failure is dangerous. It's dangerous for America's families; it's dangerous for the Nation's businesses; it's dangerous for the Nation's economy. The Affordable Care Act is the law of the land, and it is here to stay. Early evidence suggests that the health care law is already having a positive impact on the lives of millions of Americans. Millions of young adults are getting health insurance through their parents' policies when, before, they were kicked off arbitrarily by insurance companies; and now, with the individual mandate, millions of individual Americans will be able to afford the health insurance that they can't afford today without this legislation--without the law of the land, the Affordable Care Act. Children with preexisting conditions can no longer be denied health coverage or lifesaving treatment. Billions more of taxpayer dollars are being recovered through Medicare fraud. National health costs have dramatically slowed over the last several years. Health premiums as part of the State insurance exchanges are coming in lower than anyone predicted--most recently reported in New York State--for individuals, who will get their insurance because of the individual mandate; and for the first time, it will be affordable to those individuals since they've been required to have it. And, in January, the preexisting conditions that determine health coverage or costs will be banned. No longer will you be able to rule people out because of their preexisting health conditions. This is all good news, and it stands in stark contrast to the claims that we've been hearing from the other side for 3 years. Why on Earth would any responsible elected official try to hide the rights and benefits from the American people? My friends on the other side of the aisle are preoccupied with dismantling government when it protects the vulnerable or the average American, but they will move heaven and Earth to protect the most powerful or to try to score some fleeting political point. It's wrong and it's irresponsible. Mr. Speaker, playing politics with the Affordable Care Act has become something of an Olympic sport for the majority. These votes are nothing new. They are about sabotaging the law of the land in order to satisfy a narrow, radical element of the majority's party. Now is not the time to reverse course. Now is not the time to go back to the days when insurance companies were in charge--when people were thrown off their policies, when policies were taken away in the middle of treatment, when their children were not allowed to participate, and when individuals could not afford the policies at that time. Today, they will be able to.

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, today, I am proud to introduce the Airline Pilot Pension Fairness Act, legislation that would prevent deep, unfair cuts in pilots' retirement benefits. Nearly forty years ago, Congress established the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation to insure the pension benefits of American workers. When employers terminate their workers' traditional pension plans, the PBGC takes the plans over and makes monthly payments to plan participants who are retired. When the PBGC takes over a company's pension plan, the plan participants do not always receive the same benefit they would have received if their plan had not terminated. For example, workers who retire before age 65--which the law considers ``normal'' retirement age--receive reduced benefits to reflect the longer period that these retirees likely will receive benefits. This is bad news for many pilots. Until 2007, under Federal Aviation Administration rules, airline pilots were required to retire at age 60. As a result, pilots whose pension plans were terminated--like the pilots at United Airlines and US Airways--wound up taking drastic cuts to their pension benefits because the PBGC treated age 60 as an early retirement age and cut pilots' guaranteed benefits as a result. This problem was caused because the FAA's mandatory pilot retirement age of 60 and ERISA's normal retirement age of 65 were not aligned. ERISA does not provide a special rule for pilots. Pilots earn every dime of their pension benefits and they didn't choose to retire at age 60. The time to fix this problem is today. The Airline Pilot Pension Fairness Act would put airline pilots subject to the old FAA rule on equal ground with other workers by requiring the PBGC to treat age 60 as the normal retirement age for these pilots--not as an early retirement age. In other words, these pilots would receive the maximum PBGC benefit for which they would be eligible if they worked until age 65. If they worked until the age of 57, it would be as if they worked until age 62 and the pilot would receive the appropriate PBGC benefit. Eight years ago, in a 2005 e-hearing Tom Gardiner, of Bainbridge Island, WA, facing the loss of his retirement nest egg at United Airlines, explained the conundrum facing pilots-- ``My name is Tom Gardiner and I am a Captain for United Airlines with a total of 27 years of service. . . . If the PBGC takes over the pilots' defined benefit plan, I will lose at least 2/3 of my promised pension. . . . [One factor] contributing to this huge hit is the adjustment for ``early retirement'' mandated by PBGC rules. Of course, I have no choice in the matter; the FAA regulations require me to retire at age 60. The PBGC considers that to be ``early'' and takes away 35% of what I would otherwise receive from them. It is a classic ``Catch 22''. . . .'' Captain Gardiner is not alone. The Airline Pilot Pension Fairness Act would be a first step to restoring some measure of fairness to these hardworking Americans who have seen promised and hard-earned benefits disappear overnight.

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, I was unavoidably detained yesterday and missed Roll Nos. 305, 306 and 307. Had I been present, I would have voted ``nay'' on Roll Nos. 305 and 306, and I would have voted ``yea'' on Roll No. 307.

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. I thank the gentleman for yielding. As we debate this rule, it has now been a little over a week since interest rates on loans for millions of the neediest college students doubled thanks to Republican obstructionism. With that doubling, those who can afford it least will continue to be burdened under a mountain of debt with no end in sight. Because Congress has not acted in a responsible way, this rate increase will cost borrowers an additional $1,000 per student per loan. The doubling of interest rates did not have to happen. Rather than making it more affordable for students and families to pay for college, House Republicans decided to pass a bill that would make college more expensive. The bill was dead on arrival in the Senate. It was dead on arrival in the Senate because it was worse for students than the doubling of the interest rates, and it left the students without an option other than the doubling of the interest rates. That's why we must act today. We must defeat the previous question so that we can deliberate this and get a solution until we can work on a long-term, bipartisan agreement on this one. The Republican plan that passed the House was totally irresponsible. It was simply not a smart solution. It has been advertised by my friends on the other side as a long-term fix, but we all know the truth. The Republican bill adds more debt onto the students, even more than doubling the interest rates. The Republican bill also puts students in a yearly-adjustable student loan, which will result in great unpredictability and soaring loan costs to the students and to their families. And the insistence from the GOP that the students pay down the national debt is outrageous and offensive. The student loan program is a program that the Federal Government makes $50 billion off the back of the students, and the Republicans' response is that the students should pay higher interest rates so they can pay down the national deficit. The student loan program itself is paying down the national deficit because of the profit the Federal Government makes. It's time to stop that and make student loans affordable for students and for their families. This Congress simply has not done right by students. They are forcing these students to continue to graduate with an increasing mountain of debt while, at the same time, they lament that students are graduating with increased debt. That's what the Republicans offered. That's why, as my colleague from Colorado said, it was dead on arrival when it went to the Senate. It was dead on a bipartisan basis when it went to the Senate. The time has come now to defeat the previous question so that we can bring the 1-year fix to make sure that students are protected from the doubling of the interest rate that is now occurring because of the inaction by the Republicans in the House of Representatives.

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, I thank the remarks by the gentleman from Florida that we would have an opportunity to vote on the student loan bill to make sure that we don't do what millions of American students and their families have asked us not to do, and that is, they don't want us to double their debt. But in less than 100 hours if we don't get the vote that Mr. Hastings is talking about, in less than 100 hours, millions of American college students may see their student debt increase because of the Republican obstructionism. It's unfortunate that it's come to this. This issue shouldn't be partisan. It's about doing the right thing on behalf of millions of students and their families all across the country. It's a simple choice. We can help students achieve an education, one that they can afford, and the skills that they need to be successful, or we can put more hurdles in their way and increase the already skyrocketing debt burden that students absorb as they graduate from college. It has been more than a year of ignoring this issue. A year ago, we were in this position, and a year ago, we voted to keep the student loan rate at 3.75 percent. Nothing has been done until recently, and then the Republicans came up with an idea that was really bad. It was worse than doubling the interest rates on July 1. It was more expensive to the students than doubling the interest rates. It's not a smart solution. It's a terrible solution--it's terrible for students; it's terrible for their families. After a year of ignoring this issue, the Republicans foisted this harmful idea onto the House floor, and when the Republican bill hit the floor, they refused to allow a vote on a rational plan, like the Courtney bill, that stops this doubling of the interest rates and allows this Congress to examine and develop a long-term solution as part of the Higher Education Reauthorization Act. Despite trumpeting that their plan was the same as President Obama's proposal, when the Democrats offered President Obama's actual plan, they blocked that vote, too. So they won't keep the interest rates from doubling, and they won't do a plan that they said is just like theirs. On July 1, those interest rates are going to double on millions of students as they start this school year in August and September.

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. The time for obstruction has passed. It's time to keep the rates low and to work on a long-term solution. It's time to stop asking college students and their families to bear an unfair burden of paying down the Bush deficits. The Democrats have chosen to stand with the students and families who are trying to access the American Dream. We can do this. Millions of families and students have asked us: don't double their debt. Yet, on July 1, because of the Republican obstructionism, that's what's going to happen to these students. It's very unfortunate. It adds an additional $1,000 to the 4 years of college. We should not do that at this time, in this economy, for these students and families.

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, I was unavoidably detained on Thursday, June 20th and missed Roll No. 282. Had I been present, I would have voted ``yea.''