Dave Obey

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. If the gentleman will yield, as the committee indicated in its report, as we have indicated in our press statements, as we have indicated in our Dear Colleague letters for the last 3 weeks, as I have indicated on seven previous occasions on the floor, and as I emphasize again now, this package simply provides Federal money so that local schools can examine all of the possibilities for improving the way they work in their own schools on a comprehensive basis so that they can do what I hope everybody believes in, which is to find a model which really does raise performance. There are a lot of people shopping models around this country who make a heck of a lot of money with ideas that do not produce any real change for kids. What we are trying to do is to help local schools to get some idea of what works and what does not. They are free to develop any idea they want, but it is our obligation after we have spent millions of dollars on research to help them understand what works and what does not so they can make their own decisions.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I withdraw my point of order. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 12\1/2\ minutes. Mr. Chairman, I think that there has been a great deal of confusion and misinformation and mischaracterization that has accompanied the debate on this issue. Let me try to walk the House through what in fact the committee is doing with the funding in this bill for this provision. I want to make clear I intend to support the amendment, because I see no difference in the amendment and what our original intentions have been. Basically, as Members know, this bill has been part of a war zone the past 2 years. It has been one of the key issues, the education issues, the health issues, the labor issues in this bill have been some of the key issues that divided the majority party in the Congress from the White House and that division led to a protracted government shutdown. Because of that fact, we have tried this year to reach bipartisan agreement on this bill, which is one of the two big gorillas within the appropriations process, the other being the defense bill. We have tried to reach agreement between ourselves on a bipartisan approach so that we do not have a repeat of what happened 2 years ago and last year when we had savage differences of opinion on the bill. Basically what we agreed is that the priorities of the Republican Party in the House, the priorities of the Democratic Party in the House, and the priorities of the President would all to the best of our abilities be respected and reflected in the bill. That resulted in a significant increase in funding for the National Institutes of Health. It also resulted in significant increases in funding for school reform. Within the school reform arena, there are some conflicting ideas about how to proceed. The President, for instance, is strongly committed to Goals 2000. He thinks that is the magic answer to school reform. He is committed to testing. He thinks that is a key ingredient of school reform. Members of the House have varying degrees of enthusiasm about either of those approaches. So we searched for another way to promote reform without getting into an ideological battleground. We came up with this compromise. Basically what we did was to not approve the President's significant increase in Goals 2000. We tried to keep that intact as much as we could, however, in comparison to last year's funding, and we tried to complement that package with another effort at school reform which would devolve most of the decisions back to the local arena. What we did was to note that a group of very well-known businessmen over the past few years have become increasingly concerned with the failure of a good many public schools to perform the way they wanted them to perform. And because it is, after all, our employers in this country who wind up having to consume, so to speak, the product produced by our local schools when they hire workers that graduate from those schools, they set out to try to determine what could work to make school performance better than it is today. They funded a variety of approaches. After they had done that for a number of years, they then hired the Rand Corp. to test those various models. They determined that there were six or seven models which they felt showed superior performance in terms of raising student performance. That is not to say that those are the only models that work. There are many others that are being tried around the country and there are a number of others that seem also to perform rather well. What they have been asking for the last 3 years is that the Congress help them jump start the school reform movement at the local level. So that is what we have tried to do. As a result, we have put in this bill the item now before us, a proposal to spend $200 million so that not just title I schools but all schools who want to experiment at how we improve academic performance can apply for seed money, seed money grants, in order to develop their own plans to reform at the local level. Now, these reforms are meant to be comprehensive, not single shot. Some people seem to think that the way to deal with school reform is to load up schools with computers or plug into the Internet. Others seem to think we have got to rethink the way we train teachers. Those are all single-shot approaches. What they have suggested is that we need to enable local school districts to think through how they are going to reform the way they operate in totality so that they take a look at the way they are administering schools, the way kids are being taught, the way teachers are being trained, and the way parents and families are being involved in local school decisions. Despite some of the statements that have been made about this proposal, it has been suggested, for instance, that this is a top to bottom school approach, it is just the opposite. I welcome this amendment because in my view it simply clarifies the original intent of the committee. What we are trying to do is get decisions not only moved out of Washington to the local district but we are also trying to get schools to operate on the basis of not just how the local superintendent thinks they ought to run but on the basis of how local parents, local faculty, and the community itself thinks they ought to be run. And that is what this is an attempt to do. Now, it has also been charged that it was the intent of the committee to say that there were only seven models that could be reviewed. That is absolute nonsense. I do not care, and neither does the committee, if the local school districts choose one of the seven models developed by the new American schools movement or if they choose some other model or if they develop their own wrinkle. The only requirement we have in this proposal is that after these schools try whatever reforms are developed at the local level, they have to accept evaluation by somebody besides the people who implemented it so that parents know whether, in fact, there has been an increase in the level of performance. That is exactly what this approach does. That is why this package has been endorsed by the American Education Research Association, a wide variety of teachers' unions, as well as school administrators, local school board associations, the Council of Chief State School Officers, the National Association of Title I Directors, the National Parent-Teachers Association, and all the rest, because they recognize that this is an effort to empower local people in local communities to improve the standards of their schools without taking dictation from either Washington or their local school board. So I welcome the amendment because it simply clarifies what the intention is. I would also point out, because some people seem to be seeing ghosts, and I want my colleagues to understand who is the New American Schools group. Their first full-time president was that well-known leftist Ann McLaughlin. She was Ronald Reagan's Secretary of Labor. She was the first full-time president of the organization. The president of that organization is now David Kearns, who was formerly the chief executive officer of Xerox. In addition, we have Lou Gerstner, who is chairman and CEO of IBM Corp.; and Robert Allen from AT&T; John Clendenin from BellSouth, the chairman and CEO of B.F. Goodrich Co.; the chairman of Honeywell; the chairman of Boeing; the chairman of Lockheed Martin; the chairman of TRW; the chairman of GTE; Paul Tagliabue, the National Football League Commissioner, and others. This is the supposed left-wing conspiracy that got together and decided that public schools were worth saving and that we needed to base our reforms on hard-headed research, not somebody's ideological ideas, be they right or left, about what might or might not work. And so it just seems to me that conservatives, liberals, moderates, you name it, all ought to be able to agree that the best way to reform schools is to give people the local resources and the local flexibility to do it. And that is why we did it, so that we could have a constructive alternative to some of the approaches that were polarizing the country. I want to give my colleagues one example. Bob Slaven, who has developed the model which Johns Hopkins is helping local school districts with around the country, Success For All. He will not even allow the materials for his program to be sent out to any local school district unless they first have broad-based acceptance in the entire community that that is the approach that that local community wants to try. It is not enough to get the school principal, it is not enough to get a few activist faculty members. They have to have 80-percent agreement from the administrators, 80-percent agreement from the faculty and broad-based community support as well, or he will not even provide his materials to them. He will not even work with them. So it seems to me that despite people's different sets of concerns, we have arrived at exactly the same place we started. We are putting a key amount of money in a new initiative which originates in the Congress on this end of Pennsylvania Avenue and which demonstrates, I think, that we can have good ideas about education whether we are in 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue or whether we reside in the Capitol Building or whether we reside in local school districts all throughout the country. This is the idea behind it. And I think that this language, suggested by the gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Goodling] and others, helps us to clarify that, and so I happily accept it. And I think we can get on to discuss our individual philosophies, but in the end, when this funding is adopted, we will strengthen the ability of National Government to do what we do best, not to impose our own judgments but to help local schools develop their own best ideas about how best to educate their kids. Because in the end I deeply believe that the most important ideas about what happens in education are those that occur at the local level. Parents, teachers, business leaders, students themselves, everyone has a shared responsibility. And what counts is what happens in each individual school because that is where the kids learn, one school at a time, not one State at a time, not on the basis of some nationally imposed prescriptions. This is simply an effort to help local people develop their own best views about how to achieve a suitable performance. Mr. Chairman, I insert the following for the Record: California Congress of Parents, Teachers, and Students, Inc., Los Angeles, CA, September 8, 1997. Hon. Frank Riggs, U.S. House of Representatives, Washington, DC. Re Opposition to proposed amendment of H.R. 2264. Dear Mr. Riggs: I am writing on behalf of the California State PTA to convey our opposition to an amendment that would eliminate ``whole school reform'' from H.R. 2264, the House Appropriations Committee FY 1998 funding bill for the Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education. As we understand the proposed amendment, it would remove from the budget the $200 million now targeted to whole school reform initiatives and redirect this amount to Title I basic grants. We support the bipartisan proposal by subcommittee chairman John Porter (R-IL) and member Davy Obey (D-WI) to promote educational reform efforts that focus on a whole school. This approach to school improvement brings together parents, teachers, administrators and others in a community to address their school's problems in a way that is comprehensive but specifically tailored to local needs. Many successful models around the country show that whole school reforms do work. This $200 million is a wise investment and would provide much needed assistance for schools that recognize their problems and are trying to improve. PTAs in California actively supports the current Title I programs and would enthusiastically support an increased funding allocation for Title I basic grants; but we believe the money should not be taken away from the whole school reform initiative. Providing for these reforms is an important bipartisan effort that would surely increase the effectiveness of Title I programs in helping economically and educationally disadvantaged students to achieve educational success. In sum, PTA believes an amendment to eliminate the whole school reform initiative is not in the best interests of California's children. We urge you to support the $200 million education appropriation targeted to while school reforms. Thank you for considering our concerns. Sincerely, Rosaline Turnbull, President. Ann Desmond, Director of Legislation. Betty DeFen, Advocate for Federal Legislation.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, reserving the right to object, I reserve a point of order against the amendment.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I reserve a point of order against the amendment.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, again reclaiming my time, as far as we are concerned, this is part of the four-cornered package which the committee has agreed to. Procedurally, we will be required to deal with these issues one at a time, but I wanted the House to know that this is part of an overall agreement that has been reached with much controversy. I expect that even after the House proceeds with it, that there will continue to be much controversy about a number of these items as we move to conference.

Mr. OBEY. I yield to the gentleman from Indiana.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, reclaiming my time, I recognize that. All I would say is there is a reason why technology funding is exploding, and that is because technology itself is exploding, and no school wants to be left behind. This is a crucial time for all of them.

Mr. OBEY. I yield to the gentleman from Missouri.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, reclaiming my time, yes, Members will be offering their amendments and other Members are free to say or do whatever they want.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I reserve a point of order against the amendment.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I withdraw my point of order.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I withdraw the point of order. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word. Mr. Chairman, I think it is important for every Member to understand what is happening here. This is an amendment which will be the last amendment to cut Goals 2000. This amendment is going to be accepted, most reluctantly accepted, on this side of the aisle, but it is part of an agreement, the other parts of which will follow immediately. The committee will accept this amendment, further reducing Goals by the amount specified in the amendment. The committee then also plans to accept the Goodling amendment on testing, an amendment which I, for one, am strongly opposed to, but which I think represents the will of the House. The committee will also accept, as I understand it, the Riggs amendment with respect to eligible IDEA recipients in prison; although, again, there is strong controversy on that question, and it will have to be further resolved in conference. The committee intends also to then, as I understand it, accept the amendment, and I am not certain who will offer it, the amendment that will change the designation of Whole School Reform to reflect the intent of all sides that this be comprehensive reform. But we do not want to imply what the ``Whole School'' term seems to imply to some folks. That represents, basically, the four pieces which will be accepted. It has been agreed that there will be a limitation, as I understand it, of an hour on the discussion of that issue. I want to make clear, I very strongly personally oppose the idea of accepting the testing amendment. I have very strong reservations about the Riggs amendment, as well. I am certainly not thrilled with the idea of reducing Goals further. But all of these matters are going to have to be worked out between the administration and various groups in the Congress. I would also say that I think the administration has a good deal of work to do in reaching an understanding on the testing issue with both the majority party and significant elements in the Democratic Caucus as well, and I hope that that can be accomplished. So I want Members to understand that this amendment is being accepted conditionally on our part.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word. Mr. Chairman, this is another in a series of amendments being offered by a small band of Members on the other side of the aisle to, in essence, on an amendment-by-amendment basis gut one of the two top priorities of the President in this bill. I did not vote for the budget agreement. I have minimum high regard for the budget agreement. I think that in many ways the budget agreement that was endorsed by a majority of both parties is a public lie because I do not believe that the spending cuts which are contained in that budget agreement will, in fact, in the fourth and fifth years, be voted for by Members of either party. But nonetheless, the Congress adopted it. When we did so, we reached certain understandings with both branches of Government and with both parties. That understanding was that, as I said earlier, the priorities of each of the parties, the priorities of the President would be largely respected. We have already seen now two cuts adopted on the House floor with respect to goals. This cuts another $40 million out of one of the President's top two priorities, so we have already seen one of the President's top two priorities reduced by a substantial amount. The account to which the gentleman would transfer this money has not been cut. In fact, that subaccount within title I has been level funded so there is no dollar reduction in that program. In fact, the overall title I program, which is directed at improving standards, improving performance on the part of our disadvantaged children has been increased by $400 million. In fact, we are providing over $8 billion to deal with the problems of those children. And I am committed to each and every one of those. I have spent my life in this House championing each and every one of them, often over the opposition of a good many Members on the other side of the aisle. I would point out that the gentleman himself voted just 2 years ago to cut title I, the program which is being enhanced by his amendment, he voted to cut it by over $1 billion. What I will simply say is that we can do this all day long. But if amendments are adopted on the House floor that savage the President's top two priorities, this bill will not be supported on this side of the aisle and this bill will wind up where apparently a small band of Members on that side of the aisle want to see it. It will be part of a continuing resolution. I think, substantively, that will be bad for the country, but politically, to be frank about it, it will demonstrate that even after the two parties have made an agreement, that side of the aisle is incapable of living up to that agreement. I do not think that is in the interest of the gentleman's party or this House or the political system in general. I also would point out that this bill will not become law and neither will a continuing resolution if the President's priorities are not respected to the same degree that other people's priorities are respected. I would say to those Members of the House in both parties, we have a choice. We can produce a bill which is signable, which is passable and which will end the wars that have accompanied this bill for the past 2 years. As we know, this bill was a large part of the reason that the Government was shut down 2 years ago. We can follow that course again or we can try to reach a reasonable compromise between our views. That is what the committee product represents. I think the House ought to stick to that. I would urge rejection of the amendment.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I reluctantly rise to oppose the gentleman's amendment. Mr. Chairman, let me explain why. First of all, I think when we are trying to keep an agreement together between the parties, it is important to oppose amendments from both sides of the aisle, not just that side. Second, I, frankly, do not know quite what I think of the pace at which charter schools ought to be encouraged. I like the idea of charter schools, because I think that they offer an opportunity to escape the bureaucratic box which a lot of local schools have been caught in. But I am also concerned about the very uneven result we have seen so far with the charter school movement. I think if it is to be developed in the future, it sort of reminds me when we used to be involved, we had a competition between parties, frankly, to show who is most against cancer back 20 years ago. You would have amendment after amendment throwing money very fast into the Cancer Institute. But we did not also add money to the grant overseers in the department to see that the money was not wasted, and a lot of it wound up being wasted and some people went to jail. I think you can kill a good thing by sometimes increasing its budget too fast, and that is why I am concerned about increasing the funding for charter schools until we have better results. Third, while that alone would not cause me to oppose the amendment, because I think in the end charter schools will get their problems worked out, I very much am concerned about the source from which the gentleman takes the money, the technology account. I have had a good many experiences in my district in helping schools on projects in wiring those schools so they can connect with the information highway, in trying to see to it that rural schools, and I do not represent a single city larger than 37,000, I am concerned with seeing that rural schools are not passed by on either the school reform movement or by the technology revolution that is taking place in this country. It seems to me that this technology account is a key tool in enabling schools with very limited local resources to be able to stay abreast of the breathtaking changes that are occurring in technology and communications around the country. So that is why I very reluctantly would have to oppose the gentleman's amendment. Perhaps we can reach a different understanding in conference, because the President, I know, is an enthusiast for charter schools, and I am willing to listen to that. But for the moment, again, we have reached an understanding about how these resources ought to be divided. There is no question that on the merits many accounts in this bill are underfunded. I think this entire bill is underfunded to the tune of at least $4 to $5 billion. I think we should be putting more resources into education, into student aid, into medical research. But until that happens, we have to, unfortunately, make these very hard choices.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. If the gentleman would yield further, I would simply agree with the gentleman from California. If you want exhibit A of why campaign finance reform is needed, it is the tax bill that just passed this place. There would not have been any $50 billion gift to the tobacco industry with the lights out. There would not have been any spectacular giveaway to Amway Corp. You would not have had those items. So it is not that we are just interested in this for academic reasons. We are interested in this because without it, we cannot make things better in this country for working people.

Mr. OBEY. Well, I thank the gentleman for yielding. I simply wanted to take this opportunity to again congratulate the gentleman personally for his leadership in this area, also to congratulate my two Wisconsin colleagues, Mr. Kind and Mr. Johnson, and the others who are here and the others who participated in developing this proposal. I think it is incredibly sad that the original intention of the reforms back in the midseventies have now been so subverted by both misguided Supreme Court decisions and clever lawyering on the part of people who want to influence politics. The Supreme Court a long time ago passed a one man-one vote decision. One of the reasons that Congress passed campaign finance reform legislation in the seventies was because we wanted to see to it that the one man-one vote philosophy was adhered to, and that the man who had the money would not, in fact, be able to overwhelm the voice of the man who did not have the money, whether it be a candidate or an average citizen. That is, I think, going to have to be at the core of any changes that we make. When we passed that bill a long time ago, we thought that what we were doing was passing legislation which would limit to $1,000, period, what any individual could give, whether he was a man of moderate means or a millionaire. And we thought that the most that any organized group would be able to give would be $5,000, and that that would both be on the top of the table, not under the table, fully reported, fully disclosed. Instead, today we have a system in which one person in my State has been able to contribute more than $1 million to the political operations of the Speaker, and if it were not for the aggressive actions of reporters, no one would ever have known where that money was coming from. I think we have to have, as in any reform effort, as the core of the effort, the effort of the gentleman and his colleagues to severely limit or eliminate soft money, and I hope we can also add to that other provisions that are necessary so that we end these phony independent expenditures, we end these phony issue advocacy campaigns, that are really efforts to get around the law. We also, I think, have to educate the public they cannot expect candidates to be financed through immaculate conception. There are too many people that want to see us not accept any private money, but they do not want to support the principles of public financing, either. I think people need to understand that campaigns are going to cost money and that they have to be financed, they should be financed in the most open possible way, which also makes certain that whether you are giving individually or collectively, that wealthy people cannot have an undue influence in American politics. I congratulate all of you for taking the lead in trying to be part of bringing that about.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. Mr. Chairman, on this side of the aisle, we also accept the amendment.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. Mr. Chairman, we also accept the amendment.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. OBEY. With all due respect, Mr. Chairman, it is not my point of view that I want the gentleman to appreciate. I want him to be accurate about what I said on the floor.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, reclaiming my time, I would ask that the gentleman not misconstrue my remarks. I said that it is workers throughout the country who have a right to go to their Government for redress when they have been treated unfairly. Those workers work very hard and they work and sweat very often, which is a lot more than can be said about either the gentleman or me in this place. I would appreciate it if the gentleman would not mischaracterize my remarks.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, will the gentlewoman yield?

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, I would like to reemphasize something that the gentlewoman is saying. This agency's staffing has been reduced by more than one-third since 1980, from 3,000 people to under 2,000; by more than 25 percent since 1985. The staffing level for fiscal 1996 was the lowest since 1962, and yet their case intake was 56 percent higher. Each employee must now handle 28 percent more cases than in 1985. I understand that when various labor unions campaign against individual Members of Congress, that when legislation comes to the floor Members have an opportunity to offer amendments which reduce the ability of the agencies to protect legitimate rights of workers; and I understand that that can happen under the rules of the House, but that does not make the amendments that might be offered any more advisable. It seems to me that we should not, under the banner of cutting the so-called bureaucrats in Washington, actually be gutting the Government in its responsibility to protect workers and to protect corporations from unfair practices by unions. That is what the effect of this amendment would be, and I think it deserves to be defeated on both sides of the aisle. This amendment, were it to pass, would not survive conference. If it did, there would not be a bill. There is no way the President of the United States is going to accept a gutting of his responsibility to enforce the law to protect workers' rights in this country, and it is just that simple.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to insert in the Record extraneous material on H.R. 2264 relating to the issue of school reform.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Chairman, reserving the right to object, I would simply make this point. I stood on the floor just a moment ago and interrupted the Clerk to make certain that Members understood exactly where she was, because I did not want Members to miss their opportunity to offer amendments. I did that as a courtesy to Members who I knew had amendments, but it is not my responsibility to then do their job for them. Their job is to be ready to offer the amendments at the appropriate point in the bill. I went out of my way to try to alert people to the fact that the Clerk was in title II. I cannot help it if the gentleman did not respond to that. The fact is that we have already almost doubled the account the gentleman wants to add some more money to. We went in this bill from $167 to $299 million. That is hardly a failure to meet our responsibilities. The fact is that this committee has already well responded to this issue. I would further point out that the House has been informed that this bill is going to be debated this week and next week. We have not attempted in any way to cut off debate, but we are certainly not going to allow the gentleman to ignore the rules of the House for the purpose of extending debate after we purposely engaged in a courtesy that alerted people to where the Clerk was in the bill. At this point, I am sorry, but I object.