Major Owens

Mr. OWENS

Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, greed has rolled in like a bulldozer over all of the numerous logical reasons supporting the denial of a permanent trade agreement with China. The mega-profits to be realized by the corporate elite are so overwhelming that this juggernaut cannot be halted. What an irony it is that the larger part of the evil empire is now going to be a recipient of large-scale investments from the leader of capitalism in the free world. This act will have tornado-like devastation on the employment of hundreds of thousands of ordinary men and women in this Nation. Workers on both sides of the world will be the victims of this agreement. Chinese laborers paid 25 cents per hour or less will fill the bank accounts of multinational corporations. American workers will be forced to struggle harder and work more hours as industrial and manufacturing jobs are moved to China. Only lower-paying service jobs or high-tech positions requiring a college education will be left on our shores. Mr. Speaker, it is irresponsible to consider trade legislation like this without considering the consequences. We need to right now begin to prepare for all those workers that are going to be thrown out of work. I urge a no vote on this legislation.

Mr. OWENS

Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, on Friday, I was unavoidably absent on a matter of critical importance and missed the following votes: On the amendment to H.R. 4475, to prohibit use of funds for engineering work related to an additional runway at New Orleans International Airport, introduced by the gentleman from Louisiana, Mr. Vitter, I would have voted ``nay.'' On passage of the bill, H.R. 4475, the transportation appropriations for fiscal year 2001, introduced by the gentleman from Virginia, Mr. Wolf, I would have voted ``yea.''

Mr. OWENS

Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, in trade agreement after trade agreement the U.S. negotiators have allowed themselves to be swindled before. Now we are dealing with a very different kind of animal. China does not have a market economy. It has an economy that has no name. It is a complex situation where we are about to be swindled again. Without a doubt, the totalitarian government of China has the world's largest workforce. China also has the most oppressed and most thoroughly manipulated urban workforce on the face of this Earth. In the country that promised to be the paradise for the proletariat, there are no free unions. Workers cannot organize. China's size makes China special. It is a monster that can greatly distort the economics of world trade. But more importantly, with China's centralized authority, the totalitarian control of both the consumers and the workers and the means of production, everything is under control, and that also is a danger to world trade. No one in this government is willing to give us an honest study and an honest assessment of the damage that has already been done by NAFTA with its monstrous drain on manufacturing jobs on this country's economy. But China has the capacity to do 100 times more damage than Mexico did with the NAFTA blunder. China's trade is great for our retail establishment. Yes, they like to go and purchase items for a few pennies and sell them for many dollars at a tremendous profit in our retail stores. China's trade is great for our manufacturing concerns, to take their plants and pick them up and have products manufactured in China and brought back here and sold in a standard in line with our quality of life. For the managers, the executives, and the investors profits leap upward forever in this China deal. But for ordinary Americans, the statistics and the records tell the tragic side of the story. Already world trade has cost us a great deal. The gap between workers and the people on the top keeps growing. China is a disaster. Vote ``no'' on this trade bill. Mr. Chairman. I am strongly opposed to granting permanent normal trade relations to China and, knowing the strong feelings on both sides of the issue, will explain the reasons for my objection. Permanent normal trade relations with China will increase America's trade deficit, contrary to what many believe. In 1999, America exported one-third less of agricultural products to China than in the previous year and the resulting deficit affected two-thirds of all agricultural commodities exported to China. In fact, America's 1998 cotton export surplus to China of $118 million turned to a $12 million trade deficit in 1999. From 1995 to 1999, American export of fresh apples to China fell by 79 percent, while we imported twice the dollar amount of dried apples from China than we exported in fresh apples. While we exported no peanuts to China in 1999, we imported peanuts from China for the first time in 1998 and exported only $14,000. This was a drop from $60,000 worth of peanuts exported to China in 1994. How can we believe that simply giving China permanent normal trade relations status will reverse this very clear trend? This increase in agricultural imports from China to the United States has occurred simultaneously while overall United States exports to China has steadily decreased. The result is a significant agricultural trade deficit for the United States. Granting permanent normal trade relations status to China will not automatically recalibrate the balance of trade between our two countries. And historically, China has failed to honor trade agreements with the United States. What makes proponents of permanent normal trade relations believe that it will be any different after approval then it is now? But of equal concern to me is the well-known record of China in human rights violations. This extends to the workers in China who will be the recipients of American jobs exported there under the misguided belief that permanent normal trade relations with China will be a positive thing. At the current 25 cents an hour in manufacturing wages for the average worker in China, the temptation for multinational corporations to move business from America to China will only be exacerbated by granting it permanent normal trade relations status. Right now, a few multinational corporations are draining away assets from Federal, state and local coffers and taking their business to other countries that have less ethical and stringent standards under which their citizens earn a living. Are we to condone and support this trend by making it easier for those multinational corporations to export jobs away from America? This negative trend for American trade will not be helped by granting China permanent normal trade relations status. It will simply increase our dependency on foreign imports and set in motion a dangerous precedent that could see the eventual disappearance of the prosperity and productivity that America has built to an incredible degree over the last 8 years. International concerns that should give proponents of permanent normal trade relations with China pause is China's unchanged reputation for support of radical factions; like Iran, Iraq, and Libya and for bullying Taiwan. By granting permanent normal trade relations status to China, we send a message to multinational corporations that it is OK to siphon money from American communities and move assets abroad with impunity. We say to China: ``It is OK to practice human rights violations and aid and abet rogue nations in the international arena. The proper course of action for the United States Congress is to deny permanent normal trade relations to China. We must not allow American jobs to disappear and resurface abroad. We must not turn a blind eye to China's intransigence on world security issues. Let us not turn back the clock on what we have been able to accomplish over the last eight years. We must say no to permanent normal trade relations for China. We must say no to the betrayal of slave-wage workers in China and to workers in America.

Mr. OWENS

Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, I would like to begin by congratulating the Million Mom March. The Million Mom March took place on May 14. I think the moms marching had a lot to do with our agenda here in Congress today and tomorrow and our agenda for the rest of the year. I just hope that the moms realize that their power, the power of mothers marching, is great enough to have an impact and an influence on what we do here, in many ways. Their immediate objective was gun control, but there are many other items that I would like to see placed on their agenda. I would like to see the mothers set the agenda for what is going to happen here in Washington in the next few months. Mr. Speaker, there is a secret, almost a secret, that nobody wants to talk about that I think the million moms and the fathers too ought to be concerned with and should be discussing. Fathers as well as mothers, and all of us, are concerned about the future and concerned about the Nation's future as it impacts upon our immediate children and our grandchildren. We want to see a greater America, we want to see a better world, and we have a golden opportunity here in this United States of America right now with the surplus of $2 trillion over the next 10 years as a possibility. It is possible that we may have a surplus of $2 trillion. This year's surplus is definitely, by the most conservative estimate, going to be about $200 billion, $200 billion this year, and it will probably be no less than $200 billion for the next 10 years. I think the million moms marching ought to know about that. I think they ought to be involved in a discussion of what happens with that $2 trillion over the next 10 years to impact upon their lives and their children's lives. I think the most comprehensive, the longest and the loudest discussion ever held in the history of our democracy should focus on this window of opportunity that we have at this point. We started the debate today on permanent trade with China. The relationship with China is relevant here in terms of the fact that some of us believe that the trade with China agreement will have a great impact on the working families of America because it is going to take away many of the jobs that people at the lower levels have. Trade with China is definitely going to be as bad or far worse than the trade agreement with Mexico, which immediately began to drain away certain manufacturing jobs. China is so much bigger. China's economy is controlled and manipulated, and the likely danger that our economy will be greatly impacted by China is even greater than anything that happened in the case of Mexican cheap labor destroying jobs in America. The question is, what does all this have to do with the million moms marching? What does it have to do with the setting of the agenda here in this Capitol for the next few months? What does it have to do with the $2 trillion surplus we expect over the next 10 years? It all comes together because, as we lose those jobs that are going to fly away to China, inevitably corporations will pick up and they will go locate plants where the cheapest labor market is, where there are 25-cent-an- hour workers in China, where in some cases they use prison labor. Already our economy and our stores are flooded with goods from China because everybody can make a killing. Companies can go and manufacture goods at dirt cheap prices and then come back into our advanced economy and sell them at very high prices, relatively speaking, and make a big profit. So no industry, no corporation is going to back away from the opportunity to make these big profits. They will be chasing dollars at the expense of the loss of many jobs. So, what is one of the possible answers to the problem that will be created if the people who want to pass the trade bill prevail, and the rumor is that they have enough votes and they will probably prevail tomorrow and there will be a China trade agreement? There will be a huge loss of jobs. A country that has 1.2 billion people has a lot of customers, they say, and they want to get those customers. But before they get to the customers, they have a lot of workers who need jobs and who will work for almost nothing and will undercut the workers here in this country. So one possible answer immediately is in the same breath that as we create jobs in China, as we lose jobs here and create more jobs in China, let us respond to the argument that so many of the proponents of the China trade bill have made, and that is that, yes, we will lose jobs in manufacturing; yes, we will lose jobs at the lower level of the economy, but we will gain tremendous number of jobs and sales in the high-tech industry. We are going to take off where a new boom, a new surge in the sale of PCs and in the sale of services to established Web sites and all of the telecommunications, high-tech technology that is necessary. We will be the suppliers of that. It may be true that for a while there will be this great surge of need in the Chinese economy for American know-how and for American high-tech machinery. If that is the case, then there will be jobs created in America in the high-tech area. At the same time we are making a trade agreement, then let us guarantee that the thousands and thousands of workers who are going to lose jobs are also given an opportunity to get some training in these high-tech areas. Let them learn how to be the people who hook up the technology. Some might even travel to China. Let them learn how to manufacture the gadgets and the gears and the switches and the lines that might require skills that are different from the manufacturing skills that the people who make cars have, or the people who make refrigerators, or the various consumer products that are going to now be made in China. Let the people who lose the jobs making those products begin to make the products for the high-tech revolution. They cannot do it without some more training. They need training immediately. I do not know of any place where there is any legislation on the drawing board which says we are going to have a massive emergency training program for workers who lose their jobs as a result of the China trade bill passing. In the long run, however, we do talk and have talked a great deal about revamping our school system, improving the way we educate young people, so that in the long run the young people who are in school now will get an education which allows them to fill those high-tech jobs. And at least the China trade bill will not take away jobs in the future because the young people will be able and capable of stepping out of school and commanding the jobs that do exist in the high-tech industry. They predict that there may be as many as 1.5 million job vacancies in the high-tech industry in the next 5 years because of the fact that we are not training enough people in computer sciences and related sciences in our colleges so that vacancies are going to be there. So our schools, then, must rise to meet the occasion and prepare youngsters for these guaranteed jobs. In the absence of any special education effort, what we are doing is going abroad. And one item that is going to be on the agenda in this Congress in the next few weeks is the H-1B program. The H-1B section of the immigration law allows us to bring in foreigners to fill the vacancies that are created in the high-tech industry. And primarily that is the target. They are not bringing in these people for anything else. The great need is in the high-tech industry, information technology industry. So what we did not train our youngsters for in the past, will now be taken care of by foreigners. And that will keep going. How are we going to deal with the vacuum created by the movement of manufacturing jobs to China if the only source of the manpower to fill the jobs that do exist is going to be the foreign countries, foreign countries who have information technology expertise and will send the personnel here? Weaving this story together may, at the beginning, sound very complicated, but it really is not. It is quite simple. Mothers should be aware of the fact that the best way they can take care of their children is to have an impact on the policies that are made here in Washington, on the bills and the legislation that come to this floor. Mothers should have an impact. I congratulate the mothers for understanding the relationship between their marching and the possibility of making their schools safer, of making their neighborhoods safer, of ridding our society slowly of a menace that has grown over the years because mothers have not been active in attempting to end that menace. We have more than 200 million guns in our society. Those guns out there are menacing. Those guns out there represent danger to our children. They recognize that, and their immediate focus in marching here on May 14, Mother's Day, was to deal with the menace of the gun, the immediate threat to the lives of children. I think that is appropriate, and I congratulate them for focusing on something very concrete. It is possible to get some results if the mothers stay organized. It is possible we will get some basic legislation passed which will make the world of our children safer with respect to guns. We have very limited objectives this year, and we ought to be able to meet those objectives. But beyond that, mothers need to set a larger agenda. I think that The New York Times certainly had it right when they said that perhaps the best fate for the holiday, Mother's Day, would be to make Mother's Day again a day of open activism as they did on this May 14. Mother's Day has an interesting history, a very interesting history. People say it is very unusual, very nontraditional, very unorthodox to have mothers marching on Mother's Day, May 14. In my community, there were large numbers of mothers who thought it was an insult. We did have one bus load of mothers who came from my district. They actually left the city from my office, and they were mothers mostly of children who had been injured or killed by guns. There were large numbers of other mothers who were really more traditionalist and said, no, I am not ready yet. But I think I would urge all mothers to rethink the possibility that Mother's Day should be a day of activism, and maybe fathers should take note too and make Father's Day a day of activism. If we care about the next generation, our children, our grandchildren, one of the ways we should express our concern for their survival is to try harder to have an impact on what happens in our government. Now, let me just read from The New York Times editorial on May 14, which I thought was very appropriate, where they applauded the activism on Mother's Day. ``No matter how simple it looks, Mother's Day is a complicated holiday. It has its roots in mid-19th century women's activism, championed first in 1858 by Anna Reeves Jarvis and then in 1872 by Julia Ward Howe. Their causes, honored locally on various mother's days in mid-spring, were improved sanitation, first aid, and world peace. ``But activism is about the last thing Mother's Day had begun to call to mind in the 20th century. Woodrow Wilson proclaimed the first official Mother's Day on May 8, 1914, fulfilling a joint resolution of Congress that authorized the President to proclaim the second Sunday in May as Mother's Day and to request a flying of the American flag as a token of that fact. The patriotism has filtered out of Mother's Day over the past 86 years, making it hard to think of this holiday as an acknowledgment, as the joint resolution put it, of the service rendered in the United States by the American mother.'' Continuing to read from the New York Times editorial of May 14: ``The day has instead been formalized, commercially into a festival of flowers and feminine gifts and perhaps a few minutes of hard-earned leisure. But it has also been informalized, made a more intimate and less civic display of feeling. There is something a little ambivalent, a little archaic, about the formulaic ways we celebrate this day, if only because the status of mothers has never been more complex. ``In 1914, the mother's service outside the home was mainly inferential. The American mother, Congress wrote at that time, is doing so much for the home, for moral uplift and religion, hence so much for good government and good humanity. There is a lot in that word `hence.' But these days there is no inference about it at all. Mothers are as likely to work in government as they are in the home. ``Perhaps the best fate for this holiday would be to make it again a day of open activism, as it was for the woman marching on behalf of gun control in many cities across this country today. Not everyone believes as Julia Ward Howe did, that if mothers could only come together somehow, world peace would ensue. But the second Sunday of every May could come to symbolize a powerful reality of contemporary American politics. Women united behind a cause can be a powerful force for progressive social policies, better child care, broader health coverage and fully equal opportunity for them and their children.'' That was the New York Times editorial of May 14, the year 2000. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to enter the statement in its entirety in the Record. [From the New York Times, May 14, 2000] Activism on Mother's Day No matter how simple it looks, Mother's Day is a complicated holiday. It has its roots in mid-19th-century women's activism, championed first in 1858 by Anna Reeves Jarvis and then in 1872 by Julia Ward Howe. Their causes, honored locally on various mother's days in mid-spring, were improved sanitation, first aid and world peace. But activism is about the last thing Mother's Day called to mind in the 20th century. Woodrow Wilson proclaimed the first official Mother's Day on May 8, 1914, fulfilling a joint resolution of Congress that authorized the president to proclaim the second Sunday in May as Mother's Day and to request the flying of the American flag as a token of that fact. The patriotism has filtered out of Mother's Day over the past 86 years, making it hard to think of this holiday as an acknowledgment, as the joint resolution put it, of ``the service rendered the United States by the American mother.'' The day has instead been formalized, commercially, into a festival of flowers and feminine gifts and, perhaps, a few minutes of hard-earned leisure. But it has also been informalized, made a more intimate and less civic display of feeling. There is something a little ambivalent, a little archaic, about the formulaic ways we celebrate this day, if only because the status of mothers has never been more complex. In 1914, a mother's service outside the home was mainly inferential. ``The American mother,'' Congress wrote, ``is doing so much for the home, for moral uplift, and religion, hence so much for good government and humanity.'' There is a lot in that one word ``hence.'' But these days there is no inference about it at all. Mothers are as likely to work in good government as they are in the home. Perhaps the best fate for this holiday would be to make it, again, a day of open activism, as it is for the women marching on behalf of gun control in many cities across the country today. Not everyone believes, as Julia Ward Howe did, that if mothers could only come together somehow, world peace would ensue. But the second Sunday of every May could come to symbolize a powerful reality of contemporary American politics. Women united behind a cause can be a powerful force for progressive social policies, better child care, broader health coverage and fully equal opportunity for them and their children. Mr. Speaker, there is a second editorial that was done the next day by The New York Times, and it reads as follows: ``The surge of energy was palpable yesterday as hundreds of thousands of marchers gathered on the Mall in Washington to demand stiffer gun control measures, and additional crowds joined in the demonstration at other sites around the country. ``The event may not have reached the million mom goal set by some alliteration-loving promoters, but the turnout, estimated at more than 750,000, was nonetheless impressive, especially on a day traditionally devoted to family gatherings. There is a real hope that the seed planted by this march could blossom into a movement that could change the dynamics of the national struggle to achieve sensible gun control.'' I am quoting from The New York Times editorial. I am not going to read the entire editorial, but another section of it reads as follows: ``The marchers offered a sound agenda ranging from the registration of all handguns and the licensing of all handgun owners to mandatory safety locks and full background checks before all gun sales.'' This is a very limited, very practical, very reasonable agenda of the mothers who came here on May 14. They are asking for very little. I think it is possible that if they still organize they could gain this. I will just reread what can be the summary of what they came for: ``The marchers offered a sound agenda, ranging from the registration of all handguns and the licensing of all handgun owners to mandatory safety locks and full background checks before all gun sales. That is an agenda that mothers set to make their children safer in a very immediate and practical way.'' The editorial of the New York Times on May 15, the day after the march ends as follows: ``It is not yet clear how the gun control issue will play out politically. Even as mothers were mobilizing for their march, a new poll showed that the gender gap on guns is growing with men more apt to support the rights of gun owners and women more interested in gun restrictions. The challenge for the marchers will be to turn the event into a sustained political movement. ``Many speakers held this as a historical turning point in the gun control struggle, but it will only become so if the marchers keep up the pressure on Congress to pass the modest but useful gun control measures that remain blocked in a conference committee and on candidates running in the fall elections to support strict gun control laws. ``The hands that rock the Nation's cradles have the potential to rock its political institutions, but only if they keep rocking hard.'' That is the conclusion of the New York Times May 15 editorial on the day after the Million Moms March. The hands that rock the Nation's cradles have the potential to rock its political institutions, but only if they keep rocking hard. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to submit the entirety of the New York Times editorial of May 15 into the Record. [From the New York Times, May 15, 2000] The Power of Mothers Marching The surge of energy was palpable yesterday as hundreds of thousands of marchers gathered on the Mall in Washington to demand stiffer gun control measures--and additional crowds joined in the demonstration at other sites around the country. The event may not have reached the ``million mom'' goal set by some alliteration-loving promoters, but the turnout--estimated at more than 750,000 by the organizers-- was nonetheless impressive, especially on a day traditionally devoted to family gatherings. There is real hope that the seed planted by this march could blossom into a movement that could change the dynamics of the national struggle to achieve sensible gun control. That possibility clearly has the National Rifle Association running scared. It tried to neutralize the impact of the march in advance with advertisements in print and broadcast media denigrating the event and offering its own tepid alternative, a program to teach gun safety in every elementary school classroom in America. A full-page N.R.A. ad in The Times on Friday derided the march as ``a political agenda masquerading as motherhood'' and called it ``shameful to seize a cherished holiday for political advantage.'' That seemed a disingenuous complaint from an organization that regularly uses its lavish campaign contributions to seize the political process and thwart the will of the American people. The marchers offered a sound agenda, ranging from the registration of all handguns and the licensing of all handgun owners to mandatory safety locks and full background checks before all gun sales. By contrast, the solutions offered by the N.R.A. were laughably insufficient--safety education in the elementary schools, better parenting and better enforcement of existing laws, riddled as they are with loopholes. Those are all laudable goals but would not come close to stemming the epidemic of gun violence. Even worse ideas came from some participants in a countermarch staged by gun advocates. They argued for the arming of teachers and other citizens and the right to carry concealed weapons on the theory that if more of the ``good'' people owned guns for self-protection, the ``bad'' people would be deterred from attacking them. That sounded more like a recipe for shootouts than for crime control. It is not yet clear how the gun control issue will play out politically. Even as the mothers were mobilizing for their march, a new poll showed that the gender gap on guns is growing, with men more apt to support the rights of gun owners and women more interested in gun restrictions. The challenge for the marchers will be to turn the event into a sustained political movement. Many speakers hailed this as a historic turning point in the gun control struggle, but it will only become so if the marchers keep up the pressure--on Congress to pass the modest but useful gun control measures that remain blocked in a conference committee, and on candidates running in the fall elections to support strict gun control laws. The hands that rock the nation's cradles have the potential to rock its political institutions--but only if they keep rocking hard. Mr. Speaker, as my colleagues can see, I want to go further than gun control. I think that the practical objectives of the Million Moms March on May 14 are realizable. I think they should strive to see those objectives, since they are so limited, realized this year. Why not? They are very modest goals. I would like to appeal, however, to the million moms and all the moms and moms organizations everywhere to go further and set a larger agenda, beyond gun control, to make your children safe in this world, beyond gun control to guarantee that your children have a reasonable opportunity to pursue happiness. It will have the tools and the capability to be employed in the industries that are going to be very complex and demanding in the future with respect to training and intellectual capabilities. Let us set the agenda so that they have a chance. Let us set the agenda so that at a point in history where there is a $2 trillion surplus anticipated over a 10-year period that $2 trillion surplus is not squandered by the traditional conventional wisdom that prevails here in Washington. I am not going to set female reasoning up against male reasoning. I know there was a recent article in the New York Times that talked about the fact that women may have a chemical hormone that makes them more nurturing; and they may be more useful to civilization, because their immediate response to danger and response to challenges to the survival of themselves and their children is to close ranks and to organize and to help each other. I am not going to get into that kind of scientific basis that is being attempted to establish the fact that mothers are more suitable for maintaining our civilization and that women are more suitable for maintaining our civilization. Now men, I would like to appeal to men to march also, since I was very much impressed, I was down here for the Million Moms March, very impressed at the way that they turned this traditional holiday into a temporary movement, and I was very impressed by the editorials in The New York Times that call for the mothers to make the temporary movement a permanent movement. I only say that the permanent movement should set a larger agenda; let the mothers set the agenda for Washington. Let the mothers set the agenda for the House of Representatives, for the Congress. Let the mothers set the agenda for the end game negotiations that take place every budget year at the White House. There is going to be an end game negotiation where the decisions will be made about how to spend some of that surplus. Nobody wants to talk about it now. The Committee on Appropriations process is moving forward with no discussion of the surplus. They are acting as if we are still in a period of desperate deficits. The Committee on Appropriations and the authorizing committees act that way in all cases, except one. Mothers need to know that, last week, last week mothers, we passed a defense authorization bill which was $309.9 billion. The authorization bill already was $21.1 billion greater than the amount spent for the last year on defense. However, the Republican majority added an additional $4.5 billion to the bill. So if you want to know where the surplus is likely to go, if you want to know what the temperament is and what the likely manner in which it will be wasted, you watch the defense budget. There is no great war on right now. There is no evil empire to defend ourselves against, but it is the first place the extra money has been utilized. H.R. 4205, the defense authorization bill, increases the defense budget to $309.9 billion. If we do not have the debate, if you are not aware throughout the entire country that there is a window of opportunity that right now we have an opportunity to use revenue that is available in constructive ways, I do not say that the defense authorizations are not constructive, I just think they have enough money already before the additional amounts were added. There is plenty of money to meet the agenda that the defense and military establishment have set, the legitimate agenda. I would like to see them expand the agenda and use some of the tremendous resources of the defense and military establishment to do more to help with disaster relief, disaster relief in this country, disaster relief anywhere in the world. We have this huge apparatus of equipment and men and know- how and I think we ought to expand the mission of the defense to be a mission to help with natural disasters throughout the world. We can spend the money well there, but even then they have too much money. At the same time that they are authorizing an additional amount for defense, the Republican majority and the appropriation committees have led the fight to cut education drastically. Education has been cut, despite the fact that we no longer have a desperate deficit. They cannot argue, as they argued under the Newt Gingrich Contract with America, that they had to cut school lunches and they had to destroy the Department of Education, they had to cut Head Start, they had to deny increases in higher education grants, because we had a deficit, the country was on the verge of bankruptcy. That was the illusion that they painted. That was the picture that they painted. The country is not on the verge of bankruptcy now. So why are the Republicans leading these tremendous cuts in education? Why at a time when we are opening trade with China, trade with China, which will draw out our manufacturing jobs, the jobs for entry-level persons who do not have an education? Why at a time like this are we going to cut back on the education budget? Yes, it is true the Federal Government only gives a small portion. It provides a small portion of the education budget. Most of the education budget is provided by the States and by the localities, but the Federal Government's 7 percent or 8 percent is a key amount, and the fact that it is only 7 percent or 8 percent is unfortunate. There is no reason why it could not be larger. The dogma has been over the years that the Federal Government should not spend more money for education, because we want to keep our schools under local and State control. But if there is only a 7 percent investment in the schools, there is certainly no way you are going to take over the schools. And if we increase the 7 percent investment from the Federal level to 25 percent, there still is only a 25 percent power, 25 percent of the power, the other 75 percent of the power would still be at the local and State level. What is this great myth that more State, more Federal money would mean more Federal control? We need the money from the Federal Government to revamp our schools now. The window of opportunity is now while we have this great Federal surplus. There are some States that have some surplus. There are some cities that have some surplus, but there is no surplus like the tremendous surplus that is being projected over the 10 years for the Federal Government. There is no place where we are going to find over the next 10 years a projection of sums like $2 trillion, this year, $200 billion. So I think the mothers who marched here ought to know and ought to join the debate. Mothers, keep the pressure on for gun control, but, mothers, if you want to save your children and want to allow them to join the 21st century revolution which moves into a kind of a cyber-civilization, a digital world, where you have to have special skills, if you want all the children to be able to keep up with the rapid changes in our digital society, then we have got to have the education revamping now. We have to have the reform in education now. We need the computers in the schools now. We need the teachers that know how to use computers to teach. We need many of the items that were cut by the Republican majority in the Committee on Appropriations. At this point, I would like to read portions of a letter that was submitted from the National Education Association. It is headed by Robert Chase, who I heard speak a few months ago, and he talked about the fact that our schools have a great deal of needs operationally, but there are even greater needs in terms of the infrastructure. Our school buildings, our school equipment, our laboratories, there is a great need for an investment there. I want to congratulate Mr. Chase and the National Education Association, because following their statement of that need, they went out and they did an in-depth study, a thorough study from State to State of what the needs were for our school infrastructure. Infrastructure means buildings, it means gyms, it means laboratories and cafeterias, it means classroom space. That is what infrastructure means. In addition to infrastructure, they also studied our technology needs in the schools, computers and the hookups you need for the computers in terms of wiring, et cetera. So the National Education Association is certainly qualified and has earned the right to criticize the recent cuts that the Committee on Appropriations has made in the education bill. Let us remember now that the majority party, the Republican majority, is the same party which 6 years ago proposed that we abolish the Department of Education. They proposed that we cut Head Start, they proposed that we cut school lunches. They are not as bold and as open and honest in their assault on education now as they were 6 years ago, but here is an assault. In this letter from the NEA, it states that the $1.3 billion in emergency grant and loan programs proposed by the President for school repairs has been cut from the budget, cut from the appropriations. They did not put one penny in to replace that. There is no school modernization and construction money in the bill that is passed out of the Committee on Appropriations, the subcommittee, by the Republican majority. The possibility of reducing class sizes is cut down drastically when you do not have the classrooms, when you do not have the infrastructure improvements. The NEA study estimates that there are $268 billion in unmet school infrastructure needs. Now, we are talking about infrastructure, buildings, that are needed to service the enrollment right now. The population of the schools right now is being made to operate in inadequate facilities. We are not talking about projections over the next 10 years of enrollment, we are talking about the needs right now. $268 billion is needed, according to the National Education Association study, yet, the cuts that were made by the Subcommittee on Appropriations for education have wiped out any possibility of even entering $1.3 billion for emergency repairs. They have eliminated the Class Size Reduction Program, which was going forward without the extra classrooms. We started that last year by appropriating money for additional teachers. The assumption is if you have additional teachers, the ratio of pupils to teachers will be smaller in each class. The problem is that if you do not have the classrooms, you can give money for more teachers, but there is no way to reduce the class size. In the case of New York City and a few other places across the country, they have put an additional teacher in the classroom. When you have young children in the elementary grades, a teacher at one end of the room and a teacher at the other end of the room trying to teach 2 different classes is definitely an adventure slated to not be successful. Various other adaptations of the teaching takes place when you do not have the classroom space. But, nevertheless, I certainly support the program to have more teachers. We wanted to put 100,000 new teachers in our classrooms over a 3- or 4-year period. The successful class size reduction program has already helped schools to hire 29,000 highly qualified new teachers. Just last November, Congress agreed on a bipartisan basis to continue and strengthen this critical program as part of the consolidated fiscal year 2000 appropriations bill. Elimination of targeted funds for class size reduction will not only jeopardize the gains already realized, but will prevent the schools from hiring an additional 20,000 qualified teachers to serve another 2.9 million children. We urge the committee to restore funding for this critical program. The Teacher Empowerment Act Block Grant, the subcommittee bill provides for $1.7 billion for a block grant consolidating the Eisenhower Professional Class Reduction Program. Because the bill provides only a minimal increase above the current funding, schools seeking to hire additional teachers to reduce class size will have to do so at the expense of programs to recruit and train teachers. In other words, the Republican majority has folded in other programs into the money and into the program that was designed to get additional teachers. Insufficient funding for the teacher quality programs, they have cut that also. They have frozen the funds for the critical Title I programs. The subcommittee bill not only eliminates targeted funding to help low-performance schools maximize student achievement, but the subcommittee bill denies additional math and reading services to 260,000 disadvantaged children. Just last fall, the House passed a bipartisan Student Results Act setting the Title I authorization level at $9.85 billion, yet the subcommittee bill provides almost $2 billion below this level, something like $7.8 billion. So there is another cut in a critical program. There is no program that has been more critical than Title I, which is a basic thrust of the Federal Government in elementary and secondary education. Title I provides funds to schools where the poorest youngsters are attending, and it is designed to enhance the school program with extra services. They have eliminated $20 million for elementary school councils, frozen funds for bilingual school programs, refused to give additional funding for Head Start. All of this adds up to a hostile Republican majority attacking education again through the budget action. All of this is an indication that there is no concern about the fact that we have a surplus, a $2 trillion surplus over a 10-year period. We are not going to spend the money on education if we continue to follow the leadership of the Subcommittee on Education which passed out this appropriations bill. They refused to discuss the surplus. But the million moms out there who marched on March 14 ought to wake up and ask the question, what are you going to do with the surplus? And the second question is, what are you going to do about education with the surplus? There is no reason why we cannot simplify matters. I think we should make it easy on ourselves and dedicate 10 percent of the surplus, no matter what it is. If it goes down, then it is 10 percent of whatever that is; if it goes up, it is 10 percent of that. Ten percent of the surplus over the next 10 years ought to be dedicated to education, to educational improvements. Half of it can go in the form of the improvement of the infrastructure for schools all across America; the other half can go to other reforms. The debate about what the other reforms should be might continue for some time, but the money would be there when we reach consensus on programs that do work. We know that there are some programs that do work. Head Start works. We know that. The TRIO programs work; we know that. There are a number of different programs that we agree work. They should be the recipients of the increased funding first. Then additional programs that are designated as programs that work can be funded also out of the second half of the 10 percent of the surplus. What is 10 percent of the surplus this year? It would mean $20 billion; $20 billion into education this year. $10 billion of that goes toward school construction and infrastructure improvement. Then you would you have $10 billion left for other reforms and education improvements. I am certain that there are many who dismiss this proposal right away as being too ambitious, out of harmony with what is practical and acceptable, but those of us who are Members of Congress know better. We authorized a $218 billion program for a 6-year program for highways just a year ago, so $218 billion for highways over a 6-year period was not unthinkable. We can think big when it is necessary. We have just increased the defense budget, as I said before, increased it to $309.9 billion. Just as an afterthought, we added $4.5 billion to last year's budget. The President had already added $21 billion to it. So we think big, and we think in the billions. There is no reason why we cannot think about $20 billion for education improvements in one year, especially if half of that goes toward construction. School construction and infrastructure expenditures for wiring schools, for technology, et cetera, those are items which do not involve interference by the Federal Government in the operation of a local school. Those are capital budget items. The Federal Government gives the money, let us do the construction, let us revamp the schools, repair those schools, let us wire the schools so they can have Internet access, let us buy computers, let us do the capital improvements necessary, and then the Federal Government can get out. The operation of the school goes on, and you actually free up additional dollars so that the State and the Federal Government dollars, more of them can be spent on operational activities instead of capital budget activities. That is a simple formula. The amount of money spent for construction is no threat to local control at all. It is an easy way to relieve the burden at the local level. If these amounts seem too great, let me just go back for a moment to the National Education Association study. The National Education Association study is very revealing because they conclude, as I said before, that we need $253.8 billion, about $254 billion, for infrastructure other than technology. They conclude that just for technology, we need $53 billion additional. They have mapped it out quite thoroughly. Unmet needs, school modernization funding, totals, when you add technology and infrastructure together, $307.6 billion. They break it down in two areas, school infrastructure and technology. School infrastructure means deferred maintenance, take care of that, new construction, renovation, retrofitting, additions to existing facilities, major improvements. The results would be that we would have to bring it up to par, spend that $254 billion that I spoke about. Educational technology, they define that. A comprehensive definition of educational technology according to the NEA study is multimedia computers, peripherals, software, connectivity, networks, technology infrastructure, equipment, maintenance and repair, professional development and support. All of that goes into the physical needs for technology. They do not talk about training teachers. That was a different bill, and we still need that. What does it all add up to in terms of the States? They break it down according to the needs of each State. One might be interested to know that at the very top of the States in terms of infrastructure needs stands the great Empire State of New York. New York, according to the National Education Association study, New York's infrastructure needs total $47.6 billion. New York has the greatest infrastructure, they call it unmet needs, greater modernization of unmet needs in New York, the infrastructure is $47.6 billion, technology is $3 billion. According to the survey and the standards supplied by the National Education Association, the total need in New York is $50.6 billion to bring their schools up to par, to meet the needs of the 21st century in infrastructure and technology combined. New York is so bad off, they are in such terrible shape, that the second State in terms of need is about half that amount. Now, California is the second State in terms of infrastructure need, technology need. California is number two. Even though California has a much larger population, their infrastructure need is only $22 billion, not even half of New York State's $47.6 billion. Their technology needs are greater because New York, according to the survey, has done more in terms of computerization than California, so the technology needs of California are $10 billion, for a total of $32,901,000 that California needs versus New York's $50,675,000. I am talking big figures, these are big numbers. Let us not run away from them. Do we know the cost of one nuclear aircraft carrier? We do not run away from the cost of a nuclear aircraft carrier. It is more than $4 billion. Do we know the cost of a Sea Wolf submarine? It used to be around $2.1 billion. It has probably gone up by now. In weapons technology, the Star Wars, the new missile defense system that we are going to construct, I think we added almost $6 billion more to play with that some more. We have spent billions of dollars over the years to get a missile defense against terrorism. We are willing to throw away additional money on that. Common sense tells us that a terrorist does not need a long-range missile to throw a bomb into a crowded city, or to bring a bomb into a crowded city. There are many, many ways other than the firing of a long-range missile. So a system which is designed to stop long-term missiles where we have already spend hundreds of billions of dollars, we do not need to spend more billions of dollars. But my argument is that this is the way it will be thrown away. It will just be flushed down the drain, all of the surplus money, in one foolish project after another by policymakers who ought to know better, under pressures from lobbyists and from corporations and from hundreds of people who will make millions of dollars as a result of our wasting our money. The best defense for America is in brain power, developing maximum brain power so that when the China trade agreement begins to siphon off the jobs for our young people, the brain power that has been developed in those young people to step forward and take those high-tech jobs that we still have left. We do not have to bring foreigners in with an H 1 B program to take the jobs that our own youngsters should be trained for. It all comes together. Let the mothers set the agenda. Let the mothers have the common sense to do what so far the policymakers here are not willing to do. Let the mothers in on the discussion. Let us not keep proceeding toward September when the end game negotiations will take place and decisions will be made about what we should do with the surplus. Yes there have been some proposals by the President, and I support all of his proposals. He proposes to use some of the money to deal with the Medicare problems, the problems of Medicare, the possible deficit in Medicare in 15 or 20 years. Some of the money can be used to deal with that. The President is proposing we use some of the surplus to deal with a prescription drug benefit. That is one of the possibilities. Another possibility has been, of course, that we pay down the debt, the most popular one; and I am all in favor of paying down the debt. But we are not in a situation where all of the funds have to be used to pay down the debt at once. Why not invest in education, because the investment in education will only increase the surplus and increase the health of the economy. Mr. Speaker, there are a lot of arguments that make sense, and yes, they have gone forward; but suddenly there is silence about even the President's proposals which he made in the State of the Union address are not getting any great amount of discussion here on Capitol Hill. The Senate and the Congress are moving at this point as if there is no surplus. If there are discussions of a surplus, and there are, I am sure, they are all behind the scenes getting ready for D-Day when the Democratic President and the White House will have to sit down with the Republican-controlled Congress, and they will dole out what happens to portions of the surplus that they are going to spend this year. Mr. Speaker, it is our duty to send them a message. Public opinion is still vitally important. It is not as important as it used to be because there was a time when public opinion was used as a barometer for a lot of decision-making and people would say well, I have to do it because the public wants it. I cannot do it because the public is against it. Never before has public opinion been as strong as it is now in favor of the Federal Government providing more assistance to education. For the last 5 years, public opinion has told us that education ranks as one of the top five priorities of the public for the use of government money, government funds. For the last 2 years, education has been number one. Indisputably, this year education ranks as the number one priority according to the public. The polls that are taken by the Republicans show the same as the polls that are taken by the Democrats. Why is our leadership fully aware that education is a number one priority of the public refusing to respond by dedicating more of our resources to education? Our leaders who read these public opinion polls, we pay large amounts of money to pollsters to do the polls. Some of them come free from objective sources that have no stake in politics. Why are they not listened to? Now, we are like the Roman Empire right now in terms of the rest of the world. We sit on top of the world as the only superpower; and it is to our credit that we are a superpower not only in military terms, but in terms of influence of our popular culture, in terms of our compassion. Probably no nation can match our overall compassion when it comes to international emergencies. The history of defending democracy far from our shores is written in the blood of the young men who died on the beaches at Normandy and on it goes. So we have a lot to celebrate, and if there is any empire that exists now in the modern 21st century, then the empire of America is one that we can be proud of, not an empire built on blood, but the empire can fall. Mr. Speaker, we are in the same pivotal position as the Roman Empire was. Science and technology, military might has brought us to this point. But let us remember, at the same time Roman technology and the Roman engineers and the Roman scientists were at their height, they invented concrete. They built magnificent structures. They were way ahead of the rest of the world at that time. At the same time the Roman engineers and the scientists and the craftsmen were doing such great work, the Roman politicians were so backward that they were feeding the Christians to the lions in the colosseum. The engineers built a magnificent colosseum, but the Roman politicians determined who died, who was fed to the lions. So the savagery and the backwardness of the politicians, of the policymakers, of the people in charge was the beginning of the downfall of Rome. Mr. Speaker, we have so much going for us economically, scientifically, militarily. Why is it that we cannot make decisions in this case in response to our own electorate, in response to the mothers and fathers out there who answer the polls? The pollsters tell us they want more money spent for education. When they questioned the people more closely within the category of education, they said they want us to fix up the schools. How much more information do we need? How much more instruction from the people do we need? Mr. Speaker, there is a stubbornness which is dangerous. There is a stubbornness which is deadly. There is a stubbornness which we see in the figures related to gun control. We are a Nation of savages when it comes to the number of people who die from gunshot wounds every year. Compared to the other industrialized nations, Germany, Japan, France, we have 100 times more people dying from guns, being killed by guns. No other nation allows 200 million guns to circulate in their society. The mothers were late, the mothers were late, but at least they are there on gun control. There are other kinds of savage acts that are taking place that need to be challenged. There was a book written called Savage Inequity, which was a book describing the way the school resources are allocated in New York City. They compared the best schools in certain neighborhoods with the worst schools in other neighborhoods. I am sorry, it was not just New York City, it was other cities as well. They called it savage inequities in the way we are educating our children. That was almost 20 years ago. The savage inequities in the way we allocate our resources for education have gotten worse, not better. Now we have the resources. We have a $200 billion surplus this year, and over a 10-year period, a $2 trillion surplus. Why not end the savage inequities? Why not end the savage inequities? Do we need the mothers to come here and tell us what to do? I think in 1990, March 27, 1990, I made a speech on the floor of this House which was called, ``Keeping Our Eyes on the Real Prize: The Child Care Bill.'' At that time we were considering a bill for child care, and again, we were nickel and diming the situation, looking at ways in which to cut pennies from the program at the same time the savings and loan swindle was raging. Billions of dollars were going down the drain from the taxpayers to take care of the crooked savings and loan swindles and deals, and we were nickel and diming the child care program. There was a meeting held here, I will not go into the details of that meeting, and Marian Wright Edleman was invited to that meeting. She is the head of the Children's Defense Fund. The discussion that took place at that meeting and the way in which they responded to her, the negative way in which many of the persons at that meeting, Congress persons, responded to her simple plea for more money for child care upset me to the point where I wrote my first rap poem and found that rap poems are a good way to get off your frustration here in this place. I called that rap poem, ``Let the Mothers Lead the Fight.'' I dedicated it to Marian Wright Edleman and the Children's Defense Fund. It is very appropriate now. The mothers are leading the fight, they came to Washington, and I just want to close out by reading this rap poem that was put into the Congressional Record on the 27th of March, 1990. It is relevant. Let the mothers lead the fight; sisters snatch the future from the night. Dangerous dumb males have made a mess on the right, macho mad egos on the left swollen out of sight. Let the mothers lead the fight. Drop the linen, throw away the lace, stop the murder, sweep out the arms race. Let the mothers lead the fight. Use your broom. Sweep out the doom. Do not fear the mouse. Break out of the house. Rats are ruining the world. Let the mothers lead the fight. Fat cats want to buy your soul. Saving the children is the mother's role. Cook up some cool calculations. Look some of new recipes. Lock the generals tight down in the deep freeze. Let the mothers lead the fight. Human history is a long ugly tale. Tragedy guided by the frail monster male. Babies bashed with blind bayonets. Daughters trapped in slimy lust nets. Across time hear our loud terrified wail. Holocaust happens when the silly males fail. Let the mothers lead the fight. Snatch the future back from the night. Storm the conference rooms with our rage. Focus x-rays on the Washington stage. The world is being ruined by rats. Rescue is in the hands of the cats. Scratch out their lies. Put pins in smug rat eyes. Hate the fakes. Burn rhetoric at the stakes. Enough of this endless bloody night. Let the mothers lead the fight. Holocaust happens when the silly males fail. March now to end this long ugly tale. Let the mothers lead the fight. Stand up now to the frail monster male. Let the mothers lead the fight. Snatch the future back from the night. Let the mothers lead the fight.

Mr. OWENS

Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, I was unavoidably absent on a matter of critical importance and missed the following votes: On the amendment to H.R. 853, to amend the Congressional Budget Act of 1974, introduced by the gentleman from California, Mr. Dreier, I would have voted ``nay.'' On the amendment to H.R. 853, to amend the Congressional Budget Act of 1974, introduced by the gentleman from Pennsylvania, Mr. Gekas, I would have voted ``nay.'' On the amendment to H.R. 853, to amend the Congressional Budget Act of 1974, introduced by the gentlelady from Texas, Mrs. Jackson-Lee, I would have voted ``yea.'' On passage of H.R. 853, to amend the Congressional Budget Act of 1974, introduced by the gentleman from Iowa, Mr. Nussle, I would have voted ``nay.''

Mr. OWENS

Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, yesterday I was unavoidably absent on a matter of critical importance and missed the following votes: On H. Res. 491, naming a room in the House of Representative wing of the Capitol in honor of G.V. ``Sonny'' Montgomery, introduced by the Gentleman from Indiana, Mr. Pease, I would have voted ``yea.'' On H.R. 4251, Congressional Oversight of Nuclear Transfers to North Korea Act of 2000, introduced by the gentleman from New York, Mr. Gilman, I would have voted ``nay.'' On H. Con. Res. 309, sense of Congress with regard to in-school personal safety education programs for children, introduced by the gentleman from Delaware, Mr. Castle, I would have voted ``yea.''

Mr. OWENS

Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from California for yielding to me. I want to congratulate her and applaud her insight in focusing on a very serious facet of the education bill that is going to be coming to this floor soon. I serve on the Committee on Education, and I have had to live with this for a long time. To have Members who are not on the committee understand what is going on and offer to give us some help in this crucial area is very uplifting. It is good to hear that we are going to be prepared to fight the fight on the floor which we fought in the committee and we lost. The crux of the argument that is being made tonight is that we should not take the Federal monies that are appropriated primarily to help the poorest students in the poorest communities and water that down, spread it out to communities which may need money for education, but we should not give them additional funds for education at the expense of those who have the greatest need. The original intent of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act was to provide additional help for the poorest school districts and for the poorest students in those school districts. We have had a doctrine of flexibility and super flexibility, and various names have been assigned to it in the past 6 years by the Republican majority. But what they are attempting to do is Robin Hood in reverse. What the Republican majority wants to do is take the money from the poor and spread it out to the others who need it less. The irony of it is that they have better choices. We can all rejoice that we can make choices now which are very different from that and at the same time address the needs of any area that has educational needs. We have a surplus. We have a surplus. A lot of people do not want to talk about it here in Washington. It is the most important factor and development in the last 10 or 20 years. Instead of talking in terms of a deficit, there is a Federal surplus. Why do we have to rob the poor, therefore, to spread the Federal funds out to cover needs in some other district? I do think there are other needs. Nobody has spoken more often here on this floor than I have in favor of the Federal government taking a larger role in funding for education. The Federal Government's role now is around 7 percent of the total funding. Most funding for education comes from the State governments and from the local governments. The Federal government has a small role. The Elementary and the Secondary Education Act that we are talking about today is about $8 billion of Federal funds, $8 billion out of a huge budget for education, when we add the State and local government contributions. Clearly, if we go back and read the law it is still there, the findings in the preamble to the Elementary and Secondary Education Act that clearly the Federal government did not meet all the needs of everybody in education. The reasoning was that we should help those districts which have the needs most, help the poorest students, to relieve some of the burden from the State and local governments doing what they should have been doing all along, giving the kind of help these districts needed. The pattern is across America that those who need it most get the least. The pattern of State government is that they neglect those who need it most because they are the ones who have the least amount of power. It is a power situation. The pattern over the years has been State government always neglects the needs of the poor, whether it is health care or education or any other need. The Federal government has stepped in in the interests of national security, in many cases. In World War II, they found when they had to draft large numbers of young men that they were basically unhealthy, suffered from poor nutrition, any number of problems that led to the generation of concerns at the national level about health care. We later on got the beginning of health care programs in terms of Medicare, Medicaid, and various other funding for hospitals and well baby clinics because it was understood that we cannot leave that to the States because they do not deal with it, and there is a need, there is a national security interest, in having a healthy population. There is now a national security interest in having a population that is well-educated. Nothing is clearer than the fact that brain power now drives the world in terms of the economy. If we move to the military sphere, any area of activity among governments or in governments requires a tremendous amount of brain power. Educated people are our best resource. What we are proposing here and what the gentlewoman from California has pinpointed is we are proposing a very dangerous and deadly move. We are moving in the wrong direction at a time when the budget surplus permits us to give more aid to education. If we want to help other areas beyond the poorest of the poor, then we could just add money to the budget and cover the additional areas. No, at a time when we can do that, we are proposing to take the money away from the poorest of the poor and give it to the other areas. Why not, at a time like this, dedicate more of the Federal budget to education? Let us stop for a moment. The American people should listen closely to what is happening. Between the time that Congress recessed and the time we came back last week, the estimates of the budget surplus went up by $40 billion. The estimate now is, the most conservative estimate is that this year's budget surplus, the amount of money we will take in in terms of taxes, revenue, versus the amount of money we have spent, the surplus, the leftover money, will be no less than $200 billion, $200 billion. The projection is that over the next 10 years we will have about the same or more, $200 billion per year for 10 years. We are talking about a $2 trillion surplus over a 10-year period. Why are we in an atmosphere of that kind? Why are we, with opportunities of that kind, going to rob or take money from the poorest of the poor and give it, spread it out for the rest of the schools? That is mean-spirited, it is insensitive, and it is shortsighted. We should rise to the moment. We have a golden opportunity, every legislator here, everybody in government has a golden opportunity to rise to this moment when we have abundant resources. We have had to make decisions for a long time based on the fact that we had a deficit. There was not enough funding. Now we have the funds. Where is our conscience? Where are our consciences? Where are our hearts? Where are our souls when it comes time to make decisions with resources that we have been blessed with? Instead of the generosity and charity spirit prevailing, just the opposite is happening. We choose to take what we have allocated for education for the poorest of the poor and to give it to those who need it less, spread it out. Sandra Feldman, who is the president of the American Federation of Teachers, has put it well in a recent article that she has in several papers. The legislative term for what is happening she says some people call a block grant, but she calls it a blank check. ``The result would probably be the disappearance --or at least the radical weakening--of programs designed to guarantee funding for critical national objectives like safe schools and lower class sizes.'' I am quoting from Sandra Feldman's article, Mr. Speaker, and I will include the entire article for the Record. The article referred to is as follows: Commentary on Public Education And Other Critical Issues--A Blank Check (By Sandra Feldman) People in Hartford, Connecticut, have good reason to be proud and pleased. For a number of years, students in this poor, urban school district ranked academically lowest in the state, but things are changing. A new superintendent, working with the AFT local, used Title I money (federal funding targeted specifically to educationally needy children) to put in place a proven program called Success for All. And this year, the district celebrated significant improvements in math and reading test scores. This is just one story among many in which children are doing better because their schools receive federal funding. But if a measure that Congress is currently debating becomes law, there will be fewer of these success stories. The so-called Straight A's bill would allow states to lump together federal funding now devoted to programs that are proven to help children learn--as well as programs that help keep schools safe and drug free and enhance learning technology--and give the money to the states to use in any way they choose. The legislative term for this is ``block grant.'' But it should really be called ``blank check.'' The result would probably be the disappearance--or at least the radical weakening--of programs designed to guarantee funding for critical national objectives like safe schools and lower class sizes. Guranteed Funding The biggest of these programs, Title I, reaches 11 million disadvantaged kids--though in fact many more could use the kind of help it offers. Title I money goes directly to the districts and schools where it's most needed, and it pays for, among other things, extra teachers and programs that help students master reading and writing and achieve higher standards. Over the years, as Title I has been improved and focused on proven programs, student achievement has improved, and in some cases, such as Hartford, Title I has been a big factor in turning around entire schools and even school districts. It is possible that the states would carry on Title I and other programs that are working--but it's very risky. The reality about block grants is that they allow state governments to spend the money any way they want to. And of course, they have their own priorities, their own pressures and demands to answer to, which do not necessarily include needy children. This is not to say the states aren't good at lots of things. Most have been working successfully to raise student achievement. But it has been the targeted program funds of the federal government that have spurred most of them on. States have never done a good job of making sure all children get their fair share of the education pie. Schools in poorer communities have always been underfunded. Poor children, who need more than other children, have always gotten much less. Specious Arguments Supporters of education block grants talk about giving states the right to run their own school systems without federal interference. They claim they are for ``flexibility'' and against the ``status quo.'' This is disingenuous, to say the least. Virtually all of the Title I money already goes to the local level, so what kind of flexibility are they talking about? (Flexibility not to spend the money on what works?) As for moving away from the status quo, that already happened in a big way in Title I just four years ago. Strong accountability requirements for district and schools receiving Title I funds were added, and those requirements have been the engine driving a lot of the academic progress we've been seeing in the states. Of course, there is a big remaining problem with the status quo: There simply isn't enough federal education funding to meet needs. One percent of the entire federal budget is spent on K-12 education, in comparison, for example, with the 2.5 percent spent on transportation. No one denies that transportation is critical, but is building highways more than twice as important as educating our kids? Americans want money spent according to need, not politics. So why would Congress even consider turning the funding for programs that serve needy kids into pork barrels for the states? Straight A's is bad news for children, and people who care about educational equity should call their members of Congress to tell them so. To continue reading from her article, quoting, ``The biggest of these programs, Title I, reaches 11 million disadvantaged kids--though in fact many more could use the same kind of help it offers. Title I money goes directly to the districts and schools where it is most needed, and it pays for, among other things, extra teachers and programs that help students master reading and writing and achieve higher standards. Over the years, as Title I has been improved and focused on proven programs, student achievement has improved, and in some cases, such as Hartford, Title I has been a big factor in turning around entire schools and even school districts.'' ``Supporters of education block grants talk about giving states the right to run their own school systems without Federal interference. They claim they are for `flexibility' and against the `status quo.''' This is disingenuous, says Sandra Feldman. This is disingenuous to say the least, virtually all of the title I goes to the local level so what kind of flexibility are they talking about? They are talking about flexibility not to spend the money on what works. As for moving away from the status quo, that already happened in a big way in title I just 4 years ago. Strong accountability requirements for districts and schools receiving title I funds were added, and those requirements have been the engine driving a lot of the academic progress we have been seeing in the States. Mr. Speaker, I think that the examples that have already been made by the Welfare Reform Act, where large amounts of money that were targeted for the poorest of the poor, welfare people, has not been spent by the States, and instead of them using that money for daycare and for job training, where they have had choices, and sometimes even when they did not have choices, they have channeled the money into other kinds of general funds or road repair or whatever and not bother to use it for the human resource needs that they have had. Given that example, why should anyone think that giving the States a blank check on maximum flexibility on education funds will mean that they are going to spend them wisely on those funds? I would like to conclude by saying there is a simple formula that I would like to leave with everybody who cares about education in America. If we just take 10 percent of the surplus, 10 percent of the surplus each year, and devote it to education, we could resolve all of these problems with a minimal amount of distress anywhere. We do not have to take it from the poor to give to the rich. We can add money to the budget; that 10 percent would pay for construction needs, infrastructure needs. It would pay for additional computers. It would pay for a lot of different things like more teachers for the classroom, 10 percent of the surplus is $20 billion. It is only 10 percent, but because the surplus is so large, it is $20 billion per year. With $20 billion per year, we can meet the capital needs in terms of infrastructure and equipment, and at the same time, we can also meet the needs in terms of improvements in education in other areas. We have an answer, and the answer does not require us to be mean- spirited and take away from the poor to give to the rich. The answer is to add more money, 10 percent of the surplus should go for education, and we can solve this problem.

Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, my colleague on the Committee on Education and the Workforce made a very important point in passing. Since we are paying tribute to teachers today, I just want to make certain that that point does not get lost. That is that many teachers who are now employed as teachers, as well as many students who are considering teaching, they point to the abominable working conditions in the schools. And one of the abominable working conditions that they cite is the physical infrastructure, the fact that schools are in disrepair. Schools have, in the case of New York, furnaces that still burn coal and, therefore, they pollute the air. Respiratory illnesses not only are there to be contracted by the children, but also by the teachers. Schools are overcrowded, and that creates an atmosphere which exacerbates the discipline problem. Schools are overcrowded, so they force the kids to eat lunch in three or four cycles, so they have to eat lunch very early. Mr. Speaker, if we care about teachers, and I heard many protestations on the floor today as to how important teachers are and how much we care about them, if we care about teachers, then we ought to give them better working conditions and I think we should not overlook the fact that we have better working conditions in many plants and industrial offices than we have in our schools for teachers. I thank the gentleman.

Mr. OWENS

Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, Yesterday I was unavoidably absent on a matter of critical importance and missed the following votes: On H.R. 3577, increased authorization for north side pumping division of the Minidoka reclamation project, introduced by the gentleman from Idaho, Mr. Simpson, I would have voted ``yea.'' On H. Con. Res. 89 recognizing the Hermann Monument and Hermann Heights Park in New Ulm, Minnesota, as a national symbol of contributions of Americans of German heritage, introduced by the gentleman from Minnesota, Mr. Minge, I would have voted ``yea.'' On H. Con. Res. 296, expressing the sense of Congress regarding the necessity to expedite the settlement process for discrimination claims against the Department of Agriculture brought by African-American farmers, introduced by the gentleman from Arkansas, Mr. Dickey, I would have voted ``nay.''

Mr. OWENS

Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, today is a very important day. The leaders of the Caribbean nation as well as leaders of the African nations are welcoming this first step forward. It is a small step; but it is the first step, where Africa moves from almost point zero to significant participation in world trade. The Caribbean countries, we are going to have some adjustments which we hope are positive. But I would like to make a plea for the Caribbean countries in the Caribbean Basin that are smallest, the islands of Trinidad, Guiana, Barbados, Grenada, Dominica, Saint Lucia, and even Jamaica, which has a population of only about 3 million people. They are relatively small; they deserve special targeted treatment. Consider the fact that they are buying far more from the United States, consistently, than we are buying from them. The balance of trade is not a problem there as it is with China and Taiwan and Hong Kong. How did China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong get such a large portion of our textile market? They are so far away. Why can we not look at the problems that the small islands in the Caribbean have? We should have priority for our friends in this hemisphere who have always been loyal to us; priority for our friends in the hemisphere who purchase our goods and end up with a balance of trade that is in our favor, not in someone else's favor; priority to our friends in this hemisphere who will help us to control the drug trade. Mr. Speaker, if we do not take care of their exports, if we are not more sensitive to their needs, then we are going to have more problems like the problem of Colombia. It is going to mushroom, because they have no choice except to seek some form of income and to become victims of the prey of drug lords. Let us look at these nations being special to the United States and give them special sensitive preference. Mr. Speaker, this long overdue trade legislation is filled with inadequacies and shortcomings; however, it is the consensus of the African and Caribbean leaders that this act constitutes a vital beginning. The African nations will move from a zero point to a point of significant participation. Most Caribbean nations will benefit from new arrangements which prevent the unfair trade advantages of Mexico from becoming worse. The majority of the changes and adjustments have been approved by the Caribbean leaders; however, there are some disappointing background movements. Mr. Speaker, along with the majority of my Democratic colleagues, I rise to protest the procedure which finalized this important legislation. It must be noted that the Caribbean Basin Initiative [CBI] section of the Senate Conference report that we are voting on today was never presented on the floor of the House of Representatives. This Congress only had the opportunity to vote on the Africa Trade and Growth portion of the bill. Behind closed doors with minimum participation of Democrats, the Republican Majority developed this ``take it or leave it'' measure. There are some reviews of the bill which state that certain countries have lost ground. According to a representative of one of the Unions: ``To the extent that it is not good for anybody and without the actual bill for close review, Latin America profits from the bill, with the Dominican Republic the only Caribbean country that gets good benefits. Jamaica, which has good laws, has lost [a portion of] its share every year from 1995 to 1998. It is no good for Caribbean countries and no good for U.S. workers.'' We look forward to the election of a democratically controlled Congress where all of the shortcomings and deficiencies that we uncover may be revised. But as of this date, the nations of Africa and the Caribbean Basin are celebrating this important first step. President Clinton has stated that he will sign this legislation into law. benefits for the caribbean basin Preserves the United States commitment to Caribbean Basin beneficiary countries by promoting the growth of free enterprise and economic opportunity in these neighboring countries and thereby enhances the national security interests of the U.S. Builds on the Caribbean Basin Economic Recovery Act enacted in 1984 and extends additional trade benefits through 2008. Extends duty-free benefits to apparel made in the Caribbean Basin from U.S. yarn and fabric. Extends duty-free benefits to knit apparel made in the CBI from regional fabric made with U.S. yarn and knit-to-shape apparel (except socks), up to a cap of 250 million square meter equivalents, with a growth rate of 16 percent per year for the first three years; extends benefits for an additional category of regional knit apparel products up to a cap of 4.2 million dozen, growing 16 percent per year for the first three years. Includes provisions specifically designed to promote U.S. exports and the use of U.S. fabric, yarn, and cotton. Extends benefits to certain products from countries which are signatories to free trade agreements with the United States. Benefits under Caribbean Basin Trade Partnership Act are conditioned on countries continuing to meet conditions including intellectual property protection, investment protection, improved market access for U.S. exports, and whether the country is taking steps to afford internationally recognized worker rights. The bill requires that eligible countries implement strict and effective Customs procedures to guard against transshipment. Under a ``one strike and you are out'' provision, if an exporter is determined to have engaged in illegal transshipment of textile and apparel products from a CBI country, the President is required to deny all benefits under the bill to that exporter for a period of two years. Transshippers are subject to treble charges to existing textile and apparel quotas.

Mr. OWENS

Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, I pay special tribute to a group of dedicated community activists in my 11th Congressional District of Brooklyn, NY. Founded in March, 1990, by Council Member Annette Robinson, Margaret Wiseman, Mary Eccles, Linda Breakenridge, Celeste Green, Sylvia Whiteside and Lorrelle Henry, 100 Women for Major Owens was organized in order to provide an opportunity for women of diverse backgrounds and cultures to work together in order to improve the quality of life for their community. On May 5, 2000, 100 Women for Major Owens will formally celebrate its 10th Anniversary with a dinner and a special viewing of ``Grace In The Light'' at the famous Billie Holiday Theater in Brooklyn, New York. This milestone highlights the many years of service this organization has given Central Brooklyn by serving as mentors and role models for young women and their families. Through programs that range from educational seminars focusing on health care, teen pregnancy prevention, HIV-AIDS awareness, public education reform and a number of other important initiatives, the leadership has guided its members to becoming a powerful force for the residents of our community. In addition to also providing scholarships to deserving students in Brooklyn, Ms. Alice Spratley and Ms. Audrei Boyce have skillfully, since the beginning of the program administered the Congressional Awards Program which will, this year nominate several candidates for the Gold Medal. Mr. Speaker, in celebration of their 10th Anniversary, I am honored to salute this prestigious and spirited group of leaders, their past Presidents, Ms. Celeste Green one of the founding members and first President, Ms. Bernice Carter and their current President, an outstanding educator, Ms. Verdeen Gaddy and wish them continued success. Finally, I would like to acknowledge with deep gratitude, the officers and members of this stellar organization: Verdeen Gaddy, President; Audrei Boyce, 1st Vice President; Bernice Carter, 2nd Vice President, Norva Butler, Recording Secretary; Edena Gill, Corresponding Secretary; Eileen Graham, Financial Secretary; Theopia Green Treasurer; Evy Papillon-Juste, Chaplain; Adelaide Wyllie, Parliamentarian; Celeste Green, Historian. Ms. Mattie Pusey, another dedicated public servant is serving as this year's Anniversary Committee Chairperson. She is being assisted by Ms. Margaret Wiseman, Ms. Annie Nicholson and Mr. Garry Tilzer of my Brooklyn Staff. Her committee consists of Ms. Ann Munroe, Ms. Adelaide Wyllie, Eddye Elijah, Erma McEachine, Martha Greene, Sylvia Whiteside, Alice Spratley, Audrei Boyce, Edena Gill, Lorraine Smith, Orette Spence and Mart Blake.

Mr. OWENS

Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of the Worker Economic Opportunity Act. It is kind of complicated so I think it is important that the record reflect that we understand those complications. Stock option programs have existed for decades, but traditionally they have only been provided to top executives. Laudably, in recent years a number of companies have expanded these programs to cover rank and file workers. However, when this practice was brought to the attention of the Department of Labor, it correctly found that in many cases income earned by workers participating in these kinds of programs do not qualify within any of the existing statutory exemptions for exclusion from overtime. As a general matter, ignorance of or disregard for the law should not serve to justify its violation. In this instance, however, I fully concur that speculative stock options should not be subject to overtime and that invoking the requirements of the law at this late date ex post facto would be unfair and unwise. This legislation provides that if certain conditions are met, income earned by workers as a result of participation in certain recognized option programs, stock appreciation programs, or bona fide employee stock purchase programs, shall not be counted for the purpose of calculating overtime. The legislation is not intended to alter or to undermine in any way any other existing protection afforded to workers under the overtime provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act. By the same token, income from stock option-type programs that is already exempt from the overtime calculation is not intended to be affected by this legislation. That income remains exempt. Stock programs vary widely in their structure. This legislation is not intended to impose a single structure on such programs but has been broadly crafted to try to accommodate their variety. Consequently, the bill is solid with regard to certain definitions and implementation issues, and broad regulatory authority has been given to the Department of Labor to implement the legislation. The legislation requires that employees must be informed of the terms and conditions of any grants made to employees and that the employees must be able to voluntarily exercise any grant or right offered by the employer. The intent of these provisions is to ensure that employees are able to knowledgeably and freely determine whether they wish to participate in the program before they are required to do so and that they are able to knowledgeably and freely exercise such rights and options as they are afforded within the program. Employees must have a basis for assessing the value and the risk inherent in the choices they face. This legislation provides that employers may sell stock options or stock appreciation rights to employees at a discounted rate but that the discount may not be greater than 15 percent of the market value of the stock. This provision applies equally to closely held companies as well as publicly traded companies. Necessarily then stock appraisals by closely held companies may become subject to review. The legislation provides that there must be at least a 6-month period between the grant of stock option or stock appreciation right and the date on which that right is exercisable. This requirement is waived in cases involving an employee's death, disability, retirement, or a change in corporate ownership or in other circumstances permitted by regulation. The limitation on stock discounts and the 6-month holding period, taken together, reflect the intention that some level of risk be assumed by employees in order that this legislation does not serve as an incentive for employers to convert wages to stock options as a means of evading overtime. Where an employee separates from employment with an employer, whether voluntarily or involuntarily, overtime is no longer an issue. In my view, it is, therefore, wholly appropriate for the 6-month holding period requirement to be waived in such instances. Finally, while many refer to the 6-month period as a vesting period, the use of the term vesting is not accurate. The only requirement imposed by this legislation is that an employee may not exercise a grant for at least 6 months. This legislation provides that an employer may not condition the offer of a stock program based on an employee's future performance unless such an offer is made to all employees in a facility or in a business unit consisting of at least 10 employees. An exception to this rule is provided to permit employers to condition offers upon length of service or minimum schedule of hours or days of work. The purpose of the exception is to permit employers to distinguish between part-time and full-time employees or between employees on temporary or probationary status and those on permanent status. The purpose is not to permit employers to target offers predicted on future performance to a single employee or to require employees to work overtime as a condition of participation. Likewise, the term business unit is intended to be meaningful. Assuming an offer is made on less than a facilitywide basis, an employer may not make an offer that is conditioned on future performance if that offer excludes some employees within a business unit who are otherwise eligible under the grant's terms, nor may an employer make such an offer arbitrarily to some employees without regard to their duties. As is generally the case under current law with regard to performance bonuses, an employer may offer program participation to individual employees based upon the employee's past performance. The intent is to enable the employers to reward employees for past service. This provision is not intended to undermine or supersede limitations applicable to grants that are conditioned upon future performance. Stock-option programs are new avenues for the front-line worker; however, the right to overtime remains protected by the Fair Labor Standards Act for the same group of employees. The overtime law plays a more important role in the daily lives of Americans than any other provision of labor law. It guarantees that workers will be fairly compensated when they are required to work excessive hours. It creates more job opportunities for workers. It ensures that workers will have enough time away from work to meet family and personal responsibilities. As women enter the workforce in increasing numbers, the overtime law has become even more vital to the health of American families. This legislation is necessary to accommodate the increasing participation of rank and file workers in stock programs. This legislation is not intended to otherwise weaken or to diminish the vital protection afforded workers under the FLSA and should be interpreted in the manner that is consistent with the intent and remedial purposes of the Fair Labor Standards Act. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time. Mr. Speaker, I think it is important to note that the language on both sides has been the same. The concepts have been the same. We basically agree that the Committee on Education and the Workforce understands the implication of the New Economy. We understand the kind of society we are going into. We understand that we have responsibilities for the workforce. Here we are exercising an important responsibility in terms of payment; that they should not be barred from enjoying the prosperity and should not in any way be kept from having stock options as other people do within the confines of a corporate enterprise. So we all agree. Mr. Speaker, I think we all ought to agree that the Committee on Education and the Workforce is primarily for the American workforce. We may have some international obligations sometime in the future; we may choose to assume those, but it is the American workforce that we would like to see take advantage of the opportunities that exist in our economy now. The sad thing about this bill, as the gentleman from California (Mr. Cunningham) pointed out, is that so many of our people who ought to be qualified for these jobs are not qualified, and we are going to be reaching out to the rest of the world to bring in workers who will not pay into the Social Security system, who will not contribute to the full economy of our Nation, while we are denying the opportunity to our own people because we have not developed a sufficient education system. So given the fact that we now have an opportunity with a huge surplus, 10 percent of that surplus ought to be devoted to revamping our education system. Revamping it in ways that do not interfere with local controls, starting with school construction, which is a capital expenditure. Buying computers is a capital expenditure. We can do the things that capital expenditures require, get out, and do not interfere with the operation of the schools. It is relevant to this discussion. At the end of the war in Vietnam, we did not jettison or throw away our military establishment. We did not say, look, they have lost a war to a Third World country; and, therefore, they have not succeeded so we will not continue to support our military. Just the opposite happened. We began to pour more and more resources more and more dollars into revamping and building up the world's greatest military system that existed. So the failure of our school systems up to now, the huge amount of problems that we have in terms of educational reform and improvement, should not prevent us from utilizing this window of opportunity to provide help for working families. Working families should be allowed to join the economy and enjoy the stock options, because they qualify for those good-paying jobs. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, I would like to express my gratitude to the gentlemen on the other aisle for their cooperation in working together on this piece of legislation. I think the bipartisan cooperation of this legislation shows that both parties are willing to go into the rest of this age of information and to continue on to what I call the cyber-civilization and make the necessary adjustments to various factors in our economy. But I think it is important to note that the gentleman from California (Mr. Cunningham) said that it is a crime that large numbers of foreign workers are being imported and that they will be occupying these high- paying jobs, they will be getting these stock options, and large numbers of our own workforce will be denied the opportunity because they do not have the proper education and training. So at a time when our economy is leaping ahead and there is unprecedented prosperity, and we heard recently that the budget surplus is going up since we were on recess and came back, the budget surplus is going up, I think they expect about $200 billion surplus this year or more, and over the next 10 years you may have a $2 trillion surplus, it is a crime that we do not have the kind of education system which will develop and train the workers who can take the jobs that are paying so well that they offer stock options in addition to regular salaries. This great budget surplus that we anticipate, if we were only to take 10 percent of it for education, just 10 percent, we could deal with these 21st century problems of large numbers of vacancies in industries which require highly educated workers. Just 10 percent. I would say 5 percent for the all-important activity of school construction, school repairs, various things related to school infrastructure, because part of the training process requires that you have the facilities and you have the equipment. There is a great need for capital investment in our schools in order to get the workforce trained who would be able to take advantage of such lucrative items as stock options, as well as higher paying jobs. Take 5 percent for physical infrastructure and deal with the problem that the National Education Association has cited as requiring $254 billion. Their survey, their report, shows that we need $254 billion to bring the infrastructure of the public school systems up to a level where they can take care of the present population. We are not talking about long-term enrollment projections. $254 billion is needed at this point to do that. We have it. Money is not the problem. It is there in the surplus. I am not asking for that much, but I think we ought to reserve 10 percent for education. Five percent of $2 trillion would be like $20 billion. Five percent of $2 trillion would be $10 billion for construction and another $10 billion for other educational improvements. $20 billion a year reserved out of the projected surplus would take care of the problem of training workers so those workers could make the salaries and be eligible for the stock options we are talking about today. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Moran).

Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Dooley).

Mr. OWENS

Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, I was unavoidably absent on a matter of critical importance and missed the following vote: On H.R. 4199, to terminate the Internal Revenue Code of 1986, introduced by the gentleman from Oklahoma, Mr. Largent, I would have voted ``nay.''

Mr. OWENS

Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, I heard the previous speakers close out with the name of Al Gore. I understand they have been talking about the Vice President, who is the probable Democratic Party nominee for president. I certainly would like to begin my statement with a hearty congratulations to Mr. Gore for proposing a $115 billion education reform program over the next 10 years, to allocate $115 billion over the next 10 years. The details of Mr. Gore's proposal I do not particularly agree with. However, the perspective, the understanding of the need and the scope that we have to move on is welcome. I welcome Mr. Gore's vision, I welcome his commitment, and he is in line with where the American people want to go. I think we are in an area where the people, the ordinary citizens, are out there ahead of the Members of Congress, ahead of the decision- makers even in the White House, ahead of the decision-makers in the local governments and in the State governments, because the polls repeatedly keep showing that the average American out there views education as the number one priority for governmental action. Education is the number one priority. There was a time when education was in the top five, in fact, that has been the case over the last 5 years, but education was not number one. Reducing crime at one time was number one, saving social security at one time was number one, Medicare and shoring up the Medicare fund was number one at one time. But not now. Education consistently for the last 10 months has been in all of the polls, and I think the Republican polls are showing exactly what the Democratic polls are showing, that education is the number one concern of the American people. So a candidate who proposes to come to grips with the problem in a time when we have considerable wealth in this Nation, at a time when we see the estimates for revenue, revenue, being so much greater than expenditures, and the projection after we take care of the surplus of social security and put that away just for social security, the projection is $1.9 trillion in surplus over a 10-year period. So surely it is appropriate that one could talk in terms of investing $115 billion of that $1.9 trillion surplus in education reform. I do not think that goes far enough. I think that $115 billion is about half of what we need. And the Congressional Black Caucus alternative budget that was on the floor as an alternative to the Republican budget a week ago, the Congressional Black Caucus budget recommended that we use 10 percent of the projected $1.9 trillion surplus, 10 percent should be used for education. Of that 10 percent, 5 should go to school construction and the other 5 percent should go to other kinds of improvements in education; reduction of class sizes by having more teachers, more training for teachers, education technology. There is a whole range of things that needs to be done and should be done. And for the first time in the last 50 years, the revenues are there. The resources are there. Will we reinvest those resources in education and get a return on them, or will we invest them in trivial weapon systems that are redundant and not needed? Will we do as the Republican majority has done, add $17 billion to the President's defense budget? The President already put in an increase for defense in his budget that was submitted to the Congress, and the Republicans have added $17 billion to that. Are we going to throw the money away in redundant weapon systems, or are we going to invest the money in education and the kinds of activities that are going to pay off, because there will be a return on those investments? Now, I have had some comments made about some of the remarks that I have made during Special Orders, especially remarks made about school construction and the fact that I continually seem to be obsessed with one subject. I just want to confess that I have certainly spent a lot of time on this particular subject, on education, in general, but, more specifically, on school construction. I am going to talk quite a bit about it again tonight, because, you know, in the American political process, the dialogue is invaluable. As a Member of the minority party here in the House of Representatives, all we have left, in many cases, is dialogue, the ability to talk and the opportunity to reach our allies out there in the general public. I have just said we have been reading polls now for the last 10 months, which show that the majority of the American people consider government assistance for education to be the highest priority. If that is the case, then I have many allies. We have many allies, those of us who want to see more resources from the Federal Government put into education. I want to talk to our allies. I want to talk to all the school children out there who need help. There are 53 million children who go to public schools, and many of those public schools are in serious trouble. Public schools in the inner cities are in very serious trouble in most of our big cities. Public schools in some of the suburbs also need a lot of help. Public schools in the rural areas are in many cases in the worst shape of all. Help is needed. I repeat many things over and over again because it is important for us to try to understand this very unusual phenomenon. We have a situation where the people clearly have sent a message that they want to go one way and the overwhelming majority of the powerful decisionmakers in our government are going in a different direction. The response of the public figures, the public decisionmakers, the response of the leaders, including those who are running for President, has been to talk about the issue of education incessantly. There is plenty of discussion. Among Members of Congress and the Senate and candidates for the presidency, governors and State legislators and city council people and mayors, there is an understanding that when you see the polls, you understand that people are primarily concerned about government assistance for education, your response should be to talk about it, the rhetoric is important; but do not take any significant action, play around with the game of education, make education a game. Everybody is an expert on education. They want to talk about the phonics system versus the whole word system. They want to talk about the need for more discipline. They want to talk about teachers working harder and the need for certification. Most of the things they want to talk about have some validity, in terms of need. We need to deal with all of those components. There are different components, and they should be addressed; but few of the decisionmakers, the public officials, want to talk about the need for more resources. They want to deal with the fact that we have Stone Age budgets in our schools. Everything else has taken off. The stock market has soared. It is three times the size it was 10 years ago. The degrees are different when you start talking about wealth and money in every other area that you want to examine; but when it comes to schools, suddenly we want to take a horse and buggy approach. We can only see incremental gains being made, small experiments here and there. That is the approach of the present Department of Education. They cannot think big. They cannot see that this is a time to come to grips with the major problem and put major resources behind it; and at the heart of the problem of education is the need for new infractures that I continue to talk about. It is the kingpin issue, school construction, infrastructure, infrastructure involving a number of things, school repair, new school construction, modernization of schools, the wiring of schools, the developments of new security systems, you know, electronic security systems within schools. There are a number of ways dollars for infrastructure might be spent, but they are critical in the case of a great number of inner city schools, like the schools in New York City. You need the basics. You need to deal with health-threatening issues. In New York out of the more than 1,000 schools, we still have 200 schools that still burn coal in their furnances. Coal-burning furnaces are still in at least 200 schools; a year and a half ago, there were 275. I am happy to report that this talk, this repeated focus on the issue has moved some things faster. Certainly in my district, I have seen several schools watch their coal burning furnances being removed and replaced with other cleaner fuels. There are still 200 left. There are schools in our city, at least a third of them or more, where children have to eat lunch in the morning at 10 o'clock because the school is overcrowded. The lunchroom was built for a certain number of kids. They cannot get them all in there so they have to have three or four cycles, the cycle is three or four. They have to force some to eat lunch at 10 o'clock while some are forced to wait until 1:30 to eat lunch. The kids at the end are much too hungry and have been deprived, and the kids at the beginning have been abused by having been forced to eat lunch shortly after they have breakfast. I will not go into all of these examples, which I have given many times before. Mr. Speaker, I would just like to bring you up to date. I feel it is important to talk about it today because today the Committee on Education and the Workforce, which I have served on for 18 years, has begun the process of a markup of the final section of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. The Elementary and Secondary Education Act was a creation of Lyndon Johnson and Adam Clayton Powell during the era of the great society. They broke new ground in providing assistance to elementary and secondary schools. That new ground was broken on the basis of the fact that there were areas of the country of great poverty and where the tax base and various other devices were not measuring up to the provision of adequate education to those children who lived in those areas. The Elementary and Secondary Education Act's primary focus is on children in poverty, and title I is a primary ingredient of the Elementary and Secondary Education Assistance Act. We have taken care of title I already in last year's session. Now there are other elements in the Elementary and Secondary Education Assistance Act, which we started to discuss today. I am proud to announce that we spent about the first 2 hours of consideration of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. They have another name for it. It is called Education Options now. The first 2 hours were spent discussing school construction. This is quite an achievement. I am here to report tonight that we are winning in the battle to get school construction on the agenda, and the battle to get school construction to be seriously considered. We are winning. We are winning, because not only could we not have a 2-hour discussion in the committee of jurisdiction before, the committee of jurisdiction had ruled that the discussion of construction was not germane. School construction was not germane a year ago. They would not even let us discuss it. The Committee on Education and the Workforce had surrendered its jurisdiction on school construction to the Committee on Ways and Means. The only bill in the Congress which dealt with school construction 2 years ago was the bill in the Committee on Ways and Means which was sponsored by the gentleman from New York (Mr. Rangel) which was supported by most Democrats. It was, of course, proposed by the White House, initiated by the President; and it cost $25 billion in bonding authority to be backed up by the Federal Government with interest payments. The Federal Government, in other words, would pay the interest on $25 billion worth of bonds that States and local education agencies might borrow. If you borrow the money, all you have to pay back is the principal. The Federal Government would pay the interest, and over a 5-year period that interest came out to be estimated to be about $3.7 billion. In the Committee on Ways and Means, the process of paying back the interest on bonds would have yielded a 5-year commitment of the Federal Government of $3.7 billion for school construction. Now, that is a very tiny amount compared to what we need. It is at least a recognition that the Federal Government has a role in school construction. We all have supported that consistently. I am happy to report that we are winning. For the first time, the bill also has a Republican cosponsor, the gentlewoman from Connecticut (Mrs. Johnson), who is a cosponsor now with the gentleman from New York (Mr. Rangel). We have hopes that we will have enough votes, if it is allowed to come to the floor, we will have enough votes with the supporting majority party, Republican party, and the Democrats to be able to pass such a bill now that we have Republican cosponsorship, as small as it is, as meager as it is, as inadequate as it is. It at least recognizes the role. It would be a breakthrough to actually have it pass on the floor or even come to the floor for serious consideration. I assure you that there are real problems with more than just the amount. Not only is it too small an amount but it will not help New York State, for example. The great State of New York with millions of childrens in school will not be helped by this bond authority bill, even though the Federal Government is willing to pay the interest on the bond. We have had two bond issues related to school construction over the last 10 years and they failed. The voters have voted down two bond issues, and the likelihood that they will vote for another one, even if it has the Federal Government paying the interest, is very slim. So it will not help us. We need a direct appropriation. There are hundreds of jurisdictions across the country, local education agencies and counties and States that have the same requirement, that the voters have to approve the borrowing of money for schools, and the voters consistently in many places are not approving that. We had a dialogue about it, though, in the Education and the Workforce Committee. The dialogue was very interesting. We should report the very fact that we had the dialogue, as I said before, is an indication of the facts that we are winning. We are winning because we had the dialogue about school construction on the Committee on Education and the Workforce, which has been in denial for the last 6 years. Since the Republicans gained control, they have refused to discuss the issue of school construction in the Committee on Education and the Workforce. Today we had a discussion. Part of the stimulus for the discussion was the offering of an amendment by the ranking Democrat, the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Clay), to amend the Republican- sponsored substitute by placing in that substitute the President's $1.3 billion direct appropriation for school repairs. The President has offered $1.3 billion for a direct appropriation for emergency repairs, and that itself is a breakthrough. Because the President and the White House also, for the last 6 years, the last 5 years, have only had one initiative and that is the Ways and Means initiative with the gentleman from New York (Mr. Rangel) for the $25 billion in authority to buy bonds and we pay the interest on it. So when the President offered his budget for the year 2001 in February of this year, he included for the first time a direct appropriation, $1.3 billion, for education. The government really runs on direct appropriations. We do not fund helicopters or aircraft carriers or submarines with bonds. We do not say go out and buy bonds, we will pay the interest. We fund what we consider important with a direct appropriation. We fund the agriculture subsidies to farmers with direct appropriations. We fund many programs that are questionable with direct appropriations. I will not say that highways and roads are questionable. We all need them. But we authorize the funding of highways and roads and mass transit, too, subways and buses. We authorized $218 billion last year, $218 billion over a 6-year period for highways and roads; and that is going to be a direct appropriation. We did not say borrow the money and we will pay the interest. So when the Government is serious, when the decision-makers are serious, they do not talk about giving bond authority to go out and borrow the money and we will pay the interest; we have direct appropriations. And if we are going to be serious about school construction, we need direct appropriations. So I want to applaud the President, the White House, for taking this small step. A journey of a thousand miles begins with one step. They broke the pattern of insisting that school construction funds have to be won through a bonding process, a borrowing process, and they recommended and they put in the budget $1.3 billion. So we were introducing, the Democrats, the minority Democrats were introducing an amendment to the majority Republican bill which would put the President's $1.3 billion into the bill that we are preparing to bring to the floor. And of course the majority had the votes and they voted it down. But we had 2 hours of discussion, and I consider the 2 hours of discussion in the committee to be a victory, just as I consider the fact that the President moved off dead center and even made the proposal for the $1.3 billion a victory. We are winning. We are winning. The pressure of public opinion, the pressure of what is said in the polls and what people are telling their Congresspeople is beginning to get through. So I am here to say to all America that we are winning, and we must continue the pressure. Over the next 2 or 3 weeks we are going to be discussing this education bill. We probably have 2 more days before the markup is finished in the committee, and then probably in 5 to 10 days it will be on the floor of the House for discussion. And then, of course, the Senate will act and there will be a conference. Given the position of the majority party, the Republicans in the majority in the House of Representatives and the Republicans in the majority in the Senate, given the position of the majority party, it is not likely that any direct appropriations are going to pass out of the Congress for school construction. However, the dialogue is important. The record of the dialogue is important. The public ear in listening to the dialogue is important. Because in the final analysis, this issue is going to be decided in a set of negotiations, what I call the end-game negotiations. The President will veto a bill that is filled with outdated assumptions and throwbacks to the past, like the one that we were discussing today. I want to discuss the nonconstruction parts of it, where they talk about block grants and they are wiping out certain types of programs, including the program which provides more teachers for the classroom. There are many reasons why the President will veto the bill. So having vetoed the bill, there will have to be negotiations before we can come up with another bill. In those end-game negotiations we want the President to hear the voice of the American people. We want him to listen to what they have to say and understand that we are winning. We are much further along now than we were a year ago. When I first came to the floor with this hat as a symbol, we were way, way behind in terms of the recognition among Members of Congress that school construction is a major issue and it is an issue at the heart of education reform. Democrats and Republicans have a hard time understanding that. Although the polls show not only that education is of primary concern among the American voters, when they broke down education into components, one poll did this, they found at the head of the list of all the things that the public feels should be done in education the item of fixing the schools. Now, fix the schools can mean a lot of different things, but they mean physically fix the schools. There was repair, new schools, modernization, wiring for the computers and the Internet, but that emerged clearly. The physical infrastructure emerged clearly among the concerns about education as the top concern. Why? Because a lot of the other things become jokes. Common sense out there among the people and the teachers and the students tells us that it is hard to envisage a modern education with new computers, new technology in the school, in the classroom, if the school has a coal burning furnace and the kids have respiratory illnesses and the teachers have respiratory illnesses. It is kind of hard to deal with the dream, the vision of an education for the digitalized world. The new computers coming in are resented because they would like to see the coal furnace go. Or if the windows are broken and have not been fixed for some time; or if the top floor of the school cannot be used. One school I know of, with three floors, has the top floor abandoned because the walls are caving in. No matter how hard they try to fix the roof, they cannot stop the moisture from leaking in and the walls on either side are caving in. It is time to leave the school. It is time to abandon that building. But they are still there, and the school is over 100 years old. They cannot believe that we are serious about education when we talk about everything except the physical infrastructure because we say that that is too expensive. Let us focus on something else because we cannot afford to fix that. Let us focus on new technology. Let us focus on the teachers. The great cry about the fact that teachers are not qualified, and in poor schools we find a large number of uncertified teachers, where people have not even bothered to take the test that certifies teachers, because there is a great teacher shortage in the inner city schools in particular. Number one, the suburban schools surrounding most large cities are paying larger salaries; and, number two, the working conditions are so much better. Why should a teacher teach in a school that is burning coal in the furnace and have her own lungs jeopardized when they can have a choice and teach under better conditions. Working conditions for teachers are as important as working conditions for people who work in factories. Unions bargain and working conditions are always a major item on the bargaining list. Why should teachers teach in conditions that threaten their health when they can go and teach in schools that are not only safe and healthy but also conducive to learning? They have decent lighting, they are painted, the ventilation is adequate. All of these things do not exist in many of the inner city schools that the teachers are running from. So we cannot solve the problem of certification by focusing only on the problem of teacher certification. We cannot have high standards for teachers if the pool of teachers is always going to be very shallow. These school systems do not have a choice. If they want a body in front of the classroom, they are going to have to take an inadequate teacher, a teacher that is not certified. In fact, we had a dramatic situation in one district. In my congressional district there are four different school districts. And in those school districts they have varying kinds of problems, but one has an intense problem with uncertified teachers. The teachers' union offered the uncertified teachers in one district their tuition. They said they would pay their tuition. They would cover the cost if they would go finish their education, so they can take the test and be certified. The majority of the uncertified teachers, many of whom have been around for years, did not want to bother, even with the tuition paid and the benefits the union was willing to offer. They refused. And, of course, the superintendent of that district said, well, everybody who refuses to accept the offer will place their job in jeopardy. The answer came back from some of the uncertified teachers, go ahead. Because they knew if they were fired, they could go to another district. If they were fired, they knew there would be nobody in front of these classes. They understand very well things are at such a low point in terms of teacher availability and teacher training that most districts are desperate to have a body in front of a classroom. They must have an adult in front of a classroom, and that is their first priority. They cannot demand that people get certified. Uncertified teachers do not have the same benefits as certified teachers. They suffer a few hardships, but there are some people in the world who just want a basic job and have no ambition or whatever. The pool is so shallow until we cannot weed those folks out. There was a time when people coming out of college, the first job that they had was teaching. It was a time when large numbers of people, certainly in the minority community, had no options. So we had some of the best teachers in the Nation in the minority schools because we had brilliant people who could not get jobs elsewhere who became great teachers. That is not the condition that exists anymore. We have a shallow pool to begin with, and if we make it difficult for them, they will not be there. Only those who cannot go anywhere else, the worst, the worst college graduates and the worst lingerers, people who have been around for years and years and not bothered to finish their education, all kinds of people have become uncertified teachers for life. It becomes a career, a career as an uncertified teacher. So we cannot solve the problem, though, if we do not address a number of issues. And certified teachers have now been given health benefits, vacation, a number of things; but the pool keeps being eroded because the certified teachers, the best teachers, keep leaving a system that has problems, including problems of poor working conditions; poor working conditions that sometimes jeopardize their health. So we can take any problem that we want to talk about: the fact that the regents of New York State have now said a student cannot graduate unless they pass a battery of tests; English test, math test, et cetera. There was a time when they would allow youngsters to graduate with a general diploma. They would march in the line and nobody would know the difference whether they had really completed all of their work or not. Now the general diploma has been eliminated so the State board of regents that oversees all education in the State looks good. That is a politician's dream, to take action, affirmative action to do something about poor education. But most of the affirmative action is directed at the students, forcing the students to live up to standards. They still do not have any improvements in the quality of the teachers. There are some schools who lost their physics teachers 5 years ago, and they have not been able to find another person who pretends to know physics. Oh, yes, they will get some English teacher or some person who is brave enough to volunteer to go into the classroom, but there is a great shortage of physics teachers and other science teachers. There is one school I know of that has not had a physics teacher in 5 years; yet we are going to make this student pass a science test when the teacher is inadequate in the area of science. We are going to make them pass a science test when the school has no laboratory. Not an inadequate laboratory, but there are some schools that have no laboratories where students can go and experiment. Most of them that do have laboratories are woefully inadequate, they are stone-age creations and have nothing to do with textbooks and the kind of things that textbooks are talking. The libraries are a disgrace. Most of the libraries have books that are 20 and 30 years old. It is better sometimes not to learn than to learn the wrong facts by reading a 20- or 30-year-old book, especially if it is a geography book or a history book. There are a number of books that it is dangerous to believe the map of the world is the way it looked 20 or 30 years ago, the nations and the United Nations as they were 20 or 30 years ago. And on and on it goes. So all of these other problems are very real, but if we do not have adequate facilities, if we do not have an adequate infrastructure, the solution to the other problems become that much more difficult. We have a situation now where we are about to pass, and it is going to pass because very few people are against it, and I have mixed feelings about it, another extension for H1-B. H1-B is a piece of legislation that comes out of the Committee on the Judiciary which changes the immigration quotas for professional workers. Professional workers, people with expertise needed in a country, the agitation for these kinds of changes comes from industries that have the greatest need. The industry that has the greatest need is the information technology industry, the industry which uses computers and has taken us into the whole world of digitalization. They need people. There are real vacancies. They are not exaggerating. And I suspect, even with the gyrations of the stock market, the fact that it has gone up and down and some technology companies may be in trouble, I suspect they will have no real impact on their need for more high-tech employees. So we are going to have the bill on the floor to greatly increase the number of people who are allowed in the country exempted from the other immigration rules given a red carpet into the country to fill these jobs. I think it was increased less than 2 years ago to 125,000. And now I think they want to double or triple that. They are really going for broke in terms of many, many more to bring in. And that is the way we solve the problem of not having an adequate pool of young Americans who can meet the requirements of the age of the cybercivilization. We are into the cybercivilization. It surrounds us in many ways, not just industry and the high-tech industries. But in the military they are having serious problems finding young people who have had enough exposure to training in computers and related matters to be able to go into the Army, the Navy, or the Marines and deal with the high-tech military equipment. The last super aircraft carrier that was launched was 300 people short. They were short 300 personnel because they could not find the personnel who had the aptitude to learn how to operate the high-tech equipment. They probably solved the problem by now. But they had to put out to sea and launch the aircraft carrier 300 personnel short. So those who think that pouring billions of dollars into defense is a noble and adequate act relevant to our times, stop and think about the fact that the high-tech military that we have is as much in need of brain power as our economy is or any other sector of operation. Brain power is the power that drives everything. And surely, if the public out there, the voters who clamor for more government assistance for education, if they understand this, why do the elected Members of Congress, most of whom have gone to college, most of whom read quite a bit, most of whom are in an atmosphere where these items are discussed, why do they cling like savages to the taboo that Federal assistance to schools should not include school construction? Let me just read two items here, portions of it. April 4. ``Today the Clinton-Gore administration put out a `National Call to Action' to close the digital divide.'' To close the digital divide means that there is a segment of our population, the elite segment, they are very much well versed in the whole digital age, computers and Web sites, and they are off and running, they are making a lot of money, they are improving technology by leaps and bounds, we have geometrically increases in our knowledge, but they are leaving behind them a large segment of the population, not just the poor and the minorities, but there are many children of working families who are not minorities who will also be left behind. Children of working families in America need first-class schools and need world-class schools, and they are being denied those schools by the kind of decision making that refuses to recognize the need for school construction. So we have the phenomenon of President Clinton announcing today that over 400 companies and nonprofit organizations have signed a ``National Call to Action'' to bring digital opportunity to youth, families, and communities. President Clinton's ``National Call to Action'' is a challenge to corporations and nonprofit organizations to take concrete steps to meet two critical goals. Goal one is to provide 21st century learning tools for every child in every school. For children to succeed, they need to master basic skills at an early age. The ability to use technology to learn and succeed in the workplace of the 21st century has become a new basic, creating a national imperative to ensure that every child is technologically literate. To reach this goal, America needs a comprehensive approach to connect every classroom, provide all students with access to multimedia computers, train teachers to use and integrate technology into the curriculum, and to provide high quality on-line content and educational software. Goal number two is to create digital opportunities for every American family and community. For all families and communities to benefit from the new economy, we must ensure that all Americans have access to technology and the skills needed to use it. We must work to meet the long-term goal of making home access to the Internet universal to bring technology to every neighborhood through community technology centers, empower all citizens with information technology skills, and motivate more people to appreciate the value of getting connected. And then the President proceeds to announce a number of initiatives being taken in connection with Government and private industry. And it is the private sector, of course, that is taking the initiatives which involve money, additional funding. Because we are at a standstill here in this Congress in recognition of the fact that we are going into the cybercivilization, and we need to address the investment of more of our money into the education of our populous. Mr. Speaker, I include for the Record the following statement: The Clinton-Gore Administration: Related to a ``National Call to Action'' to close the digital divide: The Clinton-Gore Administration: A National Call To Action To Close the Digital Divide President Clinton Will Announce Today That Over 400 Companies And Non-Profit Organizations Have Signed A ``National Call To Action'' To Bring Digital Opportunity To Youth, Families and Communities. The President will be joined by the Secretary of Labor Alexis Herman, Senator Barbara Mikulski and Julian Lacey, a longtime volunteer at Plugged In, a Community Technology Center in East Palo Alto, California. He will announce his ``National Call to Action'' to help bring digital opportunity to youth, families and communities around the country. Over 400 companies and non- profit organizations have agreed to sign this Call to Action. President Clinton's ``National Call To Action.'' President Clinton has issued a ``National Call to Action'' to challenge corporations and non-profit organizations to take concrete steps to meet two critical goals: Provide 21st Century Learning Tools For Every Child In Every School. For children to succeed, they need to master basic skills at an early age. The ability to use technology to learn and succeed in the workplace of the 21st century has become a ``new basic''--creating a national imperative to ensure that every child is technologically literate. To reach this goal, America needs a comprehensive approach to connect every classroom, provide all students with access to multimedia computers, train teachers to use and integrate technology into the curriculum, and to provide high quality. online content and educational software. Create Digital Opportunity For Every American Family And Community. For all families and communities to benefit from the New Economy, we must ensure that all Americans have access to technology and the skills needed to use it. We must work to meet the long-term goal of making home access to the internet universal, bring technology to every neighborhood through community technology centers, empower all citizens with IT skills, and motivate more people to appreciate the value of ``getting connected.'' The President Will Announce Several Initiatives To Help Bring Digital Opportunity To All Americans. The President will announce the following initiatives that demonstrate a real commitment by the public and private sectors to work together to bridge the digital divide: $12.5 Million For An ``E-Corps.'' The Corporation for National Service will commit $10 million to recruit 750 qualified AmeriCorps members for projects aimed at bringing digital opportunity to youth, families and communities. These volunteers will provide technical support to school computer systems, tutor at Community Technology Centers, and offer IT training for high-tech careers. The Corporation for National Service will also commit $2.5 million for digital divide projects under the Learn and Serve program, which allows young people to make a difference in their communities while going to school. Yahoo! Will Invest $1 Million in Digital Opportunity. Yahoo! will provide an Internet advertising campaign worth $1 million to enlist volunteers with high-tech skills for AmeriCorps' digital divide initiative. The Yahoo! banner ads will help AmeriCorps meet the challenge of recruiting volunteers with high-tech skills to work on technology- related projects. 3Com Launches NetPrep GYRLS. In partnership with the YWCA's TechGYRLS program, 3Com will announce NetPrep GYRLS, a $330,000 program that will offer girls aged 14-16 training in computer networking. Currently, women represent less than 30 percent of U.S. computer scientists and computer programmers. The 3Com NetPrep curriculum will allow high school girls to focus their technical education on computer networking, leading to an industry-standard certification. 3Com expects to reach 600 girls in 30 NetPrep GYRLS locations across the country. American Library Association. The American Library Association will pledge to help bridge the digital divide by working with its members to create or expand ``information literacy'' programs in at least 250 communities around the country. People with information literacy skills are able to recognize when information is needed and have the ability to locate, evaluate, and use it effectively. President Clinton Will Also Announce His Third New Markets Tour--From Digital Divide to Digital Opportunity. On April 17-18, President Clinton, accompanied by CEOs, Members of Congress, Cabinet Secretaries and community leaders will focus national attention on initiatives aimed at overcoming the digital divide and creating opportunities for youth, families and communities. The President will travel to East Palo Alto, California; the Navajo Nation in Shiprock, New Mexico; and Chicago, Illinois to highlight private and public-sector initiatives to help bring digital opportunity to all Americans. Later this month, the President will travel to rural North Carolina to stress the importance of expanding rural access to the emerging broadband Internet. The Importance of Bridging the Digital Divide and Creating Digital Opportunity for All Americans Access to computers and the Internet and the ability to effectively use this technology are becoming increasingly important for full participation in America's economic, political and social life. People are using the Internet to find lower prices of goods and services, work from home or start their own business, acquire new skills using distance learning, and make better informed decisions about their healthcare needs. The ability to use technology is becoming increasingly important in the workplace, and jobs in the rapidly growing information technology sector pay almost 80 percent more than the average private sector wage. Technology, used creatively, can also make a big difference in the way teachers teach and students learn. In some classrooms, teachers re using the Internet to keep up with the latest developments in their field, exchange lesson plans with their colleagues, and communicate more frequently with parents. Students are able to log on to the Library of Congress to download primary documents for a history paper, explore the universe with an Internet-connected telescope used by professional astronomers, and engage in more active ``learning by doing.'' Students are also creating powerful Internet-based learning resources that can be used by other students--such as award-winning Web sites on endangered species, the biology of sleep,human perception of sound, and an exploration of the American judicial system. Access to computers and the Internet has exploded during the Clinton-Gore Administration. Unfortunately, there is strong evidence of a ``digital divide''--a gap between those individuals and communities that have access to these information Age tools and those who don't. A July 1999 report from the Department of Commerce, based on December 1998 Census Department data, revealed that: Better educated Americans more likely to be connected. Between 1997 and 1998, the technology divide between those at the highest and lowest education levels increased 25%. In 1998, those with a college degree are more than eight times likely to have a computer at home and nearly sixteen times as likely to have home Internet access as those with an elementary school education. The gap between high- and low-income Americans is increasing. In the last year, the divide between those at the highest and lowest income levels grew 29%. Urban households with incomes of $75,000 or higher are more than twenty times more likely to have access to the Internet than rural households at the lowest income levels, and more than nine times as likely to have a computer at home. Whites more likely to be connected than African-Americans or Hispanics. The digital divide also persists along racial and ethnic lines. Whites are more likely to have access to the Internet from home than African-Americans or Hispanics have from any location. African-American and Hispanic households are roughly two- fifths as likely to have home Internet access as white households. However, for incomes of $75,000 and higher, the divide between whites and African-Americans has narrowed considerably in the last year. Rural areas less likely to be connected than urban users. Regardless of income level, those living in rural areas are lagging behind in computer ownership and Internet access. At some income levels, those in urban areas are 50% more likely to have Internet access than those earning the same income in rural areas. Low income households in rural areas are the least connected. with connectivity rates in the singles digits for both computes and Internet access. In addition, data from the National Center for Education Statistics reveals a `digital divide' in our nation's schools. As of the fall of 1998, 39 percent of classrooms of poor schools were connected to the Internet, as compared to 74 percent in wealthier schools. I will not go through the entire piece because it is available on the Internet from the White House, and now we can get it from the Library of Congress THOMAS because it will be entered into the Record here for this special order. There is another document that I would like to also read some excerpts from. This is a document that came from a group in California near Silicon Valley: Jacqueline S. Anderson, the vice president of the Bay Area Chapter of Black Data Processing Associates; Hattie Carwell, who is president of Northern California Council of Black Professional Engineers; Eric Harris, who is the chair of the National Society of Black Engineers Alumni-Extension in the Silicon Valley Chapter; Henry Hutchins, the president of San Francisco Bay Area Chapter National Black MBA Association; Dr. Keith Jackson, the National Society of Black Physicists; Harvey Pye, Human Resources Network of Black Professionals; Kervin Hinkston, the president of the Bay Area Chapter Black Data Processing Associates; Frederick E. Jordan, the co-founder of the Northern California Council of Black Professional Engineers; John William Templeton, Books'n'Bytes, the Technology Alliance for African American Students. They sent this letter to the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Gephardt) and they sent copies to Senator Daschle, Senator Kennedy, the gentleman from California (Mr. Campbell), the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Conyers), the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson-Lee), the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Smith), the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Watt), etc. They did not send a copy to me. But in the Congressional Black Caucus meeting today, it was passed around and I found it to be very relevant to what is taking place right now in our Committee on Education and the Workforce and what will be coming to the floor probably next week, if not tomorrow, the H1-B visa issue. As I said before, H1-B visa is an exemption that is granted for professionals and experts to come into the country without having to go into the usual procedures to speed into the country those people which the industry needs in high-tech jobs and other positions requiring expertise. We went through that less than 2 years ago, and we increased the quota greatly. And now they are coming back for a still greater increase in quota. These people whose names I just read, all minorities, practically all African Americans, who are professional, who are experts, who are scientists, have written to the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Gephardt) about the dilemma they face at a time when we are bringing in H1-B professionals from all over the world. I am going to read some excerpts here from this letter, and I will submit the rest of it for the Record. Dear Representative Gephardt, more than 10,000 African American students in physics, chemistry, and engineering have met in the past 30 days. Only a token number of Silicon Valley companies showed up to recruit them. When the National Council of Black Engineers and Scientists met in Oakland in 1998, not a single Silicon Valley company showed up to recruit them. You can ask Representative Barbara Lee (D-California) because she spoke at the event. Those young people are counting on you and the Democratic Members of Congress to protect their right to earn a living in the highest wage, highest growth sectors of our economy. That is why we are quite disturbed that you and other members of the Democratic Caucus are supporting gargantuan increases in the H1-B program that exceed the total number of projected new jobs in the high-technology industry. Dr. Anita Borg of the Institute on Women and Technology, pointed out on 60 Minutes that the jobs being filled by H1-Bs correspond almost exactly with the underrepresentation of women and minorities in science and technology education. The proposal you are quoting as backing would not only fill all those jobs but all the available university slots at the same time as many States are ending their affirmative action programs. Back in 1876 the Hayes-Tilden compromise set in motion an irreversible series of events that led to Plessy v. Ferguson and Jim Crow laws. The ability to impose segregation in practically every employment sector was undergirded by extensive immigration. The point here is that immigration has been used to defeat the training of people with insight and the employment of people who are already inside the country. In January of this year, we received the entire file of labor condition applications from the Department of Labor for the western United States. After selecting 100 LCAs at random, we solicited resumes for the jobs among groups of older white programmers and African-Americans. We were able to gain a sufficient number of responses within 4 days and submitted the data to the applicant companies. We have yet to get a single response. They go on and on talking about the great need in Silicon Valley for people that is being voiced by the companies there as they are joining the other high-tech companies around the country, and they are demanding that we get more foreigners in through the H1-B visa process while they are not making the opportunities available to people within their own jurisdictions, own areas. These are people who have already gotten training and have said that they are being locked out because the H1-B visa process brings in a more desirable people in terms of people from other countries who are willing to work for lower salaries and for other reasons that they claim they cannot quite comprehend but prejudice and discrimination are at the heart of it as they see it. I do not agree with the statement here that we have enough people in the country already to fill all those vacancies. But I do sympathize with these workers because they represent another part of the problem. Part of the problem we are faced with when they bring in workers from outside is that they are paying them much lower salaries. In fact, one of the great sources of high-tech workers, information technology workers, is India. India had a vision more than 20 years ago to see that this was an area where they wanted to develop a large pool of highly trained people, so they have become the suppliers of high-tech personnel all over the world, especially in English-speaking countries. So India, because it is an English-speaking country that has the professionals who have this kind of expertise, has become a major supplier. But they come and they work for much lower salaries. The appeal of the lower salaries is a factor in the push to get more of them in rather than to have better training programs and greater opportunities being created here in this Nation for people who are here already. They conclude by saying: We do not see the gesture of applying H1-B fees to scholarships and K-12 education as significant. Those funds should go to enforcement and streamlining the immigration process, already overwhelmed by current numbers. As written, the scholarships are likely to go to visa holders. The amount needed to bring inner city schools to current standards for high-technology instruction is about $20 billion, the same amount Congress recently spent on so-called juvenile justice. Instead, we would encourage requirements of direct scholarship and internship assistance by any company filing for such a guest worker, the funds for scholarships should go to community colleges, area public institutions, historically black colleges and universities, et cetera. We would also give a priority for H1-B approvals to companies that meet or exceed local community representation in their workforces as measured by the EEO-1 for underrepresented groups. In conclusion, it is untenable for America to spend billions locking up African American and Latino youth or forcing them to fight overseas wars just to gain skills or an education and then to lock them out of the best-paying jobs. If there is a choice in the 2000 elections, then we would expect you to stand up for those who have traditionally supported you. You have the benefit of history to guide your decision. Don't let Jim Crow come back. This letter from the professionals from the Bay Area I would like to submit in its entirety for the Record. Hon. Richard Gephardt, Minority Leader, House of Representatives, The Capitol, Washington, DC. Dear Representative Gephardt: More than 10,000 African- American students in physics, chemistry and engineering have met in the past 30 days. Only a token number of Silicon Valley companies showed up to recruit them. When the National Council of Black Engineers and Scientists met in Oakland in 1998, not a single Silicon Valley company showed up to recruit them. You can ask Rep. Barbara Lee, D-CA, who spoke at the event. Those young people are counting on you and the Democratic members of Congress to protect their right to earn a living in the highest wage, highest growth sectors of our economy. That is why we are quite disturbed that you and other members of the Democratic Caucus are supporting gargantuan increases in the H1-B program that exceed the total number of projected new jobs in the high technology industry. Dr. Anita Borg of the Institute on Women and Technology pointed out on 60 Minutes that the jobs being filled by H1-Bs correspond almost exactly with the underrepresentation of women and minorities in science and technology education. The proposal you are quoted as backing would not only fill all the jobs, but all the available university slots at the same time as many states are ending affirmative action programs. Frankly, it is a shame that two conservative Republicans, Reps. Lamar Smith and Tom Campbell, from the two highest- growth technology areas, Austin and Palo Alto, are sounding the alarm for the protection of American workers, while the Democratic Caucus appears to be chasing campaign dollars. Back in 1876, the Hayes-Tilden Compromise set in motion an irreversible series of events that led to Plessy vs. Ferguson and Jim Crow laws. The ability to impose segregation in practically every employment sector was undergirded by extensive immigration. In Silicon valley, the progress of the African-American, Latino and Native American communities since the 1960s to break into technology has been reversed since 1996. Our analysis of 253 EEO-1 forms from Northern California high tech firms showed an absolute decline in the employment from these groups. In addition, 80 percent of high tech companies do not even file the EEO-1 form. By comparison, the same cohort makes up 35 percent of the Department of Defense's civilian and uniformed personnel. In January of this year, we received the entire file of Labor Condition Applications from the Department of Labor for the western United States. After selecting 100 LCAs at random, we solicited resumes for the jobs among groups of older white programmers and African-Americans. We were able to gain a sufficient number of responses within four days and submitted the data to the applicant companies. We have yet to get a single response. Keep in mind, under the unenforceable ACWIA, each applicant company ``attests'' that it can not find American workers for the job. However, no government agency actually audits or monitors that claim. The seven-day response guarantee on LCAs looks like a speedway compared to person who have filed discrimination complaints with the federal government against high tech firms. Waits of two years for a ``right to sue'' letter are minimum. 3Com fired an African-American engineer, Lindsay Brown, last year from its Palm Computing division the day after he filed a complaint with the EEOC. That shows the kind of contempt for labor standards that the H1-B program is breeding in high technology. Although we informed EEOC and OFCCP about the 80 percent non-response rate for EEO-1s two years ago, neither agency has even sent a letter to the offending companies. Only discriminatory practices can explain the fact that there are more than 225,000 African-American engineers, programmers and systems analysts, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, yet only 1,688 black professional employees of any kind in those Silicon Valley companies. You should take note of the fact that the three states with the highest demand for these H1-Bs have all taken steps to reduce African-American and Latino enrollment in their colleges, particularly in graduate and science programs, through initiatives funded largely by high technology executives. Putting the pieces together, Congressional approval of the Abraham or Lofgren-Dreier bills would extend and accelerate ethnic cleansing in the high technology industry, lock the doors of opportunity for decades and harden racial inequality into concrete and steel, instead of merely glass. We would encourage you to support and extend the worker protection provisions in the Smith-Campbell bill by requiring that companies with active ``right-to-sue'' letters from the EEOC or OFCCP be barred from making ``attestations'' about hiring American workers; by making filing of the EEO-1 form a prerequisite for a Labor Condition Application; by funding personnel to perform audits and backup checks on H1-B visas. We do not see the gesture of applying H1-B fees to scholarships and k12 education as significant. Those funds should go to enforcement and streamlining the immigration process, already overwhelmed by current numbers. As written, the scholarships are likely to go to visa holders. The amount needed to bring inner-city schools to current standards for high technology instruction is about $20 billion, the same amount Congress recently spent on so-called ``juvenile justice.'' Instead, we would encourage requirements of direct scholarship and internship assistance by any company filing for such a guest worker to community colleges, area public institutions, HBCUS or OMIs. We would also give a priority for H1-B approvals to companies that meet or exceed local community representation in their workforces as measured by the EEO-1 for underrepresented groups. Right now Congress has made it cheaper to recruit from the Indian Institute of Technology than from North Carolina A&T or Hampton University. While Congress ponders giving $40 million to 110 HBCUs for graduate education, the Indian government has asked for $1 billion from U.S. emigres for just six institutions. In conclusion, it is untenable for America to spend billions locking up African-American and Latino youth or forcing them to fight overseas wars just to gain skills or an education and then to lock them out of the best-paying jobs. If there is a choice in the 2000 elections, then we would expect you to stand up for those who have traditionally supported you. You have the benefit of history to guide your decision. Don't let Jim crow come back. Sincerely, Jacqueline S. Anderson, Vice President Bay Area Chapter, Black Data Processing Associates; Hattie Carwell, President, Northern California Council of Black Professional Engineers; Eric J. Harris, Chair, National Society of Black Engineers-Alumni Extension, Silicon Valley Chapter; Henry Hutchins, President, San Francisco Bay Area Chapter, National Black MBA Association; Kevin Hinkston, President, Bay Area Chapter, Black Data Processing Associates; Dr. Keith Jackson, National Society of Black Physicists; Frederick E. Jordan, P.E. Co-founder, Northern California Council of Black Professional Engineers; Harvey Pye, Human Resources Network of Black Professionals; John William Templeton, Books'n'Bytes: the technology alliance for African-American students. As I close, I would like to just go back to the fact that I reported when I began, that is, that there was a lengthy discussion in the Committee on Education and the Workforce today. I am proud of the fact that we finally had a discussion which almost lasted 2 hours on school construction, because the general tenor has been that school construction belongs somewhere else and the Committee on Education and the Workforce had surrendered its powers to the Committee on Ways and Means. It was a victory just to have the discussion. We also discussed it because there was an amendment offered to put the President's proposed $1.3 billion into the bill that the majority Republicans have put forth as they complete the Elementary and Secondary Education Act reauthorization. I see both of those items, the fact that the President even proposed a $1.3 billion amount for school repairs and the fact that we had a discussion as one more piece of evidence that we are winning, those of us who agree with the overwhelming body of American voters out there that it is only common sense to put more money into education, more resources into education; and among those items in the education budget, the school construction component is a vital component. It is a kingpin component. We are happy to see that we are beginning to win. Slowly we are moving off dead center. I also mentioned a few moments ago that the gentlewoman from Connecticut (Mrs. Johnson) has now joined forces with the gentleman from New York (Mr. Rangel) in the Committee on Ways and Means; so even that bill, as inadequate as it may be, the bill which allows for $25 billion in borrowing authority and the Federal Government will pay the interest, as inadequate as that is, it never had a chance of passage before and with the joining of the gentlewoman from Connecticut with that bill, it becomes a possibility. We are winning, and I want the message to go out there to all of our allies, all of those millions of people who keep showing up in the polls; and as I said before, the Republicans have the same polls as the Democrats. They are getting the same results. Nobody can hide from the fact that the demand of the American people is that our number one priority for government assistance be the assistance to education, the improvement of education. Now, there have been some arguments made, Mr. Speaker, and you are aware of that, that the demand of people for funds for schools in general and more specifically for school construction should be met by the local governments and by the States. One other speaker during our discussion pointed out that the States have unprecedented surpluses and many localities have surpluses and that they should be the ones who provide the resources to invest in education. Those are good arguments. Nowhere is that truer than it is in New York City and New York State. Two years ago, a little less than 2 years ago, the city of New York had a $2 billion surplus. We have big budgets in the city; but even with those big budgets, the revenue that came in was $2 billion greater than the expenditures. At the same time, the State of New York had a $2 billion surplus. The governor of the State of New York, who is a Republican, and the mayor of the State of New York both refused to spend a single penny on school repairs and school construction. This is in a city where there are 200 schools that still burn coal in their furnaces. The mayor did not do it. He would not spend any money to relieve the situation of overcrowding, the fact that children have to eat lunch at 10 in the morning because of the fact that they are overcrowded and the lunchroom has to eat in cycles, the mayor did not move to provide any relief for that situation. The members of the city council did not even do what we do here in Congress. Democrats cannot pass anything, but at least we insist that there be a dialogue. The dialogue did not even take place in New York City. The horror of having a $2 billion surplus and not using it was not brought home to the people of New York City, the horror of a governor who vetoed a bill that the legislature passed. Now, in the State legislature in New York, the Assembly is controlled by the Democrats, the State Senate is controlled by Republicans, so you had a bipartisan bill which would have provided for $500 million, half a billion dollars for emergency school repairs. The Republican governor of New York State vetoed that even though he had a $2 billion surplus. Across the country, the Nation, you have the same pattern where the needs of the schools for some reason are not being met by local and State officials. I cannot get into the analysis of what is going on because I am not sure I know. What I do know is that a generation of children should not have to suffer because you have Neanderthals out there in the State and city governments, and we give them more and more power at the Federal level all the time. They cannot see the obvious, that there is a need to invest in education. The Nation has been shortchanged by the States many times. In World War I, in World War II, we found we had young people, young men that we had to send off to war who were unhealthy basically because they had poor health care and had been neglected in terms of basic nutrition. The Federal Government got very much involved in free lunch programs and all kinds of health programs because of the fact that it had to fight a war. The national interest was such that they had to have a population that could meet those requirements. They could not leave it up to the States. The States for some reason with all of their advantages, and they have gloriously served us in many ways, for some reason the States never take care of the people on the bottom. The States are examples of how democracy goes wrong and the majority overwhelmingly takes care of itself and the rights and the concerns and the welfare of the powerless minority gets neglected. That is the pattern. States have had responsibility for education since the founding of the country. The primary responsibility for education is in the States. The Federal Government has no direct responsibility spelled out in the Constitution and this is often used as a way to keep the Federal role at a very low level, or not there at all. But we have a responsibility for defense and we have a responsibility for the general welfare of the people. The general welfare is threatened as well as our military defense is threatened by the inadequacy of education at the State level. So we cannot let a generation go down the drain because the States and localities are too stubborn to take action and deal with the problem by appropriating the necessary resources. It is unconscionable; it is a threat to the entire Nation. There are several of my colleagues, the gentleman from Connecticut (Mr. Larson), the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Skelton), who is our premier expert on defense in the Democratic Caucus, they have recently written a letter to the President saying that we need to take a look at the complex of education and defense and the technology needs and the research and see how it all is inexplicably interwoven. You cannot separate the education effort from the basic research effort, the research effort, technology and the ability of the military to function in this modern world. It is all there together. With a $1.9 trillion surplus, we have the advantage of being able to breathe and take a look at it and place these investments where they should be placed. I am going to end by switching subjects just a bit, because I have spent most of the time talking about education, but there is another crisis in New York City which has captured the attention of most of my constituents and most of the people of New York. We have had a situation where a police killing, a man named Amadou Diallo, took place more than a year ago, almost 2 years ago now, I guess, and the final verdict set all four policemen who were responsible free. Again, the majority of the people in a poll in New York State showed that they were outraged at the verdict, and you have a lot of activity within the city around this. On top of this miscarriage of justice, recently another young man was shot to death by police and some unfortunate political moves were made by the mayor, pulling out his records as a 13-year-old and saying he was a troublemaker and implying that he deserved to die because at 13 he had gotten in trouble. He was not convicted at 13; but he had been arrested at 13, and the record showed that. This is a boiling caldron. I have been trying to get people to see, it is very important that these matters with police brutality and police killings always touch off a kind of dynamite reaction on the one hand while the killing of children and the smothering of spirits in the education system that goes on and on year after year is never given much attention. They are related. I want to just close by saying that I heard that there was a group that met recently, a church packed with young people who decided that the solution of the problem was that they all should buy rifles. I can think of nothing more ridiculous and more dangerous than young people going out to buy rifles to try to solve a problem in the city. There are many more solutions that are to be proposed. I would like to close by saying that, again, education is at the heart of that. Being able to respond in a nonviolent way means you have to have discipline, and you have to have the leaders step forward and offer solutions to that problem in the appropriate way.

Mr. OWENS

Mr. OWENS. Mr. Chairman, may I inquire as to how much time we have remaining?

Mr. OWENS. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 1 minute. Mr. Chairman, I would like to express my appreciation for the remarks of the distinguished gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Kasich), our brilliant and distinguished budget chairman, and tell him that we welcome criticisms of our budget; and we certainly would criticize the other budgets. We very much would like to see some dialogue take place between the people who put forward these budgets. We think a $17 billion increase for defense over the President's already very generous increases shows that there is a basic misunderstanding as to what the world is all about and where America and the rest of the world is going. It is brain power, stupid. It is brain power. Brain power drives everything else. It drives the military. It drives the economy. And if we do not invest in education, we will have beautiful high-tech ships out there that nobody can operate. We would like to see some dialogue. If you would agree to take part of that $17 billion and put about $10 billion of it into education, school construction, computers and wiring of schools, I think you would do far more for defense than you are doing with the kinds of increases that are there. Mr. Chairman, I yield the balance of my time for the management of our bill to the distinguished gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Clyburn), chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus; and I ask unanimous consent that the gentleman control the time.

Mr. OWENS. Mr. Chairman, I begin by congratulating the Progressive Caucus budget for going a long way toward strengthening our defense and our security because they recognize that education is the most important priority of our government. It is brainpower that will carry us forward in the military sector, the economic sector, whatever. Brainpower. Viewing our schools and our education system as a giant mobilization for whatever the future brings. In our Republican budget, and even to some degree in the President's budget, we are still making the same error that the Russians made. They were building tanks, millions and millions of tanks, for a war theater that had long ago left tanks behind. We are increasing defense by $17 billion in the Republican budget and increasing it by too much in the President's budget; and we are neglecting the place where we should mobilize for all kinds of contingencies, and that is education. I want to congratulate the Progressive Caucus budget. I want to say the Blue Dogs' budget is impressive in the area of education. They have increased education in their budget. It is only the Democratic substitute that lags behind and the President that lags behind in terms of understanding that it is brainpower that is going to drive our future. As we go into a cyber-civilization, where digitalization is the key to all activities, it is ``dot com'' all over the place. We need smarter and smarter people to run our economy. Social Security is jeopardized if we have a workforce that cannot get out there and generate the income and we have to contract all our income-generating activities to foreign countries which have the people who can run our high-tech society. We are way behind in our thinking. This was a golden opportunity. I think that we should look at education, defense, and economics as being inextricably interwoven. We cannot separate education out from the rest and education comes first.

Mr. OWENS. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, I rise to present the Congressional Black Caucus budget. I shall manage only a small part of the time. The Congressional Black Caucus budget is a budget for maximum investment and opportunity. We are carrying forward the great Democratic Party traditions of Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal, Harry Truman's Marshall Plan and health care proposal, Lyndon Johnson's Great Society that produced Medicaid and Medicare. As advocates for the Democratic Party mainstream philosophy, the Congressional Black Caucus sets forth this budget for maximum investment and maximum opportunities. As we prepare the year 2001 budget, we are blessed by the long, warm rays of a sun of a coming decade of surpluses. Compassion and vision are no longer blocked by the spectre of budget deficits. The conservative estimate is that there will be a $1.9 trillion non- Social Security surplus over the next 10 years. Using simple logic, we should be able to program and apply this year about $200 billion for the 2001 budget as this window of opportunity opens. Investment for the future must be our first priority. Maximizing opportunities for individual citizens is synonymous with maximizing the growth and the expansion of a U.S. superpower economy. It is the age of information, stupid. It is a time of a computer and a time of digitalization. It is the era of thousands of high-level vacancies because there are not enough information technology workers. With enlightened budget decisions, we can at this moment begin the shaping of the contours of a new cybercivilization. The boldest and most vital proposal contained in the CBC budget is the Function 500. It is at the heart of our budget. Funding for school construction, responding to the fact that the American people in numerous polls have indicated that their number one priority for Federal budget action is education. Each of the budgets being presented offer increases in education. Even the Blue Dog budget at one end of the spectrum of the Democratic Party offers a $21 billion increase in education. The Republican budget offers a slight increase, also. But only the CBC budget has chosen to focus on the kingpin issue of school physical infrastructure. While we applaud the President's inclusion of $1.3 billion for our emergency repairs, we deem it to be grossly inadequate. We support school financing via the Tax Code, also. However, most of the local education agencies cannot borrow money without a lengthy taxpayer referendum procedure. This CBC budget proposes a $10 billion increase for funding for school construction. This amount would be taken from the $200 billion surplus. In addition to this 5 percent for infrastructure, and by ``infrastructure'' we mean wiring, repair, security, and new construction, the CBC budget also proposes another 5 percent, another $10 billion, to address other education, social service, and employment initiatives. Only 10 percent of the overall surplus will be utilized for the all- important mission of investment in human resources, only 10 percent of this amount available above the Social Security surplus. Other projected increases in our budget, and certainly the critical Function 500 section, include additional funding for Head Start, summer youth employment, TRIO programs, historically black colleges and universities, and community technology centers. We oppose the Department of Education's elimination of certain vitally needed ongoing technical assistance and research programs. OERI projects should not be dumped into a general slush fund for the Department of Education. The Department of Education's weak administration, with its bargain basement peer-review procedures, is not in a position to mount new programs on a timely basis. A better utilization of existing programs will be more efficient and more effective. For the critically important welfare to work programs administered by the Department of Labor, the year 2001 budget assumes a life-and-death importance. Infant mortality rates in poor communities will continue to rise, and families will suffer needlessly unless there is an end to the current Federal permissive policy which allows States to pilfer funds from the poor and to use welfare contracts as political patronage. The CBC proposes greater earmarking of funding connected with the chaotic welfare reform measures. A better funded and stronger Federal administration and direction is needed to restrain the greed and the neglect of our State governments. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. OWENS. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment in the nature of a substitute.