Major Owens

Mr. OWENS

Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, I want to talk about leadership again. The theme of leadership now shifts to the United States. It shifts to the Congress of the United States. Last week on Friday we voted the majority budget into existence. That majority budget completely ignored a major need of this Nation. This Nation needs to reform its education system. At the heart of that reform process is a need for the construction of new schools. In the Republican budget there are no funds allocated for the construction of new schools. In fact, the Republican budget represents an attack on education. They are going to wipe out Title I programs as we know them, and they will proceed to turn the dollars for Title I into vouchers. They are going to completely ignore the major problems. The problems have been clearly delineated by the President, who started with his State of the Union Address delineating the problem of the schools when he said, we need $22 billion for the construction of new schools. That is his program. I wish we had a more direct way to deal with the problem of the schools, and not through a loan program. He offers a $22 billion loan program where States and localities may borrow the money and the Federal Government would pay the interest. So they are interest-free loans. That is better than nothing, of course. It is significantly better than nothing. But I wish we would dedicate some portion of the funds that we have at the Federal level to the building of schools, grants outright to schools, especially in the inner-city communities and the rural communities where schools are in atrocious condition. All over America, in the inner cities in the suburbs, and in the rural areas, we are beginning to find these schools that are 75, 85 and 100 years old. They need repairs at least. Many of them need extensive renovations. Then we find many situations where we need totally new schools and they are just not there. The Federal Government should take leadership and this Congress should take leadership. We are facing a situation at this point where there is going to be a budget surplus of no less than $50 billion. No matter how they play with the numbers, there will be no less than $50 billion more in revenue collected than there will be expenditures. So with a surplus of $50 billion, now is the time. We have a window of opportunity to act and deal with the most pressing needs of our school systems. Education reform needs a lot of different things, but what it needs most is the basics such as classrooms and safe schools; safe schools and classrooms in those schools which will allow us to then move to the President's second point. His second point is that we need to use Federal resources to fund more teachers and decrease the student-teacher ratio so that teachers do not have so many students to teach, especially in the early years. That makes a lot of sense and the education pedagogy, the surveys and studies, everything supports the fact that we would get a more effective and more efficient school system if in the early grades we had classrooms that are smaller; probably even in later grades too, but start with the early grades. The President's proposal to provide Federal aid to reduce the number of children per class is the next step and it is very sensible, but it cannot take place in areas like New York City. Even if we had the money for more teachers, there is no place to put the classes. We have to have more classrooms if we are going to make use of the money for smaller classes. The State of New York, the legislature, recently passed legislation which guarantees that in 5 years, every child will have a right to a pre-kindergarten education. Pre-kindergarten education will be universal in 5 years in New York, theoretically. Theoretically, it is going to be done. The money will be available for the State to fund a large part of it. But if we do not have the classrooms, and in the places where we do not have the classrooms like New York City, where are we going to put the pre-kindergarten kids when we have situations where we cannot take care of children who are already there? We have situations like PS-161. And I had a group of students from PS-161 visit me last week. It is a great school, and I had been there to visit their school about a month ago. I was very much impressed with their school. Their school has been cited nationally. Even Diane Ravitch, who has very little positive to say about inner-city schools, cited this school as being an excellent school. Diane Ravitch is a former assistant secretary for OERI, the Office of Education Research and Improvement. PS-161 is located about seven blocks from my district office on Crown Street in Brooklyn. 161 has a school building that was built for 500 students. They now have almost a thousand. They have twice as many students than they were built to hold. PS-161 has a coal-burning furnace. The school still has a furnace that burns coal, not only polluting the air around the school, but polluting the internal school building. We cannot have coal-burning furnaces and not have coal dust escape. The first house I ever owned had a coal-burning furnace. I got a bargain because of that. No matter what filters we put in there or what steps we took, some of the coal dust escaped in the house. And after a while one can see the coal dust settling around. Mr. Speaker, if a child sits in a school with a coal-burning furnace, and an old one at that because these premises are 50 years old or older, and the walls of the cellar and the walls in the area around the furnace, all of those are problem areas, the chimneys are problem areas, I assure my colleagues that if a child sits there for 6 years, day after day, year after year, his lungs will receive enough coal dust to affect his health in some way. They may never know. But as I told the PS-161 students who came to visit me, they achieve despite it all. They are high achievers in reading and high achievers in math scores, among the highest in the city. They achieve no matter, despite all of this. But I hate to see one of those young people so gifted, and they are not necessarily gifted, but so well educated. They are normal children. They do not pick and choose them. They are not picked for gifted and talented attributes. They are just normal children. Most of them are poor. Ninety-five percent of the PS-161 students are eligible for school lunches. They are eligible for the school lunch program, which means they are poor. They are coming from low-income families. Nevertheless, they achieve at a very high rate despite it all. I would hate to see one of those high-achieving students have their life cut short or their career made difficult because they develop aggravated asthma later in their teen or early college years. I would hate to see one of their lives cut short because they have lung cancer because they have sat in a building provided by the city fathers and the Board of Education that was unsafe. We cannot control the environment that poor children come from. We do not have enough humanity yet to make certain that every child gets three meals a day and has a decent place to stay, and food, clothing, and shelter. We do not have that kind of society yet. But certainly when a child goes to school they ought to expect to have a safe place, a place free of harm to study, not a place which is a danger to their health. So the coal-burning school, PS-161, is an abomination. The fact that we have 285 such schools in New York, out of 1,100 schools in New York, 285 have coal-burning furnaces. That is an abomination. That is cruel and inhuman treatment to children. On top of that we add the fact that these same children are in a school that is overcrowded, so that some of them have to eat lunch at 10 o'clock in the morning. At PS-161 where despite it all they perform brilliantly, they have an excellent principal and they have teachers who care, somehow the reading scores, the math scores, any barometer we utilize shows that they are given an excellent education. But they are subjected to force feeding at 10 in the morning. To make a child eat lunch at 10 in the morning is a cruel and inhuman treatment. Some have to eat later on at 1 and 2 o'clock, and they are hungry. That is cruel also. That has to happen, they tell me, because the lunchroom is not big enough to accommodate all the students. After all, the school was built for 500 students and it is accommodating almost twice that number. If PS-161 was by itself, I would not be here today discussing this. But this is the rule, the pattern almost, in certain areas of the city. All of the schools have a problem that forces them to have very early lunches and very late lunches. Most of the schools have some problem there. Some are as bad as PS-161, and they have children eating lunch at 9:45 or 10 o'clock in the morning. In PS-161, they have a very tiny library room, but it was filled with eager youngsters. They even have put in two sections where they have a ring of computers where the youngsters can practice on computers. The principal himself went out and begged and borrowed and got the money together, it did not come in the budget. Whatever has to happen he makes happen there. He has a skilled staff that he keeps there because they like working there. Some of his teachers come in from the suburbs where they pay more money, and they could get jobs in the suburbs as teachers. They come there because they like what they are doing. They are in an environment with great leadership, to keep the theme of leadership going, because the principal is a great leader. They get things accomplished. But in that library, they pack one on top of the other. The kids sit one next to the other. They can barely turn the page. But as a mark of what is happening in that school, you do not hear a single sound in terms of children complaining about not being able to turn the page because they are so close to one student, right next to another. They work; they read. They achieve despite it all. I am here to salute PS-161 and all the people involved, the principal, the teachers, parents. They have an after-school program where the parents run it. The parents finance it. It is amazing what they do at PS-161. But why should the leadership of the school system in New York, the leadership at city hall, we have a $2 billion surplus. This year we have a $2 billion surplus projected in the city budget. None of that has been proposed as a way to get rid of some of the coal-burning furnaces. At the State level we have more than a $2 billion surplus projected. The Governor vetoed a bill recently which would have given $500 million to help alleviate the worst conditions in school buildings. So I cannot complain only about the Republican majority here in this body. We have a situation in our State and our city which shows that there is no compassion. The leadership wants to subject the children to cruel and inhumane treatment. We have an American Competitiveness Act that is going to be on the floor soon, where the Senate has said the only way we can get the people we need for information technology, the only way we can meet the problem of Y-2000, you heard of that, where our computers are going to go wild, lots of things are going to happen if we do not get those computers changed which cannot deal with the year 2000. There is a mad race on behind the scenes to deal with the year 2000. We cannot get the people to do it. We do not have the personnel. One of the reasons we are going outside the country to get personnel is because we are confronting that problem. But there is an ongoing need for information technology workers; 300,000 vacancies exist right now in the information technology industry. The Department of Labor projects that over the next 5 or 10 years we will have 1.5 million vacancies in the information technology industry, because they do not see the colleges and universities and the other places which produce these information technology workers, they do not have the capacity, they do not have the students in there now. Unless something radical happens, we are not going to be able to take care of those positions. We have the American Competitiveness Act. If ever there was a misnamed piece of legislation, it is the American Competitiveness Act, which the House will be acting on soon, which calls for the importation of an extra 30,000 people in the category of professionals. We are going to lessen the quota in some other areas for immigrants and increase the quota for professionals in order to deal with this problem; 30,000 more in the first year and over a period of 2 or 3 years, 20,000 each year more. Many of them are going to come from Bangalore, India. There is a special company over there which sends us large numbers, the same company that sends large numbers of Indian workers here for our information technology industry, that same company also has a large number of contracts to work on the Indian nuclear weapons. As I said before, you have a circle there where we are training people who can make the bombs, which we deplore, the proliferation of nuclear weapons. So we have a problem of leadership in America. We have a problem with leadership in this House. There is no compassion for poor children out there who need the help of the Federal Government. The Federal Government cannot do it all, but if we make the first step, we take the first step, we can push the States and the cities to use some of their surplus or more of their surplus or, if not the surplus, to find a way to meet us somewhere. Somebody has to have the compassion to see that you are putting children at risk in unsafe and dilapidated buildings. I have not covered all of the hazards. Some of the schools still have lead pipes that are unhealthy. Some schools have lead paint. Some of the schools have top floors where there is deterioration as a result of too many leaks, and there are so many problems with the leaking that they cannot find it anymore. The walls are just caving in. I am sure that this is not unique to New York. Other big cities and rural areas have similar problems with respect to defectiveness of school buildings. I want to salute the United Federation of Teachers, the affiliate of the American Federation of Teachers in New York. They took the case to court with respect to safety in school buildings, and they recently won a victory. A judge has ordered that all school buildings in New York have to be inspected for violations. We inspect other buildings. Landlords are held to standards with respect to health and safety. But we have never had a situation where schools have been held to the same standards. They have been exempt from inspections from the health or the buildings departments. The judge has now ordered that. We remember what happened in Washington when they began to look at certain kinds of shortcomings in the schools. For 3 weeks they had to delay the opening of schools here in Washington, D.C., because roofs had to be repaired. We hope that we are going to confront this problem and really get down to admitting that we have a crisis and are subjecting children to a crisis. We are endangering and injuring the national security of the United States. Our national security is now tied up with the degree to which we educate our population. I am not going to belittle the need for a strong Air Force or a strong Navy, the need for the most effective modern weapons, but in addition to that and in order to keep that going, you need an educated population on a scale we have not yet recognized to keep everything going. We have these surveys that have been done about the shortages of information technology workers in business. They only look at businesses. They surveyed businesses. They have not surveyed the nonprofit sector and their needs for information technology workers. They have not surveyed schools, which are trying to get going with more and more information technology, and they need personnel. When you look at all of the ways in which we are going to be utilizing information technology workers, the problem mushrooms. Our Nation's national security, our leadership economically, all is being jeopardized by the blind manner in which we insist on proceeding by not recognizing the importance of education. The budget that has been submitted by the majority Republicans in this House does not recognize the educational crisis at all. It plays games with education. It is dangerous, the budget that has been submitted by this House. We are ignoring a window of opportunity. We have a $50 billion surplus we can contemplate. And anybody who says that none of that surplus is going to be spent on anything but Social Security, that is a lie. That is a big lie, because we have left certain things undone. We have not fully funded the transportation bill, not fully funded the agriculture research bill. A number of places have not been fully funded. You watch, as we go into the latter part of this session, we get to the last days of October, you watch them pull the rabbits out of a hat. You watch and understand that part of that $50 billion surplus is going to go toward meeting some of these needs, as it ought to. I am all in favor of some of the money being dedicated to Social Security. When the President made his State of the Union address, we anticipated $8 billion. Certainly if you only had an $8 billion surplus, it should go to the Social Security contingency fund, rainy day fund. But if you have $50 billion, why not divide it the way that I propose. One-fourth of it can go to Social Security, $50 billion or more, one-fourth Social Security contingency fund. One-fourth should go to the reduction of taxes on people, families that earn $50,000 or less. And one-fourth should go to a direct grant system for school construction and repair and renovation and improvement. Another fourth should go to other education matters such as reduction of class sizes, the purchase of equipment, education technology. We can spend $50 billion in ways that would be an investment for national security. If you put it into education, it is an investment for national security, unlike any other expenditures. We are going to spend it on something, we might as well put on the table a discussion right now of how we are going to spend the $50 billion, how we are going to invest the $50 billion and not play games. I put a statement in the Record on the budget where I said the following last week at the time of the discussion of the budget: It is highly likely that there will be a budget surplus of no less than $50 billion for the coming budget year. For the first time in many decades, there will be a window of opportunity to make meaningful Federal investments in education. Unfortunately, the Federal share of the overall expenditures for education is merely 7 percent at present. This budget surplus offers an opportunity to bolster our national security by increasing the pool of brainpower to operate our increasingly complex society. I propose that the new budget surplus be divided in accordance with the priorities that I have just stated. This represents a worthy budget deal. Let us make a deal. Let the deal be on the table in respect to how we should spend the dollars, one-fourth for direct emergency for school funding, one-fourth for Social Security, one-fourth to reduce taxes for people at the bottom, and one-fourth for other education priorities. This represents a worthy budget deal which should immediately be placed on the table for discussion and debate. We need an open debate on the best use for the surplus. What American voters should fear most is a closed-door, smoke-filled room, a deal made in October with only representatives of the Republican-controlled appropriations committees and representatives from the White House present. There will be a compromise which will leave out very important, basic national security concerns, especially as they relate to education. School construction will be tossed aside in that kind of compromise. Let us talk about it. Let the American people hear the possibilities. Let the focus groups and the polling show us where they are and let the parties respond to that. The common sense of the American voters cannot go into play if they do not know what the issues are, if they do not know what the possibilities are. We have an option. We have a $50 billion plus option, a window of opportunity, and the public ought to know about it. A multibillion dollar deal is going to be made. Let this deal be done in the sunshine. Let us do a deal for the children of America. Start acting real. Right now do a democratic deal. Do this magic surplus deal. Upfront right away. Chase infected cynics Off the political highway. Make humane rules. Build safe schools. Start acting real. Right now do the deal. Sunshine is now okay. Act fast in the light of day. Invest it the people's way. Stop pushing the no touch lie. In four pieces cut the pie. Start acting real. Right now do the deal. Vote for children's justice fast. Make up for the stupid past. The budget is on keen keel. Upfront right away. Do this magic surplus deal. Do the deal now. Let us not have a situation similar to the one we had in 1990 when they all went to the White House under George Bush and the leadership of the Congress and they made a deal that was not in the best interests of the American people. At that time I wrote a piece called the Budget Summit where I said: In the great white D.C. mansion There's a meeting of the mob. And the question on the table is Which beggars will they rob? There's a meeting of the mob. Now, I'll never get a job. All the gents will make a deal. And the poor have no appeal. There's a meeting of the mob. It is still relevant. I do not want the mob to meet at the White House or any appropriations room and decide behind the scenes how to use the surplus without the input of Members of Congress. We all get elected, the same number of constituents in the districts. We should all have input. The American people should have an input. The columnists and the analysts, everybody should have an input. They should not suddenly wake up and find the deal is done and is done badly, we have used the money in ways that are really not consistent with what voters think are the priorities. Education is an ongoing priority. Within the education priority, there is no priority more important than construction. Safe schools, safe schools where students can study safely and in peace and with the necessary equipment and supplies. They should come first. In our national security, nothing is more important than education. We have a window of opportunity. We need the leadership in this House, we need the leadership in this city, in Washington, leadership that understands this. Nations rise and fall on the basis of their leadership. As I said before, superpowers can fall, too. The Soviet Union died at age 75 because its leadership was just not responsive. Its leadership closed its circle. They would not listen to anybody from the outside. They would not even let the outsiders know what they were deciding. Nothing is worse than going into the backroom and making a deal without the input of the American people. Nothing is more anti- democratic. Nothing is more destructive. We need leadership. We are a great Nation. We are called, as President Clinton said, the indispensable Nation. We have a pivotal set of decisionmakers in this pivotal Nation. This year is a pivotal time of decision-making. Let us make decisions that are in the interest of the children of America.

Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, I hoped to have a complete hour, but was going to be divided in two parts anyhow. One part I wanted to utilize to congratulate the State of Israel on its 50th birthday. I wanted to do that some time ago, but it has been very difficult to get time on special orders recently. So I am a little late, but it is still the year of the celebration of the 50th birthday of the State of Israel, so I think that it is appropriate that I make these remarks. And I want to make the remarks in the spirit of comparison of Israel with many other nations and draw some lessons from the conduct of the leadership of Israel. Second part of my presentation I wanted to deal with leadership in the United States as compared to leadership of Israel and other parts of the world on the vital issue of education, and I hope that I will be able to do that. I know the rules are that I cannot do that if the majority Representatives show up to claim the last 30 minutes. But I do hope to have the time to do that. If not, I will settle for just using the first 30 minutes to discuss the birthday of Israel and the significance of that in this modern world. Mr. Speaker, I want to wish Israel a happy birthday and state that it is 50 years old, and among nations that is really an infancy, it is an infant nation. You know, the United States is 222 years old, and we are considered quite a young Nation at 222 years. Israel at 50 years is an infant nation. But Israel is not alone. There are a lot of new nations in the world nowadays. There are many nations that are younger than Israel, and it is very interesting to compare some of the nations about the age of Israel, some of the nations that are younger than Israel, and some of the nations that are much older than Israel and look at the performance. Israel has done a great deal. The leadership of Israel is to be congratulated on the achievements that they have accomplished in the 50 years of the State of Israel's existence. It is a tribute to leadership, and by leadership I do mean large numbers of people, not just the prime ministers and the Cabinet ministers. Israel has had layers and layers of leadership. As we say in basketball or football, the bench; they have a lot of people on the bench whose names you never know among the civil servants and the deputies and the assistants across a broad range of agencies and activities developing policies to maintain civility, a balanced civic life in the nation. At the same time for the entire existence of Israel, they have been under pressure and fighting for survival. So I salute that leadership and want to talk about leadership. Sir Arthur Lewis, who was a Jamaican and shared a Nobel Prize in economics with a colleague of his, sir Arthur Lewis's major theme in his book on developing nations was that the key was leadership. The key was not natural resources. The key was not location, geographic location. The developing nations prospered and advanced in accordance with the leadership that they had, and that was the critical item. If you look at the recently established nations, nations who received their independence even after Israel, you see a pattern where if natural resources and geographical location was a determining factor, they should be much further along than Israel. For example, if you look at Nigeria, and I think of Nigeria because Nigeria is in the news today, Nigeria's strongman ruler, the dictator who has been in the position for 5 years, but they have had a lot of other military dictators, he died today. Sani Abacha died, and I do not care to comment on his death or his life. I certainly do not think it is the time to launch a critical analysis of his regime, but I would like to say that he leaves nothing behind that we can be proud of in history. He leaves a record of a sovereign predator who used his enormous powers, and we can see nothing good that came of his great use and abuse of his enormous powers. Nigeria is a country blessed with natural resources. Nigeria is a country blessed with the particular natural resource which guarantees wealth. Nigeria has not only fantastic oil deposits, but they have a type of oil which is much sought after all over the world. So Nigeria has had oil wells pumping for a long time, and if natural resources alone could determine the faith of a developing nation, Nigeria would be among the leaders of the developing nations. Nigeria is 37 years old. It was granted its independence by the United Kingdom October 1, 1960, so it is 37 years old. Israel is a little older, May 14, 1948. But Israel has no oil, no uranium, no gold, no great deposits of diamonds. Natural resources certainly do not exist in any significant abundance in Israel, so they did not have that boost. Nigeria is 37 years old, and its oil wealth has been squandered by its leadership. The oil wealth has not been utilized to really build a prosperous country. It is a large country, more than 100 million people. It is the most densely populated country on the African continent. It has more population and more people. It is not the largest in size, but it has more people, 100 million. South Africa, has many fewer people, less than 30 million people. Nigeria has 100 million. But it has vast land resources and many other natural resources, but oil is the key, because it is the cash crop, the generator of cash in hard currency. The cash that can buy anything you want anywhere in the world, Nigeria had that. But it has all been squandered by the leadership of Nigeria. The leadership of Israel is a great contrast. Having no natural resources, the only oil well Israel ever had was the oil wells in the Sinai Peninsula, and they developed the oil there while they were occupying the peninsula, and then they gave it up. The leadership decided at a critical moment that in order to make peace with Egypt, that they would agree to surrender the oil wells in the Sinai Peninsula. So their very short period of wealth by oil was ended. So the leadership of Israel stands out even more when you take a look at the nature of the land that they occupied. It is land that had been given as desert, where nothing great was going to happen there, certainly nothing in the area of agriculture and self-sustaining food production. Yet they transformed that land into an agricultural giant. They became an agricultural giant, not only for production of food in the Middle East, but they exported large amounts of food to Europe. At one point, agriculture was their major industry. It is no longer the major industry in Israel. Agriculture is not the major industry. High-tech industries, high technology industries based on brain power and the development of complex industrial operations to take advantage of the knowledge that is produced in the Israeli educational system and other parts of the world, because Israel does benefit from the fact that the leadership is drawn from a diverse group of people who came from all over the world. The diversity in their leadership probably explains some of the reason it has been so effective. They have a great deal of wisdom they bring as a result of years and years of the Jewish people, centuries of the Jewish people suffering, but they also have a knowledge of all the cultures in the world. People came to Israel from all parts of the world. So Israel is a premier example of what great leadership can do. Nobody else has accomplished this. No other Nation can say in 50 years they have accomplished as much as Israel. It is basically a self-sufficient society at this point, as much as any society is. Even the great United States of America, we depend on export markets and various other things, where if they were to collapse in other parts of the world, it would have an impact on us here also. So nobody is totally self-sufficient, but in 50 years Israel is about as self-sufficient as a Nation can become. Yes, they receive large amounts of aid from other countries, particularly from the United States, but they have made good use of that aid. Let us examine the age of some of the other countries that are in existence now. One of the youngest, probably the youngest, is South Africa. I do not know of any country that has come into existence since South Africa reestablished itself May 10, 1994. So South Africa, the new South Africa, the democratic South Africa, the South Africa where all of its people, black and white, are allowed to participate in its government, is only four years old. So it is among the youngest. The Congo is 37 years old. The new Congo that came into existence after the Belgians were forced to give it up is 37 years old. Most of that time it has been under one leader, the leader was installed after the death of Patrice Lumumba. He, of course, recently died also, and there was a whole new leadership that has taken over. But since then the Congo, with the vast natural resources, vast wealth, huge land mass, the Congo is an impoverished country right now. It can barely feed its own people. It cannot even feed its own people. All of the potential that exists there in terms of its wealth and its minerals, tin and diamonds, very few things you do not have in terms of natural resources are there that do not exist in the Congo. Yet the Congo is a miserable place. The leadership of Mobuto established by the CIA, the Central Intelligence Agency, helped to over throw the Lumumba government and install Mobuto, and Mobuto reigned for many, many years with the help of the CIA and aid from this country, and he did nothing but pilfering the country. He was a sovereign predator with all of the power, and he did nothing but make himself and his cronies wealthy. Some countries that came into existence recently include Guyana here in this hemisphere. Guyana is 32 years old. Jamaica is 35 years old. Trinidad is 35 years old. I remember being quite happy when the independence was granted to Trinidad and Jamaica and Guyana and Grenada, because in my Congressional district, you have large numbers of people from all of these countries. The West Indian population outside of the West Indies, the greatest concentration is in the 11th Congressional District in Brooklyn. So I have experienced the joy of independence with all of these different groups. I also experienced the sadness that set in as a result of the various problems that each one of these nations has experienced. They have varying degrees of success in this hemisphere. But, generally, it is not a good picture when you look at the economics of these various nations. Trinidad and Tobago have a great deal of oil. They had tremendous oil resources. They still have substantial oil resources. They were not utilized properly. The leadership did not utilize that wealth properly in the early days of independence. If Trinidad and Tobago had made some decisions about utilizing their wealth to build a first class education system, if they had educated their populace and prepared for the complexities of this century and the kinds of economies that we have now, they might have done what they did in Bangalore, India, begun to develop a large pool of people who are educated in the area of computer science. Bangalore, India is considered the computer programming capital of the world, because they have this tremendous pool of people, young people constantly being produced from their education system who are computer experts. Many American companies send their computer work over there by contract. When they import professionals, people in the computer industry, into this country, they come from Bangalore, India in large numbers. In fact, there is an issue right now on the table concerning the new American Competitiveness Act which was passed by the Senate. That act provides for us to solve our problems in terms of the shortage of personnel in the information technology industry by bringing in foreign experts, foreign computer workers, information technology workers. The greatest percentage of those workers would come from India. Right now, there is a dispute because some people are wondering how can we have an American Competitiveness Act which is designed to make us more competitive by relying on outside workers to come in? Why do we not train our own workers? Why do we not build up our capacity here and make certain that large cities, the big cities, inner cities with large numbers with unemployed people, train the people who are able to take these jobs, and we would have the resource here in the Nation. One fallacy of relying on outsiders is we are building the capacity of countries like India to create their own nuclear bombs and their own nuclear weapons. Many of the Indians that helped to create the nuclear bomb which was exploded recently and for which they have endured sanctions from our government and indignation from the rest of the world, many of those experts were trained right here in this country. They were trained here. As you train more and more, you bring them in to work here, and you pay them, you are increasing the pool of people who come from India to be able to do that kind of thing. I am not going to single out Indians and say we should not import more computer workers and information technology workers from India and discriminate against them, import them from other countries instead, I am saying we should not be importing them from anywhere because we have the potential pool right here. The failure of leadership, to get back to my concern tonight, the failure of leadership in places like Trinidad, Jamaica, Guyana, Grenada, the failure to invest more in their own education systems places them outside the possibility of the realm of being able to have workers come from their countries with the same expertise as the workers who are trained in India or some other central European countries that will be soon exporting workers to this country, instead of us developing our own. The answer to the problems is to develop our own. But if you are not doing that, this is an opportunity that the countries of this hemisphere had, but I do not think it is going to be there much longer. So we have some countries that are younger than the Nation of Israel, and some have done very poorly in terms of their years of existence and foundations they have laid. I think Israel is to be congratulated for having done far better than the Soviet Union, which came into existence in December 1922. Russia, Ukraine, a number of countries that made up the Soviet, existed long before the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union was 75 years old when it died. The Soviet Union is no more. It is dead. That is very interesting. Modern nations can die. Modern nations. A superpower we have watched die. So Israel is not invulnerable. It will not go on forever. It is always going to need what they have now, and that is excellent leadership. At 50 years, Israel is much further along than the United States was at 50 years. At 50 years, we had endured some pressure from the outside. We had to fight for survival. There were a number of different challenges to the new Nation. Of course we came into existence only after fighting a war with Great Britain. This new Nation was struggling along. Thanks to Thomas Jefferson, we have doubled our size on to his presidency. When he died, the Nation was 50 years old. When John Adams died, the Nation was 50 years old. Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, James Madison, James Monroe, they all left a legacy which guaranteed that the Nation was strong enough to resist the greatest challenge that it faced in the 1800s when civil war erupted and the Nation had to fight for its life. If we had had two nations resulting from the Civil War, history would be very different, I assure you. So we have had, after our first 50 years, we were much further along when the greatest challenge that the nations ever faced came along; that is, the Civil War. Israel is not immune to some new catastrophe. They have suffered one catastrophe after another, one challenge after another, one war after another where everybody who is not familiar with the Israelis themselves counted them out and said they will never survive. They were attacked from all sides at one time before they made peace with Egypt. Then they were attacked even after that later on, and they are under constant pressure. If you take a look at the physical nature of Israel, you can understand why they are always at risk. Israel looms very large in the minds of most of us because of the fact that they play a major role in terms of war and peace and the world. They have a large population in this country that, of course, keeps us very much aware of the problems of Israel and the achievements of Israel. So it looms large in our minds. But when you go to Israel, the first shock that I had when I landed at the airport was that it is a very tiny country. You really begin to feel how tiny it is when you land at the airport in Israel. I began immediately to feel it, even before we started traveling around the country and found that the country's dimensions physically are astounding. It is so tiny in that it is hard to conceive of the fact that its total area is 20,770 square kilometers. But you cannot really envision that. Stop and think about the State of New Jersey. The State of New Jersey, which too many New Yorkers think of as sort of a suburb of New York, the State of New Jersey is a State in itself, but Israel is smaller than the State of New Jersey. As of July 1997, you were talking about a population of 5,534,000. That is a great increase. When I first went to Israel in 1983, the population was about 3 million. So they have a great increase in population by bringing in groups from all over. But it is still only 5,534,000. They occupy a very tiny strip of land. The width of Israel is a very narrow waist. Of course the length also is very short. The preoccupation of the Israeli leadership with land is very easy to understand. They have taken the little land that they have, and they have transformed it. The greening of the desert is discussed often. They have used their knowhow, their ingenuity, to make good use of all the land available. But when it comes to their defense in military terms, the fact that it is so easy to penetrate with even short-range rockets or short-range artillery gives the Israelis a well-understood concern always about their survival in terms of land. But the leadership, despite all these problems, has maintained itself, and everybody knows the military machine that the Israelis were able to build was a remarkable one, indeed. They have earned high praise for that. But most people do not understand how at the same time the Israelis were under such military pressure, they have built a Nation with a strong education system, they have built a Nation with institutions of culture, they have built a Nation that has a great deal of compassion and humanity. In the midst of all their troubles, the Israelis rescued 40,000 black Jews, Ethiopian Jews, from Ethiopia and brought them into Israel. In the midst of all their troubles they made special provision for black Jews from Ethiopia. The Israeli leadership decided to undertake this very difficult job of assimilating people who have a different skin color. They were not stupid. They knew very well that in the modern world color is very important, and that it is a new kind of problem. When I visited Israel the last time, I visited a school called Yemin Ord, where half of the 500 students there were Ethiopian. They deliberately reached out to bring in the Ethiopian youngsters in this village school setting. They have tremendous achievements there. The Ethiopians have come from a pastoral society, and have been able over a short period of time to rise to the level and the challenge of Israeli education. The graduates from that school who were Ethiopian performed at an equal level to the other graduates from that school. Since then, they have had some difficulties. We have had some headlines about Ethiopians rioting in the streets of Tel Aviv, and being very upset about the fact that some bigoted people in the Israeli blood supply system separated their blood out and threw it away without telling them because they thought there was something wrong with their blood, and some other incidents have taken place. So they have had, as a result of reaching out to the black Jews of Ethiopia and recognizing that they were Jews, first of all, and color had to be secondary, they have had some special problems. The Israeli leadership is to be congratulated for taking on those problems with all the other problems that they have. If I had to call names, of course, and I do want to call some names, David Ben-Gurion, the first Prime Minister of Israel; Golda Meir, the American schoolteacher who went to Israel and became Prime Minister; Menachem Begin. Menachem Begin was labeled by the British as a terrorist, and he was in that sense a terrorist. He led the violent uprisings which helped to force a critical situation which led to the creation of the State of Israel. Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Perez. It is interesting that Begin and Yitzhak Rabin were both military people, they were coordinators of violence. They were successful generals and successful commanders of violent activities, of wartime activities, military activities. But Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Rabin were the greatest peacemakers of Israel. Men who have faced war and understood war were the ones who understood the necessity for peace. Menachem Begin invited Anwar Sadat to come from Cairo to Israel and open the doorway to the peace agreement which Jimmy Carter presided over, and led to an agreement with Egypt and Israel which in many ways has done more for the security of Israel than any other action taken by the leadership of Israel since its existence. They eliminated one front. They eliminated their largest and most effective enemy, Egypt, by negotiating peace at the proper time. They gave up some oil wells, some real estate that was very popular with the Israeli population. They gave up a lot, but they got peace and security as a result. Menachem Begin, Yitzhak Rabin. Shimon Perez was very interesting individual, in the background for a large part of his life. If one person can be credited with building the Israeli military machine in terms of the equipment and the organization of it, and even the creation of the Israeli Air Force, and the creation of the series of activities which probably led to Israel developing a nuclear weapon of their own, and I cannot document this and nobody admits it, but certainly the Air Force and the military machine of Israel was built mostly through the ingenuity and leadership of Shimon Perez, who operated behind the scenes and never fully got the credit. It is important that there are unnamed Israelis that we will never know who helped to make Israel what it is. Leadership means more than the people on top. The leadership in Nigeria, the leadership in Trinidad and Jamaica, et cetera, the problem often is that the leadership is too scarce. There is only one layer of leadership, and that layer of leadership, if they have errors and faults, there is nobody to balance them off. There are no people to criticize them. Leadership in a nation means that you have to have newspaper editors, judges. The whole set of modern functionaries have to be present, and they have to sort of play off each other and keep each other in line, and you create something which, by trial and error, becomes a stable Nation. The absence of this kind of leadership in most of the nations that have been newly formed is a serious shortcoming. If there is any remedy for underdeveloped nations or developing nations that we ought to look at, it ought to be some way to give them more and more aid to create more and more leaders. That means that education in other developing nations ought to take priority. There are some nations which are pitiful. Somalia destroyed itself completely. Somalia is 37 years old, but they have completely destroyed themselves. There is no Nation of Somalia anymore. There is something on the map. They have no government at all, it is completely gone. This is a Nation where most of the people are of African descent. This is a Nation where most of the people speak the same language, most are the same religion. We cannot understand quite what happened to Somalia, but because of faction fighting, they destroyed themselves completely. Israel exists because they have been able to deal with each other. They have had this pool of leadership drawn from all over the world. They have been able to compromise and negotiate when necessary. There are some very serious problems internally within the Nation now. At 50 years old, its existence is not guaranteed, I assure the Members, but certainly when we think of the pressure on the Jewish populations of Europe, which is part of what helped to create Israel, the man who created those pressures, Adolph Hitler, said that the Third Reich would reign for a thousand years. The third Reich is gone, it is no more, but Israel is very much alive with a lot of promise for growth in the future. I salute the State of Israel on the occasion of its 50th birthday. The Jewish people have defied numerous catastrophies and they have survived for thousands of years. Now Israel has become a harvesting place for all of these centuries of suffering and the wisdom accumulated from that suffering. Happy birthday to the State of Israel. Mr. Speaker, if the majority is not here, I would like to claim the other 30 minutes that is left for the second portion of my presentation.

Mr. OWENS

Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

Mr. OWENS

Mr. OWENS. Mr. Chairman, it is highly likely that there will be a budget surplus of no less than 50 billion dollars for the coming budget year. For the first time in many decades there will be a window of opportunity to make meaningful federal investments in education. Unfortunately, the federal share of the overall expenditures for education is merely seven percent at present. This budget surplus offers an opportunity to bolster our national security by increasing the pool of brainpower to operate our increasingly complex society. I propose that the new budget surplus be divided in accordance with clear national priorities. One fourth of the surplus should be set aside for social security; one fourth should be used to give tax relief to families earning less than 50,000 dollars a year; one fourth should be allocated for direct emergency funding for school construction; and one fourth should be invested in other education priorities such as smaller class sizes, education technology, books, equipment, etc. This represents a worthy budget deal which should immediately be placed on the table for discussion and debate. We need an open debate on the best use for the surplus. What American voters should fear is a closed door, smoke-filled room deal in October with only representatives of the Republican controlled Appropriations Committees (House and Senate) and the White House present. A multibillion dollar deal is going to be made. Let this deal be done in the sunshine. Let's do a deal for the children of America. do the budget deal now Start acting real Right now do a democratic deal Do this magic surplus deal Upfront right away Chase infected cynics Off the political highway Make humane rules Build safe schools Start acting real Right now do the deal Sunshine is now okay Act fast in the light of day Invest it the people's way Stop pushing the no touch lie In four pieces cut the pie Start acting real Right now do the deal Vote for children's justice fast Make up for the stupid past The budget is on even keel Upfront right away Do this magic surplus deal.

Mr. OWENS

Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to pay tribute to the students, parents, and faculty of Midwood High School at Brooklyn College. On May 22, 1998, the United States Department of Education selected the school as one of 166 winners of the Blue Ribbon Award. These outstanding individuals have not been celebrated as sports heroes and entertainment celebrities; but a tradition of academic excellence has been established at Midwood High School. These students, parents and educators have tirelessly dedicated themselves to achieving academic excellence that is necessary to prepare our young people for the challenges of the next century. Midwood High School at Brooklyn College, a secondary school of 4,000 students in Brooklyn, New York, is located in a middle class, urban environment. It is a model school of academic excellence within an integrated instructional setting. The student population consists of 43% African American students, 10% Latino students, 17% Asian students, and 30% students of other nationalities. Students wishing to attend Midwood High School may apply to one of three programs: the Medical Science Institute, the Humanities Program, and the Collegiate Program. Mr. Speaker, I feel some degree of personal pride in this achievement. For the last five years I have been a guest of the annual Midwood Student Congress. At their Congress students debate issues and take votes. A bill to greatly increase taxes on tobacco won a narrow victory this year. This activity is just one more example of the comprehensive excellence of the program at Midwood. During the 1986-87 school year, Midwood High School was named a School of Excellence by the United States Department of Education, In 1994, the school was also selected by Redbook Magazine as one of America's fifty outstanding high schools. Of the 1997 graduating class: Ninety-eight percent of the students went to college. Over seventy percent of the students earned Regents endorse diplomas. The school's SAT mean scores were significantly above the national mean. The school was rated as one of the top fifty high schools in America by the College Board Advanced Placement Program. Students were awarded $28 million in college scholarships. For the fourth year in a row, Midwood ranked among the ten top schools in the nation in the Westinghouse Research Competition. Sixty-four students were ranked Advanced Placement scholars by the College Board. Two Midwood seniors were selected as National Merit finalists. Ten Midwood students received commended status in the 1997 Achievement Program. The National Council of Teachers of English presented a writing achievement award to a Midwood senior--the tenth year in a row that this prestigious award was presented to Midwood High School. In the New York Academy of Science 1997 Science and Technology Expo, eight Midwood students received awards. Ten students received awards in a science competition sponsored by the Rockefeller Foundation. University students at Midwood High School are enriched in various ways by the academic and physical resources of Brooklyn College: They are encouraged to enroll in courses at the college campus, if qualified. They have the opportunity to use the college library. They participate in appropriate college cultural and career programs. They conduct research under the tutelage of college professors. They take Midwood High School laboratory classes on the college campus. They hear distinguished scholars from the college who visit Midwood as guest lecturers. We must create an atmosphere where our students are inspired and given incentives to strive for excellence. I salute Midwood High School for their outstanding academic performance. Each student, teacher and parent is part of a process of creating an environment in America where education is exalted, where academics and intellectual activities are raised to a new level. Midwood High School students are provided with a great Opportunity- To-Learn and they use it well. We salute Principal Lewis Frohlich and all of the teachers and students of Midwood High School.

Mr. OWENS

Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

Mr. OWENS

Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, I want to talk about the fact that the commonsense mandate for action on education is being ignored here in Washington. We have an attempt to divert the attention of the American people from what is one of our most important issues. In discussing this very important issue of education and the fact that there is an attempt to make us forget how important it is and forget that there is nothing but inaction being proposed about it here in Washington, I think we ought to discuss a few seemingly unrelated issues. The fact that India has just exploded a nuclear device is important to today's topic. The fact that the CIA failed to detect the test preparation is important. The fact that the Senate passed today something called the American Competitiveness Act, which calls for making America competitive by bringing in foreigners, foreign professionals in the information technology industry. The American Competitiveness Act is an example of outrageous language being used here in Washington, ridiculous language. It is called the American Competitiveness Act, and yet at the heart of the act is the provision which requires an increase in the quotas for visas for information technology professionals from foreign countries, so they can come in and meet our needs in this critical area of information technology workers. American Competitiveness Act for that kind of piece of legislation is about as ridiculous as the Paycheck Protection Act which my colleagues were talking about before. The Paycheck Protection Act is an act whereby they are going to try to censor unions in this country. Unions represent maybe 15 to 16 million people. They should be censored in terms of their voice in the political arena. Yet, the people who give the most money to the political process, corporations, millions of Americans have their stock in corporations, there is nothing in the legislation, no discussion at all about how corporate stockholders, people who own shares in corporations should be able to also have protection. I do not think protection is warranted in either case. It is an attempt to curb the debate and silence one segment of the American electorate. But how does this relate to education? Let us go back to India. India exploded a nuclear device. The CIA failed to detect a test. We had a discussion just a few days ago on the floor of this House about the CIA's budget. We are not sure what it is, because it is secret, but we have a good idea. We proposed to cut the CIA budget by 5 percent. We have begun to compromise. In previous years we have asked for 10 percent, but this year we went down to 5 percent. We calculated a 5 percent cut would be about $1.3 billion. We calculated that with $1.3 billion we can build a junior high school or high school which costs about $10 million to build. They may cost a little more in New York, but most parts of the country, you can build a substantial school. For $10 million, we calculated 130 schools. We are talking about cutting the waste out of the CIA budget in order to build schools. So there was a link we made to education. But we had an overwhelming vote against our amendment to cut the CIA in order to use the money for better purposes. I agree with the gentlemen over here before. The gentlemen were talking about the bigness of American government. The government spends too much money. The taxes are too high. The taxes are certainly much too high for people at the lower end of the scale, and we should move to try to cut taxes. You cannot cut taxes if you are going to continue to insist that the CIA operate at a budget between $27 billion and $30 billion. But the CIA had to be funded at the same level because the people on the floor who were members of the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence said they need this money, and one of the reasons they need this money is because they must fight nuclear proliferation. As the last superpower in the world, we are the only power that has the capability of detecting nuclear tests or preparation for nuclear tests. We can monitor nuclear tests throughout the world. One of the great dangers throughout this world is nuclear proliferation. I agree, nuclear proliferation is one of the great dangers of this world. It is an international matter. It is of international concern. I am proud of the fact that the CIA says they have the capability to monitor nuclear proliferation. That is one of their major priorities, one of the highest priorities. If that is the highest priority, and if the overwhelming majority of the Members of the House voted, as they have in previous years, to maintain the CIA budget at the same level it was during the Cold War, and to do that because of its vital function in detecting nuclear proliferation, why did they fail to detect the test preparation in India? Why did we hear it on CNN? CNN told the American people that India had exploded a nuclear device, nuclear weapon, whatever; a nuclear explosion had taken place. We got it on CNN. Would it be cheaper to contract part of the function of the CIA to CNN and save that money that we were talking about, $1.3 billion, to build 130 schools? The explanation of the CIA is that India did not play fair, you know. We are monitoring nuclear activity all over the globe, but India did not play fair. The people in India made preparations, a highly visible amount of activity at another site where they launched rockets. So the CIA thought India was prepared to launch a rocket, so that they focused their cameras, their monitoring, whatever, on that site, and they overlooked the Indian preparation for a nuclear test. The CIA, which has almost $30 billion for a budget, and part of this money is for the satellites, reconnaissance satellites that we maintain in the sky, why did they miss it? Because the Indians did not play fair. The explanation we get is they did not play fair. They sneaked and exploded their device, prepared while we were looking somewhere else, at another possible explosion. Why is our sophisticated CIA, absorbing almost $30 billion, unable to play the game that we used to play when we were kids? We played cops and robbers and cowboys and Indians or played war. You take a big rock and throw it over there. The guys looking for you will go over there, while you can come in behind them and attack them. This is the oldest game in the world, a diversionary tactic, the kind the Indians used on the CIA. Why am I talking about that if I want to alert the American people to the fact that education, one of our highest priorities, is being ignored? Because our money is being wasted in this direction. There is another linkage, also. India now is proud of the fact that they are reasserting their nuclear power status. The people of India danced in the street to celebrate the nuclear explosion. Overwhelmingly the party in power has received approval from the people, and some political pundits are estimating that this party will finally consolidate power in India. India has had a lot of turmoil politically, and now this party now in power, because of their nuclear explosion, will consolidate their power and remain in power for a long time. You have another set of demagogues using something like war or something close to war and the preparation for war to unite the nation behind them. What is the impact going to be across the world? If India is going to show their nuclear muscle, then right next to it is Pakistan. They want to do their test. How can you argue morally that Iran should not go ahead and do their testing and have nuclear weapons? Saddam Hussein is waiting for us to get tired of monitoring his country so he can go back to building his nuclear capacity. There are many other nations in the world that would like to buy technology and get into the game. So nuclear proliferation, which, by the way, the dangers of it might have nothing to do with war. Maybe they will not start a war, but the fact that the bombs or devices are exploding means that the radioactive debris is being thrown into the atmosphere, being thrown into the oceans. And if El Nino taught us anything, it taught us that the world is very small, and ocean currents in one part of the world, when they get out of whack, they are affecting other parts of the world. They throw off the weather patterns. The volcanoes recently have taught us how volcanoes in one part of the world darken the sky for long periods of time, as if we did not know it from studies of ancient catastrophes, in the last four or five years they have changed the weather patterns. So nuclear tests, which produce radioactivity, are a concern to all of us. We lived under the threat of a bomb for a long time, that one nuclear power, the Soviet Union, might attack the United States, or vice versa, and we would be thrown into a nuclear holocaust. We did not want that, and it affected the psychology of a whole lot of people of my generation and a lot of people for a long time. We were happy to see that come to an end, the threat of the two great superpowers going to war and what that would do in terms of the devastation of the earth. Now we are going to have slow poisoning by nuclear proliferation, as one nation after another joins the club. India, the home of Gandhi. If India, the home of Gandhi, passive resistance, the place where Martin Luther King got his inspiration, and numerous other leaders of the world, including Nelson Mandela, if India now is going to beat its chest as a nuclear power and the people of India are going to dance in the streets to celebrate the politicians who have made them a nuclear power, then where can we look to in the world for hope? China will certainly increase their explosions, and on and on it goes. India is important for another reason. I just mentioned the passage of the American Competitiveness Act by the Senate, that outrageous name they used, ``American Competitiveness Act.'' What is it? It is to increase the quota of foreign workers, professionals in information technology, who can come into the country and get us out of a jam because we have inadequate education. Our educational system has not produced enough information technology workers. We now have a crisis. So American competitiveness is all tied up with foreign professionals who are coming in. By the way, as they increase the quotas for foreign professionals to come in, they are going to decrease the quota in other areas, so people who are waiting for their families, to reunite families, and other areas of immigration are going to be hurt. But this great act of improving American competitiveness is going to benefit India primarily. The largest number of information technology workers now in this country from a foreign country are from India, and the largest number who will come in under this new increase in the number who can come in, I think 30,000, the quota is being increased by 30,000, and over the next few years it will be brought down back to 20,000, but for a long period of time you can have 20,000 per year. To jump it off you are going to have 30,000 more than already. Most of them come from India, and it is likely that, in the future, that same ratio is going to be there. India is the place which has seen fit, wisely so, to educate a large segment of their population for the age of computers. Computer science, all of the things related to computers and information technology, India has seen fit, they saw the need, and they have a large body of human capital to spread throughout the world, certainly the English- speaking world. Indians speak English, and that gives them an edge over the information technology professionals that might come from the former Soviet Union or from other parts of central Europe. They speak English. We need English-speaking professionals in the information technology sector. So India will send to America more and more information technology workers. Do you discern a circle here? They will be in our top industries. They will acquire more know-how. They will be able to take that know- how back to India. If India's nuclear capability is rather primitive now in comparison to the United States's nuclear capability or the Soviet Union's nuclear capability, then certainly when we get through importing Indian information technology workers, high-tech workers, when we finish with that process, then we will have trained all that they need. So the Indian government now in power, which wants to stay in power as a major militaristic nuclear power and is going to consolidate its hold on the government, is following a pattern not too dissimilar from the pattern of Saddam Hussein. Saddam Hussein made a dramatic attempt, in a very short period of time, to acquire the most modern kinds of weapons available, and now India is staking its future politically on being able to say it is a great military power. And we are going to help train them. We are going to call the training process the American Competitiveness Act, that was passed by the Senate today, and they expect it to pass the House of Representatives also. Why not, instead of importing workers for information technology, why not train them here in this country? Why not improve our own school system here in this country so that we are able to first allow young people coming out of our schools to be able to get very good jobs, that are also beneficial for the overall American economy, and also beneficial for any national security items that we are concerned with? Why not do that instead? The common sense mandate for action on education is being ignored. The American people think it makes a lot of sense to have more attention paid to our education system. The American people repeatedly show in the polls, in the focus groups, that they are concerned about education. Why are the leaders of the Republican majority, who are in control of the Congress, why are they ignoring the mandate of the people? Why are they failing to honor the results of the polls? They read the same polls that the Democrats read. Republicans and Democrats both know that education is very high on the agenda of the American people. Why are we ignoring it? Why are we turning away from a great window of opportunity at this point in history? Not only are the American people concerned about education and clearly show this is a popular concern, but we now have the resources, we now have the revenue, to address some of these critical problems in education. Why do we not address the problem of school construction that the President has proposed we address? He proposed a very meager program, $22 billion, but it is not going to come from the Treasury. All of it, in fact, the $22 billion construction program, is a program where the private sector would provide the money and the government would provide tax credits to compensate the private sector for the interest. So it is not a great amount of money that is going to be taken out of the Treasury immediately; it is over a long period of time, paying back the interest as the local education groups, agencies and the States borrow from this pool, where they pay no interest. They get the money with no interest. The interest will be paid through a tax credit vehicle. Very clever, Mr. President. I would like to see more money directly appropriated for education, so the whole question of borrowing by the local school districts and the states will not have to be an obstacle to action. But in this atmosphere, we will take your $22 billion borrowing program. The Republican majority says no; they refuse to consider it. They turned away from this window of opportunity. We could go further and not have to borrow the money because we have a surplus. Yes, Mr. Speaker, I want to talk about another secret that nobody wants to discuss here. They do not want to discuss the CIA's failure to detect the Indian nuclear tests. Also they do not want to discuss the fact that we have a budget surplus, more revenue than expenditures anticipated of between $50 and $60 billion in the coming budget year. No less than $50 billion will be available because it is not needed in the current budget scheme. There will be a surplus, revenue greater than expenditure, of at least $50 billion. Why can we not at this point address the compelling problems of our schools with some of that money? Nobody wants to talk about it here. It is amazing how quiet the Members of my party are about it. The President in his State of the Union address said any surplus should be dedicated, first of all, to Social Security. I agree with the President. He was anticipating a $8 billion surplus at that time. That was what the budget office was telling us, $8 billion. Whether it is $8 billion or more, I think Social Security should get a high priority. But since you have a window of opportunity to do something about the critical problems of education with some of this money, I would like to offer a concrete proposal to both parties, my party and the Republican majority. The budget surplus is a golden opportunity. The common sense mandate for use of this surplus should be one-fourth for Social Security, one- fourth for our Social Security contingency fund. That is what I think the President and other leaders have in mind. Social Security does not need any help for a long time to come. We are talking about 20 to 30 years before the calculations show that Social Security may be in trouble. Well, let us start getting ready for the trouble. Let us set aside a contingency fund, or whatever else they have in mind, to guarantee that Social Security never has a problem. Let us take one-fourth of the surplus for Social Security. Let us take one-fourth of the surplus for a tax cut for families earning less than $30,000. You want a tax cut? Give the tax cut where it is needed most. Families earning less than $30,000 should be given priority. If you are going to give tax cuts to others, start at $30,000 and come on up. I think we would all agree that the American people deserve some type of tax cut. You could even have a tax cut without the surplus, because most of our income taxes come from what you call earned income, the earned income of families that are working families. We have a whole pot of money that is not taxed very much, and that is the unearned income. These are not my terms. ``Earned income,'' ``unearned income'' were invented many years ago. It is not a socialist term or the term of a New York liberal. It is a general economic term. Earned income is what you receive as a result of working for wages, what you get in a paycheck and what you get as a consultant fee. I even think that the millions of dollars that a boxer earned in the ring is earned income. The millions of dollars that the sports figures on the football, baseball or basketball field earn, that is earned income. They sweat for it. I guess it goes back to the Bible and the mandate that we earn our living by the sweat of our brow. That is a certain category of money. Unearned income, and I think the term originally had some kind of undesirable feature, unearned income is what people get through investments and various other machinations that produce money. Not machinations, various other devices that produce money without them working for it on a daily basis, a weekly basis, out there on the ball field, et cetera. So unearned income on investments, primarily the money earned on the stock market is the best example of unearned income, the stock market, bonds, it is well-known where unearned income comes from. If you start looking closely at unearned income, you will find only a tiny portion of unearned income is taxed. Most of it escapes taxes. So if you really want to look for a place to give a tax cut to families earning $50,000 or less, $30,000, then increase the amount of taxes on the unearned income and greatly decrease the amount on the earned income. But I am not here to discuss that tonight. I just want to make the point we could have a tax cut. We could satisfy the top agenda items of both parties. Social Security, a tax cut, one-fourth to Social Security, one-fourth for a tax cut, and the final two-fourths, there are four fourths, you know, the final two-fourths for education initiatives, such as the construction initiative of the President, such as smaller class sizes than that have been proposed by the President, such as the reading initiative proposed by the President, such as an increase for increasing funds for technology in the schools, wiring the schools. School construction is vital. There is a lot of discussion about improving education and the Republicans are locked in on their own approach with vouchers, and other people talk about phonics versus other methods of teaching reading. The Committee on Appropriations passed a bill that called for the whole school approach a couple of years ago, and there are a lot of approaches, initiatives, innovations, and most of them might have merit, but at the heart of providing an education for young people should be the provision of a safe place to sit and study, a safe place for the teacher and student to get together, a safe place for students to look forward to when they leave home in the morning, and certainly in the poorest areas, the school ought to be a great improvement over the home environment of the poorest youngsters. We should not go to school and find we are crowded into rooms unreasonably. We should not have 45, 50 children in one room. We should not have to go to school and find that there are no rooms for some classes, and classes have to be conducted in the hallway or in the portion of the bathroom, the restroom. We should not go to school and find ourselves being put in a situation where one has to eat lunch at 10 o'clock in the morning. There are a large number of schools in New York City where the students have to eat lunch at 10 o'clock in the morning because the lunch room was not built to accommodate the large numbers of children in that school, a school built for 500 has 1,000 pupils. The lunch room can only accommodate a certain number, so they have to go in shifts, and in order to get them all in, the shift process has to start at 10 o'clock in the morning. That is child abuse, to make a child eat lunch at 10 o'clock in the morning. I think that should directly affect the physiology and the health of a child. They had breakfast at home or at school and they have to eat their lunch at 10 o'clock in the morning. I think the children on the other end, if we have to spread that over cycles, so that the last group is eating at 1:30 or 2 o'clock, they are being abused. They are hungry, starving by the time they get to 1:30 or 2 o'clock. We are doing these kinds of things, we are sending children to schools that have asbestos problems, we are sending children to schools that have lead pipe problems, we are sending children to schools that are 100 years old in New York, we are sending children to schools that have leaky roofs, we are sending children to schools in New York and other places that have coal-burning furnaces, coal-burning furnaces, still. Mr. Speaker, if a school has a coal-burning furnace, it is probably a very old school. I brought this subject up with the head of the Environmental Protection Agency here in Washington and she was appalled that there are still coal-burning furnaces in schools. Well, we only have about 285 coal-burning schools in New York, out of the 1,100 about 285 are still burning coal in furnaces, which means that the lungs of the children are directly affected, because if one has ever been in a place that is burning coal, when I first bought my first house it had a coal burning furnace, I had to go down and stoke up the fire, we put in all kinds of filters to keep the thing clean, filters at the furnace level and filters at the level of the register, but the coal dust gets through anyhow. If a child sits in a school all year long during the winter season while the furnace is burning coal, they are going to get coal dust in their lungs. If a child has to spend 6 years in school from the 1st grade to the 6th grade, or the 6th grade to the 12th grade, they are going to get plenty of coal dust in their lungs and they are going to have difficulties with health later on that nobody is going to quite understand. The child does not smoke, but the coal dust is going to be there creating a problem. We have concrete evidence of what is happening right now, because the high asthma rate in New York City is unparalleled to other big cities who have problems I am sure with coal burning schools also. The other pollution in the air now, as it grows greater, the coal- burning furnaces and that kind of pollution has an even greater affect, concentrated at places where children are gathered. So construction, if we do not do anything about a safe place to study, if we do not get rid of dangerous situations, then do not talk about the phonics method versus some other method of teaching reading. Do not think that we are going to solve the problem if we come in with a mandate that there will be no more social promotion if we mandate testing nationally or locally. The problem will not be solved with these kinds of actions, although some of them may be highly desirable. First, we have to make a commitment to have every child in America in a safe place to study, a place conducive to study, and then we have to move to a place which is enhanced with technology, with equipment for a science lab, with books that are not 30, 40 years old. These basic needs are still not being met. Now, in 1996, 1994 to 1996, the Republican majority argued that if we have the government take some initiatives to help education in some meaningful way, then we are going to bankrupt the country or we are going to put our grandchildren and our great grandchildren into debt. They made it appear that any actions by the Department of Education were an immediate threat to the economy of the United States. Mr. Speaker, with a $50 billion surplus, we cannot tell that lie anymore. With a $50 billion surplus, we cannot say that money is the problem. With a $50 billion surplus, the question is, why do we not want all the children of America to have a decent place to study, a decent place to have teachers teach them? Why do we not want all the children of America to have the opportunity to learn? We may talk about increasing the testing, but that is putting the burden on the backs of the students. We may talk about standardized curriculums and more challenging curriculums, but again, that is putting the burden on the students, and those are challenges that students ought to meet. They ought to meet the more challenging curriculum standards and they ought to be able to pass the tests. I am not against national testing forever. Somewhere down the line I would support national testing if we first deal with opportunity to learn standards. If we first say to every State and every local school board, every child should have these opportunities to learn. First, they should have a facility, a school which is safe, which is conducive to study, which has the necessary equipment and books, which has modern technology which really prepares them for the world they are going to be living in in the 21st century; all of these things are doable. It does not require magic. The money is there. All we need is two-fourths: One-fourth for education initiatives such as smaller class sizes, education for technology, et cetera, and another fourth for school construction. This is assuming we are going to have $50 billion or more. Mr. Speaker, if it were only $8 billion, as the President anticipated when he made the State of the Union address, then I would say let us give it all to Social Security, but it is far more than $8 billion, so here is a concrete proposal. The mandate for the surplus is to meet the needs as reflected by the polls and the focus groups, and Americans think Social Security is very important, they are worried about it. We have made them worry even more because we have made statements about the need to change things and privatize Social Security and do things which would erode the credibility of Social Security for the future. Let us address one-fourth of whatever the surplus is to Social Security, one-fourth to a tax cut on the earned income of families earning less than $30,000, start with them and go up; one-fourth for education initiatives such as smaller class sizes and education technology, and one-fourth for school construction. Voters of America, do not let this session of Congress end without some action on education in this direction. There is no reason why we should not have decent schools for all children in America. For us to have the revenue available, to have the resources and refuse to use them is a savage act. It is savage behavior for the responsible leaders who make decisions about how the resources of this country are going to be used for them to turn away from the needs of these students and children in America who are attending coal-burning schools, 100-year-old schools, schools that are not safe, schools that are not conducive to learning, schools that have no decent science labs, et cetera. It is a savage act. Jonathan Kozol wrote a book some time ago called Savage Inequalities. It is a book about the inequalities of the school systems in New York City. Savage Inequalities. In the same city, a public school in one part of the city had all of the modern conveniences, decent facilities, et cetera, et cetera. Not too far away, in the same borough, there were schools and in some other cities around the country the schools actually had to be closed down because when it rained. East Saint Louis was one of the examples he gave. When it rained, they literally had the rain pouring into the schools, a flood of rain pouring into the schools, and these kinds of conditions still exists, not only in rural schools and in inner city schools, but there are some suburban schools that are grossly in need of improvement and repair, and in some cases, they need to build new ones. It would be savage for the American power structure, Members of Congress, the executive branch, the private sector leaders, to allow this to continue at a time when we have the revenue, we have the resources. Instead of looking at the obvious needs for more school construction and more resources for smaller class sizes, the Republican majority is locked into an irrational, illogical, dogmatic policy related to vouchers and privatization. They are dogmatic about it. It is like a superstition that one cannot touch. They refuse to deal with reality. They are swimming against public opinion. They are swimming against the tide of public opinion in their own district. I have often approached my Republican colleagues on the Committee on Education and the Workforce and said, look, you are advocating vouchers as the only solution to the improvement of the American public schools. You want to make the public schools not public anymore; you want to make the people of America not focus their attention on improving their public schools, but you want to use vouchers and take them somewhere else. Why do you not propose that for your district? And I make the challenge here. Every Republican who proposes vouchers, why do you not propose that in your district where you run for office? Why do you not push vouchers there? What I have learned is that in the majority of the districts represented by the members of the Committee on Education and the Workforce, their constituents have said to them, we are not interested in vouchers. We were not interested in vouchers. We have good public schools, or we have schools that need improvement, and we are willing to work to improve our public schools. Some of them confess to me, I have good schools in my district, they say. I do not need vouchers. My answer to that, my response to that, is if you have good schools and you do not need vouchers, then let me have good schools in my district. Let us have good schools everywhere so nobody will need vouchers. Let us take the steps necessary to create opportunities to learn for all children everywhere. Let us improve the public schools and stop the voucher dogma. I think the Republican majority suffers from something similar to what Lysenko pushed in the Soviet Union. Lysenko was a biologist who insisted that the environment is almost totally the determining factor of what happens to living organisms. Lysenko was a geneticist, an agronomist from the Ukraine. He developed a doctrine compounded of Darwinism and the work of Michurin, that heredity can be changed by good husbandry. As director of the Institute of Genetics of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, he declared the accepted Mendelian theory was erroneous, and he ruthlessly silenced any Soviet geneticist who opposed him. He endured on the Soviet science scene and was a major dictator of science theory until Nikita Krushchev came to power in 1965. In the whole Stalinist era, they wrecked the agriculture of the Soviet Union by insisting that Lysenko was right and everybody had to follow Lysenko. The rest of the world's scientists were giving due consideration to heredity as a factor in the way living organisms developed so they could improve the plants and the animal stocks. And agriculture prospered, of course, in this country, because science was free and they followed where science went. But Lysenko said no, and they had scientists who were put in jail for challenging Lysenko. The Republican Party is suffering from Lysenkoism when it comes to the public schools. When it comes to improving schools in America, they will not look to the right or to the left. They insist vouchers and privatization are the only answer. They have forced vouchers down the throats of the citizens of the District of Columbia. People here in Washington, in the District of Columbia, they took a vote. They had a referendum on the question of whether they wanted vouchers or not. They overwhelmingly voted no, they did not want vouchers. They were willing to entertain another experiment to make the public schools more competitive and to get some innovation into the bureaucratic structure. They wanted to challenge the structure by having charter schools, some public schools that would be run by a group of individuals who would make policy for the school and determine how the school is run, in accordance with certain principles and standards that the District of Columbia sets. That is a movement that is in effect across the country in at least 25 States. New York does not have it yet, but charter schools were accepted by the people of Washington as a way to experiment and to encourage improvement of our public schools. Ninety-five percent of the children of America will go to public schools in the next 10 years. No matter what is done, even if you had an implementation of the voucher program on a large scale, you could not do it in the next 10 to 20 years to any great degree, so 90 to 95 percent of our children are going to go to public schools. Let us improve the public schools. My colleague in the Congress who now has retired, Floyd Flake, is an advocate for vouchers all over the country. He will tell us that polls show that large numbers of African American parents favor vouchers. Why do they favor vouchers? Because they are fed up, overwhelmed, they do not think they can improve public schools, and they are the ones who say, I will take anything, I will try anything. Let us lay aside my problem with vouchers and say, okay, what if you decided to implement vouchers tomorrow in Floyd Flake's school district? Congressman Flake is a minister, has a big cathedral, does a very good job of taking care of his parishioners. They have a school. The school already has a long waiting list. If we give him vouchers, if we give students in that area vouchers and say, go to Congressman Flake, go to his school, he cannot take any more. Or suppose we give him the authority to expand outside of his school, all the vouchers you need. You have a system that the parents believe in. Whatever you are doing is working. Go to it. What would happen? Pastor Flake would have to create a bureaucracy. He would have to set up a personnel system. He would have to set up a custodian system. He would have to do all the things that a local education agency does. He would run into the same problems. He would have to recruit large numbers of teachers. He could not personally interview them all. He could not get the same quality that he gets in his church school. There are a number of problems that have to be solved by public policy action, and if we turn the system over to the private sector, to the church, whoever, they are going to have the same problems. What they do now is skim across the top and get the best students, in many cases, but certainly a select number of students. That cannot solve the problem. I have said these things many times here. I hate to go on and on. But I think it would be savage for this Congress to go on doing the outrageous kinds of things we have been doing. We have just passed a bill where we are going to make America competitive by going outside. Instead of developing the brain power here, we want to go outside. It is not just the public schools, but we are attacking our own higher education institutions. We passed the Higher Education Assistance Act 2 weeks ago, and it had no new initiatives in it to deal with the problem that America needs more and more people who are college-educated. Instead, we are playing with affirmative action, trying to destroy diversity in the universities. For some kind of irrational reasons, we are attacking the higher education system to make it smaller instead of larger. In New York City, they are not attacking affirmative action, they do not use the term ``affirmative action,'' but there is a broad-scale attack on the country's oldest public university, City University of New York. It is the oldest public university, and there is a sustained attack to try to downsize and gut that institution. That is what the board of trustees is being forced to do right now. Massive political intervention has taken place, and people on the board of trustees are carrying out orders from above. In the interests of saving money, they say, they want to greatly downsize the City University of New York. How are they going to do it? Set new standards for all the senior colleges. You cannot get in if you need remediation. You can get into Yale, Harvard, and a few other colleges across the country if you need some remediation. Remediation, 80 percent of the schools in the United States have some form of remediation, because by now we know in this world that people do not come packaged perfectly. They do not have an excellent student in science and math, an excellent student in verbal reasoning, an excellent student in languages. Lots of students have some deficiencies, or they cannot excel in all three of those. That is recognized. In this kind of high-tech economy, we do not want to cut off our nose to spite our face. Why get rid of talented people because they have one thing missing? We need the creativity of students, no matter what their forte may be, no matter how strong they are in one area versus another, if they are creative. What makes the American economy go, what makes the high-tech industry go, is creativity. Bill Gates and his fellow entrepreneurs were not people who would pass all the tests for assessment as they went into college. They were not people who necessarily would score highest on the highest tests. They were people who had imagination, and the Bill Gates of today is not using his math and science skills to build one of the world's largest businesses, or probably the largest, most profitable business in the world. He is now not using algebra, trigonometry, calculus, differential equations. That has nothing to do with his ability to maneuver this system, to organize large numbers of people and focus them on various tasks, that has now led to him being accused of monopolizing and threatening certain segments of the economy. These are creative people from many walks of life. That is what makes America go. We do not score as high across the world on a lot of these tests that are given. I think we should not take that lightly. Our students should score higher on math and science, and they should compete with other students throughout the rest of the world, but what they cannot measure is creativity, creativity. Our students are probably the most creative in the world. That is how our economy, with its flexibility, is able to keep growing when other economies are having great difficulty. So City College, City University of New York, the trustees are also going to be guilty of savage behavior. It will be a savage policy to shut out large numbers of students by saying that they cannot enter any one of the senior colleges if they need remediation. They have gone further to say the 2-year colleges, you can only have remediation for a little while, or the proposal is being pushed by the mayor that says the colleges should not have remediation programs at all. There should be institutes that provide remediation. They should be summer institutes. You have a young person who comes out of high school who may be creative, have talent, which is what the City University has shown. Eighty percent of the students do graduate. A large number have deficiencies when they come in as freshmen, but the new atmosphere of the college campus is a new beginning for the student. Their latent talents, creativity, energy, is changed by being there on a college campus. If you say to the student when he comes out of high school, you cannot get into college, you cannot set foot on the campus until you spend the summer in an institute to make certain that you pass the assessment tests in math, writing, languages, whatever, reading, you will turn off large numbers. The California policy of anti-affirmative action, anti-diversity, has cut away large numbers of minority students, Hispanic and African American students. City University will chop off the head of opportunity for even more with this remediation policy. I spoke to the Board of Trustees of City University on April 20. I am a Congressman. I have been on the Committee on Education and the Work Force for 16 years. I thought they might give me a little more than 3 minutes, especially since I chided them for not bothering to come to Washington all during the time when we were considering the Higher Education Assistance Act. In previous years, and we consider the Higher Education Assistance Act every 5 years, in the previous 2 times we have reauthorized the Act, we have had representatives from the City University of New York, the State University of New York. New York was very much absent this time in the consideration of the most important piece of higher education legislation. They were not there. I chided them for not coming to us, but here I was in front of them. I hoped they would give me more than 3 minutes, but they did not. I think the chairman did give me an extra minute, so I had 4 minutes to speak. The bureaucratic secretary sat there and nearly had a heart attack because the chairman was allowing the Congressman who sits on the Education Committee in Washington to speak for 1 more minute. Just one more piece of ridiculous behavior. At any rate, I am going to read some portions of the statement, because I want to sum up tonight my concern that the commonsense mandate for action on education is being ignored here in Washington, education at every level. We are ignoring education at the elementary and secondary level. We are not providing the kind of national assistance. This garbage about local control is garbage. With local control, we were almost unprepared to fight World War II. Local control meant no programs for health for the masses of the population. We had unhealthy, emaciated bodies reporting to the draft. Local control is probably some of the worst government in the country at the local level. I hear the majority keep glorifying local control, State control. Some of the greatest amount of corruption, ineptness, and mismanagement is at the local level in our government and at the State level. So there is no magic here. Local control of education has led us to where we are now. We are in trouble. The Federal Government is only responsible for about 8 percent, between 7 and 8 percent of the budget for education in this country. With all the money spent on education, the Federal Government is responsible for only 7 or 8 percent. Most of that goes to higher education so a very tiny amount of the Federal budget goes to elementary and secondary education. We have very little voice. They keep saying that mandates from the Federal Government do this. It really is a very small amount of policy interference that takes place as a result of requiring local governments to meet certain conditions in order to receive Federal money. This is all garbage. If we gave the schools of America, the local education agencies in the States 25 percent of the funding instead of 8 percent, we could only have 25 percent of the controls still. I mean, we could increase the amount of resources from the Federal Government from 8 to 25 percent and still the local governments and the States would have 75 percent control, 75 percent of the responsibility for funding, 75 percent of the control. We ought to move toward the goal of 25 percent Federal funding for our education system. Education is the primary ingredient and component of national security. The greatness of the Nation, the economy of the Nation, it all is dependent on an educated populace. It all falls back on this American competitiveness. To have our competitiveness now linked to foreign professionals coming in to take care of our needs is ridiculous. We are going in just the wrong direction. We are making some stupid decisions and certainly making some savage decisions. In the case of City University, instead of exploring the vulnerabilities of City University, the board of trustees and all the leaders of the city should be approaching the weaknesses creatively and try to transform the shortcomings of City University into opportunities. All over the world, the education of masses of youth emerging from educationally-deprived backgrounds is a vital challenge to the process of building a new global society with abundant supplies of indigenous leadership. Mr. Speaker, I will submit my entire statement of testimony to the board of trustees of the City University of New York on April 30, 1998. I want the entire statement to be included in the Record so that those who did not have a chance to hear it will be able to read it. I want to conclude by saying that City University is the oldest public university in the country. The bulk of the students, great majority of the students, now more than ever, 80 to 90 percent come out of the public schools of New York City. So the public schools of New York City, for all that they have had to go through all these many years, have produced products that were able to go through the higher education process and emerge. There are numerous Nobel Prize winners that have come out of City University. Some people say, well, that was a long time ago. No. There are people who graduated very recently who also are Nobel Prize winners. Nobel Prizes for medicine, Nobel Prizes for physics, Nobel Prizes for economics, Nobel Prizes for a whole range of items that have come out of City University. Their graduates are teaching and have higher positions in universities all across the country. They have been sort of missionaries to the higher education community throughout the whole country. Why now are leaders without vision attempting to wipe out the effective City University? Two hundred thousand students go to City University on a regular basis and more than 100,000 go in the evening. It is a massive educational undertaking. It would be savage, stupid and savage to destroy that institution. It would be stupid and savage for the Congress of the United States to ignore education this year, not to fund a construction initiative, not to fund an initiative which would bring down class sizes, not to fund an initiative which would meet the information technology needs of this country with students in this country, with workers that come from the families in this country. Why go outside to India or any other place to bring in information technology workers and say that they are necessary to save America? Why define American competitiveness by the use of foreign brainpower? Why not develop our own brainpower? Why continue down this absurd road of Lysenkoism, of superstition, of dogma which says that only vouchers and only privatization is important and ignore the fact that the President has put before us a sensible agenda, $22 billion program for school construction, a program to lower class sizes, a program to increase reading readiness, a program to improve schools by increasing the amount of funds available for technology in the schools? All of this is relevant, and it all relates to where we are in the world today. Our national security and our economy is directly dependent on our education system. The American people know this. Common sense tells them this. That is why education is a high priority. We should not let this session end without responding to the common sense mandate for action on education. Mr. Speaker, I include for the Record the testimony to which I referred: Testimony to be Presented to the Board of Trustees of the City University of New York by Congressman Major Owens, April 20, 1998 Instead of exploiting the vulnerabilities of CUNY, we should approach the weaknesses creatively and we must transform shortcomings into opportunities. All over the world the education of masses of youth emerging from educationally deprived backgrounds is a vital challenge to the process of building a new global society with abundant supplies of indigenous leadership. If we meet this challenge of educating those who arrive in our college classrooms with inadequate preparation here in New York, in CUNY; if we can take freshmen from impoverished backgrounds with enormous skills deficits but who have normal brains and great potential; if we can take this kind of raw material and create productive and independent citizens able to take care of themselves and also serve as leaders; if we can seize the situation which presently confronts us; then we will have a system that produces a priceless global product. Using New York's great and enormously diverse population we will have developed a blueprint, a model for higher education which would be applicable anywhere in the world. The world market for such a service is almost unlimited; it would be a product of the highest value. What is happening here in New York at CUNY is a tragedy. At a pivotal point in the life of this city, as we approach the dawn of the 21st century, there are confused but powerful forces in this city which are turning a time for triumph into a time for tears. President Clinton has rightfully referred to America as the indispensable nation. It is not exaggerating to state that in this indispensable nation, New York is the indispensable City. In order for this City to maintain its rightful place and fully realize its destiny an open, thriving, creative CUNY is an indispensable institution. CUNY is the jewel in the crown of our unique urban civilization. This is the moment at which we must rally our better instincts, our common sense; we must rally our cultivated logic and receptivity to the evidence provided by well-known studies. Such studies show that the record of CUNY is a laudable one. Consider the fact that the cost to educate a single student at Harvard is about $30,000 per year; the cost at taxpayer supported West Point is more than $120,000 per year. Despite its shoestring budgets and repeated fiscal harassments, CUNY has endured over many years, CUNY still stands in the ranks of the greatest in its production of outstanding scholars, scientists and international prize winners. Oh what a tragedy indeed it would be if the enterprising citizens of New York would stand idly by and allow the destruction of this great monument to the genius of ordinary people. As silent intimidated sheep we can not allow the mutilation of this oldest and most magnificent system for the promotion of maximum educational opportunity for the greatest number. What a tragedy it would be if those with blurred visions and tiny spirits are allowed to oppress this greatest vehicle for insuring progress and economic justice in our city. Open enrollment is not our enemy. Remediation is not a terrorist tactic. If education is the way out of welfare then why are powerful forces rushing to close the doors of educational opportunity. The trumpet has sounded for leadership from within CUNY. Board of trustees; faculty senates; presidents, and full-time and adjunct faculties; student governments; student bodies; all together you comprise an aggregate more than 215,000 strong. You collectively represent the best educated and most aspiring among us. You have the capacity to utilize an Athenian style democracy not driven by the uninformed and the philistines. CUNY must refined its own mission; CUNY must confront its pockets of internal corruption; CUNY must arouse itself from snugness and complacency; CUNY must accept the continuing challenge that the founders envisioned. Following the principle that education adds value to each individual, we must seek ways to provide more and better education for all of our citizens. As our society grows more complex higher education becomes not a luxury but an obvious necessity. We should not shrink from the obligation to educate and add value to students at the lowest possible cost. Education at CUNY is still a bargain for our taxpayers; it is far cheaper than incarceration and still cheaper than welfare dependency. New York City alone will need thousands of new teachers over the next 10 years. The nation will need more than a million new Information Technology workers over this same decade. Let's educate and claim our rightful share of these new positions. CUNY enrollments should not be restricted. CUNY enrollments must be expanded. In closing let me summarize my recommendations as follows. 1. To address the problem of excessive student remediation time and to make reasonable adjustments in admissions procedures, the campus presidents and faculty senates as well as other relevant higher education policy-making entities must be given no less than 6 months to prepare and present a comprehensive plan to the CUNY Board of Trustees. 2. To allow CUNY to appropriately address the problems of remediation and the maintenance of standards of excellence as well as the problems of gross infrastructure inadequacies and student-teacher ratios. The Board of Trustees must unite with the presidents; faculties and students, and the elected officials to present a full assessment of CUNY's needs as compared to similar public institutions in other states. This assessment shall serve as a blueprint for an immediate infusion of federal, state and city capital and operating funds to achieve the overhaul necessary for the building of a greater CUNY. 3. The CUNY Board of Trustees shall assume the responsibility for the issuance of an annual CUNY Report to the Citizens of New York detailing its progress on overcoming weaknesses and its short-term and long-term plans for the future. Open public hearing fully covered by the CUNY Cable Television Channel 75 must be held following the issuance of this annual report. 4. That the CUNY Board of Trustees immediately order that a minimum of two regularly scheduled hours of time be set aside each week on the CUNY Channel 75 for the presentation of a cross-section of viewpoints on the present CUNY restructuring discussions and on CUNY policies in general. 5. That the CUNY Board of Trustees also support the following two initiatives presented in attachments to this statement. A. An amendment to the Higher Education Assistance Act which proposes the establishment of partnerships between higher education institutions and community based organizations to sponsor store front computer and telecommunications training centers. B. A proposal for greater CUNY involvement in promoting the immediate and long-term fiscal stability and prosperity of New York City. CUNY must not allow itself to be invaded and oppressed by barbarians. Outsiders of any kind should not be allowed to stampede CUNY into destructive restructuring. CUNY must be held accountable by citizens and public officials but CUNY should never be invaded; it should never be conquered and it should never be occupied by political and philistine forces. At CUNY we need scholarly expertise combined with the wisdom of the best and most experienced leadership in this city to correct, redesign, and refine that which exists already. At CUNY we need giant minds and extraordinary spirits to usher and lift a good university to a new level of greatness in the 21st century. New York is the nation's indispensable city. In this indispensable city, the institution that is most clearly indispensable for a prosperous future is CUNY. Fiscal Future Challenges for New York City Institutions for Colleges and Universities Economic Development and Revenue. Each institution should have a tourism promotion program to facilitate bringing in visitors for conferences, conventions, seminars, etc. Each should forge linkages with ``sister colleges'' throughout the Nation and the world. Each institution should have one or several in-depth cultural and language institutes and/or collections related to a nationality, ethnic, or religious group. It should declare itself a ``world center'' for that group. Each institution should be related to the development of some museum or annual exhibition or festival with linkages to some recurring tourism events. Each institution should organize and support an enhanced sports and game program in recognition of the rapidly expanding dollar value of all aspects of the sports and game industries. Each institution should develop an organized program for promoting on-campus student entrepreneurs and industries located in the vicinity of the campus which employ students. Industries utilizing faculty knowledge and expertise should share profits with the colleges. Each institution should have an organized and highly visible volunteer corps available to assist with city emergencies and special projects showing the taxpayers that students are an integral part of the life of the city while enhancing the compassion image of the city.

Mr. OWENS

Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, I rise in celebration of the renaming of the Glenmore School in Brooklyn, New York to the ``Dr. Betty Shabazz Elementary and Preparatory School.'' Dr. Betty Shabazz stands as a model of what the students of Glenmore School must strive to become--an individual with strength, resilience and perseverance in overcoming life's greatest challenges. Dr. Betty Shabazz is a great ``POINT-OF- LIGHT'' whose legacy will live on forever and will positively influence many more generations to come. On Monday, June 23, 1997, a great presence in the lives of countless citizens of the world departed this earth. Dr. Betty Shabazz was not just an inspiration to the African-American community, an advocate of equality for women and a proponent of children's rights. She was an inspiration to the human community; she was an advocate of equality for all people and she was an incarnation of every ideal upon which this Nation was founded. Born Betty Sanders in Detroit, Michigan on May 28, 1936, Dr. Shabazz married activist and civil rights leader El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz (Malcolm X) in New York in 1958. On February 21, 1965, she witnessed the assassination of her husband after the bombing of their home just three weeks earlier. Despite this tragedy, she exhibited determination as a single mother, raising and educating her six daughters: Attallah, Qubilah, Ilyasah, Gamilah, and twins Malikah and Malaak. When the harsh winds of hatred swept across our country and prematurely ended the life of Malcolm X, they could not overcome the strength of his wife. Dr. Betty Shabazz continued the struggle after his death, keeping his quest for justice alive. She found time to become a certified nurse, and later earned Bachelor's and Master's degrees, and a Doctorate in Education Administration from the University of Massachusetts. Admirably and courageously, she took the movement into academia, where she touched the lives of hundreds of students. Dr. Shabazz served Medgar Evers College in Brooklyn as Director of Public Relations and Director of Institutional Advancement with ability, passion, and caring, qualities reflected in everything she did in life. As a single mother, Dr. Shabazz's challenges as a parent were not unique. However, they were heightened by the fact that she was the single mother of Malcolm X's children. She reared her six daughters alone, constantly preparing them for a life in the forefront of the African-American community, one that is a requirement for their lineage. In this way, Betty Shabazz has served as a model of motherhood and a reflection of the family values that every American family aims to emulate. The greatness of Dr. Betty Shabazz is apparent. Despite the firebombing of her home in 1965 and the brutal murder of her husband, she refused to turn what must have been inconsolable anger into motivation. She turned inward, furthering her education and strengthening her resolve as she embarked upon her mission to raise six children alone and make significant contributions to the community at the same time. A warrior in her own right, Dr. Shabazz has made her mark on the cause to uplift oppressed people around the globe, and especially within the African-American community. Her message will be forever with us, an inspiration to all who choose a life of service to their fellow man. Dr. Betty Shabazz turned tragedy into triumph. She exemplified what we all can do if we are willing to make sacrifices. During this celebration, let us reflect upon the lessons taught to us by Dr. Betty Shabazz. Her life has been a testament to the virtues of family, community, and activism, and it is fitting for the Glenmore School to be renamed the ``Dr. Betty Shabazz Elementary and Preparatory School'' in her honor. Dr. Betty Shabazz is a great ``POINT-OF-LIGHT'' for all to admire.

Mr. OWENS

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

Mr. OWENS. Mr. Chairman, I rise in favor of the amendment, and I want to thank my colleague from Vermont (Mr. Bernard Sanders) for leading this annual dialogue with the American voters. Unless we raised these questions, one would never know that the CIA budget is about $30 billion, and there are no questions raised outside of the very closed circle of the people on the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. The Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence represents one of those command and control operations of the type which brought down the Soviet Union. There is a close circle of people who have a vested interest in keeping something going. They have no outside criticism. Nobody even knows what they are doing. Other intelligence communities have opened up, even the Soviet Union has opened up information about its intelligence operations, but we still have a secret operation which perpetuates itself. I want to thank the gentleman from Vermont for offering the American people 130 schools. We can build a state-of-the-art school for $10 million. $1.3 billion would give us 130 schools. Why not take the $1.3 billion out of the budget of this organization, which clearly has far more money than it needs at this time? The budget is about the same level it was at the time of the evil empire of the Soviet Union. They clearly do not know what to do with all the money because, and nobody ever explains this to us from the committee, they had a petty cash problem. They lost $2 billion in their bookkeeping. Found they had $2 billion more than they knew they had a few years ago. A couple of years ago. Actually, it was $4 billion. After the first announcements were made, nobody noticed that later on they came and said, well, actually we found $4 billion. Four billion dollars, and nobody on the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence has ever bothered to explain that to us or to the American voters. What happened to $4 billion? How can you lose $4 billion? That is a lot of schools. So we have an agency that probably is very much needed. Nobody says we want to get rid of it. All we are talking is a 5 percent cut, a 5 percent cut to say discipline yourself, take care of your petty cash better and build 130 schools. We can break this circle of closed decision-making, the command and control operation, that whole spirit of cloak-and-dagger operation where they will not let us see the whole budget. If a Member of Congress goes to look at this budget, he is duty bound never to speak about it again. What kind of cloak-and-dagger operation is that, that we need at this time in the life of the globe? There are some people who know the secrets of the CIA because they get it from the members of the CIA. All the people that Aldridge Ames, remember Aldridge Ames? They do not talk about him very much, but he was a top-ranking CIA person in charge of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, and he turned out to be a guy who was a hustler. For a few dollars, a few million dollars, he was telling the enemy everything they needed to know. We cannot find out here, but Aldridge Ames was telling them. Now they have a mentally unstable ex-policeman. An ex-policeman who his colleagues, in the former police department where he came from, said this guy was a nut. How did he ever get in the CIA? He is divulging our code secrets. He has divulged. He is now arrested, and there is a lot being said about him and a lot not being said about him. So we do not know what damage he has done. But he has divulged the codes and the whole cryptology and a whole bunch of very secret things the enemy knows, because the CIA is so incompetent it allows these kinds of things to get out. So we are dealing with wasteful spending and a closed circle of Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence members who are determined to perpetuate wasteful spending. It is part of their religion. It is a dogma. They go on and on and not looking closely at what they are spending the money for. There is big spending and there is wasteful spending. Democrats often get accused of being big spenders. Big spenders are the people who want to keep the Social Security system going. Big spenders are the people who want to spend money for Medicare, Medicaid, Title I. Big spenders are people who want to use the American resources for the greatest number of people. Blind spenders, wasteful spenders, are the kind of people on the Republican majority that say we should spend $10 billion for an investigation that is going nowhere in the case of campaign finance reform. They do not want to talk about campaign finance reform, they just want to dig up dirt, play around and release tapes. Ten billion dollars. That is one whole school that will be taken away as a result of wasteful spending for an investigation. The CIA and its continued big budget represents the same kind of wasteful spending. Republican wasteful spending is one thing that the voters need to take a hard look at. Do not listen to people who talk about big spending. If we ask them what they are spending the money for, we will find out whether it is big spending, blind spending, or wasteful spending. We are, Democrats as well as Republicans, very much conscious of the label of being big spenders. A lot of Democrats who are labeled as big spenders, if they do not want to stay with the label, here is an opportunity for my fellow colleagues, Democrats and Republicans. Here is an opportunity to send a message to our constituents. We can send a message to the voters that we will not be a wasteful spender. We will not go on and perpetuate the budget of the CIA, the secret budget that nobody can really know. We will not go on. We will at least cut it 5 percent and give America 130 schools. One hundred thirty schools to America.

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

Mr. OWENS. Mr. Chairman, I object.

Mr. OWENS. Mr. Chairman, I object.

Mr. OWENS. Would the gentleman take time to tell us about the $4 billion in petty cash funds that were lost? Could the gentleman tell us about the unstable ex-policeman who has now been arrested? Can the gentleman expound on these subjects?

Mr. OWENS. Well, the gentleman should not waste his on rhetoric. Give us some information.

Mr. OWENS

Mr. OWENS. Mr. Chairman, I mourn for the Chinese who were denied the right to own property. I mourn for the Japanese who were put in concentration camps. But I also mourn much more for those descendants of African slaves who were descendants of people who were not allowed to own property for 232 years. They were not even recognized in marriage. They could not get married. Laws were made to prohibit the teaching of reading to African Americans. All those injustices do not matter, I suppose. If we start with a set of wrong assumptions, we can make a profound argument about simple- minded matters. But let us lay this aside for a moment and not discuss the need for affirmative action as a matter of justice that is long overdue. Let us just talk about how do we deal with the present situation and some of the things the previous speaker said. Why do we not let all high school graduates who qualify to go to college go to college? Why do we not open up the slots. Why do we not have open admission and have the Federal Government have a program where we expand the Pell grants and we expand all the Federal aid to the point where open admission would mean that every student graduating from high school who can reach a threshold can go on to college. Because the facts are that those students who have the lower SAT scores in the minority community, once they go to college, the results, the studies that are done about results in the medical schools and results in the law schools, they get the same results. They come out at the same level as everybody else. If we want an America which is meeting its needs for a large number of educated professional people, and we are missing the boat here, we have no vision as to what is coming. We have a great shortage of teachers right now. We do not seem to recognize what that means. We have a great shortage of information technology workers. Practically every profession is facing the shortage just to meet our domestic needs. Yet we are the indispensable nation that offers all kinds of assistance to the rest of the world, and our leadership in the world will have a lot to do with our prosperity; and we do not have the educated people in the hopper, in the pipeline, to do that. This amendment is going backwards. It is all wrong.

Mr. OWENS

Mr. OWENS. Of their own foreign policy?

Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the gentlewoman from Georgia for sharing this special order. It brings a whole lot of light to a situation that is still very clouded in a lot of minds. Certainly, as a person who does not serve on the Committee on International Affairs and who is not familiar with the details, I found some of her remarks that she made so far very enlightening. I am very concerned and would like for my colleague to clarify in a few minutes the situation with respect to the fact that when this conflict broke out, there were a lot of people who absolved themselves by saying, this is an internal matter in Rwanda. It is a matter of them establishing law and order. It is their business. Or they would say, it is a civil war between two groups. It is up to them. The sovereign state of Rwanda should be left to solve its own problems, people would say. But my colleague, in her opening remarks, indicated, and I read a few articles in the past few days, indicated there was involvement already by outside powers to a great extent. First of all, there was involvement by the French on an ongoing basis; and I would like to know just what their role was. There was involvement by the Belgians, as they were the largest part of the peacekeeping force. And the United Nations was there officially to carry out a certain purpose. This was not just a matter of letting law and order take its course inside the sovereign state of Rwanda. We already had involvement there, whereas, in the final analysis, yes, the people who went out and took the machetes and hacked the people to death or stabbed them to death or shot them to death, God will hold them guilty for that. They are the primary perpetrators of the murder and the genocide. But let us take a look at what the involvement was, because I am concerned about the judgment that is always passed down on Africa. My colleagues know, ``What happened in the Congo was all the Congolese fault. It is the fault of black people not being able to govern themselves,'' et cetera. And yet we know from history that what happened in the Congo was very much shaped by the interference of outside powers, that Mobutu was maintained by the Central Intelligence Agency of the United States; that Lamumba was not murdered by somebody who was an employee of the Central Intelligence Agency; probably he was murdered probably by an agent of Moey Shumbi. After somebody in Washington made a comment that they did not care about what happened to Lamumba, they made it clear they wanted Lamumba out of the way. So in the history of these conflicts, repeatedly, even in Somalia, where it is said the Cold War powers were out of it, they did not care what happened in Somalia and there was no interest the United States had, particularly; it turns out Italy and some oil companies based in Italy had some great interest there and some oil companies in this country had some great interests too. So I think it is important, going back to Rwanda, that we get clear that there was involvement already by powers outside of Rwanda. If my colleague does not mind recapitulating some of the things she alluded to.

Mr. OWENS. If the gentlewoman would continue to yield for just a minute, the French, I admired their politics domestically, the French people do not let their government push them around right now. They are not allowing themselves to be put in a situation where large numbers of unemployed people are just left out there to suffer. They have got a lot of involvement. And the Government of France is certainly responsive to its people. How could the French do something dirty or something oppressive in Africa? Were the French in Rwanda responsible for any of this?

Mr. OWENS. The French continued to arm the Hutus after the genocide started?

Mr. OWENS. Did we really look the other way? If the French were continuing to arm the Hutus, did they not choose sides and consider that they wanted to be on the side of the victim and they really wanted the Hutus to succeed? I am not saying the French Government, knowingly, from Paris, but certainly the representatives of the French Government in Rwanda. And the Belgians, I think they withdrew in order to make it easier for the Hutus to slaughter the people they wanted to slaughter. So they were all choosing the Hutus as the winners, obviously.

Mr. OWENS. If the gentlewoman would yield further, we did not just get involved in Rwanda. We were already involved. The United Nations was already there. We did not have to go get involved; we were there already.

Mr. OWENS. I would just like to say that I agree with 99 percent of what you are saying. But the thrust of us being the policeman to the world, I do not think we want to make it that directly.

Mr. OWENS. The power of the United States should be used in concert with other forces, primarily in concert with the United Nations. We should try to strengthen and create the United Nations and create the world order where we do not have to always be the power that serves the function of policeman. We should look at public policy. Right now we have a United Nations arrears that this Nation owes that it is not paying. For the country that has the largest responsibility with the United Nations not to pay weakens the United Nations a great deal, and we do not create that world order which would send a message to people out there that they should not get involved in this kind of activity. The leaders of Rwanda probably thought they could under the cloak of Rwandan sovereignty get away with it and they probably would have gotten away with it if there had not been a guerilla war force that came in and took over. They may be sitting there right now and justifying the genocide just as Saddam Hussein is sitting there justifying himself in Iraq.

Mr. OWENS

Mr. OWENS. Mr. Chairman in view of the fact that this amendment was debated some time ago, I ask unanimous consent to speak for 5 minutes to explain the amendment before the vote takes place.