Major Owens

Mr. OWENS

Mr. OWENS. Mr. Chairman, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Michigan [Mr. Conyers]. (Mr. CONYERS asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. OWENS. Mr. Chairman, I yield such time as she may consume to the gentlewoman from Texas [Ms. Jackson-Lee]. (Ms. JACKSON-LEE asked and was given permission to revise and extend her remarks.)

Mr. OWENS. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from Georgia [Ms. McKinney].

Mr. OWENS. Mr. Chairman, do I understand correctly that this side has the right to close?

Mr. OWENS. Mr. Chairman, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from California [Mr. Dixon]. (Mr. DIXON asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. OWENS. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from Florida [Mrs. Meek], a member of the Committee on the Budget.

Mr. OWENS. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from California [Mr. Filner].

Mr. OWENS. Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. OWENS. Mr. Chairman, to close debate, I yield the balance of the time to the gentleman from California [Mr. Dellums].

Mr. OWENS. Mr. Chairman, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Fattah]. (Mr. FATTAH asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. OWENS. Mr. Chairman, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Oregon [Mr. DeFazio]. (Mr. DeFAZIO asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. OWENS

Mr. OWENS. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Maryland [Mr. Mfume].

Mr. OWENS. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Stokes]. (Mr. STOKES asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. OWENS. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Vermont [Mr. Sanders], the chairman of the Progressive Caucus.

Mr. OWENS. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from Michigan [Miss Collins]. (Miss COLLINS of Michigan asked and was given permission to revise and extend her remarks.)

Mr. OWENS. Mr. Chairman, I yield 30 seconds to the gentleman from Illinois [Mr. Yates] to finish his thoughts. (Mr. YATES asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. OWENS. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Foglietta], chairman of the Urban Caucus.

Mr. OWENS. I yield to the gentleman from Illinois.

Mr. OWENS. Mr. Chairman, I want to thank the chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus [CBC], Mr. Payne, for his steadfast support of the development of this caring majority budget. I also want to thank the chairman of the House Progressive Caucus, Mr. Sanders, for the steady stream of ideas and positions that have flowed from the Progressive Caucus since January. I also would like to thank all of the members of the CBC and their staff for Particularly, I would like to thank members of my staff: Paul Seltman, Braden Goetz, and Jacqui Ellis, for the herculean effort they put forth to produce this budget. This caring majority budget of the Congressional Black Caucus and the House Progressive Caucus meets the mandate that we produce a balanced budget. But this budget does not oppress the poor and the elderly in order to favor the rich and the privileged. This budget is balanced by eliminating corporate welfare and closing corporate tax loopholes. This caring majority budget is a budget for the benefit of all Americans. Why is the Republican majority cutting Medicaid and Medicare to give a tax break to the rich and the privileged? Why are American taxpayers angry about the gross mismanagement of their Government? Why are American individual and family taxpayers being forced to shoulder 44 percent of the current tax burden while corporations are asked to cover no more than 11 percent of the tax burden? Since 1943, why has the corporate share of the tax burden dropped from a high of almost 40 percent to the present 11 percent? Why is the national deficit careening out of control? The deficit is not out of control because we are spending too much on vital safety net programs. The deficit is out of control because the tax policies of the past few decades have dumped more and more of the tax burden on families through the personal income tax while those same tax policies have succumbed to massive pandering to the corporate sector. There is no fairness, no justice, and no balance in our present tax scheme. The unique feature of this caring majority budget of the Congressional Black Caucus and the House Progressive Caucus is that it is a budget balanced by closing abusive tax loopholes and cutting corporate welfare. We offer a tax cut for all personal income taxpayers in order to begin the progress of restoring tax justice. We propose to end the personal income tax as we know it. At the same time, we move to systematically begin decreasing the taxes on individuals and families, we must insist that the irresponsible corporate sector pay its fair share of the Nation's budget. This mandate for greater balance in the revenue area is the policy key to a balanced budget without reckless budget slashing. More balanced revenue collection policies can produce more balanced budgets. And balanced is exactly what our plan is, in every sense of the word. Our plan has nearly a 1 to 1 ratio of spending cuts to revenue increases, while the Republican plan relies solely on spending cuts that hit the working poor and middle class the hardest. Our plan includes $500 billion in corporate welfare cuts, while the Republican plan includes a mere $18 billion. I must also point out that the Republicans eliminate extended unemployment benefits. While that would save $1.2 billion in 1996, so much more could be saved by instead doing what we have done in the caring majority budget: invest in the creation of jobs and thereby save the Federal Government money in the form of transfer payments, such as unemployment insurance and AFDC. In fact, by putting 13,000 more people to work, the Republicans could save that same $1.2 billion. Our budget puts nearly 1 million more people to work by the year 2002, saving the Government $110 billion. In conclusion, I think it is pretty clear where the priorities of the caring majority are, as opposed to the priorities of the Republican Party. We do not protect the rich at the expense of the poor, or the powerful at the expense of the vulnerable. Our balanced budget is truly balanced in that it: provides a tax cut for hard-working Americans; invests more than 27 billion new dollars in education and job training, increasing that portion of the budget by 25 percent; creates at least 1 million jobs; completely protects Medicaid and Medicare at their current levels; completely protects Social Security, with no extensions of the age for eligibility or COLA cuts; and provides a more sane defense budget which offers a peace dividend to the taxpayers who have so diligently shouldered the burden of massive modern military costs. The Republican budget is a budget for the rich and the privileged. It is a budget that is mean and extreme. It is a budget that abandons large segments of America. This caring majority budget of the CBC and the Progressive Caucus is a budget for all Americans.

Mr. OWENS

Mr. OWENS. Mr. Chairman, if the gentleman will yield, our budget is balanced----

Mr. OWENS. Mr. Chairman, the caring majority budget of the congressional black caucus and the House progressive caucus is concerned about the jobs necessary to keep our economy a robust economy. Our priorities are clear: education, job training and job creation. And in the budget that we have prepared, which is a balanced budget, we provide for jobs, education and job training. The budget boldly sets forth investments in the activities which will keep our nation prosperous at home and competitive in the global arena. And we do this by providing, first of all, a tax cut for hard-working Americans. Our tax cut does go to all families. It does not favor the rich and the privileged. We invest more than $27 billion also over a 7-year period in education and job training by increasing function 500 by 25 percent. We protect major job creating functions. Other functions such as transportation, public works, commerce and health care are protected despite the pressure to make huge cuts. We ensure that current services are continued for both Medicaid and Medicare. Medicaid and Medicare are fully maintained. We supported the President's position that Medicare and Medicaid should not be touched until we have a comprehensive health reform program. We oppose all of the attempts to erode Social Security, including the extensions which will continue the COLA and have no cuts in the COLA. We advocate a more sane defense budget, a defense budget which offers a peace dividend to the taxpayers. These taxpayers have diligently supported the burden of massive modern military costs for years and years. Now we have no more Evil Empire. The Soviet Union is gone. Why do we have to continue to shoulder a massive military burden? So our biggest cut is in the area of defense. Our biggest cut is where the money is. We maintain that although defense industries do create jobs, study after study has shown that you can create two jobs for every defense job that is created. With the dollars you spend, you can create two nondefense jobs. So if you wanted to create jobs, you can create many more by spending them in other places, including, by the way, health care. Health care provides an enormous amount of jobs although the business of health care is not to provide jobs; it is to take care of people, but health care is a labor intensive industry and it does provide jobs. In order for us to accomplish all of this and still have a balanced budget and have a balanced budget with minimum pain on families and individuals, we have focused on the closing of corporate tax loopholes. We have attempted to end the lopsided tax burden which has been forced upon wage earners via the personal income tax. Corporations used to shoulder as much as 39 percent of the responsibility for Federal revenue. Now the corporations only shoulder a mere 11.2 percent of the burden, and we are saying that we would like in this budget we propose to increase it to a modest 15.9 percent of the total tax burden. By the way, individuals shoulder 44 percent of the total tax burden. We would like to change that and in the process of changing that, you will generate. That is the policy key to a balanced budget. If you must have a balanced budget, and we do not think you need to balance the budget by the year 2002, but if you wanted to move toward balanced budgets, then the way to do it is to correct the imbalance. I have a chart here which shows that in 1943, 39.8 percent of the revenue burden was carried by corporate income taxes. In 1982, that dropped all the way down to 8 percent, from 39.8 percent all the way down to 8 percent in 1982. During the Reagan years, from 1982 all the way to the end of his Presidency, it hovered around 8 and 9 percent of the total tax burden. It did not begin to back up until later on. If Members want to balance the budget, let us let the American people in on the great secret. They as individuals, the American people as individuals and as families, are bearing a greater and greater percentage of the tax burden, while corporations have been allowed to get off with more and more. Therefore, we are closing tax loopholes. Who is there who would not want to stop multinational corporations from taking advantage of our tax system? We want to end the multinational corporation swindle, and we want to close other loopholes. We can balance the budget without cutting Medicare, Medicaid, and without inflicting undue pain on numerous Americans.

Mr. OWENS

Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, I would like to associate myself with the remarks of all of the previous speakers who have covered the subject very well, and they, like myself, are shocked, outraged and I think all the American people should be shocked and outraged by the proposal in the Republican majority's budget for the liquidation, the elimination of the Department of Education, the eradication, total, of the Department of Education. In 1995, in a year when we are facing tremendous global competition, we are proposing to do what no other industrialized, civilized nation has proposed to do and that is eliminate any kind of central guidance or central influence on education. Among industrialized nations, we are unique in terms of our lack of control at the top of education. We do not have a centralized control of education. We do not have a federalized system of education. The Federal Government plays a very minor role on the periphery, sort of, of education. In Japan, the education ministry is centralized, runs education in all parts of Japan from the cradle to the grave. In France, a very highly centralized education ministry, Germany, Great Britain has begun to decentralize and try to do a little more of what we do in terms of giving more control over education to local boards and local areas. We go to the other extreme. We have too little influence and too little participation in education. We have so little that, as you heard from the previous speaker, the Federal Government is only paying 6 percent of the total bill. At one point we were responsible for about 8 percent of the total spent on education in this country and now the Federal Government is paying only about 6 percent of the total education bill; that is State government, low already, and local government which pays for most of our education. That is too little. That is extreme. We are proud, and I think we should always continue the tradition of local control of education, but local control would not be threatened if we move from the present 6- percent expenditure up to as much as 25 percent. If we were providing 25 percent of the resources for education and we would have a concomitant amount of influence, that means we still are only influencing the decisionmaking to the tune of 25 percent. Local control and State control would still be in charge of 75 percent of the decisionmaking. So it would not be an extreme. I think it would be a happy medium, happy medium between the two extremes. Some countries have gone to one extreme, too much centralization. We have too little, and now we are facing a proposal of totally eliminating the Federal Government. Our participation at this point is very important because despite the fact that we provide so little of the funding, the central direction and the guidance that has come from the Department of Education through the title I programs has been very important. The States, although they get very small proportions of the overall budget, they are quick to obey the rules and they are quick to follow the rules of the Federal Government in order to be able to qualify for those funds. And they are also influenced very much in the process toward the improvement of their education system. We have had a history recently starting with Ronald Reagan when he appointed a commission to produce the report called ``A Nation At Risk.'' The Federal Government began to realize that we are at a disadvantage in this very highly complex society. With all of the global competition that we have we were at a disadvantage with so little Federal participation. So the movement toward increasing the Federal influence started with Ronald Reagan, ``A Nation At Risk,'' and then George Bush came with America 2000. Of course President Clinton followed through with Goals 2000, which is really an adaptation of America 2000 still based on the six goals that were arrived at at the Governors' Conference which was convened by President Bush. We were moving in the right direction, and now we have a budget process that was set in motion with the majority Budget Committee that is like, you know, barbarians burning down the temple of our civilization, the American civilization. The pillars of the temple of the American civilization rest on an educated population, and to destroy the guidance and destroy the participation of the Federal Government in the process of education is a reckless and stupid act. It is a dangerous act. We should be outraged. We should be not only shocked, but we should resolve that we will not let this happen in America. The majority budget is not the only budget on the floor, however. We will have other considerations. We have shown that we can meet some of the objectives that have been set out by the majority. They have insisted that the budget be balanced by the year 2002. We do not agree with not think you have to put America in a pressure cooker and force the issue of balancing the budget to the tune of billions of dollars being cut over a short period of time. We do not think Medicare should be cut. We do not think Medicaid should be drastically cut, and most people are not even talking about the drastic cuts that are being made for Medicaid, which is serving the poorest people in the country. We do not think all of that has to happen. We offer an alternative. The Congressional Black Caucus alternative budget will be on the floor on Thursday, and it offers an alternative. We balance the budget by the year 2002. We meet that challenge, but we increase the budget for education. This budget boldly sets forth investments in the activities which keep our Nation prosperous at home and competitive in the global arena. Without hesitation, we have declared that education must be the Nation's No. 1 priority in 1995 and for the next 7 years. Though the amounts we have proposed are still not adequate, our budget alone has proposed substantial increases for education and other Function 500 activities like job training which is related to education. We have proposed to invest more than $27 billion over the 7-year period increasing the budget of education by 25 percent. We are going to increase the budget by 25 percent, and most important of all, we have rejected any notion that the Department of Education should be drastically and dangerously downsized and completely liquidated. This budget does that and it is balanced. How is it balanced? Because if you set forth priorities, and you determine what we should spend money on, and you move forward to spend the money on those priorities, then you can get the money you need for that function by cutting other places where there is waste. So we have about 500 billion dollars' worth of cuts in existing programs. We cut the F-22 fighter plane, which is manufactured in Speaker Gingrich's district, we cut that out completely. That saves $12 billion. We cut the Seawolf submarine; we do not need another Seawolf submarine. We make those cuts, and we also have almost $600 billion in the closing of corporate tax loopholes, and in the elimination of corporate welfare. The American people do not know, the American people really would be shocked if they took a look at a chart which I have which shows that from 1943 to the present the share of the tax burden which is borne by corporations has gone from 39 percent to 11 percent in 1995. At one point the share of the tax burden which is borne by corporations went as low as 9 percent, in 1990. So, from 39 percent of the tax burden it is now down to 11 percent. At the same time, the share of the burden has gone from 19 percent for individuals and families up to 44 percent. We presently have a situation where families are paying 44 percent of the tax burden while corporations are paying only 11 percent. So one way we were able to maintain Medicare and Medicaid at the same level and also increase the budget for education was to close the corporate tax loopholes and to end corporate welfare, and by doing that we are able to get the money to go forward the priorities that America ought to be setting in the year 1995. In the year 1995 we ought to be able to look forward to a nation which is a learning society, which is very much dependent on a highly educated population, not only in order to make our industries more competitive but in order to make our society more civil and our society more orderly. Let me just close by indicating some of the individual items that the Congressional Black Caucus budget is able to fund in the area of education. We increase the funding for higher education title III assistance to historically black colleges by 20 percent. We increase the Federal TRIO programs for disadvantaged students by 12.5 percent. We increase funding for title I to $9.65 billion over 7 years. That amount would serve the total 100 percent of poor youngsters who are eligible for title I. We increase the funding for the education infrastructure, and that is an amount of money proposed by Senator Carol Moseley-Braun of $600 million to help repair schools and new construction is some areas where safe schools are needed. We provide an appropriation for family learning centers and libraries which has been authorized in legislation, but not funded. This would give ordinary citizens access to the information highway. Whether you can own a computer or not, your public library would be able to give you access to the information superhighway. We increase funding for individuals with disabilities by up to 18 percent of the total cost. We increase funding for Head Start over the 7-year period, the budget cycle, we increase funding for Head Start to the point where every youngster who is eligible for Head Start would be able to get a place in the Head Start program, up to $8 billion is the total. So we have compiled, we have provided a bold budget, but at the same time we have also laid out, made decisions about what the priorities should be, and the No. 1 priority is education.

Mr. OWENS

Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, OSHA, the agency responsible for the health and safety of workers in this Nation, is presently under intense attack. Particularly my colleague, the gentleman from Georgia [Mr. Norwood], who is a fellow member of the Economic and Educational Opportunities Committee, has launched a relentless series of attacks on OSHA. Congressman Norwood that we lower our voices and make a sincere effort to humanize our discussion. Instead of focusing on the overwhelming but abstract statistics such as the 56,000 hard-working Americans who die each year from job related causes, from now on let us emphasize instead the individual workers with names and faces. There are workers in Mr. Norwood's district like William McDaniel, who without adequate restraining protection fell 80 feet off a television tower to his death in Pendergrass, GA. Like Paul Powell, who was crushed in the unguarded drive shaft of a machine at an Augusta, GA, plant. Like Earnest Gosnell of Homer, GA, who was operating a timber log skidder that had no safety belts when the machine overturned and crushed him. these fine Americans were all residents of Mr. Norwood's district in Georgia. What's really alarming here is that Mr. Norwood and so many other Republicans show no concern whatsoever for these workers and the other 56,000 hard-working Americans who die each year from work-related causes. It is really disappointing and tragic that so many Members of Congress like Mr. Norwood, would rather launch a cold-hearted and sweeping attack on a Federal agency than do everything possible to protect their own constituents. It is the duty of every Member of Congress to recognize and remember that OSHA protects the lives of workers in every district. Mr. Speaker, one of the great things about the Vietnam War Memorial is that the Vietnam War Memorial names names of each individual soldier who gave his life for his country. I do not think we should ever again have monuments for unknown soldiers. Why have celebrations of unknown soldiers when you could name the names and have the faces? It will make it less likely than for those who make decisions about war in the future to be careless or casual when they are making those decisions. In the same way we ought to try and humanize all the work we do here in Congress. In the budget that has been prepared by the Republicans, OSHA has been drastically reduced. OSHA next week will be under attack in the Economic and Educational Opportunities Committee. An omnibus bill which will deal with work-related protections will be on the floor of the committee, and OSHA will again be under attack. OSHA saves lives. Stop and consider that OSHA saves lives. Fifty-six thousand people every year die of accidents on the job or work-related causes, diseases they contract on the job or accidents they have and later die in the hospital away from the job. Six thousand die immediately in accidents on the job, but 56,000 people a year is as many people as died, almost as many people that died, in the Vietnam war over the whole 7-year period of the Vietnam war. It is a very serious matter. Accidents in the workplace, conditions in the workplace, are very serious. Let us not condemn our workers to unsafe conditions unnecessarily. OSHA protects lives. Medicaid protects lives too. In the same budget that is going to reduce OSHA, we have tremendous reductions for Medicaid. I am not talking about Medicare, because we can talk about Medicare and the reductions there. That also needs to be debated. But Medicare will be protected. It will be discussed at length on this floor. Greater cuts have been made in Medicaid than have been made in Medicare, and the Republican budget proposes to get rid of Medicaid as an entitlement. Medicaid is health care for poor people. We are going to have a second-class health care system sanctioned by the Federal Government. One system for those not in Medicaid, those who are in Medicare and can afford Medicare and can afford private insurance, and another system for the poor, that is financed by the Government, a second-class system that will be left to the States to run it. And there will be no Federal entitlements. When the States run out of money, if you are sick or ill, you will not get any help. Those are human beings out there with faces. Those are people that we all know. Somebody will know the workers who are killed in accidents or the workers who die from job related causes. Somebody knows somebody who is going to die as a result of those cuts in Medicaid and Medicare. Let us not proceed with an across-the-board cut in Medicaid of 18 percent, higher than the cut in Medicare, across-the-board cut, and assume that human beings are not going to die as a result. Second-class health care is dangerous health care. I once had a situation where a hospital about to go broke in my district told me that we are down to such a level that we cannot afford to really sterilize our towels properly. We do not have the equipment. I said to the administrator of that hospital, if you cannot sterilize your towels properly, it is time to close the hospital. Let us not try to keep it open. The provision of second-class health care is dangerous and deadly. If we treat people as numbers and do not treat them as human beings, we run the risk of destroying lives. Let us lower our voices and look at the faces again.

Mr. OWENS

Mr. OWENS. Mr. Speaker, we are about to move into the most important phase of the legislative process, and that is the budget. The Committee on the Budget I understand will be deliberating this week and by this time next week we will have on the floor of the House the budget for fiscal year 1996, the proposed budget of the House committee. The announcement is that one of the proposals in that budget coming to the floor will be a recommendation, a proposal to eliminate the Department of Education. The attack on education is one of the most baffling elements of the approach by the present majority of the House of Representatives to the Federal Government and its priorities. The attack on education comes at a time when we are in a global competition with other industrialized nations for the markets of the world, and that competition is likely to get worse. Everybody has conceded that education is a vital component of whatever effort this Nation puts forward in order to be economically competitive, now and in the future. We have had a continuum of concern expressed about education since President Reagan appointed a commission, and that commission came back with a report entitled ``A Nation at Risk.'' ``A Nation at Risk'' was a report that alarmed many leaders in America. President Reagan never appropriated any money of any kind to follow through on the recommendations of the report, but he did endorse the findings of the report and called to the attention of the American people the fact that it was a very serious problem, we had a very serious problem. President Bush came along and began to try to take steps to implement some Federal policies with respect to education which would provide greater guidance to the localities and the States. Education is primarily a state function. The Federal Government provides leadership and guidance that is very vital and important, but when it comes to expenditures for education, it is the States and the localities that provide most of the funds for education. I think about 7 to 8 percent of the total education budget may be federally financed. Out of more than $360 billion spent on education from kindergarten to postgraduate, only about 7 or 8 percent of that was Federal funding. It went down during the Reagan administration to as low as 6 percent, and began to come back up under the Clinton administration, moving toward 8 percent. So although we provide only a small amount of the funding, the Federal guidance, the Federal sense of direction, has been considered very important, since the report ``A Nation at Risk'' was released. ``A Nation at Risk'' showed the industrialized nations have some kind of centralized guidance with respect to their education systems. Many of the industrialized nations, of course, go much further than we would ever want to go in terms of they not only guide education, they administer it and set the policies and dominate education. In France, Great Britain, you have most of Europe with centralized education policymaking. Traditionally, in this country it has always been education is a state and local matter, and the freedom of local school boards to operate has always been a cherished one. Nobody wants to change that. But there are extremes. I think the European model of centralized, highly centralized education or the Japanese model of highly centralized ministers of education dictating to all parts of the country what happens in schools is one extreme. The other extreme is for the Federal Government to take no meaningful role at all. At one time our Government had no meaningful role. There was a long, long debate as to how much our Government should become involved in education. We became involved in high education, universities and college education long before the Federal Government ever became involved in public education, elementary and secondary education. There was a long, long debate. It was during the Great Society years that President Lyndon Johnson moved us into support for elementary and secondary education, and that came in the form of attempting to come to the aid of the poorest school districts in America. The poorest districts needed help. And the original elementary and secondary education legislation was targeted to the poorest districts, and to a great degree that is still the case. Most of our aid is theoretically targeted to the poorest school districts and the poorest children in America. There was a long debate before the Federal Government took this step. The creation of the Department of Education took a long, long time also, a great deal of discussion and debate. And finally, the Department of Education was created by President Jimmy Carter. After the Department of Education was created by Jimmy Carter, of course, he lost the election and Ronald Reagan became the President. And he was ambivalent about the Department of Education. Some days he wanted to eliminate it; some days he was willing to support it. There were always these forces at work which because they were schizophrenic did nothing to enhance the work of the Department of Education. The Department fell into some extremist patterns on the one hand and was not very useful during those years when it existed under a cloud. It survived, however. And it existed for the 4 years of the Bush administration and it still exists. Now we are told that for budgetary reasons, in order to streamline the Government, downsize the Government, save money, meet the requirements of this artificially created emergency, the emergency is the need to have a balanced budget by the year 2002, that emergency is an artificial one created primarily to have an excuse, rationale, rationalization for eliminating social programs. The safety net programs are going to be eliminated and we are going to do that under the rubric of having to do it in order to balance the budget. And the Department of Education now falls into that category. It is one of those programs that has been labeled expendable. We have labeled the whole Department, the whole function as being expendable. We can eliminate it. I think this is another example of what I have called before a barbaric act. It is a barbaric act. It is like sacking a segment of our civilization. It is like Attila the Hun with torches going through a civilized city and destroying everything that he does not understand or does not want to exist because he has the power to do it. Because the majority of Republicans have the power to do it, they are going to move through the budget to wipe out a department which exists as a result of a long series of discussions and debates. In 2 years, we are going to wipe out what took 20 years; it took 20 years to finally get to this point. In a 2-year period, while they are in the majority, the Republicans in the House are proposing to just wipe out this Department of Education in an era and a time when education is recognized as being critical to our competitiveness in the global marketplace. No other nation in the world would dare contemplate eliminating its Department of Education or its governmental, Federal Government function of education. Japan would never contemplate that. Germany would never contemplate that. Great Britain, France, they would consider us to be quite foolish indeed, and they would consider it quite a serious matter to watch the Education at a time like this. A Department of Education which is already the weakest, the most feeble Federal department among the industrialized nations. It does not command a great segment of the Federal budget already. It is one of the smallest department in the Federal Government. When you take away the large amount of the budget that goes toward higher education loans, then it is a very tiny department in budgetary terms. It is the department that has suffered the greatest number of cuts in personnel over the last 10, 12 years. It has always been kept on a very tight leash and not been able to perform properly. Now we are going to eliminate it, wipe it out altogether. It is a barbaric act. It is an act committed by people who do not feel that the Federal Government should be involved in providing education guidance and coordination for the whole Nation. There are some people who feel that the primary and maybe only role of the Federal Government is defense and everything else is not the proper role for the Federal Government. That is nonsense. That has nothing to do with the oath that we take when we are sworn in to Congress. The Constitution of the United States starts with the Preamble. It talks about promoting the general welfare; promoting the general welfare is as important as defense. How do you define defense? It really does not talk so much about defense as security. The security of the country is of great concern and should be a priority concern of the Nation. But how do we define security in 1995? Does security mean military preparedness only? That all we need is a powerful Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, et cetera? All we need is fantastic superweapons? Is that going to guarantee the security of the United States in the world to come, the year 2000 and the next century? Is that the definition of what we need for security? Or is it more complicated than that? In addition to military strength, do we need also to be strong in terms of our brainpower? Is brainpower probably the most important element of security? It is brainpower that produced these fantastic modern weapons. It is brainpower that allowed us to outwit our foes in World War Ii on every front. Brainpower cracked the Japanese code and brainpower cracked the German code, in addition to the creation of weapons to counteract the tremendous superweapons that were developed by the German military machine. In the final analysis, we cannot predict the nature of warfare in terms of strictly violent and military terms in the future. Whatever they are, we know they are going to be different, and whatever weapons are going to be required will be developed by people who have a tremendous amount of brainpower. Brainpower does not mean individuals. It means teams of people; it means a whole culture, a culture of people who understand how to apply science and technology where they want to apply it. It may be that there will not be any hot wars in the future, no violent wars of any significance challenging the security of the United States. It is very likely that we will not have any violent wars which are a threat to the security of the United States in the next 100 years, very likely. What we do know, as a fact, is that the challenge to the security of the United States is there already and will increase in terms of the challenge to our economy, whether we can hold our own in the world in terms of economic competition as an industrialized nation, which depends on exports and high technology in order to keep its high standard of living. Will we be able to compete with our good friends the Germans and the Japanese and the British and the French? We will not be able to compete if we throw overboard any Federal involvement in education. It is a barbaric act. It is a dangerous act. It is an act contrary to the Constitution that we have sworn to uphold. We are not promoting the general welfare. We are not helping this country at all when we do such reckless and barbaric things as destroy the Department of Education. I think it is important to talk in some detail about what is in this Department of Education and what we are about to throw overboard. What Attila the Hun, the spirit of Attila the Hun that rides through the budget proposals, what that spirit is ready to burn down, what they are ready to destroy with the scorched earth policy and the blitzkrieg that is sweeping over the Washington scene in terms of what is not considered to be good for the American people and what is considered good. I hope that, I know that most Republicans and Democrats are responding and aware of the same public opinion polls. I know both Republicans and Democrats are aware of the same focus groups and what the focus groups are showing. The American people, again, in the public opinion polls that we get and in the focus groups, they are again showing that they are collectively far wiser than the people in Washington. They are collectively far wiser than the leadership of both parties. Whereas I am accusing the Republicans of behaving in a barbaric way toward education, the Democrats, on the other hand, have certainly not made a forceful statement in support of education. We have done some great things with education in the past year. The first year, the first 2 years of the Clinton administration, President Clinton moved in a continuum from the work that had been done by President Bush. It was a good example, although there were disagreements and things that were not supported by the new administration, they took much of the Bush program on education as reflected in America 2000. President Bush had had a conference of Governors, and President Clinton was one of the Governors who was in attendance at that conference that was held in Virginia where they came up with the six goals for American education. All that was endorsed by President Clinton. All of that was taken forward by the Clinton administration from the Bush administration. So you had a kind of continuum, even though there were disagreements from Reagan to Bush to Clinton. Now all that is going to be thrown aside, all that agreement means nothing. In the rescissions that the Republicans have made on education already, the rescission bill that was passed in the House which cut $17.4 billion--I am not sure whether it was point 4 or point 5--more than $17 billion was cut out of this year's budget. In those rescissions, education was a primary target. The first target, of course, the most devastating cuts were aimed at the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Low-income housing, low-income housing, we have not solved the problem of homelessness. We have not solved the problem of providing decent low-income housing for poor people. Nevertheless in that rescission package more than 7 billion of the 17 billion was taken away from low-income housing, programs in the Department of Housing and Urban Development. The second biggest budget hit, the cuts were at the Department of Education. Almost $2 billion was taken out of the Department of Education. So it was a preview of coming attractions. What we are hearing now and seeing now developing in the budget that is going to be prepared for a whole year, the budget year 1996, is reflective of what was started, of course, in the rescission budget. I wanted to just read from a very well-written letter by Secretary Riley. I will not read the whole letter, but I would like to enter it into the Record. I will enter into the Record a letter by Secretary Riley regarding the proposed rescissions to investments in education. On February 23, 1995, Mr. Riley sent this letter out. I just think it summarizes what we are up against here. I would like the American people to follow along carefully. As I said before, what the polls and the focus groups have shown is that the American people are wiser than the leadership here. They have indicated education is one of their highest priorities. Education, in terms of the American public at this point in history wanting to see Federal support, education is still one of those high priorities. They do not want to see the budget cuts that are being proposed by the Republicans. The Republican majority knows this as well as I do. The fact that they have gone ahead and they are proceeding to do it means that they have contempt for the wisdom of the American people. They the people in a way which confuses them and you can get away with it. I think they are wrong. I think there is a basic, deep-seated fundamental desire of the American people to see that as much opportunity is provided as possible in the area of education for as many people as possible. I think that the middle class, which the majority always pretends to be concerned with, the middle class is hardest hit when you make cuts in education. We are talking specifically, these days, about the proposed Republican cuts with respect to student loans, the fact that they want to take away the Federal subsidy for the loans so that the interest that the loans accumulate during the time that students are at school is not paid anymore by the Federal Government, but attached onto the bill that the student has to pay when they come out, which means that the education of each student goes up a great deal, because 4 years of interest will be added to that bill. That is being discussed a great deal, and there is a great reaction from the middle class as to having them bear an unnecessary burden that they do not really--should not have to bear. The public knows that education ought to be a higher priority. My plea is that the public will become more vocal, and that the public, the students, the parents, the middle class out there will talk more and contact their Congressmen or take delegations, and let it be known that you are wiser than the people you have elected, and you do not want the nonsense of the destruction of education as a priority in the coming budget, you will not tolerate it. Let them know now, before they do a great deal of harm. Before Attila the Hun and the spirit of destruction rides across the Department of Education, let us intervene. Let the public come forward. Listen to the words of Secretary Reilly, and I quote: I am deeply concerned about the severe and shortsighted cuts imposed by the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, HHS, and Education yesterday. The magnitude of these kinds of cuts, at precisely the time that our Nation needs to invest in our future, represents a grave misunderstanding of the direction Americans want for their children and grandchildren. Coming on the heels of the attack on the school lunch program, these actions break faith with America's children. At a time when every poll shows that crime and school safety are a number one concern of Americans, the committee's actions to eliminate funding for programs for safety and drug prevention programs in schools represent a rejection of what the American public wants. Polls also show that an overwhelming majority of citizens favor increased investment in quality education. The committee's actions to slash bipartisan initiatives to support States and local communities in their work to raise academic standards and improve their local schools is a dismissal of the public interest. I am continuing to read from the letter of Secretary Reilly on February 23, 1995. And the sharp reduction in funding for education technology programs will enable fewer local communities to put state-of- the-art tools of learning in classrooms where they are most needed to prepare our students for the future. This certainly cannot be what the Speaker of the House had in mind when he said ``We must bring technology into the classroom, and radically rethink our education system.'' Continuing with Secretary Reilly's letter: The Republican administration changed the name of the former House Committee on Education and Labor and added the word ``opportunity,'' but the measure of the Congress's commitment to students must be evaluated not by titles, but by actions. Yesterday's actions mean less opportunity for America's students. The Secretary goes on to list each one of the programs that are being cut by the rescission bill, and those programs, the details become important for the American people. I said before that Goals 2000, Goals 2000 was legislation we passed with the support of Republican Members of the Committee on Education and Labor and of the Congress. It passed overwhelmingly. It got more than 300 votes. Nevertheless, Goals 2000 is now being threatened, not only by the rescission cuts that are being discussed in this letter of Secretary Reilly, but in the new budget they will try to wipe out Goals 2000 completely, and I am told that the committee that I serve on, the Committee on Economic and Educational Opportunities, a bill is being prepared there to repeal Goals 2000. Remember what I said before: Goals 2000 was a result that flowed from America 2000, which was President Bush's education program, and America 2000 flowed from President Roosevelt's report called ``A Nation at Risk,'' so a continuum of three Presidents, a continuum of 12, 14 years went into the preparation of Goals 2000. Now Secretary Reilly states that: With respect to Goals 2000, a 38 percent reduction in funds for State and local educational improvement would severely curtail the efforts nationwide to develop and implement comprehensive strategies for systematic educational reform. An estimated 4,000 fewer schools would receive the seed money they need to implement reforms based on challenging academic standards. Moreover, the rescission would eliminate all funds for Goals 2000 national programs. This action would end targeted support for educational reform activities in poor communities. Thus it would deprive the Federal Government of the means for evaluating the impact of educational reforms on student achievement, and it would end other national leadership and technical assistance activities. Let me just talk for a minute about what Goals 2000 does. In simple terms, the heart of Goals 2000 is three sets of standards it establishes. It establishes curriculum standards, a process for developing curriculum standards. Before I go any further, let me just stress that the curriculum standards that are to be established under Goals 2000 are voluntary standards. It is only a model, only examples of how, in each one of the six major areas that are laid out in the six education goals, mathematics, science, history, geography, in all of those areas the standards would be established so that with the collective participation of scholars and teachers and students across the country, you would come up with an idea, a model of some of the things that ought to be taught in that area in order for us to better relate to the world of 1995 and the world of the year 2000. What is it in this new global economy, what is it in this new global world that we need to know? When I was a kid my mother used to have us reciting the capitals of all the States. That was cute. I learned the capitals of the States. Any knowledge may be useful, but I suspect in this time and age, it will be far better if you teach your kids how to use the encyclopedia and the library and various books to learn the capitals of the States and the capitals of all the countries in the United Nations, and what they do in these various countries for a living, the economics of it, the trade patterns. If you want to export business in the future, how far is it from South Africa to Washington, or how far is it from China to New York? What is the cost of producing products and then paying for the transportation? There are a number of things that are known, that need to be known in the year 2000 by our youngsters, or this year, in order for them to survive and understand a world that is far different from the old world that would be covered by a collective set of scholars, teachers, and students trying to prepare those standards. That is one important thing that Goals 2000 is seeking to do, to develop standards so that everybody across the country will get some idea of what is important to be taught in history, what is important to be taught in geography, what things are most important to teach in mathematics. The world has an exploding amount of information, information that is increasing geometrically. There is twice as much information available this year as was available last year. With all that information about so many different things, what do you single out to teach the children in the schools? Do you put a great stress on learning facts--and those facts are exploding, more and more of them all the time--or do you put a greater stress on learning skills and principles, so they will know how to approach getting the information they want? Computers, the use of libraries, the use of cable television, and a number of new kinds of instruments that can be utilized for education, where do they come into this whole process? So that is one of of Goals 2000, objectives of Goals 2000, was to establish these standards. The second objective was to establish a set of assessments, tests and other means of assessing what do the students know, a national set of standards and assessments, voluntary, again, strictly voluntary. If your school board did not want to get involved, would not want to use them, they would not have to do it. Any State did not have to do it if they did not want to, but they would have available to them a set of assessments, tests based on the standards that have been developed, so from one State to another, among those States and school systems that choose to participate, you could compare relatively how are they doing in this curriculum that has been developed to meet the needs of the modern world; all of it, again, voluntary. Those are two of the simple goals and objectives of Goals 2000 that they are preparing to wipe out now. One is to develop standards for curriculum, the other, to develop assessment standards, standards for tests and assessments that are going to be made of those standard curricula. The third ingredient was the most controversial one, because there are many of us who felt if you have a set of national standards for curricula, if you have a set of national assessments for curricula, you also should have a requirement that there be some understanding that there are standards in opportunities to learn; that is, what do you do, what should schools be doing, what should they have available in terms of resources, equipment, books, in order to guarantee that the youngsters, the students, have an opportunity to learn the standard curriculum? When they learn the standard curriculum and they are going to be tested on the standard curriculum, is it fair to have a national test when you do not have some standards as to what is it that you ought to have available in order for youngsters to learn what is necessary to pass these tests? Should there not be standards which say that if you are going to teach science, you have to have a certain amount of scientific equipment: you have to have laboratories and equipment? You cannot have youngsters competing on tests which are national tests, and some have never stepped inside of a science laboratory. If they go to a science laboratory, there is no equipment in the laboratory. You cannot have youngsters competing on tests if their library books are as old as some of the library books in my district in New York City. Some of the books go back to 1925 and 1930. They are useless. You cannot have encyclopedias which do not have the countries that have become independent in the last 10 years. You cannot teach geography from those kinds of tools. The third simple ingredient of Goals 2000 was opportunity to learn standards. That upset more people than any other part of it, because Governors complained that this may mean that ``Somebody is going to judge us and say we are inadequate because we are not providing laboratories, we are not providing enough books. We do not want to have a situation where we will have to spend some money in order to meet these standards.'' We stressed in every way possible, again, that the standards are voluntary. Nobody is required to do anything unless they want to in all three of these sets of standards: curriculum standards, assessment standards, or opportunity to learn standards. With all of that guarantee and reassurance that it is all voluntary, the Goals 2000 has been attacked by certain very vocal Members of the Republican majority as being what it is not, a mandatory set of standards, imposing curriculum standards on school boards across the country. Some people have called it the National Board of Education, which is a deliberate distortion of its purpose and its mission. All of this, all of this has led to a frenzy which results in an attempt that is being mounted now to repeal Goals 2000. If you do not repeal it by discussing the authorization, it can be wiped out by just taking the money out of the budget. You eliminate the funding in the budget for Goals 2000. That is one thing that the Secretary objected to. Another item that he objected to was school-to-work opportunities, $25 million cut, $12.5 million each from the Department of Education and the Department of Labor. School-to-work opportunities was divided between the Department of Labor and the Department of Education. $12.5 million went to the Department of Education, and $12.5 million went to the Department of Labor. What would it do? It would do what numerous educators, community leaders, and Congressmen have been calling for all the time, make school more relevant to youngsters who are not going to go to college, make school more relevant for those who will have to make the transition from high school into work. The industries, the private sector has complained about the fact that the graduates they get have to be trained. The graduates do not fit in. This was an attempt to meet a requirement and a complaint that industry has had for a long time. It is a small program. A $25 million cut is a cut of a program which to begin with was very small. Of course this is one of those they are proposing now to eliminate directly. The biggest program in the Department of Education which the Secretary also talks about is the Elementary and Secondary Education Title I. Title I has existed for 30 years now. Title I was the primary thrust of the Lyndon Johnson Great Society entry into education in the public school sector. We moved from assistance to higher education to a program to assist elementary and secondary education under President Johnson, and Title I was the basic thrust, the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, which goes to schools on the basis of the poverty population of the school. The number of poor children in a particular school decides the amount of funds that that school will get. In the deliberations about Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act last year, both sides, Republicans and Democrats, supported the refunding, the reauthorization of title I. Both sides fought for every penny they could get for their States. We finally had a $7 billion program which flows to every school district almost in the country. There are some school districts that are wealthy and should not be getting money but they have been getting funding through various loopholes that were established, and we tried to eliminate that in the last legislation. So there will be fewer schools that are not deserving getting the money, but the targeting to its original purpose, to help schools with the largest number of poor students, that targeting is still left for a program of almost $7 billion. That was cut, also, in the rescission which is a preview of coming attractions. If the rescission bill cut it, we are afraid there will be more cuts in the budget that is being prepared now for the fiscal year 1996. The Eisenhower Professional Development Grants: Everybody agreed that one of the best things the Federal Government could do was provide training, ways in which teachers could get more training. In the local education budgets and State education budgets, they are hard pressed to keep enough money in there just for operations, to keep things going from day to day. So the training money, the equipment money, a lot of other things that are needed, they felt should come from the Federal Government, and there was great agreement that the emphasis would be placed on training and the Federal Government would support training. Now we have cut the Eisenhower Professional Development Grants. Safe and drug-free schools: Safe schools, an initiative that we also agreed upon by the Republicans and Democrats, overwhelmingly voted on on the floor, more than 300 people voted for it last year, now that is being wiped out completely. The original rescission bill of the Republican Majority was to zero out the whole program, about $600 million. Zero it out completely. Then they put back, I think, $10 million on the floor as a result of some sentimental appeal for one little program called DARE. But basically the safe and drug-free schools and communities programs would be wiped out if the rescission bill House were to become law. Of course we know on all these matters, the deliberations are now moving into a conference committee between the Senate and the House. The Senate does not take the same approach on many of these items that the House has taken. But the Secretary of Education was trying to point out some of the serious harm caused by these cuts. Education for homeless children and youth, a special program that was put in there in response to local education departments with a large amount of homeless children, that program was wiped out completely, zero. Bilingual education was cut drastically. Vocational education, adult education, State and post- secondary review program, the State student incentive grants, the TRIO programs were cut. TRIO is one of the most successful programs ever developed by the Government. $11.2 million was reduced from that program, which provides for college preparation for youngsters in poor communities through its Upward Bound programs and its talent search programs on college campuses. They provide for special counseling. There are a number of things that they have been doing which have been highly successful, and both Republicans and Democrats in the Congress have come to the point where they support these programs. TRIO has gotten increased funding over the years as a result of the approval of both parties. Now suddenly the barbarians are arriving, and TRIO is under the axe also and they have to be cut. The Secretary calls that to our attention. International education exchange programs. Telecommunications demonstration for mathematics. Telecommunications used for education is one of the high priority items that ought to be on everybody's agenda. You might be able to greatly bring down the cost of education by using distance learning, by using more educational television, more cable television, and projecting the instruction over the airwaves for students to pick up in their own homes. You could greatly reduce the cost of education at the higher education level, you could greatly reduce the cost certainly at the high school level, and you could probably provide a much better quality of education at the same time. What we discovered in a survey that was done of junior high schools in New York City 2 years ago was that in the junior high schools of two-thirds of the city, two-thirds which serve primarily Hispanic and African-American students, in those two-thirds of the junior high schools none of the teachers who were teaching math and science had majored in math and science in college. None of the teachers who were teaching math and science had majored in it. They could not get qualified math and science teachers which meant that those youngsters in junior high school were certainly greatly handicapped. If you had that kind of shortage of teachers and you had a well- developed hookup for distance learning, you could have top-quality teachers teaching via videos and via cable television and broadcast educational television, and they could make up for the deficit that you have in terms of qualified teachers. They could do it better, they could do it cheaper. So telecommunications and education technology were high priorities. We did not appropriate very much money to begin with because they are new, but we did have them in the budget, and we did emphasize in the reauthorization legislation for education that these are very important frontiers. This is the way American education should be going. Star schools was one of those programs where we provided money for telecommunications in situations where rural schools were spread out and students not able to get to quality schools. You could provide top- flight instruction and, using various television hookups, beam it into those various schools and into the homes of those students, and the Star schools made up for what you could not have been able to acquire even if you spent millions of dollars on the new transportation system. So what you have is everything that is going to take us into the next century, the 21st century, everything that moves us in a more progressive way toward the year 2000 in education is being cut. The national diffusion network, ready to learn television, educational television, as I just said before. Then, finally, library construction, library research and demonstrations, everything related to libraries is cut, even though it is only a tiny amount in the budget to begin with. We only have tiny amounts of money in our budget. We have never supported libraries at the Federal Government level in any significant way. If you add up all the money that has been appropriated in terms of Federal aid to libraries over the history of the Federal Government's aid to libraries, it would not equal the cost of one-half of one nuclear aircraft carrier. It would not equal the cost of one-half of one nuclear aircraft carrier, which costs about $3 billion. If you added up everything that we have ever done for libraries, it would not equal the cost of one-half of an aircraft carrier. The library community was here on the Hill today. The American Library Association program is presented. They are begging to just keep what they have, the relative pennies that they receive for libraries. Every community that considers itself a civilized community in America has a library. A library is probably the cheapest form of education. The best value you get for your money comes through public libraries. You get the most education made possible, you get the best resources made possible to the community for the cheapest amount of money. Not to fund libraries and not to support libraries even in a small way is another barbaric act. It is barbarism to not want to fund libraries. We have said a lot about going into the 21st century and updating our technology for education. We talk a lot about the information superhighway, and we make statements about wanting to make the information superhighway available to all Americans. We do not make it available to all Americans unless we find ways to let the access it. Most American homes do not have any computers. Most American homes can never get on the Internet if they have to use their own equipment. One way to guarantee that Americans have access is to have public places where you can make use of the best of modern information technology, and one of those public places should be the public library. In addition to our schools, which need more equipment and should be funded with the help of the Federal Government to acquire that equipment, our libraries are an access point for everybody. You do not have to be a student enrolled in a school. All you have to be is a member of the public, and if you made the technology available to public libraries, it would guarantee that poverty is not a barrier to being able to enter the information age. Poverty is not a barrier to being able to learn what is necessary to be able to qualify for various employment opportunities that are dependent on some knowledge of how to use modern technology to access information. So the American Library Association is proposing that we support what they call the Library Services. and Technology Act to supplement the Library Services and Construction Act. When you put all the library programs that they are proposing to fund together, they are talking about spending $1 per person to support these various programs, $1 per person in America. When you have more than 225 million Americans, it would be a very small amount of money to spend for education via libraries, and libraries are available to every citizen. They are asking that Congress pass the Library Services and Technology Act quickly because it is proposed to consolidate, simplify and update all the other components of the Library Services and Construction Act. It will reduce eight titles to two priorities for libraries. Those two priorities are information access through technology and information empowerment through special services. It would increase the flexibility and accountability in the program. It would emphasize libraries as change agents. Libraries would be enhanced as change agents and self-help institutions through these kinds of Federal-State partnerships. We have examples in my hometown of Brooklyn of libraries that are being come in. In poor communities where they stayed away from the library in the past, one or two computers established in the library has resulted in long waiting list of youngsters who flood into the place every day and they want to make use of the computers. It is a whole new ball game in terms of libraries being overwhelmed by students voluntarily coming after school and wanting to be a part of what is going on. It is the computers and the new technology that attracts them. They would never be able to get it anywhere else and, therefore, it is an area where we certainly could guarantee that everybody is a part of the new information age, everybody has access to the information superhighway. There is one representative of the library community on Vice President Gore's committee to advise on the information superhighway and we hope that they are listened to. We hope that there is more than just rhetoric in terms of including libraries in the process of developing this information superhighway and Federal support for the information superhighway. What we get from Brooklyn, my own hometown, is a statement from the libraries that none of them are wired sufficiently to really receive updated state of the art technology. They do not have the wiring. In most of the big cities of America, the institutions like schools and libraries do not have the wiring necessary to be hooked up properly. They need a great amount of money to pay for the installation of new wiring, or they need some legislation from the Federal level, because only the Federal Government can do it, which requires telecommunications companies to wire schools, to wire libraries and educational institutions at a discount or maybe for free, as part of their contribution for the benefits they are receiving from the overall participation in the Federal Government's information superhighway activities. Something has to be done to give priority to the general public and to provide an opportunity for the general public. One of the concrete steps that can be taken is to deal with the problem that most libraries in most schools in the big cities, it is not the same as the suburbs and the rural communities, they have problems too, rural communities and big cities, it is easier to do it, to wire the rural communities, less costly to wire a school. In the big cities to wire the library is very, very costly. The support began for libraries in the local communities at a time when New York City was undergoing a great budget crisis. The citizens made clear that they did not want their library services cut. In fact, library service was cut drastically, and whereas libraries had been opened 6 days a week, they were down to 4, and the citizens rose up and said, no matter what the costs are, how dire our financial situation is, we do not see great amounts of money being required to keep libraries open. And in the last political campaign for mayor, both candidates made pledges that libraries would remain a priority. That is the same case throughout the Nation. Most citizens feel that they are due decent public libraries. It may be more complicated to get first- class schools and get the funding necessary, but it is a fairly simple matter to provide enough support to help provide decent libraries and have the Federal Government continue to participate in this process. I hope that the coming budget debate will be conducted with the majority party as well as the minority party having its ears to the public. I hope we listen to the public. I hope we check the polls and we follow the polls in many, many ways, and we follow the focus groups in many, many ways. Let us not try to put a spin on and ignore and distort the information that comes from the public. The American public clearly wants support for education programs. The American public does not want to see the Department of Education eliminated. The American public does not want that kind of barbaric act to be taken in the name of streamlining government. There is a majority out there that is going to have to be reckoned with, and that majority, whatever questions we may have about it, one thing is clear, they think education is the key to their own individual family's future, and they think education is the key to the future of the Nation. They do not accept the argument that defense is only a military matter, that security is only a military matter. Security they understand is partially a matter of being prepared with the kind of educated population that you need to have and brain power becomes a major part of it. They do not think the Federal Government should only be concerned about security. They think promoting the general welfare as stated in the Constitution is as much a part of the duty and responsibilities of the Federal Government as any other duty and responsibility. So let us promote the general welfare in 1995 terms. Let us go into the 21st century promoting the general welfare in the most up-to-date, state-of-the-art manner that it can be promoted. That is to provide for a first-class educational effort. We have spent a tremendous amount of money and resources to update our defenses, our Department of Defense and our military installations. We would never have dreamed 30 years ago or 50 years ago following the end of World War II that we would ever be investing billions and billions of dollars in certain kinds of weapons systems, but we saw it as necessary. Modern technology demanded that we spend more money on very complicated weapons systems. Now the modern challenge is we spend more money on education. Instead of cutting education, we should be doubling the budget for education. Instead of cutting education, we should be looking at new ways to make certain that our whole environment is saturated with funds for learning. Instead of cutting the budget for education, we should be making it the No. 1 priority. The American people have already stated that they consider it one of our top priorities. Anyone who fails to listen to that will have to reckon with the American people. I hope that the caring majority out there, the people out there who are the majority and want to see education as a priority, will have their voices heard, and let it be soon. I hope they will become very visible. I hope they will make it clear to every decisionmaker here in Washington, both in the Congress and the executive branch, that education is a priority of the American people. We would like to see our representatives represent the people and not their own agenda, not their own distorted agenda.

Mr. OWENS

Mr. OWENS. What the Republicans are trying to do in their attempt to fulfill their contract against America, we call it against America, they say with America, in an attempt to do the undoable and bring the budget down to a level of balance by the year 2002, they are going to try to take $12 billion out of the student loan program. Already we have year after year reduced the number of grants available. The poorest young people going to college, we used to provide more grants. But we have steadily reduced the number of grants, so it is very hard to qualify for a grant. You have to be very poor, because the amount of Pell grants available, the amount of money available for Pell grants is very low. We have deliberately emphasized student loan programs. Because after all, you have time to pay for it after you get out of college and get a decent job. Most of our aid now is in the form of student loans. Now the Republicans are saying the student loan program should not be subsidized at all. What we do now is while a young person is in college, the interest on the loan is paid for by the Government. That is our contribution as taxpayers towards the student loan program. The students get out, pick up the loan, and they start paying the interest and principal until it is paid off. But the interest during the time they are in college is paid for by the Government, and if you take that away, that raises the amount the students owe. They are expecting to save $12 billion out of the hides of the students when we want to encourage more people to go to college. That is the one answer to our economy, to become more and more sophisticated and educated.