John Tierney

Mr. TIERNEY

Mr. TIERNEY. If the gentleman would continue to yield, John Kenneth Galbraith, who lives in our State and is well-known by everyone, wrote a book recently called ``The Good Society.'' Is not a difficult book to read. It is not long. He has an excellent small chapter on education. He talks with an historical perspective about colleges being very private in nature at first because, obviously, wealthy families wanted the best for their children and society thought that education was the important instrument to obtain that. So they moved in that direction and they provided college education for their children. And at some point society woke up and decided this was a good thing for society, to have a large number of people, in fact the more people as possible, who could be trained and educated to increase our productivity and to make it a better place to live, to be better participants in the Government, and simply to raise the quality and standard of life for each individual. So we created a public higher education system, and most States started with a State college and university system and community college system, and that works basically through a fee system also. But then we started to decide, as the economy got tougher, that we had to find other ways to encourage people and enable them to get their families and children on to college. That is the Pell Grant Program that you started, that you did not start but that you enhanced. But the basic Pell grant was an effort to give the children and families the opportunity to get that entry into college and to go. As school became more and more expensive and there were not enough public college slots for people, we also tried to help people get into those institutions through scholarships and loans. Now the situation in front of the Subcommittee on Higher Education will be to look and see how, if at all, we can constrain the rising costs that are rising disproportionate to other rising costs, and how we can further enable families to make sure that their children get the opportunity. Because, in essence, we are helping our businesses and we are helping everybody in society.

Mr. TIERNEY. If the gentleman will yield further, I think that we are going to find that education is not an issue that is going to go away with the American public. I think that the polling that my colleague referenced that was done for the Republican party is going to have to move beyond linguistics, going to have to move beyond the idea of semantics as to what language to use. We are going to have to move in the direction of doing something substantive. Vouchers, where you run away from the public school system, where you try to abandon it and take a few people with you on the way out, it clearly is not going to work on its face. It does not seem to make sense or reason. What we need to do is work within the public school system to improve them so that there is equal opportunity for every family and every child to go on. When we do that at the secondary level and at the elementary level, then we will also be improving the people that go into our college level and we will be able to move forward in that direction.

Mr. TIERNEY. If I can interject for a second, all of the business community in my area is very, very focused on having the product of our public school system and our private school systems get up to a level where they can hire these people and put them to work and do the fine- tune finish training for their particular product or service. But all of them expect that the school system, through the elementary and secondary level, is going to prepare these people either for a community college or college and/or work, so that they can come in and contribute and make us a productive society and make those businesses be able to perform. In my area of Massachusetts, which the gentleman also represents a part of, we are going to need millions of jobs in the next decade. Somebody has to fill them. All these jobs will require a lot more in terms of skill and education than we have known in the past, and businesses understand that. That is why they support the school-to-work program. That is why they generally get involved in each one of these local efforts to try to make sure these schools have higher standards and the students have the bar lifted for them to meet. One of the more inane exercises around here in the last few days was the Republicans arguing against testing on a national level and saying they do not want it, and then arguing, in fact, they want the States to set the standards, in the same breath fighting against Goals 2000, which in fact provides resources so that States can do just that, establish achievement standards and have their students meet those levels. So a lot of times we get into the rhetoric of the debate. It is more about politics. It is more about trying to establish who wants bureaucracy in government versus who wants to bring the money to the classroom, and it gets obstructed that way. One of the debates before the amendment was withdrawn, an amendment that sought to block grant all the programs and throw them down to the State, talked about wanting to take government bureaucracy out. The fact of the matter was that under the block grant up to 15 percent of the money could be spent on State bureaucracy to implement the programs, whereas if they were left alone, virtually every one of the programs required that 90 percent, usually 95 percent of the money get to the student and not be absorbed through bureaucracy or administration. It also implies the fact that some administration is necessary. There is no program that is going to work by going out and handing a check to a kid in the 5th grade. The fact of the matter is that somebody has to construct a program and make sure that it works and that that child deserves and gets the benefits of it. So to bring the debate to that level and to try to make it that clear is to sort of distract the issue when we try to work on that basis. I think we have to get back down to sensible discussions about what works and what does not. And that is fine. We can disagree on that and have the debate on that level.

Mr. TIERNEY

Mr. TIERNEY. Mr. Speaker, I rise this afternoon just to speak briefly on the issue of campaign finance reform. As the Speaker knows, we have had very little opportunity for deliberation and debate of this issue in the current Congress, over the objections of a fair number of people who really believe strongly that the American people deserve and in fact are requesting that Congress deal with this matter. One of the bills that has been presented of the many bills that are before this Congress that could be debated and deliberated and voted upon this session, if the Republican leadership so desired, is the clean money, clean elections bill which I was proud to sponsor, H.R. 2199. I would like to take a little bit of this time to explain some of the concepts in this bill so people will understand just what one of the proposals is that could be dealt with in this particular session. The clean money, clean elections bill would have a privately funded candidate, if so desired, and a publicly funded candidate. That would be the option. If you are a clean money candidate, or the publicly funded candidate, then the campaign would start six months before your primary date. That is when the effort would begin. Anything before then would only be an opportunity to collect seed money, so-to-speak, just $35,000 or less in contributions of $100 or less to fund the operation of an office and a campaign staff to help you get your grassroots organization to get together. There would be no money involved in that small seed amount for TV or radio or other advertising. From that period of six months prior to the primary date onward up until the thirtieth day before the election, one month before the election, candidates would seek to qualify these public funded candidates by collecting a set number of $5 contributions from individual residents of the state. Once that amount was received and you were qualified for the primary, if in fact you won the primary, you would be qualified for the final. The total amount you could receive as a clean money candidate for the primary and the general election would be 80 percent of the national average of campaign expenditures by all winning House candidates for the previous three election cycles. That amount would be limited and set. In addition, if you opted to be a publicly funded candidate, you would receive TV and radio time free, and that would be compensation to the broadcast companies for the spectrum that they already receive from the American public. This should be a strong incentive for people to forego the private money chase, to become a member of this system of clean money financing. Soft money would be prohibited. And, yes, if you elect to have private funding, you can certainly go about and raise as much as you want, but there are strong disincentives for you not to do that. Issues campaigns run for a private money candidate against a clean money candidate would count toward the private money candidate's sum. If they surpassed the limits allowed in the campaign, the clean money candidate would get offsetting moneys, so that this would always be an evenly balanced campaign. The five objectives that are basically addressed in this particular bill, Mr. Speaker, are as follows: It would eliminate any perceived and real conflicts of interest caused by the direct financing of campaigns by private interests; it would limit campaign spending by requiring that candidates who choose to participate in the clean money system spend no more money than the fixed amount of funding that they receive; it allows qualified individuals to run for office, regardless of their economic status or their access to large contributors; it frees candidates and elected officials from the burden of the continuous money chase; last, it would shorten the effective length of campaigns by defining the point at which candidates receive clean money financing to pay for campaign expenditures. Mr. Speaker, this bill creates a voluntary system. Candidates may choose to rely upon private financing, though the system provides strong incentives not to do that. For candidates, it also gets rid of the system of disfavored soft money. It creates a level playing field. There would be no unilateral disarming of any party. In effect, Mr. Speaker, I find that is generally the complaint of one side of this House or another, that many of the campaign finance bills would disarm unilaterally one faction against the other. That is not the case with this bill. It sets an even, level playing field, so the candidate with the message, with the ability to organize, get their message out, put together a strong grassroots campaign, would be the candidate that would get the voters' attention. It is, I think, Mr. Speaker, a fact that best organized candidates would prevail, and voters would in fact prevail. They would own back their own electoral process and they would once again have faith and the system would have credibility. Mr. Speaker, I put that out there as one of the options that are available for people as they wonder why it is that this House under the Republican leadership has not dealt with the issue of campaign finance reform. I say there are a number of other credible bills up for consideration that deserve a chance to be debated, deserve the deliberation of this great body, and deserve to come to a vote in a meaningful way. I would urge the Republican leadership to put this matter on the floor of the House before we go home for recess this fall, and I hope that other Members who have presented their bills will take the opportunity to address to the public the substance of their bills so that we can in some fashion have a debate that I think is much deserved and long overdue.

Mr. TIERNEY

Mr. TIERNEY. Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to this ill-advised suggestion.

Mr. TIERNEY

Mr. TIERNEY. Mr. Speaker, I rise also to talk about the fact that underlying all of the expenditures and the considerations for expenditures is the issue of how we do our business, and whether or not we do it in a credible fashion. I take some issue with the previous speaker indicating that the voters in his district perhaps are not interested in having us debate campaign finance reform, and instead want to know more what is happening in the investigatory sense. We have two committees, one in the House and one in the Senate, that are supposedly investigating past practices. Unfortunately, the one in the House is spending a lot of time doing depositions that, I might add, seem to be unfocused, accomplishing very little; in fact, I understand again today have postponed certain hearings with regard to that. But people in the country are worried about what we are going to do about future practices. They are worried about both parties and the way their fund-raising enterprises have been conducted, and whether or not the perception is that there is any honesty in government, and whether or not the actions we take are credible. There is a perception that the amount of money that is injected into politics at all levels, but particularly the national level, have a bad effect, an ill effect, on our governing. The fact of the matter is that once again it seems that States and cities are taking the lead in a lot of what should be national or Federal policy initiatives. They are driving national policy. When it comes to talking about sanctions for South Africa, or it comes to talking about what is going on in Burma, it has been States and local communities that have taken the lead in trying to make sure that something happens there. When it comes to talking about minimum wages, it is the States and local communities that have taken the risk of raising the minimum wage for workers in their communities. The fact of the matter is that a number of States have moved forward on campaign finance reform. In Vermont we saw the legislature there pass a campaign finance reform initiative. In the State of Maine people went to the ballot and by almost 60 percent got behind a campaign finance reform initiative. In Ohio there has been a cutback in the large contributions and stiffened disclosure rules; in New Hampshire, stiffer disclosure rules; in New York, computerized disclosure rules. In State after State, in Oregon and Idaho, New Mexico, Georgia, North Carolina, citizens' groups have gone to the fore and led the charge. We should not have to stay here in Congress and wait once again for local citizen groups, local communities, and States to lead the charge on what is, in fact, a national issue of importance to people. As well as knowing what might have gone wrong in the past, they insist that this body look forward to see what we are going to do with our own campaign finance practices. At a bare minimum we ought to be looking at doing something about soft money. There are few, if any, people in the American public who doubt that that is at least one issue that we can resolve here and we can deal with in this session. My suggestion is that if there are, in fact, 85 initiatives there, they ought to be assigned to committees, we ought to be debating those, we ought to be moving some of those to this floor, so the American people will not think that the only deliberative body in this entire country that seems unwilling to address the matter is the body that should be doing something first and foremost, this Congress.

Mr. TIERNEY

Mr. TIERNEY. Mr. Speaker, I object to the vote on the ground that a quorum is not present and make the point of order that a quorum is not present.

Mr. TIERNEY. Mr. Speaker, pursuant to clause 1, rule I, I demand a vote on agreeing to the Chair's approval of the Journal.

Mr. TIERNEY

Mr. TIERNEY. Mr. Speaker, I rise this morning just to speak briefly about campaign finance reform and the need for this House to address that issue before we go home this fall. Mr. Speaker, whatever business we do in this House requires that the American people have some faith and confidence in what we do and what action we take. Credibility is something that is lacking as long as the American public senses that we do not have the will to address the issue that is foremost on their minds, underlying all of the other issues which we will debate and are to debate, and that is whether or not we can do away with the perception that money, soft money or hard money, has way too much influence in the way that business is conducted in this House. Mr. Speaker, the Republicans want to say that this is the responsibility of somebody else, but I tell my colleagues that it was Democrats in the 105th, 102d, and 103d Congresses that brought this issue to the forefront. It was President Bush that vetoed campaign finance reform when it passed, and it was the Senate, led by the Republicans, that stopped it. Mr. Speaker, there are some Republicans in the House that now want to move forward on this issue. But if they had the majority on their side, and the Republicans are the majority, we would be moving forward on that issue. So, Mr. Speaker, the responsibility lies with the Republican side of the House to join with the Democrats and deal with the issue of campaign finance reform.

Mr. TIERNEY

Mr. TIERNEY. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. Mr. Chairman, I have to say that I am shocked, shocked to hear that all this time we thought that many Members on that side of the table were anti-education when they tried to do away with the Department of Education, never stood up for preventative actions for the criminal justice system before, for juveniles or for anyone else. All of a sudden they have this heartfelt concern for many, many programs that have been fought on that side of the aisle, particularly by that element of the group repeatedly. I am on the Committee on Education and the Workforce, Mr. Chairman. Believe me, I did not hear any cry for vocational education, asking for more funding at the committee level. In fact, they wanted to zero it out at the committee level. But here we are with an opportunity for them to attack a program that they do not like, and all of a sudden they want vocational education. If you were sitting in the Committee on the Judiciary, you probably would not hear much from them about preventative programs for juveniles, but here we are with an ability for them to attack a program they do not like and all of a sudden they have a newfound fervor for that. I suggest, Mr. Chairman, if we had sat around for their planning session, what we would have heard is this is an area of Goals 2000 we are going to attack and do it by making some sort of a problem for people by pitting that money against cuts or increases in another area that people feel very strongly about also. They want to be less than disingenuous. If they wanted to be actual and straightforward about it, they would just move to cut the budget. Point of Order

Mr. TIERNEY. Mr. Chairman, I proceed because I think it is important for the people to know that if it is Goals 2000 about which they want to have the debate, let us have it straightforward on that particular program. This is a program that President Bush put forward with the cooperation of Governors across this Nation, including a then Governor who is now President of the United States. It is a program that virtually every major business group supported, every major educational group supported, people by and large in this country supported because it was not national standards, it was an opportunity to combine Federal resources with local and State resources to establish standards to raise the bar for students across this country, to give them goals to achieve. That is what we ought to be doing. Then we have to assess where they are. But we need teacher development. Goals 2000 provides the tools to do that. We need to have assessment, and the local communities can do that with the help they get from Goals 2000. We need to have parental involvement, and some communities have taken Goals 2000 grants and done just that, increased parental involvement. These are the programs that we put forward repeatedly, programs that help the public schools in this country improve the ability of the children to learn and give them a chance in this life. If you do not like Goals 2000, take a straight vote on whether or not to cut that program. But do not try to be disingenuous, do not try and pit one program against another when you have lost the initial debate on policy. Come straight to the people of this country, have the debate, have the vote and then let the House get on with its business. I commend the chairman and I commend the ranking member for the hard work that they have done in reaching a compromise on a bill that helps to educate children in this country in what has been by and large historically a nonpartisan venture, the education in the public schools of the children of this country. I ask that we return to that agenda and stop what is going on here.

Mr. TIERNEY. Mr. Chairman, I thank the distinguished ranking member for yielding me this time and again congratulate him and the gentleman from Illinois for working out this bill and this particular provision within the bill. Let me say that I think that many of us have long ago gotten the idea that now certain Members on the other side are finally catching on to, is that nobody is trying to do anything except find a way to educate our children. We are not trying to have the Federal Government try to do it. We are trying to provide the resources so that communities can do it. This is about opportunity, the opportunity that exists within our public schools so that we can take the responsibility. People in the community, whether it is the business community, the colleges surrounding public education institutions, the teachers, whether they belong to unions, the administration and parents, to seize the responsibility to come together and do something that we all want to do. I do not care personally whether we call it a charter school or whether we call it a whole school, whether we call it comprehensive school reform, whatever the semantics may be. The idea is that we are actually trying to get to the point that we can take a blank educational canvas and work together to develop the foundation for a school system, a public school system that is the one that we want. This is happening in Salem, MA at a school called the Saltonstall School, and people often mistake it for a whole school or a charter school because it has all of those elements. The point I want to make is that it is a public school. We did not make that school better by creating a separate institution and a separate structure somewhere else and dividing the money and resources taking it out of the public school system and setting it aside. We did it by investing and providing resources so that that community at the local level in Salem could use the resources of Salem State College, the business community around Salem, the teachers from the teachers union sitting down and negotiating how they were going to go extra hours during the day and a longer period. It is the first public school in New England to be a year-round institution. It is working. They got together, they decided on a mission and they put it in writing. Whether you want to call it a charter or just call it an assessment or a standard, whatever it is, they put it in writing. Now they shoot for it. They decided what the mission of that school is going to be, and it happens to be math and science. They got parents involved, 140 volunteers every week in that school helping to work together. They decided how they were going to move forward as a group and as a community and they have done that. They have set those standards and they measure them year by year to see how they are doing against that. It is working. Achievement levels are increasing rapidly. People in the middle school look forward to seeing these children come out of the Saltonstall School in fifth grade and come into the sixth grade because they know they are going to be ready. When you visit the school, the children are excited about learning. Their parents are excited about participating in the process, and the community knows that it has a good model there. When you go to somebody like Kathleen Corley, the principal of that school, who has had a tremendous amount of impact on the community by working with all those folks, and you ask what is the one reason why the city of Salem and other communities do not have public schools of the nature and quality of the Saltonstall School, her answer would be resources. That is what we are able to do with this Federal program, provide the resources so that the local community can seize the public school opportunity, take the responsibility to work as a community and make the concept work, to raise the bar and raise the standard and provide the means for these students to have the opportunity. This program, $200 million, will give us the chance to broaden out what has already been shown to be successful in about 1,200 schools throughout this country and show everybody that this is the way to provide good, equal educational opportunity for the students in this country. It is through the public school system, it is not by walking away from them. It is by recognizing what works, celebrating what works, giving it the resources to be duplicated and making sure that we have the best educational infrastructure as an investment in our future.

Mr. TIERNEY

Mr. TIERNEY. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman would continue to yield, the fact of the matter is that the citizenry of Maine voted in big numbers for that particular concept. In Vermont, the legislature voted for a similar concept. In 12 different States throughout the United States, even conservatively perceived States like Arizona, have voted in overwhelming numbers to show support for this concept. But, Mr. Speaker, I am afraid that while we are down here debating incremental approaches, what is going to happen is that several more States are going to have the people speak up. It is a grassroots effort. There are people out there that are fed up with the current system, and the people down here are going to try to run to the front to get out there and lead. It is our job. We should not wait for opinion polls. It is our job to perceive what it is that the public needs and to get out front there. I think this bill gives us a chance to do that. I think your bill gives us a chance to start in that direction. I think that Mr. Gingrich, the Speaker, the others on the other side, are not living up to the responsibility and the promises to the American people and the President to get this issue before us before we go home for recess.

Mr. TIERNEY. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Massachusetts for setting up this opportunity to speak on this issue tonight. We are hoping that those who are watching are going to be able to hear a message that we are unable to bring to the floor, because, to be partisan for a minute frankly, the Republican Party that does set the agenda in this House has decided not to have this issue come to the floor. I listen to everybody talk all day long about bipartisanship. Frankly, I say to the gentleman from Maine, I think he knows my feelings on the matter, I am not a big supporter of bipartisanship, I am an advocate of partisanship, but with a lot of civility, where we clearly establish what our positions are so the public is aware of what the choices are; and in a civil manner we have discourse, we deliberate, we debate, and we vote. And everybody has, hopefully, respect for each other, and that is how we live with the result of that vote and go on. Unfortunately, I think there has been another path taken by this particular majority, some of whom in the Republican party are clearly with us on the issue of campaign finance reform; they want to debate it and they want to discuss it and vote on it. But the majority over there would not have the ability to bring forward the prospect of having this issue debated and voted upon, and they cannot get those numbers together. I clearly relate to the gentleman that the Democratic caucus has decided that, as a group, Democrats are in favor of campaign finance reform. We are very desirous of having the matter debated, having the deliberation in front of the public, talking about what might be right or wrong with a particular bill, and then moving forward on that. I am told over and over again that the public opinion polls do not support it, a public desire for campaign finance reform. I think the gentleman knows as well as I do that, frankly, what it is. If you ask the question, what issues are most on your mind, people may well say, education; they may say health care, other issues which may not get the attention that they deserve, but get some attention at least in this House. But if you ask the question, what really undermines the credibility of any action taken by Congress, whether it be on health care, whether it be on taxes, whether it be on education, people will say, we do not believe that decisions are made independently. We think large amounts of money go into the people that run our Government, and somehow they have an effect; and it has a sort of corruptive influence, or at least perception, on the work we do down here. The gentleman and I both know people are down here working very hard and that the system is such that you cannot win a seat here unless you can get your message out, get your visibility up, get people to know who you are and what you stand for. So I have a challenge for the public. Basically, we all rely on them, so we need not to try to get anybody upset, but I have a challenge for the public. If they want to get rid of the corrupting influence, or perception, of money, then we have to decide how we are going to do that; and I favor comprehensive campaign finance reform. Frankly, as much as I applaud the gentleman's efforts, and I think they have been wonderful and I think we may end up standing behind the gentleman's effort, because I have told the gentleman over and over again, those who believe we have to move forward on this issue will not stand behind a bill we file or cosponsor as a defense to not voting for anything or having nothing at all passed. We will be open-minded and we will try to move forward in the area of reform. But I am strictly an advocate of comprehensive campaign finance reform, because I do not believe in unilateral disarmament. I think that is what stops bills from passing here. Incremental bills are always subject to the attack that they leave somebody with more weaponry in the campaign battles than somebody else, whether they take PAC money and somebody feels that working people, environmental groups, and groups like that may have more of an influence, if that is left but soft money is taken away, or whether they attack business PAC's and soft money and feel hard money is left, there is always a feeling in less than comprehensive reform that somebody is left on the short end. So I put forward the bill, H.R. 2199, that talks about what folks in Maine did. It talks about public financing of campaigns. It talks about the public stepping forward and saying, we are upset about the influence of money, soft money or hard money, that we have to do something about it. When businesses want to hire people to go down and do their business, they make an investment. They invest a reasonable amount of their money as a business in defining the best people, going out and getting them, interviewing them and hiring them. For less than 1 percent of the smallest estimate of what this Congress produces and what we now call corporate welfare, we could fund congressional elections with public financing with the option of candidates to get public funding. Those that still want to go to private funding could go to private funding, but there would be certain carrots and sticks. Publicly funded candidates would have a limit, because the public clearly wants a limit on the amount of money that we spend campaigning. And by virtue of when the money is disbursed, we would have a limit on the length of the campaign, because the public clearly wants an end sometime to the last campaign and some time to govern before the next campaign begins. The public wants to know that people in office will not be on the phone or at fundraisers day in and day out instead of on the government's business. So once somebody decided to get publicly funded in a campaign, they would get a limited amount and they could raise no other money, hard or soft, because many people have a hard time believing that the person who gives $1,000, $2,000, $3,000, $4,000 is without influence any more than the person who gives $25 or $50 in soft money. So, frankly, that is the direction that I think we have to move in. We have to have free air time for those people that adopt public financing to get the message out. The people that want to stay and be private candidates would not have that free air time. But if they overspent the limit of the publicly funded candidate, the publicly funded candidate would get matching funds. That is the disincentive in order to have them not be private candidates. It is the incentive to bring everybody into the one package that gets the public to have credibility for its candidates and office holders. It lets them say we have bought back our Government. We own this enterprise now. We do not have to worry about foreign money influence. We do not have to worry about hard money or soft money or large contributors or small contributors. We do not have to worry about the pervasive attitude that we do not have an open government here that has credibility. So, Mr. Speaker, I suggest that we push out on comprehensive finance reform. I understand that we may, if anything, get the freshman bill, which is a good bill, and the gentleman understands the compromises that we made there to get something that we hope would pass. But, frankly, if we do not bring pressure on this body, we are not going to get anything at all. The reason we are here tonight is because somebody has to have a vehicle to get the message to the American people. The Democrats are on record as wanting campaign reform. We have a dozen or so proposals. We would like to debate and deliberate them and get the best final proposal together and bring it to a vote in this body. But even though there may be some Members on the Republican side that do want to come forward for campaign finance reform, the majority over there do not. The public has to know that is why this issue is not being heard on the floor. That is why it is not being voted on. That is why the public business is not being done in campaign finance reform. Mr. Speaker, we have to keep this up and I commend the gentleman from Maine [Mr. Allen] for giving us this opportunity and everybody for participating in it at this hour of night, hoping to convince people that this has to be done. We are doing our best to see that it is.

Mr. TIERNEY

Mr. TIERNEY. Mr. Speaker, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. TIERNEY

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

Mr. TIERNEY. Mr. Chairman, if the gentleman would continue to yield, does he understand that it is $1 per child?

Mr. TIERNEY. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words.

Mr. TIERNEY. I yield to the gentleman from Wisconsin. Mr. Chairman, I would like to yield to the gentleman from Wisconsin [Mr. Obey.]

Mr. TIERNEY. I yield to the gentleman from California.

Mr. TIERNEY. Mr. Chairman, reclaiming my time, I just want to start by saying when I listen to Members rise and talk about their personal experiences with members in their family who might be disabled or handicapped, if we took a survey of the 435 Members here, I would think we would be hard-pressed to find anyone who does not have some experience, either in their family or someone very close to them, in that situation. Maybe that is why, because all of America feels that passion and compassion, that we have an IDEA Program. I think that we ought to stop and move away from that for a second and look at this bill and stop accusing one another, and say that if IDEA is in fact supported by all of us, then the opportunity to put more money into that program was there in the committee and the majority did not take it. It was there in the subcommittee and the majority did not take it. It was here on the floor, and rather than taking it on a clear vote of just going and putting more money into IDEA, we get to the root of what I suspect is really at heart here, and that is something that they oppose very much, the enforcement of wages and working conditions in America. If that is the case, do not connect them. If you do not want to be in a position of trying to say that you do not care about disabled and handicapped children or people, then do not connect the two issues and do not cynically use one and pit it against the other. Come clean. You have a problem. You lost on that policy issue, obviously, when it was up for a clear vote. The majority, comprised of people on your side of the aisle and this side of the aisle, support enforcement of wage provisions. If you want to cut that, go directly at it and let us have a vote straight up. Do not do what I think is a very cynical effort, contrast it against IDEA and programs like that, when you had the chance to pump up those programs and you walked away. I think we ought to just be more cautious about the way we move in this area and not have stories about people's hardships. We all have them. Deal with it directly. If you want to vote on IDEA, put it up and vote one way or the other. If you want to vote on the policy of wage enforcement, do that and that is the way we go. I think now we are into this philosophical realm. For the next day or so we are going to hear about everybody trying to retract where their philosophy is and try to do it through the back door by pitting programs against one another and try to get back ground that your segment of the party over there apparently has already lost and is trying to reclaim.

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

Mr. TIERNEY. Mr. Chairman, reclaiming my time, that is totally inappropriate and far from the situation. As I said, your grandmother over here is not unlike a number of other Members here, and we are not impugning her integrity or her compassion for that person. We are saying, why was she not there in the subcommittee and the committee looking for more money? Where were you? Where were you when you dealt with IDEA? Where are you when it comes to the point in time when you want to attack working people in this country, some of whom have disabled children, some of whom cannot get things enforced so they can bring home a decent paycheck, some of those people who work every day and should have an enforcement mechanism there to make sure that their conditions are better? We have a country that is divided by huge gaps in wages, in wealth, and you want to attack them and you use this cynical method to do it.

Mr. TIERNEY. Mr. Chairman, I would ask the gentleman from Maryland [Mr. Gilchrest] if he knows how much the increased amount contained in the amendment of the gentleman from Indiana [Mr. McIntosh] would affect those children in his district?

Mr. TIERNEY

Mr. TIERNEY. To the gentleman from Arizona, I just address one point that he made about the fact that these were specific programs that had to be identically followed. I mention the words, as my colleagues know, of a school in Salem, MA, which is in fact, a whole school concept. With the help of Salem State College, the community got together, teachers got together, parents came on board, they developed a curriculum, they developed a mission, they have a school that goes an hour longer every day, goes all year around, is successful and has 145 volunteers a week.