Heather Wilson

Mrs. WILSON

Mrs. WILSON. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mrs. WILSON. Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mrs. WILSON. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, I would just add two things to my support of this amendment. The gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Obey) is correct that this does have an offset, which is required in order for an amendment to be in order on the floor. But that offset only reduces the general accounts, salaries and benefits accounts, of the OSHA administration by about 5 percent. I am one of those who believes in safety in the workplace. But I also do not believe that we can inspect Quality Inn. And I think there is a distinct approach that is possible with respect to occupational safety and health and that this really is a rather modest reduction with respect to OSHA. But with respect to his other point about 100,000 teachers to the classroom, we may have differences about how to administer funds, but I think we need to be fair that we are not talking about whether to increase funds for education. I actually fully expect to support additional increases in funds for education, and that is why I got into public life is because of a concern about public education. But I have to say I would rather that those decisions be made by somebody who knows my son's name, and I would rather that my local school district have the authority to decide whether we are going to go to full-day kindergarten or whether we are going to have smaller kindergarten classes and be able to make those decisions even school by school, classroom by classroom. That is the distinction between the sides of the aisle here. I can support a lot greater increases in funds for education. I just want to make sure that the quality is there and that the accountability is there and that the decisions are made at a local level. I ask for my colleagues' support for this critical teacher-training amendment.

Mrs. WILSON. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, the amendment that I have at the desk and that I am offering today launches a G.I. bill for teachers. I recognize that some may oppose this amendment today for procedural reasons and others for ideological reasons, but I believe it is very important for this country to lower our voices and to raise our sights with respect to public education and to embrace the greatest challenge that we face in the 21st century. And I believe that that is public education. I want to commend the chairman and the ranking member for bringing forward a bill that does increase funds for education. While I realize that there are still disagreements on details and on programs, this bill does include an almost 10 percent increase in education in the bill, and I support additional increases as we go on. But I do not think that we can do things the same old way and expect different results. We know that we are going to have a shortage in this country of 2 million teachers that we will need to hirer over the next decade. I believe we need to get the best and the brightest we possibly can and get them, train them, and put them in the classroom. I would like to start this year. I introduced a bill earlier this year which I call the GI Bill for Teachers. It is much larger than the amendment that I am offering today, but I would like to get a start. The amendment that I am offering today would take $25 million to start this GI Bill for Teachers. It would provide scholarships of $10,000 a year for full-time students, $5,000 a year for part-time students. Students who would be eligible include high school graduates, as well as certified teachers; and those scholarships would be available for up to 5 years for each student. The idea is that teachers would give back 2 years in the classroom for every year that they are on full-time scholarship, or 1 year given back in service for every year that they are in a turnaround school, a school that has been identified by the State as one that needs to improve its performance for its students. The scholarship program gives the money to the States based on student population, and it has the States set up selection boards and those selections would be based on merit. It also allows States to set up up to 35 percent of the value of the scholarship to recruit teachers into critical-shortage areas so States like my own that are short of bilingual teachers or short of secondary school teachers in mathematics and science could set that as a special area of concern and try to recruit young people who are the best and the brightest to teach in those areas. This is only a beginning. It would create 2,500 scholarships for young people who are committed to the profession of teaching or even for teaching assistants who want to go back to school and get that degree to become a teacher in the classroom. I believe we have much work to be done over the next decades to improve America's public schools, and I am very happy to be part of initiating a program like this to get started. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mrs. WILSON

Mrs. WILSON. Mr. Speaker, today I would like to bring to your attention Dick Knipfing, a man who has faithfully served New Mexicans for 36 years. He has served our state as a news anchor on all three of our largest local channels and has dedicated his life to informing his viewers on issues important to New Mexico. He is known and respected in New Mexico as a real ``pro'' who knows more about New Mexico history, politics and policy than most of the people he covers every day. In 1996, he was inducted into the Silver Circle Society, which is one of the more prestigious honors in his field. In the late eighties, he was elected by his peers as one of the ``Best in the Business'' and listed in the ``Washington Journal Review.'' To many New Mexicans, Dick is the one they rely on to give them the straight story, every night. ``Dick always believed that news is a service, not a product,'' said former coworker and reporter Janet Blair. Indeed, Mr. Knipfing's dedication to serving the public will be solely missed. We wish him the best in all future endeavors. He will always have a place in the hearts of New Mexicans for his integrity, his commitment to children and families, and his love of New Mexico. Mr. Speaker, television news has changed a lot in the last 36 years. It's a 24-hour a day, multi-channel business where, in some places, form is more important than substance. Dick Knipfing has always been a man of substance giving New Mexicans the truth with integrity. He will be missed. Please join me in honoring and thanking Mr. Dick Knipfing, New Mexico's anchorman, for all he has done.

Mrs. WILSON

Mrs. WILSON. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word. Mr. Chairman, there is something that I think we are forgetting in this debate and that is that every Member of Congress can go up to the Select Committee on Intelligence room and see the entire content of the intelligence authorization bill. There is nothing that is kept from us as elected representatives, but there are things that are kept in every detail from our opponents and our potential enemies. That puts the responsibility on a small number of shoulders, and most of them are sitting in this room here now, the members of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. It is our job to review the budgets and the sources and the methods and to provide oversight of all of the intelligence agencies, and we have to do this job in a way that is kind of uncommon for politicians. We have to do it quietly, without a lot of public hooha, in a closed room where the press is not there. Most of us are used to putting out press releases on everything and arguing about things in the media, but we do not have that privilege on this committee, and we should not, because this is a matter of national security. Declassifying the intelligence budget, whether as an overall number, or in smaller pieces, only helps our enemies to track trends in our spending and figure out what we are doing. My colleague from Indiana talks about books that have been published or articles that have been written, and none of us on this committee ever confirm or deny or say anything about what is right and what is wrong; and he well knows that a lot of it is complete wildness. But we do not comment on it, because it is our job not to. The problem with declassifying the whole number is that one cannot talk about the details, so it makes no sense in context with other parts of the budget. We cannot explain it, we cannot defend it, we cannot talk about the details and what it means and what we are buying; but we can refer our colleagues up to the intelligence room to look at those details, even though we cannot talk about it publicly. Even the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Moran) seemed to find it difficult to talk about comparisons here on the floor because this is a public forum. We would have that difficulty again and again and again if we try to justify a declassified total number without being able to talk about the specifics that make it up. I am also concerned that there are no exceptions in this amendment for time of war or national emergencies, and we are directing the President and the CIA to declassify numbers that, frankly, they already have the authority to do without direction of this Congress; and it concerns me when, as elected representatives, we tell the executive branch to declassify things and get proscriptive about how exactly that should be done. It is my view that that generally should be left up to the executive branch of government. Sometimes I think that we get a little bit complacent. The Cold War is over. We are all focused on things at home, on Social Security and taxes and education, and things that our constituents are facing every day. But just because the Cold War is over does not mean that there are not people out there that would take advantage of the United States and whose interests are contrary to our own, and I am ever mindful of what Churchill once said. The truth must be protected by a bodyguard of lies, and it is sometimes in the interests of the United States of America to deceive our enemies about what we are actually doing in order to protect our national security. My colleague from Indiana talks about one ray of sunshine. I see it a little differently. I think it is one piece of a puzzle, a piece of a puzzle that our enemies would very much like to have, and which I think is the obligation of this body to deny them.

Mrs. WILSON. Mr. Chairman, that really was not my point. My point was that there are times when we as elected representatives have to take on and shoulder tremendous responsibility, and that responsibility may include access to information that we cannot share with our constituents. That is the responsibility we have been given as members of this committee, and it is one that I think that we should continue, including this one piece of information.

Mrs. WILSON. I yield to the gentleman from Indiana.

Mrs. WILSON

Mrs. WILSON. The question is, where do we go from here? FEMA is doing everything they can, like they do in floods and tornadoes and other disasters, in bringing assistance to the people of New Mexico, but the reality is that the Federal Government started this fire. I am not a lawyer, I do not do liability, but there is responsibility, and the Federal Government must stand up and take responsibility for the actions and the consequences of those actions. On the night of May 4, the National Weather Service told the Park Service that there were potential blow-out conditions and that any controlled fire might not be controlled. They lit the fire anyway. This resolution before the House today commends the people of New Mexico and those surrounding States that have helped New Mexico deal with this disaster, and it takes responsibility on the part of the Federal Government for this disaster. We will begin to rebuild Los Alamos, but it will be with the help and assistance of the Federal Government, which must take responsibility for the actions that it took.

Mrs. WILSON. Mr. Speaker, it has been a very difficult week in New Mexico. My colleague, the gentleman from New Mexico (Mr. Udall), is not here. He is still in northern New Mexico. As so many New Mexicans have in the past week, we are pitching in together and holding up our end of the stick. We wanted to move forward with this resolution today, not only to recognize those who have served and are still serving in the great State of New Mexico fighting the fires, but to begin to rebuild and look to the future, and for the Federal government and for this Congress to stand up and take responsibility for a fire that was started by the Federal government. Mr. Speaker, the sense of the Congress that my colleagues will have an opportunity to vote on today recognizes a tragedy and a disaster in the State of New Mexico that I would like to talk about a little bit, because its origins will affect this Congress and how it appropriates funds this year. Let me talk first a little bit about what happened. On May 4, it seems like a long, long time ago right now, the National Park Service set a prescribed burn which was supposed to be a controlled burn in the Bandelier National Forest, which is down here. This is the area of the fire as of last night. The red area is that part of New Mexico that has been devastated by fire. Here is the Baca ranch, we are in the process of trying to purchase that for the Federal government. This is Bandelier National Monument, the Santa Clara Indian Reservation here, 10 percent of which has been burned, and the fire is now dangerously close to the cliff dwellings. Here in the middle is the town of Los Alamos and Los Alamos National Laboratories. Los Alamos is a city built on mesas. It was a closed city for many years, put out in the middle of northern New Mexico where nobody would be likely to find its secrets. On May 4, the National Park Service started a prescribed burn over here. That fire quickly became out of control, and while the Department of the Interior is conducting an administrative investigation as to whether their procedures were followed, the National Park Service has acknowledged that they started the fire, that they started it in very dry conditions, and it quickly got out of control. By Sunday night, I got a phone call from my former legislative director who went back to New Mexico to work there just 8 months ago, and he moved to Los Alamos. His house is in the western part of Los Alamos here. He was supposed to meet with me on Monday morning. He called and said, they are evacuating our neighborhood. I am not going to be able to be at the meeting on Monday. He got what he could in his pick-up truck and got his dog and headed down to White Rock, where his parents live. White Rock is this little community down here. For about 48 hours it looked as though they had things mostly under control or at least contained, and the fire had not crossed State Route 4, which they were kind of using as a fire line. But on Wednesday, last Wednesday, we got the call here that the fire had jumped the road, that the winds were gusting to 40 and 50 and 60 miles an hour, that the humidity was 10 percent, and that as sparks dropped, 9 out of 10 sparks were starting new fires. The plume of smoke stretched all the way across northern New Mexico and into Texas and Oklahoma on high winds. Immediately they began the evacuation of the town of Los Alamos and of Los Alamos National Laboratories. Los Alamos is the birthplace of the atomic bomb. It is a place that still has nuclear materials, and there was a real concern on the part of the residents of New Mexico about environmental safety and health if a raging forest fire crossed Los Alamos National Laboratories. The laboratory I believe was well prepared, and the Department of Energy responded, as did the Environmental Protection Agency and numerous agencies, to monitor and make sure that all the plans were in place and executed well to protect the people of New Mexico and even surrounding States. But they could not fight the fire. The wind was too strong. By 1 a.m. on Thursday, they began to evacuate the town of White Rock. The fire had spread down Pajarito Canyon, and they were fighting to keep it from reaching the town of White Rock and reaching a number of technical areas that contained nuclear material. So by Thursday at breakfast time, 20,000 New Mexicans had been evacuated from their homes. The winds were still high. There was no water pressure in Los Alamos. But the Los Alamos police department stayed in place. Throughout that terrible night of Wednesday night when 260 homes burned, the Los Alamos police department and the fire- fighting teams from across the American west saved everything that they could. Last night, I was up in Espanola, which is a town near here and Pojoaque, which is just down the hill, and they did re-open 80 percent of Los Alamos, everything but the areas that were burned. But the fire is still only 35 percent contained, and the winds today are expected to gust up to 30 or 40 miles per hour or even higher again. But now the biggest part of the fire is up here, burning the Santa Clara Indian Reservation and the Santa Clara Canyon, which is sacred to the Santa Clara Pueblo. In this country, we are used to dealing with disasters with floods along the Mississippi or hurricanes along the Gulf Coast or earthquakes in California, but there is a difference with this one. It is not just the Federal Emergency Management Agency coming in to help those in some way get back on their feet because they did not have insurance. Everyone in this town knows that the Federal Government started the fire. This was not an act of God. It was an act of man. While it was not intentional that this fire rage out of control, that the Park Service did not mean for this to happen, they set the fire that destroyed 260 homes and the lives of 400 families and the businesses and incomes of thousands of residents of Los Alamos in White Rock. I spent much of the weekend dealing with the fire and the fire's victims. The response of the people of New Mexico to this disaster really warms one's heart. We always read about people taking advantage of people when things are going bad, and that did not happen in New Mexico. There was nobody there trying to sell bottles of water for $5 or $10. On the contrary, there were truckloads of food and water and clothing streaming into Sante Fe and Los Alamos. Twenty thousand people relocated from a rural area in northern New Mexico, and immediately every hotel and motel in Sante Fe and Espanola in northern New Mexico dropped their prices to $25 a night. It has probably been since 1920 since one has been able to get a $25 a night hotel room in Sante Fe, New Mexico; but last weekend, one could get one if one were a victim of a fire. The Red Cross mobilized. I was there on Friday morning in Albuquerque at the Red Cross Center there where they were bringing in the national teams. On Friday afternoon, they had to stop taking donated supplies because they had no more storage room. But they were still accepting donations. Intel walked in on Thursday afternoon with a $100,000 check. As I was standing there, a man walked in and opened his wallet and emptied it and gave it to the Red Cross. Most of the banks in New Mexico set up special accounts for the victims of the fire. I went by one. It is not a big bank. It is called First State Bank. It is a New Mexico bank. They have a New Mexico flavor. They do not even wear ties to work. On Thursday mid-morning, they opened an account and just called the local radio station to say they had opened one. Six hours later, they had collected $34,000 from New Mexicans who just walked in to donate to the victims of the fire. As one can see, Los Alamos is kind of an isolated community, and there were over 1,000 fire fighters and policemen and Red Cross workers who still needed to be fed in a place that is really hard to get to. I was up in Los Alamos on Friday afternoon, and the Los Alamos Inn was still open. That is where most of the media and many of the fire fighters and rescue people were staging out of. There was a waitress who continued to work there. They were just making food and bringing it in. She had her 4-year-old daughter with her there at work. I do not think she stopped working since they evacuated the town. Down at Ray's in Albuquerque was one of the staging points for the food and water distribution. I was there on Friday morning. Mayflower had donated big trailer trucks to take food and water and clothing up to the victims of the fire. I was there. In probably about an hour and a half, they had filled half a tractor trailer truck full of food and water and clothing and bedding and equipment to rebuild lives and homes. Car after car was just driving through the parking lot and opening their trunks and giving. There is a man who wanted to remain anonymous, but he donated 1,000 brand new suits to the Salvation Army down in Espanola to reclothe the victims of the fire. It kind of made me laugh actually because, in Los Alamos, they do not often wear suits. It is kind of a relaxed place of scientists and Ph.D.s. They probably will be better dressed than they have in a long time. But it is that kind of generosity that has been provoked by the fire. The New Mexico home builders immediately got together, and they wanted to make sure there was not a lot of scamming of people who lost their homes. So they are working with the New Mexico Attorney General to come up with a list of the licensed contractors so that every victim knows what their options are and they will not have somebody show up at the front of their door and say, give me $2,000, and I will fix their siding, and they never see them again, which so often happens after these kinds of disasters. They also called all of the suppliers, all of the suppliers for the home building industry and said, we want the best and lowest prices you can get us for building materials to help rebuild. Those guys probably have the power to make that happen. On Friday morning, I went by United Blood Services in Albuquerque. See, last week, there was supposed to be a big blood drive in Los Alamos, and they depend on that to supply the State of New Mexico. They have kind of got their plan from where they are going to get enough blood from this week to make sure all the hospitals were supplied. They were 400 pints short because they had not been able to do the Los Alamos blood drive. So they put out a special appeal and said they were having a special week in Albuquerque, and please come in and donate blood. I dropped by, and the line was an hour wait just to donate blood because the people in Los Alamos were not there to donate blood. But as I was standing there and watching the live news reports from Los Alamos, there was a lady standing next to me watching as well. Her husband was donating blood. They were in Texas when the fire started, and they are from Los Alamos. The first thing they did when they came back to the State was to go donate blood while they wondered if their home still stood. We have a number of military bases in New Mexico, and the military was there, too, the National Guard, the Army Guard, the Air Guard as well as active duty. A lot of guys loading the trucks with food and water were active duty military who were not on their shifts. I met one guy. His name was David. He is a Sergeant in the Air Force. He has only been stationed in New Mexico for about a year. He is out at AFOTEC in Kirtland Air Force Base. He had come into the Red Cross because he figured the guys on the base could take the 6:00-to-6:00 shift and man the phones at night, and he could get a lot of his friends to help to relieve the Red Cross volunteers. Many of the elementary schools in New Mexico all over New Mexico have gathered contributions for the victims of the fire. This has affected so many people's lives. I dropped by the Elks Lodge in Los Alamos, which is right up there by the Los Alamos Inn. They stayed there to pass out food to the fire fighters and to the cops. They were kind of funny about it. There is more than a little gallows humor in these kinds of things. They said, well, the Elks Lodge really is not known around this town for the thing we do for the community, but we do do quite a lot. There were folks coming in in their pickup trucks. One family from Santa Clara Pueblo had a pickup truck full of all kinds of snacks and food, and they were going to every one of the trail heads to make sure that all the fire fighters would be fed in an F-150 pickup that looked like it was about a 1981 version with about 130,000 miles on it. But their Pueblo was threatened, and they had not been evacuated yet, and they were going to do everything they could until they needed their pickup truck to move out of their own homes. At that time, they did not know if they would have to move or not. Los Alamos has more Ph.D.s per capita than any other town in the world. It is probably not a surprise that, during this disaster, it was the Internet Professional Association that got up an Internet site immediately to communicate among the victims of the fire spread out across the State and their relatives, many of whom were looking for them. They put up a web site that, not only had information for folks, but also had bulletin boards so that one could ask about one's friends or relatives or have any of you seen so and so, or we are missing our horses, down where they might be, to help with the information and the confusion of a disaster. While sometimes we always like to pick on the press a little bit in this town, I have to give some commendations also to the television and radio stations in New Mexico. All three of our television stations were working around the clock during this disaster, giving information to people and providing that public service to keep people informed on where they could go and what they should do and what the fire was doing to their lives. My husband is in the Air Guard. On Saturday morning our phone rang, and the New Mexico Air Guard was called to duty for a civilian disaster for the first time in 30 years. The last time the Air Guard was called up for a disaster, State disaster, was during the riots in Vietnam at the University of New Mexico. But the Air Guard took on the task of taking in the victims, the one who had lost their homes, so that they could see what was lost and begin the process of getting insurance coverage and rebuilding their lives. So he went up to do that on Saturday and Sunday, and he ended up taking in a busload of folks. As they were driving down the street, he really understood what the fire department had done, the extraordinary efforts they had gone to to save homes and save neighborhoods from a raging inferno. There was one burned house, and right next to it, and he kind of laughed, was a fire hose with the end burned off. These guys were serious about doing everything they could to save the homes and lives of their neighborhoods. So where are we now? This fire is 35 percent contained. It is burning mostly on the northern end. 80 percent of the residents of Los Alamos are able to get back into their homes. Some will never go back into their homes. Every red dot on this map is a home that is not there anymore, 260 buildings, over 400 families that were burned out by a fire started by the United States Government. But it is not only their losses that the city of Los Alamos is feeling. Every small business in Los Alamos has been out of work and off the hill for over a week. I ran into a family at Pojoaque Red Cross Station at the high school last night.

Mrs. WILSON. 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.

Mrs. WILSON

Mrs. WILSON. Mr. Speaker, today I would like to bring to your attention a woman who exemplifies the courage and love of a mother, even under circumstances that no parent should ever have to face. Nadine Milford has become a symbol of motherhood in my District, and throughout the state of New Mexico. Today, I would like to join American Mothers, Inc. in honoring Nadine as Mother's day approaches. On Christmas Eve, 1992, Nadine's daughter, Melanie, and her three granddaughters, Kandyce, Kacee, and Erin, were hit and killed by a drunk driver in one of New Mexico's worst DWI accidents. Only Nadine's son-in-law, Paul Cravens, survived the wreck. This compelled her to dedicate her life to others. She has become a supporter and a comforter to the families of DWI victims, sometimes driving hundreds of miles to comfort a grieving mother. Nadine is powerful and courageous. She lives life with a commitment to herself and to others to make this world better, gaining strength and balance from her deep faith. She remains dedicated, even through the most trying times, and will take her massage as far as it will reach. Complimenting her dedication is her patience. Her son, Lance, has said of her, ``Mom's persistence has moved mountains one grain of sand at a time.'' Mr. Speaker, we know that laws are difficult to change, and our legislative system works slowly. More so, it takes a desire to be involved, whether you're a legislator or a caring mother who has experienced the effects of a nationwide problem--DWI--on the most personal of levels. Since that fateful holiday night so many years ago, Nadine has become New Mexico's most active and visible DWI lobbyist and activist. And she has been a significant factor in historic DWI reform throughout the years in New Mexico. Nadine's personal philosophy has earned her respect from state legislators and friends alike: ``Persistence wears resistance.'' In a world of chaos and unjustifiable tragedies, Nadine found the courage to forgive and to help. Today we gather to honor her mind and her will to make change as well as her courage, her strength, her commitment, and her involvement in our community. She encompasses what it is to be a woman and a mother: She is reverent, strong, caring, and willing to fight for a better world. Mr. Speaker, I pray that no mother will ever have to face what Nadine Milford has faced. But for those who do, I pray that they will have the strength and character that Nadine Milford has.

Mrs. WILSON

Mrs. WILSON. Mr. Speaker, today I would like to bring to your attention the heroism displayed by Thunder Boy, the masked superhero of Albuquerque. Thunder Boy recently saved the city of Albuquerque from the clutches of the Evil Grouch. Though slow to anger, Thunder Boy does not suffer villains gladly. He rescued Weatherdog, turned the city's fountain back on, and recovered stolen toys for many sick children at Carrie Tingley Hospital. Through his deeds, Thunder Boy has become Albuquerque's preeminent super hero. Time and again, through all adversity, he has proven himself a true hero, capable of whatever bravery and self-sacrifice are necessary to right a wrong or save a life. But, Mr. Speaker, let us not forget the joy that Thunder Boy brings to those around him daily, even when villains and evil-doers are on vacation. Thunder Boy's generous heart is what makes him a true hero. He saved Albuquerque because he cares about our city and our neighbors. But his heroism shows in other ways as well. When he sees people who are sad, he smiles to brighten their day. He relishes the peace he finds in others' happiness and wants to spread joy to the world. Thunder Boy shows us that the most important superpower is the ability we all have to make someone else's life better simply by being kind. Thunder Boy shows us that heroes are not only found in comic books or on television, but are here around us every day if we only look hard enough. Today we honor his strength and kind heart. His fight to help mankind will not be soon forgotten, and neither will his smile. May he teach us all the friendship and kindness that we may all become better people in the future. Mr. Speaker, the newspaper in Albuquerque, formerly the Daily Planet but now known as the Albuquerque Journal, has been on the trail of Thunder Boy, trying to reveal his true identity. The paper has unconfirmed reports that Thunder Boy, when not battling the Evil Grouch, is a 4-year-old boy name Isaiah Perea, son of Alex Perea and Tanya Larranga, who is fighting another kind of battle--against Leukemia. His wish, through Make-A-Wish Foundation, was to be a superhero. On May 16, 2000, the Foundation arranged for him to save Albuquerque from the Evil Grouch. This report, of course, is still unconfirmed. Whatever his true identity, the people of Albuquerque are grateful for all he has done for us. Mr. Speaker, let us wish Thunder Boy Godspeed in all the battles he faces.

Mrs. WILSON

Mrs. WILSON. Mr. Chairman, I want to thank the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Dingell), the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Oxley), the gentleman from Louisiana (Mr. Tauzin), and the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Bliley) for working together on a compromise substitute that we have worked on in committee to allow low-power radio to go forward. Our first obligation here is to protect the radio listeners. That is listeners with all kinds of radios whether they are in their shower or they are listening as I do on an old radio that I had when I was a kid that still has one of those really teeny-tiny switches on it to tune into my favorite station. We should not all have to have stereos and new cars to be able to hear the stations that we want to hear. We had hearings in the Committee on Commerce where the engineers did not agree on whether putting stations closer together would cause static and cross-talk and hums and things that would be really annoying to everyday people. But we do want to hear more voices on the radio. The idea of low-power radio is really kind of a neat idea that could open up radio to a lot more voices. So we have worked what I think is a good compromise in the committee. It is a little delicate, but I do not think it needs another amendment. It says, let us go forward with low- power radio with the existing interference standards; let us set aside nine cities where we are going to test it to see if we can have these stations closer together and not have interference, we are not going to let pirates have licenses, and we are going to have the FCC in this independent review come back and tell us how it went in those nine stations, find out how it goes and see if it is okay, and then maybe we will be able to open up more low-power stations. I think this is a pretty good compromise. The FCC was moving too quickly and I believe compromising the quality of the radio reception that we get in our communities. We found an acceptable balance. I thank the chairman and the ranking member and my other colleagues for working together towards this solution.

Mrs. WILSON

Mrs. WILSON. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank and commend the gentleman from Florida (Mr. McCollum) for bringing forward this bill, and also the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Ehrlich) for his leadership on this issue. I have to admit that I did not initially hear about it from them. I heard about this issue and this project from my Community Crime Advisory Council in Albuquerque, New Mexico. It was Ray Wilkinson, who volunteers with a group called Student Pledge Against Gun Violence, that initially brought this to my attention. He told Eileen Maddock, who is with the Metro Crimestoppers in Albuquerque, and we talked about it there in the community first. It has the support of my sheriffs, Joe Bowdich in Bernalillo County, and Pete Golden out in Torrance County, and the chief of police of the Albuquerque Police Department, Chief Galvin. So this is not about a Washington bill, it is about how we get States and D.A.s and the Federal government and the U.S. Attorneys to start working together to prosecute and give a hard time to armed crime. There is a little neighborhood in my district called the Trumbull La Mesa neighborhood. Charlene and Don Gould are the head of the Trumbull Neighborhood Association. That neighborhood has been troubled for a long time with drug dealers and real serious problems with folks who are moving in and out of that neighborhood and causing all kinds of problems. They got together the landlords and the cops, and they started taking back their neighborhood from the drug dealers. One of the problems that they have had is that they go down to the courts and watch these guys who have gotten arrested turned back into their neighborhood with a slap on their wrist when they have been doing serious drug trafficking offenses with weapons. It is time those people spend at least 5 years behind bars for trafficking drugs in our neighborhoods to our kids. We talk about mandatory minimums, here. I am one that believes in judicial flexibility, but I have to tell the Members, this idea that somebody who uses a gun to murder somebody, rape somebody, aggravated assault, serious drug trafficking, or robbery, and 5 years is too much? If one uses a gun in a crime in my neighborhood like that, I do not want to see that person back. It is time to stop the revolving door of justice in this country and put these people away in Federal prison or State prison, or any way we can. I want to commend the gentleman from Florida for his leadership. Ultimately, this is not so much about sentencing as it is about fear. We live in the freest country in the world, but if we are afraid to walk around our neighborhoods at night, then we are not really free. It is time to restore freedom to normal, everyday Americans so that they can let their kids play outside in their front yards.

Mrs. WILSON

Mrs. WILSON. I thank the gentleman from Pennsylvania. I thank him for joining us here tonight. Just to sum up before the hour ends here, we have been talking about the education savings accounts. We are going to be having a bill on the floor of the House on Thursday about education savings accounts. They exist under current law, but they are limited to only $500 a year per child. They can only be used for college expenses. We would like to make some changes to that. The Senate has already passed a bill, and we are going to work on it and hopefully pass it here on the floor of the House on Thursday, that would do a couple of things. It would allow you to save not $500 a year per child but to put $2,000 per year per child into that account and allow it to grow, allow the interest to accrue without paying taxes on that interest. We are going to try to extend it from college expenses down to kindergarten through 12th grade and college expenses, so it can cover tuition or tutoring or supplies or computers or books, whether that is for a child in public school or private school or parochial school or home school. The estimates are that 70 percent of the kids who are going to benefit from that at the elementary and secondary level are going to be in public school, and that parents will use those funds to wrap things around a child that they may not be getting, or they may be having trouble with in public school. The third change that the law is going to try to make on Thursday is to let corporations or nonprofits contribute to education savings accounts set up for low-income kids. One of the criticisms is that there is really no advantage to this if you are low-income or low enough income that you are not paying taxes. Of course, those generally are the kids who qualify for the grants to go to college in the first place. It is middle-income families that are really strapped when it comes to paying for education expenses. The other thing that the change will do is for those States and for those families who are making pre-paid college tuition payments who have set up an account to go to State school, as many States already have, they would be able to contribute to their educational savings account for that child, also. They would not have to choose either one or the other. That change will be in the law that we hope to pass on Thursday. They still will not be able to qualify for this if they are rich. They will still have to save and pay interest on the savings if they are making over $150,000 a year as a family. But this is really targeted towards middle-class Americans, to the kids who are wondering when they are in high school how they are ever going to pay for college, and to the parents who are despairing about the same thing. Those are the families that need the help and the encouragement through the Tax Code to invest in education. I started out talking this evening almost an hour ago now about our commitment to public education and our commitment to our kids in the 21st century. What was good enough for us and what was good enough for our parents and for our grandparents is not going to be good enough for our kids. We need to redouble our efforts and redouble our commitment to education for our children. Ten years from now, I hope that we are standing here able to celebrate the reality that 95 percent of our kids are graduating from high school and three-quarters of them are going on to college or technical school or into the military. We are not there yet, but we cannot afford to leave any child behind. No child must be left behind. We have to narrow the gap between rich and poor and black and white and brown, because in America, we will not have a 21st century that is an American century, just as much as the 20th was, unless we do. I want to thank my colleagues for joining me here this evening.

Mrs. WILSON. I was just sitting here thinking about the tremendous opportunities and possibilities that this brings for more parents who are trying to work with a teacher, whether that teacher is in public school or private school or parochial school or wherever, to meet the individual needs of that child. It is not unusual for a teacher to say, well, we think this is what your child needs and he is not a special ed kid but there are some additional materials or some additional help that might be available and to be able to use tax-free money to do that so that you are reinforcing what the teacher and the school are trying to do with your child so that they can learn and achieve, whether that is kids who are gifted or kids who are having a little bit of trouble or even if your school does not have a foreign language program and your child is particularly interested in it, or there is not music available at the elementary school level and you can bring music into the schools, whether it is parents getting together to do it or a parent doing that individually alongside the school and wrapping educational experiences around a child. All of us have looked at, what are we going to do this summer. What besides Little League or AYSO soccer or swim lessons are we going to do this summer. There are tremendous opportunities for summer school for kids, whether your child needs some extra help or whether it is that enrichment opportunity that you have really just been working for and saving for. If parents are willing to work and save for that opportunity, we should not be penalizing them by taxing them before they do so. So this change that we are looking at Thursday is going to do a couple of things: Will go from $500 to $2,000 for the amount you can save per child per year. Will expand it, not just college expenses but kindergarten through 12th grade as well. Expenses so that if it is tuition or fees or materials or supplies or computers, whether they are in a public school, private school, home school, it does not matter. It would be kindergarten on up. The other interesting change, I think this is an important one when we talk about investing in education beyond what the government does at State, Federal and local levels, is that it will allow corporations to contribute to education savings accounts. The current law says that parents or family members can put money in a child's name in an education savings account. But this bill will expand that and say that if your employer wants to make an annual contribution to the education savings accounts for the children of its employees, it would be allowed. You can very easily see where that will become a potential corporate benefit that employees will look for, just as they look for health benefits and other kinds of things when they decide who they are going to be working for. I think that that provision could encourage corporations to really make those contributions, and that is particularly important for families that may not be able to save that full $2,000 a year, but their employer is going to help to make up the difference.

Mrs. WILSON. This issue of, well, would it be draining resources from the public schools in some ways. There are some people who disagree with this, but we have for many years in this country used the Tax Code to encourage people to do things, to encourage people to make choices, to encourage people to save for their retirement, to encourage people to invest and buy a home. What we are doing in this bill with the Tax Code is encouraging them to invest in the education of their children. While some people disagree with using our Tax Code that way, I have to say that I think it is a noble goal. The folks who work at the Joint Committee on Taxation have estimated that this kind of a program based on what is happening in other similar kinds of tax changes would result in $12 billion of investment in our schools that is not there now. $12 billion nationwide, 70 percent of which would go to kids who are in public school to wrap those additional things around them that maybe the public school just could not directly afford but parents working together with teachers might be able to do. I think that that is a noble goal. There is one other change in the bill that I think is worth discussing a little bit. Right now, many States have prepaid tuition accounts for State colleges. New Mexico has that kind of a system where you can decide to save pretax and prepay your tuition if you are sending your child to UNM or New Mexico State. There are probably 20 or so States that have similar things set up under State law. Under the current Federal law, you are not allowed to take advantage of the education savings account if in the same year you are taking advantage of the prepaid tuition account that your State may offer. In other words, you cannot do both for the same child in the same year. The piece of legislation that we will be voting on on Thursday eliminates that restriction. So if in New Mexico I have a child that I am determined is going to be a Lobo when he is 18 years old and go to the University of New Mexico, I can make a prepaid tuition contribution but I could also be saving money in the education savings account in that same year. It allows parents who are committed to making those contributions up-front and making those savings up-front to do both under Federal law for one and under the State tax law for the other.

Mrs. WILSON. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Missouri for his leadership on the Committee on Ways and Means, the tax committee that deals with these bills. I also congratulate him on being a new father. I know that that brings a real focus to his commitment to a great education for all kids in this country. Now we are joined here tonight by one of my other colleagues, the gentleman from Pennsylvania, and I would be happy to yield him some time to talk about this issue.

Mrs. WILSON. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman, and I appreciate his comments here tonight. We are talking about education savings accounts and a bill that is going to be on the floor this Thursday. It is called H.R. 7, and it would expand current law which allows education savings accounts only for college expenses and only allows a 500 per-ear, per-child contribution. The bill we are going to consider on Thursday has already passed the Senate; a very similar bill has passed the Senate. It passed the first week of March, so now this is our opportunity in the House to do the right thing with respect to allowing families to save for education. I would like to talk a little bit about some of the myths and some of the attacks that this legislation has been subjected to. I think we are probably going to hear more of it over the next couple of days here in the House. But the thing that bothers me about it is that it is like throwing chaff, it is just trying to throw any argument out there, even if it is not valid at all, just to try to block the legislation, when really a lot of it just is not true. I want to talk about it a little bit. One of the major attacks on this piece of legislation is that it is just another tax break for the rich. I think that that sentence is etched in marble somewhere around Washington. Whatever we want to do, it is just another tax break for the rich. The reality is that one cannot even qualify for an education savings account if one's family income, it starts to phase out at $150,000 a year. So this is for that section of folks who are middle-income Americans, the ones who do not qualify for the grants, the ones who are looking at huge college loans or incredible expenditures, particularly when one gets more than one kid in college at the same time, who want to plan for that in advance. So the Joint Committee on Taxation looked at this and their estimates are that 70 percent of the people who benefit from this have a family income of less than $75,000 a year. This is about saving for middle- class kids. It does not affect the wealthy kids at all, really. The other interesting thing about that analysis is that three- quarters of the kids are going to be going to public school. It is about giving families the incentive to save and wrap things around kids that the public schools may not offer. It is science fair season in New Mexico. I do not know how that is in Pennsylvania, but it is a really big deal in New Mexico. My son is in kindergarten in a public school in Albuquerque, and he is doing his first science fair project. It is not that big a deal in kindergarten, but for some of these kids who are in middle school and high school, some of these science fair projects are both a huge commitment of their time, but also a fair commitment in resources too. Would it not be nice to be able to use tax-free dollars that one had been saving for those kinds of expenses, or when one's kid gets to be in middle school and high school and joins the band and really gets committed to music and wants to take private lessons in addition to playing in the band or the orchestra. It seems to me that if one is willing to support that, one should have the option to use tax-free money to do that in an education savings account. So that is one myth, that it is for the rich. It is not. The rich do not even qualify, and 70 percent of the folks who are going to benefit from this make less than $75,000 a year, hardly rich in America. The second myth is that we are going to deplete money from the public schools, that this will all be taken away in some way for the public schools. That is just absolutely flat out not true. Frankly, I got involved in public life because of a commitment to public education and a belief that we have to improve public education and make sure that all of our kids are benefiting from public education. The idea that doing something like this would take away from the public schools really bothers me. I find that myth to be personally offensive, particularly given that we just passed a budget last week that will increase, yet again, the Federal commitment to education. Mr. Speaker, almost 10 percent this year in increased funds to education. Now, that is more than our State government has been able to do for the last several years, and we will continue our commitment to funding schools. But we should also do things that encourage corporations and nonprofits and parents to save and invest in public education too. That is, I think, good public policy. The quote here that I have up next to me is from United States Senator Bob Torricelli, who is one of the principal sponsors in the Senate. He makes it very clear: this is using private money. It is using a family's own resources. By our estimation, after 5 years, $12 billion in private money will be used to educate children kindergarten to 12. This cannot be a bad thing. Yet, critics argue it is a diversion of money from public schools. Not one dime of money that is now going to a public school goes anywhere else but to that same school on that same basis. This is new money, private money, a net increase of $12 billion in education. That has to be a positive thing and it does not take a dime away from the school in your neighborhood.

Mrs. WILSON. I thank the gentleman for his comments. There are some other myths I think we are going to hear some more about. There is one that the gentleman started to touch on. That is the issue of, well, this will just mean that money is going to private schools and it is going to go to parochial schools, and not only is this wrong as a matter of public policy, but it might be unconstitutional. That is also, I think, kind of a red herring. This passes all of the constitutional tests because the benefit accrues to the family and the child. They decide what to use that money for. I find it amusing that we could say that the current law, which allows education savings accounts to be used in saving, and a child can go to Notre Dame, but it would be unconstitutional to use that same money to send that child to St. Pious High School, which is a Catholic high school in my district. It is fully constitutional and complies with all of the constitutional mandates for use of public funds. This is not about vouchers, though some people are going to argue that, as well. If we are allowed to take money after we have paid taxes on it and put it in an account so it can accrue interest without paying taxes on that interest, that is our money. We use that money. The only thing that is different about it is that they are not going to take the taxes on it if we say we are going to use that money to invest in our child's education. That is the only thing that is going on here. This is not about taking public money and funding private or parochial schools. So I think that that is an important myth that we are going to need to deal with over the next couple of days. I think there is another myth, too. It is really kind of the one that is not spoken. We might as well just come right out and say it. There are folks who believe that there is a desire to fund these kinds of things and not public schools; that what this really is about is about changing the debate and changing the flow of funds and abandoning public education. Nothing could be further from the truth. I think this Congress over the last 4 or 5 years has reaffirmed its commitment to great education in this country and great public schools in this country, because every one of us in this room, no matter what party we belong to, benefited from public education, for the most part. There are some folks here on both sides of the aisle who went to Catholic schools, but we all know that America would not be the great Nation it is today without a strong public school system. We have known that in this country, that democracy cannot thrive without a great system of public schools. The biggest chunk of Federal funding for education here goes into special ed, the IDEA funds. I think it is important to talk about a few facts here on the commitment to education. The brown bar here is what the President has requested since 1996. In every single year, Congress has appropriated more funds for special education than has been requested in the President's budget. We will do that again this year. In the budget resolution we passed last week, we will increase special education funding this year by $2.2 billion, and $20 billion over the next 5 years. We are committed to a great system of education. But that also means doing things with the Tax Code to encourage others to be equally committed, whether they are corporations or whether they are parents trying to plan for the future of their children. The final myth is that what this really is about is encouraging folks to leave the public schools; that this will somehow make it possible for a kid who is in third grade in Albuquerque to go to St. Mary's, rather than to the local public school. That may happen on the margins, but frankly, it is really probably not enough to make that happen in a large sense. If that is what works for that kid, I am not sure that that bothers me at all. We are not going to see, no matter what we do, a huge exodus from the public schools. The reason is that parents want a great school in their neighborhood. They want to be able to have their kid walk to a school that is safe, that will educate them for the 21st century. They do not want to abandon the public school system any more than we do in this body. But what they do want to do is be able to spend some money on their child's education without being penalized for it under the Tax Code.

Mrs. WILSON. Mr. Speaker, I am the gentlewoman from Albuquerque, New Mexico; and I have been asked to lead a discussion this evening about a bill that will be coming to the floor of the House this week. The bill is H.R. 7, and it is about education savings accounts. What I would like to do tonight is talk a little bit what about they are, how the current law is set up with respect to education savings accounts, and what the proposed changes are that we are going to be considering on Thursday. Because there is quite a bit of misperception about what these changes will do. But before I do that, I would like to try to set this in the context of where we need to go in America with respect to public education. In 1900 in this country, at the turn of the last century, 15 percent of American adults had a high school degree. When we turned this century into the 21st century last New Year's Eve, 85 percent of American adults had a high school degree. The big difference, though, was that, back in 1900, a third of Americans still lived on the farm. They could get a good job and support a family without having a high school degree. My grandparents did not graduate from high school. My parents graduated from high school but did not go on to college. Like many Americans, I was the first generation in my family to go to college and get a college degree. But what was good enough for us and what was good enough for our parents or our grandparents is not going to be good enough for our kids. And the reason is that Americans do not work on the farm anymore, except for about 2 percent of us; and the jobs that will be available for our children who graduate in 2010, 2012 and beyond are going to be profoundly different than they were for us when we graduated from high school, in my case, over 20 years ago. They are going to require more education, more technical training, the ability to read and understand and solve problems, which means that, if we are going to make the 21st century just as much an American century as the 20th century was, we need to recommit ourselves as a Nation to public education. In my hometown of Albuquerque, New Mexico, a third of our students do not graduate from high school. We have one of the highest drop-out rates in the Nation. We can no longer afford to let any child lag behind; and so we have to recommit ourselves as individuals, as parents, as teachers, as administrators, as communities, and as a Nation to make sure that, by the end of the next decade, 95 percent of our children graduate from high school and three-quarters of them go on to college or technical training or into the military. We need to commit ourselves to a decade of dreams for public education. The bill that we are going to consider on Thursday is really only one little piece of that dream, but it is designed to encourage private investment in education and savings by parents and families and even corporations to invest in public schools and public education. What does this do? It is called H.R. 7, and it is the Education Savings and School Excellence Act. But it builds on something that is already in public law. Back in 1997, which was before I was elected to Congress, the Congress passed a law to establish education savings accounts. So what is an education savings account? About 110 million Americans now have IRAs. To put it in its simplest terms, an education savings account is an IRA for our kids' college education. The way that the law works now is that we can put money into an education savings accounts, into one of these education IRAs, every year, up to $500, we can put into this account for each child that we have up to the age of 18. When that child turns 18, they cannot keep contributing into that account, but then the child can use that money that has been saved while he has been growing up to go to college. Now, they can use the money for a private college or a public college or even a technical school as long as they use the money before they turn 30. So a parent can put $500 a year, a kind of annual Christmas present to put in the education savings account to save for college. And the money that goes into it, they have to pay the taxes on the money that they earn to put in in the first place, but as the money sits there in that education IRA, they do not have to pay taxes on the interest that it earns. So the interest accrues tax free. Now, the money that is saved up in that education savings account can be used for tuition or fees or books or supplies or equipment and, in some cases, for room and board, as long as it qualifies under the rules, but only for post-secondary education, post-high school. It can be used for college. And it does not matter if it is a public university or a private university or religious school, as long as it is for post-secondary education, public, private or vocational. So that is what education savings accounts are. They have been in place as part of public law since 1997 in this country. There have been two previous attempts to expand education savings accounts in important ways. Both of the attempts were bipartisan efforts. In both cases, they were vetoed by the President. We are going to go back at it again. The principal sponsors of this piece of legislation on the Senate side are Senator Torricelli and Senator Coverdell of Georgia. Those two men have really led this effort to try to encourage savings and expand education savings accounts for more Americans. So what are the problems with the current bill and where do we want to go with this bill that we are going to be considering on the floor of the House this Thursday? Right now, a family can only put $500 a year per child into an education savings account in order for it to get the tax benefits, to not have to pay taxes on the interest in that account. $500 a year is not a lot of money when we consider how much college costs have escalated over the last 20 years. Indeed, if a family puts $500 a year starting when a child is born and does that every year until they are 18, even if they get 7\1/2\ percent interest or so, they really are going to only have about $15,000 in that account by the time the child turns 18 and is likely to go to college. Well, unless they are going to a State university where they get State subsidized tuition, that is not going to go very far when it comes to tuition and room and board and books and fees to pay for college. So the first thing that the bill will do that we are going to take up on the floor here on Thursday is to change that from allowing $500 per child in savings every year to allowing $2,000 per child, the same that we do now for regular IRAs. Now, what will that mean in terms of the amount that a family can save? Well, there have been some folks who have done some analysis on this and have gotten out their stubby pencils and computers to do interest rates, which I do not do very well. But if a family started saving $2,000 a year from when a child is born, by the time that child is in first grade there will be over $14,000 in that account. By the time that child reaches middle school, there will be $36,000 in that account. By the time they get to high school, assuming that they had not used it already in elementary and middle school, there would be $46,000 in that account. If that family put in $2,000 a year and did not withdraw any of it, by the time that that child graduated from high school and turned 18 years old, was a college freshman, they would have almost $72,000 in college savings; and that would all have accrued with the interest tax free. $72,000 is a pretty good chunk of change to save for college and is something that I think most Americans would like to have when their son or daughter gets that important acceptance letter to go to the school of their choice. So it would expand the ability to save, and it would allow that savings to accrue at a higher rate so that it is more reasonable by the time that somebody finishes high school and gets ready to go to college from an expanded $500 per year per child to $2,000 a year per child. Now, the second thing that this bill will do on Thursday that we are considering and probably the most controversial aspect of it is that it would allow these education savings accounts to be used not just for college tuition but for tuition and fees and expenses associated with education for kindergartners through 12th-graders. That is a big change, but it is also I think an important change. The reality is that most parents contribute to their child's education around the edges, whether it is tutoring or summer school or buying books for the classroom or participating in the fund-raiser to buy new equipment for the playground. Encouraging that kind of savings and investment in schools and giving people a tax break for doing that is a good thing, and we should expand that ability to save and invest in public education from kindergarten through 12th grade. I see one of my colleagues, the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Hulshof), has joined me here and is one of the principal supporters and sponsors of this piece of legislation, and I yield some time to him since he has worked so hard on it.

Mrs. WILSON

Mrs. WILSON. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Schaffer) will continue to yield to me, I would like to talk a little bit about some of the other things that are going to be in this budget that came out of the committee today. One of the things that I hear from kids in my district about is going to college. Fortunately, in New Mexico, we do have a program to give scholarships to kids who graduated from high school and who keep their grades up and can go to the University of New Mexico or New Mexico State. A lot of kids, to get to college, which some of them want to do because they know they need to go, they need grants and loans. Most of us in this Congress required grants and loans and scholarships to go on to school. The Pell Grant is one of the biggest ones funded by the Federal Government. This is what has happened with Pell Grants, the maximum award for Pell Grants since 1991. The change since 1995 is startling. Americans and Republicans are willing to invest in education. They are willing and we are willing to say to a kid, if you will go to school and work hard and go to college and get a degree, we all know you are going to be contributing more to this country, because you have got a great education. We will provide that opportunity through Pell Grants. The cost of a college education is going up. That means that the amount that a kid can get through a Pell Grant needs to go up, too. So we have made that continued commitment, and we will do so again in the budget this year. We want a great school in every neighborhood. We want teachers that are well trained and that can work with us as partners in the education of our children. We want charter schools in this country to give people choice. Tomorrow, along with my colleague from Colorado, we will be introducing a charter school loan guarantee fund bill. The biggest barrier to charter schools in this country is they cannot get the capital money to fix up a building or a storefront in order to open and operate because most of them cannot get bond money. So we are introducing a bill that will set up a Federal loan guarantee fund, so that people who are trying to set up charter schools can go to a bank and, without all of the signatures and putting their houses on the line and so many other things that people have been willing to do to start charter schools, there will be a Federal loan guarantee available there if the bank will loan them the money. The concept in the bill is to make a $600 million Federal loan guarantee program, which should leverage $9 billion in public school construction in charter schools through the private markets. And what does that mean? It means a charter school, instead of paying 11.5 percent in interest to redo that old building or to redo the shopping mall, strip mall site for their school, can pay 5 or 5.5 percent. That is a lot more money that can go into teachers' salaries and materials for that charter school that does not have to be paid in interest. And we should make that investment in choice and public charter schools. I call on the administration and my colleagues, because I expect this will be a bipartisan bill, to see if we can get this moving and get this through this year. I think it is up to us to commit ourselves and recommit ourselves to a decade of dreams for American education. We can no longer afford to leave any child behind, and that is why I wanted to come here tonight. I thank the gentleman for his time.

Mrs. WILSON. Mr. Speaker, I wanted to come down tonight to talk a little bit about the budget and about public education, because really the reason that I got into public life is a concern about public education and how we are going to prepare kids for the 21st century. I was very pleased to see what was coming out of the Committee on the Budget this afternoon, because we have had a lot of discussions about things; but when it really matters is when they start to get the numbers down on paper. I wanted to see, like many of the people in this House and actually on both sides of the aisle wanted to see, a balanced budget that protected Social Security, did not raid Social Security anymore; but within that budget, we wanted to see some priorities. National defense is certainly one. All of us know that we have been eroding our national defense over the last decade, and we may pay a price for that in the lack of readiness. But the second and the one I would like to talk a little bit about tonight is education, where we are going on public education in this country. There may be folks today who are listening to me tonight who remember when all a kid needed to get ready for school was a Big Chief tablet and a number 2 pencil. It is not that way anymore. We do not get protractors and slide rules in high school anymore. We are on the verge of the 21st century. It is a wonderful opportunity, but it will only be an opportunity for our children if they are prepared for that century with a great public education. I do not mean just some kids. I mean, every kid in every neighborhood. We can no longer tolerate the gaps between rich and poor, the gaps that have grown since many of these Federal programs were instituted, like title I, between rich and poor, and black and white and brown. They have grown wider. We cannot afford that as a Nation if the 21st century is to be just as much of an American century as the 20th century was. So what are our dreams for the next decade? What do we want to see with respect to public education? How is that reflected in the commitment we are beginning to make here tonight and today with the next year's budget? I think that there is kind of a myth out there that the Republican Congress does not care much about education. It always bothers me. It bothers me as a parent. It bothers me as a Member of Congress. I try to spend a lot of time talking with people about it because I think it is a myth, both in terms of financial commitment, but also in terms of personal commitment to the future of children. Because I happen to be one of those folks who believe that, unless America does have a strong system of public education, we cannot survive as a democracy. It requires an educated populous. We have to remain committed to that for every child. I would like to talk a little bit about what is in this first budget with respect to education, this first look at this year's budget. For elementary and secondary education, the budget that came out of the committee today in the House Committee on Budget provides an increase of over $2.2 billion over the last fiscal year, fiscal year 2000, and an $20.6 billion increase over the next 5 years. That is a 9.4 percent increase in our commitment to public schools and Federal funding of public schools. That is the largest increase in the budget for the fiscal year 2001. So the priority in the budget for this next year will be twofold: Defense, but first and foremost, public education. The one area where we really differ, aside from how much money we should put into it, with the administration is flexibility. I want somebody making decisions about my child education who knows my son's name. I want teachers and principals and parents to have as much control as possible over the way that dollars are spent. I want those dollars to get into the classroom where they can pay for books and bricks and teacher salaries and teacher training. I do not think that Washington has the answers on public education. I have much more confidence in the principal of our local school than I do confidence on anyone that works in a Federal building here in Washington. So where is the money going in education in this budget, and where have we been over the last 5 years? Over the last 5 years, this Congress has increased education spending by 26 percent. Last year, fiscal year 2000, we added $200 million over the previous year, a total of $1 billion more than the President requested in his budget. The emphasis was on special education kids, and that is what I want to talk a little bit about here with this chart. The Federal Government assumed a responsibility for special education, that there is a civil rights issue around special education. When we passed the IDEA Act originally, we promised to pay for 40 percent of the cost. But the Federal Government never met that obligation. The States and local school districts still have to meet those Federal requirements. So because the Federal Government did not pull its share of the load, States and local governments are having to foot the bill; and that money that could go for other priorities in education goes to special ed to meet the Federal requirements. So the first requirement of this budget is to say let us meet the obligations the Federal Government has already assumed with respect to education and IDEA. In the 2001 budget that just passed out of the Committee on Budget today, there is a $2 billion increase in IDEA funding, and that will boost us up to 12.6 percent of the cost of educating a special needs child. This is the IDEA funding here on what we have done since 1996, and it shows the President's request, and it shows the amount that the Republican Congress has put into special ed, which every single year has been larger than the President's request. We want to fund our obligations before we bring in new programs and new programs created or controlled in Washington, and get this money down to the kids that need it in special education classrooms across this country. I also want to talk a little bit about title VI, which is for innovative programs in education. It is not a huge program. But it does have a lot of local flexibility to fund things that, maybe, are just too much for a local school's budget, but they want to try something new, they want to try a new curriculum, they want to try teaching math using manipulatives or whatever they want to do. Title VI is that kind of flexible funding. Every single year, the President has proposed to eliminate this funding. Every single year, the Congress has said give the local communities some flexibility and some funding to make some decisions, and fund title VI. We are going to do that again. It was funded at $365 million last year, and we are going to continue to fund that in this year's budget, despite the President's request to zero out the program again this year. Impact aid is a major issue for those of us in the West with a lot of public lands. I see the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Hayworth) is here. If one is in the Four Corners area of New Mexico, the counties there are 90 percent Federal land. So if one is funding one's schools based on property taxes, it is really tough. Fortunately, in New Mexico, we do not have property taxes that are funding our public schools. A lot of schools do. What this says is, when the Federal Government owns the land, they have got to make a contribution to that school system; and that is what impact aid is for. It is the same if one has got a huge military base in one's town. There are kids there, and there is land that is owned by the Federal Government. It is kind of the contribution in lieu of taxes that might otherwise go to the local community. Again, the President has requested very small amounts of money for impact aid, and the Congress consistently over the last 5 years has increased that funding. I do not know if the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Hayworth) would like to comment on impact aid.

Mrs. WILSON

Mrs. WILSON. If I could follow onto something the gentleman mentioned about how easy it is to attack the pharmaceutical industry, these big companies, and why are the prices so high, but these are the companies that brought us the miracles in the first place. I just want to reinforce something the gentleman said about the worst thing we could do here is to salt the earth or poison the well that will bring us the next generation of miracles, the medicine that will cure Alzheimer's or Parkinson's or diabetes. We want this great medical miracle that we have seen in the 20th century to continue in the 21st century, and the worst thing we can do is to pass legislation which would cause the pharmaceutical industry to shrivel in America and stop creating the next generation of miracle drugs, because I want them to be there for my kids and when I am old and gray.