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“WHAT IS THE CORRECT DEFINITION OF ``CUTS''?” mentioning the U.S. Dept of State was published in the House of Representatives section on pages H10730-H10733 on Sept. 20, 1996.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
WHAT IS THE CORRECT DEFINITION OF ``CUTS''?
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of May 12, 1995, the gentleman from California [Mr. Cunningham] is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
republicans support investigation into origin of illegal drug supply
Mr. CUNNINGHAM. Mr. Speaker, many of us do support the investigation, because a lot of the drugs, about 90 percent of them, were purported to go out of Mena, ARK, when President Clinton was Governor. If you look at the Mena chronicles, in which a lot of those drugs went out, Malek, who was then Governor Clinton's chief investigator and coroner, ruled that two children that were killed on tracks had smoked a lot of marijuana and fell asleep. The parents got upset. They had outside forensics come in, and the children were stabbed to death.
Since then, 18 people that were going to testify against Governor Clinton, Malek, the judge appointed by then-Governor Clinton, and the district attorney, who also canceled the grand jury investigation, 18 people have been murdered. Yes, we look forward to that investigation.
Mr. Speaker, I came here today to talk about something that a lot of people do not talk about. I think it is a legitimate issue for both sides, both for conservatives and liberals, on what does it really mean to cut; what is cutting and what is being cut, or the differences, at least, in definition. I would like to clarify some of those.
First of all, Mr. Speaker, in education, 95 percent of education is paid for by State and local revenues. Only about 5 percent of education in our country is paid for by Federal dollars. That 5 percent of the dollars, do not misunderstand me, is no small amount. The Department of Education, for example, has an annual budget of about $35 billion, and that is a B, with a billion. So 5 percent is not a small amount of change.
The problem is, we are getting as little, especially in the district of the gentleman from New York [Mr. Owens] who just spoke, we are getting as little as 23 cents out of every Federal dollar back to the classroooms. Why? Twenty-three cents on a dollar for every tax dollar. Did God create those dollars? No. He has to take it from hardworking American taxpayers. It comes to Washington, DC, and then goes back to the people that they took it from, at only 23 cents on a dollar. Why is that?
This Republican Conference identified 760 education programs in the Federal system. Yesterday in a hearing the gentleman from Virginia, Mr. Payne, a Democrat, and the gentleman from Oklahoma, J.C. Watts, a Republican, introduced a bill. In the hearing there were about 15 different witnesses, Republicans and Democrats, appointed and asked to come by Republicans and Democrats.
They identified over nine programs within their communities that were working on antidrug and against juvenile justice. When the question was asked, how many of them had those programs in all of their districts, none of them had any one of the other eight in their particular district, but the one that worked, they were focusing on and they were using.
Mr. Speaker, what the Republicans have tried to do is direct the money to the local level, down to the people that have the Zip Code, that know the real problems of their particular community; not something one-size-fits-all, like the Federal Government does, and mandates that you will do this. If Head Start works, do it. If drug-
free schools work, do it. But the emphasis is driving the money down to the local districts, to the school teachers, to the parents, to the school boards, to the juvenile justice groups, and letting them handle the problem.
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The Federal Government has 760 Federal education programs. Just imagine trying to fund that. Every one of them has administrations. Every one of them has bureaucracies. Every one of them has paperwork that comes down to the States that affects the 95 percent that are raised at State and local levels, just because they have to use the funds on bureaucratic redtape, on paperwork that not only goes to their State department of educations, the Governor, and then has to travel back to Washington, DC, 23 cents on the dollar, Mr. Speaker. You could not compete in business like that, and you cannot work education systems with 23 cents on the dollar.
Let me give some classic examples of how government wastes money and that the other side of the aisle says that Republicans are cutting education. Let me define the term ``cut.'' The President's direct-
lending government student loan program was capped at 10 percent in a pilot project. That 10 percent cost $1 billion a year more, just to administer, than private lending institutions to do it. GAO conducted a study, said it is going to cost $5 billion more just to collect those student loans.
When the Government shut down, the President says, ``Hey, this is one of my cornerstones. I want government to spend the money down and have the power to give it out, and I want to do that.'' So at conference, we let it go to 40 percent.
But what the liberals did not see is, we put in the language that capped the administrative fees at 10 percent, instead of going up to 40 percent, to restrict Government spending. We took the savings from that and we increased Pell grants to the highest level ever, grants for poor children that achieve and do well in school, but for some circumstance, they do not have the wherewithal to go to college.
I do not mind my tax dollars going to pay for that, Mr. Speaker, because there are some disadvantaged children in this world that work hard, that want a piece of the American dream, and I think that it is part of government's role to make sure that those children are taken care of.
With those savings from the direct lending program, we took and increased student loans through the private sector by 50 percent. Did we cut education? No, sir. We drove the money down to the children that need it, the poor children, in Pell grants, to the children that need the student loans to go to school.
What we cut is the liberals' precious bureaucracy here in River City, in Washington, DC, and we took those savings and we drove it to where it is supposed to go in the first place, at a much higher rate than 23 cents on a dollar.
Let me give another good example, Mr. Speaker: AmeriCorps, another great program, according to the President. Everything that this Congress has argued over in the 2 years, Mr. Speaker, is power. That is what the American people are upset about. Power to spend money from Washington, DC, so you can send it down to your local interest groups so that they think you are a great guy or a great lady, so you can get reelected, so then you have got the majority, so you have got the power.
And over here is a bureaucracy, whether it is a direct lending program, whether it is a First Lady's government bureaucracy health care system, or all the other programs that they purport, they want the power to spend the money in Washington, DC.
AmeriCorps is a classic example. They want the dollars to come up here so that they can rain them down to different people saying, ``Look what good guys we are.'' Where does the money come from? Is there a cut?
In the first place, the money is taken from the American taxpayer. Second, the average volunteer in AmeriCorps gets $29,000. In Baltimore, just a hoot and a holler from here, the average was $50,000 per volunteer.
Can we do it better than that, Mr. Speaker? Absolutely. It is wasted dollars. Why? You pay somebody $50,000 for painting a fence, or pulling weeds, that is more than many of the steelworkers, that is more than many of your teachers make. I think we can better invest that, instead of letting the Federal Government, just because they want the ability to spend the money, force it down. And, yes, we wanted to eliminate it and use the dollars more wisely.
Let me give another example. They say, ``Duke, why do you hate Goals 2000?'' I don't hate Goals 2000. As a matter of fact, I think the standards that are lauded in Goals 2000 are pretty noteworthy. I mean, to say that you want to have the best math standards and the best math scores in the world is a pretty noteworthy and laudable standard. But if you read the bill, Mr. Speaker, in Goals 2000, there are 43 instances in the bill that say States ``will,'' and if you are a lawyer, or even the American people, you understand the difference between ``will'' and ``shall'' in any legal document. ``Will'' is a mandate; the State will have to do this.
What is one of the 43 ``wills'' of the 760 programs, Federal programs? Just one little tiny one. You have to establish a board at a local level. You have to establish an education program. They say,
``Duke, you are able to establish that local program. I mean, isn't that what you purport? You want education, you want teachers, you want parents, you want students and the administration to establish exactly what they are doing.'' You have to establish a separate board. They have to report this program to the principal.
My wife happens to be one of those principals, has a doctorate in education in Encinitas. She then has to give it to the superintendent. All of this paperwork from the superintendent then has to go to Governor Wilson in the State Department of Education in the State of California.
Think about all this paper flow from just the schools in my district. Now think about all the paper flow from all the schools in the State of California going to Sacramento. Now visualize all of that paperwork, all of that time and energy that is going to all of the State capitals to be reviewed.
What has to happen on a State capital level? There has to be a bureaucracy at a State level, Mr. Speaker, to receive and to review, to see if it is in compliance with the Federal regulations and the other
``wills'' that come forward in Goals 2000.
And then what does the State do with it? The State takes that same body of paperwork and sends it back here to River City, to Washington DC, to a giant $35 billion bureaucracy in the Department of Education. They review it to see if it falls within those 43 ``wills'' and some of those ``shalls.'' After they have done it, there is more paperwork that goes down that the administrators have to handle, that paperwork goes back and forth. And think of the time, waste and energy; is it any wonder that the United States is number 13 of all 13 industrialized nations in education, but yet we are purported to spend more on education. We do not spend more, Mr. Speaker, on education. We spend about one-fourth of what is purported because the rest goes to bureaucracy.
What we did is, the Governors came to us and said to the committee,
``Send us the money, do away with the paperwork, do away with the rules and regulations, let us establish our local programs and we can do it better.'' Mr. Speaker, I have yet to go to a graduation where you have students that do well, either on a high school or a college level, that you do not have parent involvement, you do not have the teachers that are lauded by the parents and by the students, and that teamwork and that fellowship. Yes, it does take a village to raise a child, and I am a Republican. But the problem is, under the Clinton plan, it takes another village to pay for it. We can do it better and we can afford to send other villages' dollars down into education where we can give the teachers the money they need to teach our children and ask for quality teachers.
Those are just a few of the reasons. I could literally go on all day on different examples of what we have done.
But you say, ``Duke, you've shown some of the problems. What is your vision for education?''
Mr. Speaker, as chairman of the Subcommittee on Early Childhood, Youth and Families of the Committee on Education, I want to do for education what John F. Kennedy did for the space program. We can do that. We can do that as a nation. We can make an investment in education. Not cut it. Liberals have been cutting education for the last 40 years because they have been spending it on bureaucracy. They have been taking your tax dollars, sending it to Washington, and returning it at a very low rate. That is wrong. That is cutting education. We are increasing education and the resources. How do you do that? What is your vision, then?
First of all, in the telecommunications bills, Mr. Speaker, we put in the language that encourages the AT&T's, the Baby Bell's, Apple, IBM with the computer programs, to be able to invest in our schools. Mr. Speaker, less than 12 percent of our schools in this Nation, the richest nation in the world, less than 12 percent of its classrooms have a single phone jack. We have had hearings where major representatives from industry have told us that over 80 percent of the jobs, both vocational and those that are professional-bound to colleges, are going to require high-technology equipment and a high-
technology education to meet the needs of the 21st century. I only have 12 percent of the schools that are even wired for a phone jack to put in those systems. So what we did is encourage the Baby Bell's, the AT&T's, the Alcoa that lays the fiber optics, to be able to invest in our schools. The President jumps up and says, Look at V-chip. V-chip, yeah, it's good. But the idea in the bill we passed is going to enable us, let industry build up those schools, let them put in the fiber optics, let them put in the computers, let them work with the local districts so that that computer is not obsolete in 6 months.
When you have teachers that don't know how to turn on a computer or even teach our children high skills, then think about that delta that the liberals talk about so much, about the successful and the poor, that delta, the difference between. That is going to grow even higher if we don't have a system to train our children in the future. We can do that through private enterprise, which we are doing now.
Let me give you a good example. In my district, I have a school called Scripps Ranch. Scripps Ranch, we built and we got private enterprise to invest in it. We put fiber optics in it when the school was built. We have computers in every single classroom that the children use and other high-technology equipment, both in science, in math, and yes, in the arts as well. The students, those that are vocationally bound, are using those computers. They are actually designing modular housing units that they sell to other schools so that they can buy more equipment for themselves. Those that are college-
bound, the students in architecture or design, are using those computers. They have redesigned the entire school. And both unions--
union is not a dirty word--unions and private enterprise are hiring those children in the summer and giving them OJT in job areas so that they will have a better preparation when they leave high school.
Take a look at a school like Mira Mesa that I have in my district that does not have any of that. Think of the difference in the opportunity for the children at Scripps versus the children at another school that do not have those opportunities. It is exponential. What can we do?
A charter school is a school started up by teachers, parents, or local groups that is free from the Federal regulations, and they teach the basics, reading, writing, arithmetic or math, and vocational skills.
What about choice? The voucher system is often talked about. I think the Federal Government, Mr. Speaker, mandates too much. I do not believe that there is choice in schools right now. When my wife taught in a different district, my children traveled every day with her to that school.
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That is choice. They did not have to go to the school in the District. They participated at Fletcher Elementary with the program for special education children, because they asked them to help these special education children. And that was choice.
I think we should at least offer the option to States and localities and local communities. If they want to use it, then do it, but not to mandate it from the Federal Government. Christine Whitman, in New Jersey, has done a good job with it; Governor Engler; Governor Weld. Wisconsin has a voucher program. It works. It may not work in an inner city where you have great transportation costs that are going to take away from that education system.
Again, the money should go to the local district and let the parents, the teachers, the administrators and the local groups that are in that zip code, because they know the particular problems that go on.
What is another function? Education, Mr. Speaker, is, I think, pretty close to a wherewithal that is going to save this country. It does not mean that the Federal Government has to do it. It does not mean that the taxpayers ought to send their taxes to Washington and have it turned around at such a low rate. It is ludicrous.
What about illegal immigration? In the State of California I have over, and listen to this, Mr. Speaker, I have over 400,000 illegals, kindergarten through 12th grade. Four hundred thousand, at a cost of
$5,000 each per year. That is over $2.2 billion a year that comes out of California's education fund; $2.2 billion.
We could put a computer and fiber optics into every schoolroom in the State of California. We could upgrade to where education for American citizens and their children and student loans are cheaper in the State of California. But, no, we have been mandated from the Federal Government that we have to supply this education.
The school lunch program, just for illegals, costs $1.2 million a day, and we need to address that, Mr. Speaker. It is another problem within our schools that we have to face on a daily basis.
So I look at the cost of education, what the Federal Government is killing and cutting in education every single day for the last 40 years, and we need to change that, Mr. Speaker. We can do better as a nation. We can invest in education, and we need to do it at the local level.
Let me talk about some of the things that my colleagues on the other side of the aisle said that we cut. Let me give you a good example of the lies, the deceit, the misconceptions and the rhetoric that comes out about cutting.
The other side of the aisle will say that Republicans cut safe and drug-free schools. We put the money in a block grant, again to the States, and if safe and drug-free schools works in that particular district, they can fund it; if Head Start works.
Now, get this. The Department of Education, the Department of Education, not exactly a right-wing conservative group, did a study and said across this Nation you can take two children, one in Head Start, the other not, and at the end of the training there is no difference in the results. But yet in San Diego we have a pretty good Head Start Program. It works good in San Diego.
But across the Nation it only depends on the ability of the administrators, the teachers and the parents within that zip code if that is going to succeed or not. So what we do is send the money down to the local district and say use the money where it is effective to help children, and I think that is a big difference.
But drug-safe schools. In 1994 and 1995 Democrats controlled. They controlled the House, they controlled the Senate, Mr. Speaker, and they controlled the White House. The request for safe and drug-free schools was $598.2 million. Let me repeat it for you, $598.2 million. The Democrats in the Congress, they controlled the House, the Senate and the White House, cut to $487.2 million. In 1995 the request was for
$660 million for safe and drug-free schools. Democrats cut it $194 million.
We did not cut safe and drug-free schools. We funded it at the same level, and we sent the money to the local districts and said if it works for you, do it, and fund it. Do not fund it at only 23 cents on the dollar, but fund it if it works, because that is a program you need to save for children.
Let me give you some fraud, waste and abuse in that particular program that we rooted out. In Michigan, Drug Czar Bob Peterson found
$81,000 spent on a giant plastic teeth and toothbrushes for safe and drug-free schools. They said if children brush their teeth, they are not going to do drugs. It went to fund bicycle pumps. It funded sex education consultants at Clemsford High School in Massachusetts; they spent $1,000 to present a compulsory attendance on hot, sexy, and safer programs for students.
Fairfax County, just right next to us here in Washington, DC, spent
$176,000 for staff to spend a weekend on Maryland's Eastern Shore. They spent funds for lumber to build steps for an aerobics class and funded a field trip to Deep Run Lodge for the board of education.
That is not what the money is meant for, Mr. Speaker, and that is what we are changing, is getting the money down to the local groups.
Commerce, Justice, and State appropriations, drug enforcement. My colleagues were talking about a study into contra and drug dealings. What Senator Dole has been campaigning around the country with is that drug use since the Clinton administration started, the use in our high schools, is up 143 percent, an increase. When Ronald Reagan and George Bush were in the White House, drug use went down 50 percent.
Yes, say no to drugs. With parents, it worked. It helped. Was it the wherewithal? Absolutely not, but I think there was an awareness that the Nation had a problem.
Remember Noriega and the interdiction that we used in Colombia and other countries in stopping and going after the drug cartels? That was effective. But is that by itself going to stop the war that we have on drugs? Absolutely not. Are treatment centers? In our schools, are the safe and drug-free schools and the DARE by themselves? No. It takes a compromise of a lot of different groups to make it work.
When we have a President his first week in the White House who cuts the drug czar from 154 staff to 25, and then in his next statement on MTV makes a statement, ``I would have inhaled if I could,'' is that the message we want to come across to our children in this Nation?
Agents that are going out every day in our schools say there is not a case where the kids do not laugh and say, well, the President does it. Is that the message that we want to send to our children? Is that the message that we want to send with this nation's highest medical officer, Joycelyn Elders, who came across and said she wanted to legalize drugs in this country? I do not think that is the message we want to send to our youth.
This President cut the Coast Guard. One of our most effective stops of drugs entering this country, especially in Florida and in California, is through our Coast Guard. He cut that $328 million. We put the money back in, Mr. Speaker.
Foreign operations, State Department International Narcotics Control Program. We increased it $35 million that the President cut. DOD operations was cut by the President. Where? For drug interdiction.
When we take a look across the board at where this administration has cut drug interdiction, he even cut the White House drug testing program. And, just, what, 3 weeks ago, in the Washington Times and the Washington Post and papers across this country, it was found out that in the White House staff was using cocaine, heroin, and hallucinogens. And, guess what, the President did away with the White House drug testing program before that, even when he was warned by the FBI that these people were going to go on his staff. No wonder he took away the drug testing program. And it is a fact, it is not just a statement.
We have lost great support in our war against drugs, Mr. Speaker, and Republicans are putting that back. We elevate the war threat in the National Security Council, restore funding for interdiction efforts, restore funding on the ONDCP staff for policy support lost in 1993, restore for intelligence gathering that we lost between 1993 and 1995.
So, yes, we have a critical problem. When we talk to lawyers, Mr. Speaker, and go to your lawyers in your local district, and ask them what the No. 1 issue for juvenile justice, if they could stop it, what would they do, and I bet 99 percent of them will say stop the flow of drugs into our schools and into our Nation.
And those that are on it, let us help them get off it with our treatment centers. I know that personally because of my own son who was in a drug treatment center, Mr. Speaker, and it worked. But when he checked in, the staff there, Dr. Sambs, said, ``Duke, there is only about 10 percent of these kids that are not going to come back to this facility.''
But we can save some of those kids. My son was one of those: Drug free since 1986. And he even dates the daughter of a judge, so I guess he has to stay straight now. But it has been a success program, and there are other children like him across the Nation.
Mr. Speaker, we talk about education and the importance. I taught and coached at Hinsdale High School outside of Chicago. Evanston, Nutria are two other very fine schools in this Nation with good teachers. But you go just a short distance away, Mr. Speaker, and you will go through 4\1/2\ miles of Federal housing projects. In that 4\1/2\ miles, those kids do not carry books, they carry guns. Their icons are pimps and prostitutes and drug dealers.
The illegitimacy rate is above 50 percent for those children. The only male figure they ever see is an older male that impregnates the unmarried daughter. That daughter has a child, then they get welfare. And the only male figure they see is that figure. And usually it is the grandmother that raises the child.
And then if it is a male child, where does that child end up? Where does he go? Usually, the only family that many of these kids have are gangs. And we are seeing the problem in our country of juvenile justice and juvenile delinquency grow exponentially across the Nation.
So education, a hope for a job, putting resources into education, not wasting them on Federal bureaucracy, and purporting to do that, I think, is a noteworthy task, Mr. Speaker.
What have we done in this Congress? The Speaker of the House holds up a bucket of ice. The last icebox where you had to put ice in it was in 1937, but yet the Democrats have been, under Democrat leadership for 40 years, have been delivering ice to this body for 40 years, two times a day. Two times a day. Do you know what that bucket of ice cost?
$500,000 a year.
Did we conduct a 5-year study? No. Did we retrain the ice deliverers? No. We just went cold turkey. We cut it. And can we save dollars in this body, Mr. Speaker? Absolutely. Right on down the line. For parking places for lobbyists that we cut. We cut the size of the bureaucracy and sold a building and saved taxpayer dollars. That bucket means about 400 families that can receive the Bob Dole tax relief.
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And the Bob Dole tax relief, let us take a look at it. A family of four, two children, earning $30,000, will receive a tax relief package of 86 percent of their taxes are going to be eliminated, 86 percent. And under this administration, if the tax system continues without the Bob Dole tax relief, you can send that 86 percent tax increase right to IRS.
We are going to rip it out by the roots, Mr. Speaker. We are going to have a safer, fairer tax for the American people because they do not want to send the valuable dollars to Washington, DC and only get 23 cents back on the dollar for education. They do not want to send it to Washington, DC, Mr. Speaker, and only get 30 cents of a dollar back down to welfare recipients. They want it effective.
They want a lean, mean government that walks beside its people, that helps them and gets off of their back. And there is a legitimate reason to have Federal help. Poor children. There is a legitimate need in medical research for AIDS and for cancer and Alzheimer's and other diseases.
States cannot do that, and that is why the speaker was insistent that our priority was to increase the dollars for medical research in the HHS bill, demanded it. And in many cases we took the dollars out of programs that some of us did not want, but overall it was a good program.
Mr. Speaker, in 2 years people say, well, Duke, is it really worth it to stay in Congress? Is it really worth all of the battles that you go through? And I want to tell you it is one of the most difficult things I have ever done including fighting in combat for my country because you make an honest effort. You know a system, Medicare, is going broke. My mother, who lives in Escondido, is not going to have the system if we do not preserve it and save it. My little mom, my little Irish mom who fits under my arm, you think we are going to do anything to taint that? Or my children in the future?
But yet if we do not save it, and add the dollars that we need to over a period of time, we go from $4,800 to $7,300. That is not a cut, Mr. Speaker. And the most difficult thing in this body is to sit up and listen to all the demagoguery, to the smoke and mirrors, to the scare tactics when someone is saying you are cutting Medicare, when someone is saying that you are cutting education and what you are doing is cutting their precious bureaucracy.
Why do the unions dump large amounts, $35 million, into their campaigns? Because they know and they want a centralized government and the power. What we want to do, Mr. Speaker, is turn that power away from the Federal Government and turn it back to the American people.
That is a vision. In that we can increase education dollars, and we can do the rest of the things that we purport to do.
I want to thank you, Mr. Speaker. I think that the American people, when the elections are coming up on November 5, whether you are Republican or Democrat, take a look at the issues and take a look at the values, the character; take a look at the believability of the system and what we are trying to do. It is trying to make a better America, to preserve Medicare, to preserve the environment; not cut it but to cut the Federal bureaucracy that is taking away the dollars, that is taking away the American dream.
Let us give the dollars back to the pockets of the people so that we can improve education and the other systems.
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