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“THE CASE FOR SAVING AMERICA'S FAMILIES” mentioning the U.S. Dept of Agriculture was published in the House of Representatives section on pages H933-H939 on March 12, 1997.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
THE CASE FOR SAVING AMERICA'S FAMILIES
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of January 7, 1997, the gentleman from Michigan [Mr. Hoekstra] is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, tonight I want to share with my colleagues a project that we have been working on for a number of months. We call it the Case for Saving America's Families.
In this project, we are attempting to build a case for government that does only what government can and should do. Too often in Washington we have begun to ask Washington, this city, to do things that are better done at a State and local level and in many cases are better done not by bureaucracies and bureaucrats in Washington but are better done by families, by nonprofit faith-based institutions or by the private enterprise system. We have asked this city to make too many decisions that it is ill-equipped to make and that could be made much better in other parts of America.
We have to look at this Washington bureaucracy. This street going down over on the right side used to be called Independence Avenue but if you take a look at the buildings that line that street, it is maybe an appropriate time to rename that street Dependence Avenue, because it demonstrates the dependency that the rest of America has developed on Washington, a dependency where we ask bureaucrats to take a larger role in raising our children, bureaucrats and bureaucracies taking a larger role in building our communities, bureaucrats taking a larger role in creating jobs. We have identified and we constantly are on the lookout for specific examples where we can identify what the Washington bureaucracy is doing, whether it is working or whether it is failing, where it abuses power, where it wastes money, where it does things which perhaps to the American citizen, the average citizen, actually makes no sense.
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We have begun a project of collecting these real life examples. These are things which the Washington bureaucracy actually do, and we compile these on a monthly basis. These are in your office; we send them to your office each and every month, and it is called, A Tale of Two Visions. The newsletter features actual examples of real life stories of what is happening in Washington and then compares and contrasts what Washington is doing to what successful entrepreneurs, successful individuals, and successful organizations are doing at the local level. It highlights the struggle that many Americans have with the Washington bureaucracy.
Let me just highlight some of the examples that we have in our February issue, and again these are in your offices, where we highlight some things that Washington believes it is best at deciding and it believes that it is appropriate to use American taxpayer dollars to fund these kind of activities.
As many of you know, we fund public housing projects around the country, and when we fund these projects it is only appropriate that Washington attaches strings to those dollars to make sure that the people who build those buildings build them to the codes that we want established and the criteria that we have established in Washington, that the people that manage those projects manage them the way that we want them to manage them, that the people who live in them live in them the way that we want them to live and that the pets that are in those public housing projects are treated with the dignity and respect that we want them to be treated with.
So in 1996 our Secretary of HUD decided that we had to protect the pets in public housing because this was a national crisis and this is something that Washington had to be involved with. We developed rules regarding pet ownerships by elderly and disabled in public housing. Included in this, and this is section 5.350, paragraph 2, actual language from HUD, Washington saying people at the local level, an individual, cannot make this decision, Washington has to help them, let us write these rules and regulations, let us make sure they are aware of them so that people can listen to this and that they can abide by the rules and regulations that we have established.
Paragraph 2: ``In the case of cats and other pets using litter boxes the pet rules may require the pet owner to change the litter,'' in parentheses, ``but not more than twice each week, may require pet owners to separate pet waste from litter, but not more than once each day, then may prescribe methods for the disposal of pet waste and used litter.''
Thank you, Secretary Cisneros. That is going to help us, and those were Federal dollars well spent.
On a more serious note, back in 1996, we are facing a drug problem in our country, and so what is the appropriate response? It is when a product became available that would enable parents to better gauge and understand if their kids were using illegal drugs, the FDA said, ``No, it's not appropriate that we make this technology available to parents.'' It is not that the tests were unsafe, it is not that they were ineffective. The same tests are used routinely by hospitals, employers and parole officers. It is not that they were too difficult for a parent to understand how to use it correctly. The FDA was fighting to keep this product off the shelves because the parents cannot, and this is quote, ``be trusted to handle the results,'' end of quote. They fear that these tests would have a harmful effect on the parent-child relationships. After intense pressure, hallelujah, the FDA later approved the tests.
We also now are carding 27-year-olds for the purchase of cigarettes. We are taking a look at, and this is probably the most frustrating thing, when we have wise bureaucrats in all of these buildings, and they are good people, but when these people, one bureaucrat working in one office decides what the right thing is to do, and then somebody in another building decides that maybe they have got something that is a little bit different--think about this. The National Institutes of Health required one university to replace all of the school's rabbit cages. This carried a pricetag of $250,000. That may have been the right thing to do for the rabbits. However, less than a year later the Agriculture Department declared that the cages were the wrong size and the university had to once again replace the cages.
Now I kind of like rabbits, but I am not sure that we need two agencies in Washington who are focused and believe that it is their primary responsibility and purpose in life to design and define for people at a local level what the appropriate size and design and construction of a rabbit cage should be. This appears to be a little bit of overkill.
Now let us take a look at the exciting things that are going on. There are things that are going on in the private sector that really indicate that people at the local level maybe actually have a higher degree of common sense, have a higher degree of commitment to their community and their neighbors, that they have a higher degree and sense of responsibility than what we so frequently will give them or give them credit for.
The case of a father, a Catholic priest, working on job training: This is a case of Father Ronald Marino, and he took a look at what was going on in his community and said, ``This isn't good enough.'' He took a look at how government job training programs worked, and he found that this was not working. So on his own he began teaching English to immigrants, and once they had successfully mastered it he taught them a skill with on-the-job training through an apprenticeship, the participants either in pay and advancing from their salaries. They got advances on their salaries. They were teaching them things that would enable them to get a job, and this is an individual in the community going out and taking a look at government programs and saying they do not work, I can do better, and I have got a sense of commitment to my community, I am going to improve my community.
A grandmother helped 70 kids after school, takes no Federal funds. A 57-year-old grandmother in southeast Washington, DC runs an afterschool program which provides hot meals, homework help, computer instruction, Bible study, and a safe place to play for at-risk children. Miss Hannah Hawkins founded a nonprofit organization called Children of Mine after her husband was murdered in 1970.
Margaret Alasky writes Hawkins insists that social progress comes not when professionals take on needy children as clients, but when ordinary people treat the semi-abandoned children of others as their own. People have an intense concern and love for their community, and they demonstrate it in much more effective ways than what we so often do here in Washington.
These are just a few of the examples. We continue to build this litany of examples of where Washington, well-intentioned, goes out and tries to solve problems, but in many cases does not do it very effectively, and when you take a look at the alternatives that are available: local organizations, faith-based institutions, individuals, the free enterprise system, it is kind of like why are we sucking dollars out of the community and bringing them to Washington when if they were left in the community we might be able to deliver better results and have a better impact on solving some of these very difficult problems if we just let communities have the resources for themselves.
This is our vision. Our vision is of a government which costs less so that families can survive on one income. Our vision is of a government which does not compete with or attack parents or families but builds them up. Our vision is of a stronger, more vibrant private sector which is creating jobs free from the excesses of burden of taxation and regulation.
I think it is time for us to step out here in the House and, as Republicans, to more clearly articulate our vision for what we want America to be, and one of the projects that we have been debating today and one of the things that we have been talking about is the President's budget, a President's budget which increases spending, which does not reach balance, and we are talking about whether that is good for America, whether that is good for our citizens, and whether that is good for our kids.
But I think we ought to outline a vision about what we would like to see in a budget.
The President has laid down a benchmark. I am not satisfied with it. I do not believe it meets some criteria that are very important to me. I believe that in the long run we should be working toward a Federal Government, a budget, that can be funded by a one-wageearner family. We have way too many families today where one person is working to support the family and the other person is working to support the Federal Government. We need to move back to the point where a two-wageearner family is an option and not a requirement.
We have to have a budget that is in balance with and protects the core institutions of our society: families, private enterprise and faith-based and nonprivate institutions. We have to have a budget that is based on the assumption that the dollars that come to Washington are the American people's dollars and that they are best equipped to make the choices about how to spend them. We have to have a budget that respects the needs and the interests of today as well as future generations.
We need a budget that protects our kids. We need a budget that reflects a learning from the long 29-year experience of deficit spending, deficit spending that developed out of an overexuberance about what people believe government could do and what people believe government could do better than what local institutions could do.
Do we really want to do for our kids in education what over the last 30 years we did for the needy and welfare and public housing? No, I think we can do a whole lot better than that, and we need to do a whole lot better than that.
Why does not the President's criteria, or why does not the President's budget, meet this criteria? The President's budget does not meet this criteria because what he wants to do is to continue to move dollars and spending to Washington rather than leaving the money back home.
This is not about a budget that is level, that gets to balance because revenues are increasing. This is about a President who wants to grow spending in one key category. Take a look at what happens to discretionary spending. This President wants more money to fund Washington bureaucrats and Washington bureaucracy. This is a $165 billion increase in discretionary spending between 1998 and the year 2002.
Now I just did a little figuring, and I come from a small- or medium-
sized town in west Michigan, and I am not used to numbers this big, and I used to work for a company that finally, shortly after I left, finally got to be a billion-dollar company. A billion dollars is a lot of money, $100 million is a lot of money, but if you divide $168 billion by 5,000, which maybe is about the average tax that a family of four pays each year, you divide that 5,000 into 168 billion; do that at your own offices; and you find out that it is a lot of families who are going to have to pay for this increased spending.
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If we run the numbers, and then if we divide it by the 5 years, it is about, on average, to fund the increasing spending that this President wants, about 6 million families each year, or 6 million more American families are going to have to send about $5,000 to Washington.
Does that move us closer to a budget that could be funded by a one-
wage-earner family? I do not think so. I think asking for $165 billion more of spending in Washington is going to create more two-wage-earner families, not because of a choice, but out of necessity.
Does this protect our core institutions of our society, families, private enterprise, faith-based and nonprofit institutions? No. This is Washington sucking money away from those agencies.
Does this say we believe that the American people are best equipped to make the choices that they would like to make? No. It says the American people are not equipped to make choices; Washington can make better choices of this $165 billion than what the American people can.
Does this respect the needs and the interests of today as well as for our kids? Does this protect our kids? We could get to balance and surplus a whole lot sooner for our kids.
Most of this money in increased spending we are going to have to borrow. We are going to have to borrow it, so our kids are going to have a higher debt that they are going to have to pay back. Each and every year they are also going to have to pay interest on this. No, this does not save our kids, it does not protect our kids, it puts a bigger burden on our kids.
Does this learn the lessons of deficit spending? No, it continues the over-exuberance of believing what Washington can and cannot do.
This is a bad budget for a number of reasons. It does not respect the family, it does not clarify choices, and it does not reflect the lessons that we should have learned. Those are the kinds of criteria that we need to establish as we move forward and create a new budget.
As Republicans outline what we want, and what we want to do, it is a matter of it is time to stop increasing spending; it is time to recognize that the most important thing is to start developing a surplus budget so that we can start protecting our kids, so that we can start moving power and authority and control to the places where the best solutions are, which is at the local level.
I now want to move on to another project that we have been working on which we call Lessons in Education. We have been working, a number of us, my colleagues, the gentleman from California [Mr. McKeon], and the gentleman from California [Mr. Riggs], we are working on a project which we call Education at a Crossroads. Education at a Crossroads: What Works and What is Wasted.
The purpose of our effort is to really find out what is going on in education today. The paper that we developed is lessons in education. It is a series. What are we learning as we go through this process of having hearings around the country, as we have parents, students, teachers, principals, entrepreneurs, innovators, as they testify, what have we learned about education?
We have learned, not surprisingly, although I sometimes think when we try to develop programs here in Washington we forget some of these basics. The first lesson we learned: Parents care the most about their children's education. We go around to a charter school in Los Angeles and a parent gets up and says, you know what I really like about this school? We finally have been able to take back our school. The people who are running this school no longer have to look to the L.A. unified school district about what they can do.
One of the testimonies of the person running the school, she said:
``You know, when I ran this school and I was part of the L.A. unified school district, I worried about the three Bs.''
You would think as a principal she would be worried about the three Rs, but no, the three Bs. She said: ``I was always measured and the people at headquarters did not ask me how well I was doing with my kids. They wanted to know what was happening with busing, what was happening with my budgets. And then I would always run into the third B, which is the bucks.'' What do you mean, the bucks? She says: ``Every time I had a good idea that I thought would benefit the kids in my school and I would go to my rules and regulations and I would find out, I cannot do that; but I wanted to do it because it is what I needed to do for my kids.''
I would go to the headquarters of the L.A. unified school district and I would say: This is what my kids need. This is what the parents of my kids want. That is what we have jointly decided is best for the kids in our school to make sure that they have the learning environment that enables them to get the most effective learning.
I would go to headquarters, and the answer would be: Well, that is not a bad idea, but you cannot do it, because this and that, or that. Sometimes: It may be a good idea, but if we let you do that, we would have to let everybody else do that too. We cannot have that happen.
Successful education, as we are struggling with education and the educational issues around the country, let us not forget the fact that the person who knows the kid's name and the person that named the child probably cares the most about their education and about their future. And they care more than the bureaucrat at the State bureaucracy or at the Washington bureaucracy who do not even know the name of the child. Let us not lose sight of that. Too often we are losing sight of the fact that parents care most. We have also learned that good intentions do not equal good policy.
Lesson No. 2: We care about kids in Washington. We care so much about the education that our children receive in Washington that we have created program after program after program after program so that the end of 20 to 30 years of Washington having good intentions and Washington caring about our children that we now have 760 different programs running through 39 different agencies, spending $120 billion per year, and the education system is in crisis.
Mr. Speaker, good intentions do not equal good policy. Just because we care does not mean that the answer has to be a new program with a nice sounding title and a few dollars associated with it, does not mean that we are actually helping our children.
Lesson No. 3: More money or more does not always equal better; 760 programs probably is not better than 700 programs, and 600 programs probably is not better than 5 hub programs. More money in a failed system may sound good, but more money into a system that does not work does not do anybody any good and it does not help our kids one bit.
Mr. Speaker, the interesting thing is we have developed 760 programs. There is now a cottage industry, a cottage industry that you would think would be going to schools and saying: Here is some of the research that has just been done; and this is the most effective way for kids to learn how to read; or these are some of the really interesting new tools that we have developed to help teach children math or science. Here is the latest technology that, as you get these computers into your classroom, here is what you do with them.
No. The cottage industry is here: Here are two binders that tell you about 500 different education programs; they tell you, these booklets tell you what programs exist, who is eligible, and they tell you how to write the grant to get the money.
They do not tell you how to write the grant to reflect and answer the questions in a way that is honest and truthful; they tell you how to write the grant so that you have the highest probability of getting the money. So now we have school districts all around the country not hiring instructional specialists, but they are hiring grant-writers to kind of go through these 500 programs and to see if they can strike gold by finding some grants that a local school district may qualify for. Wrong priorities, wrong decisions, and a bad way to spend our money.
Mr. Speaker, we have created such a maze of programs that we now have to have specialists to go through this maze to figure out, this money that we sent through the IRS, how that money can get back to the local school district.
Do not worry about it, we do it very efficiently. When you send a dollar to the IRS and when you send a dollar to Washington for education, you can be sure that we get about 60 to 65 cents back to the teacher and back to the classroom. That is not a bad investment.
The bureaucrats in Washington, the bureaucrats in your State education association, they only steal 35 cents of that dollar from our kids. They are sucking away 35 cents that could be used in the classroom. The issue in education is not finding more money to spend in a system that sucks 35 cents out. The question is, how do we get more of that dollar that we send to Washington back to the classroom. It is not about spending $1.10 so we can get 70 cents to the classroom. It is about finding a way to get this dollar and getting 80 cents, 85 cents, 90 cents, 95 cents, back to what the purpose is of education. The purpose of education is not to make and hire bureaucrats, it is to educate kids.
Education needs to be child-centered, is the lesson that we are working on now.
Mr. Speaker, there are too many programs today where the focus is on the bureaucrat, it is on the bureaucracy, and it is not on the student. The system today, the students way down there at the end, there is a bureaucrat at the State level, there are some other bureaucrats through this process that work at this bureaucracy in Washington, and the student is not the focal point. The system today is about Government, it is about bureaucrats, it is about bureaucracy.
The system really should be not the student at the end of the process; the student needs to be the center of the process. The people most influential on that student are the teachers in the classroom and the parents. These are the people that know that student's name, they know where they live, they know the problems and the concerns that this student faces, the special problems. They care about them. These people care.
The bureaucrats care, but do they really care and know if they cannot give you the name of the student that they are trying to help? The resources and the dollars have to be focused on the student. These bureaucrats today, they are worried about writing the rules and the regulations for 760 programs here, not all in one building. Seven hundred sixty might be OK if they were all in one building in this town, but think about it. Some of the programs are in a building called the Education Department. Other programs come out of the Defense Department. Other programs come out of HUD. Other programs come out of the Agriculture Department. It is not one building, it is not 5 buildings, it is 39 different buildings, 39 different bureaucracies spending $120 billion a year.
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We had a great hearing yesterday in the Committee on the Budget. I asked Secretary Rubin, Secretary of the Treasury, I asked the Secretary, who is the focal point? Who is the person that is setting education strategy at the Washington level? Who is focused on coordinating this effort and making sure that these different entities come together? The answer was, the President.
I am sorry, Mr. Rubin, I do not believe that the President is actually spending a whole lot of time trying to coordinate 760 programs through 39 different agencies. I think he has a few other things to do. I know education is important to him, but I believe that there are some other things on his mind.
What has been the result of this ever-increasing bureaucracy? I look at this, and coming from a business standpoint I think there is some reason to be concerned about this. I do not really think this is the best way to do it. But maybe in Washington this works. Maybe this really works in Washington. It does not work in the business world, but maybe in government all these pieces somehow magically come together.
What are the results? One-half of all adult Americans are functionally illiterate. Fifty-six percent of all college freshmen require remedial education. In California, we had a hearing and we had some of the chief officers and the key people in higher education in California come and testify. They said, please, please, as you are taking a look at the budget, do not cut our funds for remedial education.
We would say, explain that a little bit more. These are students that you have accepted into your university. What kind of remedial education are you looking for? What are these dollars exactly being used for? Remedial seems like a pretty serious term.
The answer is, well, one out of four students entering higher education in California, one out of four students cannot read or write at an eighth grade level. Excuse me? One out of four students in California entering higher ed, and this is not going into high school, this is going into higher education, one out of four cannot read or write at an eighth grade level? This is not remedial, this is a crisis. This is a big problem. Why are you not going down to the high schools, the middle schools, and the grade schools and talking to the teachers there and taking a look at what is going on in the classroom?
Remember, these teachers are graduating from your universities. They are now going into the classroom, and the children going through this system are now coming to you and they cannot read or write at an eighth grade level. Are you maybe failing the students that are going through your college that are becoming teachers? Are we failing the kids who are in grade school? Absolutely. They cannot read or write when they get out. This is a big problem. Sixty-four percent of 12th graders do not read at a proficient level. SAT scores have dropped by 60 points in 3 decades.
There are two ways to look at what we are going to do as a result, as we face what I think are some disappointing results in education, something we should all be concerned about. We can continue this Washington-centered approach. We can continue saying, you know, just a few more programs and a few more dollars, a few more bureaucrats and a few more buildings and a few more bigger buildings and we will be all right. We will solve this problem.
No, I do not think so. It is time to start maybe rethinking what is going on in these buildings, but it is not a time to add more buildings, more people, and more dollars.
We need to think in this way: How do we empower parents and teachers, the people closest to the students, closest to the kids, how do we empower them to make sure that this child gets the kind of results that we need? It is about teachers, it is about students, and it is about parents. It is not about bureaucracy and bureaucrats who have the student at the end of the system.
We ought to take a look at what the President is proposing: $165 billion more spending. The President has not learned our lessons.
This assumes that we need more money in Washington and that Washington bureaucrats care more about our children than parents do. That is lesson one. This does not assume this. Much of this spending is going for education, $55 billion more of spending for education over the next 5 years in Washington. This does not demonstrate a lesson learned; that parents care most. This also does not meet the criteria.
He did not learn lesson two. The President's programs are well-
intended, but come on, do we really think that 770 programs spending
$130 billion per year going through 30 or 40 agencies is going to work better than 760 programs, spending $120 billion? I do not think so. This does not recognize that more money in a failed system is not good policy. This is pouring more money into the same bad system that we have today.
The end result, if we pass what the President wants to do, if we give him more spending, what will these bureaucracies and bureaucrats do for our children?
Think about it. The President wants a building program, so it means that bureaucrats in Washington will now do the building, they will build our buildings at a local level. When we build in Washington, we apply lots of rules and restrictions.
Think about just one thing. when we build buildings and we put Federal dollars in construction projects, in Washington we apply a little-known law called Davis-Bacon. People may recognize that as prevailing wage, which means we have to pay probably higher wages. It means bureaucrats at the local level, individuals at the local level, have to come to Washington to find out the salaries they have to pay their contractors, rather than through competitive bidding.
But another little-known feature of Davis-Bacon, and think about this as we go through the process, Davis-Bacon prohibits the use of volunteer labor. So if you are going to build your school or if you are going to renovate your school, and you say, hey, this would be kind of nice, maybe the government can buy the paint and some of the materials and volunteers can paint our classrooms; if we are going to redo the playground, maybe the government can buy some of the materials and the parents can come and clean up the playground and do some of the construction; sorry, they cannot do that anymore.
Davis-Bacon Federal building laws prohibit the use of volunteer labor on these projects. Not a smart thing, especially when we consider some of the other things the President wants to do.
But we will have bureaucrats who build our buildings. These bureaucrats will then decide about what kind of technology goes in because we are going to put in money for technology, so bureaucrats will decide the technology that goes into the buildings. The President wants to set standards at a national level, which means that he will have a strong role in developing curriculum. He wants to do national testing, so he will test our kids. He wants to certify our teachers, so the bureaucrats in Washington will be certifying our teachers.
We already have programs that teach kids about safe sex, about appropriate or inappropriate drug use. Bureaucrats in Washington are going to continue doing those types of things. Bureaucrats in Washington already decide what our kids can eat for breakfast, what our kids can eat for lunch. We are going to have after-school programs. We are going to have midnight basketball. But other than that, it is your school.
We are going to build the buildings, put in the technology, develop the curriculum, test your kids, certify your teachers, feed them breakfast, feed them lunch, teach them about sex, teach them about drugs, after-school programs, midnight basketball, but hey, other than that, it is your school.
This is an approach that is Washington-centered, making these buildings bigger and more powerful, and we are moving away from parents and teachers and local control. Make no mistake about it, this is a massive shift of power and control to a Washington bureaucracy, away from parents, away from teachers, away from the students, and moving it to people who could not even give you the names of the kids going to the school.
I want to highlight just one other thing that happens here. Remember, our kids cannot read. So rather than going into the classroom and saying our kids are spending 7 to 8 hours in the classroom or 6 to 7 hours in the classroom per day and they cannot read, reading is kind of a fundamental thing, let us take a look at what is going on in the classroom. The student-centered approach would say let us take a look at what is happening with this student, with that teacher in the classroom, and why can this kid not learn to read? We would focus on the classroom.
The Washington approach says, now, let us develop another Band-Aid. Let us develop another program, and let us have tutors. Let us fund the Corporation for National Service to the tune of an extra $200 million. Let me get my pen out. That is $200 million per year. That is how many families paying $5,000 in taxes? That is a family of four. For the next 5 years let us have 40,000 American families pay, not to improve what is going on in the classroom, but to put a Band-Aid on a broken system through the corporation, so they can develop and get what? So they can find volunteers.
Wait a minute. Davis-Bacon and construction, we are going to discourage volunteers; but now for reading, we are going to encourage volunteers. Boy, Washington sure sends some mixed signals. Actually, we are redefining the role of volunteers. We are now redefining volunteers as people who make up to $27,000 per year. That is the Washington bureaucratic definition of a volunteer.
Now, let us go one step further. We are not fixing the system, we are applying a Band-Aid to a system. The only thing that I can say is the President did get one thing right, maybe right in this process. The President had to make a choice. If he believes in doing volunteers in this approach, through a bureaucratic approach, he at least made the right decision, that he was going to use the Corporation for National Service to teach our kids reading. It may or may not work, but we know that they cannot teach our kids math.
The Corporation for National Service, this bureaucracy in Washington with these bureaucrats, the model organization a few months ago had an independent auditing firm come in and say, you know, can your books be audited? Can you tell us where roughly $500 million or $600 million per year is spent, where it goes, how it is spent? It is kind of like the auditors came back and said, sorry, Congress, sorry, oversight subcommittee, asking the kinds of questions we should be asking about where this money is spent, the Corporation for National Service, its books are not auditable.
That is very frustrating, but the President has decided to pour $200 million more into that. We know they cannot teach our kids math. That is a sad enough story as it can be, but we know how AmeriCorps works. Students work, they get paid a stipend. Then they go to college, because they have built up a reserve that says, you know, if you are part of AmeriCorps we are going to set aside money for you to go to college. That money is set aside in a trust fund. This is fairly straightforward. You are part of AmeriCorps. We set aside money. You work, you fill out and complete your time of service, you go to college, AmeriCorps sends a check to the college to help pay your tuition, a fairly straightforward transaction; started from scratch, no new programs, nothing to corrupt the process, it started from scratch.
Bring in the accountants and say, okay, this program has now been working for 3 years. What is the state of the trust account? Are the trust funds auditable? Can you tell us with any sense of integrity who the people are that worked, that actually fulfilled their obligation to receive the college tuition grant, and have we set the money aside, and do we know with any sense of surety that when these people ask for this money, that the right people will be getting the money?
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This is not complex math. Fortune 500 companies, a small business person, the little entrepreneur, all of their books have to be auditable each and every year. If they are not, I do not think the IRS would be very happy with them. The Corporation for National Service, not only are its regular books not auditable; the fund that it started from scratch, the trust fund, is also not auditable.
But you can be sure of a couple of things. Under this model, even though it is absolutely miserable performance, where the books are not auditable, it is a first level of integrity that you have to have in any organization that, even though the books are not auditable, that the trust funds are not auditable, you can be sure that the bureaucrats will receive their salary, that the people who administer these programs at a State and local level will receive their salaries. And that is just a sad example that, even though when we do not get the results at the level of the student through these 760 programs, we do not get the level of performance or results that we need at a student level, bureaucrats and bureaucracy will continue to be paid. And under the current model that we have today, where people, some people believe that more is better, not only for miserable performance but the Corporation for National Service, when they cannot keep their own books, is going to, the President wants a $200 million increase, somewhere in the neighborhood of a 33- to 50-percent increase in their annual funding. That is the reward for not meeting the basics. Think about it. That is in Washington, that is the reward for doing a lousy job. We go back and ask you to do more.
Mr. Speaker, it is about time that we rethought the model and went back to parents and teachers. The difference here in Washington is when we cannot keep the books on an $800 million program, now in my home town the mayor invited my wife and I to a dinner. And we went to dinner and saw that many of the other council members did not have their spouses along.
After a few minutes I kind of asked him, I said, why is my wife here and there is a couple of other wives, but why aren't some of the other spouses here? The answer was, well, every dinner costs us $11 and we really do not have it all in our budget.
At a local level, people are worrying about dollars, $10, $100,
$1,000; $1,000 is a lot to many people at the local level. In Washington when a $400 million, $600 million agency cannot keep its books, remember what that means. It means that we cannot tell where the money is going or whether the money has been used for the intended purpose that Congress allocated that money to that institution for. When an organization in Washington says we cannot tell you where the money went, our response is: Great job, we need your help, we are going to expand your role, and we are going to give you $200 million more.
Mr. Speaker, that is why this system feeds bureaucracy, feeds bureaucrats and has at the end of its system, way down at the end is a student. That is why in Washington today, when the dollar comes into Washington, the bureaucracy sucks up 35 to 40 cents of every dollar and never lets us get it back to the student.
I just want to give one more anecdote about why we do not need a million new tutors in Washington. It is already being done. The State of Delaware had a hearing in Delaware, has one Congressman. There are 434 of us, 435 of us. In one congressional district, the State of Delaware, they already have 5,000 volunteers. And do you know what? It is because parents and teachers wanted to help students, and they made the decision all on their own.
What we now have in Washington is saying, they cannot do that. They need a bureaucracy to tell them. Let us spend $200 million doing that and we do not. In my hometown, churches are embracing schools. They are sending tutors in, professionals are going in and helping children. It is already happening. We do not need to move $200 million. We do not need to move $5,000 from 40,000 American families to Washington to get tutors to our kids. It is already happening.
Mr. Speaker, if we take a look at some of the other things that we learned about what the President is proposing from our hearing in Delaware, Delaware had some problems with education. They are making a turnaround. The Governor talked about and many other witnesses talked about what is enabling Delaware to make a difference. Now no, it is not more Federal programs. Like I said, with tutoring they made the difference on their own without any Federal help. Local ownership is what enabled them to produce excellent standards. They worked on developing standards.
They do not need a Federal mandate. They do not want national standards. Federal standards, the President wants to establish standards and work on curriculum and wants to do it in a Washington bureaucracy. What did we learn about standards? Think about what a standard is. A standard is what we are going to tell and teach this student in a classroom. It is one of the most important things that we have in education.
What do we expect this student to learn during this period of time in the classroom, working with that teacher and this parent? There are some that believe that we can develop these standards in Washington, funnel them through some bureaucrats and put it to the student. Sorry. Delaware's experience says, this is a very important issue. When you are talking about this student, when you are talking about this parent who knows the name of this student and that teacher who cares about that student, they are not real interested in a standard coming from Washington. They want to be an active participant in designing the standards for what that student will learn. They may want some help from outside agencies talking about what other people are doing, but they want to work through that process.
Mr. Speaker, in Delaware they went through it. They took 3 years to develop standards. But at the end of that 3-year process, parents, students, and teachers are brought in and agree with much of what was developed because they were involved in the process. A parent understands why there are certain criteria. They understand what is going on be taught and how it is going to be taught. It is a difficult process, but when you are dealing with education and you try to cut the corners and when you try to cut out parents and when you try to cut out teachers, it just does not work.
There is no way a Federal mandated standard will ever work, and, if the Federal mandated standard does not work, Federal testing will never work because what parent is going to feel good about a national test based on a national standard that they do not buy into. We need parents involved in this process, and we cannot short-circuit this process through a bureaucracy.
Mr. Ferguson, the acting State superintendent, said, regarding their standards, the important thing about these standards is that they are our standards. They are the standards of this community. They are the standards of this State. They are the standards of this parent and these teachers, and they were not given to us, they have a sense of ownership.
We have gone around the country. We have taken a look at all different kinds of innovations. We have seen that the wonderful thing about working on this project is on a national basis you hear some of the horror stories about what is going on in education and we are concerned about that.
The other thing that we are seeing is whether you are in New York City, whether you are in LA, whether you are in Phoenix, whether you are in Chicago in a public housing project, whether you are in Cleveland or whether you are in Milwaukee or Detroit, or whether you are in west Michigan, we are seeing some great schools. The thing about these great schools is that in most cases, if not all cases, in those communities parents, students and teachers have been given the flexibility to design the school and the system that works for them.
Mr. Speaker, they are not facing a mandate. This is the kind of school that you need to have. They are working on designing things because in each of those areas the schools need to be different because the needs of the students in each community are different. Not the need for what they are going to learn, they need to learn the same kinds or similar things, but where they come from, the environment that they come from, and so each school has different challenges. Each school has different opportunities and communities need the flexibility.
That is why you see charters. And the charters in Delaware are different than the charters in Delaware, which are different than the charter schools in Phoenix and these choices in local communities. The choice in Delaware allows full public school choice so a parent can choose the program and the school and the curriculum that best meets the needs of their child. It is enabling parents to become consumers of education. It is empowering parents. It is empowering students and it is empowering teachers.
One of the most exciting things that is happening is that the National Education Association, the National Education Association, the organization that represents teachers, they are going to get involved in the charter school effort. They are going to start I believe four charter schools in different parts of the country. If anybody should be establishing charter schools, I want our teachers to do it. They should be more knowledgeable and better equipped about what needs to go on in the classroom than almost anybody else in our society, those front-line teachers. I am excited about the opportunity and the learning that we can achieve when the National Education Association sets up its charter schools and how that may be a catalyst for learning and for change that can just go throughout our entire public school system, unleashing teachers from the rules and the regulations and the bureaucrats and the bureaucracies that have been defining for them what they need to do, rather than empowering them to do what they want to do and how they can best help their kids.
Can you imagine empowered teachers working with consumers of education, parents, all focused on what the student needs? What a wonderful opportunity to improve education in America and what a much better picture and what a much more optimistic picture that is for America and American education than one which focuses on bureaucracy and bureaucrats.
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