Senator Reed Rises in Support of Kennedy Amendment

Mr. REED. Mr. President, I rise to support the Kennedy amendment which would allow us to live up to the commitment we made just over a year ago in the No Child Left Behind Act, that we would fully fund educational programs contained in that law and other educational initiatives that are so important to all of our citizens. Today we are facing a budget that does not do that.

I was listening to my colleague who talked about President Bush's efforts of the last two years with title I, which is very important. These increases are commendable. I was listening to comparisons with President Clinton. I think President Clinton did extremely well in terms of funding education, and he focused not just on title I but also efforts to reduce class sizes, increase professional development, and increase and improve the quality of the educational efforts throughout this country.

It is particularly noteworthy that President Clinton exceeded all of his recent predecessors in terms of Title I increases. President Reagan proposed a 2.99-percent cut; President George Herbert Walker Bush, a 2.31-percent increase; and President Clinton, a 4.01-percent per year increase.

When I arrived in 1990 in the other body and served on the Education Committee there, it was recognized that education was important, but by 1995 a Republican Congress was making its first priority the elimination of the Department of Education. Yet in that environment we were still able to increase funding for title I and other educational programs.

The issue is not about comparing President George W. Bush to President Clinton. We are simply asking President Bush to do what he said he would do when he signed the No Child Left Behind Act, when he embraced all of the reforms within this act, when he touted these reforms as a path-breaking development in Federal education policy.

He understood, I think, and certainly in the deliberations we all came to the understanding, that education is not just about one segment, not just about students. It is about teachers. It is about facilities. It is about giving local school districts incentives to improve and ensuring they do improve by setting up accountability measures. We cannot do that without providing the resources.

There have been discussions in the Chamber about unfunded mandates, and my colleague from New Hampshire pointed out that in his view the testing is not an unfunded mandate because we will fund the testing. The reality is that we are telling school districts to not only test, but then to take those results and improve schools.

I already have schools in Rhode Island that have been required by the Department of Education to be certified as not making sufficient progress. Under our legislation, that triggers steps the State and school districts must take. Those steps are not without costs. Yet we are not providing sufficient resources to meet all of those costs.

That is the unfunded mandate. That is what is objectionable. That is what we hear in every State capital in every community. You asked us to go out and test our children, you asked us to start reforming, you asked us to have better teachers, better facilities, better libraries. You give us money to test, but where are the other resources? That is the heart of this whole discussion and whole debate.

I recall, they were so eloquent and so passionate, the words of our late colleague, Paul Wellstone, who said repeatedly:
We cannot realize the goal of leaving no child behind on a tin cup budget.

There were loads of us who, a year ago, applauded the approach but feared the authorization would be what it seems to be on the floor this evening, just a hortatory, nice thing to do, rather than a goal we are bound and committed to achieve.

Last year, no one was talking about this as just merely suggestions, these authorization levels. They talked about it as a real commitment. That is why we are here. That is why Senator Kennedy has this amendment. Let's make a real commitment, not just a rhetorical one. Let's put our money where our mouth was last year and should be this year. We have to do that because we recognize unless we invest in education we are not going to be able to prepare young people to assume roles, not just in our economy, but also in our civic life.

The tasks before schools today are so much more complicated. The new Americans who arrive daily with different languages and different cultural viewpoints have to be, we hope, seamlessly brought into our system, and public education has been the great institution to do that. We have to support that.

So we are here today to be very serious about education, not just to pass a bill that we can go out and tout in our states and then come back here and say that was just rhetoric. We are here for the resources. We are here for the second part of the equation.

The goals are there. The structure is there. Now we really have to put the resources to those goals and to that structure. Senator Kennedy has identified two of the key components: title I, which serves practically every community in this country, and also Pell grants.

In distinction to the approach of Senator Kennedy, my colleague from New Hampshire would suggest an across-the-board cut. So many people have already pointed out this overall omnibus is deficient in so many different ways, to take from the Department of Veterans Affairs, to take from the other departments, is not a way to solve this issue. We have to stand up and fund these programs in education without denying other worthwhile programs. I think we can. I think we should.

Of course, all of this is in the context of what follows this appropriations process. It is already the announced goal, the objective of the President, to propose a huge tax cut. We should ask ourselves why can't we, today, simply reserve from that proposed tax cut sufficient moneys this year and in the years to come to fully fund education? I would suspect, and I would even wager that, if you asked most Americans whether they would prefer to fund this bipartisan education act—which has been touted, supported, embraced by all sides, President Bush, Republican congressional leaders, and Democratic congressional leaders—by taking money from that tax cut and putting it into this sound program, and they agree it is sound, they would agree overwhelmingly.

In a way, we are not doing that directly, but that is the overarching context of our efforts this afternoon. We want to put the resources where they should be, in title I and in Pell grants. We want to keep our promises. We want to make sure all the provisions of this No Child Left Behind Act have a fair chance to operate and succeed.

Let me just conclude by saying one of the major points that persuaded me with some—I wouldn't say reluctance, but with some hesitancy, because I feared this day where we, a year after our press releases, would be coming here and finding the money is not there to do the job—but what persuaded me is that this bill essentially recognized that education is not just one thing, it is many things. That is why this No Child Left Behind Act has funding for professional development, parental involvement, school libraries, and a host of other programs.

Let me tell you, those programs are going to be drastically underfunded in the President's budget, as I see it, even if we put more money into the title I program.

But the point is, if we do not commit ourselves to the full change of educational reform we are going to, I think, sadly misspend even the money we commit to the program.

I hope we can support the Kennedy amendment. I hope we can support additional resources for education. In doing so, let's fulfill our commitment, not just our commitment to the act that was passed last year, but a greater commitment, to give every citizen in this country the opportunity to succeed, and the best instrument to do that is good education. We all believe that. Let's translate our beliefs into votes this evening and put the money where it should be.

I yield the remainder of my time.