Departments Of Labor, Health And Human Services, And Education, And Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2008
Floor Speech
DEPARTMENTS OF LABOR, HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES, AND EDUCATION, AND RELATED AGENCIES APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2008 -- (House of Representatives - July 18, 2007)
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Ms. FOXX. I want to just say I am very concerned when there is an attitude here in the Congress that it is our money to spend. I want to make sure that nobody ever forgets that we are the stewards of money that we legally steal from the people of this country. We take it from them under duress, and we have a tremendous responsibility to make sure that that money is being spent well.
There's no such thing as Federal dollars. It's all money that belongs to the American taxpayers, and we're up here confiscating a great deal of their money and deciding how to spend it. And it's up to us to make sure that we spend it very, very carefully and very, very fairly.
The Constitution provides for no role for the Federal Government in education. We're already overstepping our bounds, and if we're going to overstep our bounds, we better be extraordinarily careful in that respect.
Mr. Chairman, I yield back my time.
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Ms. FOXX. Mr. Chairman, my amendment would reduce funding for the Fund for the Improvement of Education by $10 million, while increasing IDEA State grants by $10 million.
Transferring these funds will ensure that Congress does not create a new unauthorized $10 million grant program for ``full-service community schools'' with the Fund for the Improvement of Education, a program which was specifically mentioned in the committee report. We should not be using appropriations bills to authorize programs.
It appears that language in the committee report for this program has been taken from legislation introduced by the House majority leader, as well as in the Senate by Senator Nelson. Their bill would create a $200 million full-service community school grant program.
What exactly is a full-service community school? According to the underlying funding bill, it's a ``public elementary or secondary school that coordinates with community-based organizations and public-private partnerships to provide students, their families and the community access to comprehensive services.''
The language specifies that the grants must be used to provide not fewer than three services selected from a variety of selective services, including community service, service learning opportunities, nutrition services, job training and career counseling, primary health and dental care, mental health counseling services adult language, including instruction in English as a Second Language.
I am concerned we are moving schools away from focusing on the basics, academics. Our schools still have room for much improvement in ensuring all students are proficient in the basics of math, reading, writing, science and history. So why is the Federal Government sending money to turn schools into social, medical, educational job training hubs?
I am also concerned about the unsettling prospect of having adult, nonfamily members of the community regularly visiting school grounds for job training and medical and mental health services when young children and teenagers are present. Combining schools with health care and other social services for community residents poses a danger to students that would need to be addressed in any future legislation.
Since 1965, Congress has increased the role of the Federal Government in public primary and secondary education, as well as in higher education. If history has taught us anything about education, it's that the proliferation of Federal programs and regulations has not improved education. In a time where the Federal Government continues to spend more and more and expand its reach with very limited results, I question the need for us to meddle in affairs such as this.
With this in mind, my amendment would transfer $10 million from the Fund for the Improvement of Education to IDEA grants. These grants help States and localities pay for the rising cost of special education for 6.9 million children with disabilities.
While my amendment adds only a small amount to these State grants, any amounts are helpful in fully funding Congress' commitment to fund 40 percent of the average per-pupil excess cost of educating students with disabilities.
IDEA part B grants to States is funded at only $11.29 billion, which is $7 billion or 41 percent below the 2007 authorized level of $19.2 billion. I urge my colleagues to vote for this amendment to ensure that any full-service community school legislation goes forward through the proper authorizing process, not through the appropriations process, and we put money where it's desperately needed, as we all know from hearing from the schools in our districts.
Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.
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Ms. FOXX. I appreciate the ranking member for yielding time to me.
I want to say that I am very troubled by the fact that the terms that are being used here that we want to test, creating holistic educational experiences, that's one of the problems, again, with the Federal Government being involved in the education process. It is not up to us to be doing that. The testing needs to be done at the local level.
There are programs. North Carolina has a tremendous number of programs where it's working through community centers, sometimes at schools, most of the time not, where they are trying to do these kinds of things. We don't need to be funding this at the Federal level. If the States want to do it, they ought to be doing it.
I think that calling this a symbolic amendment is a denigration it doesn't deserve. This is a serious amendment. We are violating our processes. We are violating what we say we are going to do here. Appropriations bills should not be authorizing bills. We separate that process.
I have not been here very long, and I know I don't know all the rules and the way things are done, but I noticed that the chairman reserved a point of order, but they were able to the waive points of orders in order to authorize. So when the majority wants to break the rules, it easily breaks the rules to try to accomplish what it wants to accomplish when it can't accomplish it the other way. So I am very concerned about it. I think this is a very valid amendment done very seriously.
I haven't sat over here for a couple of hours and haven't worked on this for many hours to think that it is frivolous or simply symbolic. It's an important thing. And I don't appreciate the amendment being denigrated in the way it has been denigrated by the chairman of the committee.
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Ms. FOXX. I thank my colleague for yielding to me. And I want to say again that I am sorry that my colleague from Maryland is not aware of this really excellent program that exists in North Carolina called Smart Start, which did this back in 1995, where we pulled together these different agencies to work together on this very good concept. But it is being done in States without Federal dollars, and I would urge the people in Maryland to look at that concept and deal with it.
I want to say that I am very concerned again, not by your comments but by the comments of the chairman, about the denigration of the allocation of $10 million as negligible. That is the attitude of people from Washington that adding $10 million is negligible. That is hard for people who are paying their taxes every day to understand that. I am sure that the teachers and parents of special needs students who are getting just a small percentage of money already authorized by this Federal Government to do what we are demanding that they do, they are not getting all their money.
Now, I commend the majority party for increasing the spending in this area, but it is the biggest complaint that I get when I talk to people about what is happening in education and the Federal role. So I think we need to put every dime we can possibly find into authorized programs already that are not spending what they should be spending. And I would say, I find it hard to look in the eyes of the parent of a special needs child or the teacher of a special needs child and say: We had an opportunity to give you 10 million more dollars and it was turned down; because they are there, and they need it.
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