Omnibus Appropriations Act, 2009

Floor Speech

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Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I rise to speak in reference to an amendment which I believe will be included in the list of amendments by the Republican side. It relates to the DC voucher program. Senator JOHN ENSIGN of Nevada is offering an amendment that will be part of our consideration on Monday or Tuesday relative to the future of the DC voucher program. The DC voucher program was created 5 years ago at a time when the Republicans were in control of the White House and of Congress. What they offered to the District of Columbia was an offer they couldn't refuse, a substantial amount of money--I believe it was $14 million--for the public schools of the District, another $14 million for the public charter schools, and about $14 million to create a DC voucher program. The theory behind the DC voucher program is that they would award this Federal money to families with children in voucher schools, private schools, not public schools. They could use this money to pay for tuition to send their children to these schools.

This is the first of its kind where the Federal Government would directly provide money to parents to send children to private schools. It is an experiment. It was described as such. It was initiated 5 years ago when the Republicans were in control. It came through the Appropriations Committee. Senator Mike DeWine of Ohio was one of its strong proponents.

We considered several amendments in the committee. I came to this with mixed feelings but skepticism, mixed feelings because I am not an opponent of private education. My wife and I sent our three children to Catholic schools. That was our choice. We continued to pay our property taxes to support public schools. I have openly supported public school referenda in my community. I have done everything in my State to make sure there was adequate funding for public schools, but we made a personal family decision, based on a number of circumstances, to send our children to the local Catholic schools. That was our decision at our expense. I have no prejudice against private education. If I entrusted my children to it, I certainly believe in it.

But the question always came up in my mind: Who should pay for it. We were prepared as a family to pay for it. It was an extra sacrifice we were prepared to bear.

The argument behind DC voucher schools is that some families can't or won't bear that burden of the cost of private education. So they should have direct Federal subsidy, Federal payments to defray or defer any cost of tuition. That was the theory behind it.

My skepticism had a lot to do with the fact that I think our first obligation is to the public school system. The DC public school system is struggling. Credit the new Mayor, Mr. Fenty; he has hired Michelle Rhee, an extraordinarily talented young woman, to be chancellor of DC schools, and she is intent on improving the quality of the public schools. That is something we should invest in, something we should support.

The debate 5 years ago was interesting. I offered three amendments. The first amendment said that any building used as a school under the DC voucher program had to pass the life safety code, had to be inspected as being safe for children to go to school. I guess one could say it goes back to 50 years ago, my memory of the terrible Our Lady of Angels fire at the school in Chicago that killed so many children and nuns in the building and led to changes and stricter enforcement of the life safety code for school structures in Illinois.

My goal in the DC voucher program was to establish at least a comparable standard for the safety of buildings used for DC voucher students as buildings used as public schools. I don't think that is unreasonable. Every parent should have the peace of mind that their child is safe in that building.

I offered the amendment in the Appropriations Committee. It was defeated by those who argued we could not restrict or hamper DC voucher schools. As a consequence, they wanted to defeat my amendment. Incidentally, a GAO study, in November of 2007, on the DC voucher program showed the sites of some of the schools and specifically noted that two of the schools operated without a certificate of occupancy as private day schools--just what I feared.

These are buildings--one looks like a private residence, the other like a commercial building--that do not look like schools at all, and they did not pass the basic standards for health and life safety that we require of schools in the District of Columbia. So my amendment was defeated.

The second amendment I offered said teachers in the DC voucher schools had to have a college degree. Now, that is a basic requirement of any teacher in public schools in DC or most States in the Union. The amendment was defeated, and the argument was made: No, no, no. DC voucher schools have to be ``creative.'' We have to open this to people who do not have college degrees to teach.

Well, I am afraid of the mischief that would result from that, but my amendment was defeated.

The third amendment I offered said DC voucher schools had to have the same test administered in terms of student achievement as the DC Public Schools so at the end of the day we could compare performance and output. Are the kids in voucher schools doing better or worse than the kids in DC Public Schools? If they are not doing any better, it challenges the premise of this DC voucher program. My amendment was defeated, rejected. ``People in the DC voucher schools should not be restricted to the kind of achievement tests they offer.''

Now, those three amendments, I thought, waved three red flags: the buildings did not have to be as safe as public schools, the teachers do not have to have college degrees, and the schools would not be subjected to the same achievement tests. Now, that does not say to me the people creating the DC voucher program had a lot of confidence in what they were doing. They just wanted to make their point of establishing a DC voucher program.

So 1,700 students now in Washington, DC, have benefited from this voucher program and are at private schools. Some are Catholic schools; some are not. Some are private. There are a wide variety of them. Some, they say, are world-class schools, and others, frankly, are not.

Now, here we are coming up on the fifth anniversary of the passage of this legislation and, in fact, the program was supposed to expire. It was an experimental program. The authorization ended.

Well, I faced that when I wrote this appropriation for this year and said: I will tell you what I will do. I will extend the life of the DC voucher program 1 additional year, and in that additional year, I think we should have two things occur. First, the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, under Senator JOE LIEBERMAN's chairmanship, should have a hearing and consider reauthorization legislation. What will be the next phase of the DC voucher program? What requirements will we impose on these schools in the next reauthorization? How are they doing? What mistakes were made?

I can tell you, the Government Accountability Office, in their survey back in 2007, found some serious issues in terms of the DC voucher program. The Washington Scholarship Fund, the group that runs the program, was a small operation, until they were given the administration of this program. The Government Accountability Office said they did not believe they were fully prepared to handle a program with millions of dollars.

The GAO also had serious concerns about the accounting and check-writing process. Is it legitimate for us to ask questions about whether taxpayers' dollars, subsidies to parents for DC vouchers, are being spent appropriately? Well, I hope so. Accountability should be demanded of all of us in all programs. But those who are for the voucher program apparently do not want to go through this kind of investigation. Well, I do not believe that is a right approach.

The GAO said the processes are not integrated for accounting and check writing, and the WSF--at the time in November 2007--had to set up a new system. They had concerns with information security. The Washington Scholarship Fund used temporaries for data entry, had inadequate password security--the list goes on and on. Some of these things are easily corrected. Others go to the heart of the administration of this program.

There were programmatic concerns too. On average, the Government Accountability Office found that students met income requirements, but less than 50 percent came from ``in need of improvement schools.'' See, the idea was these kids would leave schools that were not good-performing schools and go into voucher schools. Well, it turns out over half the kids were in schools that were doing a good job, at least by the standards of public education. So that raised a question on the program.

They also noted students are clustered in a small number of schools. Mr. President, 16 out of 60 schools enrolled 60 percent of the voucher students. In 7 schools, over 50 percent of the students enrolled received vouchers. So it was a handful of schools that were really the subject of the voucher program.

The Washington Scholarship Fund is supposed to conduct site inspections and look at the financial stability of the school. Based on the information provided to the GAO at the time of this report, it is unclear whether they conducted these thorough site visits.

So we said to the Lieberman committee--and, incidentally, Senator Lieberman is favorably disposed toward this program. I do not recommend it to him or refer it to him or suggest he consider it believing he is prejudiced against it. He is not. He wants to support it, but he wants to make sure it is running well.

So we include a provision: Keep the program alive for another year. Protect all the students in the program. In the meantime, we should have an authorization. The committee should investigate how it is being managed and decide what the future will be. What will the next 5 years look like?

The legislation that created this said to the Department of Education, specifically: The Secretary may make grants under this section for a period of not more than 5 years to the Washington Scholarship Fund. We extended it for 1 year. They knew creating the DC voucher program it was a 5-year program. We gave them an additional year so they could review this program and see how effective it might be.

Now, there is a second part I put in this legislation which apparently rankles some on the other side. Here is what it says: The Washington Government, the DC City Council, has to vote to continue the voucher program. How unreasonable is that?

I heard this morning on NPR Senator Ensign say: Well, we know they are opposed to it, so we want to take away local control of this school program. I have not heard that very often from the Republican side nor from the Democratic side. I would not want to live in a political jurisdiction where someone imposed a program on families and students without asking whether it was a reasonable thing to do, and in this case, whether the DC Public School System should, in fact, absorb a voucher program.

But on the Republican side of the aisle, most of whom voted against the idea of giving DC voting rights in Congress, want to impose this. This is their laboratory. This is where they want to have their experiment on voucher schools, and they do not want close scrutiny. They do not want an investigation. They do not want a reauthorization. They want to continue this program indefinitely, funding millions of dollars into a program that has been found to have significant deficiencies.

Until this bill that is before us today, there was no requirement that teachers in DC voucher schools have college degrees, but I put that requirement in the law. I lost that issue 5 years ago, and I think it is only reasonable we have that requirement today. So for the next year they are going to have to have teachers with college degrees, and the buildings have to be inspected. What is wrong with that? Would anyone want to send their kids to a school building that is dangerous or potentially dangerous? Apparently, some do. They want us to step away, not to have any scrutiny or any oversight over these school buildings. I am not one of those, and I could not in good conscience allow this program to continue without having that requirement.

Now, I will be honest with you. I backed off of the achievement test requirement after speaking to Chancellor Rhee. I said: Why don't they have the same test?

She said: They should. But if you are only going to allow this program to continue under the law for 1 year, and it is uncertain what happens after that, don't impose on them the costs of changing achievement tests. It costs millions of dollars. So let them stay with the current achievement test, even though they cannot be compared to DC Public School students with that achievement test.

So I deferred that, saying: Why impose a $2 or $3 million cost on them? Let the authorization committee decide whether that ought to be the case. I will certainly argue for it.

So now we have the Republicans saying: We do not want the program investigated. We do not want it reauthorized. We do not want the people of the District of Columbia to have any say as to whether it will be part of their public school system. That is the Republican position. I think it is unfair. I think it is unwise. I think it is bad policy.

If this program is good, it will stand on its own feet. If it is a program that needs improvement, let's make the improvement. If it is a program that has failed, let's move on and try something that will succeed. We are talking about the lives of children.

I might also say, Chancellor Rhee, I think, comes to her job with the DC Public Schools with a fresh, positive attitude. We need to make sure all the kids in DC, whether they are in voucher schools or not, have a high-quality education. The same goes for my State of Illinois and the State of Virginia. That is our first obligation. So that is where we stand today.

The Ensign amendment is going to be offered. At that time, we will have a chance to debate it even further. But we have funded the program through the next school year. Senator Lieberman has given his word to me and those who support the program on the other side that he will have a timely hearing so we can get on with this review and reauthorization in a reasonable way.

Two separate studies by the Department of Education have clearly demonstrated that the Washington voucher program has no statistically significant impact on student academic achievement. We knew this program was going to expire in 5 years. We need to ask whether the money might be better spent on some other approach, whether it is in the DC Public Schools or into charter schools. It is time we take time for careful and deliberate consideration of this program.

For those who have written in several publications: DURBIN is just out to kill this program, I had a chance to do that, and I did not. I extended the program beyond its authorization for an additional year, gave them adequate funds to continue serving the students who are currently in the program, with the understanding, at least in the bill, that we would take the time to carefully study the DC voucher program.

For those who believe in the voucher program, do not be afraid. Do not be afraid to step forward and let people take a look at what has happened. Let's see what the successes and failures of this program have been and then decide how to go forward. I think that is a critical objective we can achieve.

OMNIBUS APPROPRIATIONS

Mr. President, I would like to say one other word about the pending legislation, the omnibus bill. I have listened to so many speeches on this floor about earmarks. I made a point yesterday in television interviews back in Illinois to make it clear what I was talking about in terms of projects coming back to our State that were earmarks.

I do not think I can be any more transparent about earmarks. What we do in my offices is to put on our official Web site every request I make for earmarked funds, congressionally directed spending from appropriations bills. For every single request, I indicate who is going to be the recipient, how much money was asked for, what is the nature of the request, and clearly make a statement that I have no conflict of interest involved in making the request. I think that is required by law, and it is certainly a valuable requirement.

Then we go through the process of the Appropriations Committee choosing those earmarks they can put into a bill. At the end of the day, we not only send out press releases in terms of those projects that have been approved, we make it clear, so people know, start to finish, every step of the way.

So when I was on the news yesterday, I said to some of the local newscasters: The word ``earmark'' has such a negative connotation, but the word ``earmark'' should be remembered in this context: I have millions of dollars in this bill that will go to communities in the suburbs of Chicago that have been dealing with serious flooding problems for decades. We have made significant progress. I worked with Mayor Tony Arredia in Des Plaines, IL, before he gave up the office recently, and we protected many parts of his community that used to be regularly, annually devastated by floods--earmarks in appropriations bills for flood control.

The metropolitan area and sanitary district has this deep tunnel that we put money into by earmark year after year after year, so that storm water can be collected there and will not run off to integrate with the sanitary sewer system and will not cause degradation of Lake Michigan and rivers and tributaries nearby. That is one area.

The second area I focused on in the earmarks has been transportation. There are specific earmarks in this bill for the expansion of the Chicago Transit Authority and other transit systems in our area. They are struggling to survive with the recession. We are trying to make sure passengers do not have to pay outrageous amounts of money for them to continue to be successful in their operation.

Another earmark: $4 million in this bill goes for the Chicago shoreline on Lake Michigan. When they surveyed the people of Chicago a few years ago and asked: What is the most important thing we have in our city that you are proudest of, they said: Lake Michigan, overwhelmingly. And they should. It is a beautiful expanse of water. Aside from the scenery and the beauty of it, it is part of the Great Lakes, one of the greatest sources of drinking water supplies in the world.

So what we have done is to address a 100-year-old shoreline that was crumbling and falling apart. I sat down with Mayor Daley. We entered into an agreement with the Army Corps of Engineers. With this agreement, the city put money up-front. We came in with money on the Federal side. We have reduced the overall cost of the project and accelerated by years--as you drive along that lakefront, you can see they are building a modern lakefront that will serve us for decades to come. It is an earmark. It is an earmark in the bill.

When I hear people come to the floor saying: This is an outrage that all these earmarks are in the bill, I think to myself: There is nothing outrageous about this.

We bragged about it. We have had press conferences about it. The people of our city think it is money well spent.

There is money in here as well going to hospitals to buy critical equipment. It is all listed--every single hospital, every single dollar--whether it is for research, cancer research, Alzheimer's research at universities, for example, or if it is buying critical equipment for hospitals that many times don't have the resources to do so. I try to help them out if I can. I think that is part of my job.

I listened to these overall criticisms of earmarks and I don't doubt that pouring through the thousands that may be in here, we are going to find some that are questionable. That is natural. One Congressman and one Senator may think something is important to his district, his community, his State; others may question it. That is part of the process. They should be questioned. But at the end of the day, to say that when you take 1 percent of this bill and allow Members of Congress to zero in on specific issues in their States, in their districts, that there is something inherently evil, wicked, criminal or wrong with it, it is not the case.

I wish to salute Senator Inouye, who is our chairman of the Appropriations Committee, for what he and Congressman DAVID OBEY, the House Appropriations Committee chairman, agreed to do, which is to dramatically cut back the overall cost of earmark projects. Under the Republican leadership a few years ago, about 4 to 5 percent of an appropriations bill would be earmarked. They have brought it down to just over 1 percent. The goal is 1 percent. I don't think that is unreasonable, that 1 percent of the spending bill would be congressionally directed in a transparent and open process; otherwise, what happens, we give the money to the agency downtown and they decide where to spend it. It isn't as if the money would not be spent; oh, it will be spent, but it may not be spent as effectively or for projects that are as valuable as many of us who represent these areas believe.

We could have given the money to the Army Corps of Engineers for the Lake Michigan shoreline. I can say what would have happened. It would have cost more, there would have been less local contribution, and it would have taken many more years to get started. We avoided all that with the earmark process. I know there is going to be a lot of debate--some even this morning on this--but my feeling is we are reaching the right balance of disclosure, transparency, and limiting the number of earmark projects so the taxpayers can have confidence that, at the end of the day, there is a process here and the scrutiny that there should be when it comes to taxpayers' dollars. At the end of the day, some of my colleagues will never be satisfied. They just will not be satisfied until every earmark is removed. I hope that doesn't happen. I think we can make the process better.

U.S. ECONOMY

Mr. President, I also wish to say a word about the state of our economy today, if I can, and set it apart in the Record because this is a historic anniversary week. As you may know, 76 years ago this week, exactly, on March 4, 1933, the President, Franklin Roosevelt, took the oath of office for the first time. He faced an America broken to its knees--not by a war or an invasion but by a depression which had broken the confidence of a proud nation.

It is hard for many people today to even imagine how frightened Americans were the day after he became President. Jonathan Alter, a news analyst for Newsweek, who comes from Chicago, recently wrote a book about the transition and beginning of the F.D.R. Presidency called ``The Defining Moment.'' He sketched the picture very well. He said at that time America has experienced its gravest crisis since the Civil War.

The American economic system had gone into a state of shock. Days before the F.D.R. inauguration, the New York Stock Exchange suspended trading indefinitely and the Chicago Board of Trade bolted its doors for the first time since it opened in 1848. In the 3 years since the crash of the stock market, 16 million jobs had disappeared in 1933 and business investment had dropped 90 percent. America's official unemployment rate was 25 percent. In some areas, it went as high as 80 percent when it came to adult men. More than 5,000 banks had failed. People who were unlucky enough to put their money in them had lost everything.

The great economist, John Maynard Keynes, was asked by a reporter at the time if there was any precedent for what happened to the world economy. He replied: Yes. It lasted for 400 years. It was called the Dark Ages.

In his first inaugural address, Franklin Roosevelt told a shaken nation: ``Only a foolish optimist can deny the dark realities of the moment.'' But then he went on to reassure America and said: ``The only thing we have to fear is fear itself--'' that famous phrase--``nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.''

F.D.R. said we needed to abandon the failed ideas that led us into economic crisis and try something new and bold. The Federal Government, the President said, will treat the task of economic recovery ``as we would treat the emergency of a war.''

What America needed, the new President said, was ``action, and action now'' to put Americans back to work and restore strength to our economy and rebuild people's faith in the future. He assured us: ``This is no unsolvable problem if we face it wisely and courageously.''

Where are we today, 76 years later, 76 years after F.D.R. took that oath of office on March 4, 1933? Another new President has inherited the worst economic crisis since that historic day in 1933. This crisis is not another Great Depression, thank the Lord, but it is grave. It is dangerous. It is unlike any crisis we have seen in our lifetime. Sadly, it appears to be getting worse at this moment. America lost more jobs last year than at any time since World War II. Manufacturing is at a 28-year low. Many businesses can't borrow or make payroll. Many workers and retirees are seeing their life savings disappear. People have seen the values of their homes and retirement plans plummet, and a large and growing number of Americans are uncertain and anxious about the future.

President Obama, sworn into office on January 20 of this year, has been in office a little over 6 weeks. He has made it clear we need to act and act quickly; otherwise, he says, the recession could linger on, unemployment could continue to grow, we could lose a generation of promise and potential as millions of Americans have to forgo college and a chance to train for jobs of the future. We could lose our competitive edge in the world if we don't act. In short, an already bad situation could get worse. He proposed to Congress, soon after he was sworn in, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act--the most sweeping in history.

Similar to Franklin Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln--another President who inherited a major economic crisis during the Civil War--this President has said we must put our American house in order, put Americans back to work, and invest in America's future. He has said the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act represents not just new policy but new thinking; a new approach to meeting our most urgent challenges. It will save or create 3 million to 4 million jobs over the next 2 years while investing in priorities such as health care and education. It enables us to rebuild America's crumbling infrastructure--the roads, the bridges, the schools.

The economic recovery plan also includes help for States. My State of Illinois is in deep debt. We are hoping this recovery plan will help them get through this difficult period. Also, it has a tax cut for most working families. Ninety-five percent of them will receive this tax cut as soon as next month. It is a smart plan that invests in things that work. Congress, the President, and respected economists agree now is not the time to create new Bureaucracies and new Government agencies. We should use existing programs wherever possible to make sure the recovery funds are invested quickly and efficiently to stabilize this economy. We are relying on experienced and knowledgeable Government professionals, but as most of us know, there is no playbook you can pick up at the library or find on a Web site. We are trying to make wise decisions based on economic experience.

I think this program we passed is a start, but the bill before us is equally important. This bill continues the function of Government. This bill allows many Federal agencies to continue with funding that is necessary so they can perform valuable services. If we don't pass this bill, we will reduce the amount of money that is being spent by these agencies at a time when our economy needs the spending to create the jobs to move us forward.

We are going to lose about $1 trillion in purchasing of goods and services this year. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, along with this piece of legislation, will try to provide some jump-start to this economy, a catalyst for more economic recovery and growth, which is something we desperately need.

There is more that is needed as well. Next week I am going to, after we finish this bill, be talking about the housing crisis we face. I have been pushing for 2 years for a change in the bankruptcy law to allow the courts, as a last resort, to rewrite a mortgage. Last night, that measure passed in the House of Representatives. I hope we can take it up. We are in the process of working out the details of our Senate version now, and I hope that by next week we will be prepared to present it to our colleagues. We need their help. Some of them were skeptical when I last offered it. Many Democrats voted against it. They said: Well, we think this can work itself out. Some of those same Members have come to me since and said it didn't work. We thought the voluntary approach was what was needed; it didn't do the job. There are too many foreclosures. It is not only hurting the lives of those who lose their homes but the people who live next door.

I think it was Secretary Geithner who used the analogy at a hearing this week of someone who lives next door to a man who smokes in bed. Well, because of that unwise conduct, the man's house catches fire, and because of that fire in a closely packed neighborhood it endangers all the houses nearby. Now, you can shake your finger and say you never should have smoked in bed or you can pitch in and try to put out that fire because, if you don't, it could affect your home too. The same thing is happening here. Whether the right decisions were made at the outset, whether people borrowed when they shouldn't have, whether people were the victims of predatory lending, that will eventually work itself out and we will know more about it; but in the meantime, we need to stabilize this housing market.

I listen to some of the great sources of information in America and one of them is Jon Stewart with the ``Daily Show.'' He had a program earlier this week that was a classic. It involved a fellow named Santelli who, on a CNBC cable show, went into this what he called himself, a rant over the idea that we would help people facing mortgage foreclosure. He was critical of the wisdom of these people in entering into mortgages when they should have known better, making guesses about their economic future that turned out to be so wrong. Mr. Stewart, in a style which I find very entertaining and amusing, then proceeded to replay the statements made by economists on CNBC who downplayed the thought of a recession, who suggested that many of the great banking houses that have failed were going to do fine. He tried to make the point that even some of the people who were screaming at those who entered into mortgages they shouldn't have entered into got it all wrong when they tried to analyze the economy and give advice to America.

People do make mistakes. They should be allowed to recover from those mistakes in a situation where continued mortgage foreclosures could jeopardize housing markets and the value of everyone's home for years to come. That issue will come up before us next week. I look forward to it.

At this point, I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

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