[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 145 (1999), Part 16] [Senate] [Pages 22657-22658] [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]EDUCATION Mr. DOMENICI. Madam President, I want to talk a little bit about education because somehow or another we have ourselves involved in competing resolutions about the funding of education when we do not know how much education is going to get funded because the appropriation bill has not been produced yet. If this were a court of law, the Daschle resolution would be dismissed as being premature. There is no issue yet. But we will have to debate it and vote on it. Before we are finished, the Appropriations Committee that handles Labor-Health and Human Services will produce a bill that is more consistent with the budget resolution than anything else. Regardless of what it looked like 3 or 4 weeks ago, they are going to have sufficient resources. Remember, the President of the United States advance appropriated, in his function and in his budget, $21 billion. We are going to do some of the same things because they are legitimate and proper. When you take that into consideration, frankly, the Daschle resolution is talking about a nonreality. I can say there is a high probability, and if I had one more afternoon to go talk to a couple of Senators on that committee, I would predict with certainty--but I can say with almost certainty that the subcommittee of the Senate on Labor-Health and Human Services will appropriate more money in education than the President put in his budget. When you combine what they are going to give, it will be more than the President's. Is it going to have every single item in it? I do not know. In fact, before we vote on the final determination of education funding, the Senate will debate the issue on an appropriations bill which I have just described which will have more funding in it than the President's. We will probably decide in a floor fight on this floor how that education program should be structured. I think the occupant of the chair knows that Republicans have been working very hard at loosening up this money from the strings and rigidities of Washington into something that will go local schools in a looser fashion, from which we can get accountability and flexibility. We give flexibility and we expect accountability. It will not be all the line items the President wants, but it will be more money than the President requested. So I do not know what we are voting about in these resolutions. They are premature. The only guidance we have is the budget resolution that Republicans voted for and which said that of the domestic programs, there are a number of priorities but the highest one is education. The Senator occupying the chair voted for that resolution. In fact, it said we should appropriate, over the next 5 years, in excess of $28 billion--$26 or $28 billion more than we had been appropriating regularly under the President's approach. Over 10 years, it should be somewhere around $85 billion or $90 billion more. That is the only direction and guidance we have. That is not binding. But if ever there was something you know you are going to do when you pass a budget resolution, it is this because the American people think it is right. But the American people do not think we are making headway with the existing education programs. They would be thrilled if we gave more money and did it differently. Why should we be doing it the same old way which we have been doing it, which has no accountability and is all targeted whether the schools need it or not? They have to put on the same pair of socks and same shoes in every school district in America. They have to fit into the same shoes in order to get the Federal money, whether they have the problems or not. Then we have the great program that we call IDEA, where we told them you get started with special education and we will end up paying a substantial portion of it. We did not. We cheated. We made them pay a lot more than they were supposed to after we mandated it. Under Republican leadership, we are putting more and more money into that program for special education because we told them to do it, and we said we would pay a certain percent and we never came close. We keep putting more in than the President. The President complains about some targeted program we do not fund, but we fund IDEA and it loosens up money the States would otherwise have to spend for a program that we mandated, that we never lived up to our commitment on, and that is pretty good and we probably will do that this year, provide more funding than the President asked for. So I don't know, when this 5:30 vote comes, what we are voting on. I think we ought to put them both off and let's see what the appropriations subcommittee does. But if we do not, I can say I don't know why anybody would vote for the Daschle resolution. It is a statement of unreality. It is a statement of hypotheticals. It is a statement of: Here is how much money they have to spend in that subcommittee, so I am going to do some arithmetic and assume everything is going to get cut 17 percent. That is about where the 17-percent number comes from, but it does not mean anything because nobody suggests that all the money Labor-Health and Human Services gets [[Page 22658]] is going to be divided the way any Senator currently thinks it should be. It is going to be done by a committee that has been doing it for many years. Those are my two thoughts for the day. I have used about 5 minutes on each, and I talked faster than I normally do because I did not want to stay down here too long. Other Senators want to speak. I repeat: If we cannot give the American taxpayers a cut in their taxes when in the past 6\1/2\ years the tax take of America, what we have taken from the taxpayers, is up 58 percent--got it?--the tax receipts of America in the last 6 years 9 months is up 58 percent. The average check increase for American working people is up 11 percent, and the cumulative increase of Government annually over 7 years--6 years 9 months--is 22. Who was cut short? A 58-percent tax increase, 22-percent growth in Government, 11-percent growth in the paychecks of Americans. They need some of their money back. That is what that issue is about. If not now, when? On education, wait and see. We will do better than the President. It will be hard to convince the President, and he will have something to say about it. We ought to put up a nice big board and add up the numbers when we are finished with appropriations. We will do better than he did. I yield the floor. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from South Dakota. ____________________