[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 154 (2008), Part 8] [Extensions of Remarks] [Page 11445] [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]HONORING LYNDON BAINES JOHNSON ______ HON. GENE GREEN of texas in the house of representatives Wednesday, June 4, 2008 Mr. GENE GREEN of Texas. Madam Speaker, later this year the Department of Education will formally be renamed after a former teacher, who became president and made equal opportunity to education a national priority. President Lyndon Baines Johnson pioneered many issues such as civil rights, voting rights, but his education leadership stands out even among those accomplishments. President Johnson was a very human figure but his legacy is with us in many major ways today. Lyndon Johnson's first priority in life was education, and he was the first ``Education President.'' As we approach President Johnson's 100th birthday on August 27, I would like to submit the following article which appeared in the Austin-American Statesman highlighting the profound legacy President Johnson had on America's education system, and the renaming of the Department of Education Building. [From the Austin American Statesman, October 28, 2007] LBJ Finally Gets His Due in Washington (By David H. Bennett) Washington is a city of monuments; the Mall hosts buildings, statues and walls commemorating big achievements (saving the union) and small ones (inventing the screw propeller). But until now, Washington had no monument to a man who left an enormous mark, not only on American government, but on the lives of our people: Lyndon Baines Johnson. Until this year, the only thing named for LBJ in the capital area was a Memorial Grove, a clump of trees on the Potomac in Virginia. But when the Department of Education building is formally renamed for LBJ on September 18, it will finally provide Washington recognition for the man who fundamentally reshaped the role of government in the United States. On one level, ignoring LBJ in Washington simply replicates what has happened in politics and academia. For Republicans and those on the right, the Johnson years have always been anathema. He promised to be the ``education president,'' the ``health president'' and the ``poor people's president.'' He did all of that and more, earning the enduring hatred of those who loathe government. But more surprising is that the man who presided over that spectacular legislative run of victories for activist government that he called the ``Great Society'' has been the forgotten man by the party he once led. At Democratic conventions, FDR, Truman, and Kennedy are the iconic figures to whom speakers pay homage; LBJ goes unmentioned. Historians too seemed to look past LBJ--textbooks and history classes often pay little heed to the achievements of Johnson's domestic agenda. For many, it seems. the shadow of Vietnam obscures everything else about LBJ's career and accomplishments. That is a serious misreading of history, as a brief review of Johnson's legacy makes clear. It is his educational agenda that will be deservedly memorialized in the naming ceremony. The 1965 Elementary and Secondary Education Act was landmark legislation. It did not have a fancy title like ``No Child Left Behind,'' but the ESEA marked the first time the federal government committed to helping local school districts--and with funding, not directives. The 1965 Higher Education Act provided scholarships, grants, loans and work study programs--hundreds of billions of dollars worth--that made college possible for millions who could not afford it before. In addition, LBJ, himself once a school teacher in a desperately poor Texas district, was the president who first recognized and funded bilingual and special education. But education is only part of the story. Medicare transformed the health delivery system for older Americans, having helped almost 50 million citizens stay out of poverty and live longer. Medicaid has served over 200 million needy people since its creation. The Heath Professions Act helped to double the number of doctors graduating from medical school. LBJ's ``War on Poverty'' would later become a whipping boy for right-wing critics, but Head Start, Upward Bound, VISTA, the Job Corps and other poverty programs made their mark across the years, despite diminished resources and lack of commitment in some subsequent administrations. And it was the political genius of the man who ``knew the deck on Capitol Hill'' that played a critical role in pushing through the landmark Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts in 1964 and 1965. There is much more. In a nation which no longer seems to address infrastructure needs, Johnson's White House gave us the Urban Mass Transit Act, bringing MARTA to Atlanta, BART to the San Francisco Bay and, of course, Metro to Washington. And Johnson was truly a pioneer of environmentalism, spearheading the Clear Air, Water Quality, Clean Water Restoration, Solid Waste Disposal and Motor Vehicle Air Pollution Control Acts. Johnson also gave us regulatory protections like product and child safety, truth in packaging and truth a lending legislation, as well as the creation of OSHA. LBJ promised that the Great Society would be concerned with the quality of our lives as well as the quantity of our goods. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the Endowments for the Arts and the Humanities were the result. There would be hundreds of playhouses, opera companies, professional orchestras and dance companies created or supported with federal dollars. With the possible exception of FDR's first term, there was never anything like this record of legislative accomplishment. It is clear why the political right wants to bury the memory of LBJ. But why progressives have chosen to disregard his extraordinary domestic achievement is something else. The naming of the education building is a start in redressing this act of historical amnesia. ____________________