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Tavis Smiley: Congressman George Miller is Chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee which, over the past two weeks, has been really busy spearheading legislation to raise the minimum wage and give relief to students with college loans. He's serving his seventeenth term in Congress from the East Bay of San Francisco and joins us tonight, though, from Washington. Congressman, nice to have you on the program, sir.

George Miller: Thank you. It's a pleasure.

Tavis: Let me start, although a few days removed, with a quick question about what you made earlier this week of the president's State of the Union speech, given that you have been really spearheading moving some domestic issues. It seemed that, earlier this week, he wanted to talk about domestic issues.

Miller: Well, I think clearly he was trying to talk about domestic issues, about education, about energy, about health care. I think he came up a little short in each one of those issues, but he was really trying to stay away from Iraq and then all of a sudden he plunged into Iraq in sort of a last-minute "Hail Mary" sales pitch to try to get people to go along with this escalation of the troops in Iraq and of the war. I obviously disagree with that, but it was interesting.

He came back to education and he reaffirmed his support for "No Child Left Behind." I'm encouraged by that. I'm one of the original co-authors of "No Child Left Behind." I think it's having a very significant impact in the poor and minority community in terms of improving young peoples' education, their proficiency in reading and math, but it's got a long ways to go. I wish the president would have said that he was going to reaffirm his promise to fully fund and adequately fund "No Child Left Behind," but he didn't.

Tavis: To your point about that, I suspect that some might be surprised to know that a Democrat in fact co-sponsored that legislation as you mentioned you did a couple or few years ago. I think some might be surprised by that because of what you just said a moment ago which is that that thing still has not been fully funded and the president stole this terminology, "No Child Left Behind," with the Children's Defense Fund.

But never mind the name of it. It hasn't been fully funded. It is not working in the way that it was designed to work, yet you think the president ought to do more here.

Miller: I think he ought to do more. I think we can improve and modify the act. It's up for reauthorization this year. But this is clearly the most important act, the most important opportunity, we've had to concentrate and focus both resources and attention and accountability on the education of poor and minority children.

You know, Brown v. Board of Education said you had a right to an education. "No Child Left Behind" starts to tell you what kind of education you have a right to. This has been a major re-concentration of federal dollars back to those schools where poor and minority children are going. It's not perfect. It's an infancy.

We've learned a lot in this five years and there's a lot of tune-up that has to take place in this to make it more effective in the future for those children, for those schools and for those neighborhoods. But if the president doesn't step up with substantial new funding, it's going to make that reauthorization process very difficult.

Tavis: While we're talking about education, let me move now to the collegiate level. For those of us who have student loans, you passed some legislation over the last few days that makes it a little bit easier to navigate that process. You're about twenty years too late for me (laughter).

Miller: Or for my children (laughter).

Tavis: Yeah, but thank you nonetheless. Tell me about the legislation that was passed.

Miller: Well, what we did in the first hundred hours with college loans is we began the process of cutting the interest rate for subsidized student loans in half. Over the next five years, we will phase in a fifty percent cut from 6.8 percent to 3.4 percent. That hopefully will make it less expensive for those students at the lower income levels to be able to borrow that money to go to college.

As you know, students have access at the lowest income level to Pell Grants. About half of those Pell Grant students will also have access to these loans. That combination, I think, will make it more accessible for lower middle income and low income students to go to college. As you now know, we're foreseeing for the first time really several hundred thousand students who are deciding not to go to college because they don't know how they're going to manage the debt or they simply can't afford it. The Speaker made it very clear that this was only the beginning.

The next step, of course, would be to increase the value of the Pell Grants and then to look at possible deductions for tuition and college costs for parents, then finally a conversation with colleges of how do we contain and slow down this rapid increase in the cost of college that's starting to exclude highly-qualified students? They simply don't have the family income to go to college.

Tavis: I'm glad you raised that last point. I wanted to follow up, as I will now, by asking what you make of the fact that many believe that a college education which is so necessary to getting gainful employment is becoming almost a luxury in America, becoming more and more difficult to achieve. What's driving that and tell me more expressly how we slow that train down?

Miller: Well, I think, one, the federal government has got to start to talk to the state legislators, to talk to the institutions of higher education. We can't keep putting money in the top if the state is going to pull it out the bottom. We've got to have some state support for these systems. Very often, they withdraw their support from the colleges and universities because they know they really can't cut elementary secondary education. Then they raise the fees and the tuition and the costs to the students and to their parents.

That's just a process that's not going to work under its current form. It's accelerating too fast for families and for students who want to take advantage of going to college. You're right. If you don't, it's going to become the biggest determinant of the differences of peoples' ability to participate in the economy and society and, of course, then the difference of haves and have-nots.

Tavis: As I mentioned earlier, you've been a busy Chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee. You've talked about the education piece of your work. Let's get to the labor front. I think it's good news, although I don't like the fact that it's being phased in over two years, but it's not my place to comment on that. But the minimum wage has been increased up to $7.25 an hour effective 2009. Tell me about the fight to get that passed? As you well know, this has been the longest period in our history without an increase in the minimum wage.

Miller: It is really, you know, a scandal, a blight, on the record of Congress that, for ten years, unfortunately under Republican control, that Congress absolutely resisted any effort to increase the minimum wage. We have people in America today who are working at minimum wage jobs, some of them disagreeable jobs, difficult jobs where people go to work and they work hard every day. At the end of the year, they end up below the poverty line. They end up essentially working for a federal poverty wage.

Finally, when we could get a clean vote up or down on the minimum wage, the Congress overwhelmingly on a bipartisan basis supported that increase. The only thing that kept that from happening all these years was all of the special interest money that was flowing around Congress against raising the minimum wage.

In fact, what we're seeing in those communities and those states that have raised the minimum wage beyond the federal level, some twenty-six states, those economies are doing much better. Hiring is up even in retail. Business is up. Businesses are growing because there's more money in the community. So I think what we're seeing is that this is going to have a positive economic impact in those communities that are stuck at the federal minimum wage.

Tavis: You have given any number of presentation speeches and talks about this extensively, that is to say, the way you view your work as Chair of the Education and Labor Committee is to help pass good public policy that strengthens the middle class. You've talked about some of the busy efforts you've been engaged in over the last few weeks, but talk to me briefly about this notion that you've put forth continually that all of this is about an effort to strengthen the middle class and why that's so important.

Miller: Well, we actually want to do two things, Tavis. We want to strengthen the middle class and we want to grow the middle class. We want to allow more people from low economic strata of society to enter this middle class. One of the things that's key to doing that is to have some security with your job. If you don't have health care, people get locked into a job that may offer them some health care and they're afraid to move around. You've got to know that you're going to be able to have a secure retirement system. You've got to be able to know that you can have an education and get your kids an education.

These are the components that built this middle class, that built this country, that is really the backbone of this country, and I think it's critical to the democracy in this country. If we start continuing what we're now seeing, these incredible inequities that are taking place in American society from the very rich to the rest of society, I think we've got problems in holding together a democracy.

If you look around the country where you have these 80-20 splits in countries, that's where you have twenty percent of the people living behind walls, gates, glass on top of the walls, guards, dogs and all of those things. That's not a functioning society that we want in America. We've got to have more people continuing to move into middle class and participating. Then for those people who are in the middle class, make sure that they have some security, their health security, their retirement security, their job security, at that time.

That's really what the Education and Labor Committee is about. It's about the education of America's school children and young people in college and it's about where America works. So we're going to take the Resources Committee and we're going to look at the issues that are impacting people that are falling out of the middle class today. The trend is going the wrong way.

Tavis: How much progress can you make with that kind of aggressive agenda? While you control the House and the Senate, you still don't control the Oval Office.

Miller: Well, I hope I can make a lot of progress. But even more importantly, I think it's important that we raise these issues, that people hear out in the country that we are concerned about their access to affordable health care. We are concerned when their pensions are being terminated and people are losing, as in the United Airlines case, over half of their pensions overnight disappear and are gone.

I think we've got to have this committee listen to these people, look at their concerns, try to address them and maybe the politics will take care of itself as it did with the minimum wage, as it did with the cut in the interest rates for student loans.

Tavis: Finally, I should offer a quick programming note. The roommate of Representative George Miller. His roommate will be on this program on Monday night. His roommate happens to be a guy named Chuck Schumer, a senator out of New York who helped the Democrats take back control of the Senate. As a matter of fact, before I let you go, how tickled was I - and I suspect some of the other "New York Times" readers - when we saw this story which I knew nothing about obviously.

There are four members of Congress who all live together. They share a house in Washington and three of them are in the leadership. I mean, it's just unheard of that three members in the leadership who have run this country, George Miller who we're talking to right now; Dick Durbin out of Illinois; Chuck Schumer out of New York, three members of the leadership, and, of course, Bill Delahunt out of Massachusetts. Is that an "Animal House" or what?

Miller: Well, sometimes it's characterized as an "Animal House." It's an unusual living arrangement. It's worked for us. Our families are back home in our districts. It gives us a chance to plot and scheme and talk and work on the issues confronting the country and the Congress.

It's an interesting experience and, if you know Chuck Schumer, you'll know what kind of experience it is. I think he's got a new book out. He told me about it last night. He said he's going to be on your show and he's pretty excited about it and I'm excited to see the book. But it's an interesting experience living with him.

Tavis: Well, we look forward to talking with him on Monday and, of course, delighted to talk with you tonight. Congressman, nice to have you on. Thanks for your insight. We appreciate it.

Miller: Thank you.

Tavis: Congressman George Miller, Chair of the House Education and Labor Committee. Again, Monday night, his roommate, Chuck Schumer, out of New York.