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The second of four resolutions asks the Congressional leadership whether the Democrats or the Republicans have a better agenda for improving American's quality of life.
A RealAudio version of this Newsmaker interview is available.
Topics addressed on PBS Debate Night:
- Should the Republicans should maintain control of Congress?
- Which party would handle the economy better?
- Would Democrats or Republicans improve America's quality of life?
- Would a Republican or a Democratic majority in Congress ensure America's place in the World?
- Which party would run the government better?
- What is the connection between a vote for President and a vote for a member of Congress?
Browse the Online NewsHour's Congressional coverage.
JIM LEHRER: All right. Having resolved that, we’re now going to move on to our second topic, and again it comes in the form of a resolution: Be it resolved that the Democratic Party in Congress can best protect the quality of life values important to all Americans. Democrats.
REP. GEPHARDT: Well, Jim, I often go door-to-door in my district, and the other day I met a woman at the door. She was a single mother of two children. She had two jobs. She’s working 16 hours a day, both near minimum wage. She said, I still can’t pay my bills, but she said, that’s not my great concern. She said, my concern is I’m never at home to deal with my children. She said, I’m even worried that they will commit crimes.
Now, I think that what the Republicans have tried to do over the last two years has not helped her situation. In fact, in some ways, I think it’s made it worse.
First, they opposed the Family Medical
Leave law which would have allowed her to be at home with those children if they were sick. They tried to cut out the funding for this network which we’re having this debate on tonight, so they wouldn’t have had Big Bird to watch. Thirdly, they tried to cut back on school lunches for elementary kids and high school kids, and then if she wanted to send the kids to college, they were cutting back on student loans. So I don’t think they helped that person.
In contrast, our Families First agenda would help her. It would give her extra tax credits for child care. It would try to get an after school program in every school in this country so kids would have a place to go after school. It would give ‘em tax cuts for health care and for education. We’ve got to deal with people’s practical, everyday problems, and Families First does that.
JIM LEHRER: Republican rebuttal.
SEN. LOTT: What we’re talking about there really in this area of quality in life is opportunity and security; opportunity to be able to keep more of your own money so that you can look after your own family and help you in your own community, and also the right to be secure in your own community.
Crime and drugs are a problem in America; they’re a scourge. And when I go to my own state and when I go to other states for my friends in the Senate, people, they come up to me, they’re alarmed, they’re scared, when they realize what’s happening with our children, with drugs, teenagers, that are not just using the marijuana but the hard stuff, and the tremendous increase, they, they say, look, I don’t understand, the government is
taking my money in taxes, taking it to Washington, uh, I have the feeling it’s being wasted, and I don’t see real help coming to me for me and my family and my community and my town in terms of fighting in, in drugs, and fighting crime.
Now we have worked on that in the Congress. We passed half a dozen bills this past two years that really will help some of that, Megan’s Law, which will help deal with the sexual offenders against young children, and the stalks law. Right now we’re trying to get a child pornography bill off the Internet, try to get it through the Senate. It was objected to when I tried to do it just yesterday.
And one other thing--education--we need quality education, but it should be controlled by the parents, the teachers, and the children at the local level. The question on education is not so much how much but how well, what are we doing to help our children learn more and be smarter, and we need to have that emphasis and that flexibility and that control with the parents and the teachers at the local level.
JIM LEHRER: Democrats, start the dialogue.
SEN. DASCHLE: Well, Jim, I agree with some of what Trent said. I think it is a question of how much and how well. Obviously, this year we’re seeing a tremendous amount of increase in enrollment across the country in schools and colleges in every state. Obviously, this year, given that dramatic increased enrollment, whether or not we provide a good education is dependent in part on how well funded the programs are.
Now, you have proposed deep cuts, the biggest cuts in the history of our country, with regard to student loans and student grants, Head Start, school lunch, uh, safe and drug free schools, math and reading--and--and advocated the abolition of the Department of Education.
Now, I believe that’s an extreme proposal. I think that in light of the fact that we’ve seen the dramatic increase in enrollment is something you just can’t justify. Let me ask you this: Would you support next year adequate funding in all of those programs and renounce your support for the abolition of the Department of Education?
REP. GINGRICH: Sometimes I wonder exactly which program, Tom, you’re referring to. In the case of Head Start, we increased it every year. My oldest daughter, Kathy, went to Head Start when it was first created, when I was a graduate student in New Orleans. I’m very familiar with it. I’m a teacher by
background, and I come out of a background where both my daughters went to public school, I went to public school, but I’m very frightened by what I see happening. I think first of all we spend far too much money on bureaucracy and not enough on teachers.
Take Washington, D.C.. We spend over $9,000 a student in Washington, and the student-teacher ratio is such that if just half that money went to teachers, teachers that make $90,000 a year. We have layer after layer of bureaucracy. There’s a National Science Foundation fellowship they withdrew from the school, because they didn’t take the money and give it to teachers; they hired a $31,000 a year chauffeur for the school board member.
Now I don’t think the American public thinks pouring more money in the top--sort of trickle down bureaucracy--we pour enough money up here, the bureaucrat eats it and the bureaucrat eats it and the bureaucrat eats it and the bureaucrat eats it--finally down here is a teacher, a student, and a parent, and they get a tiny amount.
I would love to work with you on a program to clean out most of the bureaucracies, get the money to the teacher, to the parent, to the student, and actually be spending at the local level. And you see this in New York, where Mayor Giuliani is trying to work with the Catholic schools that have a great record of helping kids to actually raise the scholarship money so the poorest children can go to a safe, drug-free school in a neighborhood with a good educational experience. Those are the kind of child focus things that’ll make a difference.
REP. GEPHARDT: Well, let me say that I think we ought to be looking for how to get the programs that Tom mentioned to be better funded because I think they do get the money to the teachers and the parents and to the students. Safe and Drug Free Schools, every time I’ve seen it in the schools in my district, it works, it helps kids stay off drugs. It gives them the information they need. Head Start is accepted in every state in this country. I’ve never heard anybody say that Head Start wasn’t a great program. School lunch is, is needed by parents who just can’t make ends meet, and it helps kids learn. And student loan is to me the best program we’ve ever had in the government. We had the head of the Young Republicans from Georgetown come to one of our rallies for the student loan program when you had that cut in your budget. So I think what the federal government has been doing that has worked we ought to continue and even further fund, and if we can find ways to get the money better to the teachers and to the students, we ought to do that.
SEN. DASCHLE: Could I just--
SEN. LOTT: If I could, I agree that we should have more funding for education. And as a matter of fact, we are doing it, we have been increasing each year for the last four years. Last night, the House just voted 370 to 37 for a bill that included significant increases for education. And you’re talking about student loan programs, when I finished college, I worked for two years for the University of Mississippi in the Placement and Financial Aids Office. I think every student in America that finishes high school should be able to go forward and get training or an education; maybe it’s vocational education, maybe it’s a community college, but every one of them should be told there will be a, a grant, a loan, or a scholarship, or a work-study program for you. I support funding those programs, and, in fact, why wait till next year? We’re doing it this year.
SEN. DASCHLE: Well, but, Trent, you know what, I think that’s--I must say--I think in part that’s an election year conversion. I mean, you go back--
SEN. LOTT: But do we do it or not?
SEN. DASCHLE: Well, you went back just because you finally agreed with the administration and the Democrats on what the funding levels ought to be for the next year. My concern is what you’re going to do the next year, and, and I must say, you’ve got to go back to the Republican budget. I don’t think anyone would argue with the facts--CBO and OMB both agree that these are the deepest cuts that have ever been made in educational programs, the deepest cuts.
SEN. LOTT: It’s going up.
SEN. DASCHLE: Now, I know I’ve heard Newt tonight say that, that this is just a lot of bureaucracy. Well, you tell a student who can’t get a loan that it’s just bureaucracy. Tell a Head Start kid who can’t get into the program that it’s just bureaucracy. Go out to a principal or a superintendent whose walls are caving in and his roof leaks and they can’t get the kind of money it takes to, to build the infrastructure for a good school that it’s just bureaucracy. But we’ve got serious funding problems in education, across-the-board; South Dakotans, a lot of kids in my, my state today are not able to go to college because they can’t get a loan or a grant.
REP. GINGRICH: But in a sense, Tom, you’re making our point. The city of Washington spends over $9,000 per student, and we had to pass emergency money this week to keep the boilers from blowing up because the bureaucracy is so bad, it is so inefficient, it is so incompetent that at $9,000 a student it’s failing. And it’s failing to education the children. You mentioned the Drug Free School program. They had an application from a school in Texas that took over $1,000 to fill out, and they gave them a $13 grant. Now, this is ridiculous. They got a $13 grant they used to pay for bus parking at a museum. It ‘em over $1,000 to apply for it. We’re just saying if that money had gone to teachers’ salaries, if every teacher in America got half the money being spent per child in her school district or his school district, you’d have better teachers, less bureaucracy, and better education.
REP. GEPHARDT: Maybe we can make some progress. I’ve had a program I’ve called Reward for Results. And it says to the local school, it goes right down to the billing, and says, you produce so many kids that can pass the test, whether it’s the Motorola test or the GE test, this year, for every one more you produce next year, we’ll pay you a bonus. It can go--
REP. GINGRICH: Great idea.
REP. GEPHARDT: --wherever you want it to go. You get us the result, we’ll help you.
SEN. LOTT: How about the Bob Dole proposal for the tax credit scholarship which would allow you to deduct the savings of $500 a year over a child’s lifetime when they get ready to college? It would be $30,000. How about that?
SEN. DASCHLE: Better yet, what about taking what the President has proposed, which is to extend for two more years what most people need for a good education? Let’s go from twelve to fourteen years and give every student the ability to go to college for those two years. I think that’s a great idea. I think we all ought to have a mind set that, that now it’s going to be 14 years. In an information age, we need that kind of education.
REP. GINGRICH: I think it’s a good idea if you also make sure they actually are learning, that it’s not just paper, it’s not just rubber stamps, it’s not just social promotion, but there are real standards with real discipline, doing real homework.
SEN. DASCHLE: We require a B average.
SEN. LOTT: Not just how much but how well.
SEN. DASCHLE: They have to have a B average--
SEN. LOTT: Very important.
SEN. DASCHLE: --to be eligible. But I think it’s a great idea, and we ought to have a bipartisan agreement on that.
REP. GINGRICH: Georgia actually does that for the first year of college now.
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