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HIGHER EDUCATION AMENDMENTS OF 1998
(House of Representatives - April 29, 1998)

Text of this article available as: TXT PDF [Pages H2510-H2594] HIGHER EDUCATION AMENDMENTS OF 1998 Mr. HASTINGS of Washington. Mr. Speaker, by direction of the Committee on Rules, I call up House Resolution 411 and ask for its immediate consideration. The Clerk read the resolution, as follows: H. Res. 411 Resolved, That at any time after the adoption of this resolution the Speaker may, pursuant to clause 1(b) of rule XXIII, declare the House resolved into the Committee of the Whole House on the State of the Union for consideration of the bill (H.R. 6) to extend the authorization of programs under the Higher Education Act of 1965, and for other purposes. The first reading of the bill shall be dispensed with. All points of order against consideration of the bill are waived. General debate shall be confined to the bill and shall not exceed one hour equally divided and controlled by the chairman and ranking minority member of the Committee on Education and the Workforce. After general debate the bill shall be considered for amendment under the five-minute rule. It shall be in order to consider as an original bill for the purpose of amendment under the five-minute rule the amendment in the nature of a substitute recommended by the Committee on Education and the Workforce now printed in the bill, modified by the amendments printed in part 1 of the report of the Committee on Rules accompanying this resolution. That amendment in the nature of a substitute shall be considered by title rather than by section. Each title shall be considered as read. All points of order against that amendment in the nature of a substitute are waived. Before consideration of any other amendment it shall be in order to consider the amendment printed in part 2 of the report of the Committee on Rules, if offered by Representative Goodling or his designee. That amendment shall be considered as read, shall be debatable for 20 minutes equally divided and controlled by the proponent and an opponent, shall not be subject to amendment, and shall not be subject to a demand for division of the question in the House or in the Committee of the Whole. All points of order against that amendment are waived. If that amendment is adopted, the provisions of the amendment in the nature of a substitute as then perfected shall be considered as original text for the purpose of further amendment. No other amendment to the amendment in the nature of a substitute shall be in order except those printed in the portion of the Congressional Record designated for that purpose in clause 6 of rule XXIII. Printed amendments shall be considered as read. The chairman of the Committee of the Whole may: (1) postpone until a time during further consideration in the Committee of the Whole a request for a recorded vote on any amendment; and (2) reduce to five minutes the minimum time for electronic voting on any postponed question that follows another electronic vote without intervening business: Provided, That the minimum time for electronic voting on the first in any series of questions shall be 15 minutes. At the conclusion of consideration of the bill for amendment the Committee shall rise and report the bill to the House with such amendments as may have been adopted. Any Member may demand a separate vote in the House on any amendment adopted in the Committee of the Whole to the bill or to the amendment in the nature of a substitute ultimately considered as original text. The previous question shall be considered as ordered on the bill and amendments thereto to final passage without intervening motion except one motion to recommit with or without instructions. The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentleman from Washington (Mr. Hastings) is recognized for 1 hour. Mr. HASTINGS of Washington. Mr. Speaker, for the purposes of debate only, I yield the customary 30 minutes to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Hall), pending which I yield myself such time as I may consume. During consideration of this resolution, all time yielded is for the purposes of debate only. (Mr. HASTINGS of Washington asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.) Mr. HASTINGS of Washington. Mr. Speaker, H.Res. 411 is a modified open rule waiving all points of order against consideration of the bill. The bill provides 1 hour of general debate to be divided equally between the chairman and ranking minority member of the Committee on Education and the Workforce. [[Page H2511]] The rule also provides that the amendment in the nature of a substitute recommended by the Committee on Education and the Workforce now printed in the bill, as modified by the amendments printed in part 1 of the report of the Committee on Rules, shall be considered as an original bill for the purpose of amendment. Furthermore, Mr. Speaker, the rule provides that the amendment in the nature of a substitute shall be considered by title and that each title shall be considered as read. All points of order are waived against the amendment in the nature of a substitute. The rule provides that before consideration of any other amendment, it shall be in order to consider the manager's amendment printed in part 2 of the report of the Committee on Rules, if offered by the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Goodling) or his designee. All points of order against that amendment are also waived, it shall be considered as read, and shall be debatable for 20 minutes equally divided and controlled by the proponent and an opponent. It shall not be subject to amendment and shall not be subject to a demand for division of the question in the House or in the Committee of the Whole. If that amendment is adopted, the provisions of that amendment in the nature of a substitute as then perfected shall be considered as original text for the purpose of further amendment. Mr. Speaker, H.Res. 411 provides that no other amendment to the amendment in the nature of a substitute shall be in order except those printed in the Congressional Record. The rule allows the Chairman of the Committee of the Whole to postpone votes during consideration of the bill and to reduce votes to 5 minutes on a postponed question if the vote follows a 15-minute vote. Finally, the rule provides one motion to recommit, with or without instructions. Mr. Speaker, H.R. 6, the Higher Education Amendments of 1998, reauthorizes existing programs that provide Federal aid to students. It is designed to help to make college more affordable, simplify the student aid system and improve academic quality. Most importantly, Mr. Speaker, this legislation will ensure that all Americans wishing to pursue a higher education will continue to have that opportunity. First and foremost, H.R. 6 safeguards the student loan program by ensuring that student loans will remain available for all students and that students will receive the lowest interest rates in 17 years. Moreover, once this bill is enacted into law, deserving students from disadvantaged backgrounds will have more Federal support to attend college than ever before. H.R. 6 improves campus-based aid programs such as Work Study, Supplemental Educational Opportunity Grants, and Perkins Loans. It also expands flexibility in the Pell Grant program that provides vouchers to needy students, by permitting a larger portion of the grant to be used for purposes other than tuition, such as child care for parents attending classes. Mr. Speaker, encouraging students and their parents to work and save for educational expenses is a priority in this Congress. Accordingly, H.R. 6 increases the amount of income students may earn before it impacts their eligibility for financial aid. The bill also exempts veterans' benefits from being counted against students when they apply for financial aid. Incredibly, Mr. Speaker, the current financial aid formula treats the assets of students and their parents differently and separately, as though they are not part of the same family. H.R. 6 changes this provision by combining the assets of the student and his or her parents when calculating the total ability of the family to contribute towards college expenses. Finally, this legislation contains a number of administrative changes designed to streamline aid to education and eliminate bureaucratic red tape. In that regard, H.R. 6 can truly be described as a good deal for taxpayers as well as a good deal for students. I commend the Committee on Education and the Workforce, and in particular the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Goodling), the gentleman from California (Mr. McKeon), the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Clay) and the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Kildee) for their efforts in bringing this important legislation to the floor. The rule before the House today is designed to provide full and fair consideration of the committee's work product, while limiting the opportunity for Members desiring merely to score political points with this bipartisan legislation. Mr. Speaker, the quality of our higher education system in the United States has long been the envy of the entire world. At the same time, access to higher education for all deserving young people has been one of the driving forces behind two centuries of innovation and economic growth. I urge my colleagues to continue this tradition by putting America's students and their education first and adopting both this rule and H.R. 6, the Higher Education Amendments of 1998. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time. {time} 1900 Mr. HALL of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague from Washington (Mr. Hastings) for yielding me the time. This is a modified open rule. It will allow debate on H.R. 6, which is the Higher Education Amendment of 1998. As my colleague has described, this rule provides 1 hour of general debate to be equally divided and controlled by the chairman and the ranking minority member of the Committee on Education and the Workforce. The rule makes in order only those amendments that have been preprinted in the Congressional Record. These amendments will be permitted under the 5-minute rule, the normal amending process in the House. The rule does permit germane amendments to those preprinted amendments. The bill continues and revises Federal student loans, Pell grants and other higher education programs. Federal grants, loans and college work study awards have made the dream of higher education a reality for millions of young people. These programs are essential to bring the opportunity for higher education to all Americans. This bill makes a number of important changes to the programs intended to make college affordable, simplify the student aid system and promote academic quality. Mr. Speaker, It is a bipartisan bill. It has strong support from both sides of the aisle. The Committee on Education and the Workforce reported the bill with all Democrats who were present supporting it. During testimony last night before the Committee on Rules, the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Clay) the ranking minority member of the committee, and the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Kildee) the ranking minority member of the subcommittee, requested a full and open rule. The Committee on Rules denied the request, instead requiring all floor amendments to be preprinted in the Congressional Record. Even though the minority's request was not fully granted, the rule will provide opportunity for Members to amend the bill on the House floor. Moreover, the bill is the result of a bipartisan process. Mr. Speaker, the Committee on Rules approved this modified open rule by a voice vote, and I would urge adoption of the rule. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time. Mr. HASTINGS of Washington. Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Duncan). Mr. DUNCAN. Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of the rule and for the underlying bill, H.R. 6, which this rule brings to the floor, the Higher Education Amendments of 1998. I especially want to thank my good friend, the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Hastings) for yielding me this time; and also I would like to thank the chairman, the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Goodling) for including provisions in the bill in H.R. 6 which are similar to my bill, H.R. 715, the Accuracy in Campus Crime Reporting Act. I would briefly like to discuss H.R. 715, much of which has been incorporated into H.R. 6. This legislation, H.R. 715, currently has 71 cosponsors almost equally split between both parties. H.R. 715 is a [[Page H2512]] genuinely bipartisan bill. No college or university that has a safe campus should have any problems with the campus security provisions in H.R. 6, but for those institutions that do have crime problems, students and their parents should have a right to know about these dangers before they enroll. I became concerned about this issue after meeting with several families whose children had been murdered on college campuses. These families never dreamed that they should have to worry about the physical safety of their children on college campuses. The issue of campus crime last attracted the interest of many in the national media in the past year. Both CBS and ABC have devoted extensive time to this problem. Several leading publications have also covered this story. In fact, both the New Republic and USA Today have favorably written about my legislation, H.R. 715. After reading many of these articles and hearing these reports, it became painfully obvious to me that many colleges are doing a poor job in giving students and their parents an accurate picture of the dangers that lurk on some college campuses. On February 9, USA Today strongly endorsed H.R. 715 by stating, quote, in 1990, Congress passed a law requiring colleges to collect annual campus crime statistics, but the Education Department blocked the law's full implementation by threatening to withhold Federal funds from colleges opening their police logs. USA Today then hit the nail on the head by concluding, quote, it is a sad state of affairs when an act of Congress is necessary for the Education Department to protect student safety. I think, Mr. Speaker, that most of us look fondly on our college days, from the appealing image of ivy-lined brick buildings, the excitement of interacting with professors and, of course, making new friends who last for a lifetime. At least, that is what my colleagues and I probably remember. However, in the 1990s, unfortunately, the reality is far different. On many campuses, rapes, robberies and even murders are becoming far too common. Students now have reason to fear for their safety on some campuses. Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased that H.R. 6 contains campus security provisions that are modeled on H.R. 715. The campus security provisions of H.R. 6 require colleges and universities to maintain a daily log of all crimes committed and make those logs available for public inspection within 48 hours. Many States already require colleges and universities to make their police logs public. These provisions in H.R. 6 are a matter of fairness to those institutions which are making good-faith efforts to inform the public of the dangers on their campuses. The need for accurate police logs is crucial so that accurate crime statistics can be compiled. The public must be able to make informed decisions about where to attend college. While I would have liked to have seen more provisions from H.R. 715 included in H.R. 6, I believe that the provisions that are included will go a long way in improving the public's awareness of the dangers that, unfortunately, lurk on some of our college campuses. I appreciate the cooperation of the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Goodling) in this regard, and I urge support for H.R. 6. Mr. HALL of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Spratt). (Mr. SPRATT asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.) Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me the time. Mr. Speaker, I support student loans, and I support the kind of compromise that has been reached in this bill, but as the ranking democrat on the Committee on the Budget I have to raise concerns about this bill because I do not think it complies with the Budget Act, and I think those concerns should be expressed. For the first time in 30 years, we have got a balanced budget this year, and we have got a balanced budget in part because of disciplines and budget process changes we made in the Budget Summit Agreement of 1990, the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1993 and the Balanced Budget Act last year, 1997. One of those rules which we established in 1990 and have carried forward in each of those years was the so-called pay-go rule, which simply provides that any time anyone wants to liberalize or add to an entitlement the cost of it must be paid for either by identifying a revenue stream to pay for it or by reducing an entitlement somewhere else in the budget. When the rule was read, the gentleman noted that all points of order are raised. The reason all points of order have to be raised as to the Budget Act is that this particular bill increases direct spending for student loans by $2.8 billion, according to the Office of Management and Budget, over and above what was provided in the balanced budget agreement last year. In effect, what we have done here is lower the rates the students will pay, and that is good, I am for that, and raise to some extent what the banks will realize for these loans. We have increased the spread over and above what was anticipated for the next 5 years, and the cost is $2.8 billion, according to OMB. Now what does this mean? We have waived points of order. The bill cannot be withheld. I know the calamity it would cause if it were withheld because students are making decisions about how they will pay for college right now. But what this means is that we will have an entry on something called the pay-go score card. There is about $700 million in scored offsets to this bill so the entry will be $2.8 billion minus $700 million equals $2.1 billion. And if as of September 30 of this year we have not cleared that from the score card, it will trigger sequestration. It will mean across-the-board cuts in a host of programs, including educational programs, voc rehab. Ironically, it will increase student loan origination fees. Now I am not criticizing the group here that put this together. I am criticizing the way the House is run. We should have had well before now a budget resolution. We have a process by which these decisions are not made one by one, piecemeal. They are made in a comprehensive context where we have to identify the offsets, identify the tradeoffs. When we want to increase one thing, we have got to decrease something else. We have not done that. The most egregious violation of it was the BESTEA bill, the transportation bill that we had on the floor just a few weeks ago. That particular bill will increase spending by $35 billion over and above what we provided in the BBA. This is just another illustration of what happens when we do not have a budget agreement, when we do not have a budget resolution. The proper procedure would be to send this bill back to the committee and require maybe not this group but some group to identify the offsets better than the offsets that have been identified here. I know that is not going to happen. When the bill comes up, I am going to vote for it myself. But I could not let the bill come to the floor, could not let it be considered in this manner, could not let this routine incantation that all points of order are waived be made without raising the concern of the Committee on the Budget, my own personal concern that we are deviating from the disciplines that have brought us to a balanced budget for the first time in 30 years, and we are going to have a real pileup in September unless we get under way with the budget resolution in the process that we duly adopted. Mr. HASTINGS of Washington. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Goodling) the chairman of the Committee on Education and the Workforce. Mr. GOODLING. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding the time to me. First, I would like to say that I wish the previous speaker would have been sitting on our committee when we were marking up. I sure could have used him. Because we had amendment after amendment after amendment, and every time I asked where is the offset, they said there was not any. Now, fortunately, we were able to defeat them in a bipartisan way, but, otherwise, we had a serious problem. I think it is important to point out that we have asked the lending institutions to reduce yields by 30 basis points that they would normally expect to receive, so it is not a situation where [[Page H2513]] somebody came and gave them more. We asked them to reduce yields by 30 points, and we did that to bring about an agreement with the students. And for the gentleman from California (Mr. McKeon) and the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Kildee) I will not be so informal. They worked for a year and a half to bring about this agreement between the students and the lending institutions. The scoring has been a problem. There is no question about it. At one point, they were told that we have about $4 billion to $6 billion in savings. We were really swimming in good water. We had all sorts of money to spend. Next time they scored it, they used a different scoring method, and all of a sudden we are a billion dollars short. I would also tell the previous gentleman we have come up with at least half of that, and I believe that the Committee on the Budget is able to come up with the other half. So, again, it has been a very difficult thing, but we know that we must have it on the President's desk by May 15, unless my colleagues want to have total, a total disaster. We will have parents, we will have students, we will have schools sitting out there wondering are their loans? When will we find out? So we just positively have to move the legislation, and I cannot give the two congressmen I mentioned enough credit for the amount of hours that they have spent and the staffs have spent to bring together the students and the lending institutions. Above all, the students do not want to see their opportunity taken away from them simply because we in the Congress cannot come up with an agreement that will save the private sector as far as their ability to provide 70 percent of all Federal student loans. So I would hope that we can eliminate an awful lot of the amendments that are coming up because that could really drive us up the wall and then we will really have a scoring problem and, at the same time, get this legislation to the President quickly. Mr. HALL of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer). Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding this time to me, my friend from Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of this rule and in support of this bill. However, I must say that I share the views of the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Spratt) the ranking member of the Committee on the Budget. I think his concerns are absolutely accurate; but, like him, I will vote for this bill and hope that we can work out some of the problems as it goes through. I am pleased that the committee was able to work together in a bipartisan fashion to draft this bill. However, Mr. Speaker, I am extremely concerned that the authorization for the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards was eliminated during markup of the bill. {time} 1915 I have talked to some of the staff of the committee on our side, and that was not our intent, and my understanding is we are not supportive of that, although it is a small component of a large bill. As education is one of our Nation's highest priorities, Mr. Speaker, we need to focus on improving the quality of the teachers in our schools. National board certification is, in my opinion, an important way to achieve this goal. Both the President and a bipartisan group of our Nation's Governors support the good work that the national board is doing to improve the quality of our teachers. Recently, Mr. Speaker, the Maryland Legislature passed a bill creating a pilot program to encourage up to 45 teachers to seek national board certification. In the city of Bowie, Maryland, just down the road, the City Council approved a $20,000 set-aside in its 1997- 1998 budget for initiatives to enhance the teaching skills and instructional environment in Bowie schools, including national board certification. Mr. Speaker, as President Clinton said last Friday, and I quote, now is no time to walk away from our commitment to public education. The National Board for Professional Teaching Standards, the President said, should not be a partisan issue, it should not be an ideological issue, it ought to be purely and simply what we can do to help you do what is best for our children and their future, close quote. Mr. Speaker, as I said, I will support this bill, but I am very, very hopeful that the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards is included in the Senate bill and will be included in the conference. I will be talking to my good friend, the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Clay), the chairman-in-exile of this committee, and the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Goodling), chairman of this committee, in working toward that end. I think this is a critical component of our overall effort to upgrade the status of teaching, and, therefore, the quality of education in our schools. I would hope that we could come to an agreement between the two bodies on this, and I look forward to working toward that end. Mr. HASTINGS of Washington. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Paul). (Mr. PAUL asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.) Mr. PAUL. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time. I rise in support of this rule. It is obviously a very fair rule because I am allowed to offer an amendment later on, so I am pleased to be able to vote for this rule. I have an amendment that I am going to offer in Title I which will be designated so that the Social Security number cannot be used for the electronic personal identifier for any of the programs in this educational bill. The American people have become very worried about how often the Social Security number is being used as a national identification number, and we are working quickly toward a time where we have a national identification card. We certainly have abused the Social Security number as being the number. It was never intended that way. That is not what was intended when the Social Security was started that this number would be a universal number for everything. In 1974, it was stated rather explicitly that the Social Security number should not be used for programs like this, and I would like to just quote the Privacy Act of 1974: ``It shall be unlawful for any Federal, State or local government agency to deny any individual any right, benefit or privilege provided by law because of such individual's refusal to disclose his Social Security number.'' I think this is a good idea, because today we are very much aware of the fact that if a company, if a loaning company, or if one is going into a store to buy something, and they get one's name and one's Social Security number, one knows that they can call up more information about somebody than they know about themselves. I think this is a serious threat to the privacy of every American citizen, and we should be cautious about using the Social Security number. It is being used all the time. Mr. Speaker, prior to coming to this Congress, I was an obstetrician delivering babies, and babies cannot leave the hospital these days without a Social Security number. So they are born, get a Social Security number, they do not leave the hospital without it, and do my colleagues know that one cannot have a death certificate without a Social Security number? They are everyplace. It is an intrusion on our privacy. We do not need to use a Social Security number. When I was in the Air Force, we used to have an identification number, but now, today, it is the Social Security number. Not too many years ago a law was passed here in the Congress that mandates that each State licensing agent for our automobile says that one has to have a Social Security number. So now they will be cross-checking with Social Security number and all of our driver's license numbers. We are losing our privacy in this country. The American people know it. We do not need this number to be used in this program for it to be successful, and we should move very cautiously, and I hope I can get support for this amendment so that we do not use the Social Security number as the electronic personal identifier. Mr. HALL of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from New York (Mrs. Lowey). [[Page H2514]] (Mrs. LOWEY asked and was given permission to revise and extend her remarks.) Mrs. LOWEY. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time. Mr. Speaker, I rise to offer my strong support for this rule and the bipartisan amendments to the Higher Education Act. Education is society's great equalizer. It enables Americans to participate in democracy and pursue the American dream. We all recognize that a college education is as necessary today as a high school education was just a generation ago. In 1982, a worker with a college degree earned 40 percent more than a worker without one. Today, college graduates earn 75 percent more. A recent national survey showed that 9 in 10 Americans believe every interested qualified student should have the opportunity to attend college. My colleagues, that is a clear mandate for a strong higher education bill, and I believe such a measure is before us today. Just briefly, it increases Pell Grants by 50 percent next year and provides additional increases in the future. It preserves the Perkins Loan, the State Student Incentive Grant, the Supplemental Education Opportunity Grant programs, all important sources of financial aid. It will encourage more disadvantaged students to pursue higher education by strengthening TRIO, continuing my National Early Intervention Scholarships, and establishing a new High Hopes program that will work with low-income middle schools and community organizations. The new campus-based child care program will help young mothers attend college and become self-sufficient. The new loan forgiveness program will help fill America's growing need for qualified teachers. The bill will also help make college campuses safer and provide students and their families with the information they need and deserve about crime on campus. Of course, this bill is not perfect. It ends Federal support for the fine work of the National Board of Professional Teaching Standards and fails to include, as the Senate bill does, a Fair Play Act to encourage colleges to satisfy the interests and needs of young female athletes. However, despite some deficiencies, this is a strong bipartisan bill, and I urge my colleagues to support it. Mr. HASTINGS of Washington. Mr. Speaker, how much time remains on each side? The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Gutknecht). The gentleman from Washington (Mr. Hastings) has 14\1/2\ minutes, and the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Hall) has 18\1/2\ minutes. Mr. HASTINGS of Washington. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. McKeon). Mr. McKEON. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time. I rise in strong support of this rule and the bill H.R. 6, the Higher Education Amendments. First I would like to thank the gentleman from New York (Mr. Solomon), chairman of the Committee on Rules, for his help in crafting this rule. Through his efforts and those on the committee, we have been able to bring this bill to the floor in a timely and expeditious manner. He definitely will be missed when he retires. This rule will govern floor consideration of H.R. 6, which is one of the most important education bills that this Congress will consider this year. As many of my colleagues know, we are facing a July 1 deadline that creates a crisis in the student loan program. H.R. 6 contains a bipartisan compromise that fixes the problem, maintains the viability of the private loan program, and provides students with the lowest interest rate in 17 years. So through the swift adoption of this rule and passage of H.R. 6, we will move one step closer to meeting that deadline. Therefore, I urge all of my colleagues to support the rule and vote in favor of H.R. 6, the Higher Education Amendments of 1998. Mr. HALL of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Guam (Mr. Underwood). Mr. UNDERWOOD. Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend from Ohio for yielding me this time. I rise in support of the rule on H.R. 6. I know that many of the members of this committee have worked hard on producing a bill which will increase the affordability for our institutions of higher education and advance social mobility in our country. As a retired educator and higher education administrator, we know that institutions of higher education advance knowledge, provide community service, and serve as the basis for social and economic mobility for millions of our young people who come from backgrounds with few social advantages and economic resources. Higher education institutions in our country are marked by their capacity to provide this opportunity which is vastly different than institutions in other countries. Higher education is the strength of our society and the engine of progress and opportunity, and this bill, as written, continues and ratifies this understanding of postsecondary institutions and deserves our support. Mr. Speaker, I would like to draw attention to the especially unique provisions that it has on Hispanic-serving institutions and the work of the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Hinojosa) in that regard. I would also like to draw attention to a provision which allows higher education institutions in the territories to compete for grants with a little bit more flexibility. I would like to really draw attention to the fact that it is making higher education affordable for millions of young people around the country, and the increase in Pell Grants. I know there is a problem with the Pell Grant provision, and I have spoken with the leadership on this issue. The bill, as currently written, says that students from the Micronesian Islands, the Republic of the Marshall Islands, and the Republic of Palau and the Federated States of Micronesia are not eligible for Pell Grants except if they go to institutions in those areas and Guam only. I feel very strongly that this is a violation of the compacts of free association and will attempt to limit educational opportunities for these people. The FAS territories of the Pacific islands was an American- administered area of the Pacific under which some compacts were arranged in order to help to facilitate the growth of these areas, and for one reason or another, H.R. 6 does not take this into account. I trust that we can work towards a version of the bill on this particular provision which will restore the benefits of Pell Grants for the Micronesian students not only in Guam, and not only on their own home islands, but throughout the 50 States. Again, Mr. Speaker, this bill deserves our support. It is a good bill, and it is a bill that is the work of very strong bipartisan support and a good and healthy understanding of the role of postsecondary institutions in our society. Mr. HASTINGS of Washington. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from New Jersey (Mrs. Roukema). (Mrs. ROUKEMA asked and was given permission to revise and extend her remarks.) Mrs. ROUKEMA. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time. Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of both the rule and the bill. I think this bill is one of the most significant bills that we will probably pass in this Congress, and these are the issues that count with the American people, without a doubt. To be competitive in the global economy, we need to provide our youth with the means to better their education. This is the essence of the American dream. Now, I know that there are going to be amendments during this process, and I do believe that there will be constructive colloquies and constructive dialogue and debates on those amendments, but this bill is fundamentally a very strong bill. I do want to point out that one of the issues that has been questioned is the resolution here of the potential crisis of the interest rate issue on this bill. The proposal in this legislation, I believe, is the best that we could have come up with, and it will help students while saving the program for higher education through the private banking system. Now, I am one of the longtime members of the Subcommittee on Postsecondary Education, Training and [[Page H2515]] Life-Long Learning, but I have another hat. I am the chairwoman of the Subcommittee on Financial Institutions and Consumer Credit, and perhaps from that point of view I understand both sides of this issue. This legislative fix, so to speak, is necessary, absolutely necessary, not only to protect the loans for the students at reasonable low interest rates, but also to ensure that the banks will not be forced to leave the market. {time} 1930 I think this is the best possible compromise that we could have reached. It works for the students and their families and it works for the private sector, the banks who provide the loans at low interest rates. Mr. HALL of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Andrews). (Mr. ANDREWS asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.) Mr. ANDREWS. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Hall) for yielding me this time. Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of the rule, and at a time when the people who cover politics are obsessed with what is scandalous and divisive, we have before us tonight something that is solid and unifying. Mr. Speaker, I want to commend the leaders of our committee, the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Chairman Goodling), the gentleman from California (Chairman McKeon), the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Clay) and the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Kildee) for all the time and effort they have put into this bill and all the very fine work that they have done. I also want to commend the Committee on Rules for putting before us a rule that lets anyone with any idea have the right to come to the floor and express his or her idea. That is why I support the rule. Mr. Speaker, I do want to associate myself, however, with the remarks of the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Spratt), the ranking Democratic member of the Committee on the Budget, with respect to the cost and payment mechanism for the interest rate compromise that has been referred to earlier. First of all, we do not really know what the cost is. We have an estimate from the Office of Management and Budget that tells us it will be net in excess of $2 billion. We have another estimate from the Congressional Budget Office which tells us that even with the offsets that have been identified, it is in the neighborhood of half a billion dollars. It is a very serious consideration that we are moving forward on this bill without identifying where the money is going to come from. It is sort of the-check-is-in-the-mail theory of budgeting that got us into this mess in the first place. I agree with those who say that we should move forward this evening, and I will vote with them to do so. But I also want to sound a note of caution that as we move this bill out of the House of Representatives and into the conference committee, I think it is imperative that we lay before the Members of this body and our constituents, the American people, the specifics of how much this compromise will cost the taxpayers and where the money is going to come from to pay for it. I believe it would be a disaster to fatten the profits of the banking industry at the expense of other student aid programs or other mandatory programs. We should be watching that as the time goes on. Mr. HASTINGS of Washington. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time. Mr. HALL of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I have no more speakers. I would urge a ``yes'' vote on the rule, and I will not be calling for a vote. I think it is a good bipartisan rule, and I yield back the balance of my time. Mr. HASTINGS of Washington. Mr. Speaker, I want to urge my colleagues to support this rule, and the underlying bill. This is clearly a product that is bipartisan in nature and that is something I think we can be proud of. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time, and I move the previous question on the resolution. The previous question was ordered. The resolution was agreed to. A motion to reconsider was laid on the table. The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Hastings of Washington). Pursuant to House Resolution 411 and rule XXIII, the Chair declares the House in the Committee of the Whole House on the State of the Union for the consideration of the bill, H.R. 6. {time} 1934 In the Committee of the Whole Accordingly, the House resolved itself into the Committee of the Whole House on the State of the Union for the consideration of the bill (H.R. 6) to extend the authorization of programs under the Higher Education Act of 1965, and for other purposes, with Mr. Gutknecht in the chair. The Clerk read the title of the bill. The CHAIRMAN. Pursuant to the rule, the bill is considered as having been read the first time. Under the rule, the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Goodling) and the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Clay) each will control 30 minutes. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Goodling). Mr. GOODLING. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 5 minutes. Mr. Chairman, I rise today in support of H.R. 6, the Higher Education Amendments of 1998. Considering H.R. 6 today, the House will complete a bipartisan process that began in the subcommittee chaired by the gentleman from California (Mr. McKeon) well over a year ago. This legislation will benefit millions of students across the country in their pursuit of a higher education. The bill will improve programs such as Work-Study, Pell grant, TRIO, and student loans that help millions of students pay for college. We will do a number of important things here today. However, none may be as important as our efforts to keep student loans available for all students. As all of my colleagues know, we have been struggling for the past year with the student loan interest rate issue that is the direct result of the Student Loan Reform Act of 1993. That act changed the index for establishing interest rates on these loans. Prior to the Student Loan Reform Act, interest rates had always been tied to 91-day Treasury bills. However, as part of the changes associated with the creation of the Federal Direct Student Loan program, the index for establishing interest rates changed to one based on the 10-year Treasury bond. This scheduled rate change is serious and has the potential to disrupt the Federal Family Education Loan Program which provides nearly 70 percent of this country's Federal student loans. As a parent I am keenly aware of the burden being placed on our youth by student loan debt. I am personally committed to ensuring that the interest rate on Federal student loans is kept as low as possible. However, I also realize that there is a point at which the lenders will get out of the program. That point is reached when their return on making these loans falls short of the return they could make by investing elsewhere. Under the bill we are considering today, students will receive historically low interest rates, the lowest in 17 years. The rates students pay on new loans will drop from the current rate of 8.25 down to 7.43 during the repayment period. At the same time, the amount the lenders are paid will be reduced by 30 basis points which will, I believe, ensure uninterrupted access to private capital for our Nation's students. The chairman of the Subcommittee on Postsecondary Education, Training and Life-Long Learning, the gentleman from California (Mr. McKeon) and the ranking member of that subcommittee, the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Kildee) have worked very hard to find a solution to the crisis. That solution is contained in this legislation. Throughout this difficult process, the gentleman from California (Chairman McKeon) and the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Kildee) never forgot the interests of the students. They never gave up when negotiations broke down. I know that the ranking member of the committee, the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Clay) and the rest of the members of the committee are grateful for their efforts in resolving the issue. Mr. Chairman, I especially want to thank the Speaker of the House, the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Gingrich), the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Armey), the majority leader, as well as [[Page H2516]] the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Kasich) chairman of the Committee on the Budget. Without their help, this solution would not have been possible. All three contributed to ensuring that we could pay for this provision which is now budget neutral without passing any of the costs on to students. Many in the higher education community support the proposal and have joined me in praising the gentleman from California (Chairman McKeon) and the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Kildee) for their leadership. The major student groups have described the proposal as, and I quote, ``A realistic, fair, and even-handed compromise that protects students' need for lower borrower rates.'' The American Council on Education and 10 other major higher education groups representing over 3,600 colleges and universities praised the fact that the proposal ``ensures the continued availability of capital in the guaranteed student loan program.'' Mr. Chairman, for the people back home, I hope they would notice that I am not quoting anything that the lending institutions or the lending organizations have had to say about this. Obviously, they are not nearly as pleased. I continue to welcome the help of everyone who is willing to work in good faith to get the problem solved. I thank those who have already shown a willingness to seek common ground in order to ensure that student loans remain both inexpensive and available. But, Mr. Chairman, I am sorry to say that despite the bipartisan example set by the leaders on both sides of this committee, there are those who would continue to play politics with this issue. A high- ranking official at the Department of Education recently put out a press release about our bipartisan solution stressing that it recognizes the ``need to protect students from banks.'' Now, if there is anything that students need to be protected from, it is the high cost of getting an education and the quality of service they get from the bureaucracy at the Department. This bill scores high on both counts: It helps make college more affordable and it simplifies the student aid delivery system. The committee is proud of the accomplishments made to date in making college affordable for all students. Since we have been in charge, for example, Pell grants and College Work-Study are funded at all-time highs, while provisions in the Taxpayer Relief Act created education IRAs and other tax credits to help low- and middle-income students obtain a postsecondary education. The legislation we are considering today will build on these important achievements by continuing the important programs that serve students well and by reforming burdensome requirements to best meet the needs of students, families, and colleges across the country. Mr. Chairman, I do want to caution all of my colleagues to please be very, very careful about their ambition to add all sorts of things to this legislation, because they could kill the wonderful work that the subcommittee and then eventually the full committee has done. Mr. Chairman, we have also made significant changes to the current need analysis formula in order to address concerns raised by many students and families about the need to encourage students to work and save for their education. The bill increases the amount of money that students may earn before it impacts their eligibility for financial aid. By doing this, we are encouraging students to work and save for college. It also combines the assets of a student and his or her parents when calculating the ability of the family to contribute towards college. The current formula treats that assets of parents and students differently and separately as though they are not part of the same family. We are changing this provisions so the formula truly considers the ability of the family to pay for college. The legislation we will consider today will also improve service to students. It addresses the need to reduce the administrative costs associated with the processing, delivery, and monitoring of the Federal financial aid programs. It gives the Secretary of Education the tools he needs to bring the Department into the 21st Century. Specifically, the Department will be required to put in place a Performance-Based Organization (PBO) to run the day-to-day operations of the student financial aid delivery system. Chairman McKeon and Representative Kildee introduced the PBO bill last fall with the full support of the students and the rest of the higher education community. I am glad to see that it has been included in our final bill. A more stable and more efficient delivery system coupled with regulatory reform should result in reduced administrative costs for the Department as well as for schools, lenders, guaranty agencies, and other program participants who must interact with the Department's delivery system. This is particularly important since we are forcing lenders and guaranty agencies to operate with less revenue and we expect colleges to keep their costs down for students. The Department needs to contribute to these efforts by operating more efficiently so others can do the same. I'd also like to note some provisions of H.R. 6 that were offered in Committee by Representatives McKeon and Castle to make college affordable. The McKeon--Castle amendment will implement a number of the recommendations of the Commission on the Cost of Higher Education. This is important, because if we are truly interested in making sure that all Americans can afford a quality postsecondary education, and if we are truly interested in reducing the debt burden placed on our students, then the single most important thing we can do is to get colleges to lower their prices. These provisions are a needed first step in that direction. In addition to making college more affordable and simplifying the delivery system, we have fulfilled our promise to improve the quality of higher education. H.R. 6 will help create safer campuses where our nation's students can learn. It improves the information made available to students and families about crimes occurring on college campuses. And although no one can guarantee safety, we are making sure that students have the information they need to protect themselves from becoming victims of crime. We are also ensuring families have accurate information about crime on college campuses so they can make informed choices when selecting a college for their children. H.R. 6 also provides strong incentives for students to stay off drugs. An amendment offered by the gentleman from Indiana, Mr. Souder, and accepted in Committee will eliminate student aid eligibility for students convicted of drug offenses. This provision is based on an amendment offered by Mr. Solomon in 1992, which was accepted by the House. Unfortunately, the Solomon amendment was later dropped in conference. If we want to ensure safety on our Nation's campuses, it is vital to keep them drug-free. H.R. 6 also focuses on improving teacher quality so that students will have high quality teachers trained in the subject areas in which they teach. It is alarming to find that nearly one-third of all high school math teachers and over one fifth of all high school English teachers in this country have neither majored Nor minored in the subjects in which they teach. Given this fact, it should come as no surprise that American twelfth graders recently scored so low on the TIMMS international math and science test. Under this legislation, States will be encouraged to undertake a wide variety of efforts to improve the quality and ability of classroom teachers--beginning with the reform of institutions at which many of these teachers are prepared. Specifically, this bill amends the Higher Education Act by replacing 16 unfunded teacher preparation programs with a single competitive block grant, which I'm pleased to mention, was developed through a bipartisan process within our Committee. Using funds from this competitive block grant, Governors will have significant flexibility in which activities to carry out. Specifically, such efforts may include strengthening State teacher certification procedures to better reflect current and future teacher's academic knowledge of the subjects they teach; reforming schools of education and holding them accountable for producing quality teachers; creating and/or expanding programs which provide alternative routes to teacher certification; undertaking teacher recruitment efforts; and implementing initiatives to expeditiously remove incompetent or unqualified teachers. To ensure that States receiving these funds are making progress to improve teacher quality, this legislation also makes future grants to States contingent upon meeting specific goals such as being able to demonstrate an increased percentage of teachers teaching in subject areas and an increase in ``first-time'' certification and licensure rates among education school graduates. I would like to especially highlight several provisions that were worked out in a bipartisan fashion which are now part of the manager's package of amendments. They include: an increased emphasis on partnerships consisting of the Governor of a participating State, exemplary schools of education and local educational agencies; an increased focus, with respect to the teacher recruitment provisions, on schools most in need [[Page H2517]] of quality teachers, such as in poor urban and rural areas; and a clarification that the Governor shall be the grant recipient except in those cases where State law or constitution dictates that another individual is responsible for education. I look forward to the support of my colleagues for this compromise so that we can help States really reform teacher preparation programs and provide high quality teachers to our students. I would also like to thank Representative Graham for his efforts in working with Representative Kildee, in crafting a truly bipartisan initiative under this legislation which provides loan forgiveness for prospective teachers who agree to teach in high poverty urban or rural schools. In addition to the improvements we will make in the preparation of teachers, there are a host of other changes that will improve educational quality and opportunities far beyond the college campus. Today, the House will increase opportunities for all Americans to get the education they need through the expanded use of distance learning techniques and new technologies. Today we will also encourage students to become involved in their communities and to help children learn to read by ensuring that colleges use more of the Work-Study dollars to fund these initiatives. Finally, let me just say that that the legislation before us today is one of the most important things that we in the 105th Congress will do this year. It will ensure that every American has access to a quality postsecondary education at an affordable price. This is a bipartisan bill that makes much needed reforms to help students, parents, and schools. I urge all of my colleagues to support it, and I urge a ``yes'' vote on final passage. Mr. CLAY. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 5 minutes. Mr. Chairman, I want to commend the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Kildee) and the gentleman from California (Mr. McKeon) for their great bipartisan teamwork on this very important higher education initiative. They worked for better than a year to fashion legislation that I believe strengthens our country's commitment to higher education. I also want to commend the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Chairman Goodling) and all the committee members who made valuable contributions to the higher education reauthorization effort. I am pleased to give my enthusiastic support for this bill. The bill strengthens student aid financing by significantly reducing student loan interest rates, increasing Pell Grants and improving the calculations of benefits for independent and dependent students. The bill adopts a number of measures that enhance support for minority and disadvantaged students by strengthening the TRIO program and other programs supporting historically black colleges and universities, Hispanic-serving institutions and tribally controlled colleges. Mr. Chairman, I am also pleased that the committee adopted President Clinton's High Hopes program. And I commend the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Fattah) for his successful advocacy of this important initiative. Mr. Chairman, the bill also includes a number of provisions aimed at improving services to students on campus such as enhanced campus crime reporting, a new campus-based child care program and streamlining financial aid procedures. I am also pleased that teacher education and recruitment received a boost in this bill by the adoption of a loan forgiveness program for new teachers and strong teaching training partnerships. As we continue to work on this bipartisan bill, I hope that we can continue our efforts to resolve issues regarding loan consolidation interest rates, guarantee agencies, and the National Board for Teacher Certification. Finally, Mr. Chairman, I would like to express my hope that we will unanimously reject attempts to undermine this bipartisan bill through the introduction of a divisive anti-affirmative action amendment. The Riggs amendment has received universal condemnation among all those who care deeply about expanding educational opportunities for all Americans. Students, colleges, civil rights groups, editorial boards and women's groups across this country have urged us to reject this

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HIGHER EDUCATION AMENDMENTS OF 1998
(House of Representatives - April 29, 1998)

Text of this article available as: TXT PDF [Pages H2510-H2594] HIGHER EDUCATION AMENDMENTS OF 1998 Mr. HASTINGS of Washington. Mr. Speaker, by direction of the Committee on Rules, I call up House Resolution 411 and ask for its immediate consideration. The Clerk read the resolution, as follows: H. Res. 411 Resolved, That at any time after the adoption of this resolution the Speaker may, pursuant to clause 1(b) of rule XXIII, declare the House resolved into the Committee of the Whole House on the State of the Union for consideration of the bill (H.R. 6) to extend the authorization of programs under the Higher Education Act of 1965, and for other purposes. The first reading of the bill shall be dispensed with. All points of order against consideration of the bill are waived. General debate shall be confined to the bill and shall not exceed one hour equally divided and controlled by the chairman and ranking minority member of the Committee on Education and the Workforce. After general debate the bill shall be considered for amendment under the five-minute rule. It shall be in order to consider as an original bill for the purpose of amendment under the five-minute rule the amendment in the nature of a substitute recommended by the Committee on Education and the Workforce now printed in the bill, modified by the amendments printed in part 1 of the report of the Committee on Rules accompanying this resolution. That amendment in the nature of a substitute shall be considered by title rather than by section. Each title shall be considered as read. All points of order against that amendment in the nature of a substitute are waived. Before consideration of any other amendment it shall be in order to consider the amendment printed in part 2 of the report of the Committee on Rules, if offered by Representative Goodling or his designee. That amendment shall be considered as read, shall be debatable for 20 minutes equally divided and controlled by the proponent and an opponent, shall not be subject to amendment, and shall not be subject to a demand for division of the question in the House or in the Committee of the Whole. All points of order against that amendment are waived. If that amendment is adopted, the provisions of the amendment in the nature of a substitute as then perfected shall be considered as original text for the purpose of further amendment. No other amendment to the amendment in the nature of a substitute shall be in order except those printed in the portion of the Congressional Record designated for that purpose in clause 6 of rule XXIII. Printed amendments shall be considered as read. The chairman of the Committee of the Whole may: (1) postpone until a time during further consideration in the Committee of the Whole a request for a recorded vote on any amendment; and (2) reduce to five minutes the minimum time for electronic voting on any postponed question that follows another electronic vote without intervening business: Provided, That the minimum time for electronic voting on the first in any series of questions shall be 15 minutes. At the conclusion of consideration of the bill for amendment the Committee shall rise and report the bill to the House with such amendments as may have been adopted. Any Member may demand a separate vote in the House on any amendment adopted in the Committee of the Whole to the bill or to the amendment in the nature of a substitute ultimately considered as original text. The previous question shall be considered as ordered on the bill and amendments thereto to final passage without intervening motion except one motion to recommit with or without instructions. The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentleman from Washington (Mr. Hastings) is recognized for 1 hour. Mr. HASTINGS of Washington. Mr. Speaker, for the purposes of debate only, I yield the customary 30 minutes to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Hall), pending which I yield myself such time as I may consume. During consideration of this resolution, all time yielded is for the purposes of debate only. (Mr. HASTINGS of Washington asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.) Mr. HASTINGS of Washington. Mr. Speaker, H.Res. 411 is a modified open rule waiving all points of order against consideration of the bill. The bill provides 1 hour of general debate to be divided equally between the chairman and ranking minority member of the Committee on Education and the Workforce. [[Page H2511]] The rule also provides that the amendment in the nature of a substitute recommended by the Committee on Education and the Workforce now printed in the bill, as modified by the amendments printed in part 1 of the report of the Committee on Rules, shall be considered as an original bill for the purpose of amendment. Furthermore, Mr. Speaker, the rule provides that the amendment in the nature of a substitute shall be considered by title and that each title shall be considered as read. All points of order are waived against the amendment in the nature of a substitute. The rule provides that before consideration of any other amendment, it shall be in order to consider the manager's amendment printed in part 2 of the report of the Committee on Rules, if offered by the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Goodling) or his designee. All points of order against that amendment are also waived, it shall be considered as read, and shall be debatable for 20 minutes equally divided and controlled by the proponent and an opponent. It shall not be subject to amendment and shall not be subject to a demand for division of the question in the House or in the Committee of the Whole. If that amendment is adopted, the provisions of that amendment in the nature of a substitute as then perfected shall be considered as original text for the purpose of further amendment. Mr. Speaker, H.Res. 411 provides that no other amendment to the amendment in the nature of a substitute shall be in order except those printed in the Congressional Record. The rule allows the Chairman of the Committee of the Whole to postpone votes during consideration of the bill and to reduce votes to 5 minutes on a postponed question if the vote follows a 15-minute vote. Finally, the rule provides one motion to recommit, with or without instructions. Mr. Speaker, H.R. 6, the Higher Education Amendments of 1998, reauthorizes existing programs that provide Federal aid to students. It is designed to help to make college more affordable, simplify the student aid system and improve academic quality. Most importantly, Mr. Speaker, this legislation will ensure that all Americans wishing to pursue a higher education will continue to have that opportunity. First and foremost, H.R. 6 safeguards the student loan program by ensuring that student loans will remain available for all students and that students will receive the lowest interest rates in 17 years. Moreover, once this bill is enacted into law, deserving students from disadvantaged backgrounds will have more Federal support to attend college than ever before. H.R. 6 improves campus-based aid programs such as Work Study, Supplemental Educational Opportunity Grants, and Perkins Loans. It also expands flexibility in the Pell Grant program that provides vouchers to needy students, by permitting a larger portion of the grant to be used for purposes other than tuition, such as child care for parents attending classes. Mr. Speaker, encouraging students and their parents to work and save for educational expenses is a priority in this Congress. Accordingly, H.R. 6 increases the amount of income students may earn before it impacts their eligibility for financial aid. The bill also exempts veterans' benefits from being counted against students when they apply for financial aid. Incredibly, Mr. Speaker, the current financial aid formula treats the assets of students and their parents differently and separately, as though they are not part of the same family. H.R. 6 changes this provision by combining the assets of the student and his or her parents when calculating the total ability of the family to contribute towards college expenses. Finally, this legislation contains a number of administrative changes designed to streamline aid to education and eliminate bureaucratic red tape. In that regard, H.R. 6 can truly be described as a good deal for taxpayers as well as a good deal for students. I commend the Committee on Education and the Workforce, and in particular the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Goodling), the gentleman from California (Mr. McKeon), the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Clay) and the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Kildee) for their efforts in bringing this important legislation to the floor. The rule before the House today is designed to provide full and fair consideration of the committee's work product, while limiting the opportunity for Members desiring merely to score political points with this bipartisan legislation. Mr. Speaker, the quality of our higher education system in the United States has long been the envy of the entire world. At the same time, access to higher education for all deserving young people has been one of the driving forces behind two centuries of innovation and economic growth. I urge my colleagues to continue this tradition by putting America's students and their education first and adopting both this rule and H.R. 6, the Higher Education Amendments of 1998. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time. {time} 1900 Mr. HALL of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague from Washington (Mr. Hastings) for yielding me the time. This is a modified open rule. It will allow debate on H.R. 6, which is the Higher Education Amendment of 1998. As my colleague has described, this rule provides 1 hour of general debate to be equally divided and controlled by the chairman and the ranking minority member of the Committee on Education and the Workforce. The rule makes in order only those amendments that have been preprinted in the Congressional Record. These amendments will be permitted under the 5-minute rule, the normal amending process in the House. The rule does permit germane amendments to those preprinted amendments. The bill continues and revises Federal student loans, Pell grants and other higher education programs. Federal grants, loans and college work study awards have made the dream of higher education a reality for millions of young people. These programs are essential to bring the opportunity for higher education to all Americans. This bill makes a number of important changes to the programs intended to make college affordable, simplify the student aid system and promote academic quality. Mr. Speaker, It is a bipartisan bill. It has strong support from both sides of the aisle. The Committee on Education and the Workforce reported the bill with all Democrats who were present supporting it. During testimony last night before the Committee on Rules, the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Clay) the ranking minority member of the committee, and the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Kildee) the ranking minority member of the subcommittee, requested a full and open rule. The Committee on Rules denied the request, instead requiring all floor amendments to be preprinted in the Congressional Record. Even though the minority's request was not fully granted, the rule will provide opportunity for Members to amend the bill on the House floor. Moreover, the bill is the result of a bipartisan process. Mr. Speaker, the Committee on Rules approved this modified open rule by a voice vote, and I would urge adoption of the rule. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time. Mr. HASTINGS of Washington. Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Duncan). Mr. DUNCAN. Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of the rule and for the underlying bill, H.R. 6, which this rule brings to the floor, the Higher Education Amendments of 1998. I especially want to thank my good friend, the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Hastings) for yielding me this time; and also I would like to thank the chairman, the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Goodling) for including provisions in the bill in H.R. 6 which are similar to my bill, H.R. 715, the Accuracy in Campus Crime Reporting Act. I would briefly like to discuss H.R. 715, much of which has been incorporated into H.R. 6. This legislation, H.R. 715, currently has 71 cosponsors almost equally split between both parties. H.R. 715 is a [[Page H2512]] genuinely bipartisan bill. No college or university that has a safe campus should have any problems with the campus security provisions in H.R. 6, but for those institutions that do have crime problems, students and their parents should have a right to know about these dangers before they enroll. I became concerned about this issue after meeting with several families whose children had been murdered on college campuses. These families never dreamed that they should have to worry about the physical safety of their children on college campuses. The issue of campus crime last attracted the interest of many in the national media in the past year. Both CBS and ABC have devoted extensive time to this problem. Several leading publications have also covered this story. In fact, both the New Republic and USA Today have favorably written about my legislation, H.R. 715. After reading many of these articles and hearing these reports, it became painfully obvious to me that many colleges are doing a poor job in giving students and their parents an accurate picture of the dangers that lurk on some college campuses. On February 9, USA Today strongly endorsed H.R. 715 by stating, quote, in 1990, Congress passed a law requiring colleges to collect annual campus crime statistics, but the Education Department blocked the law's full implementation by threatening to withhold Federal funds from colleges opening their police logs. USA Today then hit the nail on the head by concluding, quote, it is a sad state of affairs when an act of Congress is necessary for the Education Department to protect student safety. I think, Mr. Speaker, that most of us look fondly on our college days, from the appealing image of ivy-lined brick buildings, the excitement of interacting with professors and, of course, making new friends who last for a lifetime. At least, that is what my colleagues and I probably remember. However, in the 1990s, unfortunately, the reality is far different. On many campuses, rapes, robberies and even murders are becoming far too common. Students now have reason to fear for their safety on some campuses. Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased that H.R. 6 contains campus security provisions that are modeled on H.R. 715. The campus security provisions of H.R. 6 require colleges and universities to maintain a daily log of all crimes committed and make those logs available for public inspection within 48 hours. Many States already require colleges and universities to make their police logs public. These provisions in H.R. 6 are a matter of fairness to those institutions which are making good-faith efforts to inform the public of the dangers on their campuses. The need for accurate police logs is crucial so that accurate crime statistics can be compiled. The public must be able to make informed decisions about where to attend college. While I would have liked to have seen more provisions from H.R. 715 included in H.R. 6, I believe that the provisions that are included will go a long way in improving the public's awareness of the dangers that, unfortunately, lurk on some of our college campuses. I appreciate the cooperation of the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Goodling) in this regard, and I urge support for H.R. 6. Mr. HALL of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Spratt). (Mr. SPRATT asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.) Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me the time. Mr. Speaker, I support student loans, and I support the kind of compromise that has been reached in this bill, but as the ranking democrat on the Committee on the Budget I have to raise concerns about this bill because I do not think it complies with the Budget Act, and I think those concerns should be expressed. For the first time in 30 years, we have got a balanced budget this year, and we have got a balanced budget in part because of disciplines and budget process changes we made in the Budget Summit Agreement of 1990, the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1993 and the Balanced Budget Act last year, 1997. One of those rules which we established in 1990 and have carried forward in each of those years was the so-called pay-go rule, which simply provides that any time anyone wants to liberalize or add to an entitlement the cost of it must be paid for either by identifying a revenue stream to pay for it or by reducing an entitlement somewhere else in the budget. When the rule was read, the gentleman noted that all points of order are raised. The reason all points of order have to be raised as to the Budget Act is that this particular bill increases direct spending for student loans by $2.8 billion, according to the Office of Management and Budget, over and above what was provided in the balanced budget agreement last year. In effect, what we have done here is lower the rates the students will pay, and that is good, I am for that, and raise to some extent what the banks will realize for these loans. We have increased the spread over and above what was anticipated for the next 5 years, and the cost is $2.8 billion, according to OMB. Now what does this mean? We have waived points of order. The bill cannot be withheld. I know the calamity it would cause if it were withheld because students are making decisions about how they will pay for college right now. But what this means is that we will have an entry on something called the pay-go score card. There is about $700 million in scored offsets to this bill so the entry will be $2.8 billion minus $700 million equals $2.1 billion. And if as of September 30 of this year we have not cleared that from the score card, it will trigger sequestration. It will mean across-the-board cuts in a host of programs, including educational programs, voc rehab. Ironically, it will increase student loan origination fees. Now I am not criticizing the group here that put this together. I am criticizing the way the House is run. We should have had well before now a budget resolution. We have a process by which these decisions are not made one by one, piecemeal. They are made in a comprehensive context where we have to identify the offsets, identify the tradeoffs. When we want to increase one thing, we have got to decrease something else. We have not done that. The most egregious violation of it was the BESTEA bill, the transportation bill that we had on the floor just a few weeks ago. That particular bill will increase spending by $35 billion over and above what we provided in the BBA. This is just another illustration of what happens when we do not have a budget agreement, when we do not have a budget resolution. The proper procedure would be to send this bill back to the committee and require maybe not this group but some group to identify the offsets better than the offsets that have been identified here. I know that is not going to happen. When the bill comes up, I am going to vote for it myself. But I could not let the bill come to the floor, could not let it be considered in this manner, could not let this routine incantation that all points of order are waived be made without raising the concern of the Committee on the Budget, my own personal concern that we are deviating from the disciplines that have brought us to a balanced budget for the first time in 30 years, and we are going to have a real pileup in September unless we get under way with the budget resolution in the process that we duly adopted. Mr. HASTINGS of Washington. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Goodling) the chairman of the Committee on Education and the Workforce. Mr. GOODLING. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding the time to me. First, I would like to say that I wish the previous speaker would have been sitting on our committee when we were marking up. I sure could have used him. Because we had amendment after amendment after amendment, and every time I asked where is the offset, they said there was not any. Now, fortunately, we were able to defeat them in a bipartisan way, but, otherwise, we had a serious problem. I think it is important to point out that we have asked the lending institutions to reduce yields by 30 basis points that they would normally expect to receive, so it is not a situation where [[Page H2513]] somebody came and gave them more. We asked them to reduce yields by 30 points, and we did that to bring about an agreement with the students. And for the gentleman from California (Mr. McKeon) and the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Kildee) I will not be so informal. They worked for a year and a half to bring about this agreement between the students and the lending institutions. The scoring has been a problem. There is no question about it. At one point, they were told that we have about $4 billion to $6 billion in savings. We were really swimming in good water. We had all sorts of money to spend. Next time they scored it, they used a different scoring method, and all of a sudden we are a billion dollars short. I would also tell the previous gentleman we have come up with at least half of that, and I believe that the Committee on the Budget is able to come up with the other half. So, again, it has been a very difficult thing, but we know that we must have it on the President's desk by May 15, unless my colleagues want to have total, a total disaster. We will have parents, we will have students, we will have schools sitting out there wondering are their loans? When will we find out? So we just positively have to move the legislation, and I cannot give the two congressmen I mentioned enough credit for the amount of hours that they have spent and the staffs have spent to bring together the students and the lending institutions. Above all, the students do not want to see their opportunity taken away from them simply because we in the Congress cannot come up with an agreement that will save the private sector as far as their ability to provide 70 percent of all Federal student loans. So I would hope that we can eliminate an awful lot of the amendments that are coming up because that could really drive us up the wall and then we will really have a scoring problem and, at the same time, get this legislation to the President quickly. Mr. HALL of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer). Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding this time to me, my friend from Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of this rule and in support of this bill. However, I must say that I share the views of the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Spratt) the ranking member of the Committee on the Budget. I think his concerns are absolutely accurate; but, like him, I will vote for this bill and hope that we can work out some of the problems as it goes through. I am pleased that the committee was able to work together in a bipartisan fashion to draft this bill. However, Mr. Speaker, I am extremely concerned that the authorization for the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards was eliminated during markup of the bill. {time} 1915 I have talked to some of the staff of the committee on our side, and that was not our intent, and my understanding is we are not supportive of that, although it is a small component of a large bill. As education is one of our Nation's highest priorities, Mr. Speaker, we need to focus on improving the quality of the teachers in our schools. National board certification is, in my opinion, an important way to achieve this goal. Both the President and a bipartisan group of our Nation's Governors support the good work that the national board is doing to improve the quality of our teachers. Recently, Mr. Speaker, the Maryland Legislature passed a bill creating a pilot program to encourage up to 45 teachers to seek national board certification. In the city of Bowie, Maryland, just down the road, the City Council approved a $20,000 set-aside in its 1997- 1998 budget for initiatives to enhance the teaching skills and instructional environment in Bowie schools, including national board certification. Mr. Speaker, as President Clinton said last Friday, and I quote, now is no time to walk away from our commitment to public education. The National Board for Professional Teaching Standards, the President said, should not be a partisan issue, it should not be an ideological issue, it ought to be purely and simply what we can do to help you do what is best for our children and their future, close quote. Mr. Speaker, as I said, I will support this bill, but I am very, very hopeful that the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards is included in the Senate bill and will be included in the conference. I will be talking to my good friend, the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Clay), the chairman-in-exile of this committee, and the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Goodling), chairman of this committee, in working toward that end. I think this is a critical component of our overall effort to upgrade the status of teaching, and, therefore, the quality of education in our schools. I would hope that we could come to an agreement between the two bodies on this, and I look forward to working toward that end. Mr. HASTINGS of Washington. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Paul). (Mr. PAUL asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.) Mr. PAUL. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time. I rise in support of this rule. It is obviously a very fair rule because I am allowed to offer an amendment later on, so I am pleased to be able to vote for this rule. I have an amendment that I am going to offer in Title I which will be designated so that the Social Security number cannot be used for the electronic personal identifier for any of the programs in this educational bill. The American people have become very worried about how often the Social Security number is being used as a national identification number, and we are working quickly toward a time where we have a national identification card. We certainly have abused the Social Security number as being the number. It was never intended that way. That is not what was intended when the Social Security was started that this number would be a universal number for everything. In 1974, it was stated rather explicitly that the Social Security number should not be used for programs like this, and I would like to just quote the Privacy Act of 1974: ``It shall be unlawful for any Federal, State or local government agency to deny any individual any right, benefit or privilege provided by law because of such individual's refusal to disclose his Social Security number.'' I think this is a good idea, because today we are very much aware of the fact that if a company, if a loaning company, or if one is going into a store to buy something, and they get one's name and one's Social Security number, one knows that they can call up more information about somebody than they know about themselves. I think this is a serious threat to the privacy of every American citizen, and we should be cautious about using the Social Security number. It is being used all the time. Mr. Speaker, prior to coming to this Congress, I was an obstetrician delivering babies, and babies cannot leave the hospital these days without a Social Security number. So they are born, get a Social Security number, they do not leave the hospital without it, and do my colleagues know that one cannot have a death certificate without a Social Security number? They are everyplace. It is an intrusion on our privacy. We do not need to use a Social Security number. When I was in the Air Force, we used to have an identification number, but now, today, it is the Social Security number. Not too many years ago a law was passed here in the Congress that mandates that each State licensing agent for our automobile says that one has to have a Social Security number. So now they will be cross-checking with Social Security number and all of our driver's license numbers. We are losing our privacy in this country. The American people know it. We do not need this number to be used in this program for it to be successful, and we should move very cautiously, and I hope I can get support for this amendment so that we do not use the Social Security number as the electronic personal identifier. Mr. HALL of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from New York (Mrs. Lowey). [[Page H2514]] (Mrs. LOWEY asked and was given permission to revise and extend her remarks.) Mrs. LOWEY. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time. Mr. Speaker, I rise to offer my strong support for this rule and the bipartisan amendments to the Higher Education Act. Education is society's great equalizer. It enables Americans to participate in democracy and pursue the American dream. We all recognize that a college education is as necessary today as a high school education was just a generation ago. In 1982, a worker with a college degree earned 40 percent more than a worker without one. Today, college graduates earn 75 percent more. A recent national survey showed that 9 in 10 Americans believe every interested qualified student should have the opportunity to attend college. My colleagues, that is a clear mandate for a strong higher education bill, and I believe such a measure is before us today. Just briefly, it increases Pell Grants by 50 percent next year and provides additional increases in the future. It preserves the Perkins Loan, the State Student Incentive Grant, the Supplemental Education Opportunity Grant programs, all important sources of financial aid. It will encourage more disadvantaged students to pursue higher education by strengthening TRIO, continuing my National Early Intervention Scholarships, and establishing a new High Hopes program that will work with low-income middle schools and community organizations. The new campus-based child care program will help young mothers attend college and become self-sufficient. The new loan forgiveness program will help fill America's growing need for qualified teachers. The bill will also help make college campuses safer and provide students and their families with the information they need and deserve about crime on campus. Of course, this bill is not perfect. It ends Federal support for the fine work of the National Board of Professional Teaching Standards and fails to include, as the Senate bill does, a Fair Play Act to encourage colleges to satisfy the interests and needs of young female athletes. However, despite some deficiencies, this is a strong bipartisan bill, and I urge my colleagues to support it. Mr. HASTINGS of Washington. Mr. Speaker, how much time remains on each side? The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Gutknecht). The gentleman from Washington (Mr. Hastings) has 14\1/2\ minutes, and the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Hall) has 18\1/2\ minutes. Mr. HASTINGS of Washington. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. McKeon). Mr. McKEON. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time. I rise in strong support of this rule and the bill H.R. 6, the Higher Education Amendments. First I would like to thank the gentleman from New York (Mr. Solomon), chairman of the Committee on Rules, for his help in crafting this rule. Through his efforts and those on the committee, we have been able to bring this bill to the floor in a timely and expeditious manner. He definitely will be missed when he retires. This rule will govern floor consideration of H.R. 6, which is one of the most important education bills that this Congress will consider this year. As many of my colleagues know, we are facing a July 1 deadline that creates a crisis in the student loan program. H.R. 6 contains a bipartisan compromise that fixes the problem, maintains the viability of the private loan program, and provides students with the lowest interest rate in 17 years. So through the swift adoption of this rule and passage of H.R. 6, we will move one step closer to meeting that deadline. Therefore, I urge all of my colleagues to support the rule and vote in favor of H.R. 6, the Higher Education Amendments of 1998. Mr. HALL of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Guam (Mr. Underwood). Mr. UNDERWOOD. Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend from Ohio for yielding me this time. I rise in support of the rule on H.R. 6. I know that many of the members of this committee have worked hard on producing a bill which will increase the affordability for our institutions of higher education and advance social mobility in our country. As a retired educator and higher education administrator, we know that institutions of higher education advance knowledge, provide community service, and serve as the basis for social and economic mobility for millions of our young people who come from backgrounds with few social advantages and economic resources. Higher education institutions in our country are marked by their capacity to provide this opportunity which is vastly different than institutions in other countries. Higher education is the strength of our society and the engine of progress and opportunity, and this bill, as written, continues and ratifies this understanding of postsecondary institutions and deserves our support. Mr. Speaker, I would like to draw attention to the especially unique provisions that it has on Hispanic-serving institutions and the work of the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Hinojosa) in that regard. I would also like to draw attention to a provision which allows higher education institutions in the territories to compete for grants with a little bit more flexibility. I would like to really draw attention to the fact that it is making higher education affordable for millions of young people around the country, and the increase in Pell Grants. I know there is a problem with the Pell Grant provision, and I have spoken with the leadership on this issue. The bill, as currently written, says that students from the Micronesian Islands, the Republic of the Marshall Islands, and the Republic of Palau and the Federated States of Micronesia are not eligible for Pell Grants except if they go to institutions in those areas and Guam only. I feel very strongly that this is a violation of the compacts of free association and will attempt to limit educational opportunities for these people. The FAS territories of the Pacific islands was an American- administered area of the Pacific under which some compacts were arranged in order to help to facilitate the growth of these areas, and for one reason or another, H.R. 6 does not take this into account. I trust that we can work towards a version of the bill on this particular provision which will restore the benefits of Pell Grants for the Micronesian students not only in Guam, and not only on their own home islands, but throughout the 50 States. Again, Mr. Speaker, this bill deserves our support. It is a good bill, and it is a bill that is the work of very strong bipartisan support and a good and healthy understanding of the role of postsecondary institutions in our society. Mr. HASTINGS of Washington. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from New Jersey (Mrs. Roukema). (Mrs. ROUKEMA asked and was given permission to revise and extend her remarks.) Mrs. ROUKEMA. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time. Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of both the rule and the bill. I think this bill is one of the most significant bills that we will probably pass in this Congress, and these are the issues that count with the American people, without a doubt. To be competitive in the global economy, we need to provide our youth with the means to better their education. This is the essence of the American dream. Now, I know that there are going to be amendments during this process, and I do believe that there will be constructive colloquies and constructive dialogue and debates on those amendments, but this bill is fundamentally a very strong bill. I do want to point out that one of the issues that has been questioned is the resolution here of the potential crisis of the interest rate issue on this bill. The proposal in this legislation, I believe, is the best that we could have come up with, and it will help students while saving the program for higher education through the private banking system. Now, I am one of the longtime members of the Subcommittee on Postsecondary Education, Training and [[Page H2515]] Life-Long Learning, but I have another hat. I am the chairwoman of the Subcommittee on Financial Institutions and Consumer Credit, and perhaps from that point of view I understand both sides of this issue. This legislative fix, so to speak, is necessary, absolutely necessary, not only to protect the loans for the students at reasonable low interest rates, but also to ensure that the banks will not be forced to leave the market. {time} 1930 I think this is the best possible compromise that we could have reached. It works for the students and their families and it works for the private sector, the banks who provide the loans at low interest rates. Mr. HALL of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Andrews). (Mr. ANDREWS asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.) Mr. ANDREWS. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Hall) for yielding me this time. Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of the rule, and at a time when the people who cover politics are obsessed with what is scandalous and divisive, we have before us tonight something that is solid and unifying. Mr. Speaker, I want to commend the leaders of our committee, the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Chairman Goodling), the gentleman from California (Chairman McKeon), the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Clay) and the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Kildee) for all the time and effort they have put into this bill and all the very fine work that they have done. I also want to commend the Committee on Rules for putting before us a rule that lets anyone with any idea have the right to come to the floor and express his or her idea. That is why I support the rule. Mr. Speaker, I do want to associate myself, however, with the remarks of the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Spratt), the ranking Democratic member of the Committee on the Budget, with respect to the cost and payment mechanism for the interest rate compromise that has been referred to earlier. First of all, we do not really know what the cost is. We have an estimate from the Office of Management and Budget that tells us it will be net in excess of $2 billion. We have another estimate from the Congressional Budget Office which tells us that even with the offsets that have been identified, it is in the neighborhood of half a billion dollars. It is a very serious consideration that we are moving forward on this bill without identifying where the money is going to come from. It is sort of the-check-is-in-the-mail theory of budgeting that got us into this mess in the first place. I agree with those who say that we should move forward this evening, and I will vote with them to do so. But I also want to sound a note of caution that as we move this bill out of the House of Representatives and into the conference committee, I think it is imperative that we lay before the Members of this body and our constituents, the American people, the specifics of how much this compromise will cost the taxpayers and where the money is going to come from to pay for it. I believe it would be a disaster to fatten the profits of the banking industry at the expense of other student aid programs or other mandatory programs. We should be watching that as the time goes on. Mr. HASTINGS of Washington. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time. Mr. HALL of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I have no more speakers. I would urge a ``yes'' vote on the rule, and I will not be calling for a vote. I think it is a good bipartisan rule, and I yield back the balance of my time. Mr. HASTINGS of Washington. Mr. Speaker, I want to urge my colleagues to support this rule, and the underlying bill. This is clearly a product that is bipartisan in nature and that is something I think we can be proud of. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time, and I move the previous question on the resolution. The previous question was ordered. The resolution was agreed to. A motion to reconsider was laid on the table. The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Hastings of Washington). Pursuant to House Resolution 411 and rule XXIII, the Chair declares the House in the Committee of the Whole House on the State of the Union for the consideration of the bill, H.R. 6. {time} 1934 In the Committee of the Whole Accordingly, the House resolved itself into the Committee of the Whole House on the State of the Union for the consideration of the bill (H.R. 6) to extend the authorization of programs under the Higher Education Act of 1965, and for other purposes, with Mr. Gutknecht in the chair. The Clerk read the title of the bill. The CHAIRMAN. Pursuant to the rule, the bill is considered as having been read the first time. Under the rule, the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Goodling) and the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Clay) each will control 30 minutes. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Goodling). Mr. GOODLING. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 5 minutes. Mr. Chairman, I rise today in support of H.R. 6, the Higher Education Amendments of 1998. Considering H.R. 6 today, the House will complete a bipartisan process that began in the subcommittee chaired by the gentleman from California (Mr. McKeon) well over a year ago. This legislation will benefit millions of students across the country in their pursuit of a higher education. The bill will improve programs such as Work-Study, Pell grant, TRIO, and student loans that help millions of students pay for college. We will do a number of important things here today. However, none may be as important as our efforts to keep student loans available for all students. As all of my colleagues know, we have been struggling for the past year with the student loan interest rate issue that is the direct result of the Student Loan Reform Act of 1993. That act changed the index for establishing interest rates on these loans. Prior to the Student Loan Reform Act, interest rates had always been tied to 91-day Treasury bills. However, as part of the changes associated with the creation of the Federal Direct Student Loan program, the index for establishing interest rates changed to one based on the 10-year Treasury bond. This scheduled rate change is serious and has the potential to disrupt the Federal Family Education Loan Program which provides nearly 70 percent of this country's Federal student loans. As a parent I am keenly aware of the burden being placed on our youth by student loan debt. I am personally committed to ensuring that the interest rate on Federal student loans is kept as low as possible. However, I also realize that there is a point at which the lenders will get out of the program. That point is reached when their return on making these loans falls short of the return they could make by investing elsewhere. Under the bill we are considering today, students will receive historically low interest rates, the lowest in 17 years. The rates students pay on new loans will drop from the current rate of 8.25 down to 7.43 during the repayment period. At the same time, the amount the lenders are paid will be reduced by 30 basis points which will, I believe, ensure uninterrupted access to private capital for our Nation's students. The chairman of the Subcommittee on Postsecondary Education, Training and Life-Long Learning, the gentleman from California (Mr. McKeon) and the ranking member of that subcommittee, the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Kildee) have worked very hard to find a solution to the crisis. That solution is contained in this legislation. Throughout this difficult process, the gentleman from California (Chairman McKeon) and the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Kildee) never forgot the interests of the students. They never gave up when negotiations broke down. I know that the ranking member of the committee, the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Clay) and the rest of the members of the committee are grateful for their efforts in resolving the issue. Mr. Chairman, I especially want to thank the Speaker of the House, the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Gingrich), the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Armey), the majority leader, as well as [[Page H2516]] the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Kasich) chairman of the Committee on the Budget. Without their help, this solution would not have been possible. All three contributed to ensuring that we could pay for this provision which is now budget neutral without passing any of the costs on to students. Many in the higher education community support the proposal and have joined me in praising the gentleman from California (Chairman McKeon) and the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Kildee) for their leadership. The major student groups have described the proposal as, and I quote, ``A realistic, fair, and even-handed compromise that protects students' need for lower borrower rates.'' The American Council on Education and 10 other major higher education groups representing over 3,600 colleges and universities praised the fact that the proposal ``ensures the continued availability of capital in the guaranteed student loan program.'' Mr. Chairman, for the people back home, I hope they would notice that I am not quoting anything that the lending institutions or the lending organizations have had to say about this. Obviously, they are not nearly as pleased. I continue to welcome the help of everyone who is willing to work in good faith to get the problem solved. I thank those who have already shown a willingness to seek common ground in order to ensure that student loans remain both inexpensive and available. But, Mr. Chairman, I am sorry to say that despite the bipartisan example set by the leaders on both sides of this committee, there are those who would continue to play politics with this issue. A high- ranking official at the Department of Education recently put out a press release about our bipartisan solution stressing that it recognizes the ``need to protect students from banks.'' Now, if there is anything that students need to be protected from, it is the high cost of getting an education and the quality of service they get from the bureaucracy at the Department. This bill scores high on both counts: It helps make college more affordable and it simplifies the student aid delivery system. The committee is proud of the accomplishments made to date in making college affordable for all students. Since we have been in charge, for example, Pell grants and College Work-Study are funded at all-time highs, while provisions in the Taxpayer Relief Act created education IRAs and other tax credits to help low- and middle-income students obtain a postsecondary education. The legislation we are considering today will build on these important achievements by continuing the important programs that serve students well and by reforming burdensome requirements to best meet the needs of students, families, and colleges across the country. Mr. Chairman, I do want to caution all of my colleagues to please be very, very careful about their ambition to add all sorts of things to this legislation, because they could kill the wonderful work that the subcommittee and then eventually the full committee has done. Mr. Chairman, we have also made significant changes to the current need analysis formula in order to address concerns raised by many students and families about the need to encourage students to work and save for their education. The bill increases the amount of money that students may earn before it impacts their eligibility for financial aid. By doing this, we are encouraging students to work and save for college. It also combines the assets of a student and his or her parents when calculating the ability of the family to contribute towards college. The current formula treats that assets of parents and students differently and separately as though they are not part of the same family. We are changing this provisions so the formula truly considers the ability of the family to pay for college. The legislation we will consider today will also improve service to students. It addresses the need to reduce the administrative costs associated with the processing, delivery, and monitoring of the Federal financial aid programs. It gives the Secretary of Education the tools he needs to bring the Department into the 21st Century. Specifically, the Department will be required to put in place a Performance-Based Organization (PBO) to run the day-to-day operations of the student financial aid delivery system. Chairman McKeon and Representative Kildee introduced the PBO bill last fall with the full support of the students and the rest of the higher education community. I am glad to see that it has been included in our final bill. A more stable and more efficient delivery system coupled with regulatory reform should result in reduced administrative costs for the Department as well as for schools, lenders, guaranty agencies, and other program participants who must interact with the Department's delivery system. This is particularly important since we are forcing lenders and guaranty agencies to operate with less revenue and we expect colleges to keep their costs down for students. The Department needs to contribute to these efforts by operating more efficiently so others can do the same. I'd also like to note some provisions of H.R. 6 that were offered in Committee by Representatives McKeon and Castle to make college affordable. The McKeon--Castle amendment will implement a number of the recommendations of the Commission on the Cost of Higher Education. This is important, because if we are truly interested in making sure that all Americans can afford a quality postsecondary education, and if we are truly interested in reducing the debt burden placed on our students, then the single most important thing we can do is to get colleges to lower their prices. These provisions are a needed first step in that direction. In addition to making college more affordable and simplifying the delivery system, we have fulfilled our promise to improve the quality of higher education. H.R. 6 will help create safer campuses where our nation's students can learn. It improves the information made available to students and families about crimes occurring on college campuses. And although no one can guarantee safety, we are making sure that students have the information they need to protect themselves from becoming victims of crime. We are also ensuring families have accurate information about crime on college campuses so they can make informed choices when selecting a college for their children. H.R. 6 also provides strong incentives for students to stay off drugs. An amendment offered by the gentleman from Indiana, Mr. Souder, and accepted in Committee will eliminate student aid eligibility for students convicted of drug offenses. This provision is based on an amendment offered by Mr. Solomon in 1992, which was accepted by the House. Unfortunately, the Solomon amendment was later dropped in conference. If we want to ensure safety on our Nation's campuses, it is vital to keep them drug-free. H.R. 6 also focuses on improving teacher quality so that students will have high quality teachers trained in the subject areas in which they teach. It is alarming to find that nearly one-third of all high school math teachers and over one fifth of all high school English teachers in this country have neither majored Nor minored in the subjects in which they teach. Given this fact, it should come as no surprise that American twelfth graders recently scored so low on the TIMMS international math and science test. Under this legislation, States will be encouraged to undertake a wide variety of efforts to improve the quality and ability of classroom teachers--beginning with the reform of institutions at which many of these teachers are prepared. Specifically, this bill amends the Higher Education Act by replacing 16 unfunded teacher preparation programs with a single competitive block grant, which I'm pleased to mention, was developed through a bipartisan process within our Committee. Using funds from this competitive block grant, Governors will have significant flexibility in which activities to carry out. Specifically, such efforts may include strengthening State teacher certification procedures to better reflect current and future teacher's academic knowledge of the subjects they teach; reforming schools of education and holding them accountable for producing quality teachers; creating and/or expanding programs which provide alternative routes to teacher certification; undertaking teacher recruitment efforts; and implementing initiatives to expeditiously remove incompetent or unqualified teachers. To ensure that States receiving these funds are making progress to improve teacher quality, this legislation also makes future grants to States contingent upon meeting specific goals such as being able to demonstrate an increased percentage of teachers teaching in subject areas and an increase in ``first-time'' certification and licensure rates among education school graduates. I would like to especially highlight several provisions that were worked out in a bipartisan fashion which are now part of the manager's package of amendments. They include: an increased emphasis on partnerships consisting of the Governor of a participating State, exemplary schools of education and local educational agencies; an increased focus, with respect to the teacher recruitment provisions, on schools most in need [[Page H2517]] of quality teachers, such as in poor urban and rural areas; and a clarification that the Governor shall be the grant recipient except in those cases where State law or constitution dictates that another individual is responsible for education. I look forward to the support of my colleagues for this compromise so that we can help States really reform teacher preparation programs and provide high quality teachers to our students. I would also like to thank Representative Graham for his efforts in working with Representative Kildee, in crafting a truly bipartisan initiative under this legislation which provides loan forgiveness for prospective teachers who agree to teach in high poverty urban or rural schools. In addition to the improvements we will make in the preparation of teachers, there are a host of other changes that will improve educational quality and opportunities far beyond the college campus. Today, the House will increase opportunities for all Americans to get the education they need through the expanded use of distance learning techniques and new technologies. Today we will also encourage students to become involved in their communities and to help children learn to read by ensuring that colleges use more of the Work-Study dollars to fund these initiatives. Finally, let me just say that that the legislation before us today is one of the most important things that we in the 105th Congress will do this year. It will ensure that every American has access to a quality postsecondary education at an affordable price. This is a bipartisan bill that makes much needed reforms to help students, parents, and schools. I urge all of my colleagues to support it, and I urge a ``yes'' vote on final passage. Mr. CLAY. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 5 minutes. Mr. Chairman, I want to commend the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Kildee) and the gentleman from California (Mr. McKeon) for their great bipartisan teamwork on this very important higher education initiative. They worked for better than a year to fashion legislation that I believe strengthens our country's commitment to higher education. I also want to commend the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Chairman Goodling) and all the committee members who made valuable contributions to the higher education reauthorization effort. I am pleased to give my enthusiastic support for this bill. The bill strengthens student aid financing by significantly reducing student loan interest rates, increasing Pell Grants and improving the calculations of benefits for independent and dependent students. The bill adopts a number of measures that enhance support for minority and disadvantaged students by strengthening the TRIO program and other programs supporting historically black colleges and universities, Hispanic-serving institutions and tribally controlled colleges. Mr. Chairman, I am also pleased that the committee adopted President Clinton's High Hopes program. And I commend the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Fattah) for his successful advocacy of this important initiative. Mr. Chairman, the bill also includes a number of provisions aimed at improving services to students on campus such as enhanced campus crime reporting, a new campus-based child care program and streamlining financial aid procedures. I am also pleased that teacher education and recruitment received a boost in this bill by the adoption of a loan forgiveness program for new teachers and strong teaching training partnerships. As we continue to work on this bipartisan bill, I hope that we can continue our efforts to resolve issues regarding loan consolidation interest rates, guarantee agencies, and the National Board for Teacher Certification. Finally, Mr. Chairman, I would like to express my hope that we will unanimously reject attempts to undermine this bipartisan bill through the introduction of a divisive anti-affirmative action amendment. The Riggs amendment has received universal condemnation among all those who care deeply about expanding educational opportunities for all Americans. Students, colleges, civil rights groups, editorial boards and women's groups across this country have urged us to reject this giant leap backwards. Last n

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HIGHER EDUCATION AMENDMENTS OF 1998
(House of Representatives - April 29, 1998)

Text of this article available as: TXT PDF [Pages H2510-H2594] HIGHER EDUCATION AMENDMENTS OF 1998 Mr. HASTINGS of Washington. Mr. Speaker, by direction of the Committee on Rules, I call up House Resolution 411 and ask for its immediate consideration. The Clerk read the resolution, as follows: H. Res. 411 Resolved, That at any time after the adoption of this resolution the Speaker may, pursuant to clause 1(b) of rule XXIII, declare the House resolved into the Committee of the Whole House on the State of the Union for consideration of the bill (H.R. 6) to extend the authorization of programs under the Higher Education Act of 1965, and for other purposes. The first reading of the bill shall be dispensed with. All points of order against consideration of the bill are waived. General debate shall be confined to the bill and shall not exceed one hour equally divided and controlled by the chairman and ranking minority member of the Committee on Education and the Workforce. After general debate the bill shall be considered for amendment under the five-minute rule. It shall be in order to consider as an original bill for the purpose of amendment under the five-minute rule the amendment in the nature of a substitute recommended by the Committee on Education and the Workforce now printed in the bill, modified by the amendments printed in part 1 of the report of the Committee on Rules accompanying this resolution. That amendment in the nature of a substitute shall be considered by title rather than by section. Each title shall be considered as read. All points of order against that amendment in the nature of a substitute are waived. Before consideration of any other amendment it shall be in order to consider the amendment printed in part 2 of the report of the Committee on Rules, if offered by Representative Goodling or his designee. That amendment shall be considered as read, shall be debatable for 20 minutes equally divided and controlled by the proponent and an opponent, shall not be subject to amendment, and shall not be subject to a demand for division of the question in the House or in the Committee of the Whole. All points of order against that amendment are waived. If that amendment is adopted, the provisions of the amendment in the nature of a substitute as then perfected shall be considered as original text for the purpose of further amendment. No other amendment to the amendment in the nature of a substitute shall be in order except those printed in the portion of the Congressional Record designated for that purpose in clause 6 of rule XXIII. Printed amendments shall be considered as read. The chairman of the Committee of the Whole may: (1) postpone until a time during further consideration in the Committee of the Whole a request for a recorded vote on any amendment; and (2) reduce to five minutes the minimum time for electronic voting on any postponed question that follows another electronic vote without intervening business: Provided, That the minimum time for electronic voting on the first in any series of questions shall be 15 minutes. At the conclusion of consideration of the bill for amendment the Committee shall rise and report the bill to the House with such amendments as may have been adopted. Any Member may demand a separate vote in the House on any amendment adopted in the Committee of the Whole to the bill or to the amendment in the nature of a substitute ultimately considered as original text. The previous question shall be considered as ordered on the bill and amendments thereto to final passage without intervening motion except one motion to recommit with or without instructions. The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentleman from Washington (Mr. Hastings) is recognized for 1 hour. Mr. HASTINGS of Washington. Mr. Speaker, for the purposes of debate only, I yield the customary 30 minutes to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Hall), pending which I yield myself such time as I may consume. During consideration of this resolution, all time yielded is for the purposes of debate only. (Mr. HASTINGS of Washington asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.) Mr. HASTINGS of Washington. Mr. Speaker, H.Res. 411 is a modified open rule waiving all points of order against consideration of the bill. The bill provides 1 hour of general debate to be divided equally between the chairman and ranking minority member of the Committee on Education and the Workforce. [[Page H2511]] The rule also provides that the amendment in the nature of a substitute recommended by the Committee on Education and the Workforce now printed in the bill, as modified by the amendments printed in part 1 of the report of the Committee on Rules, shall be considered as an original bill for the purpose of amendment. Furthermore, Mr. Speaker, the rule provides that the amendment in the nature of a substitute shall be considered by title and that each title shall be considered as read. All points of order are waived against the amendment in the nature of a substitute. The rule provides that before consideration of any other amendment, it shall be in order to consider the manager's amendment printed in part 2 of the report of the Committee on Rules, if offered by the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Goodling) or his designee. All points of order against that amendment are also waived, it shall be considered as read, and shall be debatable for 20 minutes equally divided and controlled by the proponent and an opponent. It shall not be subject to amendment and shall not be subject to a demand for division of the question in the House or in the Committee of the Whole. If that amendment is adopted, the provisions of that amendment in the nature of a substitute as then perfected shall be considered as original text for the purpose of further amendment. Mr. Speaker, H.Res. 411 provides that no other amendment to the amendment in the nature of a substitute shall be in order except those printed in the Congressional Record. The rule allows the Chairman of the Committee of the Whole to postpone votes during consideration of the bill and to reduce votes to 5 minutes on a postponed question if the vote follows a 15-minute vote. Finally, the rule provides one motion to recommit, with or without instructions. Mr. Speaker, H.R. 6, the Higher Education Amendments of 1998, reauthorizes existing programs that provide Federal aid to students. It is designed to help to make college more affordable, simplify the student aid system and improve academic quality. Most importantly, Mr. Speaker, this legislation will ensure that all Americans wishing to pursue a higher education will continue to have that opportunity. First and foremost, H.R. 6 safeguards the student loan program by ensuring that student loans will remain available for all students and that students will receive the lowest interest rates in 17 years. Moreover, once this bill is enacted into law, deserving students from disadvantaged backgrounds will have more Federal support to attend college than ever before. H.R. 6 improves campus-based aid programs such as Work Study, Supplemental Educational Opportunity Grants, and Perkins Loans. It also expands flexibility in the Pell Grant program that provides vouchers to needy students, by permitting a larger portion of the grant to be used for purposes other than tuition, such as child care for parents attending classes. Mr. Speaker, encouraging students and their parents to work and save for educational expenses is a priority in this Congress. Accordingly, H.R. 6 increases the amount of income students may earn before it impacts their eligibility for financial aid. The bill also exempts veterans' benefits from being counted against students when they apply for financial aid. Incredibly, Mr. Speaker, the current financial aid formula treats the assets of students and their parents differently and separately, as though they are not part of the same family. H.R. 6 changes this provision by combining the assets of the student and his or her parents when calculating the total ability of the family to contribute towards college expenses. Finally, this legislation contains a number of administrative changes designed to streamline aid to education and eliminate bureaucratic red tape. In that regard, H.R. 6 can truly be described as a good deal for taxpayers as well as a good deal for students. I commend the Committee on Education and the Workforce, and in particular the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Goodling), the gentleman from California (Mr. McKeon), the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Clay) and the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Kildee) for their efforts in bringing this important legislation to the floor. The rule before the House today is designed to provide full and fair consideration of the committee's work product, while limiting the opportunity for Members desiring merely to score political points with this bipartisan legislation. Mr. Speaker, the quality of our higher education system in the United States has long been the envy of the entire world. At the same time, access to higher education for all deserving young people has been one of the driving forces behind two centuries of innovation and economic growth. I urge my colleagues to continue this tradition by putting America's students and their education first and adopting both this rule and H.R. 6, the Higher Education Amendments of 1998. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time. {time} 1900 Mr. HALL of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague from Washington (Mr. Hastings) for yielding me the time. This is a modified open rule. It will allow debate on H.R. 6, which is the Higher Education Amendment of 1998. As my colleague has described, this rule provides 1 hour of general debate to be equally divided and controlled by the chairman and the ranking minority member of the Committee on Education and the Workforce. The rule makes in order only those amendments that have been preprinted in the Congressional Record. These amendments will be permitted under the 5-minute rule, the normal amending process in the House. The rule does permit germane amendments to those preprinted amendments. The bill continues and revises Federal student loans, Pell grants and other higher education programs. Federal grants, loans and college work study awards have made the dream of higher education a reality for millions of young people. These programs are essential to bring the opportunity for higher education to all Americans. This bill makes a number of important changes to the programs intended to make college affordable, simplify the student aid system and promote academic quality. Mr. Speaker, It is a bipartisan bill. It has strong support from both sides of the aisle. The Committee on Education and the Workforce reported the bill with all Democrats who were present supporting it. During testimony last night before the Committee on Rules, the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Clay) the ranking minority member of the committee, and the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Kildee) the ranking minority member of the subcommittee, requested a full and open rule. The Committee on Rules denied the request, instead requiring all floor amendments to be preprinted in the Congressional Record. Even though the minority's request was not fully granted, the rule will provide opportunity for Members to amend the bill on the House floor. Moreover, the bill is the result of a bipartisan process. Mr. Speaker, the Committee on Rules approved this modified open rule by a voice vote, and I would urge adoption of the rule. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time. Mr. HASTINGS of Washington. Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Duncan). Mr. DUNCAN. Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of the rule and for the underlying bill, H.R. 6, which this rule brings to the floor, the Higher Education Amendments of 1998. I especially want to thank my good friend, the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Hastings) for yielding me this time; and also I would like to thank the chairman, the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Goodling) for including provisions in the bill in H.R. 6 which are similar to my bill, H.R. 715, the Accuracy in Campus Crime Reporting Act. I would briefly like to discuss H.R. 715, much of which has been incorporated into H.R. 6. This legislation, H.R. 715, currently has 71 cosponsors almost equally split between both parties. H.R. 715 is a [[Page H2512]] genuinely bipartisan bill. No college or university that has a safe campus should have any problems with the campus security provisions in H.R. 6, but for those institutions that do have crime problems, students and their parents should have a right to know about these dangers before they enroll. I became concerned about this issue after meeting with several families whose children had been murdered on college campuses. These families never dreamed that they should have to worry about the physical safety of their children on college campuses. The issue of campus crime last attracted the interest of many in the national media in the past year. Both CBS and ABC have devoted extensive time to this problem. Several leading publications have also covered this story. In fact, both the New Republic and USA Today have favorably written about my legislation, H.R. 715. After reading many of these articles and hearing these reports, it became painfully obvious to me that many colleges are doing a poor job in giving students and their parents an accurate picture of the dangers that lurk on some college campuses. On February 9, USA Today strongly endorsed H.R. 715 by stating, quote, in 1990, Congress passed a law requiring colleges to collect annual campus crime statistics, but the Education Department blocked the law's full implementation by threatening to withhold Federal funds from colleges opening their police logs. USA Today then hit the nail on the head by concluding, quote, it is a sad state of affairs when an act of Congress is necessary for the Education Department to protect student safety. I think, Mr. Speaker, that most of us look fondly on our college days, from the appealing image of ivy-lined brick buildings, the excitement of interacting with professors and, of course, making new friends who last for a lifetime. At least, that is what my colleagues and I probably remember. However, in the 1990s, unfortunately, the reality is far different. On many campuses, rapes, robberies and even murders are becoming far too common. Students now have reason to fear for their safety on some campuses. Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased that H.R. 6 contains campus security provisions that are modeled on H.R. 715. The campus security provisions of H.R. 6 require colleges and universities to maintain a daily log of all crimes committed and make those logs available for public inspection within 48 hours. Many States already require colleges and universities to make their police logs public. These provisions in H.R. 6 are a matter of fairness to those institutions which are making good-faith efforts to inform the public of the dangers on their campuses. The need for accurate police logs is crucial so that accurate crime statistics can be compiled. The public must be able to make informed decisions about where to attend college. While I would have liked to have seen more provisions from H.R. 715 included in H.R. 6, I believe that the provisions that are included will go a long way in improving the public's awareness of the dangers that, unfortunately, lurk on some of our college campuses. I appreciate the cooperation of the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Goodling) in this regard, and I urge support for H.R. 6. Mr. HALL of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Spratt). (Mr. SPRATT asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.) Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me the time. Mr. Speaker, I support student loans, and I support the kind of compromise that has been reached in this bill, but as the ranking democrat on the Committee on the Budget I have to raise concerns about this bill because I do not think it complies with the Budget Act, and I think those concerns should be expressed. For the first time in 30 years, we have got a balanced budget this year, and we have got a balanced budget in part because of disciplines and budget process changes we made in the Budget Summit Agreement of 1990, the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1993 and the Balanced Budget Act last year, 1997. One of those rules which we established in 1990 and have carried forward in each of those years was the so-called pay-go rule, which simply provides that any time anyone wants to liberalize or add to an entitlement the cost of it must be paid for either by identifying a revenue stream to pay for it or by reducing an entitlement somewhere else in the budget. When the rule was read, the gentleman noted that all points of order are raised. The reason all points of order have to be raised as to the Budget Act is that this particular bill increases direct spending for student loans by $2.8 billion, according to the Office of Management and Budget, over and above what was provided in the balanced budget agreement last year. In effect, what we have done here is lower the rates the students will pay, and that is good, I am for that, and raise to some extent what the banks will realize for these loans. We have increased the spread over and above what was anticipated for the next 5 years, and the cost is $2.8 billion, according to OMB. Now what does this mean? We have waived points of order. The bill cannot be withheld. I know the calamity it would cause if it were withheld because students are making decisions about how they will pay for college right now. But what this means is that we will have an entry on something called the pay-go score card. There is about $700 million in scored offsets to this bill so the entry will be $2.8 billion minus $700 million equals $2.1 billion. And if as of September 30 of this year we have not cleared that from the score card, it will trigger sequestration. It will mean across-the-board cuts in a host of programs, including educational programs, voc rehab. Ironically, it will increase student loan origination fees. Now I am not criticizing the group here that put this together. I am criticizing the way the House is run. We should have had well before now a budget resolution. We have a process by which these decisions are not made one by one, piecemeal. They are made in a comprehensive context where we have to identify the offsets, identify the tradeoffs. When we want to increase one thing, we have got to decrease something else. We have not done that. The most egregious violation of it was the BESTEA bill, the transportation bill that we had on the floor just a few weeks ago. That particular bill will increase spending by $35 billion over and above what we provided in the BBA. This is just another illustration of what happens when we do not have a budget agreement, when we do not have a budget resolution. The proper procedure would be to send this bill back to the committee and require maybe not this group but some group to identify the offsets better than the offsets that have been identified here. I know that is not going to happen. When the bill comes up, I am going to vote for it myself. But I could not let the bill come to the floor, could not let it be considered in this manner, could not let this routine incantation that all points of order are waived be made without raising the concern of the Committee on the Budget, my own personal concern that we are deviating from the disciplines that have brought us to a balanced budget for the first time in 30 years, and we are going to have a real pileup in September unless we get under way with the budget resolution in the process that we duly adopted. Mr. HASTINGS of Washington. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Goodling) the chairman of the Committee on Education and the Workforce. Mr. GOODLING. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding the time to me. First, I would like to say that I wish the previous speaker would have been sitting on our committee when we were marking up. I sure could have used him. Because we had amendment after amendment after amendment, and every time I asked where is the offset, they said there was not any. Now, fortunately, we were able to defeat them in a bipartisan way, but, otherwise, we had a serious problem. I think it is important to point out that we have asked the lending institutions to reduce yields by 30 basis points that they would normally expect to receive, so it is not a situation where [[Page H2513]] somebody came and gave them more. We asked them to reduce yields by 30 points, and we did that to bring about an agreement with the students. And for the gentleman from California (Mr. McKeon) and the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Kildee) I will not be so informal. They worked for a year and a half to bring about this agreement between the students and the lending institutions. The scoring has been a problem. There is no question about it. At one point, they were told that we have about $4 billion to $6 billion in savings. We were really swimming in good water. We had all sorts of money to spend. Next time they scored it, they used a different scoring method, and all of a sudden we are a billion dollars short. I would also tell the previous gentleman we have come up with at least half of that, and I believe that the Committee on the Budget is able to come up with the other half. So, again, it has been a very difficult thing, but we know that we must have it on the President's desk by May 15, unless my colleagues want to have total, a total disaster. We will have parents, we will have students, we will have schools sitting out there wondering are their loans? When will we find out? So we just positively have to move the legislation, and I cannot give the two congressmen I mentioned enough credit for the amount of hours that they have spent and the staffs have spent to bring together the students and the lending institutions. Above all, the students do not want to see their opportunity taken away from them simply because we in the Congress cannot come up with an agreement that will save the private sector as far as their ability to provide 70 percent of all Federal student loans. So I would hope that we can eliminate an awful lot of the amendments that are coming up because that could really drive us up the wall and then we will really have a scoring problem and, at the same time, get this legislation to the President quickly. Mr. HALL of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer). Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding this time to me, my friend from Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of this rule and in support of this bill. However, I must say that I share the views of the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Spratt) the ranking member of the Committee on the Budget. I think his concerns are absolutely accurate; but, like him, I will vote for this bill and hope that we can work out some of the problems as it goes through. I am pleased that the committee was able to work together in a bipartisan fashion to draft this bill. However, Mr. Speaker, I am extremely concerned that the authorization for the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards was eliminated during markup of the bill. {time} 1915 I have talked to some of the staff of the committee on our side, and that was not our intent, and my understanding is we are not supportive of that, although it is a small component of a large bill. As education is one of our Nation's highest priorities, Mr. Speaker, we need to focus on improving the quality of the teachers in our schools. National board certification is, in my opinion, an important way to achieve this goal. Both the President and a bipartisan group of our Nation's Governors support the good work that the national board is doing to improve the quality of our teachers. Recently, Mr. Speaker, the Maryland Legislature passed a bill creating a pilot program to encourage up to 45 teachers to seek national board certification. In the city of Bowie, Maryland, just down the road, the City Council approved a $20,000 set-aside in its 1997- 1998 budget for initiatives to enhance the teaching skills and instructional environment in Bowie schools, including national board certification. Mr. Speaker, as President Clinton said last Friday, and I quote, now is no time to walk away from our commitment to public education. The National Board for Professional Teaching Standards, the President said, should not be a partisan issue, it should not be an ideological issue, it ought to be purely and simply what we can do to help you do what is best for our children and their future, close quote. Mr. Speaker, as I said, I will support this bill, but I am very, very hopeful that the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards is included in the Senate bill and will be included in the conference. I will be talking to my good friend, the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Clay), the chairman-in-exile of this committee, and the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Goodling), chairman of this committee, in working toward that end. I think this is a critical component of our overall effort to upgrade the status of teaching, and, therefore, the quality of education in our schools. I would hope that we could come to an agreement between the two bodies on this, and I look forward to working toward that end. Mr. HASTINGS of Washington. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Paul). (Mr. PAUL asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.) Mr. PAUL. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time. I rise in support of this rule. It is obviously a very fair rule because I am allowed to offer an amendment later on, so I am pleased to be able to vote for this rule. I have an amendment that I am going to offer in Title I which will be designated so that the Social Security number cannot be used for the electronic personal identifier for any of the programs in this educational bill. The American people have become very worried about how often the Social Security number is being used as a national identification number, and we are working quickly toward a time where we have a national identification card. We certainly have abused the Social Security number as being the number. It was never intended that way. That is not what was intended when the Social Security was started that this number would be a universal number for everything. In 1974, it was stated rather explicitly that the Social Security number should not be used for programs like this, and I would like to just quote the Privacy Act of 1974: ``It shall be unlawful for any Federal, State or local government agency to deny any individual any right, benefit or privilege provided by law because of such individual's refusal to disclose his Social Security number.'' I think this is a good idea, because today we are very much aware of the fact that if a company, if a loaning company, or if one is going into a store to buy something, and they get one's name and one's Social Security number, one knows that they can call up more information about somebody than they know about themselves. I think this is a serious threat to the privacy of every American citizen, and we should be cautious about using the Social Security number. It is being used all the time. Mr. Speaker, prior to coming to this Congress, I was an obstetrician delivering babies, and babies cannot leave the hospital these days without a Social Security number. So they are born, get a Social Security number, they do not leave the hospital without it, and do my colleagues know that one cannot have a death certificate without a Social Security number? They are everyplace. It is an intrusion on our privacy. We do not need to use a Social Security number. When I was in the Air Force, we used to have an identification number, but now, today, it is the Social Security number. Not too many years ago a law was passed here in the Congress that mandates that each State licensing agent for our automobile says that one has to have a Social Security number. So now they will be cross-checking with Social Security number and all of our driver's license numbers. We are losing our privacy in this country. The American people know it. We do not need this number to be used in this program for it to be successful, and we should move very cautiously, and I hope I can get support for this amendment so that we do not use the Social Security number as the electronic personal identifier. Mr. HALL of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from New York (Mrs. Lowey). [[Page H2514]] (Mrs. LOWEY asked and was given permission to revise and extend her remarks.) Mrs. LOWEY. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time. Mr. Speaker, I rise to offer my strong support for this rule and the bipartisan amendments to the Higher Education Act. Education is society's great equalizer. It enables Americans to participate in democracy and pursue the American dream. We all recognize that a college education is as necessary today as a high school education was just a generation ago. In 1982, a worker with a college degree earned 40 percent more than a worker without one. Today, college graduates earn 75 percent more. A recent national survey showed that 9 in 10 Americans believe every interested qualified student should have the opportunity to attend college. My colleagues, that is a clear mandate for a strong higher education bill, and I believe such a measure is before us today. Just briefly, it increases Pell Grants by 50 percent next year and provides additional increases in the future. It preserves the Perkins Loan, the State Student Incentive Grant, the Supplemental Education Opportunity Grant programs, all important sources of financial aid. It will encourage more disadvantaged students to pursue higher education by strengthening TRIO, continuing my National Early Intervention Scholarships, and establishing a new High Hopes program that will work with low-income middle schools and community organizations. The new campus-based child care program will help young mothers attend college and become self-sufficient. The new loan forgiveness program will help fill America's growing need for qualified teachers. The bill will also help make college campuses safer and provide students and their families with the information they need and deserve about crime on campus. Of course, this bill is not perfect. It ends Federal support for the fine work of the National Board of Professional Teaching Standards and fails to include, as the Senate bill does, a Fair Play Act to encourage colleges to satisfy the interests and needs of young female athletes. However, despite some deficiencies, this is a strong bipartisan bill, and I urge my colleagues to support it. Mr. HASTINGS of Washington. Mr. Speaker, how much time remains on each side? The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Gutknecht). The gentleman from Washington (Mr. Hastings) has 14\1/2\ minutes, and the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Hall) has 18\1/2\ minutes. Mr. HASTINGS of Washington. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. McKeon). Mr. McKEON. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time. I rise in strong support of this rule and the bill H.R. 6, the Higher Education Amendments. First I would like to thank the gentleman from New York (Mr. Solomon), chairman of the Committee on Rules, for his help in crafting this rule. Through his efforts and those on the committee, we have been able to bring this bill to the floor in a timely and expeditious manner. He definitely will be missed when he retires. This rule will govern floor consideration of H.R. 6, which is one of the most important education bills that this Congress will consider this year. As many of my colleagues know, we are facing a July 1 deadline that creates a crisis in the student loan program. H.R. 6 contains a bipartisan compromise that fixes the problem, maintains the viability of the private loan program, and provides students with the lowest interest rate in 17 years. So through the swift adoption of this rule and passage of H.R. 6, we will move one step closer to meeting that deadline. Therefore, I urge all of my colleagues to support the rule and vote in favor of H.R. 6, the Higher Education Amendments of 1998. Mr. HALL of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Guam (Mr. Underwood). Mr. UNDERWOOD. Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend from Ohio for yielding me this time. I rise in support of the rule on H.R. 6. I know that many of the members of this committee have worked hard on producing a bill which will increase the affordability for our institutions of higher education and advance social mobility in our country. As a retired educator and higher education administrator, we know that institutions of higher education advance knowledge, provide community service, and serve as the basis for social and economic mobility for millions of our young people who come from backgrounds with few social advantages and economic resources. Higher education institutions in our country are marked by their capacity to provide this opportunity which is vastly different than institutions in other countries. Higher education is the strength of our society and the engine of progress and opportunity, and this bill, as written, continues and ratifies this understanding of postsecondary institutions and deserves our support. Mr. Speaker, I would like to draw attention to the especially unique provisions that it has on Hispanic-serving institutions and the work of the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Hinojosa) in that regard. I would also like to draw attention to a provision which allows higher education institutions in the territories to compete for grants with a little bit more flexibility. I would like to really draw attention to the fact that it is making higher education affordable for millions of young people around the country, and the increase in Pell Grants. I know there is a problem with the Pell Grant provision, and I have spoken with the leadership on this issue. The bill, as currently written, says that students from the Micronesian Islands, the Republic of the Marshall Islands, and the Republic of Palau and the Federated States of Micronesia are not eligible for Pell Grants except if they go to institutions in those areas and Guam only. I feel very strongly that this is a violation of the compacts of free association and will attempt to limit educational opportunities for these people. The FAS territories of the Pacific islands was an American- administered area of the Pacific under which some compacts were arranged in order to help to facilitate the growth of these areas, and for one reason or another, H.R. 6 does not take this into account. I trust that we can work towards a version of the bill on this particular provision which will restore the benefits of Pell Grants for the Micronesian students not only in Guam, and not only on their own home islands, but throughout the 50 States. Again, Mr. Speaker, this bill deserves our support. It is a good bill, and it is a bill that is the work of very strong bipartisan support and a good and healthy understanding of the role of postsecondary institutions in our society. Mr. HASTINGS of Washington. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from New Jersey (Mrs. Roukema). (Mrs. ROUKEMA asked and was given permission to revise and extend her remarks.) Mrs. ROUKEMA. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time. Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of both the rule and the bill. I think this bill is one of the most significant bills that we will probably pass in this Congress, and these are the issues that count with the American people, without a doubt. To be competitive in the global economy, we need to provide our youth with the means to better their education. This is the essence of the American dream. Now, I know that there are going to be amendments during this process, and I do believe that there will be constructive colloquies and constructive dialogue and debates on those amendments, but this bill is fundamentally a very strong bill. I do want to point out that one of the issues that has been questioned is the resolution here of the potential crisis of the interest rate issue on this bill. The proposal in this legislation, I believe, is the best that we could have come up with, and it will help students while saving the program for higher education through the private banking system. Now, I am one of the longtime members of the Subcommittee on Postsecondary Education, Training and [[Page H2515]] Life-Long Learning, but I have another hat. I am the chairwoman of the Subcommittee on Financial Institutions and Consumer Credit, and perhaps from that point of view I understand both sides of this issue. This legislative fix, so to speak, is necessary, absolutely necessary, not only to protect the loans for the students at reasonable low interest rates, but also to ensure that the banks will not be forced to leave the market. {time} 1930 I think this is the best possible compromise that we could have reached. It works for the students and their families and it works for the private sector, the banks who provide the loans at low interest rates. Mr. HALL of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Andrews). (Mr. ANDREWS asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.) Mr. ANDREWS. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Hall) for yielding me this time. Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of the rule, and at a time when the people who cover politics are obsessed with what is scandalous and divisive, we have before us tonight something that is solid and unifying. Mr. Speaker, I want to commend the leaders of our committee, the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Chairman Goodling), the gentleman from California (Chairman McKeon), the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Clay) and the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Kildee) for all the time and effort they have put into this bill and all the very fine work that they have done. I also want to commend the Committee on Rules for putting before us a rule that lets anyone with any idea have the right to come to the floor and express his or her idea. That is why I support the rule. Mr. Speaker, I do want to associate myself, however, with the remarks of the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Spratt), the ranking Democratic member of the Committee on the Budget, with respect to the cost and payment mechanism for the interest rate compromise that has been referred to earlier. First of all, we do not really know what the cost is. We have an estimate from the Office of Management and Budget that tells us it will be net in excess of $2 billion. We have another estimate from the Congressional Budget Office which tells us that even with the offsets that have been identified, it is in the neighborhood of half a billion dollars. It is a very serious consideration that we are moving forward on this bill without identifying where the money is going to come from. It is sort of the-check-is-in-the-mail theory of budgeting that got us into this mess in the first place. I agree with those who say that we should move forward this evening, and I will vote with them to do so. But I also want to sound a note of caution that as we move this bill out of the House of Representatives and into the conference committee, I think it is imperative that we lay before the Members of this body and our constituents, the American people, the specifics of how much this compromise will cost the taxpayers and where the money is going to come from to pay for it. I believe it would be a disaster to fatten the profits of the banking industry at the expense of other student aid programs or other mandatory programs. We should be watching that as the time goes on. Mr. HASTINGS of Washington. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time. Mr. HALL of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I have no more speakers. I would urge a ``yes'' vote on the rule, and I will not be calling for a vote. I think it is a good bipartisan rule, and I yield back the balance of my time. Mr. HASTINGS of Washington. Mr. Speaker, I want to urge my colleagues to support this rule, and the underlying bill. This is clearly a product that is bipartisan in nature and that is something I think we can be proud of. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time, and I move the previous question on the resolution. The previous question was ordered. The resolution was agreed to. A motion to reconsider was laid on the table. The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Hastings of Washington). Pursuant to House Resolution 411 and rule XXIII, the Chair declares the House in the Committee of the Whole House on the State of the Union for the consideration of the bill, H.R. 6. {time} 1934 In the Committee of the Whole Accordingly, the House resolved itself into the Committee of the Whole House on the State of the Union for the consideration of the bill (H.R. 6) to extend the authorization of programs under the Higher Education Act of 1965, and for other purposes, with Mr. Gutknecht in the chair. The Clerk read the title of the bill. The CHAIRMAN. Pursuant to the rule, the bill is considered as having been read the first time. Under the rule, the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Goodling) and the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Clay) each will control 30 minutes. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Goodling). Mr. GOODLING. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 5 minutes. Mr. Chairman, I rise today in support of H.R. 6, the Higher Education Amendments of 1998. Considering H.R. 6 today, the House will complete a bipartisan process that began in the subcommittee chaired by the gentleman from California (Mr. McKeon) well over a year ago. This legislation will benefit millions of students across the country in their pursuit of a higher education. The bill will improve programs such as Work-Study, Pell grant, TRIO, and student loans that help millions of students pay for college. We will do a number of important things here today. However, none may be as important as our efforts to keep student loans available for all students. As all of my colleagues know, we have been struggling for the past year with the student loan interest rate issue that is the direct result of the Student Loan Reform Act of 1993. That act changed the index for establishing interest rates on these loans. Prior to the Student Loan Reform Act, interest rates had always been tied to 91-day Treasury bills. However, as part of the changes associated with the creation of the Federal Direct Student Loan program, the index for establishing interest rates changed to one based on the 10-year Treasury bond. This scheduled rate change is serious and has the potential to disrupt the Federal Family Education Loan Program which provides nearly 70 percent of this country's Federal student loans. As a parent I am keenly aware of the burden being placed on our youth by student loan debt. I am personally committed to ensuring that the interest rate on Federal student loans is kept as low as possible. However, I also realize that there is a point at which the lenders will get out of the program. That point is reached when their return on making these loans falls short of the return they could make by investing elsewhere. Under the bill we are considering today, students will receive historically low interest rates, the lowest in 17 years. The rates students pay on new loans will drop from the current rate of 8.25 down to 7.43 during the repayment period. At the same time, the amount the lenders are paid will be reduced by 30 basis points which will, I believe, ensure uninterrupted access to private capital for our Nation's students. The chairman of the Subcommittee on Postsecondary Education, Training and Life-Long Learning, the gentleman from California (Mr. McKeon) and the ranking member of that subcommittee, the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Kildee) have worked very hard to find a solution to the crisis. That solution is contained in this legislation. Throughout this difficult process, the gentleman from California (Chairman McKeon) and the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Kildee) never forgot the interests of the students. They never gave up when negotiations broke down. I know that the ranking member of the committee, the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Clay) and the rest of the members of the committee are grateful for their efforts in resolving the issue. Mr. Chairman, I especially want to thank the Speaker of the House, the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Gingrich), the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Armey), the majority leader, as well as [[Page H2516]] the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Kasich) chairman of the Committee on the Budget. Without their help, this solution would not have been possible. All three contributed to ensuring that we could pay for this provision which is now budget neutral without passing any of the costs on to students. Many in the higher education community support the proposal and have joined me in praising the gentleman from California (Chairman McKeon) and the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Kildee) for their leadership. The major student groups have described the proposal as, and I quote, ``A realistic, fair, and even-handed compromise that protects students' need for lower borrower rates.'' The American Council on Education and 10 other major higher education groups representing over 3,600 colleges and universities praised the fact that the proposal ``ensures the continued availability of capital in the guaranteed student loan program.'' Mr. Chairman, for the people back home, I hope they would notice that I am not quoting anything that the lending institutions or the lending organizations have had to say about this. Obviously, they are not nearly as pleased. I continue to welcome the help of everyone who is willing to work in good faith to get the problem solved. I thank those who have already shown a willingness to seek common ground in order to ensure that student loans remain both inexpensive and available. But, Mr. Chairman, I am sorry to say that despite the bipartisan example set by the leaders on both sides of this committee, there are those who would continue to play politics with this issue. A high- ranking official at the Department of Education recently put out a press release about our bipartisan solution stressing that it recognizes the ``need to protect students from banks.'' Now, if there is anything that students need to be protected from, it is the high cost of getting an education and the quality of service they get from the bureaucracy at the Department. This bill scores high on both counts: It helps make college more affordable and it simplifies the student aid delivery system. The committee is proud of the accomplishments made to date in making college affordable for all students. Since we have been in charge, for example, Pell grants and College Work-Study are funded at all-time highs, while provisions in the Taxpayer Relief Act created education IRAs and other tax credits to help low- and middle-income students obtain a postsecondary education. The legislation we are considering today will build on these important achievements by continuing the important programs that serve students well and by reforming burdensome requirements to best meet the needs of students, families, and colleges across the country. Mr. Chairman, I do want to caution all of my colleagues to please be very, very careful about their ambition to add all sorts of things to this legislation, because they could kill the wonderful work that the subcommittee and then eventually the full committee has done. Mr. Chairman, we have also made significant changes to the current need analysis formula in order to address concerns raised by many students and families about the need to encourage students to work and save for their education. The bill increases the amount of money that students may earn before it impacts their eligibility for financial aid. By doing this, we are encouraging students to work and save for college. It also combines the assets of a student and his or her parents when calculating the ability of the family to contribute towards college. The current formula treats that assets of parents and students differently and separately as though they are not part of the same family. We are changing this provisions so the formula truly considers the ability of the family to pay for college. The legislation we will consider today will also improve service to students. It addresses the need to reduce the administrative costs associated with the processing, delivery, and monitoring of the Federal financial aid programs. It gives the Secretary of Education the tools he needs to bring the Department into the 21st Century. Specifically, the Department will be required to put in place a Performance-Based Organization (PBO) to run the day-to-day operations of the student financial aid delivery system. Chairman McKeon and Representative Kildee introduced the PBO bill last fall with the full support of the students and the rest of the higher education community. I am glad to see that it has been included in our final bill. A more stable and more efficient delivery system coupled with regulatory reform should result in reduced administrative costs for the Department as well as for schools, lenders, guaranty agencies, and other program participants who must interact with the Department's delivery system. This is particularly important since we are forcing lenders and guaranty agencies to operate with less revenue and we expect colleges to keep their costs down for students. The Department needs to contribute to these efforts by operating more efficiently so others can do the same. I'd also like to note some provisions of H.R. 6 that were offered in Committee by Representatives McKeon and Castle to make college affordable. The McKeon--Castle amendment will implement a number of the recommendations of the Commission on the Cost of Higher Education. This is important, because if we are truly interested in making sure that all Americans can afford a quality postsecondary education, and if we are truly interested in reducing the debt burden placed on our students, then the single most important thing we can do is to get colleges to lower their prices. These provisions are a needed first step in that direction. In addition to making college more affordable and simplifying the delivery system, we have fulfilled our promise to improve the quality of higher education. H.R. 6 will help create safer campuses where our nation's students can learn. It improves the information made available to students and families about crimes occurring on college campuses. And although no one can guarantee safety, we are making sure that students have the information they need to protect themselves from becoming victims of crime. We are also ensuring families have accurate information about crime on college campuses so they can make informed choices when selecting a college for their children. H.R. 6 also provides strong incentives for students to stay off drugs. An amendment offered by the gentleman from Indiana, Mr. Souder, and accepted in Committee will eliminate student aid eligibility for students convicted of drug offenses. This provision is based on an amendment offered by Mr. Solomon in 1992, which was accepted by the House. Unfortunately, the Solomon amendment was later dropped in conference. If we want to ensure safety on our Nation's campuses, it is vital to keep them drug-free. H.R. 6 also focuses on improving teacher quality so that students will have high quality teachers trained in the subject areas in which they teach. It is alarming to find that nearly one-third of all high school math teachers and over one fifth of all high school English teachers in this country have neither majored Nor minored in the subjects in which they teach. Given this fact, it should come as no surprise that American twelfth graders recently scored so low on the TIMMS international math and science test. Under this legislation, States will be encouraged to undertake a wide variety of efforts to improve the quality and ability of classroom teachers--beginning with the reform of institutions at which many of these teachers are prepared. Specifically, this bill amends the Higher Education Act by replacing 16 unfunded teacher preparation programs with a single competitive block grant, which I'm pleased to mention, was developed through a bipartisan process within our Committee. Using funds from this competitive block grant, Governors will have significant flexibility in which activities to carry out. Specifically, such efforts may include strengthening State teacher certification procedures to better reflect current and future teacher's academic knowledge of the subjects they teach; reforming schools of education and holding them accountable for producing quality teachers; creating and/or expanding programs which provide alternative routes to teacher certification; undertaking teacher recruitment efforts; and implementing initiatives to expeditiously remove incompetent or unqualified teachers. To ensure that States receiving these funds are making progress to improve teacher quality, this legislation also makes future grants to States contingent upon meeting specific goals such as being able to demonstrate an increased percentage of teachers teaching in subject areas and an increase in ``first-time'' certification and licensure rates among education school graduates. I would like to especially highlight several provisions that were worked out in a bipartisan fashion which are now part of the manager's package of amendments. They include: an increased emphasis on partnerships consisting of the Governor of a participating State, exemplary schools of education and local educational agencies; an increased focus, with respect to the teacher recruitment provisions, on schools most in need [[Page H2517]] of quality teachers, such as in poor urban and rural areas; and a clarification that the Governor shall be the grant recipient except in those cases where State law or constitution dictates that another individual is responsible for education. I look forward to the support of my colleagues for this compromise so that we can help States really reform teacher preparation programs and provide high quality teachers to our students. I would also like to thank Representative Graham for his efforts in working with Representative Kildee, in crafting a truly bipartisan initiative under this legislation which provides loan forgiveness for prospective teachers who agree to teach in high poverty urban or rural schools. In addition to the improvements we will make in the preparation of teachers, there are a host of other changes that will improve educational quality and opportunities far beyond the college campus. Today, the House will increase opportunities for all Americans to get the education they need through the expanded use of distance learning techniques and new technologies. Today we will also encourage students to become involved in their communities and to help children learn to read by ensuring that colleges use more of the Work-Study dollars to fund these initiatives. Finally, let me just say that that the legislation before us today is one of the most important things that we in the 105th Congress will do this year. It will ensure that every American has access to a quality postsecondary education at an affordable price. This is a bipartisan bill that makes much needed reforms to help students, parents, and schools. I urge all of my colleagues to support it, and I urge a ``yes'' vote on final passage. Mr. CLAY. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 5 minutes. Mr. Chairman, I want to commend the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Kildee) and the gentleman from California (Mr. McKeon) for their great bipartisan teamwork on this very important higher education initiative. They worked for better than a year to fashion legislation that I believe strengthens our country's commitment to higher education. I also want to commend the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Chairman Goodling) and all the committee members who made valuable contributions to the higher education reauthorization effort. I am pleased to give my enthusiastic support for this bill. The bill strengthens student aid financing by significantly reducing student loan interest rates, increasing Pell Grants and improving the calculations of benefits for independent and dependent students. The bill adopts a number of measures that enhance support for minority and disadvantaged students by strengthening the TRIO program and other programs supporting historically black colleges and universities, Hispanic-serving institutions and tribally controlled colleges. Mr. Chairman, I am also pleased that the committee adopted President Clinton's High Hopes program. And I commend the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Fattah) for his successful advocacy of this important initiative. Mr. Chairman, the bill also includes a number of provisions aimed at improving services to students on campus such as enhanced campus crime reporting, a new campus-based child care program and streamlining financial aid procedures. I am also pleased that teacher education and recruitment received a boost in this bill by the adoption of a loan forgiveness program for new teachers and strong teaching training partnerships. As we continue to work on this bipartisan bill, I hope that we can continue our efforts to resolve issues regarding loan consolidation interest rates, guarantee agencies, and the National Board for Teacher Certification. Finally, Mr. Chairman, I would like to express my hope that we will unanimously reject attempts to undermine this bipartisan bill through the introduction of a divisive anti-affirmative action amendment. The Riggs amendment has received universal condemnation among all those who care deeply about expanding educational opportunities for all Americans. Students, colleges, civil rights groups, editorial boards and women's groups across this country have urged us to reject this

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HIGHER EDUCATION AMENDMENTS OF 1998
(House of Representatives - April 29, 1998)

Text of this article available as: TXT PDF [Pages H2510-H2594] HIGHER EDUCATION AMENDMENTS OF 1998 Mr. HASTINGS of Washington. Mr. Speaker, by direction of the Committee on Rules, I call up House Resolution 411 and ask for its immediate consideration. The Clerk read the resolution, as follows: H. Res. 411 Resolved, That at any time after the adoption of this resolution the Speaker may, pursuant to clause 1(b) of rule XXIII, declare the House resolved into the Committee of the Whole House on the State of the Union for consideration of the bill (H.R. 6) to extend the authorization of programs under the Higher Education Act of 1965, and for other purposes. The first reading of the bill shall be dispensed with. All points of order against consideration of the bill are waived. General debate shall be confined to the bill and shall not exceed one hour equally divided and controlled by the chairman and ranking minority member of the Committee on Education and the Workforce. After general debate the bill shall be considered for amendment under the five-minute rule. It shall be in order to consider as an original bill for the purpose of amendment under the five-minute rule the amendment in the nature of a substitute recommended by the Committee on Education and the Workforce now printed in the bill, modified by the amendments printed in part 1 of the report of the Committee on Rules accompanying this resolution. That amendment in the nature of a substitute shall be considered by title rather than by section. Each title shall be considered as read. All points of order against that amendment in the nature of a substitute are waived. Before consideration of any other amendment it shall be in order to consider the amendment printed in part 2 of the report of the Committee on Rules, if offered by Representative Goodling or his designee. That amendment shall be considered as read, shall be debatable for 20 minutes equally divided and controlled by the proponent and an opponent, shall not be subject to amendment, and shall not be subject to a demand for division of the question in the House or in the Committee of the Whole. All points of order against that amendment are waived. If that amendment is adopted, the provisions of the amendment in the nature of a substitute as then perfected shall be considered as original text for the purpose of further amendment. No other amendment to the amendment in the nature of a substitute shall be in order except those printed in the portion of the Congressional Record designated for that purpose in clause 6 of rule XXIII. Printed amendments shall be considered as read. The chairman of the Committee of the Whole may: (1) postpone until a time during further consideration in the Committee of the Whole a request for a recorded vote on any amendment; and (2) reduce to five minutes the minimum time for electronic voting on any postponed question that follows another electronic vote without intervening business: Provided, That the minimum time for electronic voting on the first in any series of questions shall be 15 minutes. At the conclusion of consideration of the bill for amendment the Committee shall rise and report the bill to the House with such amendments as may have been adopted. Any Member may demand a separate vote in the House on any amendment adopted in the Committee of the Whole to the bill or to the amendment in the nature of a substitute ultimately considered as original text. The previous question shall be considered as ordered on the bill and amendments thereto to final passage without intervening motion except one motion to recommit with or without instructions. The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentleman from Washington (Mr. Hastings) is recognized for 1 hour. Mr. HASTINGS of Washington. Mr. Speaker, for the purposes of debate only, I yield the customary 30 minutes to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Hall), pending which I yield myself such time as I may consume. During consideration of this resolution, all time yielded is for the purposes of debate only. (Mr. HASTINGS of Washington asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.) Mr. HASTINGS of Washington. Mr. Speaker, H.Res. 411 is a modified open rule waiving all points of order against consideration of the bill. The bill provides 1 hour of general debate to be divided equally between the chairman and ranking minority member of the Committee on Education and the Workforce. [[Page H2511]] The rule also provides that the amendment in the nature of a substitute recommended by the Committee on Education and the Workforce now printed in the bill, as modified by the amendments printed in part 1 of the report of the Committee on Rules, shall be considered as an original bill for the purpose of amendment. Furthermore, Mr. Speaker, the rule provides that the amendment in the nature of a substitute shall be considered by title and that each title shall be considered as read. All points of order are waived against the amendment in the nature of a substitute. The rule provides that before consideration of any other amendment, it shall be in order to consider the manager's amendment printed in part 2 of the report of the Committee on Rules, if offered by the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Goodling) or his designee. All points of order against that amendment are also waived, it shall be considered as read, and shall be debatable for 20 minutes equally divided and controlled by the proponent and an opponent. It shall not be subject to amendment and shall not be subject to a demand for division of the question in the House or in the Committee of the Whole. If that amendment is adopted, the provisions of that amendment in the nature of a substitute as then perfected shall be considered as original text for the purpose of further amendment. Mr. Speaker, H.Res. 411 provides that no other amendment to the amendment in the nature of a substitute shall be in order except those printed in the Congressional Record. The rule allows the Chairman of the Committee of the Whole to postpone votes during consideration of the bill and to reduce votes to 5 minutes on a postponed question if the vote follows a 15-minute vote. Finally, the rule provides one motion to recommit, with or without instructions. Mr. Speaker, H.R. 6, the Higher Education Amendments of 1998, reauthorizes existing programs that provide Federal aid to students. It is designed to help to make college more affordable, simplify the student aid system and improve academic quality. Most importantly, Mr. Speaker, this legislation will ensure that all Americans wishing to pursue a higher education will continue to have that opportunity. First and foremost, H.R. 6 safeguards the student loan program by ensuring that student loans will remain available for all students and that students will receive the lowest interest rates in 17 years. Moreover, once this bill is enacted into law, deserving students from disadvantaged backgrounds will have more Federal support to attend college than ever before. H.R. 6 improves campus-based aid programs such as Work Study, Supplemental Educational Opportunity Grants, and Perkins Loans. It also expands flexibility in the Pell Grant program that provides vouchers to needy students, by permitting a larger portion of the grant to be used for purposes other than tuition, such as child care for parents attending classes. Mr. Speaker, encouraging students and their parents to work and save for educational expenses is a priority in this Congress. Accordingly, H.R. 6 increases the amount of income students may earn before it impacts their eligibility for financial aid. The bill also exempts veterans' benefits from being counted against students when they apply for financial aid. Incredibly, Mr. Speaker, the current financial aid formula treats the assets of students and their parents differently and separately, as though they are not part of the same family. H.R. 6 changes this provision by combining the assets of the student and his or her parents when calculating the total ability of the family to contribute towards college expenses. Finally, this legislation contains a number of administrative changes designed to streamline aid to education and eliminate bureaucratic red tape. In that regard, H.R. 6 can truly be described as a good deal for taxpayers as well as a good deal for students. I commend the Committee on Education and the Workforce, and in particular the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Goodling), the gentleman from California (Mr. McKeon), the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Clay) and the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Kildee) for their efforts in bringing this important legislation to the floor. The rule before the House today is designed to provide full and fair consideration of the committee's work product, while limiting the opportunity for Members desiring merely to score political points with this bipartisan legislation. Mr. Speaker, the quality of our higher education system in the United States has long been the envy of the entire world. At the same time, access to higher education for all deserving young people has been one of the driving forces behind two centuries of innovation and economic growth. I urge my colleagues to continue this tradition by putting America's students and their education first and adopting both this rule and H.R. 6, the Higher Education Amendments of 1998. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time. {time} 1900 Mr. HALL of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague from Washington (Mr. Hastings) for yielding me the time. This is a modified open rule. It will allow debate on H.R. 6, which is the Higher Education Amendment of 1998. As my colleague has described, this rule provides 1 hour of general debate to be equally divided and controlled by the chairman and the ranking minority member of the Committee on Education and the Workforce. The rule makes in order only those amendments that have been preprinted in the Congressional Record. These amendments will be permitted under the 5-minute rule, the normal amending process in the House. The rule does permit germane amendments to those preprinted amendments. The bill continues and revises Federal student loans, Pell grants and other higher education programs. Federal grants, loans and college work study awards have made the dream of higher education a reality for millions of young people. These programs are essential to bring the opportunity for higher education to all Americans. This bill makes a number of important changes to the programs intended to make college affordable, simplify the student aid system and promote academic quality. Mr. Speaker, It is a bipartisan bill. It has strong support from both sides of the aisle. The Committee on Education and the Workforce reported the bill with all Democrats who were present supporting it. During testimony last night before the Committee on Rules, the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Clay) the ranking minority member of the committee, and the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Kildee) the ranking minority member of the subcommittee, requested a full and open rule. The Committee on Rules denied the request, instead requiring all floor amendments to be preprinted in the Congressional Record. Even though the minority's request was not fully granted, the rule will provide opportunity for Members to amend the bill on the House floor. Moreover, the bill is the result of a bipartisan process. Mr. Speaker, the Committee on Rules approved this modified open rule by a voice vote, and I would urge adoption of the rule. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time. Mr. HASTINGS of Washington. Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Duncan). Mr. DUNCAN. Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of the rule and for the underlying bill, H.R. 6, which this rule brings to the floor, the Higher Education Amendments of 1998. I especially want to thank my good friend, the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Hastings) for yielding me this time; and also I would like to thank the chairman, the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Goodling) for including provisions in the bill in H.R. 6 which are similar to my bill, H.R. 715, the Accuracy in Campus Crime Reporting Act. I would briefly like to discuss H.R. 715, much of which has been incorporated into H.R. 6. This legislation, H.R. 715, currently has 71 cosponsors almost equally split between both parties. H.R. 715 is a [[Page H2512]] genuinely bipartisan bill. No college or university that has a safe campus should have any problems with the campus security provisions in H.R. 6, but for those institutions that do have crime problems, students and their parents should have a right to know about these dangers before they enroll. I became concerned about this issue after meeting with several families whose children had been murdered on college campuses. These families never dreamed that they should have to worry about the physical safety of their children on college campuses. The issue of campus crime last attracted the interest of many in the national media in the past year. Both CBS and ABC have devoted extensive time to this problem. Several leading publications have also covered this story. In fact, both the New Republic and USA Today have favorably written about my legislation, H.R. 715. After reading many of these articles and hearing these reports, it became painfully obvious to me that many colleges are doing a poor job in giving students and their parents an accurate picture of the dangers that lurk on some college campuses. On February 9, USA Today strongly endorsed H.R. 715 by stating, quote, in 1990, Congress passed a law requiring colleges to collect annual campus crime statistics, but the Education Department blocked the law's full implementation by threatening to withhold Federal funds from colleges opening their police logs. USA Today then hit the nail on the head by concluding, quote, it is a sad state of affairs when an act of Congress is necessary for the Education Department to protect student safety. I think, Mr. Speaker, that most of us look fondly on our college days, from the appealing image of ivy-lined brick buildings, the excitement of interacting with professors and, of course, making new friends who last for a lifetime. At least, that is what my colleagues and I probably remember. However, in the 1990s, unfortunately, the reality is far different. On many campuses, rapes, robberies and even murders are becoming far too common. Students now have reason to fear for their safety on some campuses. Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased that H.R. 6 contains campus security provisions that are modeled on H.R. 715. The campus security provisions of H.R. 6 require colleges and universities to maintain a daily log of all crimes committed and make those logs available for public inspection within 48 hours. Many States already require colleges and universities to make their police logs public. These provisions in H.R. 6 are a matter of fairness to those institutions which are making good-faith efforts to inform the public of the dangers on their campuses. The need for accurate police logs is crucial so that accurate crime statistics can be compiled. The public must be able to make informed decisions about where to attend college. While I would have liked to have seen more provisions from H.R. 715 included in H.R. 6, I believe that the provisions that are included will go a long way in improving the public's awareness of the dangers that, unfortunately, lurk on some of our college campuses. I appreciate the cooperation of the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Goodling) in this regard, and I urge support for H.R. 6. Mr. HALL of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Spratt). (Mr. SPRATT asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.) Mr. SPRATT. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me the time. Mr. Speaker, I support student loans, and I support the kind of compromise that has been reached in this bill, but as the ranking democrat on the Committee on the Budget I have to raise concerns about this bill because I do not think it complies with the Budget Act, and I think those concerns should be expressed. For the first time in 30 years, we have got a balanced budget this year, and we have got a balanced budget in part because of disciplines and budget process changes we made in the Budget Summit Agreement of 1990, the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1993 and the Balanced Budget Act last year, 1997. One of those rules which we established in 1990 and have carried forward in each of those years was the so-called pay-go rule, which simply provides that any time anyone wants to liberalize or add to an entitlement the cost of it must be paid for either by identifying a revenue stream to pay for it or by reducing an entitlement somewhere else in the budget. When the rule was read, the gentleman noted that all points of order are raised. The reason all points of order have to be raised as to the Budget Act is that this particular bill increases direct spending for student loans by $2.8 billion, according to the Office of Management and Budget, over and above what was provided in the balanced budget agreement last year. In effect, what we have done here is lower the rates the students will pay, and that is good, I am for that, and raise to some extent what the banks will realize for these loans. We have increased the spread over and above what was anticipated for the next 5 years, and the cost is $2.8 billion, according to OMB. Now what does this mean? We have waived points of order. The bill cannot be withheld. I know the calamity it would cause if it were withheld because students are making decisions about how they will pay for college right now. But what this means is that we will have an entry on something called the pay-go score card. There is about $700 million in scored offsets to this bill so the entry will be $2.8 billion minus $700 million equals $2.1 billion. And if as of September 30 of this year we have not cleared that from the score card, it will trigger sequestration. It will mean across-the-board cuts in a host of programs, including educational programs, voc rehab. Ironically, it will increase student loan origination fees. Now I am not criticizing the group here that put this together. I am criticizing the way the House is run. We should have had well before now a budget resolution. We have a process by which these decisions are not made one by one, piecemeal. They are made in a comprehensive context where we have to identify the offsets, identify the tradeoffs. When we want to increase one thing, we have got to decrease something else. We have not done that. The most egregious violation of it was the BESTEA bill, the transportation bill that we had on the floor just a few weeks ago. That particular bill will increase spending by $35 billion over and above what we provided in the BBA. This is just another illustration of what happens when we do not have a budget agreement, when we do not have a budget resolution. The proper procedure would be to send this bill back to the committee and require maybe not this group but some group to identify the offsets better than the offsets that have been identified here. I know that is not going to happen. When the bill comes up, I am going to vote for it myself. But I could not let the bill come to the floor, could not let it be considered in this manner, could not let this routine incantation that all points of order are waived be made without raising the concern of the Committee on the Budget, my own personal concern that we are deviating from the disciplines that have brought us to a balanced budget for the first time in 30 years, and we are going to have a real pileup in September unless we get under way with the budget resolution in the process that we duly adopted. Mr. HASTINGS of Washington. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Goodling) the chairman of the Committee on Education and the Workforce. Mr. GOODLING. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding the time to me. First, I would like to say that I wish the previous speaker would have been sitting on our committee when we were marking up. I sure could have used him. Because we had amendment after amendment after amendment, and every time I asked where is the offset, they said there was not any. Now, fortunately, we were able to defeat them in a bipartisan way, but, otherwise, we had a serious problem. I think it is important to point out that we have asked the lending institutions to reduce yields by 30 basis points that they would normally expect to receive, so it is not a situation where [[Page H2513]] somebody came and gave them more. We asked them to reduce yields by 30 points, and we did that to bring about an agreement with the students. And for the gentleman from California (Mr. McKeon) and the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Kildee) I will not be so informal. They worked for a year and a half to bring about this agreement between the students and the lending institutions. The scoring has been a problem. There is no question about it. At one point, they were told that we have about $4 billion to $6 billion in savings. We were really swimming in good water. We had all sorts of money to spend. Next time they scored it, they used a different scoring method, and all of a sudden we are a billion dollars short. I would also tell the previous gentleman we have come up with at least half of that, and I believe that the Committee on the Budget is able to come up with the other half. So, again, it has been a very difficult thing, but we know that we must have it on the President's desk by May 15, unless my colleagues want to have total, a total disaster. We will have parents, we will have students, we will have schools sitting out there wondering are their loans? When will we find out? So we just positively have to move the legislation, and I cannot give the two congressmen I mentioned enough credit for the amount of hours that they have spent and the staffs have spent to bring together the students and the lending institutions. Above all, the students do not want to see their opportunity taken away from them simply because we in the Congress cannot come up with an agreement that will save the private sector as far as their ability to provide 70 percent of all Federal student loans. So I would hope that we can eliminate an awful lot of the amendments that are coming up because that could really drive us up the wall and then we will really have a scoring problem and, at the same time, get this legislation to the President quickly. Mr. HALL of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer). Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding this time to me, my friend from Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of this rule and in support of this bill. However, I must say that I share the views of the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Spratt) the ranking member of the Committee on the Budget. I think his concerns are absolutely accurate; but, like him, I will vote for this bill and hope that we can work out some of the problems as it goes through. I am pleased that the committee was able to work together in a bipartisan fashion to draft this bill. However, Mr. Speaker, I am extremely concerned that the authorization for the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards was eliminated during markup of the bill. {time} 1915 I have talked to some of the staff of the committee on our side, and that was not our intent, and my understanding is we are not supportive of that, although it is a small component of a large bill. As education is one of our Nation's highest priorities, Mr. Speaker, we need to focus on improving the quality of the teachers in our schools. National board certification is, in my opinion, an important way to achieve this goal. Both the President and a bipartisan group of our Nation's Governors support the good work that the national board is doing to improve the quality of our teachers. Recently, Mr. Speaker, the Maryland Legislature passed a bill creating a pilot program to encourage up to 45 teachers to seek national board certification. In the city of Bowie, Maryland, just down the road, the City Council approved a $20,000 set-aside in its 1997- 1998 budget for initiatives to enhance the teaching skills and instructional environment in Bowie schools, including national board certification. Mr. Speaker, as President Clinton said last Friday, and I quote, now is no time to walk away from our commitment to public education. The National Board for Professional Teaching Standards, the President said, should not be a partisan issue, it should not be an ideological issue, it ought to be purely and simply what we can do to help you do what is best for our children and their future, close quote. Mr. Speaker, as I said, I will support this bill, but I am very, very hopeful that the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards is included in the Senate bill and will be included in the conference. I will be talking to my good friend, the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Clay), the chairman-in-exile of this committee, and the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Goodling), chairman of this committee, in working toward that end. I think this is a critical component of our overall effort to upgrade the status of teaching, and, therefore, the quality of education in our schools. I would hope that we could come to an agreement between the two bodies on this, and I look forward to working toward that end. Mr. HASTINGS of Washington. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Paul). (Mr. PAUL asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.) Mr. PAUL. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time. I rise in support of this rule. It is obviously a very fair rule because I am allowed to offer an amendment later on, so I am pleased to be able to vote for this rule. I have an amendment that I am going to offer in Title I which will be designated so that the Social Security number cannot be used for the electronic personal identifier for any of the programs in this educational bill. The American people have become very worried about how often the Social Security number is being used as a national identification number, and we are working quickly toward a time where we have a national identification card. We certainly have abused the Social Security number as being the number. It was never intended that way. That is not what was intended when the Social Security was started that this number would be a universal number for everything. In 1974, it was stated rather explicitly that the Social Security number should not be used for programs like this, and I would like to just quote the Privacy Act of 1974: ``It shall be unlawful for any Federal, State or local government agency to deny any individual any right, benefit or privilege provided by law because of such individual's refusal to disclose his Social Security number.'' I think this is a good idea, because today we are very much aware of the fact that if a company, if a loaning company, or if one is going into a store to buy something, and they get one's name and one's Social Security number, one knows that they can call up more information about somebody than they know about themselves. I think this is a serious threat to the privacy of every American citizen, and we should be cautious about using the Social Security number. It is being used all the time. Mr. Speaker, prior to coming to this Congress, I was an obstetrician delivering babies, and babies cannot leave the hospital these days without a Social Security number. So they are born, get a Social Security number, they do not leave the hospital without it, and do my colleagues know that one cannot have a death certificate without a Social Security number? They are everyplace. It is an intrusion on our privacy. We do not need to use a Social Security number. When I was in the Air Force, we used to have an identification number, but now, today, it is the Social Security number. Not too many years ago a law was passed here in the Congress that mandates that each State licensing agent for our automobile says that one has to have a Social Security number. So now they will be cross-checking with Social Security number and all of our driver's license numbers. We are losing our privacy in this country. The American people know it. We do not need this number to be used in this program for it to be successful, and we should move very cautiously, and I hope I can get support for this amendment so that we do not use the Social Security number as the electronic personal identifier. Mr. HALL of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from New York (Mrs. Lowey). [[Page H2514]] (Mrs. LOWEY asked and was given permission to revise and extend her remarks.) Mrs. LOWEY. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time. Mr. Speaker, I rise to offer my strong support for this rule and the bipartisan amendments to the Higher Education Act. Education is society's great equalizer. It enables Americans to participate in democracy and pursue the American dream. We all recognize that a college education is as necessary today as a high school education was just a generation ago. In 1982, a worker with a college degree earned 40 percent more than a worker without one. Today, college graduates earn 75 percent more. A recent national survey showed that 9 in 10 Americans believe every interested qualified student should have the opportunity to attend college. My colleagues, that is a clear mandate for a strong higher education bill, and I believe such a measure is before us today. Just briefly, it increases Pell Grants by 50 percent next year and provides additional increases in the future. It preserves the Perkins Loan, the State Student Incentive Grant, the Supplemental Education Opportunity Grant programs, all important sources of financial aid. It will encourage more disadvantaged students to pursue higher education by strengthening TRIO, continuing my National Early Intervention Scholarships, and establishing a new High Hopes program that will work with low-income middle schools and community organizations. The new campus-based child care program will help young mothers attend college and become self-sufficient. The new loan forgiveness program will help fill America's growing need for qualified teachers. The bill will also help make college campuses safer and provide students and their families with the information they need and deserve about crime on campus. Of course, this bill is not perfect. It ends Federal support for the fine work of the National Board of Professional Teaching Standards and fails to include, as the Senate bill does, a Fair Play Act to encourage colleges to satisfy the interests and needs of young female athletes. However, despite some deficiencies, this is a strong bipartisan bill, and I urge my colleagues to support it. Mr. HASTINGS of Washington. Mr. Speaker, how much time remains on each side? The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Gutknecht). The gentleman from Washington (Mr. Hastings) has 14\1/2\ minutes, and the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Hall) has 18\1/2\ minutes. Mr. HASTINGS of Washington. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. McKeon). Mr. McKEON. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time. I rise in strong support of this rule and the bill H.R. 6, the Higher Education Amendments. First I would like to thank the gentleman from New York (Mr. Solomon), chairman of the Committee on Rules, for his help in crafting this rule. Through his efforts and those on the committee, we have been able to bring this bill to the floor in a timely and expeditious manner. He definitely will be missed when he retires. This rule will govern floor consideration of H.R. 6, which is one of the most important education bills that this Congress will consider this year. As many of my colleagues know, we are facing a July 1 deadline that creates a crisis in the student loan program. H.R. 6 contains a bipartisan compromise that fixes the problem, maintains the viability of the private loan program, and provides students with the lowest interest rate in 17 years. So through the swift adoption of this rule and passage of H.R. 6, we will move one step closer to meeting that deadline. Therefore, I urge all of my colleagues to support the rule and vote in favor of H.R. 6, the Higher Education Amendments of 1998. Mr. HALL of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Guam (Mr. Underwood). Mr. UNDERWOOD. Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend from Ohio for yielding me this time. I rise in support of the rule on H.R. 6. I know that many of the members of this committee have worked hard on producing a bill which will increase the affordability for our institutions of higher education and advance social mobility in our country. As a retired educator and higher education administrator, we know that institutions of higher education advance knowledge, provide community service, and serve as the basis for social and economic mobility for millions of our young people who come from backgrounds with few social advantages and economic resources. Higher education institutions in our country are marked by their capacity to provide this opportunity which is vastly different than institutions in other countries. Higher education is the strength of our society and the engine of progress and opportunity, and this bill, as written, continues and ratifies this understanding of postsecondary institutions and deserves our support. Mr. Speaker, I would like to draw attention to the especially unique provisions that it has on Hispanic-serving institutions and the work of the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Hinojosa) in that regard. I would also like to draw attention to a provision which allows higher education institutions in the territories to compete for grants with a little bit more flexibility. I would like to really draw attention to the fact that it is making higher education affordable for millions of young people around the country, and the increase in Pell Grants. I know there is a problem with the Pell Grant provision, and I have spoken with the leadership on this issue. The bill, as currently written, says that students from the Micronesian Islands, the Republic of the Marshall Islands, and the Republic of Palau and the Federated States of Micronesia are not eligible for Pell Grants except if they go to institutions in those areas and Guam only. I feel very strongly that this is a violation of the compacts of free association and will attempt to limit educational opportunities for these people. The FAS territories of the Pacific islands was an American- administered area of the Pacific under which some compacts were arranged in order to help to facilitate the growth of these areas, and for one reason or another, H.R. 6 does not take this into account. I trust that we can work towards a version of the bill on this particular provision which will restore the benefits of Pell Grants for the Micronesian students not only in Guam, and not only on their own home islands, but throughout the 50 States. Again, Mr. Speaker, this bill deserves our support. It is a good bill, and it is a bill that is the work of very strong bipartisan support and a good and healthy understanding of the role of postsecondary institutions in our society. Mr. HASTINGS of Washington. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from New Jersey (Mrs. Roukema). (Mrs. ROUKEMA asked and was given permission to revise and extend her remarks.) Mrs. ROUKEMA. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time. Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of both the rule and the bill. I think this bill is one of the most significant bills that we will probably pass in this Congress, and these are the issues that count with the American people, without a doubt. To be competitive in the global economy, we need to provide our youth with the means to better their education. This is the essence of the American dream. Now, I know that there are going to be amendments during this process, and I do believe that there will be constructive colloquies and constructive dialogue and debates on those amendments, but this bill is fundamentally a very strong bill. I do want to point out that one of the issues that has been questioned is the resolution here of the potential crisis of the interest rate issue on this bill. The proposal in this legislation, I believe, is the best that we could have come up with, and it will help students while saving the program for higher education through the private banking system. Now, I am one of the longtime members of the Subcommittee on Postsecondary Education, Training and [[Page H2515]] Life-Long Learning, but I have another hat. I am the chairwoman of the Subcommittee on Financial Institutions and Consumer Credit, and perhaps from that point of view I understand both sides of this issue. This legislative fix, so to speak, is necessary, absolutely necessary, not only to protect the loans for the students at reasonable low interest rates, but also to ensure that the banks will not be forced to leave the market. {time} 1930 I think this is the best possible compromise that we could have reached. It works for the students and their families and it works for the private sector, the banks who provide the loans at low interest rates. Mr. HALL of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Andrews). (Mr. ANDREWS asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.) Mr. ANDREWS. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Hall) for yielding me this time. Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of the rule, and at a time when the people who cover politics are obsessed with what is scandalous and divisive, we have before us tonight something that is solid and unifying. Mr. Speaker, I want to commend the leaders of our committee, the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Chairman Goodling), the gentleman from California (Chairman McKeon), the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Clay) and the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Kildee) for all the time and effort they have put into this bill and all the very fine work that they have done. I also want to commend the Committee on Rules for putting before us a rule that lets anyone with any idea have the right to come to the floor and express his or her idea. That is why I support the rule. Mr. Speaker, I do want to associate myself, however, with the remarks of the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Spratt), the ranking Democratic member of the Committee on the Budget, with respect to the cost and payment mechanism for the interest rate compromise that has been referred to earlier. First of all, we do not really know what the cost is. We have an estimate from the Office of Management and Budget that tells us it will be net in excess of $2 billion. We have another estimate from the Congressional Budget Office which tells us that even with the offsets that have been identified, it is in the neighborhood of half a billion dollars. It is a very serious consideration that we are moving forward on this bill without identifying where the money is going to come from. It is sort of the-check-is-in-the-mail theory of budgeting that got us into this mess in the first place. I agree with those who say that we should move forward this evening, and I will vote with them to do so. But I also want to sound a note of caution that as we move this bill out of the House of Representatives and into the conference committee, I think it is imperative that we lay before the Members of this body and our constituents, the American people, the specifics of how much this compromise will cost the taxpayers and where the money is going to come from to pay for it. I believe it would be a disaster to fatten the profits of the banking industry at the expense of other student aid programs or other mandatory programs. We should be watching that as the time goes on. Mr. HASTINGS of Washington. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time. Mr. HALL of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I have no more speakers. I would urge a ``yes'' vote on the rule, and I will not be calling for a vote. I think it is a good bipartisan rule, and I yield back the balance of my time. Mr. HASTINGS of Washington. Mr. Speaker, I want to urge my colleagues to support this rule, and the underlying bill. This is clearly a product that is bipartisan in nature and that is something I think we can be proud of. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time, and I move the previous question on the resolution. The previous question was ordered. The resolution was agreed to. A motion to reconsider was laid on the table. The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Hastings of Washington). Pursuant to House Resolution 411 and rule XXIII, the Chair declares the House in the Committee of the Whole House on the State of the Union for the consideration of the bill, H.R. 6. {time} 1934 In the Committee of the Whole Accordingly, the House resolved itself into the Committee of the Whole House on the State of the Union for the consideration of the bill (H.R. 6) to extend the authorization of programs under the Higher Education Act of 1965, and for other purposes, with Mr. Gutknecht in the chair. The Clerk read the title of the bill. The CHAIRMAN. Pursuant to the rule, the bill is considered as having been read the first time. Under the rule, the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Goodling) and the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Clay) each will control 30 minutes. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Goodling). Mr. GOODLING. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 5 minutes. Mr. Chairman, I rise today in support of H.R. 6, the Higher Education Amendments of 1998. Considering H.R. 6 today, the House will complete a bipartisan process that began in the subcommittee chaired by the gentleman from California (Mr. McKeon) well over a year ago. This legislation will benefit millions of students across the country in their pursuit of a higher education. The bill will improve programs such as Work-Study, Pell grant, TRIO, and student loans that help millions of students pay for college. We will do a number of important things here today. However, none may be as important as our efforts to keep student loans available for all students. As all of my colleagues know, we have been struggling for the past year with the student loan interest rate issue that is the direct result of the Student Loan Reform Act of 1993. That act changed the index for establishing interest rates on these loans. Prior to the Student Loan Reform Act, interest rates had always been tied to 91-day Treasury bills. However, as part of the changes associated with the creation of the Federal Direct Student Loan program, the index for establishing interest rates changed to one based on the 10-year Treasury bond. This scheduled rate change is serious and has the potential to disrupt the Federal Family Education Loan Program which provides nearly 70 percent of this country's Federal student loans. As a parent I am keenly aware of the burden being placed on our youth by student loan debt. I am personally committed to ensuring that the interest rate on Federal student loans is kept as low as possible. However, I also realize that there is a point at which the lenders will get out of the program. That point is reached when their return on making these loans falls short of the return they could make by investing elsewhere. Under the bill we are considering today, students will receive historically low interest rates, the lowest in 17 years. The rates students pay on new loans will drop from the current rate of 8.25 down to 7.43 during the repayment period. At the same time, the amount the lenders are paid will be reduced by 30 basis points which will, I believe, ensure uninterrupted access to private capital for our Nation's students. The chairman of the Subcommittee on Postsecondary Education, Training and Life-Long Learning, the gentleman from California (Mr. McKeon) and the ranking member of that subcommittee, the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Kildee) have worked very hard to find a solution to the crisis. That solution is contained in this legislation. Throughout this difficult process, the gentleman from California (Chairman McKeon) and the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Kildee) never forgot the interests of the students. They never gave up when negotiations broke down. I know that the ranking member of the committee, the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Clay) and the rest of the members of the committee are grateful for their efforts in resolving the issue. Mr. Chairman, I especially want to thank the Speaker of the House, the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Gingrich), the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Armey), the majority leader, as well as [[Page H2516]] the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Kasich) chairman of the Committee on the Budget. Without their help, this solution would not have been possible. All three contributed to ensuring that we could pay for this provision which is now budget neutral without passing any of the costs on to students. Many in the higher education community support the proposal and have joined me in praising the gentleman from California (Chairman McKeon) and the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Kildee) for their leadership. The major student groups have described the proposal as, and I quote, ``A realistic, fair, and even-handed compromise that protects students' need for lower borrower rates.'' The American Council on Education and 10 other major higher education groups representing over 3,600 colleges and universities praised the fact that the proposal ``ensures the continued availability of capital in the guaranteed student loan program.'' Mr. Chairman, for the people back home, I hope they would notice that I am not quoting anything that the lending institutions or the lending organizations have had to say about this. Obviously, they are not nearly as pleased. I continue to welcome the help of everyone who is willing to work in good faith to get the problem solved. I thank those who have already shown a willingness to seek common ground in order to ensure that student loans remain both inexpensive and available. But, Mr. Chairman, I am sorry to say that despite the bipartisan example set by the leaders on both sides of this committee, there are those who would continue to play politics with this issue. A high- ranking official at the Department of Education recently put out a press release about our bipartisan solution stressing that it recognizes the ``need to protect students from banks.'' Now, if there is anything that students need to be protected from, it is the high cost of getting an education and the quality of service they get from the bureaucracy at the Department. This bill scores high on both counts: It helps make college more affordable and it simplifies the student aid delivery system. The committee is proud of the accomplishments made to date in making college affordable for all students. Since we have been in charge, for example, Pell grants and College Work-Study are funded at all-time highs, while provisions in the Taxpayer Relief Act created education IRAs and other tax credits to help low- and middle-income students obtain a postsecondary education. The legislation we are considering today will build on these important achievements by continuing the important programs that serve students well and by reforming burdensome requirements to best meet the needs of students, families, and colleges across the country. Mr. Chairman, I do want to caution all of my colleagues to please be very, very careful about their ambition to add all sorts of things to this legislation, because they could kill the wonderful work that the subcommittee and then eventually the full committee has done. Mr. Chairman, we have also made significant changes to the current need analysis formula in order to address concerns raised by many students and families about the need to encourage students to work and save for their education. The bill increases the amount of money that students may earn before it impacts their eligibility for financial aid. By doing this, we are encouraging students to work and save for college. It also combines the assets of a student and his or her parents when calculating the ability of the family to contribute towards college. The current formula treats that assets of parents and students differently and separately as though they are not part of the same family. We are changing this provisions so the formula truly considers the ability of the family to pay for college. The legislation we will consider today will also improve service to students. It addresses the need to reduce the administrative costs associated with the processing, delivery, and monitoring of the Federal financial aid programs. It gives the Secretary of Education the tools he needs to bring the Department into the 21st Century. Specifically, the Department will be required to put in place a Performance-Based Organization (PBO) to run the day-to-day operations of the student financial aid delivery system. Chairman McKeon and Representative Kildee introduced the PBO bill last fall with the full support of the students and the rest of the higher education community. I am glad to see that it has been included in our final bill. A more stable and more efficient delivery system coupled with regulatory reform should result in reduced administrative costs for the Department as well as for schools, lenders, guaranty agencies, and other program participants who must interact with the Department's delivery system. This is particularly important since we are forcing lenders and guaranty agencies to operate with less revenue and we expect colleges to keep their costs down for students. The Department needs to contribute to these efforts by operating more efficiently so others can do the same. I'd also like to note some provisions of H.R. 6 that were offered in Committee by Representatives McKeon and Castle to make college affordable. The McKeon--Castle amendment will implement a number of the recommendations of the Commission on the Cost of Higher Education. This is important, because if we are truly interested in making sure that all Americans can afford a quality postsecondary education, and if we are truly interested in reducing the debt burden placed on our students, then the single most important thing we can do is to get colleges to lower their prices. These provisions are a needed first step in that direction. In addition to making college more affordable and simplifying the delivery system, we have fulfilled our promise to improve the quality of higher education. H.R. 6 will help create safer campuses where our nation's students can learn. It improves the information made available to students and families about crimes occurring on college campuses. And although no one can guarantee safety, we are making sure that students have the information they need to protect themselves from becoming victims of crime. We are also ensuring families have accurate information about crime on college campuses so they can make informed choices when selecting a college for their children. H.R. 6 also provides strong incentives for students to stay off drugs. An amendment offered by the gentleman from Indiana, Mr. Souder, and accepted in Committee will eliminate student aid eligibility for students convicted of drug offenses. This provision is based on an amendment offered by Mr. Solomon in 1992, which was accepted by the House. Unfortunately, the Solomon amendment was later dropped in conference. If we want to ensure safety on our Nation's campuses, it is vital to keep them drug-free. H.R. 6 also focuses on improving teacher quality so that students will have high quality teachers trained in the subject areas in which they teach. It is alarming to find that nearly one-third of all high school math teachers and over one fifth of all high school English teachers in this country have neither majored Nor minored in the subjects in which they teach. Given this fact, it should come as no surprise that American twelfth graders recently scored so low on the TIMMS international math and science test. Under this legislation, States will be encouraged to undertake a wide variety of efforts to improve the quality and ability of classroom teachers--beginning with the reform of institutions at which many of these teachers are prepared. Specifically, this bill amends the Higher Education Act by replacing 16 unfunded teacher preparation programs with a single competitive block grant, which I'm pleased to mention, was developed through a bipartisan process within our Committee. Using funds from this competitive block grant, Governors will have significant flexibility in which activities to carry out. Specifically, such efforts may include strengthening State teacher certification procedures to better reflect current and future teacher's academic knowledge of the subjects they teach; reforming schools of education and holding them accountable for producing quality teachers; creating and/or expanding programs which provide alternative routes to teacher certification; undertaking teacher recruitment efforts; and implementing initiatives to expeditiously remove incompetent or unqualified teachers. To ensure that States receiving these funds are making progress to improve teacher quality, this legislation also makes future grants to States contingent upon meeting specific goals such as being able to demonstrate an increased percentage of teachers teaching in subject areas and an increase in ``first-time'' certification and licensure rates among education school graduates. I would like to especially highlight several provisions that were worked out in a bipartisan fashion which are now part of the manager's package of amendments. They include: an increased emphasis on partnerships consisting of the Governor of a participating State, exemplary schools of education and local educational agencies; an increased focus, with respect to the teacher recruitment provisions, on schools most in need [[Page H2517]] of quality teachers, such as in poor urban and rural areas; and a clarification that the Governor shall be the grant recipient except in those cases where State law or constitution dictates that another individual is responsible for education. I look forward to the support of my colleagues for this compromise so that we can help States really reform teacher preparation programs and provide high quality teachers to our students. I would also like to thank Representative Graham for his efforts in working with Representative Kildee, in crafting a truly bipartisan initiative under this legislation which provides loan forgiveness for prospective teachers who agree to teach in high poverty urban or rural schools. In addition to the improvements we will make in the preparation of teachers, there are a host of other changes that will improve educational quality and opportunities far beyond the college campus. Today, the House will increase opportunities for all Americans to get the education they need through the expanded use of distance learning techniques and new technologies. Today we will also encourage students to become involved in their communities and to help children learn to read by ensuring that colleges use more of the Work-Study dollars to fund these initiatives. Finally, let me just say that that the legislation before us today is one of the most important things that we in the 105th Congress will do this year. It will ensure that every American has access to a quality postsecondary education at an affordable price. This is a bipartisan bill that makes much needed reforms to help students, parents, and schools. I urge all of my colleagues to support it, and I urge a ``yes'' vote on final passage. Mr. CLAY. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 5 minutes. Mr. Chairman, I want to commend the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Kildee) and the gentleman from California (Mr. McKeon) for their great bipartisan teamwork on this very important higher education initiative. They worked for better than a year to fashion legislation that I believe strengthens our country's commitment to higher education. I also want to commend the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Chairman Goodling) and all the committee members who made valuable contributions to the higher education reauthorization effort. I am pleased to give my enthusiastic support for this bill. The bill strengthens student aid financing by significantly reducing student loan interest rates, increasing Pell Grants and improving the calculations of benefits for independent and dependent students. The bill adopts a number of measures that enhance support for minority and disadvantaged students by strengthening the TRIO program and other programs supporting historically black colleges and universities, Hispanic-serving institutions and tribally controlled colleges. Mr. Chairman, I am also pleased that the committee adopted President Clinton's High Hopes program. And I commend the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Fattah) for his successful advocacy of this important initiative. Mr. Chairman, the bill also includes a number of provisions aimed at improving services to students on campus such as enhanced campus crime reporting, a new campus-based child care program and streamlining financial aid procedures. I am also pleased that teacher education and recruitment received a boost in this bill by the adoption of a loan forgiveness program for new teachers and strong teaching training partnerships. As we continue to work on this bipartisan bill, I hope that we can continue our efforts to resolve issues regarding loan consolidation interest rates, guarantee agencies, and the National Board for Teacher Certification. Finally, Mr. Chairman, I would like to express my hope that we will unanimously reject attempts to undermine this bipartisan bill through the introduction of a divisive anti-affirmative action amendment. The Riggs amendment has received universal condemnation among all those who care deeply about expanding educational opportunities for all Americans. Students, colleges, civil rights groups, editorial boards and women's groups across this country have urged us to reject this giant leap backwards. Last n