August 23, 1978
Page 27437
Mr. MAGNUSON. I will briefly explain what it does. This is an amendment I know that the committee has some doubts about, and we may have to have a roll call on it. Does the Senator from New York wish a roll call on this amendment?
Mr. JAVITS. I would like to hear the Senator.
Mr. MAGNUSON. I hope I am convincing enough that we will not need to have one.
The amendment has to do with impact aid. I have always been a strong supporter of impacted aid, but the program has just grown too fast. As a matter of fact, I say to my colleagues in the Senate that I am a little bit embarrassed about this, because I started the first impact aid. We were building a dam called the Grand Coulee Dam out in my State, and it was being built in a county that had nothing but sagebrush and jackrabbits. There was not a single taxable item in the county, and no schools.
Because it was a Federal project, we got started with impact aid to build a couple of schools for the kids of the workers that came there, the influx of workers.
But, as I say, it has grown too fast. We should make sure that the school districts which are affected by Federal programs, directly affected, are assisted. But this bill proposes to go far beyond that. The bill would add an additional $120 million in mandatory — again, mandatory — appropriations for public housing students.
Public housing is usually in an urban area. Usually public housing is surrounded by millions of dollars worth of real estate and buildings and has a tax base which is good.
I do not object to part of it, perhaps, but the amendment would leave the public housing provision as it currently stands, which is about $79 million, a reduction of $120 million. We are not taking money away from anyone. This money has not been appropriated.
The amendment would make it easier to add funds for public housing if Congress so decides, and if the Appropriations Committee so decides.
Under the amendment we can pull out some items and fund them separately, Including public housing, or stop what is going on in some of the counties. I need not mention again the counties around Washington, D.C., where we have seen a tremendous amount of impact aid because there are Government workers here.
It was not intended that way. It does not affect class A students and it does not affect any students coming from people who work in military establishments.
Mr. McINTYRE. Will the Senator yield?
Mr. MAGNUSON. In just a moment. The third type of impact aid would mandate a study of this program.
I do not know how to do it. It should be a legislative matter. Again, it has not been addressed by the legislative committees to change the rules. I need not cite what goes on in Fairfax County or Montgomery County. My own State is the recipient of a lot of impact aid. Some of it may not be for totally high priority items.
Mr. McINTYRE. Will the Senator yield?
Mr. MAGNUSON. In a moment. We could go on.
The Senator's former colleague, Norris Cotton, and I have always been opposed to this.
I really want to assist the education of public housing students, and we should add money to the title I program where the money is specifically targeted to the education of the disadvantaged.
All this amendment does is move back to the present level the $79 million and the bill mandates that we go up another $120 million. This knocks a mandatory $120 million out of the bill.
I yield the floor.
Mr. McINTYRE. Does the Senator's amendment in any way affect the 3(a) student, the student who lives on the post with their parents and goes to public schools?
Mr. MAGNUSON. Not at all.
Mr. McINTYRE. I have an amendment on that subject.
Mr. MAGNUSON. They should be taken care of. It is that the abuses in this program have gone up to about $600 million in the bill for this program. There are 435 legislative districts in this country, or congressional districts, and 432 are in impact areas. I do not know what happened. There are 432 which receive impact aid based upon there being a Federal employee around somewhere.
I understand that they are starting to suggest that postal employees' school children can be used for the school district to get impact aid because they work for the Federal Government I think it is a time to put a stop to it, or at least hold it down and not have it mandatory. Let us take a look at it anyway.
(Mr. METZENBAUM assumed the chair.)
SEVERAL SENATORS. Vote!
Mr. JAVITS. Mr. President, I oppose this amendment. I know Senator MAGNUSON has been wonderful in many things, but I believe this is very unfair, taking it out of the hides of the children who come from public housing projects which are federally financed. We had a tremendous battle getting them in because the fact is that a big block of money goes to impact aid. Impact aid will be run in a different manner, we will soon see, when Senator MAGNUSON presents his amendment.
Mr. MAGNUSON. If the Senator will yield, we are not kicking out anybody. All we are doing is removing a mandate that we increase it by 150 percent. That is all.
Mr. JAVITS. The Senator is eliminating from tier 2 the public housing children, which means that the public housing children will only get 25 percent of what they would otherwise get if they were included in tier 2. They would get 57 percent. So the Senator's amendment is cutting out the U.S. public housing children in a way which is very discriminatory to them.
Mr. MAGNUSON. We are not going to make it discriminatory. We are going to take a look at it.
Mr. JAVITS. In the meantime, the amendment is cutting it out.
Mr. MAGNUSON. The Senator's public housing is surrounded by hundreds of millions of dollars of expensive real estate.
Mr. JAVITS. And the public housing is still there and those people are still there and still need help.
Mr. MAGNUSON. And 29 percent of this goes to the State of New York.
Mr. JAVITS. Not that I am conscious of.
Mr. MAGNUSON. That is the figure.
Mr. JAVITS. Concerning the whole impact aid program, Mr. President, if we are going to knock it out, knock it out.
Mr. MAGNUSON. I am not talking about that.
Mr. JAVITS. I understand. But the whole impact aid program was originally invented here for the purpose of looking after something which is no longer true. It is really aid to public schools now. As far as public housing was concerned it was the only way in which many communities in this country — and I am being brutally frank with the Senate — could get a look in on all this dough. It was the only way it could be done. Now if we are knocked out we are being discriminated against and the Senator is making it necessary for us to go after the whole impact aid program. I promise, we will. The big cities of the country may not do it tonight, but they will wake up and they will join me. They will knock it all out. That is what you are doing.
The minute you start monkeying around with this tier system, and the minute you knock a particular block of children out of it, you are inviting disaster for impact aid. Every administration has been against it, the Republicans and the Democrats, but they have had to live with it and tolerate it. I have, too, and every other big city Senator has had to live with it and tolerate it, and do his utmost to get a piece of the action.
I said I would be very frank with the Senate and I am being frank.
If you want to cut us out, OK, you may have the votes to do it, but I promise you that you will lose the whole program the minute you start to monkey with it. Sure, so many school districts are in it precisely for that reason. Everybody else wants a piece of the action, as long as there is going to be Federal aid to public schools with a big block of public money, just as I did and other Senators representing big cities. But if you tamper with it this way and knock these kids out, that is the end of the program. It may not be this year but it will be the next year or the year after that.
Mr. MAGNUSON. If I may
Mr. JAVITS. I have not yielded, I say to the Senator. Let me finish.
Mr. MAGNUSON. But the Senator is getting emotional.
Mr. JAVITS. I am not a bit emotional but I am indignant. The quality of indignancy should not be mixed up with emotion. I can understand what the Senator is doing. I cannot understand why, but I can understand what he is doing. He is putting a ceiling on this. Every impact recipient better understand this.
This cuts the amount available for impact aid by about one-third. The Appropriations Committee does not have to appropriate all the money which is provided for impact aid, even without this amendment. But now, in addition to the discretion and the volition of the Appropriations Committee, a ceiling is put on it. So even if the Appropriations Committee wanted to give you the full amount which is provided they could not do it because the ceiling, as I say, is one-third less than the allowable amount which the Appropriations Committee, with complete volition, could do if it wanted to.
Senator MAGNUSON is a very important and influential person. I am really very fond of him; I am devoted to him. But this is what is happening right here, tonight. I think the votes are here to accomplish it if the Senator presses his amendment, as I know he will. But I am just telling you what you are doing to a program which, by simple acceptance, has been accepted as a part of Federal aid to schools and everybody has some part of it. So we accept it and tolerate it. But when you begin to dismantle it, and this is the first move to do it, I promise you that you are going to have to answer to why these children and not those children, why these children and not the other children, and that tier system. The whole neat plan is going to begin to be very materially broken up.
Mr. MAGNUSON. This money does not knock out any children anyplace.
Mr. JAVITS. It knocks out these children in Federal public housing projects.
Mr. MAGNUSON. It does not knock them out.
Mr. JAVITS. It most assuredly does.
Mr. MAGNUSON. The school district of New York can take care of it; can they not?
Mr. JAVITS. No; they cannot.
Mr. MAGNUSON. Why not?
Mr. JAVITS. Because they do not have the money, any more than any other places in the country have the money.
Mr. MAGNUSON. That is not the point.
Mr. JAVITS. Well, it is. This is knocking out Federal aid.
Mr. MAGNUSON. It is not kids at all.
Mr. CHILES. Will the Senator yield?
Mr. MAGNUSON. Yes.
Mr. CHILES. My understanding is that what this amendment does is simply say that the amount of money, $180 million, this bill sets an authorization for an increase of $180 million, that increase to be in public housing. It says that $180 million, and only that portion, which is new, will be subject to an appropriation for the first time. Before that, we had formulas. They are locked in.
You have to appropriate on the basis of those formulas and everything we are talking about in this series of amendments tonight is to try to allow the Appropriations Committee, which is supposed to have that role — that is what it is supposed to be about — the ability to look at this as we look at the defense authorization, as we look at the authorization bills that come out of other authorizing committees, and say we can only fund so much of those this year.
This provides for an increase. It is an authorizing committee proposal. Most of the authorizing committees will come up as they reauthorize for increases. It simply says that this increase in the public housing field will have to be subject to the Appropriations Committee and subject to appropriation.
We realize that this is a complex subject. Most of us know that we have to do something about impact aid. We know that it has gotten out of control and we now have all but about three of the legislative districts in the entire country drawing impact aid. We do not know just how to get a handle on that now, so we are not even attempting to do that. We are saying that should be studied.
What we are saying is we authorize new and additional funds. For goodness sake, we say that is subject to an appropriation, as we should be doing with all authorizing measures. That is all, in effect, that this does.
Mr. JAVITS. Mr. President, if I may complete my argument.
Mr. MUSKIE. Will the Senator yield?
Mr. CHILES. I yield.
Mr. MUSKIE. I want to be sure I understand accurately what the present situation is. This public housing money was not in tier 2 under current law. So if my understanding is correct, we are not cutting anything out of what anybody has now. We are amending a bill that proposes to put public housing in tier 2 where it is not presently found.
Am I not right?
Mr. JAVITS. That is correct.
Mr. MUSKIE. So, we are not cutting them out.
Mr. JAVITS. We are cutting them out in practical effect.
Mr. MUSKIE. We are cutting them out of this new authorization scheme.
Mr. JAVITS. While you are looking after everybody else. That is my argument.
Mr. MUSKIE. These other groups have been funded in tier 2 prior to this re-authorization bill.
Mr. JAVITS. Nonetheless, they are being looked after and the fact is that the fact that the public housing children—
Mr. MUSKIE. My point is this:
This represents an expansion with respect to the public housing students because they were never in tier 2 before. They were prepared for inclusion in this bill. You cannot appropriate in tier 2 until you have appropriated fully in tier 1. You cannot appropriate in tier 3 until you have appropriated fully in tier 2. This tier system has been devised to force that full funding for tier 1 and then for tier 2 before you can get to tier 3. By putting public housing students into tier 2, we are giving them a status they do not now have.
The second point I would like to make is that these payments to school districts for public housing students will not go to pay for the education of public housing students. The payments would go to the jurisdictions in which the public housing students are found and they will be used in those jurisdictions for the general education program.
Mr. JAVITS. I shall answer that in a minute. I yield to Senator EAGLETON.
Mr. EAGLETON. Mr. President, I know the hour is late, but like my colleague from New York (Mr. JAVITS) , I think this is an important matter that merits at least a little attention. It was my amendment in 1970 that brought public housing students first into the impact formula; 1974 was the first time funds were appropriated for the impact aid provision. As does the Senator from New York, I have an enormous respect for the chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee. I have worked with him and I admire him and respect him greatly.
But, Mr. President, what he rails against tonight, a Federal judge in his home State or Federal officials living in Montgomery County, Md., and Montgomery County, Md., whose children are eligible for impact aid by reason thereof, these are the real evils of impact aid. Those are the evils that this body will not eliminate.
I will bet if I offered an amendment to do away with all of impact aid except "A" students — that is, students whose families live and work on base, and that is the true impaction, and that is the original intent of the bill — if I offered an amendment to restore it to what it was originally designed to be and what each of us in our own minds knows today it should be, I doubt if I would get four votes. I do not think I would get four. Maybe I ought to offer it to see how few I would get. I have a record on some of my amendments of getting less than double-digit support. Maybe this would be yet another one.
Some of us were looking at the impact aid formula and saw that Montgomery County was getting a ton of money for no good reason, and Fairfax County was getting a ton of money for no good reason. So all of this largesse was being spread around for, really, no good educational reason other than the fact that the formula grew. Some of us said, well, so what. What is the worst kind of an impaction insofar as a tax point of view that a city can have? The impaction of a public housing project, where there are no taxes paid and where, from giant highrise complexes, thousands of kids are thrust upon a school system.
My friend from Washington tells me that right outside of public housing are all these properties that can be taxed. Maybe Seattle is an affluent city. I daresay it is. But I will tell you, the St. Louis school system is dead broke and has a lot of housing projects in it. I will tell you the Kansas City, Mo., school system is dead broke and has a lot of housing projects in it.
Sure, Senator JAVITS speaks up for New York City. Does anybody have to take notice that New York City and its school system is financially bankrupt? It is. And part of that impaction and part of the reason for that bankruptcy is the fact that we have put public housing in mass concentrations in small numbers of urban centers, and then said, go ahead, see what you can do with these kids.
If we want really to purify impact aid, yes, strike it all except the "A" kids, those who live and work on base. That is what the bill was originally about. But if you are going to throw Montgomery County into it, and we have, and we do not have the guts to retrieve it, and if we are going to throw Fairfax into it and throw Beverly Hills into it, I say the Senator from New York is absolutely right.
The true impaction is the public housing impaction and that is where there is need for additional Federal money.
Mr. PELL addressed the Chair.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Rhode Island is recognized.
Mr. MAGNUSON. May I say to the Senator from Missouri that he is a distinguished Member—
Mr. PELL. I yield to the Senator from Washington.
Mr. MAGNUSON. I had the floor. I have the amendment.
Mr. PELL. I was just recognized. But I yield to the distinguished Senator from Washington.
Mr. MAGNUSON. In this process, you can submit an amendment for your problem and you may get my support. We just say the Appropriations Committee should take a look at it and not be mandated by this group. That is all.
Mr. PELL. Mr. President, I think the Senator from New York and the Senator from Missouri have articulated far more eloquently than I could the reasons why this amendment should be defeated.
I suggest we all know our own mind and we move to a vote. I will vote to accept it.
Mr. JAVITS. Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second? There is a sufficient second.
The yeas and nays were ordered.
Mr. ROBERT C. BYRD. Vote! Vote!
The PRESIDING OFFICER The question is on agreeing to UP amendment No.1744 of the Senator from Washington (Mr. MAGNUSON). The yeas and nays have been ordered and the clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk called the roll.
The result was announced — yeas 62, nays 22, as follows:
[Roll Call Vote tally omitted]