District of Columbia House Voting Rights Act of 2009
Floor Speech
DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA HOUSE VOTING RIGHTS ACT OF 2009 -- (Senate - February 26, 2009)
AMENDMENT NO. 587
Mr. VOINOVICH. Madam President, today I speak as a Member of the Senate, but also as a former chairman and now ranking member of the Oversight of Government Management, the Federal Workforce, and the District of Columbia Subcommittee. I have had a relationship with the District for quite some period of time and have been very interested in the District and also in the District's reaching out in terms of providing a quality education for the boys and girls who live in the District, understanding that this is the Nation's Capital and it should be the shining city on a hill where people can come from all over America and see the very best we have in our country in terms of educational opportunities and, I also feel, the opportunity of people to have the right to vote.
As a result of my concerns about the ways to rectify the lack of voting representation for the District, I have approached this bill with the belief that citizens who pay taxes and serve in the military should have House representation so long as such representation conforms to the Constitution.
Although a constitutional amendment would provide the clearest constitutional means to ensure District residents are provided House representation, after studying the legal arguments, I have concluded that there are sufficient indicia and precedent that the Constitution's District clause grants Congress the constitutional authority to give the District a House Member. As for any argument that the bill is unconstitutional, I need only to say that I believe any ambiguity and disagreement will be resolved quickly by the courts.
After weighing the constitutional arguments and equities, I have decided to support this legislation--in fact, I am a cosponsor of this legislation--on one condition: We must also continue to give the families of the District a vote on how their children are educated.
Accordingly, I am proud to join Senator Ensign in offering an amendment to reauthorize the District of Columbia Scholarship Program for an additional year. Perhaps one may wonder why am I so concerned about this issue. It is because of the fact that when I was Governor of Ohio, we started a scholarship program in Ohio for children who were not members of the public schools. That experiment has worked to the benefit of thousands of children, particularly in the Cleveland district, who have gone through the system and are now in college. I meet with them, and they tell me: Were it not for the Cleveland Scholarship Program where I had a choice to go to another school, I don't believe I would be in college today and be as successful as I have been.
When I instituted that program, it was said it was unconstitutional. I am pleased to say that several years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court said that providing scholarships to nonpublic school systems fit in with the Constitution of our country.
When we had an opportunity to help the District, we provided $14 million for public schools, $14 million for charters, and $14 million for the scholarship program. It is a critical component of a three-sector education strategy to provide a quality education to every child in the District, regardless of income or neighborhood.
The program provides up to $7,500 per student per year to fund tuition, fees, and transportation expenses for K-12 for low-income DC families.
To qualify, students must live in the District and have a household income of no more than 185 percent of the Federal poverty level. In 2008, that was
about $39,000 per family of four. In fact, the average income for families using scholarships in 2008 was just over $24,000.
Since its inception, the program has served over 2,600 students. They have about 7,500 who would like to get in the program, but they do not have a place for them. Entering students had average math and reading test scores in the bottom third.
A recent evaluation of the Department of Education reaffirms academic gains among participants less than 2 years after receiving a scholarship. They are benefiting from it. We need more time to see how it works out. I wish to underscore that I think this is part of this whole package we put together.
Many Members of this body are unaware of the fact that today the people who live in the District can go to any public college in the United States and we provide up to $10,000 for out-of-State tuition. They are not aware of the fact that Don Graham over at the Washington Post got the business community together and set up the Washington scholarship program, the CAP program, and $2,500 is available for youngsters. Or that the Gates Foundation thinks so much of what is happening in the District that they provided another $120 million to keep kids in school in the two worst dropout districts in the District of Columbia.
There are some wonderful things happening in the District, and yet--and yet--there are some people here, because of special interest groups, who want to do away with the scholarship program. They want to deny these children an opportunity to have this educational opportunity, this smorgasbord we have available to them.
What this amendment does is it extends for 1 year that program as we look at it and see how it goes through its metamorphosis.
I have to say to my colleagues on the other side of the aisle and this side of the aisle, if you want to do something that is disastrous to the kids in the District in terms of public relations and the interest of all these people in the District, go ahead and make it impossible for this program to keep going.
Think about this: the Gates Foundation, the College Assistance Program--great things are happening in the District today. What a terrible message it would send to the rest of the country and those who care about education in the District if we were denied this opportunity, this experiment to continue in the District.
I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record two editorials, one on January 26 titled ``School Vouchers, District parents know why the program should continue.'' The demand for it is tremendous. They want it. And a recent editorial, ``Hoping no one notices, congressional Democrats step between 1,800 DC children and a good education.''
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in the RECORD, as follows:
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Mr. VOINOVICH. Madam President, do you know why? It is because of the National Education Association. They do not want it to happen. They fought it in my State. The Ohio school boards fought it. I will never forget going up for an endorsement in 2004 when I ran last time. When I ran in 1998, I got support from the Ohio Education Society. They said: No Governor has done more for education than GEORGE VOINOVICH. So I came to Washington. They kind of forgave me for the scholarship program in Cleveland. They kind of let that go.
Madam President, 2004 came along, and I went through the whole endorsement procedure. I did everything. After it was over, many people came up to me and said: George, you absolutely did a fabulous job with your presentation, what you are trying to do with education on the national level and you are concerned about it. But we got the word from Washington that you are not going to be endorsed because you have broken the rule in supporting scholarships, supporting an opportunity for kids to have another opportunity to go to school and try something new.
I want to say this. In this country of ours, we cannot survive with half the kids in our urban districts dropping out of school. I am glad the President spoke about it in his State of the Union. I am glad the President talked about charter schools. But the real question is, Is he going to stand up and are the Democrats on the other side of the aisle and some Republicans going to stand up to the National Education Association, the National School Boards Association and some of these groups that want to keep things as they are?
I am going to tell you something, Madam President. We will never make
it. I want everybody to understand that I am for this bill, voting rights, but I am not going to support this bill unless I am convinced we are going to have an opportunity to debate this issue in the Senate and keep this program going for the boys and girls who are benefiting from it, the same kind of program that benefited so many thousands of people in the State of Ohio.
I yield the floor.
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