No Child Left Inside Act of 2008

Floor Speech

NO CHILD LEFT INSIDE ACT OF 2008 -- (House of Representatives - September 18, 2008)

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Mr. McKEON. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself the balance of my time.

One week before the 110th Congress is scheduled to adjourn, we are devoting precious legislative hours to debating a noncontroversial bill to extend a minuscule environmental education program for 1 year. I think we all agree that environmental education is important now and for future generations, and I want to commend the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Sarbanes) for the work that he's done on this bill. I think, as he has eloquently stated, environmental education is very important. But how we spend our time in this Chamber is a reflection of our priorities, and today, our priorities are all wrong.

Chairman Miller and I work well together on the Education and Labor Committee, and we often reach agreements before bills are brought to the floor. On this bill, we worked together to resolve our differences, and we agreed that while important, this bill was straightforward and noncontroversial--most of our Members will vote for it--enough that it should be considered on the suspension calendar. I believe that two-thirds of this body would easily have supported the legislation, making these hours of debate unnecessary.

For whatever reason, whether to mask their continued failure to offer comprehensive energy solutions or simply to avoid a debate on the issue altogether, the majority has opted to bring this bill to the floor today under a rule. So let me just take a moment to reflect on H.R. 3036.

The Federal Government has a role to play in education. That role is to provide support and assistance to ensure that all children are provided a quality education. It is to support the academic achievement of disadvantaged children, children with disabilities, and other at-risk students who might otherwise be left behind. In pursuing these goals, we must be careful not to create too much bureaucracy nor too many Federal programs that could undermine local control.

That's why I appreciate the efforts that were made to limit the scope of this bill, extending an existing program at the EPA and supplementing it with similar activities through the Department of Education rather than establishing a massive new environmental education bureaucracy as some had originally proposed.

This is a reasonable bill, and at the end of the day, I will support it. But, Mr. Chairman, if I had my choice, we would not be here debating this legislation today. Although environmental education is important, this Congress has a limited amount of time to challenge our mammoth problems facing this Nation.

As of a few minutes ago, when we found we won't be in session tomorrow, if we work all of next week, we will have 5 days left to finish the work of this Congress. Instead of tinkering around the edges of an existing environmental education program, we ought to be debating comprehensive, all-of-the-above approaches to reform our Nation's energy policy and put America on the path to energy independence.

Here we are, going into the last week of this Congress. We've been here 2 years, we only have now 13 days of work scheduled for the last 5 months of this year--and that, after our Democrat leadership, during the last election, said that we would be a harder working Congress, we would be a more open Congress, we would be one that would follow regular order, we would be open to the way this House was meant to function.

At this point, we have not passed one spending bill. The spending bills that were passed last year run out on September 30, the new year starts October 1, and not one spending bill to continue to fund the Government through the next year has yet been passed. We did pass one on this floor, but not one has been passed through the whole process--the House, the Senate, and been sent to the President's desk, not one spending bill.

I guess the people throughout the country will be watching and seeing what happens on October 1. Will the Government be shut down? I don't know. I don't know how they plan to solve this problem. I just know that at this point they have not brought one spending bill to completion for the President to sign.

We have not finished our work on this committee on No Child Left Behind. That was a very, very important piece of legislation. We worked on it last year. We haven't talked about it for over a year now. And I guess that's just going to be let go into next year, when a new Congress will be here.

I am greatly disappointed, Mr. Chairman, with the work product of this Congress. We had the ability. We had new leadership that came in with lots of promises, lots of enthusiasm, lots of things that were going to be done to make things better for the American public. The most important issue facing us today is the energy issue. Every one of us in America sees that every day when we fill our tanks or at least drive by the gas stations and see how the price has gone up--or maybe down a couple cents, depending, but it's a couple dollars more than it was when the Republicans were in charge here a couple years ago.

We had the opportunity this year, even this week, to address an all-of-the-above energy solution: More conservation, more alternative fuels, more biomass, more wind, more solar--yes, and more oil, more coal, more shale.

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Mr. McKEON. Madam Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

I want to thank Chairman Miller for offering this amendment, and Mr. Sarbanes for filling in.

This amendment clarifies that the Federal Government will not impose an environmental justice curriculum on our Nation's schools. This issue was debated during the committee consideration of the bill and it was an issue on which there was disagreement between the majority and the minority. I believe that the bill approved by our committee went too far in this regard because it could have required State and local officials to develop specific environmental justice curricula.

We have long believed that specific curricula--which is taught in individual classrooms--is best determined at the local level. And while this bill contains a broad prohibition on Federal curriculum development, I believe it was necessary to clarify the environmental justice language as well so that there would be no confusion as to what the Federal Government is or is not demanding of our schools. Chairman Miller worked closely with me to refine this language, and I want to thank him for his willingness to do so.

This amendment also contains some interesting language that was added earlier this week, presumably in response to efforts on our side of the aisle to ensure this bill does not ignore critical energy issues.

Republicans proposed amendments to advance the understanding of the environmental and economic benefits of clean coal and oil shale production, energy production in the ANWR, and energy production on the Outer Continental Shelf. We proposed amendments to advance the understanding of the environmental and economic benefits of nuclear power, and of American-made energy, and of the all-of-the-above energy strategy, which would increase production, promote conservation, and expand innovation. We think that each of these issues deserves a full and open debate because an all-of-the-above energy strategy does not ignore any aspect of energy reform.

Although our amendments were not made in order, I was pleased to see that the Miller amendment now includes language to ensure that environmental education programs include a discussion of the costs and benefits of oil and gas drilling, of nuclear power, of new coal technologies, and of renewable energy sources. While this language is not as strong and comprehensive as what the Republicans had offered, I appreciate its inclusion nonetheless.

The truth is we need to be talking about energy more, not less. We passed an energy bill earlier this week that won't increase energy production. We passed an energy bill that puts American resources under lock and key instead of opening them up to environmentally safe production that will create jobs and that will bring down energy prices. This sham of a bill that we passed raises taxes and stands to drive consumer prices up, not down.

So I'm glad we're going to be talking to our children about the benefits of American energy production. It's a conversation we should be having here in Congress as well.

Once again, I want to thank Chairman Miller for working with me to clarify the environmental justice aspect of this legislation, and I look forward to supporting this amendment.

I reserve the balance of my time.

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Mr. McKEON. I yield myself such time as I may consume.

The bill before us is about environmental education. Specifically, it is about teaching elementary and secondary students about the world in which they live, about the natural resources of our great Nation and about the stewardship of our environment and of our resources for the future.

This legislation provides grants to State and local education agencies, to institutions of higher education or to nonprofit organizations. The resources are targeted to ensure they will directly benefit students. This amendment, as I understand it, would make ``municipalities eligible for these grants as well.'' Unfortunately, that term is not defined, leaving open to interpretation just exactly how far we would be expanding this program.

Without a clear and narrow definition, this amendment could open up the funding to any number of entities, including cities, townships, districts or county governments, to name just a few. In other words, this amendment opens the limited resources under the bill to organizations that may or may not provide the direct services to students that we're seeking.

I support local control and local partnerships. That's why I support the Courtney amendment, which allows partnerships with State and local park departments. Through that model, we provide grants directly to educational organizations, which can then partner with the local organizations we're talking about now that can enrich the environmental education experience.

I understand what the gentleman is trying to accomplish with this amendment, and I'd like to work with him to see if we can get there, but at this time, I'm opposed to this amendment because it's not clear enough about prioritizing funds for educational entities that provide direct services to students. I know that the majority is working with us to clarify the definition of ``municipality.''

As this bill moves forward, I look forward to working with them to ensure we do not dilute the limited resources of this program away from the students they're intended for.

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Mr. McKEON. I appreciate the gentleman. As I said, I appreciate his amendment, and I appreciate his effort in this regard.

This points out, once again, to me that we have a large country with 435 congressional districts. Just within my congressional district, we have cities; we have counties; we have towns; we have towns that really don't have a government responsibility, but they're kind of granted that, and that's just in my district. I haven't had the opportunity to visit your district. I'm sure that in each of the 435 districts we would find different ways that this would be treated, and that is my concern is how we define that.

I think the gentleman's bill is directed towards students to help students get the education of environmental studies that he would like to see and that I support. The concern that I have again is that, if we direct it as your amendment would, it may be directed away from students. I think that this could be worked out. As we know, we are not going to finish this up in this Congress anyway, so it will be something that will carry over next year. Should we all happen by some circumstance to win our elections, we'll be back here in a few months, working on this again, but at this point, I would still have to oppose the amendment, hoping that we could work this out in the future.

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Mr. McKEON. Madam Chairman, as I stated earlier, I support the gentleman's amendment and commend him on it.

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Madam Chairman, over the last several years, the National Park Service has increasingly relied on partnerships with outside entities to fulfill its mission and foster a shared sense of stewardship for our environment and natural resources. In fact, a number of National Park Service programs operate almost exclusively through partnerships.

One way the National Park Service is supporting environmental education is through professional development opportunities for teachers. These include helping teachers utilize park resources in the classroom or preparing classes for a park visit. Most of these workshops are accredited and can be taken for college credit, and are structured to meet the needs of today's teacher--teaching to academic content standards while making the material engaging and relevant.

Because of the existing commitment on the part of the National Park Service to provide educational enrichment, the bill allows grantees to enter into National Park Service partnerships as a means to increase the knowledge and understanding of environmental education.

The Courtney amendment goes beyond this focus on the National Park Service, by allowing grant applicants to discuss through the grant application process how they have partnered, or intend to partner, with a state and local park and recreation department.

I support this amendment because it maintains the current funding structure--in which we provide grants to educational organizations--while making clear that students can benefit from the creativity, experience, and resources of local programs. These types of partnerships could benefit students by enriching their environmental education experience, and I thank the gentleman for offering this amendment to clarify that these partnerships are permissible, and welcome, under the legislation.

This amendment builds on the existing emphasis we have placed on partnerships with the National Park Service, and I am happy to support it.

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