Providing for consideration of the bill (H.R. 366) to amend the Carl D. Perkins Vocational and Technical Education Act of 1998 to strengthen and improve programs under that Act.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the gentleman from Utah (Mr. Bishop) for yielding me the customary 30 minutes.

(Mr. McGOVERN asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. Speaker, H.R. 366, the Vocational and Technical Education For the Future Act, is a good news/bad news piece of legislation. The good news is that this is a bipartisan bill. And the Republican majority in the Education and the Workforce Committee supports these important vocational programs, and were determined to bring this reauthorization bill to the House floor.

The bad news is that these same Republican leaders voted just last week for a budget resolution that eliminates all funding for these programs in fiscal year 2006. The good news, which we will no doubt hear from some of our Republican colleagues today, is that they are determined to restore some of the funding for the Perkins Vocational Education Programs when the House starts moving forward individual appropriations bills, and that there is room to fund these programs under the budget education numbers.

The bad news is that the education funding in the budget resolution is so limited that it already requires deep cuts and even elimination of many other critical education programs. So to restore the $1.3 billion for vocational, career and technical education and training programs that the Republicans just voted to eliminate from the Federal budget, will require cutting even deeper an additional $1.3 billion from all the other education programs.

Moving on, Mr. Speaker, the good news is that H.R. 366 increases State and local accountability for these programs and they are funded. The bill requires each local recipient to establish levels of performance for high school and post secondary students in core skills and knowledge. This is an important new responsibility for local educators, and for the States that must negotiate and monitor these accountability measures.

The bad news is that this bill does not authorize, let alone provide, additional funding or resources to ensure that local schools and States can successfully carry out these new responsibilities and requirements.

We have all seen this before, Mr. Speaker. We have seen this in the No Child Left Behind Act where the law mandates new responsibilities, new accountability measures, and new administrative tasks, but fails to provide the necessary resources to ensure their success.

At least in No Child Left Behind, Congress authorized the funding to support these new mandates, even though the President and the Republican Congress failed to provide the funding to carry them out successfully.

H.R. 366, does not even pretend to authorize additional resources. It just requires this additional workload happen. In fact, H.R. 366 actually reduces the setaside for State administrative funds while State responsibilities are being increased. Mr. Speaker, we used to call these unfunded mandates by the Federal Government, but I guess times have changed.

Finally, this bill consolidates into one block of funding both the Perkins State grant program for vocational education, and the tech prep program that prepares students and current worker for highly skilled technical occupations.

The good news is that this is an effort to save the tech prep program. The bad news is that history has shown us that when programs are rolled together into one block grant, they inevitably end up receiving less funding over time than they would have if they remained separated programs.

While this authorization requires the consolidated grant programs to ensure that fiscal year 2006 tech prep presumes received the same level of funding as in fiscal year 2005, it authorizes no such assurances for fiscal years 2007 through 2011.

But what does it matter, Mr. Speaker? There is no money for these programs in the 2006 budget resolution. So why quibble over the details of the authorization, when it is all window dressing anyway?

Mr. Speaker, Federal support for career and technical education is a critical means of ensuring that our students and our future workforce are well trained for the jobs of the present and the future. The career and technical education programs funded under the Carl D. Perkins Vocational and Education Act, and reauthorized by H.R. 366, provide the training and the skills for high school and community college students to prepare for their post secondary education and employment and ensure their future financial success.

It is shameful, then, that President Bush and the Republican- controlled Congress have undermined these critical programs by presenting budgets and approving budget resolutions that eliminate their funding.

America has lost over 1.7 million private sector jobs since the start of the Bush administration, and hundreds of thousands of American jobs have been outsourced to other countries. The Republican response has been to short-change our students and workers instead of investing in them.

Businesses and rapidly growing industries face the prospect that many high-skilled, high-wage jobs will go unfilled or be outsourced because they cannot find enough qualified American workers. At the same time, millions of young adults ages 16 to 24 lack the skills needed to secure jobs that pay more than poverty-level wages.

Rather than invest more funds in career and technical education and training in our high schools and community colleges, President Bush and the Republican Congress have chosen to terminate the entire $1.3 billion Federal investment in these programs. Nearly half of all high school students and one-third of college students who take vocational courses will be denied funding, leaving many schools and communities unable to prepare these students to successfully enter the workforce.

Mr. Speaker, in Worcester, Massachusetts, the city has invested in constructing a modern vocational high school to serve over 1,000 students, recognizing the importance of training these students to enter the manufacturing and high-tech companies of central Massachusetts. Currently, several students at Worcester Vocational High School have received Skills USA Awards to the Vocational Industrial Clubs of America; and one student, Christopher Bradley, placed third in national competitions.

Just recently, three other vocational students, Amanda Niquette, Alicia Sheperd and Amy Trujillo, received an award for their work in raising community awareness about hunger. They created public service ads on hunger, appeared on local talk shows, and organized a breakfast that raised over $3,000 for the Worcester Food Bank.

Mr. Speaker, these students and tens of thousands of students just like them across our Nation deserve the support of this Congress. But the Republican majority is turning its back on these young men and women and their hopes to contribute to our communities and our national economy.

While it is important to reauthorize these programs, it is just as important to make sure that they are fully funded.

Mr. Speaker, the Republican majority cannot declare with a straight face that it supports these programs by passing H.R. 366 this week, when just last week in a rush to the House floor it approved a budget based on eliminating all funding for these programs.

I recognize that authorizations and appropriations are different bills; but they are all part of the same process, namely, the budget process. In fact, the budget resolution is like the mother of all authorization and appropriations bills. Mr. Speaker, despite what I expect to be widespread support for this bill, and I will vote for this bill, I do not want my colleagues on the other side to mislead the American public by claiming that this is a good and fair rule.

Yes, two of the three amendments made in order are Democratic amendments, but the Republican leadership denied five other amendments from being offered on the floor today. My

friends on the other side of the aisle will say it is a good thing that two-thirds of the amendments made in order are Democratic amendments. Let me respond right now. Denying five of eight amendments, a total of two-thirds of the total amendments offered before the Committee on Rules, is undemocratic and it is one more example of Republican leadership trying to stifle debate in this country on very important issues.

Of those amendments not made in order today, Mr. Speaker, the one that is most troublesome is the amendment offered by the gentleman from California (Mr. George Miller), the ranking member on the Committee on Education and the Workforce.

The Miller amendment is simple. It prohibits the Department of Education from using Federal funds to pay journalists or media commentators to engage in publicity or propaganda. It also would have required prepackaged news segments paid with Federal funds to disclose such funding in the segment. This is a simple and straightforward amendment. Republicans and Democrats in this body and the Senate have publicly condemned the way President Bush paid Armstrong Williams and other journalists to publicly support partisan and controversial administration policies.

This amendment does not blame anyone. It just says that no administration now and in the future can use journalists to act as paid ambassadors for administration policy. Why would the Republican leadership deny this amendment? Why should this administration's actions be condemned but not prohibited?

My Republican friends, I am sure, will not answer these questions; but let me tell you, Mr. Speaker, that this is just one more case of the Republican leadership's actions not matching their rhetoric.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, before I introduce our next speaker, let me respond to the gentleman. When he mentioned the fact, I think he used the word that some of these amendments were not germane to the bill, it is my understanding that all eight Democratic amendments were cleared by the Parliamentarian of this House as being germane. And if we had an open rule, every single one of them would have been germane to this bill and could have been offered. So, again, it is puzzling to me why some of these amendments were denied.

I would also say to the gentleman, the point I was trying to make is that while there is a lot in this reauthorization bill that is good in terms of reauthorizing programs, it seems inconsistent with the budget resolution that the Republican leadership passed just last week that eliminates a significant amount of funding from the education budget.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Woolsey).

Mr. Speaker, I once again yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Woolsey).

Mr. Speaker, I reserve my time.

Mr. Speaker, does the gentleman have any more speakers on his side?

Mr. Speaker, I continue to reserve my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

I want to close by again expressing my disappointment that this is not an open rule, and that if they did not want to give an open rule, they should have made at least all eight amendments in order.

Five Democratic amendments were not made in order under this rule, notwithstanding the fact that, according to the parliamentarian, they were germane. These amendments were thoughtful. They certainly would not have disrupted the debate on this bill. They could have been dealt with in a short period of time, but I think my friends on the majority side are so addicted to denying amendments and stifling debate and closing rules that it is hard for them to break the habit.

So I express my regret and I hope that in the future, that they will be more forthcoming with allowing Members to have their say on the floor.

Mr. Speaker, I yield back my time.

Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding me this time.

I also want to thank her for all of her work on behalf of our Members on this side of the aisle in helping to shape this legislation. And I want to thank the gentleman from Ohio (Chairman Boehner) for bringing this bill to the floor in a timely fashion, and to the gentleman from Delaware (Chairman Castle) for all of his work and his dedication to the vocational education programs within our jurisdiction.

I rise today for two reasons: One, I am hopeful that bringing this bill to this floor at this time and all of the statements made by Members on both sides of the aisle as to the successes of vocational education and the various components of vocational education in their districts and in their States will forever put an end to this idea of the administration that it is going to somehow zero out this legislation or that it is going to take this money for some other initiative when Members of Congress recognize in such an overwhelming fashion the importance of vocational education to the students in their districts, to the success of the educational programs, and certainly to their local economies and to their State economies.

That is really the second reason that I rise, and that is to again reiterate the idea that this is not our fathers' or our grandfathers' vocational education. A dramatic transition and a transformation has been made within many of our educational establishments in high schools and community colleges that now provide for the linking and the merging and integration of academic programs and vocational programs and skills-acquiring programs so that students now not only are taking vocational education or participating in vocational education to get a job.

What they are getting is a set of skills that will allow them to get that job but also to have the options to create career paths within that industry or within that vocation, within that sector of our economy. Far different than has been done in the past.

In the integration of the academic skills, again, building upon the research that has been developed over the last decade, and that is that really for people to be proficient, to continue to maintain a middle- class life-style, to be able to continue to maintain their opportunities in employment. The set of skills that they need on the academic side and on the vocational skills side really are equivalent of what one needs to have an AA degree.

So now students are put on that path. They are given the opportunity to relate the academic skills that they need to acquire for the job opportunities, for the career opportunities, and for the academic opportunities in their future lives. And that is a dramatic change from what many people view as vocational education of the past or of their experiences when they were in school.

We now talk to young people. I just recently visited a program at the Serendipity training program in Mr. Diablo High School in my district, where Chevron Corporation just made a major grant to the county schools for the purposes of enhancing these kinds of economic opportunities and educational opportunities for young people. And when we talk to the young people, whether they are participating in the health academies or they are participating in the fire academies or the food service academies or the technical academies, the fact of the matter is they now see themselves having multiple options. For some it is just to simply get a job. A number of students said they were go to become EMTs because they wanted to be able have that work and that work schedule and that income to pay for their college education. Others decided that they would go just to the fire academy and try to get a job. Others thought that they would go to the fire academy and go on to Humboldt State and to the 4-year programs in terms of fire sciences.

So what these students now see are the multitude of opportunities that are available to them, the opportunities for career and advancement and providing for them and their families into the future.

I would hope that we would support this bill. I am disappointed that the Committee on Rules, in its continued abuse of power, simply could not provide for the debate of the amendments that many on this side of the aisle wanted to offer. Again, it is not like the Congress is running at maximum RPMs here day in and day out and there is no time for that debate. It is unfortunate that the Committee on Rules continues that abuse of power, but we will have an opportunity to debate a couple of amendments and then push this bill forward to conference committee, where a couple of its modest shortcomings can be hopefully corrected.

Mr. Chairman, I want to thank Chairman Boehner and Castle for bringing this bill the floor. The V ocational and Technical Education for the Future Act reflects a bipartisan work product and I am pleased to be able to join the chairman, Chairman Castle and Ranking Member Woolsey in supporting this reauthorization.

Career and technical education has traditionally been a bipartisan effort in Congress and that continues today. Unfortunately, the President, for the fourth year in a row has tried to eliminate this program, and this is a mistake.

Career and technical education programs make high school matter for many young people, offer college students pathways into productive employment and new hope for displaced homemakers and workers reentering the workforce.

Now, is not the time to retreat on our investment in career training. The global economy demands a highly skilled workforce and the Perkins program has been instrumental in building that workforce.

H.R. 366 moves the successful Perkins Act, named after the distinguished Senator from Kansas, to the next level in career and technical education. This program may have started out as second tier education program for students who sought employment after graduation from high school, but today, these programs are changing the face of secondary and

post-secondary education. Perkins equips America's workforce with the skills they need to compete in a global economy.

More and more schools are using career and technical education programs to develop highly challenging and academically sound education systems, combining secondary and postsecondary education elements. H.R. 366 adopts this model.

Successful career tech programs allow academic and vocational teachers to develop curriculum together and teach together so that students can apply academic content in a real world context. In order to make high school matter, learning, must become more meaningful to students. Career technical education programs do this.

H.R. 366 also ensures that students learn the identical challenging academic content as students who are in a purely academic program further reinforcing the goals of No Child Left Behind: that all students should be taught to high standards.

We know that students who are enrolled in career technical programs are less likely to drop out before graduation. Students who graduate from these programs perform better than their academic-only counterparts in math and science. And, students who complete these programs are able to obtain higher salaries than their counterparts.

Mr. Chairman, while I will support this bill, I remain concerned that it fails to address two critical issues: the bill eliminates the separate authorization for the Tech Prep Program and cuts State Administrative funding far below what states need to carry out the new responsibilities that have been added to the bill. These problems can and should be corrected in conference.

The Perkins Act is a critical workforce development tool and the bill before us represents sound education policy. It contains critical improvements in the areas of accountability, integration and coordination and is supported by a range of organizations to include the Association for Career Technical Education, the National Association of State Directors of Career Technical'' Education, the NEA, and the National Coalition for Women and Girls in Education.

I want to thank these organizations for their input on the bill and I want to thank our staff for their efforts in bringing this bill together in a relatively short period of time.

I will vote in favor of final passage and urge my colleagues to do the same.

Mr. Speaker, I offer a motion to recommit.

I am, Mr. Speaker, in its present form.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, as Members have heard, the purpose of this amendment is to make sure that no monies expended under this act will be used to pay for propaganda by members of the media.

Specifically, my motion requires that the prepackaged news stories put together with Federal funds must be disclosed to viewers. This portion of the motion was offered as an amendment to the supplemental by Senator Byrd and was passed 98 to 0.

The motion also prohibits using public funds to pay journalists or media commentators to promote the views of the agency, which directly addresses the Armstrong Williams propaganda fiasco.

The Department of Education Inspector General recently issued a report that I requested that concludes that the Department squandered hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars in a contract with Ketchum Communications and a subcontract with media commentator Armstrong Williams.

Specifically, the Inspector General found that Department officials involved in the Armstrong Williams contract made poor management decisions, exercised poor judgment and oversight, and paid for work that did not reach its intended audience, and paid for work that the Department never received. The report notes that the covert editorial comments by Armstrong Williams in support of No Child Left Behind were specifically required by Department work orders, and confirmed by activity reports submitted by Mr. Williams.

In my view, the Federal Government was defrauded out of hundreds of thousands of dollars in this case. An even greater concern is this may not be an isolated case in the Department of Education. The Inspector General is preparing the release of a second report in coming weeks that will review a number of highly questionable activities regarding the use of propaganda by

the Department of Education officials. We must stop this act of the abuse of taxpayer funds.

This motion to recommit is very simple. Members can vote for it and report the bill back to the House, and then we can pass the bill. It is a simple choice. Do we want to use education dollars for the education of our children, or do we want to use it for propaganda? This amendment says we shall not use it for propaganda; we shall not pay news commentators to engage in propaganda on behalf of the Department of Education.

Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as she may consume to the gentlewoman from Connecticut (Ms. DeLauro).

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for her support. Again, the choice is very simple here: whether or not at a time when education programs are being cut in the Federal budget that we passed last week, whether or not we will now decide not to use these hard-earned education dollars, hard-paid-for education dollars by the taxpayers that we represent to develop propaganda that they shall be restricted to the uses for which this program was passed, and that is the vocational education of our students in this country.

I urge the support of this motion.

Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

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

Mr. Chairman, I rise today in support of the Vocational and Technical Education for the Future Act. The bill has received strong support from educators, school administrators, principals, and vocational and technical education advocates around the country. In this bill, we are protecting the role of States and local communities, and we are asking for results in exchange for the money we are already spending at the Federal level.

The gentleman from Delaware (Mr. Castle) wrote a good bill and deserves great credit for his commitment to this issue. He produced a bill that has received bipartisan support in the committee while still fulfilling our principles for reform.

I would also like to thank the gentleman from California (Mr. George Miller) and the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Woolsey) for their hard work and cooperation in bringing this bill forward today.

This bill will improve vocational and technical education by focusing on academics without expanding the Federal role in education. We streamline bureaucracy and give more money to local communities. H.R. 366 reduces the share of funds going to State administrative activities and targets more funding to the local level. We also streamline funding by consolidating the Tech-Prep program with a basic State grant.

The bill also focuses on success at the local level. Under the bill, local communities will establish achievement targets; and to reward increased academic achievement, States and local communities can receive incentive grants for success. Above all, we maintain local control. The bill continues to move away from the so-called ``School to Work'' model of the past and maintains our commitment to ensuring that States and local communities have the final say when it comes to the educational choices for their students.

Mr. Chairman, I strongly support this legislation, which will help States and local communities strengthen and improve vocational and technical education and help ensure academic success for students. I urge my colleagues today to join me in voting ``yes'' on the bill.

Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I am pleased to yield 6 minutes to the gentleman from Delaware (Mr. Castle), the author of the bill and the chairman of the Subcommittee on Education Reform.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Pennsylvania (Ms. Hart).

Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from North Carolina (Ms. Foxx), a member of the committee and an educator and someone who knows more about this probably than most Members of Congress.

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

Mr. Chairman, several of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle have referenced the fact that our fiscally responsible budget may, in fact, require changes to how we fund various education programs. While we will have plenty of time to debate those issues when we get into the appropriations process, I think all of my colleagues realize the Perkins program providing for vocational and technical education around the country is widely popular with Members on both sides of the aisle. I have no doubts, no doubts that the funding called for in the President's budget, the funding that is authorized in this bill will, in fact, happen, just to set the record straight.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Illinois (Mrs. Biggert), a member of the committee.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Souder), a member of our committee.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself the balance of our time.

I want to thank the gentleman from California (Mr. George Miller) and the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Woolsey) for their work on this bill; and I want to thank my colleague, and the author of the bill, the subcommittee chairman, the gentleman from Delaware (Mr. Castle), for his fine work. While there are 435 of us in the Congress, of course everyone would like to make this bill look as though it were theirs and written exactly the way they would like to write it. Clearly, I would like to have that opportunity too, but that is not how the process works. We have a bipartisan bill, and we should not make the perfect the enemy of the good.

I also want to thank my staff, Krisann Pearce and Whitney Rhoades, for their fine work on this bill. I want to thank Denise Forte and Lloyd Horwich on the Democrat side for their work. As most of my colleagues know, we could not do the fine work that we do without excellent staff on both sides. They have done very good work in helping us get to where we are today.

Vocational education, as my colleague from California pointed out, is not vocational and technical education like it was 20 years ago or even 10 years ago. We all recognize that those in vocational and technical education also need a strong academic background. This program, over the last several reauthorizations, has attempted to move to stronger academics; and we continue that process in the reauthorization that we bring to the floor today. It is one of the reasons why the Tech-Prep program, which used to be separate and in this bill we have merged it with a basic grant, although we preserve the funding, is not quite as significant as it once was, because Tech-Prep was intended to help encourage those in vocational and technical education from outlining a program where they would do 2 years at the local Tech-Prep school and then go on and do 2 years probably at a community college. By improving the academics across the board, I think it is good for all students.

I have two technical schools in my own district, Butler Tech, Butler County Tech and Miami Valley Tech, who offer wonderful programs and wonderful Tech-Prep programs for many of their students. They have articulation agreements with Sinclair Community College in Dayton, Ohio, and other community colleges to help put students on a path where they will gain the skills necessary to be able to go out in the workforce and have very productive jobs.

There are two or three million jobs in America today that have gone begging because we do not have employees and people with skills to fill those jobs; and many of them could be filled if, in fact, we have stronger technical vocational programs around the country.

So I would encourage my colleagues to support the underlying bill, and we are about to get into the amendment process, and we will see where that takes us.

Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, while I do not object to the gentleman's amendment, I would like to claim the time in opposition.

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

Mr. Chairman, I support the amendment. Clearly those who take technical and vocational education programs ought to have the ability to take those credits and that time that they have invested in that program and be able to move on, if they choose, into, whether it is a 2-year school or a 4-year school.

What we have seen in the past, many students who were in vocational schools, technical schools, and who may have then decided to change their minds, did not have the ability to move on to get that 2-year degree or to get that certificate they may be looking for, or even a 4- year degree. And I think that the articulation agreements that would be permissible under this bill, with the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. Wu's) amendment, are growing from State to State.

I know in Ohio, all of the State-sponsored schools now have an articulation agreement, a transfer of credit policy, as well, which I think will help facilitate students who want to continue their education at various schools. And I think the allowable use of funds in this amendment will, in fact, help students all over the country, and I am pleased to support the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. Wu's) amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself the balance of our time.

Let me just thank the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. Wu) for his amendment and thank him for working with us on this language. It is similar language to what is in the Senate bill. The gentleman from Oregon (Mr. Wu) is a valued member of our committee, and we have worked closely on a number of issues, and we are glad to support this amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, while I am not opposed to the amendment, I would like to claim the time in opposition to it.

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

Mr. Chairman, I appreciate the gentlewoman's amendment. I appreciate her willingness to work with us on her amendment, to put it in a form that we think is acceptable. And while these activities are clearly allowed under the bill, the specific training that is outlined here, I think is, in fact, needed not only in her State of California, but all across the country, as we look at a lot of high skilled jobs that are out there, but yet no one to fill them.

And I think if you look at vocational and technical education in a broader sense is intended to help provide the type of skills necessary in today's economy. We think the gentlewoman has a good amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I claim time in opposition to the motion to recommit.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, the amendment that the Democrat leadership is talking about would not do a single thing to improve educational opportunities for American students.

The Democrat leadership amendment has nothing to do with the bipartisan legislation that is being debated on the floor today. It is a partisan cheap shot aimed at the administration. It really has no place in this bill.

When USA Today first reported on the Armstrong Williams contract in January, I immediately supported the gentleman from California's (Mr. George Miller) request for an independent investigation by the Education Department's Inspector General.

That investigation has taken place and the Inspector General has concluded that nothing illegal or unethical took place.

Now, what happened with respect to the Armstrong Williams contract was stupid; but passing laws to outlaw stupidity is not Congress' job.

Now, the new education Secretary has taken decisive action to ensure that what happened in the Armstrong Williams case does not happen again. But I think what we see here today is what I said earlier, a partisan cheap shot aimed at the administration. It does not belong in this bill. I urge my colleagues to reject the motion to recommit.

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I want to thank my committee chairman, the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Boehner), and our full ranking member, the gentleman from California (Mr. George Miller), and always my partner, the chairman of the subcommittee, the gentleman from Delaware (Mr. Castle), for working together in a bipartisan way the last Congress and this one to bring this bill to the floor.

As I have said, I have my concerns about this bill, even though it is the result of a bipartisan process. I am especially pleased that the majority has brought this bill forward, in light of the President's proposal to eliminate career and technical education. I hope that we will send a strong bipartisan signal today that we in the House believe that career and technical education is critical to our students and to our country's economic future.

But, Mr. Chairman, I do, as I said, have concerns regarding this bill. First, the bill rightly strengthens accountability for State and local programs, but at the same time it cuts by 60 percent the funds that States can use for that very purpose. I support these accountability measures, but if we do not enable the States to administer them, they will be an empty promise.

I also am concerned this bill merges the Tech-Prep program with the basic State grant. I appreciate that our Republican colleagues in the committee have maintained funding for Tech-Prep activities; but as we all know, not sending Tech-Prep funding separately to the States means that eventually States will lose their focus on those very activities we consider so crucial.

Finally, I am disappointed we are not being allowed to debate most of the amendments that my colleagues and I submitted to the Committee on Rules. I support the amendments that we are debating, but there are many critical issues that we are leaving undiscussed. The gentleman from California (Mr. George Miller), the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Kildee), the gentleman from New York (Mr. Owens), and the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Holt) all offered important amendments on government paying journalists to create propaganda, on dropout prevention, on school construction, and helping out-of-work manufacturing workers. But we are not debating any of those issues today, and I do not understand why.

Finally, we are not debating an issue that has long been important to me and I consider critical to our country's future, that is, the lack of women and girls in science, math, engineering, and technology. My amendment would have helped school districts increase girls' interest in studying in these careers and in these areas. A recent GAO study, Mr. Chairman, found that men still outnumber women in nearly every field in the sciences. In his recent article, ``It's a Flat World, After All,'' and new book, ``The World is Flat,'' The New York Times writer Thomas Friedman explained that America's historical economic advantages have disappeared now ``that the world is flat, and anyone with smarts, access to Google, and a cheap wireless laptop can join the innovation fray,'' no matter what continent they are living on.

Mr. Friedman's and others' remedy is to attract more young women and men to science and engineering. But it will be impossible for our country to continue to lead the world in innovation as long as more than half our population, women, are steered away, intentionally or not, from studying and working in the fields from where that innovation would come.

Consider this, from Dr. Susan Hockfield, the president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who recently said that squandered talent, and I quote her, ``is one of the key issues of women in science and engineering.'' All of our children, not just girls, would have benefited if we had been able to debate this issue today, and I am sorry that we are not.

But, again, Mr. Chairman, I thank my colleagues for their hard work on this bill, and I look forward to improving it even more in conference.

Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I am pleased to yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from California (Mrs. Davis), who is a valued member of the subcommittee.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Tierney), a valued member of the full committee.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Etheridge), superintendent of schools for 8 years in North Carolina.

Mr. Chairman, I am pleased to yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Illinois (Ms. Bean).

Mr. Chairman, I am pleased to yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Holt), a member of the full committee.

Mr. Chairman, I am pleased to yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Kind), a member of the subcommittee.

(Mr. KIND asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Millender-McDonald).

Mr. Chairman, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from California (Mr. George Miller), our full committee ranking member and my leader on education and many other issues.

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

Mr. Chairman, I want to say one more time how much I appreciate the bipartisan work that we accomplished on the subcommittee and on the full committee, and I thank both the full Chair, the subcommittee Chair, and my ranking member for making all that possible.

In closing, I want to reiterate my main concerns with the bill, which I hope will be addressed in conference.

First, the bill rightly strengthens accountability for State and local programs, but at the same time, it cuts 60 percent of the funds that the States can use for that very purpose. I support these accountability measures, but if we do not enable the States to administer them, we will be providing empty promises. I offered an amendment in the committee to restore this cut.

I am also concerned that this bill merges the tech prep program with the basic State grant, and I appreciate that our Republican colleagues on the committee have maintained funding for tech prep activities. But as we all know, not sending tech prep funding separately to the States means that eventually States will lose their focus on those activities.

Another area that I am concerned about and I want to reiterate is the issue that the gentleman from California (Mr. George Miller) has just discussed, which is his amendment offered to end abuses like the Department of Education's contract with Armstrong Williams. His amendment simply said that the government cannot hire journalists to create government propaganda and required that if the Department of Education continues to produce prepackaged news pieces, it has to fully disclose that fact in the piece. I am sorry that that language, which is really about government being honest with the people, is not in this bill.

Finally, we must ask ourselves, despite bipartisan support and despite the support of the gentleman from Ohio (Chairman Boehner) and the gentleman from Delaware (Chairman Castle), where will the appropriators find the funds to support this and other critical education programs that the President wants to eliminate or underfund? For example, this year alone, the President wants to provide our schoolchildren $12 billion less than he promised under the No Child Left Behind Act.

Mr. Chairman, one last comment: this is a good, bipartisan bill, and we must fix the little pieces that are missing in conference.

Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I rise to clearly not oppose this amendment, and I claim the time in opposition, and I yield myself such time as I may consume. I would echo what the gentleman on the other side of the aisle have said about our good and wonderful staffs. I do not know what we would do without them, and I thank them very much, our wonderful staff and the Republican staff.

I want to thank, again, the chairman of my subcommittee, the gentleman from Delaware (Mr. Castle), for letting me work with him in a bipartisan way on this bill and for offering this amendment. As I noted in my opening statement, I do not think that merging Tech-Prep programs into the basic State grant is good policy, and I would prefer that this amendment allow proportional increases for Tech-Prep funding as overall funding increases, because as things get more expensive, it is pretty hard to flat fund. But I hope we will address this as the bill moves forward.

I need to say, though, that I appreciate the commitment of the gentleman from Delaware (Mr. Castle) to hold Tech-Prep funding harmless at the fiscal year 2005 level, and I do agree with his amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I am pleased to yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Kind).

(Mr. KIND asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. Chairman, I want to thank my colleague, the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Millender-McDonald) for offering this very important amendment. We hear a lot of talk, especially with every increasing gas prices of the need for alternative automotive fuel technologies.

And we need to do more, because we are not developing the technologies nor the talent to develop the technologies. In fact, several Congresses ago, then Secretary Reich encouraged us to take more interest in high-tech automotive job training, noting then of the severe shortage of workers for the industry, and because cars and trucks are not simply machines, simply machines at that, we have to have a workforce of technicians who understand what is needed, or else we will all be in really big trouble, not just personally, but economically as a country.

This amendment would ensure that regardless of changes in fuel technology, we will have the workforce we need; and I encourage my colleagues to support it.

Mr. Speaker, by direction of the Committee on Rules, I call up House Resolution 254 and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. Speaker, for the purpose of debate only, I yield the customary 30 minutes to the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. McGovern), pending which I yield myself such time as I may consume. During consideration of this resolution, all time yielded is for the purpose of debate only.

Mr. Speaker, House Resolution 254 provides for the consideration of H.R. 366, the Vocational and Technical Education for the Future Act, under a structured rule. The rule waives all points of order against consideration of the bill, and provides for 1 hour of general debate equally divided and controlled by the chairman and ranking minority member of the Committee on Education and the Workforce.

The rule makes in order the amendments printed in the Rules report and provides for one motion to recommit with or without instructions.

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to stand before the House today in support of this rule, and for the underlying legislation, H.R. 366, the Vocational and Technical Education for the Future Act.

The gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Boehner), the Chairman and the gentleman from Delaware (Mr. Castle), the subcommittee chairman, the original sponsors of the bill and many other committee members on both sides of the aisle, have put forward a bipartisan reauthorization of the Perkins Vocational Education Funding Programs, which have helped and will continue to help our Nation's young people, as well as older workers, attain the real-world technical skills that are vital in today's highly competitive world marketplace.

I make special note that this legislation was reported out of the full Committee on Education and the Workforce unanimously on a voice vote, and with no surviving opposition. This legislation reauthorizes the Carl Perkins Vocational and Technical Education Act through fiscal year 2011, and it would authorize $1.3 billion for grants to the States in fiscal year 2006, and ensure that all States are held harmless, and receive at least at a minimum the amount of vocational education funding as was in fiscal year 2005.

Mr. Speaker, this is a program that has been funded in one way or another from Congress since 1917. In talking to some educators from Utah who happen to be with me today, and I was meeting with today, to find out how this works in the real world, this particular program in one district in Utah, provides for a student center coordinator and a workforce coordinator within the district, a separate student counselor within the alternate learning program, and English as Second Language language assistance to help those trying to gain these skills to improve their ability to communicate within the language.

All of these programs come from this money. All of these programs could have been there without this money, but it would mean that other programs essential in the education community would have to be cut to compensate for that.

This bill goes beyond reauthorization and incorporates several changes to the past Perkins programs. Among those improvements is the combining and streamlining of two existing funding streams, the traditional State grant funding with a tech prep funding, and encouraging the States to apply the higher educational goals of the tech prep program in mathematics and science to all of the recipients.

At the same time, it would also give States and local recipients critical flexibility in customizing their implementation plans for incorporating tech prep education goals based on local needs and local concerns.

Mr. Speaker, this approach taken by this legislation increases local accountability for the use of these funds, and, according to the Congressional Budget Office review of H.R. 366, as published in the committee report, the bill does not contain any unfunded Federal mandates on State and local governments.

The bill does recognize that State and local communities shall have the final say as to what is taught in local schools and explicitly rejects the one-size-fits-all Federal standard for curriculum or academic content.

And, finally, Mr. Speaker, this bill reduces the amount of funding that can be consumed in administrative overhead from 5 percent to 2 percent, and instead pushes these extra cost savings out to the local recipients, actually resulting in more funding available on the local level for more student and better student programs.

This rule makes some very important amendments in order. The rule is fair. The rule allows this legislation to move forward.

And with that, Mr. Speaker, I would urge adoption of the rule.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the comments from the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. McGovern). If I could go through the speech itself and divide it into two halves of it, the points that the gentleman made under ``bad news'' basically are not germane to this particular bill and are issues that will be addressed in other positions that will be coming through at another time and another place. I am sure when we do address those particular issues on relevant pieces of legislation, the comments that the record number of Federal money that has gone into education over the last 5 years will be clearly made and clearly understood.

However, I also do appreciate his good points that he said because each of those good points did, indeed, deal with this particular bill, this particular program and they were laudatory; and I am assuming that that means that this particular bill has some positive aspects that are within the gentleman from Massachusetts' (Mr. McGovern) purview.

I appreciate the gentleman bringing up what I think is one of the strengths of this particular bill which deals with the administrative costs and realizing fully that when we are talking about education there are two funds that will drive education. One is program costs. The other is the maintenance and operation costs. Within a traditional education program, once the maintenance and operation is there, that becomes a standard cost and standard form and everything else is driven by the program aspect which is almost always salaries. To tie administrative costs to that as a clear percentage makes a lot of sense.

In this particular area when you are dealing with a system that has both programs as well as the operational costs that are separate, but while the program costs may be constant, the operational costs, therefore, come in uniquely motivated fashion, which is high front end. To try to put a percentage on that and drive that automatically skews the entire area that deals with administration. That is why it is one of the bright parts of this particular bill, to try and scale back that so that more money can go into the programs and directly help kids and people trying to get jobs, as opposed to just simply the administration.

And I agree once again with the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. McGovern) that at least without this bill, nothing goes forward as providing vocational, technical, agricultural training. And there are high-paying jobs out there begging for this kind of technical training that we need. I have seen them. I have seen the programs that do that.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Louisiana (Mr. Jindal).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Dent).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Nebraska (Mr. Osborne), someone who

has a unique insight into the needs of education.

I have two more speakers.

Mr. Speaker, how much time do I have remaining?

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Boehner) who spends much time working in this particular area, is very knowledgeable, and has a great deal of respect for the education system in all the States, including my own, the chairman.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

I appreciate this opportunity because the reauthorization of the Perkins vocational funding is a fundamental part of the educational funding of this Nation, as well as American competitiveness.

This bill will help provide both the public and private sector of our economy with an educated, capable, highly trained skilled workforce, which is essential for our economy to grow and be competitive in our environment.

This is a good, well-balanced and bipartisan, I emphasize that word ``bipartisan'' bill that deserves its vote on final passage.

I am appreciative that the words that were said here today, talking specifically about this particular bill, have all been positive. We may have differences on other educational concepts and issues at other times, that will be the point at other times and other places, but for this particular bill it moves us forward.

With that, I urge the adoption of the rule and the underlying legislation.

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time, and I move the previous question on the resolution.

The previous question was ordered.