Veterans Education Equity Act of 2013

Mr. Speaker, by direction of the Committee on Rules I call up House Resolution 274 and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. Speaker, for the purposes of debate only, I yield the customary 30 minutes to our good friend, the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Hastings), who I certainly hope is feeling better than the way he's walking today, 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.

General Leave

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members have 5 legislative days during which they may revise and extend their remarks.

This resolution provides for a structured rule for the consideration of H.R. 2231, the Offshore Energy and Jobs Act of 2013, as well as H.R. 1613, the Outer Continental Shelf Transboundary Hydrocarbon Agreements Authorization Act, and makes several specific amendments in order to each bill which are germane and compliant with the rules of the House. This proposed rule also provides for an open rule for consideration of H.R. 2410, the Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agencies bill.

These energy bills, if enacted, will help foster responsible development of our abundant offshore domestic energy resources and will do so in an environmentally responsible manner. H.R. 2231 would help reverse some of the current administration's energy policies, which are stalling responsible offshore lease development on the Outer Continental Shelf. This legislation would require that the administration implement a new 5-year leasing plan, including 50 percent of the areas that have been previously identified as the most promising in oil reserves and natural gas.

The average American consumer has seen their energy bill double since this

administration started. A gallon of gas was under $2 when the President was first sworn in. It's now routinely more than $4 a gallon--and continues to climb. And yet the administration deliberately stalls and blocks job-creating, energy-producing projects like the Keystone pipeline for the responsible development of coal and tar sands reserves we have on our public lands, including in my own State. This actually hits the middle class and the poor class the worst.

H.R. 2231 will streamline the current bureaucracy handling these leases and will also implement a fair and equitable revenue-sharing plan for coastal States. The Congressional Budget Office has indicated that passage of this bill will reduce net direct spending of the Federal Government by $1.5 billion over the next 10 years. So, in essence, you have a bill that makes us more energy independent, drives down the cost of fuel for U.S. families, helps reduce the cost of the Federal Government, and produces an estimated 1.2 million jobs. I think, by most standards, that would be considered a fairly good bill.

Likewise, the other bill in the rule, H.R. 1613, the Outer Continental Shelf Transboundary Hydrocarbon Agreements Authorization Act, will provide for improved Federal management and oversight of energy resources which straddle international boundaries. Passage of this act will implement an agreement we already have with the Government of Mexico on how to handle development of these resources, including revenue-sharing concepts, as well as ensuring that the United States companies that are investing will develop their resources but not be imperiled by actions that may be taken later on by the Government.

Finally, the resolution also provides for a modified open rule for consideration of H.R. 2410, the fiscal year 2014 Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agencies appropriations bill, which continues what was common when I first arrived here and then stopped but was then reinstated and continues to be reinstated by Chairman Pete Sessions--having open rules on our appropriations bills.

I'm appreciative of the Rules Committee chairman's leadership in this regard. I'm also appreciative of the hard work and dedication of the bill's sponsors. First, the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Duncan), the gentleman from Washington, also chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee (Mr. Hastings), as well as the gentleman from Alabama (Mr. Aderholt), for his leadership on the Agriculture appropriation bill. In short, this is a fair and good rule dealing with good pieces of legislation.

Mr. Speaker, these are good bills. I urge their adoption, and I reserve the balance of my time.

I am happy to yield 4 minutes to the author of one of the bills in here, as well as the chairman of the Natural Resources Committee, the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Hastings).

I appreciate the comments that were just made by the gentleman from Massachusetts about a program which does fund $6.7 billion in the WIC program and was passed unanimously by voice vote from both parties in the Appropriations Committee.

With that, I yield 3 minutes to the sponsor of one of the bills that is part of this rule, the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Duncan).

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

Mr. Speaker, it is wonderful to realize how the GAO's and the OMB's facts are not inaccurate and also how rules that were waived for this bill have been waived for the same reason in prior pieces of legislation.

With that, Mr. Speaker, I continue to reserve the balance of my time.

I yield myself 1 minute.

I appreciate what has been said even though it has very little to do with the bills that we will be discussing in these next couple of weeks.

Especially as a former teacher, I understand significantly what it does to student loans and situations. I understand significantly how now 5 years ago Congress passed legislation that cut out the FFEL Program, which actually helped kids in their being able to afford their college workability. We consolidated all of our efforts with a program, an idea, from the 1980s, which was a bad idea then and is a bad idea now.

Unfortunately, this House has dealt with this issue. On May 23 of this year, we passed a bill that solves this problem, and we sent it over to the Senate. For some reason, I feel uncomfortable or at least tired of being held accountable for the Senate's inability to actually deal with legislation sent to them that solves problems and then have to take the responsibility back here. The House has dealt with this issue, and we did it in a responsible, reasonable way. The Senate has refused to.

So often what we have found as gridlock here is not necessarily between Republicans and Democrats as we pass a whole lot of bipartisan bills on this floor. It's between the Senate and the House. I wish it were different and that we could compel the Senate to act responsibly, but the Senate has not and the House has.

With that, I reserve the balance of my time.

Other than brilliant verbiage from myself, you've got it.

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

I appreciate the opportunity of being part of a debate that covered a smorgasbord of ideas. Let me just respond to several of those that have been presented in the last lead-up to the vote on this particular amendment.

As I said before, I'm a teacher. I care greatly about education. I'm especially frustrated with the way Congress has passed or handled the student loan provision.

Several years ago, while the Democrats were in control--I'm trying not to be too partisan, but they were in control--we changed the law that dealt with student loans to consolidate that authority within the Federal Government. By doing so, we crushed private-State partnership plans that were an excellent avenue for loans that students could use. They could get breaks depending on their repayment habits. It was a marvelous program, but it was stopped in an effort to try to consolidate everything here within Congress. Since that time, we have played silly games of brinksmanship that deal with what the rate should be and what the rate might be.

We have a bill that this body passed on May 23 in plenty of time to extinguish this issue, plenty of time for the Senate to debate it, amend it, send it back to us, appoint the conference, go through regular process, if the Senate wished to do that. Instead, the result is the Senate has basically turned their back on the issue and said, We'll let it go over the cliff one more time.

You see, it shouldn't have been that way. If we had not changed the policy back when we passed a bill in the previous leadership of this House, we wouldn't have had this problem in the first place. What this House tried to do is say this is a silly approach going into the future. Let's come up with a policy towards student loans. If we have to consolidate them, if the Federal Government has to have their control and grasp over the entire thing, we should do it in a way that provides some kind of flexibility and some kind of rationalization so it can ebb and flow in the future as the market requires it to do.

We passed a bill not just that allowed them not to double, but we passed a bill here on this floor which solved the problem. The fact that the Senate does not wish to solve the problem is something that I find sad. But we solved the problem, and we did it in a timely fashion.

The great speeches that I heard today--and they were very good and their verbiage was better than mine--should be given over in the Senate where it can do some good.

I also want to talk about a couple of other issues that I've heard, that these particular bills in this rule would violate states rights' agreements, even though the issue at hand is only those waters and coastal waters that are a part of the Federal preserve and does not talk about State waters whatsoever.

We talked about in H.R. 1613 a poison pill being inserted into that provision that exempts Dodd-Frank. Somehow I wish we could actually go back to the person who actually inserted that provision in there because it was Secretary Hillary Clinton. That's part of the negotiations we did as a country with the Mexican Government; and it's logical that it is in there because it gives some protection to U.S. companies that, if that language was not in there, could be forced either to violate Federal laws or violate foreign laws and face civil penalties or cease to operate in foreign countries.

I can understand why the Secretary of State at the time did negotiate that portion that is in there. That's not the poison pill. That's simply what is in the negotiated settlement. All we're doing with this bill is enacting it, putting it into place, and allowing us to move forward with what has been simply negotiated on resource areas that straddle international lines.

I'm also somewhat frustrated with the statement that we might as well use the leases that we currently have. I'm also frustrated because we have had a great deal of increase in production of oil and gas, and it's all happened on private and State lands.

I happen to represent a State that has almost 70 percent of it controlled by the Federal Government. I have enormous amounts of resource potential in my State, but it is controlled by the Federal Government. So even though areas where private property and States have been able to increase the revenue to their States and increase the total amount of petroleum productions that we have, my State has seen the exact opposite.

If you go onshore to the areas that are controlled by this administration, the Federal lands, the amount of parcels that have been offered since 2005 are down 88 percent. The amount of acres that are offered for development of resources are down 85 percent. And what is most sad is the amount of revenue that is produced both to the State and to the Federal Government from onshore development since 2005, which is down 99 percent.

A lease is simply not, as has been stated, the green light to start drilling. A release simply says you start the process. And part of the problem with the releases both onshore and offshore has been the inability of the Federal Government to do so in a reasonable fashion. On onshore lease development there is regulation that says it must be done in a 6-month period of time to move forward from the initial sale and to which the lease is then offered so the company can start its drilling process. Yet in a survey done by GAO, 91 percent of the time, that 6-month standard has not been met onshore.

Part of H.R. 2231 is a reorganization of the administrative function that deals with how these leases are developed and how they proceed going forward. By taking one agency, which has had a very poor record and dividing it into three with specific responsibilities, we think we can streamline this process and make sure that what we are doing on the Outer Continental Shelf is far more effective than what we are doing on Federal lands onshore, where all we are having is stalling delays and a lack of production and a lack of revenue coming from them.

It was once said to the chairman of the Natural Resources Committee that if he had a better idea, do it. In all due respect, he has a better idea. That better idea is the two bills before us right now, H.R. 2231, and the other bill, which is H.R. 1613. Those are good ideas. They will move us forward. They're the things we ought to do to prepare.

I think it's a great rule that is allowing that and allowing the appropriation bill to come through in an open rule, allowing anyone who has an idea that he or she wishes to bring to the floor the opportunity to do so.

With that, this is a fair rule. It deals with an appropriations process, as well as two bills that are good bills that

will help people. Especially after yesterday's speech, we should have an energy policy in this country aimed at helping middle class Americans, not one that simply says, freeze in the dark, especially if you're poor. That's the best thing we are going to be able to do.

These bills move us forward. We should vote for them. With that, having failed at my effort to give you good verbiage, in which case I'm sorry you're holding the cane there, I hope you're using that only to navigate around this floor and it will not become a weapon in the future.

The material previously referred to by Mr. Hastings of Florida is as follows:

An Amendment to H. Res. 274 Offered by Mr. Hastings of Florida

At the end of the resolution, add the following new

sections:

Sec. 8. Immediately upon adoption of this resolution the

Speaker shall, pursuant to clause 2(b) of rule XVIII, declare

the House resolved into the Committee of the Whole House on

the state of the Union for consideration of the bill (H.R.

1595) to amend the Higher Education Act of 1965 to extend the

reduced interest rate for Federal Direct Stafford Loans. The

first reading of the bill shall be dispensed with. All points

of order against consideration of the bill are waived.

General debate shall be confined to the bill and shall not

exceed one hour equally divided and controlled by the chair

and ranking minority member of the Committee on Education and

the Workforce. After general debate the bill shall be

considered for amendment under the five-minute rule. All

points of order against provisions in the bill are waived. At

the conclusion of consideration of the bill for amendment the

Committee shall rise and report the bill to the House with

such amendments as may have been adopted. The previous

question shall be considered as ordered on the bill and

amendments thereto to final passage without intervening

motion except one motion to recommit with or without

instructions. If the Committee of the Whole rises and reports

that it has come to no resolution on the bill, then on the

next legislative day the House shall, immediately after the

third daily order of business under clause 1 of rule XIV,

resolve into the Committee of the Whole for further

consideration of the bill.

Sec. 9. Clause 1(c) of rule XIX shall not apply to the

consideration of H.R. 595 as specified in section 8 of this

resolution.

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

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks.

Mr. Speaker, it's an honor and a privilege to have the opportunity to stand here once again and to anchor the Congressional Black Caucus Special Order with my distinguished colleague from the Silver State, Steven Horsford.

For the next 60 minutes, members from the Congressional Black Caucus will speak directly to the American people about the importance of investing in the education of our children and of our young people as a matter of utmost importance for the future prosperity of this great country.

I've got the honor and the privilege of representing the 8th Congressional District, which includes parts of Queens, and it is largely anchored in neighborhoods in Brooklyn. And 100 years ago this month, in April of 1913, Ebbets Field opened for the first time. Ebbets Field, as the movie ``42'' has illustrated, is the baseball stadium where, on April 15 of 1947, Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in America's pastime and became the first African American to participate in a Major League Baseball game.

Now, we know that prior to that moment, African Americans, solely on the basis of their color, were prohibited from playing Major League Baseball. And so you had individuals like ``Cool Papa'' Bell and Josh Gibson, any number of individuals who were stellar at their craft amongst the best who have ever played, confined to the Negro leagues, unable to ever get onto a Major League Baseball field because of the color of their skin.

That all changed on April 15, 1947, when Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier. And I think that holds an important point for us, what Jackie Robinson illustrated: that if you get an opportunity to get on the field of play, folks who otherwise have been excluded from the mainstream can demonstrate that they will perform just as well, if not better, than everyone else.

And in the context of education in the United States of America, we confront a situation where you have one group of children in this country who've got a first-rate education, and then you've got another group of children who are confined to a broken public school system that has failed them, that has inadequately prepared them for the opportunities that otherwise would be available in life.

We don't have necessarily, the literature has begun to show, an achievement gap that relates to capacity or ability. Yes, based on different performance measures, Black children and White children and Latino children score differently in various areas of proficiency, but the literature has begun to show that's not really an achievement gap. It's really an opportunity gap.

And what Jackie Robinson demonstrated, I think, for all of America to see is that, if you just give our children the same opportunities available to others through the educational system--give them the same bat, give them the same glove, give them the same cleats, allow them to perform on the same fields of human endeavor--that they can perform just as well, if not better, than everyone else.

And if you give them that opportunity, if you give all American children opportunity, it's good for them, but it's good for the community and it's good for the Nation. It lifts everyone's productivity in a manner that will benefit America. That is why the CBC believes that investing in education is the appropriate and a meaningful and the right way to go, given what we confront in our country at this moment.

We've been joined by several distinguished members of the CBC. Let me first yield to my co-anchor, the distinguished gentleman from Nevada, Representative Steven Horsford.

Mr. Speaker, let me now yield to a great fighter for education and for social and economic justice here in the Congress and in this Nation, the distinguished gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Butterfield).

I thank the gentleman from North Carolina for his extremely insightful comments and for his leadership on this issue.

We have also been joined by another dynamic member of the freshman class, who has taken the Capitol by storm with her intelligence and elegance. We are thankful for her leadership. Let me yield to the distinguished gentlelady from Ohio, Representative Joyce Beatty.

I thank the distinguished Congresswoman from Ohio.

I note the connection to Ohio State University that we share in my family. My brother is a professor of history at Ohio State's great institution. Your contribution to opening up opportunities for people of color and all students at such a great public university is noted.

It is important, I think, for this institution to take a look at several of the issues that you've raised, Congresswoman, that Representative Horsford and I will shortly explore.

The debt situation is particularly troublesome, and I'm going to ask the gentleman from Nevada if he would make a few observations in connection to what Representative Beatty noted is a student-loan problem that we have here in America.

Now, the interesting thing is that during the 110-plus days that we all as freshmen have been in this Chamber, we've heard a lot of talk about the moral imperative of dealing with the debt situation that we confront in America. And every time we're about to hit the debt ceiling, there are some in this Chamber who have said that we should perhaps default to send a message that some in this country apparently are reckless with their spending habits.

Now, parenthetically, this is, of course, a complete mischaracterization of what the debt ceiling actually represents. It's not a forward-looking vehicle designed to give the President the opportunity to spend more. It's a backward-looking vehicle designed to allow this administration, or any administration, to pay bills that this Congress has already incurred.

But whenever we talk about the debt, my friends on the other side of the aisle raise it as a moral imperative. I think the fact that we've got student loan debt in America that now exceeds, as the chart illustrates, more than $1 trillion is really what imperils future generations in this country. You've got young people saddled with, on average, in excess of $25,000 per person in debt facing a tough job market, with the inability often to find employment in their field of endeavor, to start a family, to purchase a home, the things that traditionally have been associated with pursuit of the American Dream.

The prescription that has been put forth by the other side, as it relates to how to alleviate this debt connected to students, is very different than the one that, I think, we on this side of the aisle have chosen to offer.

Let me now yield to the gentleman from Nevada if he might elaborate on our CBC vision for how to deal with the student loan problem or the education of young people in America.

I thank the gentleman from the Silver State for those very astute observations. As Representative Horsford has pointed out, a budget essentially is a choice and a pathway forward that people in this Chamber are making decisions on based on what they see as best for America. And the Republican budget that was passed by this House, as Representative Horsford has indicated, in total would cut $168 billion in spending on higher education. That's a value choice, to walk away from young people in America, young people who already are being saddled with in excess of $1 trillion in debt in total.

Now, what else does that budget do? Well, it says that we're going to take the top tax rate, which is 39.6 for millionaires and billionaires, the wealthiest and the well off, and we want to slash that tax rate down to 25 percent. So we're going to cut education spending for, among other reasons, to cut further the taxes paid by the wealthy and the well off in this country. That is a choice that is bad for America. It's bad for the middle class. It's bad for working families, and it's bad for our future.

We have been joined by the distinguished gentleman from Virginia, an expert in all matters pertaining to the budget in this Congress, among other things. Representative Bobby Scott is an expert on the CBC budget, in the budgets that have come out of this House of Representatives, and it is my honor and privilege to now yield to him.

I thank Representative Scott. We both sit on the Judiciary Committee, and in the context of our service on the Judiciary Committee, we will be presented with an opportunity to deal with the issue of comprehensive immigration reform. Already two hearings have been held on this matter.

One of the issues that has consistently come up is the need to increase the number of H-1B visas for highly skilled immigrants in the STEM field--science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

The technology-and-innovation economy and sector in this country have taken off, and there are actually opportunities. Some estimate approximately 20 percent of the workforce has openings in the technology-and-innovation sector that many would like to see filled by opening up the opportunities for highly skilled immigrants. It's an approach that I think shares bipartisan support.

But, simultaneously, many of us believe that, as a country, we must also invest in STEM education for our children and our young people to make sure that, moving forward, they have the opportunity to develop careers in the STEM fields in a manner that will benefit themselves, their families, their communities and, by extension, the country.

And so before I yield to the distinguished gentleman from New Jersey, I believe that Representative Horsford had an observation or two to make in the area of the need to invest in STEM education.

Thank you, Representative Horsford. And as was noted earlier, the CBC believes that there are children all across America, in many inner-city communities, certainly in the neighborhoods that I represent back home in Brooklyn and places like Bedford-Stuyvesant and east New York and parts of Coney Island, where the public school system has failed them for decades, generation after generation after generation subjected to a broken public school system, from a very early point, all the way through high school.

And unless we invest in turning these broken systems around, we're essentially at risk of dooming young people to life sentences of disadvantage and despair. That's why the CBC supports the President's proposal in his budget to invest an additional $75 billion over a 10- year period, as Representative Horsford indicated, in early childhood education to make sure that we give every American child the opportunity to be successful by putting them on an even plane with those who get the benefit of a first-rate public or private school education.

I want to yield to the distinguished gentleman from New Jersey, another dynamic member of the freshman class, Representative Donald Payne, Jr., who was a leader on education issues prior to arriving in the Congress, and he's continued to demonstrate leadership in this area and in other areas moving forward.

I want to thank the distinguished gentleman from New Jersey for his very astute observations.

Mr. Speaker, how much time is remaining on this Special Order?

Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker.

Again, I thank the Representative from New Jersey for making it clear that all children in this country deserve the opportunity to be part of a pipeline toward progress and prosperity, even though some, unfortunately, have been subjected to circumstances that often lead to a pipeline from the schoolhouse to the jailhouse. That's not how things should be anywhere in America. And that's why we believe a robust investment in education is the right way to go in this country.

I'm going to ask the distinguished gentleman from the Silver State for his observations on this chart. The chart illustrates that education pays. If you invest in education, increase the level of degree of attainment, what it does is increase the capacity for Americans to earn a better living.

And so, for example, for Americans who have less than a high school diploma, their average weekly earning is $451. But someone with a high school diploma earns, on average, $638 per week. And someone with a bachelor's degree earns, on average, $1,053 per week. If you give an American an advanced degree, their average earnings per week increase to in excess of $1,600.

Investing in education pays for the American people.

I yield to my distinguished colleague from Nevada.

I thank the gentleman from Nevada. We will not, as he indicated, support any budget that balances itself on the backs of children or young people or college students in America. Unfortunately, that is the budget that has been put forth by my colleagues on the other side of the aisle. We support a balanced approach to dealing with the economic problems that we have in this country that involves the investment in education. That is what we stand for. That's what is good for America.

I yield back the balance of my time.

To my colleague and dear friend, the Representative from the 8th Congressional District of New York, it's good to join you for this hour of power to talk directly to our constituents and the American people about the priorities that we're focused on here in the United States House of Representatives and that we hope our colleagues on the other side will join with us to advance.

Today, we bring to the focus of this body the need to invest in opportunity through education. A pathway to a college education is a pathway into the middle class. And as a panel that was just convened, moderated by Wade Henderson, entitled, ``For Each and Every Child,'' they indicated that, while a post-high school education is not an economic cure-all, it does provide a steppingstone to a good job and stable wages.

Now, every parent should be able to count on a good education for his or her children. As a father of three young children, I'm very focused on what my children need in the opportunities to advance in their lives and to be successful, as every parent is focused on, but, unfortunately, it is not always the case.

We need to refocus the conversation on educational opportunity, as my colleague, Mr. Jeffries, just indicated, and making sure that our children's future is not determined by a ZIP Code. Our schools should not be structured like a lottery system where some luck out and others strike out--to continue with your analogy, Mr. Jeffries.

Poor kids who are exceptional should be the norm, not the exception to the rule. They deserve the resources they need to be successful; and that's what we, on behalf of the Congressional Black Caucus, are bringing forward here today.

In order to fix what's wrong right now, we need to change the way we think about our schools, because it's not simply schools that teach our students; it's actually the entire community. It is a community effort.

In 2011, 78 percent of high school graduates from high-income families enrolled in college. The shares for middle- and low-income families were 63 and 55 percent, respectfully. We have to work to close this gap and open a pathway to college for all students.

Now, today, we will hear from our colleagues who share with this need to invest in education. We would like to talk about the particular issue that's affecting our Black men and boys in education. We want to focus on the need to grow more science and math majors. We know we need to invest in pre-K, and we want to outline our priorities as they compare to the Republican budget that's been offered by the other side.

And so as we enter into this hour of power to talk about education, I hope that we can cover these topics and others, and I look forward to this discussion.

I say thank you to my colleague from New York.

Before I elaborate further, let me say that first you have to understand that there is a problem in order to address the problem. I think far too often some of our colleagues on the other side fail to recognize the fact that so many families who are struggling to help their students obtain a college degree are having to do so through student loans and rely greatly on Pell Grants for that assistance. Maybe it's because they don't have that same experience that they don't understand why these are important.

This is what the House Republican budget would mean for those very programs that you're talking about. First, the Republican budget freezes the maximum Pell Grant for the next 10 years, even though Congress already enacted and paid for mandatory annual inflationary increases in 2010. With this one step, they slash higher education funding by $83 billion.

The House Republican budget allows the interest rate on need-based student loans to double this summer.

The House Republican budget eliminates the income-based repayment program, which provides that Federal student loan borrowers can cap their loan payments at 15 percent, going down to 10 percent in 2014 of their discretionary income each year.

The reason that this is so important is because of constituents like the ones I spoke to on Sunday in my district. We were talking about the immigration issue. But as we were discussing that, many of them came to me and said, Well, you know what? I've had to borrow $30,000, $40,000, $50,000 in student loans to acquire this degree, and I'm now working in the field I'm in, but unfortunately it's taking $1,000, $1,500, $2,000 a month of my income to pay back those student loans.

At the very time these families are struggling to do that, the Republican budget proposes to slash it further. Not only does it slash support for individuals and families who rely on student loans, as I said, they also freeze the maximum Pell Grant, which so many low-income families and students desperately depend on.

This is a real issue, and it's a real difference. That is why we are here today to bring attention to the differences between the two sides. I hope that as we move forward, we can find common ground.

Mr. Speaker, I want to say something, because sometimes I know when we talk about the needs of educating Black children, that people will say, What about other communities? My answer to that is that if we can help improve the education for Black children in America, we will improve education for all children in America, whether they be Latino or White or Asian.

And so that is why we need to have an investment in education in America, not to defund, not to slash, not to reduce or not to freeze funding, but to invest in the very things that we know work and that will improve the successes for young people to succeed in life.

Thank you, Representative Jeffries. And you provided the clear nexus.

While the Congressional Black Caucus, working with our colleagues from the Hispanic Caucus and the Asian Pacific Islander Caucus, supports comprehensive immigration reform, including provisions that allow the best and the brightest from around the country to immigrate to the United States and to contribute to making our country great, we also believe that there should be investment here in the United States to educate those of us here for these careers in the 21st century.

Colleges and universities in our country will produce 3 million STEM majors in the next 10 years. Still, according to a 2012 report by the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, our economy will demand more students graduating with STEM degrees than we are currently providing.

So what can we do?

We need to increase funding in STEM education and follow the lead of many of our Historically Black Colleges and Universities and Hispanic- serving institutions which are producing a greater share of students with STEM degrees.

Among HBCUs, currently, they produce about 19 percent of all STEM bachelor degrees, 38 percent of which are in the biological sciences, 31 percent in math, 35 percent in computer science, 34 percent in the physical sciences, and 22 percent in engineering.

Now, the Obama administration has requested more investment for STEM teachers and additional funds to expand effective models of teacher preparation to help train 10,000 STEM educators per year. That's what the President's budget proposes. Those are the same priorities, they are the right priorities, and they're the priorities that the Congressional Black Caucus agrees need to be supported by this Congress.

We need to invest in teachers that will train students for jobs in the 21st century. But let me be clear: you can't expect students to graduate with degrees in science, mathematics, engineering, and technology if we're not doing more to invest in pre-K and to help students start with a strong foundation. And that's why the President has a historic level of investment in his budget for early childhood education and pre-K.

We enroll most kids in this country at 5 or 6 years old. We should be starting them earlier; 50 years of research

tell us that critical development and learning happen before the age of five. When schooling starts at kindergarten or first grade, it denies these young people chances to make the most of this critical period.

Fundamentally reforming our education system begins with high-quality pre-kindergarten programs. In my opinion, pre-kindergarten is an antidote for the achievement gap. In cases where our kindergarten teachers are getting kids who've had, in some cases, 2 years of early education, they're seeing that the achievement gap has stopped or been narrowed. That's why we need to invest in programs like Head Start so that we don't have to play catch-up later or deny these young, bright minds the opportunities to go into the fields of the 21st century.

So, Mr. Speaker, this is an and/also strategy, not an either/or. We believe that we can invest in both early childhood education, K-12 education and higher education, not cut, slash or deny these opportunities to America's children. These are our priorities, and it's what we'll continue to fight for for all of America's children.

Just to elaborate further on this point, education attainment is an economic imperative. Not only is it the investment in the individual that proves great dividends and a return on investment, but the failure to invest, based on the bottom line in red, for someone with less than a high school diploma the likelihood of them being unemployed is 14 percent. For those with a high school diploma who are unemployed, it's 9.4 percent. If you have a bachelor's degree, the unemployment rate drops in half, to 4.9 percent. And if you have a professional degree, the unemployment rate is 2.4 percent.

So the correlation is clear that with education attainment come economic prosperity, opportunity, and a return on investment that is good for that individual, their ability to provide for themselves and their family, and for our entire country.

And so, Mr. Speaker, when we talk about investment, we're not talking about investments in programs or systems. We're talking about investments in people. When we talk about Head Start, we're talking about 3- and 4-year-old children. When we talk about title 1 funding, we're talking about schools and children that are identified as having low-income needs and the disadvantaged. When we talk about funding for IDEA, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, we're talking about individuals. And the more that we can invest in the individuals in America, the greater return we will have in the productivity of that individual, their family, the community they live in. And that will make for a stronger America for all of us. That is what we are aspiring to accomplish in this 113th Congress.

We want to work with our colleagues on the other side. Where they can meet us in the middle to find solutions to make these investments, we look forward to working with them. But one thing we will not do is to slash, defund, or freeze the investment of the American children and the American family.

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

This rule provides for the consideration of three bills, as enunciated by my friend from Utah. However, the only thing that these bills have in common is that they're overwhelmingly partisan in nature and fail to address the most pressing challenges facing our country. Bottom line: we should be doing all that we can to help struggling Americans get back on their feet.

The first bill, H.R. 1613, had been relatively noncontroversial and could have been addressed under suspension. But instead, my colleagues on the other side of the aisle have chosen to take the partisan route by including a provision that waives the Securities and Exchange Commission natural resources extraction disclosure rule of the Dodd- Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, which requires the disclosure of payments from oil and gas companies to foreign governments. I just simply don't understand why this poison pill was added.

Similarly, H.R. 2231 opens up new, unsafe drilling off the coasts of 14 States at a time when domestic energy production is booming. Furthermore, the bill does virtually nothing--and I asked that question of our colleague, Mr. Duncan from South Carolina--to implement key safety reforms in the wake of the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster and constrains the statutory review process for offshore drilling.

This is a part of the Republicans' ``drill, baby, drill'' energy policy agenda. While my colleagues on the other side of the aisle continue to bring bills like this to the floor which contain huge giveaways to Big Oil, it is clear that they're not interested in doing a thing to protect worker safety, the environment, or the tourism and fishing industries. It is astounding that Congress would move forward to open new natural gas and oil leases when this institution has not acted on the recommendation to improve the safety of offshore drilling. If we didn't learn anything at all from BP, we're not ever going to learn anything. The successor to the BP spill commission recently gave Congress a D-plus grade on its legislative response to the spill.

Before opening any new leases, we should enact legislation to improve safety and eliminate or adjust the liability caps upward. We have a pitiable liability cap now of $75 million.

It is time to get real about energy policy. We need to invest in the development of renewable resources, which would reduce our impact on climate change and move us towards true energy independence. These two bills today aren't about gas prices or job creation. They're about bolstering the Republicans' political base and lining the pockets of Big Oil and gas CEOs.

Republicans' refusal to address the sequester and insistence upon limited cuts in the Homeland Security, MilCon/VA, and DOD appropriations bills leave all the other nondefense measures like H.R. 2410 before us today with inadequate funding levels. The refusal by my friends on the other side to appoint conferees to reach a bipartisan compromise on the budget and end the sequester has left us with this disastrous agriculture bill that we saw last week. As my Republican colleagues very well know, there are $214 million in cuts to Women, Infants, and Children, or WIC, funding, which will prevent 214,000 eligible applicants from receiving the nutrition they need.

Furthermore, there are $284 million in cuts to Food for Peace that will result in 7.4 million fewer people receiving food aid from the United States. Mr. Speaker, I'd really laugh, except the prioritization of partisanship and politics over responsibility has become par for the course in the Republican-controlled Congress.

As I pointed out before, just last week the Republican partisan farm bill was scuttled. Traditionally--I'm here now 21 years, and that bill, at times that it was brought appropriately, was a bipartisan piece of legislation. Draconian cuts and work requirements imposed upon programs that benefit the poorest among us effectively killed any chance of the FARRM Bill passing. Rather than see passage of a strong, bipartisan bill, Republicans deliberately made it unpalatable to even strong agriculture supporters like myself. These are not the priorities of a Nation that cares about its poor. These are the priorities of a Republican Party that cares only about itself.

The poor are not villains. Many are trapped in inescapable situations due to circumstances totally beyond their control and largely, in many instances, by our making here in this institution. Mr. Speaker, it's hard to pull yourself up by your bootstraps when those bootstraps, without any nourishment, may be the only thing you have to eat.

I reserve the balance of my time.

I would say to my very good friend and namesake, if you can do better, do it.

I'm very pleased at this time to yield 3 minutes to my distinguished colleague from Massachusetts (Mr. McGovern) with whom I serve on the Rules Committee.

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to yield 2 minutes to my friend, the distinguished gentlewoman from California (Mrs. Capps).

I yield an additional 30 seconds to the gentlewoman.

Mr. Speaker, I'm very pleased to yield 2\1/ 2\ minutes to my good friend, the distinguished gentlewoman from Oregon (Mr. DeFazio).

Mr. Speaker, if we defeat the previous question, I will offer an amendment to this rule that would allow the House to hold a vote on the Student Loan Relief Act. If Congress doesn't act by July 1, undergraduate students in this Nation, all over this Nation, will see a hike in their student loan interest rates.

To discuss our proposal, I yield 2 minutes to my friend, the gentleman from California (Mr. Miller).

(Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

I yield the gentleman an additional 1 minute.

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to yield 1\1/ 2\ minutes to my friend, the distinguished gentleman from Iowa (Mr. Loebsack).

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to yield 2 minutes to a friend of mine, the distinguished gentleman from Connecticut (Mr. Courtney).

Mr. Speaker, I would inform my colleague from Utah that I have no further requests for time, and I would ask whether or not he has additional speakers.

I am looking forward to the brilliant verbiage.

Following on from the previous discussion, Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to insert the text of the amendment, which has been discussed, in the Record along with extraneous material immediately prior to the vote on the previous question.

I yield myself the remainder of my time.

I urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' and defeat the previous question. I am tempted to take the 8\1/2\ minutes and, perhaps, not offer as much brilliant verbiage but at least add, without hyperbole, the continuing concern that all of us should have.

I agree with my friend from Utah when he points to the fact that there has been legislation that has come out of the House of Representatives, regardless of who was in the majority, and that it has gone over to the other body and nothing has transpired. But when the American people look at Congress, they are not looking just at the House of Representatives or just at the United States Senate--it is all of us--and it is our responsibility here in the House, particularly as the body that has the Ways and Means Committee, which generates the financial circumstances of this country that ultimately is voted on.

It's our responsibility, in my judgment, to undertake to answer one simple question regarding this loan thing:

Why is it that college students are going to be required to have loan obligations that raise their loans from 3.4 percent to 6.8 percent when Bank X and Bank Y can borrow money from each other for little or nothing at all? That does not make any sense.

We can't do these children this way in this country, and we have an absolute responsibility to all of them to give them the opportunities that many of us had. People here in this House that have come here by way of student loans and some of them have had those opportunities, why not give these children that chance?

Mr. Speaker, the most common critiques of this Congress have been bipartisanship and dysfunction. This rule today for these three bills shows that the Speaker and majority leader are perfectly content with that characterization of their work. Congress doesn't have to be this way.

It isn't always like this. It wasn't like this when I came here in 1992. It was not like this for the greater portion of a decade after I came here in 1992. Instead of appointing budget conferees, instead of passing a farm bill in a bipartisan way, instead of fixing the pending student loan interest rate, instead of replacing the sequester that has been monstrously all over this Nation hindering our economic recovery and instead of preventing us from yet another game of chicken, which we will be doing sometime in the fall over the debt ceiling, we're considering three purely political bills that will only create more partisanship among us and might, I add, ain't going nowhere.

Mr. Speaker, Congress can and must do better.

I urge a ``no'' vote on the rule, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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

Let me thank you, Mr. Jeffries, for yielding me this time, and thank you for your leadership here in the House of Representatives.

Since you have arrived here in the House, you have just done extraordinary work. You've taken the time to come to this floor and to educate and inform the masses of our people about the great, important issues facing our Nation. So I want to thank you for all of your work.

I also thank Mr. Horsford, the other gentleman who has taken the time to convene this special hour of presentations. I want to thank you for all of the work that you do. You are both freshmen, but you have the personalities and the abilities of someone who has been in this body for many years, so thank you very much.

The Congressional Black Caucus this evening has chosen to talk about the important subject of education. I am a strong supporter--a proponent--of strong public education. Mr. Speaker, there is no investment that we can make as a country that is more important than investing in children and investing in their education and in their higher education.

Regrettably, there are some people in this body who think otherwise. They may say that they don't think otherwise, but their actions demonstrate every day that they do not have a strong commitment to supporting our educational system in this country. There are even some Members of this Chamber who, regrettably, have said from time to time that they want to defund and eliminate the U.S. Department of Education. They feel that the educational responsibility of government belongs to the States and not to the Federal Government. That is so unfortunate, but I want to encourage all of us who serve in this body to work together and stay together and to try to promote public education in every way that we can.

Now, Mr. Jeffries, I cannot speak about the State of New York with any

authority or about the borough of Brooklyn--I know you do that very well in that you've been there for many years--but I can speak to my home State of North Carolina.

We have a demonstrated record of commitment and excellence in public education, both at the elementary and high school levels, as well as at the college level. We started way back in 1868 when our constitution was enacted. In the State constitution, we made sure that there was a provision that guaranteed a public education for every child in our State. Ensuring that our students have access to quality education has long been a principle of my State and of those that I associate with. So I have firsthand knowledge of our educational system. I know about the dedicated educators that we have in North Carolina, and I want to just encourage them and thank them for their service, and I urge them to keep on doing what they're doing.

Mr. Speaker, I came from a family of educators. My mother was a classroom teacher. She taught school for 48 long years. Many people want to know how a single person could be in the classroom for that long, but my response is that, during those days, you did not need a college degree in order to be a classroom teacher--only a passionate commitment and a high school diploma.

I understand the importance of education, but even the most devoted and capable educators must have the resources to provide our children with quality education. We now face a defining moment for future generations of Americans in which some Republicans want to fix this budget by cutting funding for our students in schools. At the same time, we continue to be outpaced by other countries that continue to increase their educational investments.

In this country, the world's most prosperous Nation, 25 percent of our children do not graduate from high school. More than 90 million adults have inadequate literacy skills. The numbers are even more startling for low-income children and African American children, many of whom live in my district. Less than 8 percent of students in advanced placement math or science courses are African American. Fewer than half of African American students graduate from high school on time, and that must change.

Despite these statistics, data show that investments in educational programs like Title I and IDEA and Race to the Top and Head Start and TRIO are instrumental in preparing our students to compete globally, but draconian cuts through sequestration have rolled back discretionary Education Department funding below the 2004 level and have gutted many of those programs.

My State will lose $25 million in funding for primary and secondary education this year; 38,000 fewer students will be served in my State; and 350 education jobs will be in danger. The Ronald McNair TRIO program for doctoral students from disadvantaged backgrounds, which was cut at Elizabeth City State University, is just one example. Many State legislatures, including that of my State, are cutting State education budgets at the same time. We must find ways to address our fiscal challenges without placing the burden on our children and our teachers.

While our goal must be to ultimately reauthorize the ESEA and the Higher Education Act, there are many ways we can help right now. We must preserve the maximum Pell Grant and keep interest rates on student loans low to enable low-income students to attend college. We must sustain funding for Race to the Top grants. In North Carolina, those grants have developed stronger curriculum in math and science, and they are working. They have strengthened teacher training and improved early childhood education.

Finally--and I will close--we must also protect other STEM funding streams through funding for NSF and NIH, which support innovative research in my district at Duke University, East Carolina University, Elizabeth City State University, and at my alma mater of North Carolina Central University. We must also support bills like H.R. 595, the Veterans Education Equity Act, which I introduced to resolve an inequity in existing law that unintentionally allots more education funds to veterans who are enrolled in private colleges than those in public institutions.

The bottom line, Mr. Speaker, is that education must be a priority. We must seize every opportunity to increase support for public education and not decrease it. Public education should be off-limits to budget cuts.