Tom Harkin: “I join with my colleague, my chairman, Senator Specter, in commending, first of all, the staff for all the wonderful…”

“I join with my colleague, my chairman, Senator Specter, in commending, first of all, the staff for all the wonderful work they did in pulling this bill together. I especially want to thank Craig Higgins, Bettilou Taylor, Jack Chow, Jim Sourwine of Senator Specter's staff. And our staff on our side: Ellen Murray and Marsha Simon. This is a very complex, very big bill. It took us a long time to get it through. The Senate worked its will, and we did finish action on the bill. For the most part, I think it is a good bill, and I think it does move us in the right direction. There is a lot of good stuff in there for children's health, preventive health care measures. There are good provisions in there dealing with human services. For the most part, there are a lot of good items in there that will advance the cause of education in this country. However, I must once again, Mr. President, for the record state that the adoption of the Gorton amendment basically does away with all the targeted programs that this Congress has supported on a bipartisan basis for so long; things like vocational education, bilingual education, education technology, and some of the newer ones, like Goals 2000. These are all done away with by the Gorton amendment. What it says is we are going to take all this money and it goes to the local education agencies without any restrictions whatsoever.”