Education

Floor Speech

Ms. MOORE of Wisconsin. Mr. Speaker, it's such a privilege to stand in the well of the House of Representatives.

Each time I stand here, I just shiver and shake and think about just how I got here and the unusual circumstances that have allowed me to be here. Really coming from a very poor background, parents who had very, very meager means. But it was because of an educational opportunity that I'm able to be here with you and to speak with you here this evening.

You've heard it all from the well of the House of Representatives, Mr. Speaker. You've heard about all of the problems that we have in our economy. And this evening I want to talk to you about the importance of reestablishing ourselves in the world as a nation that is graduating students from college and producing the next generation of innovators and engineers and doctors and scientists and teachers so that we can reestablish ourselves in the world and continue to enable our economy to grow. But, of course, you've heard about all of the problems that sort of crowd out a really important discussion about the importance of funding educational opportunity.

You've heard about the two wars and the escalation, which is going to cost us $30 billion. You've heard about the war spending. Between 2001 until 2009, we've spent just under $950 billion for Iraq and Afghanistan, and we've just included another $139 billion for both wars. In July, the DOD was spending $11 billion a month on both wars. And CRS projects that we're going to be spending another $400 billion to $900 billion in the next 10 years.

You've heard about the entitlement programs, Medicare and Social Security, and how they're in danger and how we have to fund that. You've heard about the escalating health care costs consuming 20 cents of every consumer dollar in the so-called takeover by the government of health care. You've heard about the great recession where as many as 700,000 jobs were lost in a single month in the last 15 months. You've heard about the financial systemic risk that threatens the economy not only of the United States of America but of the world, requiring countries, including this one, to develop billions of dollars in stimulus funding. You've heard about various proposals to right ourselves and to justify our economy. You've heard proposals to just simply reduce spending. You've heard proposals to give tax breaks to the wealthy and that these tax breaks will somehow trickle down to support those workers and small businesses. And you've even heard whispers of raising taxes. And very few people raise as a solution to this problem at looking hard at what we're doing in terms of advancing post-secondary educational opportunity.

That's why this evening, Mr. Speaker, I'm so happy to be joined by my dear friend and colleague from Virginia, Representative BOBBY SCOTT, who serves on the Labor and Education Committee and I'm sure will give us some valuable information about the importance of preparing the next generation of students.

Mr. SCOTT of Virginia. I thank the gentlewoman from Wisconsin for talking about education and talking about the importance of educating all of our young children.

Quality education is more important today than ever before with the rapid development of a global marketplace. We find that we're competing not just with cities across a State or even cities across the Nation but cities all over the world.

We can't compete with other countries on things like lower wages. There are people who work in other countries for wages that we can't compete with. We can't necessarily compete in terms of location. You don't have to work right next to your coworkers anymore. If you can work across the hall from your coworkers, you can work across the globe from your coworkers. And in manufacturing, if you manufacture something, you don't have to be that close to your customers. You can ship things overnight from almost anywhere. In the global economy when you're trying to get a plant financed, there used to be a time where you had to locate the plant in the United States because you needed financing. Now with worldwide banking, you can put that plant anywhere that you want.

The one reason that businesses would want to locate in the United States or in a particular community is because they know they can find well-educated workers. So education becomes the competitive advantage. And when you start looking at the location, you know you can get the good workers. You know that the communities will benefit by having a good education. We know these communities that invest heavily in education suffer less crime, pay less welfare, and we know the individuals benefit, the students benefit with a good education.

There's an old adage that says ``the more you learn, the more you earn.'' The more education you get, the higher your income will be. So we need to focus on education if we're going to maintain our competitiveness.

But, unfortunately, we're finding that we're slipping in terms of math and science on any international basis. We used to be fairly high. We're kind of drifting down. We're kind of in the middle of the pack right now but dropping. We used to be number one in graduating our students from high school. Now we're dropping. We used to be number one in those going to college. We used to be number one by far. Now many countries are having more young people go to college and graduate from college than in the United States.

Ms. MOORE of Wisconsin. Reclaiming my time, I guess what I'm recalling is a country where, I mean, we invented the telephone. We invented the automobile, the television, the camera, Google, iPod. We've made major medical breakthroughs. We discovered the cure. We discovered Penicillin and practically eradicated polio by developing the vaccine. And we've done this because we have been number one in the world for developing a brain trust.

So I guess I'm sort of curious about the statements that you've just made that we no longer have the smartest students or the best workforce and that we're no longer leading in innovation and technology.

Mr. SCOTT of Virginia. If the gentlelady would yield, that's why we need to remain competitive and make sure that all of our students have an opportunity to go to college. We need to make sure that they have the knowledge to be successful, and we need to make sure that we are making those investments in early childhood education, in elementary and in secondary, and are making sure that all of our students have access to college. That means we have to make sure we continue to invest in Pell Grants and to reduce the interest on student loans so that everybody can get into college.

One of the things we also have to do is to make sure they have the support, and not only the encouragement, to go to college. They need the financial access but also the support so they can stay in college. That's why the Federal TRIO Programs are so important--Talent Search, Upward Bound, Upward Bound Math and Science, Veterans Upward Bound, and Student Support Services. Once they get into college, there are the educational support centers and the Ronald E. McNair Post-Baccalaureate Achievement Program.

The TRIO Programs encourage low-income and first-generation students to think in terms of college. For many of them, it's just not an expectation in their families, so they think, after high school, that's going to be about it. We need to instill upon them an expectation that, if you can do the work, you ought to continue your education. The TRIO Programs are extremely important in making sure they have not only the financial access but the support once they get there so that they can graduate.

Ms. MOORE of Wisconsin. Will the gentleman yield, please?

Mr. SCOTT of Virginia. I will yield.

Ms. MOORE of Wisconsin. This administration has been very good on financial aid, and this Congress has been great in providing financial aid. As a matter of fact, between fiscal years 2001 and 2009, the Pell Grant has seen an increase of over $27 billion. Now, these TRIO Programs that you talk about have a funding level of $853 million. That is less than $1 billion to the Pell Grant of $27 billion.

While providing financial aid to students is a great strategy, can you tell me why you think it is so important to fund these TRIO Programs in addition to the Pell Grant? Aren't we making a big enough investment in Pell?

Mr. SCOTT of Virginia. Well, we're not making enough of an investment in Pell. We need to make those investments because the cost of college is going up even more than the increases in Pell Grants. We have done a lot in Pell Grants in the last few years. After several years of no increases, we have made significant increases in Pell Grants, but the Pell Grant still does not pay as much of a portion of your education as it used to. It used to be that, with a Pell Grant, you could almost pay your entire tuition--room and board--at a State college. Now it's about 30 percent, and you've got to come up with the rest. With a Pell Grant, people back in the '60s and in the early '70s could work 15 hours a week at a little part-time job and could work their way through college. Today, even with a Pell Grant and while working 40 hours a week, it is still very difficult to work your way through college. We need to make sure that these opportunities are there.

Even though you have financial access with the Pell Grants, with the student loans, and with the scholarships, you need to make sure that you have the support to get the work done. Many students will start in college and won't finish, and you'll have dropouts not only in high school but also dropouts in college. We need to make sure that they have those services.

The beneficiaries of the TRIO Programs do much better in college completion than those who don't have those support services. You have the counseling, the tutorial, and the other support services that you need. They are so important, and that's why we need to make sure that the TRIO Program funding goes up as much as the funding for financial access, like Pell Grants and student loans. We have to recognize that the investments we make in education are so important and that, if we don't make these investments, we end up paying the bill anyway.

I serve not only on the Education and Labor Committee, but I also serve on the Judiciary Committee, where I chair the Subcommittee on Crime. We know that there is a strong correlation between those who drop out of school and those who end up in the criminal justice system. The high school dropouts are much more likely to end up in prison. Those who graduate from high school and those who go to college are much less likely to get caught up in the criminal justice system. When you look at all of the costs of incarceration and when you look at all of the costs of affordable welfare, if we had made the investments in education to get young people on the right track and to keep them on the right track, we wouldn't have had to make those expenditures in the criminal justice and social service programs.

So education is extremely important, and it is a much more intelligent use of taxpayer money--investing in education--rather than waiting for young people to drop out of school and to mess up, to join a gang and then get into a bidding war as to how much time they're going to serve in prison.

I saw an article in the last couple of days in New York. For every juvenile incarcerated, they spend about $200,000 a year locking up juveniles. California had the same number--over $200,000 per year per juvenile. You can just think of what kind of education could have been provided a few years before to make sure that the young people got on the right track and stayed on the right track. So investments in education are not only good for the economy and are not only good for the community, but they actually save more money than they cost when you look at the costs of failing to educate the next generation.

Ms. MOORE of Wisconsin. Will the gentleman yield?

Mr. SCOTT of Virginia. I yield.

Ms. MOORE of Wisconsin. I come from a community

where there has been a great deal of discussion about the failures of students on the fourth-grade reading tests and about the failures of students on the eighth-grade math tests, so I am really interested in your description of how the TRIO Programs really provide an intervention, as it were, in, admittedly, a systemically failed process up through middle school.

The TRIO Programs, as I have come to understand them, literally intervene in kids' lives in middle schools through the Upper Bound program, for example, and through Talent Search. They really identify that next generation of students who have the capability and the capacity to go to college and to really keep our country on top. Many countries do this. They have done it for generations. They have identified kids in middle schools. Despite the incapacity of the families, based on their incomes, to put their kids in private schools or to give them tutoring, the TRIO Programs intervene in middle school, and put them on a college track. Here are some of the data and statistics that I want you to respond to:

First of all, in terms of low-income students--and I'm not talking about any particular race or anything because, as I understand it, 37 percent of those students enrolled in TRIO are white students; 35 percent are African American; 19 percent are Hispanic; 4 percent are Native Americans; 22,000 of these students in TRIO are disabled students; and 25,000 are veterans.

So here we have a really diverse group of students who take advantage of these TRIO Programs, but they have one thing in common--they are all low-income students. They are all students who are disadvantaged by not having wealthy parents who can send them to prep schools. These are students we are depending on to become that next generation of engineers, scientists, and biologists. They are the people who are going to correct the conditions of our lakes, of our forests, and who will be these innovators. Yet, of all the low-income students in our country, only 41 percent enroll in college, and after 6 years in these Student Support Services, we find that almost 31 percent of these students actually attain a bachelor's degree, and that only 21 percent, literally 10 percent fewer of them, graduate from college when you have only given them Pell Grants.

I guess that is one of the problems that you have tried to share with us today, which is: If you are going to spend $27 billion and are going to make that kind of important investment in financial aid, it sure is important to give these students the wraparound services that they need, perhaps some remediation in math and in reading, so that they can succeed, some support services.

If you will indulge me, Mr. Scott, I will tell you a little story.

I was pregnant at 18 years old when I graduated from high school, and I was not headed to college. As a matter of fact, I was at the then-Boys' Club--it was not the Boys and Girls Club. I was at the Boys' Club, watching the boys play basketball, when a young man walked up to me and said, The director of the Educational Opportunity Program in Marquette is looking for you, and he said he wants you to come down there right away. That's how I ended up in college--18 years old, pregnant.

What these programs do is they actually interrupt the poverty cycle. They actually interrupted the sociological outcome for me to just be a welfare mom, receiving food stamps, with no hope of ever making an important contribution to society.

So I think that, if we are looking at a long-term bang for our buck, these TRIO Programs and increasing the funding for these TRIO Programs will certainly do that because we cannot afford the downward slide that you have described.

I'm not sure that people have really understood the seriousness of this. You mentioned that we were probably in the middle of the pack. According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, we are about 15th among 29 industrialized countries in college completion rates. That really has consequences, because when you look at China and at Japan and at South Korea, these are countries that are now the innovators in the world. They are producing the engineers. There used to be a time when you saw Chinese students sitting in American universities. You don't really see that anymore. They are staying at home and are obtaining their baccalaureate degrees.

Now, President Obama has indicated that he has a goal of producing the highest proportion of college graduates in the world by 2020. To reach that goal, this Pell Grant increase is a part of that program. He also wants to expand the reach of community colleges, wants to invest Federal money in research and data collection and in other reforms to the student loan program, and wants to simplify the student aid process.

The gentleman from Virginia, those are very good intentions, and you're experienced on the Education and

Labor Committee, but I guess I'd like you to respond to whether or not just simply providing financial aid and collecting data will get us there.

Mr. SCOTT of Virginia. Thank you.

If the gentlelady would yield, one of the things we need to do is to make sure that we get all of our students headed toward college. You mentioned the impact of finances and the income of parents. One factor is that many parents never went to college, so there is not an expectation that their children will go to college. If your parents went to college, there is really an expectation that you are going to go to college, too. It's not a question of whether you are going to college. After you graduate from high school, it's which college are you going to go to. There is just an expectation.

Ms. MOORE of Wisconsin. Right.

Mr. SCOTT of Virginia. When you have parents who did not go to college--and this is one of the main focuses of the TRIO Programs--they want to develop that expectation.

When I was in college, I was an Upward Bound counselor, and I could see in the Upward Bound program the profound change in attitude that young people had as the summer went on. At the beginning of the summer, I remember you could ask young people, What are your plans for the future? They would start telling you their plans for the weekend. Later in the program, you'd ask, What are your plans for the future? They'd tell you what courses they needed to take in high school to make sure they could get into college, and they'd tell you the courses that they'd have to take in college in order to get into law school or into medical school. They had planned their futures a lot farther along than just the weekend.

When you have a different perspective and when you start having an expectation that ``my future includes college,'' a lot of things happen. One, you are less likely to use drugs and to get caught up in delinquency because you know that will adversely affect your future.

So just the fact that you're looking at a future, you will much more likely get on the right track and stay on the right track to actually achieve those goals.

Ms. MOORE of Wisconsin. Will the gentleman yield?

Mr. SCOTT of Virginia. I yield.

Ms. MOORE of Wisconsin. Gentleman, you indicated, I heard you say that we need to get all of our kids prepared to go to college. And I'm wondering if we aren't concerned about class warfare. We talked about those parents who are not low income. They've gone to college. They've had a college fund for their children early on. And perhaps these are parents who might feel somewhat resentful that there's a program out there that provides supportive services for low-income students, as I indicated, I mean, 41 percent of low-income students, just--I mean, if you're not an athlete and you can win a scholarship, you know, if you're not summa cum laude, valedictorian of your high school, you might not have access to scholarship funds.

What would you say to those parents who do have a baccalaureate degree about the need to make sure we give access to all students to college?

Mr. SCOTT of Virginia. Well, one of the things we found in our work in Education and Labor and on the Crime Subcommittee is that so many of our young people are not graduating from high school. In some States, in some schools, and they're called drop-out factories, half the children that go to those schools fail to graduate. And so it's important, if we're going to have any kind of society, that we encourage young people to go to college because at least that means they'll get through high school. If you do not pay for education, you will pay for welfare and crime. And so it's important for us, as a society, to make sure that we invest in education so we won't have as much to pay for in crime and welfare, and also, we'll have an educated workforce so that when businesses come to the community and consider moving their businesses to your community, you'll have a well-educated workforce to show off, and you'll also demonstrate that if they bring their business here, their workers will have access to a good education. So it's in everybody's best interest to have a well-educated workforce and to make the investments in education.

The Pell Grants make sure that everybody can have access. A significant reduction in interest on student loans has taken place in the last few years. There are a lot of things that we're doing, and we're helping colleges. We've made significant investments in colleges and how they can help their students. There are a lot of things that we've been doing, but the main focus has got to be to get young people into college, and once they get into college, to make sure they have the support services that the TRIO programs will provide to make sure that they can actually graduate.

Ms. MOORE of Wisconsin. I was just looking at an article that was published in Forbes Magazine recently, called Investing in America's Future, and one of the points that the author made was that in California, two-fifths of the State's jobs are expected to require college degrees by the year 2020. But the number of adults with those credentials will fall short. So it's not just a matter of providing an opportunity for middle-class and upper-class students.

We've been joined by Congresswoman SHEILA JACKSON-LEE, who has spoken often about the need for businesses to have an educated workforce. I've heard her speak very passionately about how there are so many requests among our business leaders for foreign students to come into the country because we don't have an educated workforce.

And so, gentleman, I'd like you to respond to that.

Mr. SCOTT of Virginia. You mentioned two-fifths require college. But even more than that require some education past the high school level, some kind of training, some kind of education, maybe not the 4-year college but a 2-year college, or maybe some career training course so that you could learn your trade. There used to be a time where you could get a low-skilled job, keep it for 40 years and then retire. The jobs of today require continual learning, lifelong learning. You've got to be retrained. A lot of jobs have become obsolete. Instead of one job for a long time, most people will have four or five or six jobs during their careers. It's important to make sure that you can learn and you have lifelong learning so that you can keep up with the new jobs. Most, 40 percent require college, but virtually all of them, good jobs, will require some kind of education past the high school level.

Ms. MOORE of Wisconsin. Thank you so much.

I'm so happy this evening that we've been joined by Congresswoman SHEILA JACKSON-LEE from Houston, Texas; and I would yield to her at this time.

Ms. JACKSON-LEE of Texas. Let me thank the distinguished gentlelady from the great State of Wisconsin for her persistence in the work that I found

her doing when I visited her district some several years ago. She has been persistent and consistent, and I'm delighted to join her this evening, along with my friend and colleague from Virginia. I served with BOBBY SCOTT as the Chairman of the Subcommittee on Crime. But he has redefined that committee, and he realizes, with his experience on the Education and Labor Committee, that we are going down the wrong direction. And I combine the idea of steering people away from a life of crime or the mistakes that we've made in the criminal justice system with the poor response that we have given to our education system. I really think that we have, or we took our education system for granted. It was there. We were at a point in our lives in the 19th century, the 20th century, most particularly when we were really churning in the economy and we were at the cutting edge of invention. We had televisions; we were doing transistor radios; we did the telephone. We were really, if you will, at the peak of the envy of all the world, and we took for granted that individuals would start school, public school, by the way, and they would finish school and some would finish high school, but they would still be at an economic level that they could provide for their families. And others went to college. And so I'm listening to this discussion about our international competitiveness, and I read this sentence to you: America no longer has the smartest students or the smartest workforce in the world.

I would take issue with that and say that we have the smart people, but we have not cultivated them and provided them the support system that a TRIO provides, a steering. It's almost as if you had a playing field and you told people to just get out on that playing field. There were no guidelines, there were no bases to make, there were no touchdowns to make, and what would you get? You'd have very poor results. But if you had some guidelines, if you told them that they had to go from one point to the next, that they had to kick the ball into the field goal area, or they had to make a touchdown, or they to had hit a home run. And that's why I've come to the floor today, because I want to share these statistics, but I want to refute these statistics and I want to say, it's time now to go back to the old, to reinvest in our education as if we cared about it.

And so let me cite these numbers that may have already been put into the RECORD, but I believe it's important, that show the 2007 trends in international mathematics and science study, which is really a baby of mine. I've been on or served on the Science Committee for 12 years. In that, my emphasis was math and science and NASA and what NASA can do to inspire our young people to want to be scientists and mathematicians. It measures the math and science knowledge of fourth and eighth graders.

Our students don't perform like those in competitor nations. Only 10 percent of U.S. fourth graders and 6 percent of U.S. eighth graders scored at or above the international average in math. That means that 94 percent of our eighth graders are getting beat by countries like Singapore, Hong Kong, England and Russia, and Kazakhstani students scored better in math than our own fourth graders. What does that mean? It means that there is a legitimate argument for TRIO because TRIO provides the kind of road map that gives you the support systems that really cause students who come from disadvantaged backgrounds to get to the finish line, to be able to kick the goal, to make the touchdown, to make the home run.

And I believe that we've been lax in the funding. It's always easy to cut funding for the vulnerable. We don't have to worry about any funding for the vulnerable because their voices cannot be heard. We know that just across the country, the University of either Southern California or Berkley has students who have been picketing and sitting in for weeks because of tuition increases. So we know how disadvantaged students are more disadvantaged as they raise tuition costs and they don't have support systems.

So, for example, here is what TRIO has done, college going rates for TRIO versus non-TRIO students: All low-income students, 41 percent enrolled in college; Upward Bound participants, 77.3 percent; Upward Bound Math-Science, 86.5 percent; and Talent Search, 79 percent.

What is there to convince that TRIO works, that the support system works?

Student Support Services, low-income bachelor degree attainment with a 6-year period: Student Support Services, 30.9 percent; receive Pell but no support, 21 percent, way down; receive neither Pell nor support, 8.9 percent. They just don't make it.

Ms. MOORE of Wisconsin. Will the gentlelady yield?

Ms. JACKSON-LEE of Texas. I'll be happy to yield.

Ms. MOORE of Wisconsin. This is the question I have for my colleagues here. If it's so clear, as you've indicated, gentlelady from Texas, that TRIO works, if it's so clear, as the gentleman from Virginia has indicated, that we need, in order to remain globally competitive and to continue to be the innovative country and to really develop a way to develop and create new revenues for our country, we're not going to just cut spending and raise taxes and have that be adequate for remaining a first-class nation.

If it's true that we don't have enough upper-class students who are graduating from college that we can afford to ignore low-income white students, low-income African American students, low-income Hispanic students, low-income Asian students, disabled students and veterans who are in these programs, if we can't afford to ignore them, we've got to grab them and educate them so that we can meet those goals and that bar, why has TRIO been flat funded?

What are the consequences of the fact that TRIO was flat funded during fiscal year 2006 and 2008, had just a minimal increase in 2009, a minimal increase in 2010 and, God bless him, our Appropriations Chair, Dave Obey, added $20 million to TRIO this cycle, but after all of the negotiations with the Senate, only $5 million was retained in that program. What are the consequences of reducing these vital services to TRIO students and our remaining competitiveness of the world? We need at least $200 million for this program.

Ms. JACKSON-LEE of Texas. You are eloquent in crafting the frustration that you experience and so many of us experience. And do you know what the answer is? They just don't get it. Not the friends and allies who work so hard, the chairman of the Appropriations Committee on the House side, so many Members who understand what TRIO means, but the overall thinkers about education and how to cut dollars just don't get it. TRIO costs an average of about $1,000 per student per year, $1,000. Pell is estimated to spend approximately $25 billion helping over 7 million students get aid. The combination of a TRIO effort for a student counters the tragedy, and let me just retract that word and not utilize ``tragedy,'' but when you look at it and you say we are the country that spent the 20th century just inventing about everything the world now uses, when we think of China, we are glad that it has made gigantic steps of development. It still is a developing nation, and a lot of what China has made its economic rise on has been what we invented in the 20th century and now they make it in a cheaper manner.

So what we are losing is we are losing the genius of our invention and inventiveness. H-1B is what you're talking about. The H-1B visas have become the popular response. So I'm not going to worry about the fact that our children don't know math and science. Forget about it. We'll just import thousands upon thousands.

I have no quarrel with them. We just stood today and introduced a comprehensive immigration reform bill. There is no quarrel with the idea that this Nation is a nation of laws and immigrants, but there is a quarrel when we throw to the side those disabled, those veterans, those disadvantaged students, those children who have a single parent who would not have the ability to be able to follow through on college.

So what do we lose? Again, we lose the ability to invent for the next generation. We lose the scientific minds that are going to be at the cutting edge of finding the right kind of cure for HIV/AIDS or stopping the H1N1 pandemic or finding a cure for cancer or being able to fix crumbling bridges. This is what we lose. And, frankly, I believe we are long overdue for the reckoning that comes with the idea that we are ignoring our children.

I would like to just use as an example the fact what we call AP classes and advanced classes. You poll and find out how many of those classes are still being kept, advanced placement. It's all about budget. We don't respect or appreciate how much money good education can generate, and I think that we lose our rightful competitive place in the world. And I would much rather invest $1,000 in TRIO than $1,000 in making war and taking a chance of losing one of our bright young men or bright young women who has gone on the front lines. We appreciate them.

But what I'm saying is we should give equal opportunity for those who are either after their military service or in the midst of their military service or that want to go to school, we should give them the opportunity to do so, and that is what TRIO is all about.

Ms. MOORE of Wisconsin. Will the gentlelady yield?

Ms. JACKSON-LEE of Texas. I'd be happy to yield.

Ms. MOORE of Wisconsin. My colleague Representative Scott is a great mentor of mine. He serves on the Budget Committee, and he is an expert on one of the subjects that really consumes a great deal of time on this floor and in our committees, and that's the subject of the budget deficit and how we dig ourselves out of this hole. And I guess I was wondering if he would share--I'm sort of surprising him with this question, but I guess I would like for him to talk about the revenue options or the cutting options or how we got into this fiscal hole that we are in and what the role of educating and having an educated workforce will have on us ever being able to approach some sort of deficit reduction.

And I will yield to the gentleman.

Mr. SCOTT of Virginia. There are direct consequences of spending more money on education, one of which is that the average income of those who you have invested in, the average income will go up, better known from a budget perspective as more taxable income. And so those that you invest in and have more taxable income will be able to help fund the government. That is on the plus side.

On the minus side, if you do not educate the people, they are much more likely to be involved in crime and welfare, better known as expenditures. So instead of getting more revenue, you end up with more expenditures.

So we need to make sure that we make these investments in education so more and more of our students go on to college. And we know what works. We know that TRIO works. The TRIO programs, the Talent Search, Upward Bound, Upward Bound Math-Science, and Veterans Upward Bound all help students think about college and get them on track to college.

The Student Support Services, Educational Opportunity Centers, and the Ronald E. McNair Postbaccalaureate Achievement Programs help students once they get to college. They are involved in those programs and are much more likely to graduate and complete their education, making sure they will be much more contributing members of society. And we know they work. There are currently 2,800 TRIO programs that are serving 850,000 low-income and first-generation students.

Now, you can only imagine that without TRIO, many of these students wouldn't even be thinking about college. And if you just look around the country, many of these programs have waiting lists, young people that are trying to get the help of a TRIO program, but because we haven't funded them adequately, there are not enough slots and they have to languish and perhaps not get an education because they didn't get the services that they needed.

We need to make sure those investments are there. If you're looking long term in the budget, we need to make sure that people are self-sufficient, not depending on government. The investments we make in education in the long-term budget perspective are investments that need to be made.

Ms. MOORE of Wisconsin. Thank you so much for that, gentleman. That is so important.

You know, the Department of Education really bears this out. They say a high school dropout earns about $18,000 a year--of course that's if they're not costing us money in the prison system--a high school graduate, $26,000 a year, an associates degree, $38,000, and a bachelor's degree, $65,000. When we consider our aging baby boomers, we certainly are going to need to make sure that we have a lot of higher-income individuals working toward all of these innovations that we are so capable of.

Mr. SCOTT of Virginia. And if we don't make the investments that we're talking about today, this may be the first generation that has a lower achievement of education than their previous generation. Right now, many children of college-educated parents are not going to college. We are very close to having this generation less educated than last. That will be the first time in American history that that has ever taken place.

Ms. MOORE of Wisconsin. Wow. Before I yield to the gentlelady, I just want to say that old adage, ``pennywise and pound foolish.'' I started this hour out by talking about all of the competing problems that we discuss on this floor, the cost of the war and cost of health care, costs of Medicare and Social Security, those entitlement programs, the cost of escalating the war in Afghanistan, the great recession where, at its height, 700,000 jobs were lost in a single month, the bailout funds for the ``too big to fail'' institutions.

And so if we allow ourselves to get mired down in this and decide that $200 million for an education program is just too much money, that would be the perfect place to talk about pennywise and pound foolish, wouldn't you agree, gentleman?

Mr. SCOTT of Virginia. I would agree. And I have introduced, as you know, the Youth Promise Act, which looks at a comprehensive approach to investing in our young people, getting them on the right track, keeping them on the right track rather than waiting for them to drop out of school, mess up, and then spend all the money on incarceration.

If we take a comprehensive approach, we have found that you are more likely to save money in the long run--indeed, certainly even in the short run. Comprehensive approaches to juvenile crime, one in Pennsylvania where they spent $60 million investing in young people--in a couple of years they figured they saved $300 million. Those kinds of results happen all over the country when you take a comprehensive approach, making sure young people can get on the right track and stay on the right track and get out of what the Children's Defense Fund calls the cradle-to-prison pipeline and get into the cradle-to-college or cradle-to-workforce pipelines. Those pipelines, the college and workforce pipelines, are actually cheaper to construct than a cradle-to-prison pipeline where you spend huge sums of money locking people up. You don't get the benefit of the increased earnings; you just end up spending all the money on crime and welfare.

So if we make the right investments in getting young people on the right track and keeping them on the right track, we not only have a better society, but the budget will look better.

Ms. MOORE of Wisconsin. Thank you so much. That was just amazing information.

The gentlelady from Texas, I would love to hear what you have to say on this matter.

Ms. JACKSON-LEE of Texas. Well, I think this discussion should be a roadmap, but it also should be a primer, a tutorial for us not heading toward the disaster that we are heading toward. We should heed some of the comments that have been made.

I would like to build on this issue of the criminal justice system, which has just grown exponentially. I would say to the gentlelady that there are at least 1 million persons in our prison system throughout the Nation. It is known to be the largest prison system in the civilized world. It is called the ``prison industrial complex'' because there is so much money spent in incarcerating persons, and it does not seem that we have gotten it again to invest on the front end.

So I would just like to share with you, according to the National Center for Education Statistics, which studies the math skills of 15-year-olds throughout several industrialized countries, our United States students ranked 25th internationally. Why? Probably not embraced by the TRIO concept, the support system concept. High school graduates, only 75 percent. I realize that TRIO goes forward into the college area, but it means that these students are not getting support early.

High school graduation, only 75 percent of first-year high school students graduate within 4 years; 25 percent of our students are left behind. Today, 1 in 10 24-year-olds still lack a high school degree. According to the Alliance for Excellent Education, 76 percent of white students graduate in a 4-year period, compared with 55 percent of Hispanic students and 51 percent of African American students. There lies the crux of the need for TRIO, because we need that kind of inspiration.

Let me just finish. The Alliance estimates that high school dropouts from the class of 2008--listen to this number--will cost the United States $319 billion in lost wages over their lifetime. Is there any defense for not supporting TRIO, for not funding it to the max so that we can draw these students through the high school period into the college and then see them graduate and invest that $319 billion into the economic engine of this economy, and on the other side, having skills that are marketable skills?

I started out by saying that we have been cited as not having the smartest students in this century or this time frame. I said, no, these are smart students; we just have not given them the rules, we have not laid out the plan, we have not directed them, we have not provided them the TRIO support system that can be so helpful in providing the kind of economic engine for America.

So in this climate of high unemployment and all of this talk about creating jobs, we cannot ignore America's education system for our children.

Ms. MOORE of Wisconsin. Thank you so much, gentlelady from Houston, Texas. And thank you, my dear friend and colleague on the Budget Committee and also on the Education and Labor Committee.

Before we close out this hour, I just want to sort of summarize what we have said here this evening.

We really admire this Congress and our President for really revamping tuition and making adequate tuition a priority. It has been so important to revisit how we make student loans so that we don't just provide funding for bankers, that we actually use those funds for students, to simplify student forms. It is even important to invest in research about educational outcomes.

It has been very, very important to have seen the dramatic increase in the Pell Grant because, without this tuition assistance, students would not be able to make it. Tuition assistance is a vital component in helping low-income and first-generation college students or any students get through college. Without these dollars, higher education would be unattainable for millions of students who rely on Pell to pay the bills. But all too often, Pell is a wasted investment for our low-income kids because they don't have access to guidance counselors and tutors and the other types of support that come with the TRIO programs.

It doesn't do the student or our country much good if we spend millions on first-year Pell recipients only to have those students drop out after their second or third year. That's not a sound investment. A sound investment is making sure that when we commit to providing educational resources for our most vulnerable kids, we give them all the tools to successfully see that journey through.

That's why we're here today. This Congress has drastically increased vital funding for Pell Grants. I have been and will continue to be a staunch supporter of that increased investment, but I also know that millions of those dollars will be wasted unless we also invest in the tools to get these students through college.

More importantly, our country, our country, our beloved country that we love so much, and love so dearly, and a country that has given us an amazing life-style of modern living is at risk if we don't educate the future workforce. We have got to start with our tiny tots in early education, but that's a more long-term goal. Right now we are having an emergency, an emergency; students are either not graduating from high school or they are graduating with deficiencies.

In order to step up, we need a TRIO program, a modest amount of funding, $200 million in the scheme of things, nothing like we are spending on all the other crises in this country, that would help these programs serve those students who are on waiting lists.

With that, I would yield to the gentleman from Virginia.

Mr. SCOTT of Virginia. I want to thank the gentlewoman from Wisconsin for her hard work. She has benefited from the TRIO Program, so she knows firsthand as I do, as a counselor in college. I spent 3 years as a counselor in the Upward Bound Program, noticing the profound change from the beginning of the program to the end of the program.

We need to make sure these opportunities and this guidance is made available to all students to make sure they can get into college and then to support services once they get there so that they can graduate. These are important programs.

I thank the gentlelady for organizing this Special Order and I thank the gentlelady from Texas for joining us.

Ms. JACKSON-LEE of Texas. If I may say a word of appreciation for you and say a picture is worth a thousand words, these tall bars, if they can be seen, show what happens to Upward Bound participants, Upward Bound Math and Science and Talent Search, much higher than the little low bar here that shows students without assistance.

One last point is that one in nine African American men age 20 to 34 are behind bars. Black men are more likely to be in jail than to have a graduate degree. We can lock up people, but we can also break that chain, take the key and open the doors to opportunity.

The gentlelady has told and expressed to us her story. It's a powerful story. I would say that we need to give everyone the same chance that so many of us have had for a great opportunity.

Ms. MOORE of Wisconsin. This has been great, this has been fantastic, and I would say that the importance of this program is its diversity. It is not a program that just benefits one group of people. Thirty-seven percent of TRIO students are white, 35 percent are African Americans, 19 percent are Hispanics, 4 percent are Native Americans, 22,000 of TRIO's students are disabled students, and 25,000 are our beloved veterans.

This is a program that embraces every American from all backgrounds and makes sure that money is not the reason that you cannot use your brain. Talk about a brain drain, it's a brain drain when the only thing that stands between you and greatness is an education.

Thank you so much and good night.

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