without deeds," and he pledged interest and efforts to that goal. "Government words can ring emptier without dollars."

I suggest to you that the impact aid to public housing schools puts our money where the mouths are. The President and Administration ought to support it. If they propose to take this public housing part of impact aid out, they ought to come up with some alternative proposal which will meet this problem about which there is no dispute. Even the Battelle Report acknowledges there is a serious problem and there is no group of kids that more desperately need special assistance than the kids who live in public housing projects. If I sound exercised, gentlemen, I can only tell you when I see what the schools of Chicago are going through and I see the kinds of problems that our local board of education and teachers are trying to cope with without adequate funds, for us to turn our backs. on them now would be the grossest kind of deceit.

Mr. PUCINSKI. Let me congratulate you for your excellent statement. It is obvious that you know the problem well, and you reflect the urgency of the situation most eloquently before this committee. I would like to congratulate you.

One of the things that has struck me in some of the discussions we have had here now, my colleagues, and some of the other witnesses can get very deeply concerned, and properly so, about an Indian reservation and the problems on an Indian reservation. And yet we have what is tantamount to reservations in our large cities, whether it is Watts, Chicago, or New York, and the very same conditions prevail, if perhaps not more tragic in terms of any kind of resources coming into the community from these indigent families who live in public housing projects.

When you ponder the fact that we have in Chicago some 100,000 children living in public housing projects, which pay the City of Chicago in lieu of taxes $11.40 per child, when it costs the City of Chicago a local contribution of $460 per child to educate this child, and as the gentleman so eloquently stated, these are children who have come to Chicago from all over the country, from the bayous of Louisiana, cotton fields of Georgia, pulpwood forest of Alabama, from the foothills of Appalachia, people with special needs, special educational needs, and probably the most expensive kind of education that these youngsters need to bring them up to an educational norm where they can at least have a fighting chance of participating in the economy of the Nation and intellectual activity of the Nation.

So I think the gentleman has made a most eloquent plea here, and I want to congratulate him on his depth of understanding of the problem. I agree with you that the President erred. We did not include that proviso in this legislation because it was not in the Administration's request, and I wanted the bill to be the Administration's bill for the purpose of hearings. But I want to congratulate you for your excellent statement. Mr. Meeds.

Mr. MEEDS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I, too, want to congratulate the gentleman from Illinois, who is always an articulate and capable spokesman of the views of his constituents on many subjects.

So that the record will properly show my concern, I am just as concerned about a person in the ghetto and slums of the core city

of Chicago as I am about an Indian child on the reservation in my own district. I have had some philosophical problem with utilization of the impact aid legislation in serving the function of distributing funds to areas in which substantial numbers of low-income people reside.

The reason I feel that way is because we devised Title I of ESEA specifically for that purpose, but, as the gentleman from Illinois points out there are a lot of "ifs" connected to this. If we were fully funding that entitlement and if we were doing a lot of other things, perhaps he wouldn't be here urging the inclusion of these people in this bill.

I certainly have to agree with the gentleman that it might not be necessary if we were doing that, but the fact is that we are not doing it, and I have absolutely nothing but admiration for the gentleman for attempting to include these people in an ongoing program.

Mr. MIKVA. I thank the gentleman for his kind words. I am aware that he is concerned, and really with deference to the chairman, who I think has done a tremendous job in getting this in the first place, I am not going to stick on how you do it, and if somebody can come up with a different way of doing it, fine.

My point is that I think the analogy to the Indians is very apt. My wife teaches in a model school here in the District of Columbia and I was figuring out the other day that it looks like they are spending about $1150 per child in this one model school to really try to educate the kids who come in with learning problems that you described. I suspect that is what either is being spent or should be spent in Chicago in some of the public housing project schools we described.

But you gentlemen can devise whatever kind of formula you want. If it comes out with the dollars, I will commend your efforts; and if it doesn't, I can only tell you that one of my most distinguished constituents is Bill Mauldin, and he drew a cartoon a few weeks ago which showed an Indian leaning over the fence to a black father and black son, saying to them, "Believe me, folks, there is no neglect like benign neglect."

Mr. PUCINSKI. Counsel.

Mr. RADCLIFFE. Congressman, you said you don't know of any greater impact than public housing. Can you expand on that a little bit? Do you see any different impact? In your judgment, is it a difference of kind when you have public housing that pours children into a school and pays, as you pointed out, virtually no taxes?

Mr. MIKVA. Yes, because the learning problems are so much. greater. You create this tremendous need. Let me put it this way: When you put a military installation someplace and bring people in, you may be adding to the school costs in terms of the number of kids, but there is no greater per capita cost than normal, because presumably these kids will be like everybody else there.

Mr. RADCLIFFE. Again that is going to the extent of the impact. Let me try to sharpen my question a little bit. Except for the fact that these children require larger expenditures to properly educate, do you see any distinction between the public housing children in

terms of the Federal connection and the children of Federal employees attending school in Fairfax County?

Mr. MIKVA. No, I don't.

Mr. RADCLIFFE. Following that a little bit, then, you mentioned Indian reservations. Do you see any difference between the public housing children and children on Indian reservations who are attending public schools?

Mr. MIKVA. No, but I must confess I am not familiar with how the Federal Government reimburses school districts where Indian children live. In public housing projects, I know we get payment in lieu of taxes, which is some ridiculous sum per capita.

Mr. RADCLIFFE. Could I be presumptuous, then, and suggest to you that you follow up on Mr. Meeds' concern and the chairman's concern and find out why, in the existing legislation, public housing is treated as something apart? You have a separate authorization and you have to go down to the Appropriations Committee and fight for any penny that you may get for that separate authorization.

I think your testimony goes to the point that these children represent the same kind of impact and the same kind of Federal responsibility, and you might come out with some money for them if they were put together with all of the other Federally-connected children, including Indian children, and whatever is appropriated then is split up on an equal basis.

Mr. MIKVA. Except we agree in the beginning, if anything, the impact is greater here.

Mr. RADCIFFE. Let me ask it in the form of a question then. Why would you favor the existing law, which separates these children from all of the other impact children in terms of appropriating funds for them?

Mr. MIKVA. I don't favor it since we didn't get the money. Again let me say it very simply. I think that the impact formula, because it is in existence, because it is something that, as a formula, we have worked with and understood, that it makes sense to extend it to public housing kids.

If there is a better way of reaching these kids, I welcome your efforts. I do not contend to be an expert in devising of the formula. Mr. RADCLIFFE. I think, Congressman, my only point is that you have the authorization but, as you know, it is a long step from having the authorization to getting the funds; whereas, if these kids were included in the law along with all of the other kids to share in whatever funds were appropriated, I think you might see some money in Chicago for these kids.

Mr. MIKVA. And I would be for it.

Mr. PUCINSKI. I would like to elaborate on the answer of my colleague from Chicago. Legislation is the art of the possible. You can sit here all day long and come up with all sorts of bright ideas, but you have got to find some way of translating those ideas into legislative action.

We have learned a long time ago that there is a price that you pay around here for various pieces of legislation. For two decades, the Hill-Burton formula, which is totally indefensible, has been the price that we have had to pay for hospital construction, for school aid, for various other programs, simply because one member

of the Senate dominated the committee and that was the price that he exacted.

So we made public housing a Category C because that was the price that we had to pay. The impact lobby said: No, sir, we don't need public housing in here because that may somehow or other take a few dollars away from the impact "B" money. And these are the cruel realities of the legislative process.

Now, I do agree with my colleagues, and we shall try to seek in this legislation, if possible, another category or incorporate it into Category B, the concept of more meaningful and equitable help for the "B" student. We seem to have general agreement here on the "A" student. But on the "B" student, there is a great deal of reservation, as we have seen a moment ago, two witnesses, one representing Indian children on an Indian reservation, another representing children in one of the wealthiest congressional districts in the country.

So I think we ought to try in the committee and see whether or not we can make Category B, if there is going to be a Federal aid program, more realistic to reflect some of the thinking of these elements in Chicago into the existing law.

I am in thorough agreement with you that it doesn't make any sense at all to have thousands of youngsters living in public housing in a city like Chicago with their enormous educational needs and say the Government is going to turn its back on those children and then, for no defensible reason, pour money into Fairfax County or Montgomery County or the other places. It just doesn't make

sense.

As we have said so many times around here when we started these hearings, who is going to be big enough to kill Santa Claus?

Mr. MIKVA. If you don't kill him, would you at least expand his girth so it covers my kids.

Mr. PUCINSKI. Thank you very much, Congressman Mikva.
We will adjourn until tomorrow at 10 o'clock.

(Whereupon, at 12:10 p.m. the subcommittee recessed, to reconvene at 10 a.m. Thursday, April 9, 1970.)

IMPACT AID REFORM ACT OF 1970

THURSDAY, APRIL 9, 1970

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,

GENERAL SUBCOMMITTEE ON EDUCATION OF THE

COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION AND LABOR,

Washington, D. C.

The subcommittee met at 10 a.m., pursuant to recess, in room 2257, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Roman C. Pucinski (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.

Present: Representatives Pucinski, Meeds, and Quie.

Staff members present: John F. Jennings, majority counsel: Alexandra Kisla, clerk; and Charles W. Radcliffe, minority counsel for education.

Mr. PUCINSKI. The committee will come to order. We are going to resume this morning our hearings on H. R. 16307 and H. R. 16384, the Impact Aid Reform Act of 1970.

We are very pleased to have this morning as our first witness Congressman Jerry Pettis of California, who is extremely interested in this legislation.

Congressman Pettis, we are most pleased to have you here. I think it is extremely important for us to have the views of fellow Congressmen on this legislation. It is extremely controversial legislation. I think the people of your district ought to be grateful and proud of the fact that they have a Congressman who is first of all so well versed on the subject, and, secondly, will take the trouble to come before this committee and put in the proper perspective how this particular legislation will affect the people in his district. I should think this is representative government at its very finest, and I want to thank you for taking time from your busy schedule to give us your views on this very important matter.

Your prepared statement will be included in the record at this point.

(The statement referred to follows:)

TESTIMONY OF HON. JERRY L. PETTIS, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA

Mr. Chairman and Members of the Committee:

You are most generous and I appreciate this opportunity to appear before the Committee this morning to discuss the implication of H.R. 16307 and H.R. 16384 to the State of California and more partciularly my own Thirtythird Congressional District.

California has an estimated entitlement of $109 million under the present law. If this bill is enacted, California's entitlement would be cut to $56 million, a decrease of nearly 49 per cent. California School Districts can not take this kind of cut and not suffer serious consequences.

Now let me discuss with you what will happen to the School Districts in my Congressional District if H.R. 16307 and H.R. 16384 is enacted into law as introduced.