Mr. BAILEY. He is appearing solely in the interests of H.R. 22.

Mr. UDALL. Very well.

Mr. BAILEY. The gentleman has 5, 6, or as much as 7 minutes, if he cares to take it.

STATEMENT OF HON. LEE METCALF, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF MONTANA

Mr. METCALF. Mr. Chairman, for the benefit of the gentleman from Arizona, I will qualify myself as an expert in a moment.

Mr. THOMPSON. I would like the record to show that, because there was not any formal vote taken on Mr. Metcalf's election to the Ways and Means Committee, I voted against him for that position because I want him to stay here with us. And I am glad that he is in this position now, but I would much rather have had him right here.

Mr. BAILEY. I am sure a majority of the subcommittee feels the same way as the gentleman from New Jersey. But, under the circumstances, we appreciate having you here, Mr. Metcalf, and, if you will, you may proceed to discuss your legislation.

Mr. METCALF. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

As you can see, Mr. Chairman, from the colloquy that has gone on already between the gentleman from Arizona and the gentleman from New Jersey and yourself, I appear before this committee with some trepidation. I appear before it as a former member, and I know the kind of treatment a former member is liable to get from this committee. However, I am very proud and pleased that the committee has permitted me to be the first witness in behalf of H.R. 22. This bill has been cosponsored by the senior Senator from Montana over in the Senate and by several of our colleagues, including the gentleman from New Jersey, Mr. Thompson.

Mr. Chairman, I was first a member of a subcommittee studying school construction in the 83d Congress. Before I go any further, I would like to pay tribute to the chairman, the gentleman from West Virginia, for his long and dedicated service to the cause of education. I believe that no man in the Congress has done more for the education of the boys and girls of America than the gentleman from West Virginia.

Second only to his dedication has been that of the gentleman from Pennsylvania, Mr. Kearns. It was under Mr. Kearns' chairmanship on a Subcommittee on School Construction that I first began to work on this problem. And the gentleman from New Jersey, Mr. Frelinghuysen, was also a member of that committee.

After a good deal of study and hearings back in the 83d Congress in 1953 and 1954, Mr. Kearns' subcommittee came in with the unanimous recommendation-that was a Republican Congress under a Republican chairman-that "legislation be enacted providing for Federal payments to enable the States and local communities to expand their school construction programs."

That subcommittee said that

While we were unable to reach agreement on any one bill, it was clear that Federal legislation is needed and that the legislation must be designed to encourage State and local efforts to meet the problem.

Five years and dozens of bills later, I am here again before this committee, and the gentleman from New Jersey is the only member of the Kearns subcommittee that is now on a subcommittee actually studying this problem. But we have not done anything about passing legislation to meet that problem that we all recognized back there in the 83d Congress.

The only thing that has been changed is the fact that the States and the local communities have made a tremendous effort, a magnificent effort to meet this classroom shortage. Yet they have been unable to make any appreciable inroads on the backlog of classrooms that have piled up.

So today, instead of saying that we have to have legislation to encourage the States, we have to have legislation to assist the States. And the time has come where we have to forget about this matching proposition, because the States have done the job. They have done a job to physical exhaustion. They have exhausted their statutory and their constitutional debt limits and their capacities to bond. They have exhausted their physical resources so that they have reached a debt ceiling beyond which the capacity to tax property cannot go.

So, Mr. Chairman, I have introduced H.R. 22, which is a modification and a refinement of the various bills that have come before this committee, the various plans and programs and proposals that have been set up.

It is a very simple proposal. It just recites what I have said, that we have recognized this crisis, the gravest domestic crisis we have here, of our classroom shortage. We recognize that there is also a teacher shortage, and we say to the States, "We are going to assist you. We are going to assist you just in the same way that we recommended assistance back in the days of the Kearns subcommittee, on a per capita basis."

The first year we will pay them $25 per capita, Federal assistance without matching. That will go to $50 the second year, $75 the third year, and $100 per capita every year thereafter.

That money can be spent for one of two purposes, or, either, it can be spent for school construction, or it can be spent to assist the teachers in improving the teachers' salaries and raising the standards of certification of teachers in the area.

All that the State has to do to get this money is to certify that it is going to be spent for the purpose for which the legislation provides, and every year it makes such a certification.

There are no State plans. We rely upon the States for the distribution of the money either for school construction or for teachers' salaries.

There is a minimum of Federal control, and there is no Federal control of education in this bill.

I say there is a minimum of Federal control because before we get into the educational phase, we have provided, as we provide in most of the construction, that the schools have to be built under the provisions of the Davis-Bacon Act. But, once they are built, Uncle Sam steps out, steps aside, and there is no longer any Federal control.

I am not going to be redundant and give you some cumulative testimony upon the amount of classrooms we need, upon the number of

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children that are unhoused or going to school in substandard classrooms. There are witnesses that follow me that are going to give you all that. My purpose here is to emphasize that the entire period that I have been in Congress I have been sitting on a subcommitte such as you are sitting on today, studying this problem, studying various proposals, having the President of the United States send down recommendations, having the various Secretaries of Health, Education, and Welfare, and, before that, the head of the Office of Education, coming before this committee and testifying to the need for Federal assistance to help the States and the local communities to alleviate this classroom shortage. Yet today we have the same classroom shortage that we had back in those days when we first began to study these various proposals.

So, Mr. Chairman, it is time that we stopped talking, that we stopped studying, that we stopped talking about these various proposals and arguing about one or another of the proposals, and gave some Federal assistance, or, else, we will lose a whole generation of boys and girls as we have lost, already, 6 years of going to school in substandard classrooms, in firetraps, in double shifts, and, thereby, losing an educational opportunity.

I regret very much that Mr. Gwinn is not here so that we could play a little numbers game this morning. But he is not, and, so, I am not going into the figures that were just recently released by the Office of Education demonstrating that we have reached our peak in local capacity to build schools, and we are now on a downward trend because of this physical exhaustion of local and State facilities. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. BAILEY. Thank you, Mr. Metcalf.

Before I ask the members of the subcommittee if they have any questions, we have two other witnessess scheduled to be heard, and we will necessarily have to be brief in the discussion with this present witness, if there are any questions to be asked.

Mr. Thompson?

Mr. THOMPSON. I would like to compliment the gentleman from Montana. I know that this bill has taken a great deal of thought and argument. As a matter of fact, I can report that during the last Congress I argued with the gentleman, and finally I was persuaded that it is, as the gentleman says, in fact time for us to set aside arguments and to take some action on this.

I wonder if the gentleman, in view of the fact that we have other witnesses, would, if need be, be willing to come back before us at another time, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. METCALF. I thank the gentleman from New Jersey. I thank the gentleman from New Jersey for being the cosponsor of H.R. 22. I thank him because I know of the various other proposals that he has put before the Congress, and for reminding me that I would like permission, Mr. Chairman, to file, before these hearings close, a more detailed statement than I am permitted to make here this morning. Mr. BAILEY. Would you put that in a request for a personal appearance before the subcommittee?·

Mr. METCALF. I will hope that, as these hearings go along, I can appear before the committee again.

Mr. BAILEY. I am sure, if the members of the subcommittee knew you were intending to go into detail on this legislation, they could defer questioning until that time. I am sure you will receive an invitation to appear, and if you fail to appear it will be because you do not take advantage of the opportunity. You will be given the opportunity.

Mr. THOMPSON. We might screen him out, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. BAILEY. Off the record.

(Discussion off the record.)

Mr. BAILEY. Mr. Frelinghuysen.

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. Mr. Chairman, I would like to say that I certainly would be against screening out Mr. Metcalf as a witness. I would certainly hope he would come back. But we have other witnesses, and if we are already under pressure of time at the very beginning of the session, I think it is too bad, because I think it is a subject, contrary to the gentleman's point of view, that still needs talking about and considerable study.

As he pointed out, I have been very much involved and interested in this question as to the appropriate role of the Federal Government in helping to solve some of our educational problems over a period of years. Yet, I am dismayed, frankly, this morning, that we feel that there is no need to study or worry about the consequences of a program of the size that he has suggested.

As an example, I would like-perhaps not this morning-some discussion about the amount of dollars that are involved in this program. As a member of the Ways and Means Committee, perhaps in time he will have more to say on that subject than he would today.

I would like some discussion as to the need, why we are having a program of this scale, and if there is a need, because there have been over a period of years insufficient funds to build the classrooms that are needed today, why we don't begin with a $5 billion program a year instead of working up to it.

What are we afraid of if we can justify a building program of this magnitude, this dollar amount?

Mr. METCALF. The gentleman from New Jersey will recall that when we were sitting together on the Kearns subcommittee we were talking about a 10 to 12 billion-dollar program; 5 to 6 billion dollars of Federal aid to be matched by the States by 5 or 6 billion dollars. That was 6 years ago. Building costs have gone up, sometimes doubled. Had we embarked upon that program and upon a 6-year program and spent $12 billion, we might have eliminated this backlog. Instead of that, we have been talking about it and talking about various proposals, and no one has submitted more proposals than the gentleman from New Jersey, and we are not doing anything yet.

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. No one is more anxious than the gentleman from New Jersey to see a reasonable program enacted.

Mr. METCALF. The gentleman from Montana knows that. Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. If we do not consider carefully, as we have in the past, in our efforts to get legislation enacted, we can expect to have no action at the Federal level once again. It is for that reason that I have great misgivings about a program of this kind.

As an example of what I mean, to include subsidies for teachers in a construction program seems to me to invite disaster. Strongly

as I feel that there is a role involved for the Fedral Government, it seems to me to include teachers as something that the Federal Government should presently subsidize on a large scale is just an invitation to trouble.

I regret that we are already under such pressure of time that we do not have the opportunity to probe the philosophy and the arguments behind your introducing this bill. I realize it has powerful support. I realize, again, that the Democrats are solidly in control of this subcommittee, the full committee, and both Houses of Congress. So they can do whatever they want regardless of what any Representatives may feel.

But it still seems to me that we have an obligation to think about the consequences of what we are proposing at the Federal level, and I think we have a very profound obligation to look at the financial aspects of a program such as this.

On both scores I think it demands both further talking and further study, contrary to what the gentleman from Montana says.

Mr. BAILEY. May I introduce this thought at this time:

I want to assure the gentleman from New Jersey that these meetings today and the ones set for tomorrow are in the nature of an emergency to hear some special witnesses. I can assure the gentleman from New Jersy that he will be given an opportunity to go into this matter in detail, because we are going to take the time necessary to do so.

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. I am sure that the gentleman from Montana will be willing to come back to discuss a matter of this importance. Mr. METCALF. I will be glad to come back.

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. And I hope we are not under such pressure either that we could not invite you back or you would not have the time to accept the invitation.

Mr. METCALF. As far as the gentleman from Montana is concerned, H.R. 22 is the most important bill in this session of Congress.

I am also saying that when I come back I will respond to the challenge thrown out by the minority leader, Mr. Halleck, the gentleman from Indiana, and I will be prepared to meet your argument about the financial statements.

I, for one, am willing to vote the kind of taxes necessary to build schools and pay teachers for the boys and girls of America.

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. As a member of the Ways and Means Committee, do you think you can persuade them to levy additional taxes to support a program of this kind?

Mr. METCALF. I can only speak for myself as a member of the committee and as a Member of Congress. But, as a member of that taxing committee, I am willing to vote taxes to build schools and pay teachers to educate the boys and girls of America, yes.

Mr. BAILEY. Now, Mr. Udall?

Mr. UDALL. Our colleague has other business, and I will reserve my questions until his subsequent visit to our committee. But I would like to say one thing.

I regard H.R. 22 as being substantially improved over the bill that our colleague sponsored last year. I think it is simplicity itself. I think it is stripped down so that any layman can understand its provisions. I find it almost entirely devoid of Federal control. In fact,