Representative George Miller Interview on Democratic Priorities

KTVU, December 13, 2006
Video: Windows Media File, 5.83MB »

Ross McGowan: One of the Democrats anxious to begin the new year is Congressman George Miller from Martinez. In this new Congress he will be chairman of the Education and Workforce Committee and one of his goals is to make life better for the middle class. He joins us live from Washington, D.C this morning. Good morning sir, how are you?

Rep. Miller: I'm good Ross, how about yourself?

Ross McGowan: I'm doing very well. So often we hear about how great this economy is going, but you point out the middle class really has nothing to write home about. Give us some examples of what you are talking about.

Rep. Miller: What we see in this economy is essentially the middle class paychecks have been flat and yet their cost of health care, if they have it, the cost of pensions, if they have them, have started to skyrocket and now the cost of the college education for their children. Those items have gone up 50-70% andthe middle class over the last five years has lost almost $1300 in paycheck. There's a lot of insecurity in the middle class about how are they going to provide for their retirement, how are they going to provide for kids' college education, and are they going to have access to affordable health care. For Millions of Americans the answer is no.

Ross McGowan: So when you get into control there in the first 100 hours in January, what are you going to do about it?

Rep. Miller: I think we have to look at our pension system where we saw United Airlines throw hundreds of thousands of workers out of their existing pension plans without a fair process to do that. We've got to make sure that employers either through tax credits or another way are offering health care to the middle class that they can count on that will be there when they need it. And yet we see 6 million more Americans without health care now. In the first 100 hours, Nancy Pelosi has announced we'll cut the interest rates on student loans by half, to try to help pay for college education. But the Secretary of the Treasury said this economy is not working to a broadband of Americans working very hard themselves. They are not getting paid enough for what they're doing.

Ross McGowan: Is this a code for a tax increase?

Rep. Miller: No, this isn't a code for tax increase, this is a code for a decent health care policy in this country, for secure pension system in this country and affordable college education. That's what people work for. That's the American dream. This is not extravagant. This is what people expect when they work hard all day long, all year long, that they'll be able to provide for their families to educate their kids and look forward to a secure retirement. Corporations all over the country are turning that upside down by liquidating pension plans, by freezing them, by not having pension plans, by freezing health care plans, by putting more of the burden on the workers and not increasing their pay. It's a lot of stress for the middle class.

Ross McGowan: I know you and the president early on worked on No Child Left Behind. You want to bring that back. It's back on the table now. Why can't we go back to where California was the number one school system in the country? Why can't we go back to doing some of the things we were doing then and get the federal government out of running the school systems?

Rep. Miller: We don't run the school systems. We simply want to know for the billions of dollars we put into the California school system, are we getting results we want? Can kids read at grade level in California? We don't set those standards, the state sets those standards. We just want the state to meet its own standards and the answer is for a huge number of children especially poor minority, the state isn't teaching them to read, it isn't teaching them to do mathematics at a fourth grade level or eighth grade level. That's what we want to know. I think it's fair to the taxpayers to ask. If we're going to put money into the system, does it have high expectations of the students? Does it have high standards for its students? Does it have an assessment that is telling us how the children are doing? Is somebody being held accountable for that? That's what No Child Left Behind says. The fact of the matter is that we could go back, but that would be -- California used to spend a lot of money on education. They spend less today than they did before. And we've got to professionalize our teachers and improve the development of teachers, we have to provide financial incentives for teachers to teach in the more difficult schools. Ross, it's a big package. But before No Child Left Behind California was in worse shape. They had 60,000 teachers that didn't have credentials, that were on emergency credentials, that didn't have subject matter competency in the subjects they were teaching. If you take a poor child and put them with a poor teach ea poor school, chances are you get a poor result and that's what was going on in California.

Ross McGowan: You've got a big job ahead of you.

Rep. Miller: I look forward to it.

Ross McGowan: I thank you, congressman.

Rep. Miller: Thank you.