Heidi Alexander: “the distinguished Senator from Alabama mentioned music, and I guess a lot of us have been watching Ken Burns' ``Country…”

“the distinguished Senator from Alabama mentioned music, and I guess a lot of us have been watching Ken Burns' ``Country Music'' film the last several days, which is terrific and includes lots from Alabama and even more from Tennessee. My experience with music and Nashville songwriters is, to get a melody, you need some cooperation. You need cooperation. Usually, they have three songwriters who will write a song. I am interested in harmony, but I think we need some cooperation across the aisle as on our committee--thanks to the distinguished Senator from Washington State, Mrs. Murray, and Senator Jones--we often have. We had it on fixing No Child Left Behind; we had it on the 21st Century Cures; we had it on the Opioid Crisis Response Act; we had it on the Lowering Healthcare Costs Act, which came out of our committee 20 to 3 just recently; and we need to have it on higher education. So I have a suggestion today. I want to speak about it for about 10 minutes. It would, I believe, give an opportunity to deal with the historically Black colleges legislation and indeed an opportunity to do more than that. In the first place, the bill passed by the House is a short-term bill, which is funded by a budget gimmick, which has no chance of passing the Senate. I propose that we do permanent funding of historically Black colleges. That is the way to provide certainty.…”