Political Quotes

“last year the law everybody wanted to fix was named No Child Left Behind. Despite many different opinions and many different political attitudes, we got it done. I give great credit to the Senator from Washington, Mrs. Patty Murray, and to the members of our Education Committee, 22 Senators of widely divergent political views, for their willingness to do that. I often say if all you want to do is announce your opinion, you can do that at home. You can stand on the street corner and preach or you can get your own radio program, but if you want to be a U.S. Senator, after you announce your opinion, you are supposed to get a result, and that means work with other people to identify common areas of interest and see if you can, and we were able to do that with the bill that fixed No Child Left Behind. Not only did we reach a consensus that needed to be fixed, we reached a consensus on how to fix it. The President signed it on December 10. He called it a Christmas miracle. It passed broadly in this body and it had the effect of reversing the trend toward a national school board, of repealing the common core mandate, and of, according to the Wall Street Journal, being the largest devolution of power from Washington to local control of schools in 25 years. So it was a significant bill, and I would argue that no bill that the Congress enacted last year was more important.…”