Barbara Boxer: “I am very grateful to have 6 minutes to try to put into words my strongest support for this very important amendment…”

“I am very grateful to have 6 minutes to try to put into words my strongest support for this very important amendment which has been put forward by our leader on education, Senator Kennedy, with the strong endorsement of Senator Gordon Smith, making it a very bipartisan amendment. There is some confusion about what an emergency supplemental bill is. I have been in the Congress--hard to believe it--20 years, 10 in the House and 10 in the Senate, and we take up emergency supplementals all the time because there are unmet needs and we need to act. Senator Kennedy is pointing out a crucial unmet need. I was very delighted when he asked me to speak because I have worked hard with him, with the Presiding Officer, and others on afterschool programs for our children. The funding will go into the afterschool programs. We all think of afterschool programs as occurring at the end of the day when kids could go home to empty houses, and so on. That is the usual way to think of it. But Senator Kennedy is doing something interesting. What he is basically saying is afterschool ends and for some kids there is no summer school. That is afterschool in the broadest sense. So I support these funds going through the 21st Century Learning Centers. When President Bush speaks about education, he talks about leaving no child behind.”