Michael Bennet: “I will be brief. I want to thank Mr. Wyden, the Senator from Oregon and the ranking member of the Finance Committee, for…”

“I will be brief. I want to thank Mr. Wyden, the Senator from Oregon and the ranking member of the Finance Committee, for his leadership on this bill. I thank, as he did, Senator Hatch for his leadership on this bill and Senator Grassley for his leadership on this bill. As the Senator from Oregon indicated, this bill passed unanimously in the House of Representatives. This bill passed with 500 groups supporting the bill from every geographic area in the United States. There are groups from Oregon. There are groups from Colorado. There are groups from the Presiding Officer's State that have weighed in on this and said we should have this legislation passed. We have had testimony in the Finance Committee from people who were foster children who came to the Congress to testify about what had gone wrong in their lives as a result of the system we have in place today, who still made the time to come here to advocate on behalf of children all over the country who are situated in the same way they once were. Now, because of a disagreement in the Senate, this bipartisan bill that passed the House unanimously, that has almost 30 cosponsors in the U.S. Senate, a bill that was supported universally by the testimony we had in the Finance Committee, somehow can't get done before we leave for the holidays. That would be a terrible shame, a terrible stain on this Senate. Tonight there are 50,000 children in Colorado who are in foster care.…”