Michael Bennet

We have focused on other issues to the detriment of our children.

I'd like to thank Chairman Harkin and Senators Murkowski, Brown, Casey, and Bennet for their leadership on efforts to improve the nutritional content of school meals provided by the Federal school lunch program.

Yesterday's failed procedural vote on Chairman Schumer's campaign finance legislation is the perfect example, in my view, of the abuse of Senate rules.

We need substantial bipartisan support to update the Senate's rules, so let us put together a package.

The pervasiveness of the filibuster deployed every day for multiple purposes in this body has started to cause the Senate to descend into complete dysfunction.

The filibuster has been abused more and more in recent Congresses, and it is time for the Senate to consider what to do about it.

I would argue strongly for at the national level, since Federal spending is only 10 percent of K-12, to invest in more competitive funding for school systems.

We are still getting really horrible outcomes for poor kids.

I think you have to pick your spots about what you require.

I would urge you to think carefully about the levers that are available in the legislation to push for this finally.

The failure of the American system is how we pay for it.

The purpose of funding education is equity for poor kids, equity for children with disabilities.

The diversity and the innovation we have in this country has been an inspiration for other countries. That is the genius of the American system.

I would like to thank Senator Bennet and Senator Harkin for raising this issue of equity.

We do not live that way anymore. We have suburbs and we have spread out from our towns.

If these 100 people were children in poverty in our country, eighth graders, 15 of them would be proficient in math.

If they were ninth graders, roughly 9 of them would graduate from a 4-year college.

I want to remind us for a moment why we are here.

I think our goal is to make credit available.

If we don't get at that core issue in this legislation somehow, if we don't get at that, we really haven't accomplished much.

I think there is a desire by many for that to occur.

I am concerned about some of the proposed cuts, and I would be remiss if I didn't mention them to you.

I strongly support this funding and want to work with you and the Administration to see to it we get it done before this Congress adjourns.

The problem with that is that kids end up in institutions where they are not learning anything year after year after year, and they just fall farther and farther behind.

On the human capital question that you were raising at the end about finding administrators, finding teachers in rural areas, we face this in my State of Colorado as well.