The final Senate CFPA proposal may be weaker, however.

We need to disabuse ourselves of the notion that a test score constitutes an education.

Our goal shouldn't be to punish shortcomings but to encourage success.

We need to reform ESEA this year, and the administration's proposal serves as a useful first step.

No education policy--not No Child Left Behind and not any of the proposed reforms--will work without adequate funding.

We need to make education everybody's job.

Now, of course, for the United States, we want Iraqis to make these decisions, and we are very encouraged by the elections.

I commend the Obama administration for deciding to send an Ambassador and reopen the diplomatic front.

I think, frankly, that the Syrians share that objective. I don't think their interest, as they perceive it, is the same.

The Obama administration, on the other hand, has chosen to put diplomacy at the forefront of foreign policy.

The previous administration did not believe that we should talk to countries with whom we have a difficult relationship.

Syria continues to engage in deeply troubling behavior.

I would say that the remedies need to be strengthened certainly in the Equal Pay Act, and title VII is no panacea either.

The better approach is to look at how the wage scale is dealt with for this job.

If you take some of the proposals that I supported when I was here that Mike Enzi has talked about in terms of these workforce issues, combine that, getting our economy moving again, these seem all to be getting us in the right direction.

The Paycheck Fairness Act will not prohibit businesses from taking into consideration market factors.

Women still earn just 77 percent of what men earn.

Using any factor other than sex, we found to be a rather large loophole.

As Senator Dodd pointed out, the military is a business with clear pay equity policies.

There was a concerted effort to just virtually eliminate the EEOC, if they could, by strangling it financially and starving it.

The fact that people are prohibited from talking about their wages in many cases stifles the conversation.

It is, frankly, a little embarrassing that we have to be here today talking about the wage gap between men and women.

I want to thank Mike Enzi. I couldn't agree more. We need to get our economy back on its feet again.

I authored the Family Medical Leave Act years ago, and it was a controversial bill.

I would be very interested if you could ask your members at the Business Roundtable to submit to you and then to us what some of the ideas individual companies are doing to expand parental involvement so we might promote some of these…