Tom Harkin: “I, again, say I am sorry that we hear an objection from the other side. We are not doing much around here. Every day we…”

“I, again, say I am sorry that we hear an objection from the other side. We are not doing much around here. Every day we sort of hang around and have a couple of cloture votes and that is about it. We could bring up this education bill. As I said, it passed unanimously. That means both Republicans and Democrats supported this bill. It has money in it for Pell grants. We have a lot of middle-class kids going to college who are counting on these Pell grants. This bill had a $100 increase to help these middle-class kids go to college. Yet we are being denied the opportunity to get that $100 increase per year for the Pell grant. We just passed a leave-no-child-behind bill last year. I ask Senators to go and talk to the principals in the schools. Where are the resources to back them up? Without the resources, a lot of children are going to be left behind. So this bill has resources in it for title I--as I said, about $700 million. That is going to be denied to our public schools because the other side objected. Special education--almost $1 billion is tied up because the other side objects to going to our appropriations bill. I am sorry that the Republican whip has objected to bringing up this bill. But every day that we are here, I intend to ask unanimous consent to bring up the education funding bill. This is our ticket out of the recession. It is our ticket to a better future. It is a ticket to a stronger America. We can't back off of our support for education.”