Timothy Roemer: “I appreciate the very kind words from my good friend and fellow New Democrat from the State of Washington (Mr. Smith). I…”

“I appreciate the very kind words from my good friend and fellow New Democrat from the State of Washington (Mr. Smith). I want to applaud him for his hard work on this bill over the past year and a half. I want to thank the gentleman from Mississippi (Mr. Shows) for the eloquence in his statement. We will be joined by the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Kind) to talk about education as well from his vantage point on the Committee on Education and the Workforce where he has joined me working on these efforts for the past several years. I also want to commend all the New Democrats that have worked so hard on education legislation over the past several years. We have a host of people that dedicate their careers in public service to trying to improve opportunities for young children, for people that are going back to school, whether they be 28 or 48 years old, to get a better education, whether it be a nontraditional student at 33 years old going to a community college. We are interested in working in areas to improve education for Americans across the country. The New Democrat Coalition has been a driving force to try to come up with these new ideas, to try to work with the Senate where, with this particular bill, the Three R's, we have worked with Senator Bayh, my colleague from Indiana, and Senator Lieberman from Connecticut to craft this legislation.…”