Richard Burr: “I will say to the Senator, if for some reason it is not perfectly clear--and we have had the best legislative folks in…”

“I will say to the Senator, if for some reason it is not perfectly clear--and we have had the best legislative folks in the Senate who wrote the amendment; I do not think they got it wrong, but if they did, it will change. But the reality is, it is not going to pass and the Senator from Oregon knows it is not going to pass, not because there are questions on whether it is all title 1; it is not going to pass because they are not willing to let the $177 million worth of new money be devoted to education. It is not because of some technical problem we have with my amendment. The Senator's bill was awfully large, and there were still changes being made to the bill yesterday. It was a moving target to try to figure out exactly how to do an amendment. The Senator may remember, yesterday it was a second-degree amendment, but to accommodate the majority leader, we decided to do it as a side-by-side, which meant I had to incorporate now my amendment into the Wyden bill. So we have got a Wyden bill by itself, and a Wyden bill with this change. What my colleagues are going to be asked to do is not to vote against Wyden; either way they vote, they get the Wyden bill. But if they vote for the Wyden bill with the Burr amendment, they have now made a commitment to education. They have now made a commitment to the children. They have now made a commitment to 40 percent of America's schools that are located in rural areas, 8 million kids. That is the decision.”