Jon S. Corzine: “I will just wrap up. Again, I have a hard time understanding this debate, when we have such a clear choice in front of…”

“I will just wrap up. Again, I have a hard time understanding this debate, when we have such a clear choice in front of us, when we talk about the needs of these 6 million kids, the 10,000 identified failing schools. By the way, we are all in favor of the flexibility and making sure that the local school districts have the ability to deal with a lot of these issues. But we cannot turn around failed schools if we don't have teachers who are qualified to sit in the classrooms. And we need to do it. By the way, one of the ways we get those qualified teachers in those classrooms is to make sure the Pell grant program is properly funded, where people who need the opportunity to get a higher education actually have access. I hear about the tax cut, $30 billion that went into the tax system. That is great, as long as you have taxable income. If you don't have anything to have a tax credit against, it is pretty hard to figure out how you are going to use that to fund higher education that will ultimately end up providing our teachers, our doctors, our researchers, and all the people to go forward. So I hope my colleagues can understand the simple concept: Do we really need a $675 billion tax cut, for those who are already doing well, when we can't make the choice to provide the $6 billion that we want to invest in our schools? I appreciate Senator Kennedy's efforts here. I wholeheartedly support them and hope my colleagues will as well.”