Political Quotes

“today we are taking a long, overdue step in moving beyond the Bush No Child Left Behind law. The Every Student Succeeds Act will reduce the focus on testing while still ensuring that all students are making progress. This reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act also includes new investments for early childhood education--a priority for Democrats. The senior Senator from Washington, Mrs. Murray, and the chairman of the HELP Committee, Senator Alexander, did good work in getting this bill passed. But while we pat ourselves on the back for passing this legislation, we shouldn't forget that we could have done this a long time ago. It was not long after the bill passed that we knew it was full of flaws, and we tried valiantly to change it for a number of years. Why didn't we change it? Because there were Republican filibusters. We couldn't bring the bill to the floor. In fact, nearly every major bipartisan bill we passed this year could have become law in years past if Republicans had not blocked them, obstructed them, and filibustered them. What are we talking about? We are talking about the bill we are going to vote on at 10:45 a.m., the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, and the so-called doc fix. My friend referred to that, the SGR. For years, because of something the Bush administration had done to fix it on paper to make the budget look good, we could not get past that.…”