Political Quotes

“I rise today to talk about a couple aspects of the legislation. I will do it in summary form. I will submit a longer statement for the Record. First, I wish to say how much I appreciate the work that has been done not only this week but over many weeks and months that led up to today. We were working a number of months ago on the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee to get a bill out of the committee. After it was completed, of course it looked easy, but I know how hard Senator Alexander, the chairman of the committee, and Senator Murray, the ranking member, worked to reach this point. The vote that day was 22 to 0, and now we are considering the bill on the floor. So that is significant and noteworthy, especially in these times in the Senate. I just wanted to talk about a couple of aspects of this legislation. For far too long, States have had to deal with the uncertainty of Federal waivers. One aspect of the legislation we are focused on is that we need one law that provides States and districts with more flexibility. We hear all across the country--I certainly heard it in Pennsylvania--that among the concerns people had was a lack of flexibility, sometimes a one-size-fits-all regimen that came from Washington. So that flexibility is important. We also want to make sure we are recapturing the original intent of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act--to protect our most vulnerable students.…”