Political Quotes

“I rise to speak on an amendment that has great significance for our country. It is about early learning. I will give you the formal name of the amendment so we have it for the record: Casey amendment No. 2152, the strong start for America's children amendment, which is an amendment to the Every Child Achieves Act that will establish a Federal-State partnership to provide access to high- quality and public prekindergarten education for low- and moderate- income families. We have had a debate, especially over the last couple of days, about our commitment to basic education, so-called elementary and secondary education. As part of that, I think it is the time to finally, at long last, have a debate about early learning on the floor of the U.S. Senate. It has been a long time since that has happened. I thank the folks who have made it possible for us to get to this point to consider an amendment like this and to have this debate about the larger legislation but also about this amendment, in particular. Senator Alexander and Senator Murray were leading the effort to consider the Every Child Achieves Act, but also, in particular, I again salute Senator Murray for her many years, as you might call it, laboring in the vineyards of early learning, as she has done on so many other issues--since the first stage, she has been in the Senate working on early learning.…”