Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from Massachusetts for yielding and for her outstanding leadership on reauthorizing the Carl D. Perkins Career and Technical Education Act. I am certainly pleased to join with five other bipartisan colleagues as original cosponsors of this bill. I would also, in particular, like to thank my friend and colleague, Representative G.T. Thompson of Pennsylvania, for his unwavering commitment to expanding CTE. As co-chairs of the Career and Technical Education Caucus, Representative Thompson and I have made Perkins reauthorization our top priority; and today it is the culmination of over 4 years of our work on the caucus together. I want to thank him and both his staff and my staff for their extraordinary efforts. We should also, of course, recognize everything that Chairman Kline, Ranking Member Scott, and their staffs did to get this bill to the floor today. Perkins has historically been a bipartisan bill, and we are all very happy to continue this tradition. H.R. 5587 was passed unanimously by the Education and the Workforce Committee and is the product of an inclusive and thoughtful process. Again, it passed unanimously. When does that happen, ever, it seems, these days in this Congress? This is extraordinary. The bill makes many necessary updates to Perkins, with an emphasis on training students for the skills they will need in high-growth sectors in the 21st century economy.…”