On the recordMarch 30, 2011
I would like to thank the distinguished chairman of Oversight for his graciousness and leadership. Mr. Speaker, we have found consensus. Sweet, elusive consensus. We found it. Not in a final committee vote; that would be too much to ask. Not even in the testimony of the witnesses who came before the subcommittee. But we found consensus among the Members themselves, one after the other after the other who testified as to the power and the magic of education to transform not just their lives but generations of lives. I spoke with a distinguished Member from the other side of the aisle, a gentleman that I happen to like and respect very much and is one of the most powerful speakers in this body. And I will not call his name because the conversation was not public. But he recalled for me the day that he was sworn into office, and how his father came to him with tears streaming down his face. And some of the tears were the tears that only a father can have who is delighting in the success of a child. But some of the tears were also the acknowledgement that it could have been the father and not the son had the father not been born in the wrong town, at the wrong time, and in the wrong State, and, yes, in the eyes of our educational system of yesterday, the wrong race. It is that shared acknowledgement that education is the pathway to prosperity that makes me struggle with how someone can oppose this bill. The parents want it. They feel more vested.…
