Thomas Daschle: “this is an important bill. Ed-Flex is a bill that, in my view, as I have said before, warrants a 100-to-nothing vote. We…”

“this is an important bill. Ed-Flex is a bill that, in my view, as I have said before, warrants a 100-to-nothing vote. We ought to give States more flexibility. But we also ought to recognize that if we are going to begin debate on education policy in the U.S. Senate, there are other issues that also merit consideration and opportunity for an up-or-down vote: Whether or not we have an afterschool program, whether or not we have an effort in this country to prevent dropouts, whether or not we consider 100,000 teachers and class size, whether or not we have school construction. All of those are legitimate education issues. So I will offer to my distinguished majority leader another effort at compromise. I will attempt to see if we might come down to five or six amendments and say: Look. We will agree to those five or six amendments; we will agree to time limits and up-or-down votes on those five or six amendments; and then let's move on. The majority leader was very generous, I thought, with what he said earlier to the Governors. As I understand it, the majority leader said, Let's go to the Senate; let's take a week; let's take 2 weeks, if necessary, but let's talk about education. Let's take 2 weeks if necessary. We haven't even taken a week yet. So I really appreciate the majority leader's interest in trying to find some way with which to resolve this impasse. I think he is understandably desirous of moving on to other things. We want to do that.…”