Bill Lee

The point of the Higher Education Act was to increase access to postsecondary education

We needed the Federal Government to provide that oversight---- of civil rights protection.

This did not amount to quotas. This amounted to providing those tools and guidance to make sure that students' civil rights are protected, and you rescinded that.

Your own Department of Education Office for Civil Rights indicated that students of color are suspended three times more than white students.

Why in the world would you blame--and I understand what the rationale was, blaming school shootings, the tragic gun violence that has taken place throughout the country, on the civil rights protections for students of color? It doesn't…

Seventy-five civil rights groups wrote you in January, expressing opposition to the rescission of this guidance.

Black K-12 students and Latino students are three times as likely to be suspended or expelled as their white peers.

We can't wait 2 years to get a report on school desegregation from you.

It is outrageous. Your cuts here specifically target students of color.

The Trump administration's goal was to deconstruct the administrative state

You need someone to study the trauma associated with children being separated from their parents.

I don't know how we are going to address age HIV and AIDS when you are going to cut 40 percent of the people who rely on Medicaid.

It is really robbing Peter to pay Paul.

I have long had concerns over the effectiveness of some of the programs run by the U.S. Agency for Global Media, including the Office of Cuba Broadcasting and Radio and TV Marti, which serves, quite frankly, no useful purpose. It is a…

That is very undemocratic.

It is well documented that Russia, for example, tried to influence and turn African American groups against each other through their interference in our elections.

With this type of a cut, we haven't seen any plan that would show that we are going to make sure that new infections don't emerge and that we are able to get this epidemic under control.

Mr. Secretary, I think, because of what you just said, we are making progress, why would we pull back now and reduce our contribution to PEPFAR and the Global Fund, when in fact the American people want us to succeed, and every report that…

Given these cuts, it is difficult to believe that the administration's Africa strategy is sound.

I would suggest that if these recommendations have been made and if they haven't been embraced by the highest level of our government as it relates to our own efforts to stop the disinformation, then we are complicit in this.

Now, of course, we know Russia took sides in the Presidential elections here in America. That is a documented fact. And their candidate, Donald Trump, won. That is a fact.

I believe, a waste of taxpayer money.

Of course I have been concerned about the Trump administration's cuts to UNFPA and the impacts that these cuts have on the health and wellbeing of women and girls around the world.

Under Trump the policies have turned us back.

Now, let me ask you about industrial hemp. Because in the farm bill, we have legalized the production of industrial hemp.