Political Quotes

“we are facing an absolute crisis with our schools. Today, only 40 percent of school kids in America are attending in-person school 5 days a week. It has been a year since these COVID lockdowns began. Millions of school kids are falling behind, and it is falling disproportionately on low-income kids, on African-American kids, on Hispanic kids. This bill spends billions of dollars on schools and doesn't require that they open. My amendment does something very simple. It says if a school is open, it gets the new money that is in this bill, but if the school is not open 5 days a week, then that money goes to the parents, up to $10,000 per child, so they can get their kids an education. We have single moms with kids trapped in schools that are not open, and this crisis, this body can do something about. Those kids, if they fall behind, the science and the data tells us that they will be behind, potentially, for the rest of their lives. We should come together in a bipartisan way to say: We are going to open the schools, and we are going to give hope and relief to the kids who are being left behind. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Washington.”