Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, I rise on H.R. 5349, the so-called Crucial Communist Teaching Act. Let me start by acknowledging that there is value in educating our students about the dangers of totalitarianism and the atrocities committed under communist regimes, but the truth is we are debating a bill that skirts around key historical lessons and only risks further politicizing education. Rather than bringing forward substantive legislation to address challenges that our children face in the classroom, Republicans want us to focus on this narrowly tailored bill that leaves out important issues that we should be discussing about communism. We should be taking action to address the actual challenges that our children are facing, like legislation to increase investments in early childhood education, closing achievement gaps in our schools, tackling the mental health crisis among our youth, increasing graduation rates, and making college more affordable. These are the challenges that people are actually facing, but this bill--in fact, this entire session--has been silent on those issues. Furthermore, the bill fails to provide a complete and comprehensive approach to teaching students about the full history of communism.…”