Political Quotes

“Madam President, I rise to speak in support of an amendment I have filed to the Every Child Achieves Act that will be brought up, I believe, later today. In the spirit of my friend the Senator from Texas I am glad he has joined me on this amendment. I know as we get into this terribly important education bill, I want to commend Senator Alexander, Senator Murray for their leadership in bringing it to the floor and trying to wrestle through the right balance of between Federal, State, and local partnerships in education. I look forward to being a part of that debate. While we will spend hours on the floor of the Senate debating issues around accountability and assessment, terribly important issues, there is one issue I believe all of us in this body can agree upon, to make certain we ensure that all dollars that are spent on education are spent appropriately and in an efficient way and that most of those dollars end up in the classroom. This was a conversation I started when I was Governor of Virginia. When I looked around at the Commonwealth of Virginia, where we spend close to $9 billion a year on public education, I realized that many of the same debates we are having in the Chamber we were having in Virginia at that time. But again, one area where there was complete agreement was to make sure those dollars spent on education were spent efficiently.…”