Lamar Alexander

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Madam President, if I could have the attention of Senators, I ask unanimous consent that the order relating to the Warren amendment be vitiated and the amendment remain pending while Senator Murray and I work with Senator Warren on the language in the bill. So we won't be voting on the Warren amendment today, but it will remain pending. That leaves votes on two amendments: Senator Brown's amendment and Senator Toomey's amendment.

Mr. ALEXANDER. I want to thank the Senator from Pennsylvania and the Senator from West Virginia for working with Senator Murray and me and others to come to a conclusion on this. They feel passionately about it. They have worked hard on it. They deserve credit for that. I am glad to be a cosponsor of it, and I plan to vote for it.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Madam President, I yield back all Republican time.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, the Democratic leader and the Republican leader have created an environment in which we can succeed on this bill, and I am grateful to them for that. I listened to their remarks this morning about some things that have gone on in the past in the Senate. My late friend Alex Haley, the author of ``Roots,'' used to say: Find the good and praise it. And so what I would like to do is thank the majority leader for putting the bill on the floor. Only he can do that and give us a chance to debate it. I thank the Democratic leader for creating an environment in which we can have a large number of amendments and succeed. I thank the Senator from Washington, Mrs. Patty Murray, who suggested the way we proceed today. We fell into some partisan differences in the last two Congresses that made that impossible, and she has, as much as anybody, helped solve that problem. We are making good progress. We have adopted a number of amendments. We voted on some others. Some have passed, and some have been defeated. People have had a chance to have their say. Senator Murray and I have received a large number of amendments--several dozen, actually, that Senators on both sides have offered--that we have agreed to recommend to the full Senate we adopt by consent. In addition to that, we adopted 29 amendments in the committee consideration, and many of those were amendments from Democratic Members of the Senate. So I think most Senators--in fact, I haven't heard a single one say that they haven't had a chance to have their say on No Child Left Behind. Yesterday, I put into the Record an op-ed from the Washington Post by the Virginia Secretary of Education Anne Holton, who made the argument that States, like Virginia, are well prepared to accept the responsibility for higher standards, better teaching, and real accountability. Over the last 15 years, that has happened in every State. It reminds us that this bill we are debating only provides 4 percent of the dollars that pay for our 100,000 public schools in the country. We have some other money that the Federal Government spends--4 percent or 5 percent more--for those schools, but this bill spends 4 percent. Most of the money, most of the responsibility, most of the opportunity for success is with parents, classroom teachers, and others who are close to the children. The consensus we have developed, the bipartisan consensus--again, with the bill Senator Murray and I put together and improved by our committee and now being improved on the floor--is that while we keep the important measures of the accountability, so we know what children in South Dakota and Tennessee and Washington State are learning and not learning, so we can tell if anyone is left behind, that we restore to States the responsibility for figuring out what to do about the tests. That has broad-scale support. Superintendents were in town yesterday from all over the country; they told us that. Governors are calling us; they tell us that. The major teachers organizations in the country tell us we do not need, in effect, a national school board. Those decisions need to be made by teachers who cherish the children in their classroom and the parents who put them there and school board members who care for them and Governors and legislators who are closer to home. So this bill isn't easy to do, but because of that consensus, we are making good progress. I will submit following my remarks an article from earlier this week from Newsweek entitled, ``The Education Law Everyone Wants to Fix.'' The House of Representatives said it wants to fix it last night. The progress we are making suggests the Senate wants to fix it. We know all across the country Governors, legislators, teachers, school superintendents, and parents want to end the confusion and anxiety in the 100,000 public schools. We will be having more votes, hopefully today just before lunch, and then we will continue with the bill. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that following my remarks, the article from Newsweek entitled ``The Education Law Everyone Wants to Fix'' be printed in the Record. On a different subject, which I will not elaborate on today, I wish to also include, following my remarks, an article I wrote for the Wall Street Journal yesterday about the cost of going to college. I think it is unfortunate that so many politicians and pundits say that Americans can't afford college when in fact most of them can. It is never easy, but it is important for them to know that for low-income Americans, for example, the first 2 years of college are free or nearly free at a community college; and there are many other ways colleges, universities, the Federal Government, and taxpayers try to make it easy for a larger number of Americans to go to college. That is a debate Senator Murray and I are already working on. We will bring the reauthorization of the higher education bill before the Senate hopefully later this year. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that my op-ed from the Wall Street Journal be printed in the Record following my remarks. Mr. President, there are a number of Senators who wish to come to the floor to speak today. I encourage any Senator who hasn't presented their amendment to go ahead and do that. I am hopeful that soon we will have an agreement to have a number of votes before lunch. I yield the floor.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I wish to acknowledge the comments of the Senator from Washington. Before she was here, I commented on her leadership and on how the Democratic leader as well as the Republican leader have created an environment in which we can succeed. We govern a complex country such as ours by consensus, and I think the way we are doing things is a pretty good example of the way we can do that. I am glad the House of Representatives acted. We have a process for this called conference. We haven't been doing conferences much lately. But she and I both talked with Chairman Kline and Representative Scott. If we should succeed next week, as I believe we will, why then we will have a conference with the House of Representatives, and we will develop a bill we hope the President will be comfortable signing. We are not here just to make a speech. We want to resolve this. As I said in the article I put in earlier, this is the education law everyone wants fixed. In our constitutional system of government, we don't fix it unless the House and Senate agree and the President signs it. So that is our goal, and we are continuing to make steps, thanks to the leadership of Senator Murray and others. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the time until 11:30 a.m. today be equally divided between the two managers or their designees and that it be in order to call up the following amendments: Daines amendment No. 2110, Warren amendment No. 2120, Brown amendment No. 2099, Portman amendment No. 2147, Manchin amendment No. 2103, Kaine amendment No. 2096, Heller amendment No. 2121, Feinstein amendment No. 2087; that the Toomey amendment be modified with the changes at the desk; further, that at 11:30 a.m., the Senate vote in relation to the amendments in the order listed, with a vote in relation to the Toomey amendment, as modified, after disposition of the Brown amendment, with a 60-affirmative vote threshold for adoption of the Daines amendment, and with no second-degree amendments in order to any of the amendments prior to the votes; that there be 2 minutes equally divided prior to each vote, and that upon the disposition of the Feinstein amendment, the Senate vote in relation to the Fischer amendment No. 2079.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, for the information of Senators, we expect the first four amendments in this series to require rollcall votes, with the rest of the amendments being adopted by a voice vote. I thank the Senator from Washington for working with us to create this agreement. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Madam President, I ask to set aside the pending amendment to call up the following amendments en bloc: Portman amendment No. 2147 and Heller amendment No. 2121.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Madam President, this amendment is well-intentioned, unnecessary, won't pass, and undermines the bipartisan agreement we reached to try to move in exactly the direction the Senator from Montana suggested. In addition, the House of Representatives rejected it last night. I recommend instead that my friends who want more local control of the schools vote for our bipartisan agreement, which ends the common core mandate, ends waivers in 42 States, reverses the trend of national school boards, and which, in my opinion, would be the biggest step toward restoring local control to public schools in the last 25 years. I urge a ``no'' vote on a well-intentioned, unnecessary idea which won't become law and which might help undermine the bipartisan proposal that has a very good chance of becoming law. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the votes following the first vote in this series be 10 minutes in length.

Mr. ALEXANDER. I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Madam President, I remind Senators that this and the next vote are 10-minute votes.

Mr. ALEXANDER. I yield back the time.

Mr. ALEXANDER. I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Madam President, I ask for 30 seconds for Senator Murray and me to make a brief comment.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Minnesota for her contributions to the legislation we are working on. She has been very focused on STEM education and has found creative ways to encourage that, and I thank her for it. We are hoping within a few minutes to be able to agree by consent to a few bills and call up a few others. So what I would say to the Senator from Arkansas, through the Chair, is if he wouldn't mind going ahead with his remarks and, perhaps, if we are able to, I may ask him to yield for 60 seconds and allow us to do that and proceed with a unanimous consent request. But I don't want to delay the Senator any further with moving ahead with his remarks.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, Senator Murray and this Senator have a small package of amendments that have been cleared by both sides. I ask unanimous consent that the following amendments be called up, reported by number, and agreed to en bloc: Gardner No. 2083, McCaskill No. 2092, Gillibrand No. 2108, Gardner No. 2119, Casey No. 2131, and Klobuchar No. 2138.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to set aside the pending amendment and call up the following amendments en bloc: Kirk No. 2161, Scott No. 2132, and Hatch No. 2080. And I further ask that Senator Murray be recognized to call up two other amendments.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that at 5:30 p.m. on Monday, July 13, the Senate vote on the following amendments, with no second-degree amendments in order to any of the amendments prior to the votes: Hatch amendment No. 2080 and Kaine amendment No. 2118.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to a period of morning business, with Senators permitted to speak therein for up to 10 minutes each.

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record a copy of my remarks at the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions hearing on ``Reauthorizing the Higher Education Act: Evaluating Accreditation's Role in Ensuring Quality.''

Mr. ALEXANDER

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Select Committee on Intelligence be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on July 9, 2015, at 2:30 p.m.

Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on the Judiciary be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on July 9, 2015, at 10 a.m., in room SD-226 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building.