Michael Bennet

Mr. BENNET

Mr. BENNET. Mr. President, I call up amendment No. 2907.

Mr. BENNET. Mr. President, this amendment will help improve access to care for veterans all across the country and fill a huge unmet need. It provides funding to hire more doctors, nurses, social workers, and mental health professionals to serve our veterans. It will also help improve VA medical facilities by supporting upgrades and minor construction improvements. In Colorado, our VA system has been plagued by long waiting times and a lack of access. Across the State, we have shortages of physicians, nurses, and mental health professionals, particularly in rural areas such as Alamosa and the San Luis Valley. We also know all too well in Colorado that much more accountability is needed within the VA, and we will continue to work to improve a bureaucracy that has plagued access to quality care. The 400,000 veterans in Colorado and across the Nation deserve the best care we can offer. They deserve what they have been promised. This amendment is fully paid for, and I urge my colleagues to vote yes on this amendment. I yield the floor.

Mr. BENNET. Mr. President, first, through the Chair, I say thank you to my colleague from Wyoming for his kind words about our efforts with respect to veterans. Pursuant to section 904 of the Congressional Budget Act of 1974, I move to waive all applicable provisions of that act for purposes of the pending amendment, and I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. BENNET

Mr. BENNET. Mr. President, I am here to reflect on the tragedy that occurred in Colorado Springs last week. There, a gunman attacked a Planned Parenthood clinic, killing three people and injuring nine others. Colorado is mourning the losses of the three who were murdered, all of whom were parents in the prime of their lives and all of whom represented the best of our State. Officer Garrett Swasey was one of the first officers to arrive at the scene. He had served as an officer at the University of Colorado Colorado Springs Police Department for 6 years. Garrett had been married to his wife Rachel for 17 years. He leaves behind his two children--Faith, who is only 6, and Elijah, who just turned 11 on Sunday. His wife said: His greatest joys were his family, his church, and his profession. We will cherish his memory, especially those times he spent tossing the football to his son and snuggling with his daughter on the couch. She went on to note: Helping others brought him deep satisfaction and being a police officer was a part of him. In the end, his last act was for the safety and well-being of others and was a tribute to his life. Officer Swasey's actions last Friday spoke to his extraordinary courage and selflessness. As a university police officer, he wasn't under any obligation to respond when he first heard of the incident through emergency radio. He could have looked the other way. Yet he was one of the first to arrive at Planned Parenthood, which is 4 miles away from the university. His good friend and copastor said that Officer Swasey often responded to dangerous calls off campus and that he put other people's lives before his own. The University of Colorado Colorado Springs police chief said: There was no way any of us could have kept him here. He was always willing to go. . . . He had an enthusiasm that was hard to quell. Officer Swasey is truly a hero in every sense of the word. Before joining the university police force, Officer Swasey was a Junior National Champion ice skater. Upon hearing the news of the tragedy, his skating partner, with whom he won that championship, observed: Garrett was selfless, always there to help me, always my wingman. He was my brother and my partner. I could always count on him. After his competitive career, Officer Swasey continued to teach skating. He also served as a copastor at Hope Chapel, which he and his family attended since 2001. At church he led care groups and taught Scripture and guitar. At services on Sunday, a fellow pastor at the church described how he felt. ``You don't realize how much you love someone until you can't tell him anymore.'' Our State is also mourning the loss of Ke'Arre Marcell Stewart. He was only 29 years old. Here is how his family and friends have described Ke'Arre: ``a good friend and an amazing listener''; ``one of the most caring men I've ever met''; ``someone you could just sit and talk to about life''; ``caring, giving, funny and just a damn good person.'' Those traits were on display Friday when he was at Planned Parenthood accompanying a friend. He served our country in the Army and was deployed to Iraq between 2005 and 2006. Last week he died as he was trying to save others. According to reports, after being shot outside of the building, Ke'Arre ran back inside to warn others to seek safety. His family credits his military training and instinct for how he responded. Ke'Arre wasn't a native of Colorado. He was born in Texas, where he was a three-sport athlete, playing football, basketball, and running track. His friends say he moved to Colorado because he was stationed at Fort Carson and stayed, like so many of us, because he loved our beautiful State. Ke'Arre had two children, both daughters. They are 11 and 6 years old. His friend observed that ``he loved his daughters to death. He would do anything for them.'' Finally, the third victim, Jennifer Markovsky, was also accompanying a friend to the clinic on Friday. Jennifer grew up in Hawaii, where she met her husband who was serving in the Army at the time. About a decade ago--in a story similar to Ke'Arre's--they moved to Colorado when he was reassigned. Jennifer's family described her as a loving wife and mother to a young son and daughter. Her sister-in-law told the Colorado Springs Gazette: ``She lived for her kids.'' She said Jennifer often took her children, who are 10 and 6, on hikes and spent time with them baking and working on crafts. Her father, who had just wished her a happy Thanksgiving one day earlier, called her ``the most lovable person . . . kind-hearted . . . always there when I needed her.'' Yesterday her husband said: She was a very caring and compassionate person and patient and understanding parent. She was deeply loved by all who knew her. She was always helping the kids do homework and reading books with them. We will miss her; her cooking, crafting and adventurous spirit. Three young parents who woke up last Friday morning with long, bright futures ahead of them, with the chance to raise their children and watch them grow and learn, with the chance to contribute, as they had before, to our community and our country but instead whose lives were violently ended in a hail of gunfire--three strangers to each other, now joined together in our fondest memories. Nine others were wounded, and our thoughts and prayers are with them and their families as well. We should also honor and thank the Colorado Springs Police Department and other local law enforcement agencies that responded so swiftly and effectively. Five officers were wounded in the attack. I wish to also recognize the employees at Planned Parenthood who worked tirelessly during the extended shooting and hostage incident to ensure that their patients were kept safe. This is not the day to talk about how our country begins to emerge from this season of killing and violence, but let me simply say in recent years too many of our children and parents have had their lives stolen, and too many of the rest of us have lived to pursue the ordinary course of our lives--going to school, going to work, seeking health care--in the shadows of the question: Whose child will be next? Whose mom and dad will be next? What we need today--instead of charged rhetoric and political tactics--is to find a way to at least begin figuring out how we can deal with these problems that we need to solve, how we can make things better. I thank my colleagues for their comforting words this week, and I hope we will all take time in the days ahead to think of the families and victims involved in this tragedy. Take a moment to think of the kids who lost their mom or dad. I have no doubt that the Colorado Springs community and our State will come together to heal during this difficult time. We could all take a cue from that here. I thank the Presiding Officer, and I yield the floor.

Mr. BENNET

Mr. BENNET. Mr. President, I would like to speak on the agreement the P5+1 powers reached on Iran's nuclear program. I was an early cosponsor of the bill that gave Congress an opportunity to evaluate the agreement. Because of that legislation, we have had extensive discussion and debate. This Chamber has a history of voting on critical national security issues at a 60-vote threshold, and I would have preferred an up-or-down vote on the merits. But, as too often happens, politics have prevailed, and this will likely be the only vote we will have on this agreement. So this vote serves as the vote on the substance. In 2003, Iran was operating approximately 164 centrifuges and had virtually no enriched uranium. By 2009, when the current administration took office, Iran had between 4,000 and 5,000 centrifuges installed. Over the next few years, Congress passed increasingly tough sanctions that the administration, to its credit, set out to implement. As a member of the banking committee in 2010, I helped write and pass those sanctions. By 2013, even in the grasp of the toughest international sanctions regime, Iran's nuclear program had raced forward. The country had 19,000 centrifuges installed, 10 bombs worth of enriched uranium, and 2 to 3 months' breakout time to a bomb. The harsh reality is that today Iran stands on the threshold of a nuclear weapon. So we have to weigh the agreement against this set of facts. Our goal throughout this process has been clear: to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon. Like many Members of this Chamber, I have undertaken an exhaustive review of the agreement and a lengthy consultation process. This included briefings from our own national security and intelligence experts, international verification experts, regional experts, former Israeli military and intelligence officials, and the P5+1 Ambassadors as well as Israel's Ambassador to the United States. My conclusion is that the JCPOA is more likely to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon than the plausible alternatives. For that reason, I will vote to support the agreement. It is no surprise to me that there are sincere, heartfelt differences of opinion about the merits of this deal. I have deep concerns about what the shape of Iran's nuclear program could look like beyond the 15 year horizon. But I also believe that implementation of this agreement is the best of bad options. If Congress rejects this agreement, Iran will receive billions of dollars of sanctions relief and there will be no oversight of its nuclear program. That is an unacceptable result. Some have argued that the United States could reject this agreement in favor of returning to the negotiating table. But this logic only holds if the international coalition holds, and everything I heard this summer tells me that won't happen. While this agreement has flaws, it is clearly better than the alternatives. The agreement is the best option for preventing Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon, and it maintains all of our options to respond to a move by Iran to break out to a bomb. The agreement doesn't eliminate the deep concerns I hold about Iran's horrific acts of terror and its hegemonic pursuits, but all of Iran's malevolent acts would only be more dangerous if backed by a nuclear weapon. We must also help our closest ally in the region, the State of Israel, defend itself. Let me be clear. The survival of the State of Israel is essential to the security of the Jewish people, and, as far as I am concerned, Israel's survival is essential to our humanity. For these reasons and for our own security, we cannot allow Iran to acquire a nuclear weapon, and we must be crystal clear that we will use force to prevent it from doing so. In fact, we will have more credibility to use force if this agreement is in place, and we will have more legitimacy when we work to build an international coalition to respond to Iranian cheating. There are risks to the successful implementation of the agreement, and the President and Congress must now work to make it stronger. I have worked with others in the Senate to push the administration toward that goal. Since the announcement of the agreement, I have also worked with Senator Cardin to develop a legislative package to address the accumulated shortcomings of our policies towards Iran and to strengthen the agreement. Among other measures, our legislation will ensure that we track the resources Iran obtains from sanctions relief and work with our regional partners to counter conventional Iranian threats. It also invests in our intelligence capabilities and provides Israel deterrence to ensure Iran cannot shield covert systems and facilities, no matter how deeply they are buried. As we implement this agreement, we must set in place a strategy with our partners to ensure that Iran appreciates the consequences of its violations, for the next 15 years and beyond. My grandparents, John and Halina Klejman, and my mother Susanne Klejman had everyone and everything they knew taken from them in the Holocaust. Yet, as my grandmother always told me, they were the lucky ones--they had the chance to rebuild their shattered lives in a country that accepted them and let them succeed beyond their wildest dreams. We live in dangerous times, and whether you support the agreement or not, we must develop a cohesive strategy for U.S. policy in the Middle East that addresses the grave security concerns in the region. Separate from Iran's nuclear program, the region is threatened by war, sectarian violence, a terrible refugee crisis, and acts of barbaric brutality that belong to another century. We should seize this opportunity to play a constructive role in addressing these threats. Our young men and women in the Armed Forces have been asked to sacrifice so much. None of us can have any doubt that, if called upon again, they would rise to any challenge, anywhere in the world. We honor their courage and spirit of sacrifice by exhausting diplomatic options before we turn to military ones. This isn't a sign of weakness but proof of our strength. And it will help us rally our allies to our side if ultimately we need to turn to military action. Our primary objectives are to prevent Iran from having a nuclear weapon, make sure Israel is safe, and, if possible, avoid another war in the Middle East. This agreement represents a flawed but important step to accomplish those goals. I yield the floor.

Mr. BENNET

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

Mr. BENNET. Mr. President, I thank Senator Booker. I see the Senator from Pennsylvania is here. The Senator from Connecticut is here, and I want to thank him for his leadership and how he has stuck with it week after week after week. I want to say to my friend from New Jersey, through the Chair, how much I appreciate his words and his aspirations for our country, because we are falling down on the job. We have issue after issue after issue that comes here to the Senate floor--sometimes resolved, sometimes not. Education almost never is in front of us. I sometimes hear people say this, and it rattles me when I hear them say it. Sometimes people say: Michael, don't you know that not everybody is going to go to college? Don't you know that not everybody is going to go to college? That is OK with me as long as it is their decision that they are making and that they are an educated 12th grader but they are deciding not going to go to college. That is the decision they are making. But the reality is that it is not that we are sort of, kind of getting it right when it comes to kids in this country. Let's do the math. If you are born poor in the United States, because of the way our K-12 system works in access to higher education, you stand a 9-in-100 chance of getting a college degree--not an 80 percent chance, not a 75 percent chance, but 9 in 100. If we were poor kids in this place instead of Senators, it would be those desks in the front row, the desks in the row behind them, and three desks in the next row. The entire rest of this Senate would be a sea of people without a college degree. That is the condition for poor kids living in the United States of America. That is the circumstance they face. We have to start believing there are kids--they are not someone else's kids. We learned for the first time a month ago--this is not a measure of poverty in the same sense that I was just using the word, but for the first time in this country's history, over half our public school children are poor enough that they qualify for free and reduced lunch. We did not change the standard for free and reduced lunch. That is the effect of 20 years of an economy that is not driving middle-class wages up and the worst recession since the Great Depression. So at every level from the schoolhouse door to the floor of the Senate, this ought to be our No. 1 priority. Because as the Senator from New Jersey said, all the other stuff that we want to fix--he mentioned what we need to do with sentencing reform. Eighty-five percent of the people in our prisons are high school dropouts. That tells you something about what you might do to cure that problem. This ought to be our No. 1 issue. It ought to be our No. 1 here, and it ought to be our No. 1 issue at home. I yield the floor.

Mr. BENNET. Mr. President, as we wait for colleagues to arrive to the floor, I thought I would take a few minutes to speak a little bit about accountability in this bill. As we know, the No Child Left Behind legislation and now this new version of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act require annual tests. They are not popular. I believe we are overtesting kids in this country. It is not the Federal requirement that is causing that; it is the relationship of the Federal requirement to State and local tests that are administered, so that by the time we get to the classroom inhabited by one of my three daughters who go to Denver's public schools, for example, kids end up spending too much time being tested. Part of that is because we haven't done a good job, I don't think, of distinguishing between tests that are used for accountability purposes--how is the school doing growing kids--and tests that are used for teaching and learning purposes, which are assessments that have to happen all the time during the school year. When I was in school, we called those quizzes, and we dreaded them, just as people dread them today. That was the way teachers were able to keep an eye on how students were doing in their classroom throughout the year so they could course correct, so they could make changes based on the individual needs of the kids in their classroom. Teaching and learning and accountability aren't the same things, and I think we put too much freight on some of these assessments. I hope what we are going to see as we come out of this new reauthorization is an understanding about the importance of the accountability--why we have it--and better implementation of tests at the State and local level. There is no reason for the Federal Government to be involved in education, really--only 9 percent of what we spend is Federal money, and the rest of it is State and local money--except for one reason. The civil rights imperative in this bill and that is at the heart of this bill has said to us that we just can't look the other way when it comes to kids of color and kids living in poverty in this country, which we did for decades--for decades--without knowing where we were headed. The one great benefit of No Child Left Behind is that it required that data about kids living in poverty, kids of color, kids with special needs, and English language learners as well be published so we could see the huge gaps that exist all across this country in educational attainment. We can't go backward on that. I agree that allowing States to have more flexibility in the design of these systems is important. It is an important step forward in this bill. As I mentioned yesterday, when I was the superintendent of the Denver Public Schools--the best job I ever had; I had that honor--I used to wonder all the time why people in Washington were so mean to our teachers and to our kids. I got here and I realized they weren't mean, they just have absolutely no idea what is going on in our schools and our classrooms. Where the Presiding Officer is right now, right here, in this place--and I mean this literally--is as far away as one can get from a school or a classroom in this country and still be in this universe. We are very distant. We may think we know what is going on there, but we don't know. This institution doesn't know. While I, as that superintendent, have developed a very strong view that I didn't want to be told how we should do things by Washington, and I didn't want Washington telling my teachers how to do things, our principals how to do things, kids and families how to do things, I think it is important and imperative that we have a national expectation for what kids ought to be able to do at certain grade levels and that we have a national imperative around the achievement gap in this country. We also have a national imperative--people may not like to know this--to figure out how we are going to replace the 1.5 million teachers we are going to require in this country over the next several years. Those are all issues of national concern, but our federalist system tells us there are certain responsibilities assumed by the States and certain responsibilities assumed by the Federal Government, and we have gotten that twisted up when it comes to education. So I think that is an important step forward, that we are not going to be telling people how to do it, but we need to remind people that they need to do it. It is not OK that we live in a country where if you are unlucky enough to be born poor, your chances of getting a college degree or its equivalent are roughly 9 in 100. That is not OK. That is a matter of national concern. That is why the accountability provisions in this bill are so important. To be honest, that is why the annual testing is so important, if it is done wisely and well and if the data is used in a thoughtful way to measure student growth. No Child Left Behind not only was a huge overreach by the Federal Government, it also asked and answered the profoundly wrong question. It asked: How did this year's group of fourth graders do compared to last year's fourth graders? That is how we evaluated schools, on that basis. That is crazy. They are not the same kids. The question we should be asking and the question we are asking now in many States and in many communities across the country is this: How did this group of sixth graders do compared to how they did as fifth graders compared to how they did as fourth graders and then compared to all the kids in the State--this is the way we do it in Colorado--who had a statistically similar test history. That reveals a lot of information. For No Child Left Behind, we used to have a matrix in Denver, and it was four squares, and in the upper right-hand corner was--well, there are two measures; one is growth and one is status. How much did you grow this year? It would be like saying, how much weight did you gain or lose this year, versus status, which is, how much did you weigh? What is your achievement level? Those are two different ideas. In those four boxes I mentioned earlier, in the upper right we had high growth, high status schools, and in this corner we had high status but low growth schools. Those are schools we called excellent schools under No Child Left Behind. Those were blue ribbon schools even though kids were losing ground in those schools. They arguably shouldn't have been because those schools didn't have the struggles schools have with kids living in poverty. Those were blue ribbon schools. Those are schools where we were telling moms and dads and kids that everything is fine, even though kids were losing ground when they showed up at the schoolhouse door. The reverse was also true. The reverse was also true because we were saying to schools that were below the threshold of high status--low status schools--that they were failing schools even though they might have been schools where what we were seeing was 2 years of growth for kids who had started out way behind because they had come to kindergarten with that stubborn word gap, that 30 million word gap that kids have who are living in poverty and are showing up in kindergarten. By the way, we are not doing anything, almost, as a country to deal with that problem. As I mentioned yesterday, we are having a debate in Washington about income redistribution sometimes. We have a discussion about what the Tax Code should be, and there are people here who believe that it shouldn't do anything. That is a principled position, but if that is a person's position, they better be working day and night to make sure every single kid in America has access to high-quality early childhood education. We better make sure every kid in America has access and a choice to go to a high-performing K-12 school. And we better make sure we are doing everything we can to make it easier, not harder, to go to college to get a higher education degree because this unforgiving international economy is not going to change its mind about whether a high school degree is enough or dropping out of high school is enough. We need to be focused on education in this country. It is the single most important public good we provide domestically. If a person asks me as a parent what I would take a risk on for my kids, the No. 1 thing I wouldn't take a risk on is their education. That is how we ought to be feeling about all of the kids in the United States of America. We should stop treating America's children as though they are someone else's kids. They are not someone else's kids; they are our kids. And if we extrapolate the academic outcomes that we are seeing in this country, the college graduation rates we are seeing, the high school graduation rates--if we extrapolate those against the changing demographics in the United States, we are not going to recognize ourselves in the 21st century. When we constrain a child, a human being, an American citizen to the margin of this economy or the margin of the democracy simply because they are born into poverty and we can't do the work to provide a high- quality education, that is all the evidence we need that we are treating people as though they are someone else's kids. That is why, by the way, there is more we need to do on accountability. I feel as though we have made good progress with a lot of this bill, and I am extremely grateful for the leadership of Chairman Alexander from Tennessee and the ranking member of the committee, Senator Patty Murray, and I am pleased to see that the bill passed out of committee unanimously. Remember, ESEA is fundamentally a civil rights law. We should measure growth. We should identify the bottom 5 percent of schools in this country. We need to ensure that subgroups and high- performing schools are not left behind. And that is the power of the data that is collected, and that is the power of what is called the disaggregation of that data so that we can see outcomes. I see my colleague from New Jersey is here. Through the Chair, I would ask if he wishes to speak, and if so, I will stop. I was filling time. I do want to talk about the comparability loophole, but I will come back to that and yield to my colleague from New Jersey.

Mr. BENNET

Mr. BENNET. Thank you, Mr. President. I am obviously a Senator from Colorado, but as I rise, I am speaking more as the father of three daughters in the Denver Public Schools and a former superintendent of schools. It was a great privilege of mine, probably the privilege of a lifetime, to have been the superintendent of Denver Public Schools for almost 5 years. I can't begin to express, as I am standing on this floor, my gratitude for what I have learned from teachers, principals, and parents who were sending their kids to what was then a school district that had seen declining enrollment for many years. It is now the fastest growing urban school district in America. Of course, the students themselves day after day inspired all the adults around them to want to help deliver a high-quality education. But I also was struck when I was superintendent with the barriers that we have accepted as a country and as a society that we would never accept for our own children. We would never accept them for our own children. The first barrier I talked about on the floor before is the fact that if you are born poor in this country, you show up to kindergarten having heard 30 million fewer words than your more affluent peers. This is an enormous barrier we haven't addressed as a country, and there are many other challenges up to and including the fact that we have made it harder and harder as years go by for people to afford a college education without bankrupting themselves or shackling themselves to a mountain of debt. In the face of all that, we have been very slow to change. We have been very slow at every level to change the way we deliver K-12 education or early childhood education through higher education. Let me just give you one example that this bill addresses today, in part. We have done almost nothing in this country to change the way we attract teachers, recruit teachers, inspire teachers, train teachers, reward teachers, since we had a labor market that discriminated against women and said the only job you can have is being a teacher or being a nurse. Those are your two jobs. So why don't you come to the Denver Public Schools and teach Julius Caesar every year for 30 years of your life for a really low compensation. But if you stick with us for 30 years-- which you would not do anymore--we will give you a pension worth three times that of Social Security. That sounded like a good deal because you were likely to outlive your spouse, you weren't paid a lot during your lifetime, and you get the pension at the end. We have done nothing to change that. That is our offer. I can tell you again--not speaking as a politician but speaking as a school superintendent, speaking as somebody who has never done anything but substitute teach. I have never actually taught as a traditional teacher. I substitute taught from time to time. That is the hardest job a person can have, especially when you are teaching in a high poverty school. It is much harder, I can say without any doubt, than any job any Member of the U.S. Senate has. Yet we have an offer that belongs to an era that no longer exists. In all honesty, we used to subsidize the public education system in this country through that discrimination in our labor, our approach to labor, because even though the deal wasn't a good deal, we might have been able to get the very best British literature student in her class to commit to be a teacher of British literature because she had no other options except for perhaps becoming a nurse. Fortunately, that hasn't been true in this country for 30 or 40 years, but we haven't updated the offer, and we haven't changed the way we train our teachers once they get there. That is why this bill is important in some parts because it makes some important steps in the right direction. We are not going to teach children from Washington. Our kids who today are in systems all across this country in their schools and classrooms are never going to remember who here worked on the new version of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. That is not going to be of concern to them, but hopefully what they will remember is a third grade teacher who made a huge difference for them, a fourth grade teacher who made a huge difference for them, a college adviser who took a special interest and made sure somebody who didn't know that college was for them was for them. Our job, it seems to me, is to do what little we can to try to help put people at home in a position to do that job. That is why it is critical in this bill that we raise the quality of professional development by encouraging ongoing training and education that actually tracks the specific strengths and areas of growth for each individual teacher, instead of group workshops that we know are ineffective. For instance, teachers who need help in classroom management will receive training in that specific area, if a school district or a school would want to do that. We promote collaboration and the use of common planning time, so that teachers can work together in groups as teams, each of whom may have a different view of each kid but together can figure out how to get each child in the school to their potential. One of the things I heard all of the time from the teachers that I worked with in Denver was that they felt that they faced a binary choice when it came to their profession. Yet they loved to teach. They loved being with the kids. But the only other option besides teaching was becoming a principal or going to work in the central office. We worked very hard in that school district and across the State to think differently about career ladders for teachers, to give more opportunity and options for people to give back, and to be able to help perfect their own craft as teachers by learning from their peers and also serving as master teachers. This bill, for the first time, allows funding to be used for hybrid roles that allow teachers to serve as mentors or academic coaches while remaining in the classroom. It creates options, as I said. It encourages teacher-led and colleague-to-colleague professional development among teachers. I may have learned it the hard way, but I know that nobody knows how best to improve instruction more than our teachers do. But the struggle is how to figure out how to break out of the old roles to give people the opportunity to be able to have the chance to mentor their colleagues and also, significantly, have the time in the school day and in the school year, when the stress of other business makes it hard to do, to create the time for people to be able to work together for our kids. In this bill we recognize the work that is happening in cities such as Chicago, Denver, and Boston, around teacher residency programs, an alternative approach to bringing teachers into the profession, not relying anymore solely on higher education, understanding that maybe what we need is content matter experts who can learn how to teach by being latched to master teachers in a school district such as the Denver public schools, who bring their content, their substance from their undergraduate degree but can acquire a masters as they are learning on the job in the classroom, as in a medical residency program. We allow funding to be used for that. These programs can provide critical clinical experience to teacher candidates. There is funding to train and place effective principals to lead high-need and low-performing schools. You cannot have a good school without a good principal. Ask anyone. You cannot have a good working environment for a teacher without a good principal. It is impossible. We skipped over that in our efforts of implementation across the country. When I had the good fortune to be the superintendent of Denver Public Schools, my chief academic officer was a guy named Jaime Aquino, a gifted school leader. He and I would start every single day for 2 hours with a group of 15 principals in one of their schools. It was not about broken boilers, and it was not about who got left on the bus. It was about teaching and learning in Denver Public Schools. We would do the same thing for 3 weeks, and then we would start over again, which meant that I got to see every principal in my school district once every 3 weeks, and they got to see each other. They came to understand that they had a reciprocal obligation to each other as we thought about the obligation we had to the kids in Denver. I will give you an example of one of the sessions. Jaime would bring a 1\1/2\-page piece of student writings to these meetings, because it is really important for teachers to look and analyze student work to be able to differentiate their instruction to meet the individual needs of kids in the classroom. It is easy to say that. It is easy to have the fly-by professional development where a bunch of people are sleeping in auditorium listening to really boring stuff. It is another thing to actually get people to want to do the work. At the beginning it was hard. We would pass out that piece of student writing and you would hear sort of a crescendo as people were talking about it, and they would say: I cannot read this. I don't know what this says. This looks like a foreign language to me. Then Jaime would say: Based on what you have read, what are Nancy's strengths as a writer? She turned out to be a very typical fourth grader in our school district. They would say: Well, she writes from left to right. She has a sense of story structure. She spells high-frequency words correctly. Jaime would say: Well, why is that? He would say: Well, maybe she had a vocabulary test. He would say: Maybe she had a word wall, and she is using it to scaffold her instruction. Over time, the principals saw what their role was as leaders and how reliant we were on them. I can tell you firsthand that school leaders have a powerful affect dramatically improving the quality of teaching and raising student achievement, and we have skipped over them. This bill no longer skips over them. We also update and improve the teacher incentive fund in this bill. We encourage districts to redesign their systems for recruiting, hiring, and placing teachers. We incentivize districts to think about paying different teachers differently. In Denver, we don't have a monopoly on wisdom, but if you are working in a high-poverty school, you get paid more for that. It is harder to find you. It is a harder job. We recognize that. If you are teaching a subject for which it is hard to find people to teach, we pay a little more for that. If you are driving student achievement or your colleagues are, we pay you a little more for that. Through this incentive fund, we promote school autonomy over budgeting, staffing, and other school-level decisions. We incentivize folks to change hiring schedules so high-need schools can hire earlier in the year and select from the best and brightest teachers, instead of the reverse. So we have done some good things here on teachers. It is one of the reasons why I am supporting this legislation. I want to thank Chairman Alexander and Ranking Member Murray, who are both on the floor today, for their exceptional leadership in bringing this bill out of committee. The people who are watching this on television know that this body cannot seem to agree on anything these days. Because of their work, we were able to produce a bill that got unanimous support in the HELP Committee. Every single member of the committee supported it. Imagine that. Imagine that in this body. You know what. There are no ringers on that committee either. That committee has the junior Senator from Kentucky on it, Mr. Paul; it has the junior Senator from Vermont on it, Mr. Sanders, and everybody in between. That is a rare case of unanimity among a very diverse set of Senators, which I think argues well for getting this bill through in the Senate and hopefully in the House. I see my colleague is here. If I can just take 2 more minutes I want to mention a word or two about the title I formula. I have joined my friend from North Carolina in supporting an amendment to change the title I funding formula. The formula I think that we are trying to propose today is sensible and eliminates the overly complex and opaque formulas that we currently have. It creates one formula that is targeted and provides more funding for districts with higher concentrations of poverty. I am extremely sensitive to the arguments that others have made, such as my friend from New York. I also agree that we need to invest significantly more in our kids. This formula change is good for my home State of Colorado. I think if you are a poor kid in Alamosa or Woodrow, CO, you deserve every chance to get a great education, including receiving an equitable share of Federal resources. With that, I see my colleague from Utah is here. So I will relent and yield the floor and come back at a later time.

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

Mr. BENNET. I thank the Presiding Officer. Mr. President, as the father of three girls in Denver Public Schools and as a former school superintendent, I know there is a lot we can do to streamline tests, but the problem is not the Federal requirement. That is not the real problem. The real problem is the way the Federal requirement works with States and the way the State tests have piled up on the Federal requirements. That is why States should establish a cap on the total amount of time spent taking these assessments. This target would be State-determined, subject to discussion among parents, teachers, and policymakers. If the district exceeds the policy cap, it would be required to simply notify parents. This is an essential way to respond to concerns voiced by students, parents, teachers, principals, and communities across the country about overtesting. I urge my colleagues to support this amendment.

Mr. BENNET

Mr. BENNET. Mr. President, I ask to set aside the pending amendment and call up the following amendments en bloc: on behalf of Senator Booker, amendment No. 2169; Bennet amendment No. 2159; and Bennet amendment No. 2210.

Mr. BENNET

Mr. BENNET. Mr. President, while we wait on another colleague, I thought I would talk about another aspect of this bill that I think is very important. For the first time in this country's history, finally, the Elementary and Secondary Education Act is going to require districts to report actual per-pupil expenditures, which will shed light on extraordinary funding inequities in this country. We are one of three countries in the OECD, because of the way we fund our public schools in the United States, that actually spends more money on more affluent kids than we do on kids living in poverty. That is not well understood, but that is a fact. That is the truth. We need to be concerned with closing the achievement gap in the United States, because if we look at the academic outcomes for kids in this country and extrapolate those outcomes against the changing demographics in the United States, we are not going to like what we see in the middle of the 21st century if we don't make these changes. One would think, if anything, that we would be spending more money on kids living in poverty, coming from disadvantaged backgrounds than we do on kids coming from advantaged backgrounds. But we do the opposite in the United States, and the Congress, for decades, has looked the other way. I believe we need to close this loophole. It is called the comparability loophole. We don't do that in this legislation, but at least the requirement where we move to reporting based on actual rather than average expenditures is an important step in the right direction. I yield the floor.

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

Mr. BENNET. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. BENNET. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I think there is a lot we can do to streamline those tests, but it is not the Federal requirement that is causing it, it is the way the Federal requirement works with State assessments and district assessments, and we have to do a better job. I also think we ought to think differently about the testing we are doing for teaching and learning, which needs to be continuous, ongoing, and inform a teacher's instruction and inform the principal's leadership at the school. The testing that is done for accountability should be a lot less. We heard testimony from the superintendent of the Denver Public Schools, Tom Boasberg, who told us he thought that for accountability purposes, probably all we need is 4 hours a year in reading and math. I know the Bennet girls would settle for that. They would agree with that. They would do that deal. But until somebody comes up with a better way of measuring where kids are, we need the annual assessments. We have to have them because it is the only way you can show growth. When No Child Left Behind started, it asked and answered a completely irrelevant question--a question that was so frustrating to the teachers I knew in the Denver Public Schools and to our principals. It asked: How did this year's fourth graders do compared to last year's fourth graders? This is a completely irrelevant question. Today, because of the work that has been done in Colorado leading the way, States all over the country now measure the growth of kids. What we ask is, How did this year's sixth graders do compared to how they did as fifth graders, compared to how they did as fourth graders, and compared to everybody else in the State who has a statistically similar test history? Why is that important? Because it allows you to establish growth or show growth. Then one can actually evaluate how well a school is doing, because it used to be in No Child Left Behind, under adequate yearly progress--which asked that long question of how did this year's fourth graders do compared to last year's fourth graders--it used to be we measured what was called status: How proficient were the kids, how lucky were those kids. You might have a school where kids were proficient but were actually losing ground in terms of academic proficiency, and we were rewarding those schools. We were calling those schools blue ribbon schools. There were also schools in poorer parts of town where teachers were killing themselves, students were killing themselves, and they weren't proficient because they started so far behind, but they were getting more than a grade level or two grade levels of increased proficiency during the course of the year. Do you know what those schools were called under No Child Left Behind? Those schools were called failing schools. We called those teachers failing teachers. We called those students failing students, those who were achieving 2 years of growth. Their more affluent peers might have been losing ground, and we were saying they were winners. We have moved past that. This bill now acknowledges that. I wish this bill required growth--which it doesn't--but I believe States and districts will use growth to measure data. The bill also continues to require that States and districts disaggregate data so we can actually understand where kids are. That is really important. Before No Child Left Behind existed, we had absolutely no idea. Now we know. The hard truth is that kids of color in this country aren't doing nearly as well as Anglo kids in this country. Kids living in poverty aren't doing nearly as well as their middle-class or more affluent peers. We need to do better. I run into people periodically who say to me that you can't fix it unless you fix poverty. You can't fix the education system unless you fix poverty. Don't tell kids in my city who are living in poverty that that is true. Outside of every one of our schools it says ``school.'' It doesn't say ``orphanage.'' It says ``school.'' We need to make sure every one of those schools is delivering for every kid in our community, no matter where they come from. Otherwise, what is left of us? What is left of this land of opportunity? Before No Child Left Behind existed, we had an impression, a vague sense of the inequities in our educational system. Now we understand how deep they are, how rooted they are, and we have to continue to build on the successes we have seen in high-quality schools working in poor neighborhoods that have actually delivered for kids all over the country. This new bill--and I see the Senator from Texas is here and I will yield to him as soon as he is ready. The new version of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act importantly empowers States to design their accountability systems, giving them more flexibility while ensuring that essential information is included. I think that is an important recognition, led by Chairman Alexander, that there was a real overreach in No Child Left Behind. As a former school superintendent, I can say I used to wonder all the time why Washington was so mean to our teachers and to our kids. What I have realized since coming here is that it is not that everybody here is mean. They mean well. But this place is the farthest place in the universe--I mean that literally, I don't mean that figuratively--this is the farthest place in the universe from a classroom in the Denver Public Schools or a classroom anywhere in this country, and I think No Child Left Behind in many ways was an overreach. The last thing I want to be told as a superintendent is how to do my work in Denver. I want to insist that we do the work. I want to insist that children all over this country have a chance, no matter what State they are born into, no matter what neighborhood they are born into, but I don't want people here telling people how to do that work. There is a distinction. I have more to say about this, but I see my friend from Texas is here, so I will yield to him. Before I do, I just congratulate the chairman of the committee who is here on the floor, Senator Alexander from Tennessee, for his extraordinary leadership on this bill. Again, I remind my colleagues who are listening to this, what a rare--rare--occurrence this is. This is a bill that passed unanimously out of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, and that would not have happened without the leadership of Senator Lamar Alexander and Senator Murray, the Senator from Washington.

Mr. BENNET. Mr. President, we are here today to consider the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, the bill that has been known for years as No Child Left Behind. It is a bill the Congress was supposed to reauthorize more than 7 years ago. When school kids come to visit me in my office here, I often ask them: What would happen if you showed up and were told that your homework was 7 or 8 years late? That is how long it has taken us to get to this place. As the Presiding Officer may know, before I came to the Senate, I had the honor of being the superintendent of the Denver Public Schools district, which now has 95,000 children in it, 67 percent of whom qualify for free and reduced lunch. I should note that we got some sad news in the last month or two. For the first time in our country's history--for the first time in the history of the United States--over half of the children attending public schools in our country qualify for free and reduced lunch. That is due to two decades of stagnant middle-class family incomes and the effect of the worst recession since the Great Depression. What people in Washington need to understand is that when it comes to education in this country right now, our kids don't have a fair fight, especially our kids living in poverty. If you were born poor in the United States of America, you will have heard 30 million fewer words than your more affluent peers when you show up for kindergarten. Ask any kindergarten teacher in the country whether that makes a difference, and they will tell you it does. What are we doing as a country to fill that gap? Not much. By the time kids get to elementary school--their early years--only one out of five is reading proficiently of the kids who were born poor and 20 percent are reading at grade level. Ask any middle or high school teacher whether that is going to make a difference when that child gets to middle school or high school. Where does it end in the land of opportunity for kids who are born into poverty in this country? If you are born poor in the United States of America, your chances of getting a college degree, or the equivalent of a college degree, is 9 in 100, which means--in this global economy of ours--that every year becomes less and less forgiving to people who have less of an education. And 91 out of 100 of our kids are going to be constrained to the margin of the economy and the margin of the democracy from the very outset. There are 100 desks in this room. There are 100 chairs in this room. If we weren't the Senate but instead kids born into poverty in this country, not even those three rows of desks over there in that corner would represent people graduating from college. Everybody else in this room would not have the benefit of a college degree. We would never accept those odds for our own children. The people in the Senate would never ever accept those odds for our own children. If our kids faced the odds of showing up to kindergarten having heard 30 million fewer words than their peers and if you knew it was assured that your child had a 20-percent chance of reading at grade level when they got to elementary school, I guarantee you would leave this place. You would leave the Senate, and you would go home and address the problem. But when it comes to public education--especially when it comes to our kids who are living in poverty in this country--we stop treating them as if they were our kids. We are treating them as if they were someone else's kids. We are leaving it to luck as to whether a kid can fill that 30-million-word gap. I am sure the Presiding Officer knows this. There are entire cities in this country and rural areas in this country where school choice would be meaningless because there is not a good school to choose from. There is not a school in the neighborhood or in the city that anybody in this body would send their kid to. That is where we are. Over the last decade or so, we made progress in many places across the country. The Denver Public Schools is one of those places. It is the fastest growing urban school district in the United States. In 2005, the kids who attended Denver Public Schools were dead last in terms of student growth compared to any school district of any size in the State of Colorado. For the last 3 years Denver Public Schools has led the State in terms of its student growth, both for kids who receive free and reduced lunch and kids who do not receive free and reduced lunch. Thirty percent more kids graduated and went to college this year than in 2005. Now, I am the first to say that we have a long, long way to go in Denver to make sure that the ZIP Code you are born into doesn't determine the educational outcome you get, but we are making substantial progress. And I say that if we could say as a country that every single urban school district since 2005 showed a 30-percent increase in kids going to college, we would be feeling a lot better about where we are headed. There is a lot of debate in this body about what tax policy ought to be and whether we ought to think about redistributing wealth and who should pay what share of taxes. Some people view it as everything ought to be decided out there by the market. I understand that point of view. But if that is your point of view, you better be doing everything you can to be sure that every single kid in the country has an excellent shot at an education, because if you don't, then you are basically saying, if you have the bad luck to be born to a poor family in this country, you are on your own. You are on your own, and you have a 9-in- 100 chance of getting a degree that is actually going to allow you to compete in the global economy. One thing I know about kids who are born in this country, they don't get to pick who their parents are. They don't get to decide whether they are born into a ZIP Code that is going to fill that 30-million- word gap by the time they get to kindergarten or that is going to give them excellent school choices or that will allow them to go to college. Today, while we are not talking about higher education, this is very much a part of this K-12 conundrum because college has become harder and harder to afford, even at a time when it is much more important for people to succeed. I saw some data the other day that said that for the average cost of tuition in this country, the average cost of college, a family in the bottom quartile of income earners, after you account for student loans, grants, and student aid, would have to consume 85 percent of their income to afford 1 year of college; whereas, if you are in the top quartile, it will cost you 15 percent of your income. Is that fair? It didn't used to be this way. In the 1970s, it wasn't this way. In the 1970s, a Pell grant covered 76 percent of what it cost to go to the average college in this country. We are rolling up the carpet on the next generation of Americans, and I don't think it is fair. I don't think it is right. We should be having a debate about the size and scope of government. I believe that. We should have that debate. But as we are having that debate, we should keep in mind that we have an obligation to fulfill to honor the obligation our parents and grandparents fulfilled for us, which is to make sure that if you were willing to work hard, if you were willing to study hard, that college was going to be something that was attainable and it wasn't going to strangle you in debt. Too many families across Colorado are facing this challenge, and the saddest thing I hear in my town is when somebody comes and says: We can't afford to send our kids to the best college they got into. What a waste that is--what a waste for that student, what a waste for our society. So there is more for us to do on college affordability. But today we are talking about the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. I think we actually make substantial progress in this bill. I want to say how pleased I am with the leadership of Chairman Alexander and the ranking member Patty Murray. They have done an exceptional job of managing this bill through our committee. We have a very diverse committee. We have the junior Senator from Vermont on the committee and we have the junior Senator from Kentucky on the committee, and because of Chairman Alexander's leadership and the work and leadership of the ranking member Senator Murray, the bill actually passed out of the committee unanimously. Imagine that--around this place, where we can't even agree on how to publish a report or what time we should come to work, we have a committee in the U.S. Congress where Republicans and Democrats unanimously agreed on a bill. Let me tell you, it wasn't easy. If it were easy, we would have done it on time. We would have done it 8 years ago when we were supposed to do it--when our homework was due--but I suppose it is better late than never, and I am very pleased with the product. There is more I would like to add, but I think--I know the teachers, principals, and school leaders across Colorado need us to fix No Child Left Behind, and I hope we can finally get it done this time. This bill is a good starting point. It eliminates NCLB's one-size- fits-all approach to education, which we know will not work, and it re- empowers those who are closest to our kids to make the decisions that need to be made for their benefit. This bill includes many key elements. Importantly, it includes the requirement for annual assessment. I know testing is not popular. I have three kids in the Denver Public Schools. My three daughters go to those schools. I get an annual report on what the testing looks like. I believe we are overtesting our kids, but I don't think that is because of the Federal requirement. I see the Senator from Tennessee. Does the Senator want to speak?

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

Mr. BENNET

Mr. BENNET. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Jessica Bowen, a fellow in my office, have floor privileges for the remainder of this session.

Mr. BENNET

Mr. BENNET. Mr. President, I would like to commemorate the third-year anniversary of the creation of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, DACA, program. On June 15, 2015, we celebrated this successful, although not comprehensive, policy that has provided deportation relief to more than 660,000 child immigrants nationally, including 14,900 in Colorado. This life-changing program has allowed young people who were brought to the United States as children--DREAMers--to fully engage in their communities by continuing their education and having the opportunity to work. They have been able to open bank accounts, obtain credit cards, and receive driver's licenses. Deferred action is giving these young people relief and some degree of certainty to pursue opportunities that would not have been available to them otherwise. DACA has given DREAMers hope for their future. They include DREAMers like Alex Alvarado-Renteria who has lived in Carbondale, CO for the last 18 years and has known no other home outside of the United States. Alex's parents migrated from Mexico and worked as farmworkers in order to give their children an opportunity for a better life. Alex was granted DACA and has since graduated from the Metropolitan State University of Denver with a bachelor of arts in history and Chicana/o studies. He now plans to become the first in his family to earn an advanced degree by attending law school and opening up his own immigration law practice one day. We also have DREAMers like Lourdes Bustos from Denver, CO who has lived in the United States for the last 26 years and who was able to stay with her children upon receiving DACA. It was years before Lourdes realized she was not documented and would not be able to work legally or get a driver's license. Granting her deferred action meant that she would not be separated from her family. Lourdes has graduated from high school and has opened her own painting business. DACA has played a transformative role in increasing social and economic integration for youth who have been raised and educated in our country. It has given DREAMers an opportunity to invest in their futures. It has empowered DREAMers with a sense of community and belonging. This program has helped many of our young people, but only offers a temporary solution to the unfair consequences of our broken immigration system. This anniversary should also serve as a stark reminder that every day that Congress fails to enact immigration reform, it jeopardizes our economy, our safety, and our communities. It is time to put politics aside and work to enact comprehensive immigration reform.

Mr. BENNET

Mr. BENNET. I thank the Senator from Arizona for that additional time and for his commitment and the ranking member's commitment to our national security. I deeply appreciate it. Amendment No. 1540 Mr. President, I would like to talk briefly about amendment 1540, which the Senate will consider shortly. I am here with my colleague Senator Gardner from Colorado. We are here on this bipartisan amendment to require the Government Accounting Office to audit the way the Veterans' Administration constructs major medical facilities and help identify exactly where the money went on some of these projects. The Veterans' Administration is building several major medical facilities across the country, including one in Aurora, CO. The project in Colorado has been grossly mismanaged leading to excessive cost overruns. Other projects across the country have had similar problems for years. For years, our delegation and practically anyone who has been involved with the Aurora project--almost anybody who has driven by the Aurora project has pushed the VA to acknowledge that there is actually a problem and to come up with a plan to fix it. Unfortunately, the VA has so far failed to do this, and veterans across the Rocky Mountain region have continued to wait for this new medical center. We should ensure and must ensure that the mistakes on the Aurora project never happen again, but we all concluded that with greater accountability and transparency the right thing to do is to move forward and complete this critical facility. As many of us have experienced up here, imposing accountability and transparency on an enormous Federal bureaucracy is elusive and complicated. The GAO has the necessary expertise to identify realistic, hard reforms and to make them stick. We have to hold the VA accountable to our taxpayers so we can move forward to give the Rocky Mountain region's veterans the care they need. The VA and Congress are going to have to work together to get this project back on track. Finding the money to do this will be painful. It will be difficult, which is why we need to ensure that we account for every dollar that has been spent. But failing to complete this hospital is not an option. It would be a broken promise. Having a half-finished hospital in Colorado would be a national disgrace, and on behalf of our veterans, we cannot allow it to happen. It would be a disservice--worse than a disservice--a broken promise of the worst kind to the hundreds of thousands of veterans across the Rocky Mountain region and throughout the United States. I urge my colleagues to support this amendment. I wish to express my gratitude to my colleague from Colorado, Senator Gardner, for joining me on this important amendment. I yield the floor.

Mr. BENNET

Mr. BENNET. Mr. President, I want to take this opportunity to thank my colleagues for lifting the authorization cap to allow construction to continue on the VA hospital in Aurora, CO. This project has been an absolutely shameful display of mismanagement from the very beginning. And the Colorado delegation has been screaming from the hilltops about a flawed strategy on the part of the VA for years now. But with the right accountability and transparency reforms, we have all concluded that the right thing to do is to move forward and complete this facility. And today, we have acknowledged that the worst possible thing we could do is to stop work on the construction site again. Doing so would add hundreds of millions of dollars in extra costs to the project and would be a grave disservice to veterans throughout Colorado. This is an important step, but we have a long way to go. The VA and Congress are going to have to work together to get this project back on track. And finding the money to do this will be painful, which is why we need to ensure strong accountability and that we protect critical programs and services for our veterans. Failing to complete this hospital, though, simply is not an option. Having a half-finished hospital in Colorado would be a national disgrace. And the hundreds of thousands of veterans across the Rocky Mountain region that this hospital would service deserve better. I especially want to thank Chairman Isakson and Ranking Member Blumenthal for their work on this project and for their commitment to finishing the hospital. And, I want to thank my colleague Senator Gardner for his work--especially in the last hours--to avoid a shut down. Mr. President, before I turn this over to my colleague from Colorado, I thank Chairman Isakson for his extraordinary leadership in getting this done. It was very difficult to do. Senator Isakson and Senator Blumenthal came to Colorado. They are both men of their word, and I have never doubted that for an instant. The chairman has set an incredible example for this body. I also thank the Senator from Kansas for his work on this legislation. My colleague, Senator Gardner, from Colorado, has been a true champion for our veterans. He has helped us keep our delegation together as we have gone through a rough patch here and, through the Chair, I thank him for his leadership. I yield the floor to my colleague from Colorado.

Mr. BENNET. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table, and any statements relating to the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. BENNET. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the bill be read a third time.

Mr. BENNET. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of H.R. 2496, which was received from the House.