Michael Bennet

Mr. BENNET

Mr. BENNET. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the pending motion be set aside so that I may call up my motion.

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

Mr. BENNET. Mr. President, I rise to offer a very simple motion to instruct the budget conferees. It encourages the conferees to address the economic and national security threats posed by climate change. During our consideration of the budget, I offered an amendment that outlined these threats and highlighted the need to act. That amendment passed the Senate by a 53-to-47 vote. It was supported by both Republicans and Democrats. The same language should be included in the final budget conference. During the markup, the Budget Committee adopted a complementary amendment which discussed the importance of climate change initiatives in the Department of Defense. The language should be included in the final budget resolution. Let's make it clear that the Congress plans to respond to the serious economic and national security threats posed by climate change. I urge a ``yes'' vote on this motion to instruct. I yield the floor, and I ask for a voice vote.

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

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 I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. BENNET

Mr. BENNET. Mr. President, this year marks 70 years since the spring of 1945, when Allied forces liberated concentration camps, a major milestone in the end of the Holocaust. For more than 30 years, the Greeley Holocaust Memorial Observances has helped raise awareness of the atrocities of Nazi crimes and the perils of anti-Semitism, hatred, and intolerance. This month, the Greeley Holocaust Memorial Observances will continue its longstanding tradition of remembering the victims of the Holocaust, commemorating the end of this horrific part of our history, and educating Coloradans about the importance of the Holocaust with discussions, films, exhibits, and workshops. This year's events will include presentations by Holocaust survivor Nathan Taffel. It is my pleasure to commend the Greeley Holocaust Memorial Observances Committee for their dedicated service to this critical cause and to congratulate the Committee on its 32nd Greeley Holocaust Memorial Observances, 70 years after the end of the Holocaust.

Mr. BENNET

Mr. BENNET. Mr. President, this amendment provides an additional 2 years of funding for the Children's Health Insurance Program, or CHIP. I wish to especially thank Senators Brown, Wyden, Stabenow, Casey, and Reid for their leadership on this amendment. We have made great strides in recent years to ensure that Americans of all ages have access to quality health care, but a huge part of this success in increasing access for quality health care comes from CHIP, which provides insurance to low- and moderate-income children and pregnant women. We know CHIP works. The CHIP program serves more than 8 million children, including more than 115,000 in Colorado. This is health care they might not otherwise have. Unfortunately, the House failed to take full advantage of this moment and this momentum for compromise and only extended funding for 2 years. CHIP is authorized through 2019. This amendment would extend it for 2 additional years. The very physicians who would be helped by fixing the SGR would also see increased reimbursement when they treat these children instead of seeing millions of them lose access to affordable, comprehensive coverage. I ask my colleagues to support this amendment. I yield the floor.

Mr. BENNET. Mr. President, I call up amendment No. 1115.

Mr. BENNET. Mr. President, pursuant to section 904 of the Congressional Budget Act of 1974 and the waiver provisions of applicable budget resolutions, I move to waive all applicable sections of that act and applicable budget resolutions for purposes of the pending amendment, and I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. BENNET

Mr. BENNET. Mr. President, this amendment is very straightforward. The purpose reads ``. . . responding to the economic and national security threats posed by human-induced climate change, as highlighted by the Secretary of Defense, the Director of National Intelligence, the Administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and the Administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.'' The amendment establishes a deficit-neutral reserve fund to promote national security, economic growth, and public health by addressing climate change through the increased use of clean energy, the deployment of energy efficiency, and the reduction of carbon pollution. That is it. That is all it is--simply a statement of all the facts and the suggestions of three common strategies to address the issue. Climate change is a serious threat to the world, to our country, and to Colorado. Ask anyone whose farm or ranch depends on water from the Colorado River or one of its tributaries.

Mr. BENNET. Mr. President, this is a simple amendment. It increases the amount of money that small businesses can expense in a given year. That makes it easier for them to purchase new equipment and grow the economy. It is especially important to places such as the State of Colorado, where small businesses make up 97 percent of the employers in our State. Specifically, the amendment increases the section 179 expensing allowance to $1 million. Right now, it is at $25,000. If we ever manage to pass another extenders bill, it will increase to $500,000. As we all know, many small businesses are pass-through entities. So they pay the individual tax rate even though they may use business tax credits and deductions. So in tax reform they may lose some of their credits but may not see a corresponding drop in their tax rates. As we begin the process of reforming our Tax Code, we need to ensure that these types of small businesses can continue to grow, invest, and innovate. This amendment takes an important step in achieving this goal. I am told that there is an agreement--there may be an agreement--to have a voice vote on this amendment. That would certainly be fine with me. I yield the floor.

Mr. BENNET. I ask unanimous consent that the reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. BENNET. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to set aside the pending amendment to call up amendment No. 947.

Mr. BENNET. I urge a ``yes'' vote on this amendment.

Mr. BENNET

Mr. BENNET. Mr. President, I rise today in offering an amendment with Senator Stabenow to guarantee we keep a sacred promise to our Nation's seniors to protect the Medicare Program for years to come. The budget we have in front of us doesn't balance our values or priorities as a country. Unfortunately, it misses the mark entirely for our seniors. To put it into perspective, the Senate Republican budget cuts the Medicare Program by almost three times as much as the House Republican budget. My amendment ensures we protect our seniors from any effort to cut Medicare beneficiaries' guaranteed benefits, privatize Medicare into a premium support plan or increase out-of-pocket spending on drugs or prevention services. In 2013, over half the Medicare beneficiaries had incomes below $23,000 a year. We can't attempt to balance the Nation's budget on the backs of our seniors. There is a reason why the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare is urging a ``yes'' vote on this amendment and a ``no'' vote on the Republican budget. I urge my colleagues to vote ``yes'' on the Bennet-Stabenow amendment, and I yield whatever time remains to the senior Senator from Michigan.

Mr. BENNET

Mr. BENNET. Mr. President, I also rise to speak in favor of the Portman amendment. This amendment is based on a bill I introduced earlier this year called the ACE Kids Act that recognizes the critical importance of Medicaid to children with severe medical conditions. It highlights the need for greater coordination and integration of care across the country for 2 million children. Earlier this month, I met with Everett Ediger at Children's Hospital of Colorado in Denver. Everett is 8 years old and has spina bifida, a neurological disorder of the spine. It took his mom Maureen 2 years to get him signed up under Medicaid and to establish a system to coordinate all of his care. While Everett was beating me at air hockey, he let his mom explain to me about the frustrating experience of trying to coordinate all of her son's specialists and the payments for his care. We need to focus on children such as Everett all across this country. I thank my colleague Senator Portman for his leadership in offering this amendment. I urge my colleagues to vote yes.

Mr. BENNET

Mr. BENNET. Mr. President, through the Chair, I would like to thank the senior Senator from Texas for his courtesy in allowing me to speak this afternoon. Lynch Nomination Mr. President, I rise today to discuss the nomination of Loretta Lynch to be our next Attorney General. It has been 131 days since President Obama nominated her for this position. By Monday, she will have waited longer on the Senate floor than the last seven Attorney General nominees combined. When it comes to Ms. Lynch's nomination, it seems as if we are setting records--but for all of the wrong reasons. The irony of that is that she is probably one of the most qualified and least political Attorney General nominees that this Chamber has seen in decades. She has spent a significant portion of her career as a Federal prosecutor in the Eastern District of New York, having twice served as the U.S. attorney. There she took on corrupt public officials and expanded the office's national security practice. She has also worked in private practice at one of the country's top law firms, where she specialized in commercial litigation, white-collar criminal defense, and corporate compliance. In 2011, she was recognized as the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association Foundation honoree of the year. In 2014, she was honored as the recipient of the Women in Federal Law Enforcement Foundation President's Award. She has received support--no surprise--from all across the political spectrum. Just this week, even former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani--hardly a great friend of the President--wrote that she was ``balanced, professional and a dedicated public servant.'' He went on to write that he can ``further attest that her skill set seems very appropriate to the tough tasks she would face as attorney general.'' The Major Cities Chiefs Association, which represents the 67 largest law enforcement agencies in the country, wrote this to the Senate: ``Ms. Lynch has overseen many important criminal prosecutions for terrorism, organized crime, corruption, drug and gang related cases. It is clear that her familiarity with the Department, managing a fast- paced and high profile office as well as her integrity and private sector legal experiences make her a qualified candidate.'' What are we waiting for? Some 25 former U.S. attorneys who worked in both Democratic and Republican administrations wrote to this body saying: ``Ms. Lynch has the experience, temperament, independence, integrity, and judgment to immediately assume this critically important position.'' They should know. They should know. These are the folks with whom she has worked closely, and will continue to work as Attorney General. Both as a Federal prosecutor and in private practice, they have seen firsthand her character, intellect, and her integrity. I myself once worked for the Deputy Attorney General of the United States at the Department of Justice. I know how close the collaboration is when things are working well between the Attorney General and the U.S. attorneys all throughout the United States of America, and it is something to see. I know it has become fashionable around this place to continually criticize our Federal employees, but I recommend that our new colleagues, if they ever have the chance, go see the investiture of a new judge in their State, as I have had a chance to do in my State. When you see how the U.S. attorney's office, the Federal public defender's office, the Drug Enforcement Agency, the FBI, and the U.S. Marshals Service are all represented, you will say to yourself: Thank God I live in a country that is committed to the rule of law. Thank God I live in this country instead of most of the countries around the world where they don't even know what the rule of law is. That is what we have in the United States, and the chief law enforcement officer of this country is our Attorney General. Everybody who has looked at this nomination from the outside has said she would be an excellent Attorney General. So given all of that, it is awfully difficult to understand why she has had to wait so long just to receive a simple up-or-down vote. Has anyone challenged her qualifications? Come to the floor today and do it. Has anyone questioned her character or integrity? Of course not. Has she failed to provide necessary information to the Senate? It is my understanding that she testified for almost 8 hours and responded to about 900 questions for the record. Is her nomination delayed just to make political points on completely unrelated issues? I have gotten to the point now that when people come to my office after they have been nominated to be a judge or have been nominated to do something in the Federal Government, the first words out of my mouth are not ``Congratulations'' anymore; the first words to come out of my mouth are ``Don't take it personally. Don't take this process personally.'' We are losing talented people who want to serve the United States of America in these important and in many cases nonpolitical jobs because the Senate cannot confirm them. It is because we tell somebody like Loretta Lynch: Sorry, it is going to be zillions of days before you have a chance to even serve this country. It is not right. I am amazed at the capacity of people in this place to waste their own time, but we should not waste other people's time. Unfortunately, the delay in confirming Ms. Lynch is having real-world consequences. Earlier this week, the former Deputy Attorney General expressed his concern that the protracted nomination process is adding unnecessary uncertainty to the Department of Justice. He highlighted the importance of having continuity in undertaking long-term investigations or in developing national security policy and how it is harder to facilitate continuity the longer Ms. Lynch's nomination is delayed. As I said, this has become in many ways the new norm in our politics where these fights in Congress are having real-world consequences on the people we represent. It is incredibly counterproductive to the people we represent, whether it is shutting down the Department of Homeland Security or running the government on continuing resolutions or passing 2-week tax extender bills, for goodness' sake. There is not a mayor or county commissioner in the entire State of Colorado who could get away with governing like this, and neither should we. It is obvious to everybody watching the Senate that we have not been productive. We have not really been productive for a long time but certainly not for the last 90 days. We barely managed to keep the Department of Homeland Security open for another 6 months. We passed a resolution of disapproval that the President will veto. At the very least, we should be able to find the time to confirm Loretta Lynch as the Nation's next Attorney General. Her experience, temperament, and independence make her abundantly qualified for one of the most important positions our country has, and she has waited too long to receive an up-or-down vote. I am not worried about her; she will be fine no matter what she does. I am worried about the Department. I am worried about our homeland security. I am worried about the willingness of other Americans to put their hand up and say ``Let me serve'' for fear that they will get caught in the crazy politics of the Senate. I look forward to supporting Ms. Lynch's nomination. I hope we will have the opportunity to consider that nomination in the coming days. With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. BENNET

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

Mr. BENNET

Mr. BENNET. Mr. President, it is a privilege to be here with my colleague from Colorado. I rise to talk about our schools and really to talk about our values and our morality--what we stand for as a country--and to ask whether we are able to look forward and create a better future for our children. To set the record straight, let me be clear. When it comes to our children, I have fallen short, you have fallen short, and this body has fallen short. Let me explain why. We have learned in the last couple of weeks that over half of the public school children in this country are now poor enough that they qualify for free or reduced lunches at school--children who, through no fault of their own, are reaping the whirlwind of 15 years of stagnant middle-class family income and the effects of the worst recession since the Great Depression. By many measures, as the Presiding Officer knows, Colorado's economy leads the Nation. But even in our home State, we see more children living in poverty. In fact, the number of children in poverty is growing faster in Colorado than in most of the other 50 States. As a country and as a State, we are making a lot of progress in a number of dimensions, but we are headed in the wrong direction when it comes to our kids. That is a bad sign for any country but particularly for a democracy that aspires to be the land of opportunity. A girl in poverty in the United States is five times more likely to be a young single mother than a child from a middle-class family, and a boy in poverty is twice as likely to be incarcerated as his middle- class peers. Children from low-income families in this country are about three times less likely to graduate from high school. Someone from a family in poverty stands only a 9-in-100 chance of earning a college degree. Think about that. There are 100 seats in this Chamber. There are 100 desks in this Chamber. If they represented children living in poverty in the United States, that desk, that desk, that desk, those three desks, and three of those desks would represent college graduates. The entire rest of this Chamber would be people that would never earn a college degree or its equivalent and who would be constrained to the margins of our economy and our democracy as a result after that. Interestingly enough, the equivalent number for children in the top quarter of income earners is almost 80 out of 100. So 80 of these desks from a more affluent family--80 of these desks would represent a person who graduated with a college degree or its equivalent, and 20 would represent people that had fallen short, but nine poor children would have a college degree. In other words, in a way that is profoundly at war with our founding ideals, poverty breeds deeper poverty, lack of educational achievement reaps deeper academic failure, and broken families are the surest predictor of more broken families in the next generation and the generations beyond that. This is a sentence of unequal opportunity for all poor Americans, no matter the color of their skin. It is a generational sentence for 7 out of 10 children who will remain at the bottom of the income scale their entire lives. Are there people who defy these odds? Of course there are. As superintendent of the Denver public schools and in this job, I have met scores of children who have overcome the odds--sometimes alone--but often also with the help of a parent who wouldn't quit, a teacher who wouldn't take ``no'' for an answer, a former gang member whose sworn duty is to keep young people out of gangs, a philanthropist who insisted that Denver's kids would go to college. In these exceptional children I have seen the indomitable nature of the human spirit persevere against all odds and have recognized how little I and most of us have achieved by comparison. I have met kids who take three buses both ways to school leaving as early as 5:30 in the morning just to have the benefit of a better school all the way on the other side of town, kids who can't get up in the morning because they have to work until 11 o'clock or 12 o'clock at night in a fast food restaurant to help pay the rent, kids who pour their heart and soul out into their studies and communities only to learn that college is not for them because of an immigration status they did not even know that they had. I met kids who were the primary caregivers of younger brothers and sisters who are taking care of ailing parents and grandparents, who have made it to college for the first time in their family's history who are that 9 in 100, who represent the best of our human spirit. They are our heroes. As one of our Denver public school students, Chaunsea Dyson from South High School, recently told a radio reporter, ``When you are growing up in poverty, when you are 15 or 16 that means you are grown.'' That means you are grown. As the father of three girls who are 15, 14, and 10, I would say that is an awful lot to expect of a 16-year-old, especially one coming from circumstances few in this Chamber could overcome. My point is that while there are many heroic people in our schools--kids, teachers, principals--succeeding in our school system today, heroism is not a standard we tend to count on for the success of human enterprise. We simply can't scale heroism. I wish we could--but we can't--to address the scope of our achievement gap. It is too much to ask, and it is not fair to our kids who have no control over the circumstances of their birth. I don't think there is one Member in this Chamber who could come and say that is not true, that a child could control somehow the circumstances of his or her birth, because one of the enduring truths of being a human being is that we don't get to choose our parents. We don't choose to be born into a home of wealth or poverty, a home that values books or learning or a home which for whatever reason does not. That is a matter of good and bad luck. Yet those circumstances beyond our children's control--absolutely beyond their control--today almost always determine educational outcomes in the United States of America. So the question is, What is our obligation? What is our obligation as a nation to remedy the burden of bad luck for millions of American children? I believe at a minimum it means we have a moral duty to assure that our less lucky children have educational opportunities that let them make the most of their God-given potential. That is certainly what I would want for my own daughters. If we are honest, then by any reckoning we are failing to meet this moral duty and I would say failing very badly. If we ask ourselves why we are failing to do our duty--how can this be--in my mind it comes down to a sad and simple reality: We are treating America's children as if they were someone else's children rather than our own. To demonstrate this let's consider what conditions we have allowed to exist for a child born, through no fault of her own, into poverty in the United States of America in the year 2015. We know that by the age of 4 she will have heard 30 million fewer words than her more affluent peers--30 million. Ask any elementary schoolteacher in the country whether that will make a difference in how prepared she is for kindergarten. Fewer than half of poor children start school with the skills they need to be ready to succeed in kindergarten. Every elementary schoolteacher in America knows that. What are the odds her neighborhood school will meet her needs? How about a school 1 mile away? How about a school 5 miles away? It is not likely in many American cities and rural communities. When she reaches the fourth grade her odds are no better. She is 9 years old and there are 30 children in her classroom. On average, 24 of her classmates cannot read at grade level--24 out of 30. Her chances of being a proficient reader--20 percent--one in five. One in five poor children cannot read at grade level in the fourth grade in the United States of America this week, today, this year. Would any of us accept those odds or outcomes for our own children? Would any one person in this Chamber accept that? Would any of us still be in Washington engaged in the Potemkin debates we are having if our child couldn't read by the fourth grade? Of course not--of course we wouldn't. But we act as if it is not our children who are the casualties, and so we smile and we stroke our chins on the cable TV and pretend this is all somehow out of our hands, too hard to solve, someone else's problem. Here is where it ends. In this knowledge-based global economy, this unforgiving global economy, only 9 out of 100 kids, as I said in poverty, will graduate with a college degree or its equivalent and 91 will not. These are the results we have produced for our children in this unforgiving global economy. But for once let's put aside the finger-pointing and the blame-- although we should take our fair share of responsibility--and let's ask the questions our children might reasonably ask to judge their Nation's leaders. For example, they might ask: Why do we trail behind 35 other developed countries in our math scores? Why does the United States rank 20th in increasing educational attainment from one generation to the next--20th; the least likely country to produce more educated people coming after us than there were before us. Why are American children much more likely to be stuck in the economic class into which they are born than children in at least 12 other countries, including Canada, Japan, Germany, Australia, and Denmark? These seem like reasonable questions. You wouldn't know they were on anybody's mind around here with what concerns us on this floor, but I can tell you it is of concern to people at home. Why are we consigning, they might ask, our children and ourselves to a social economic framework that is increasing, not decreasing, inequality in this country, when other countries in the world are headed in the opposite direction? Why are we putting up with a set of circumstances in which income and equality in America has grown significantly much faster than other industrialized countries in the world? If I were a child living in poverty in this country, those are the questions I would want to know, in addition to the fact that I can't find a school, not just down the street, not just in my neighborhood but in my city or even in the region of my State to go to. To put it another way, I can't find a school in my community that any Member of the Senate would be proud to send their child to. Why can't I find that school? I didn't pick my parents. That was a question of good luck or bad luck. In my case it was bad luck. I know there are profound disagreements about whether the Federal, State or local government should serve our kids and how. I am even sympathetic, believe me, as a former school superintendent, to many arguments about how poorly Washington is often situated to help. But surely as a nation, one way or another, we have a moral obligation. That is our legacy as Americans ``in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, ensure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity. . . . '' Imagine how less powerful the Preamble to the Constitution would have been if it stopped with ourselves, period--but it didn't. It resolves the question in favor of our posterity--our posterity, not someone else's--our children, not someone else's. What would this debate sound like if we were serious about this moral obligation? Without deciding today who would deliver and pay for these important social goods, something we should debate and understand, consult with our States and our school districts, our parents and our communities; but, without making those decisions today, if we just were treating the country's children as our own children, what would this debate sound like? What would we do? We surely would provide every parent and her child with the choice to access early childhood education from birth to age 5 in order to attack that 30 million word deficit. Surely we would do that. I am not saying we should do it. I don't think we should do that from here, but as a nation we should do that. Surely we would ensure that every child, without exception and regardless of where they live, has the choice to attend a high-performing school from kindergarten to 12th grade. Surely we would do that. We would enable every young person, consistent with most of our postwar history, the chance to attain a college degree or other advanced technical training without bankrupting their family. I saw some data this weekend about this that showed that in 1975--and admittedly it was the high-water mark--the Pell grants covered roughly 76 percent of what it cost to go to college, the average cost of college. Do you know what that number is now? It is 22 percent, mostly because the cost of college has increased so much. Bankruptcy is a real issue. These goals--early childhood education, a great K-12 school, affordable college--might seem obvious and even unimaginative to many of us in this Chamber, but that might be because we take them for granted for our own children. Of course we want high- quality early childhood education, of course we want a high-quality K- 12 school, of course we want our young people to have access to college without bankrupting our family, and that is the experience of a lot of people in this Chamber. The terrible reality for most poor children in America in 2015 is that these simple goals are as out of reach as flying to the Moon, all over this country. Some say we can't afford to change, and I say we can't afford not to change. The costs of failure, as we know, are simply too high. Since the Industrial Revolution, we have had the greatest economy the world has ever known, and if we are to remain so in the 21st century, we must educate our people. We have no other choice. They are our greatest asset. We can do it. I am not proposing today a new Federal program of any kind. However, I will say if it were left up to me, we would have a standing committee in the Senate focused exclusively on our children and their future. Such a committee would, for example, examine every funding stream in the Federal budget related to kids and ask what is working and what is not working. What redundancies exist? How are we going to align every single taxpayer dollar or tax credit to help support the health, education, and well-being of our children? I suspect that in addition to increasing efficiency, we would decide to spend more of our resources in and around schools. That is where our kids are, after all, and that is where the people who have served them in our communities need to be instead of tied up in the redtape of compliance and outdated and unimaginative Federal rules and regulations. In addition to that, we need to explore more efficient ways to finance social welfare programs, promote more creative ways to weave our social safety net in this country, and reform our criminal justice system. A good start would be to graduate children from high school, since around 80 percent of our prison inmates are high-school dropouts. That would help a lot. We need to better engage with the private and nonprofit sectors when the government isn't working well enough. This is all part of a broader but essential conversation, one this body continues to avoid while it wanders from one phony conflict to the next, and one that becomes more difficult and more expensive the longer we wait. Our kids are waiting for us to have this conversation. We are wasting their time. It is one thing for us to waste our own time--although the capacity for doing that around here is beyond belief--but we ought to stop wasting our kids' time. As I said, it is only going to become more difficult and more expensive the longer we wait. In the meantime, we have before us the potential to rewrite the Elementary and Secondary School Act. Fixing so-called No Child Left Behind is only one piece of the puzzle. Given where we are, this is all pretty modest stuff. There are some very encouraging signs, although the law has plenty of flaws. In fact, I said many times that if we had a rally out in front of the Capitol to keep No Child Left Behind the same--if that is what the rally was for--not a single person in America would show up for that rally. Incidentally, while we have this reauthorization in front of us, it is a reauthorization that should have happened 7 years ago. It expired 7 years ago. We are running education policy in this country by waivers from the Department of Education because this Congress cannot do its job. Almost 40 of 50 States have waivers from the law as it exists today. Let's change the law. Let's write it properly. Let's do our work around here instead of spending our time on things the American people don't want us to spend our time on. Although everybody loves to hate No Child Left Behind, and I put myself in that category, it has some good things. It required us to face the facts about how our kids in poverty are doing in our schools. It shed light for the first time on the achievement gap--the brutal achievement gap--we have in this country, and some school districts stepped up. Denver Public Schools is one such district. Over the last decade, Denver Public Schools has implemented a number of changes and has seen real results. My schoolboard and my principals and my teachers and our kids and I would be the first to say we have not yet gotten to a place where you can say the ZIP Code you were born into doesn't determine the education you are going to get, but we are a lot closer in Denver. We are a lot closer there than we are in a lot of other cities in this country. We have seen some real results. Almost 30 percent more students graduated and went to college last year than in 2005. That is not enough. We are not satisfied with that. But if you could say that about every single city in this country, that we were graduating and sending 30 percent more students to college than we were in 2005, that might give us some hope for the future. That might suggest that some outcomes other than the ones we have been seeing with the result of 9 out of 100 poor kids getting a college degree is not where we have to end up, is not where we have to land. I am here to tell you, not as a U.S. Senator, but as someone who was a superintendent of the Denver Public Schools, this is possible. It is possible to change these outcomes in urban districts and in rural districts for children who are unlucky enough to be born into poverty in the greatest Nation on the planet--unlucky enough to be born poor and not born rich. Denver has recognized the importance of providing access to high- quality, early childhood education, and now an estimated 70 percent of Denver's 4-year-olds are enrolled in preschool. That was not true in 2005. As the Presiding Officer knows, we live in a State that doesn't require or pay for 5-year-olds to go to kindergarten. That is a shame. But because of the changes we made in Denver, our 5-year-olds go to kindergarten--a full day if they want it, which most of them do--and 70 percent of the fourth graders in Denver have early childhood education, and it is not only delivered by the Denver Public Schools, but by other providers as well and the Denver public schools. This seems to be having an effect as kids who attend the Denver preschool program track higher in school readiness. They know more about the alphabet, words, and books. They have a higher vocabulary and are able to comprehend basic math. And in kindergarten, first, and second grade, they showed better literacy and math skills than their peers. The dropout rate in Denver has decreased since 2005 by 60 percent. Incidentally, the teen pregnancy rate has also fallen by 60 percent. Denver Public Schools has gone from being the district with the lowest rate of academic growth among major districts in the State to the highest for 3 straight years. I am not taking responsibility for that. I am here, not there. Last year DPS students from low-income families had stronger growth in math and writing than nonfree- and reduced-lunch students Statewide. And Denver's nonfree- and reduced-lunch students showed more growth than their State counterparts in math by nine points. This was once labeled the failing school district in our State, but because of the data that we have as a result of No Child Left Behind, we can actually see what is happening--which kids are growing and which kids are not, which schools are driving growth among kids and which schools are not. You can look at a map of our city and find a school that looks just like your low-performing school with the same percentage of free- and reduced-lunch kids where kids are succeeding beyond their wildest dreams. Then what parents can do is say: I want that school, not this school, for my kid. Because we have a robust system of choice in Denver, parents are able to take advantage of that data, and we simply would not have had the proliferation of high-performing charter schools if it had not been for No Child Left Behind. In addition, Denver has gone beyond that. We have 33 innovation schools where teachers and administrators have the flexibility to modernize their teaching practices and have more autonomy to make decisions at the school level to better meet the needs of individual students. And it is not just Denver. We have seen progress all across the country--not remotely enough, but we have seen progress, and we cannot go backward. In the 3 decades prior to No Child Left Behind being passed--30 years--the average 9-year-old's reading score on the National Assessment of Educational Progress increased only 4 points--4 points in 30 years. Is that acceptable? Contrast that to the gains from 1990 to 2012, which is roughly the life of No Child Left Behind. During that span, 9-year-olds gained 9 points in reading, about 7 times as much annual progress. We have seen similar progress in math--9-year-olds only increased 2 points from 1990 to 1999, but from 1999 to 2012, they gained 12 points. In that same span, African-American students improved by 15 points and Latino students improved by 21 points. The achievement gap shrunk as well. In reading, the gap between White and African-American 9-year-old students dropped from 35 to 23 points. It is still too big, but it is moving in the right direction. This represents progress, but as I have said, in the face of stiff competition worldwide, it is nowhere near enough. Since the year 2000, we have dropped from second to twelfth in the world in the production of college graduates. We need to write a bill that builds on our successes and turns us away from the failed practices of the past, and we cannot do it if we are constrained by the typical politics--the small politics of Washington. We cannot afford to have the same tired fights. We won't always agree on everything, but I know we can find a way to pass a bill that helps our schools and school districts to make the decisions they think are best for the kids they are educating.

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

Mr. BENNET. I appreciate the indulgence of my colleague from Louisiana. In a significant demonstration of leadership around here, Chairman Alexander and Senator Murray have told us they intend to write a bipartisan bill. Their process has the potential to be a rare exception to the gridlock that has gripped this Senate, along with our bipartisan work on the farm bill and immigration. Senators Alexander and Murray have both expressed a willingness to work together because they appreciate the importance of this task. They understand the consequences of failure. They know enough about this issue, and they care enough about it. In January of 1941, during one of the Nation's most difficult times-- the height of the Great Depression and on the eve of our entry into the Second World War, Franklin Roosevelt declared that there were four universal freedoms that all persons possessed--freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear. Today, in the 21st century, some of these freedoms may be obtainable, but an honest assessment tells us it would be impossible to achieve all of them without something additional, and that is freedom from ignorance. In the end, freedom from ignorance is the surest relief from the shackles of poverty. Where does this leave us as we begin this important but long overdue national conversation on the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary School Act? First, for all the reasons I have mentioned, America's children would benefit if we treated our work less as legislators than as parents and grandparents with a real stake in the outcome of what we decide. Second, we must be clear-eyed about the Federal Government's proper role in American education and what is not. As a superintendent, I learned there are many things the Federal Government cannot and should not do when it comes to educating our children. And above all else, Washington cannot and should not micromanage our schools or our school districts or cultivate systems driven by compliance rather than creativity. I believe the evidence of our failures and our successes over the last 15 years suggest three primary Federal responsibilities: equity, accountability, and innovation. After all, the deep and intractable inequities that persisted along lines of race and class and geography in America of the 1960s drove Lyndon Johnson to pass the first Elementary and Secondary Schools Act. They drove the creation of title I, specific funds targeted to the kids who needed the greatest support. Sadly, for all the reasons I said, half a century later the data reveals these profound inequities persist and our students need our help now more than ever. But there is also reason for hope in this data, and maybe that is the most important message I can bring. We now have evidence that sustains support to make the difference in closing the pernicious gaps that remain for low-income kids around the country. Our deep commitment to equity, therefore, is as important today as it was in 1963. This means not just committing title I resources, but continuing to expand efforts to open the best schools and attract the best teachers and principals to our communities in the greatest need. In particular, we must help teachers who are saying they want better preparation, they want an excellent principal in their school, they want a better compensation system and opportunities for leadership that allow them to continue working with students. At DPS we have made some strides. We created the Denver Teacher Residency Program and introduced differentiated pay. We used Federal innovation dollars to help us improve and expand early on. We are creating leadership roles for teachers who demonstrate results with their students. We survey our teachers every year, and their satisfaction rates are higher than the national average. But there is still much more for us to do. Second, those of us working in the field know we must have a clear, shared system of accountability, a system that allows us to monitor, understand, and improve outcomes for students. This requires annual assessments that monitor progress and growth across all our cities and States. It requires breaking down data to show how and if we are closing the gaps for all students in our school districts. It means requiring States to take courageous action to turn around those schools that consistently fail our children. That is not just about paying attention to how we are serving our low-income students in Detroit or Denver. It means examining how well we serve our historically disadvantaged students even when they live in some of the most advantaged neighborhoods. As we do this, we need to work to reduce the amount of testing in our schools. As the father of three daughters in the Denver public schools, I am concerned about how much they are tested. But as their father, I also want to know every year how they are doing against a set of rigorous standards and compared to kids in Denver, across Colorado, and around the world. Will they be ready for college? Do they have the skills they need to succeed in this global economy? Third, we have learned over the last decade there is a vital Federal role when it comes to innovation in our schools. We can help provide the preconditions for success by providing incentives for educators on the ground to apply their own creative thinking to address our most persistent education problems. I say to my colleague from Louisiana, through the Chair, I am coming to the end. I owe him 10 minutes whenever he would like it. I thank him for his indulgence. We will never solve the challenges our teachers and students face in Washington, period. We will not do it from here. We can help local leaders break free from a status quo that will never succeed for enough of America's children. We should help identify the challenges, provide resources to local educators to overcome them in the context that works best for their communities and their students, and we should continue to be the clearinghouse that gathers these stories of successful innovation and provide the resources to invest in scaling what works and sharing these practices across communities and States. Equity, accountability, innovation--that is our charge and the commitment we must keep if we are to build an America where we treat every child as if she were our own. As a parent myself, I am well aware the first responsibility any parent has is the education of her child. I am also aware that many people believe a bad education is just one more outcome produced by corrosive poverty in this country. Fix poverty, and you will fix education. Maybe so, but that is cold comfort for millions of children in our schools today. In the end, we have a duty as a nation to ensure that education liberates our children, rather than reinforces the circumstances into which they were born. In that sense, America's children are our children, our responsibility, not someone else's. Can you really accept an America in which your little girl has just a 1-in-5 chance of being able to read well or a 9-in-100 chance to graduate from college? Can you really demand heroism as a precondition for success? If this were your child, would you still be in the Senate, or would you go home and solve the problem? It has been said the future has no lobby in Washington, DC. Are we really content to have that depressing observation be the ultimate verdict on our leadership? I doubt we are. I would raise this as a bipartisan challenge as I close. I know the Senator from Louisiana knows a lot about what I came to talk about today, and I look forward to working with him on the health committee. Here is my bipartisan challenge. Let's forge a lobby for the future. Let's agree that the obligation we owe the Founders is to create more opportunity, not less, for the children coming after us. Let's pledge that every child in America is our child, and our future rests with her, as it most assuredly does. I yield the floor.

Mr. BENNET. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent for 7 more minutes.

Mr. BENNET

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

Mr. BENNET

Mr. BENNET. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Laura Sherman, a fellow in my office, be given floor privileges for the remainder of this session.

Mr. BENNET

Mr. BENNET. I thank my friend from North Carolina for his efforts, and I wish to echo a lot of the points he already made so well, especially about how we stand here today having this fair, reasonable, unanimous consent request that the Senator from North Carolina has asked for, as we stand here today when essentially what we are talking about is a promise that has been broken by this Congress to the American people for 50 years. I thank, through the Chair, my colleague from North Carolina for trying to rectify that. I am disappointed that our unanimous consent request was objected to, but I know this measure has plenty of support. As he mentioned, we led an amendment on the floor last week with the exact same text of the bill that we are discussing today. When the dust settled, that amendment received 59 votes, but I have a hunch that it would comfortably clear the 60-vote threshold were it to be considered again. And it should be considered again. The measure is simple. As Senator Burr said, it simply reauthorizes the Land and Water Conservation Fund and ensures that a dedicated portion of LWCF funds go to provide new access for our Nation's sports men and women. As most in this body know, LWCF is one of the country's best conservation programs. It provides $900 million annually to preserve our public lands and increase access to them. Not only do we need to pass this bill to reauthorize the program, but we need to ensure that we dedicate full and mandatory funding to the initiative, as Congress intended when we created the program in 1964. Historically, LWCF resources have been used for all types of projects, ranging from building city parks to purchasing small parcels of isolated land from willing sellers and all the way to preserving our Nation's historic battlefields. In Colorado, we have used LWCF for a wide variety of projects beyond traditional conservation. For example, LWCF was of critical importance to our State following a major natural disaster in 1976. That year an intense rainstorm caused massive flooding around Colorado's Big Thompson River. The flood claimed the lives of 145 Coloradans and caused more than $35 million in damages. Once the horrible tragedy passed, the community had to rebuild. Rather than constructing houses back in the flood plain, Larimer County turned to LWCF to acquire the affected land and compensated the families whose homes were destroyed. Those flood plains are now home to four new county parks--popular destinations for birdwatchers, anglers, and family picnics--instead of vulnerable structures. When another huge flood hit in the fall of 2013, the rivers ran black and eventually surged over their banks, as we can see from this photo I have in the Chamber. Luckily, the flood plains, protected by LWCF and the creativity of our local folks, saw much less damage this time. The floodwaters inundated the open, undeveloped spaces instead of destroying homes and businesses, and Larimer County avoided about $16 million in estimated property damages. It is incredible to think that an LWCF investment of just over $1 million in 1976 saved us more than 15 times that amount in 2013. Beyond the example from Larimer County, communities all across Colorado have used LWCF to preserve sensitive landscapes and to help their local economies. This past summer, we completed a huge LWCF project in the San Juan National Forest near the town of Ophir. I spoke briefly about this project last week, and I will mention it again today because the work of the town of Ophir and the people of Ophir, along with their partners, the Trust for Public Land, were truly remarkable. If memory serves, it is a project that took 12 years from start to finish. It had to be done in phases. LWCF funds were used to acquire several old mining claims above town, preserving the scenic beauty and ensuring that the area will remain undeveloped forever. In this picture, if you ignore the center with these people in front of me, we can see how beautiful it is. This is a picture of the newly preserved landscape in Ophir. A group of us gathered to celebrate the accomplishment this past summer. Most of these mountain communities get huge portions of their revenue and business from recreation and tourism. It is for some of these reasons that the town felt the Land and Water Conservation Fund literally helped secure their economic future. This is a small, rural community in my home State. It is far away from this floor. LWCF has made a huge difference for Ophir. These are two stories from Colorado, but I know they have been replicated thousands of times across the country and in all 50 States. Those stories and accomplishments alone make this bill worth supporting. As I mentioned earlier, Congress wrote and passed LWCF in 1964, and it is beyond time to reauthorize it. Senator Burr has shown great leadership in crafting a bill to do just that. Conservation policies--from LWCF to farm bill easement programs, from wilderness to national parks--are important to the American people. The American people support this work. Protecting our land and water is part of our everyday lives in Colorado, and I know our State is not the only one. Conserved lands and wide-open spaces are a huge economic driver across the country, a huge part of our culture. They are who we are in the West. We should do right by the American people and reauthorize this program as soon as possible. Then we ought to work together to ensure that LWCF gets the full and mandatory funding going forward that was promised 50 years ago by Congress. With that, I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.