Patty Murray

Mrs. MURRAY

Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, I concur with the remarks from the chairman of the committee and urge a ``no'' vote.

Mrs. MURRAY

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 Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mrs. MURRAY

Mrs. MURRAY. Madam President, I believe that providing all of our students with a quality education is one of our most important national priorities. The workforce in the years to come will depend on today's students being able to create and take on the jobs of tomorrow, and providing students with the chance to learn, grow, and thrive will help our country continue to compete and lead in the 21st-century global economy. Today we are continuing our work on the Senate floor to make sure all of our students have access to a quality education by working to fix the badly broken No Child Left Behind law. I thank Chairman Alexander, the senior Senator from Tennessee, for working with me on this bipartisan bill. He has been a great partner throughout this process. The bipartisan bill, the Every Child Achieves Act, is a good step in the right direction. It gives our States more flexibility while also including Federal guardrails to make sure all students have access to a quality public education. But I want to work, of course, to continue to improve and strengthen this bill throughout this process on the Senate floor. I want to make sure struggling schools get the resources they need. I want to make sure all of our kids, especially our most vulnerable students, are able to succeed in the classroom. Finishing this process and getting a bill signed into law isn't going to be easy. Nothing in Congress ever is. But students and parents and teachers in communities across our country--including in my home State of Washington--are looking to Congress to fix this broken law. We cannot let them down. We need to work across the aisle to provide a quality education for all students, regardless of where they live or how they learn or how much money their parents make. So I look forward to continuing to work with Chairman Alexander as we move this through the Senate floor and to conference--and I think he agrees with me--and, hopefully, to the President to get it signed into law. I see the chairman is here. I yield the floor.

Mrs. MURRAY. Madam President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mrs. MURRAY

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, making sure our Nation's students get a quality education is critical for our ability--our country's ability-- to lead the world in the years to come, and a good education can be a ticket to the middle class. It is also important for building an economy from the middle out, not just from the top down. Of course, yesterday the House of Representatives passed their partisan bill to reauthorize the Nation's K-12 education bill. While that is another important step in the process to finally fix the badly broken No Child Left Behind law, I am disappointed that House Republicans have chosen to take a partisan approach in their bill that is unacceptable to Democrats and will never become law. I appreciate the work that ranking member Bobby Scott put into the House Democratic substitute. I am looking forward to coming together with him as well as Chairman Kline in a conference. I truly hope House Republicans will be ready to join ranking member Bobby Scott and other House and Senate Democrats, Senate Republicans, and the administration as we work to get this done in a way that works for all students and families. I am looking forward to continuing that work here today in the Senate. Again, I truly want to thank my colleague, the senior Senator from Tennessee, for working with me on our bipartisan bill, and I appreciate Chairman Alexander's cooperation in working in a bipartisan way through this process. I join him this morning in encouraging our colleagues to file their amendments so we can continue making progress on this important piece of legislation. Our bipartisan bill, the Every Child Achieves Act, is a good step in the right direction to fix No Child Left Behind. It gives our States more flexibility, while also including Federal guardrails to make sure all students have access to a quality public education. We are not done yet. I want to work to continue to improve and strengthen the bill. One example, today we will talk about an amendment to help shine a light on inequalities in education that still exist in our country. I thank Senator Warren for offering her amendment. I look forward to that discussion. That amendment will help States, districts, and schools better analyze student achievement data so they can help their students achieve. So I hope our colleagues will pass that amendment. I am looking forward to getting started again today to work through this issue and a number of others we have, and I hope to continue to work in a bipartisan way to make sure all students have access to a quality education, again, regardless of where they live or how they learn or how much money they make. I look forward to today's discussion. Again, I thank our colleagues on the other side of the aisle for working with us to fix this badly broken bill. I yield the floor.

Mrs. MURRAY. Madam President, I join with the chairman in thanking the Senators from Pennsylvania and West Virginia and for working with our staffs to create this new version. I think this amendment gets at a real problem by ensuring that suspected abusers do not transfer to other States and districts. It is a positive step. I urge its adoption.

Mrs. MURRAY. I yield back our remaining debate time on the final amendments.

Mrs. MURRAY. Madam President, I ask to set aside the pending amendment in order to call up the following amendments en bloc as provided for under the previous order and ask that they be reported by number: Warren No. 2120, Brown No. 2099, Manchin No. 2103, Kaine No. 2096, and Feinstein No. 2087.

Mrs. MURRAY. Madam President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mrs. MURRAY. Madam President, I know Senator Brown is on his way. But I just want to let Senators know that too often our Nation's students show up to school hungry or lacking adequate school supplies. Many of our teachers, as we know, are really struggling to provide students with an education, while they are also dealing with the compounding problems brought on by poverty. Site resource coordinators, which this amendment addresses, operate through a community school model, are able to bolster the number of resources in schools, and increase the number of services offered to students and their families. So what this amendment does is that it would further that goal by allowing title IV funds to be used for site coordinators. I thank Senator Brown for offering this amendment.

Mrs. MURRAY. I yield back the time.

Mrs. MURRAY. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senator from Virginia be given 1 minute and the Senator from California be given 1 minute to speak prior to the five voice votes.

Mrs. MURRAY

Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, today I am introducing the Homeless Veterans Services Protection Act of 2015. This legislation would ensure continued access to homeless services for some of our country's most vulnerable veterans who are currently at risk of losing these critical services. The administration set the difficult but commendable goal of eliminating veteran homelessness. Through tremendous efforts at every level of government, and with the help of community groups, non-profits and the private sector, we have made major progress toward achieving that goal. But we know we have a lot of work to do. Veterans are at greater risk of becoming homeless than non-veterans and on any given night as many as 50,000 veterans are homeless across the United States. This is unacceptable. Our veterans made great sacrifices while serving our country and our commitment to them is especially important. This commitment includes providing benefits, medical care, support, and assistance to prevent homelessness. Two of our greatest tools are the Department of Veterans Affairs' Grant and Per Diem program and the Supportive Services for Veteran Families program through partnerships with homeless service providers around the country. These important and successful programs assist very low-income veterans and their families who either live in permanent housing or are transitioning from homelessness. The programs help our veterans with rent, utilities, moving costs, outreach, case management, and obtaining benefits. But last year, after a legal review of its policies, VA was forced to prepare for a change that would have cut off services to veterans who did not meet certain length of service or discharge requirements, changing policies that homeless service providers had followed for decades. That would be a heartless, bureaucratic move that could have put thousands of veterans on the streets--practically overnight. According to some of our leading veterans and homeless groups--including The American Legion, the National Alliance to End Homelessness the National Low Income Housing Coalition, and the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans--had the policy been enacted, VA would have had to stop serving about 15 percent of the homeless veteran population, and in certain urban areas up to 30 percent of homeless veterans would have been turned away. The veterans community alerted me to this possible change--and while I am proud that we prevented these changes in the short-term--it is very concerning that a legal opinion could be issued at any time to undo all of that. There is good reason to reverse this policy for good. A report from VA's Inspector General, issued just last week, shows how VA's unclear or outdated guidance hurts veterans, and how VA's proposed policy changes work against efforts to help homeless veterans. As a senior member of the Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee and the daughter of a World War II veteran, I'm proud that the bill I have introduced today would permanently protect homeless veterans' access to housing and services. This bill makes it clear that our country takes care of those who have served, and we don't allow bureaucracy to dictate who gets a roof over their head and who doesn't. Many veterans struggle with mental illness, substance abuse, or simply finding a steady job--all factors that can lead to homelessness. And veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are increasingly becoming homeless--numbers that will continue to increase in the coming years unless help is available for them. The idea that any of these veterans returning from service could become homeless because of these policies is unacceptable. If we ever hope to end veteran homelessness we must do everything we can to reach this goal, and I want to make sure that VA's policies are moving us in that direction. I don't just believe that the United States can do better; I believe we must do better for those who've sacrificed so much for our country. Finally I would like to thank Senator Hirono for cosponsoring this bill and being a champion of the men and women who have served our country.

Mrs. MURRAY

Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, today I am introducing the Homeless Veterans Services Protection Act of 2015. This legislation would ensure continued access to homeless services for some of our country's most vulnerable veterans who are currently at risk of losing these critical services. The administration set the difficult but commendable goal of eliminating veteran homelessness. Through tremendous efforts at every level of government, and with the help of community groups, non-profits and the private sector, we have made major progress toward achieving that goal. But we know we have a lot of work to do. Veterans are at greater risk of becoming homeless than non-veterans and on any given night as many as 50,000 veterans are homeless across the United States. This is unacceptable. Our veterans made great sacrifices while serving our country and our commitment to them is especially important. This commitment includes providing benefits, medical care, support, and assistance to prevent homelessness. Two of our greatest tools are the Department of Veterans Affairs' Grant and Per Diem program and the Supportive Services for Veteran Families program through partnerships with homeless service providers around the country. These important and successful programs assist very low-income veterans and their families who either live in permanent housing or are transitioning from homelessness. The programs help our veterans with rent, utilities, moving costs, outreach, case management, and obtaining benefits. But last year, after a legal review of its policies, VA was forced to prepare for a change that would have cut off services to veterans who did not meet certain length of service or discharge requirements, changing policies that homeless service providers had followed for decades. That would be a heartless, bureaucratic move that could have put thousands of veterans on the streets--practically overnight. According to some of our leading veterans and homeless groups--including The American Legion, the National Alliance to End Homelessness the National Low Income Housing Coalition, and the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans--had the policy been enacted, VA would have had to stop serving about 15 percent of the homeless veteran population, and in certain urban areas up to 30 percent of homeless veterans would have been turned away. The veterans community alerted me to this possible change--and while I am proud that we prevented these changes in the short-term--it is very concerning that a legal opinion could be issued at any time to undo all of that. There is good reason to reverse this policy for good. A report from VA's Inspector General, issued just last week, shows how VA's unclear or outdated guidance hurts veterans, and how VA's proposed policy changes work against efforts to help homeless veterans. As a senior member of the Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee and the daughter of a World War II veteran, I'm proud that the bill I have introduced today would permanently protect homeless veterans' access to housing and services. This bill makes it clear that our country takes care of those who have served, and we don't allow bureaucracy to dictate who gets a roof over their head and who doesn't. Many veterans struggle with mental illness, substance abuse, or simply finding a steady job--all factors that can lead to homelessness. And veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are increasingly becoming homeless--numbers that will continue to increase in the coming years unless help is available for them. The idea that any of these veterans returning from service could become homeless because of these policies is unacceptable. If we ever hope to end veteran homelessness we must do everything we can to reach this goal, and I want to make sure that VA's policies are moving us in that direction. I don't just believe that the United States can do better; I believe we must do better for those who've sacrificed so much for our country. Finally I would like to thank Senator Hirono for cosponsoring this bill and being a champion of the men and women who have served our country.

Mrs. MURRAY

Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to set aside the pending amendment to call up the Franken amendment No. 2093 and the Kaine amendment No. 2118 en bloc.

Mrs. MURRAY

Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, since our Nation's founding, the idea of a strong public education for every child has been part of the fabric of America. In the late 1770s, Thomas Jefferson introduced a bill in Virginia that outlined his plan for public schooling. At the time he wrote: ``By far the most important bill in our whole code is that for the diffusion of knowledge among the people.'' Jefferson knew that educating children would strengthen our country. That is still true today. Today a good education can provide a ticket to the middle class. When all students have the chance to learn, we strengthen our future workforce and our economy. But nearly everyone today agrees that the current education law--No Child Left Behind--is badly broken. The bipartisan bill we are debating on the floor today--the Every Child Achieves Act--is a strong step in the right direction to finally fix that law, and it will help continue our Nation's tradition of making sure all students have access to a quality public education. Some of our colleagues on the other side of the aisle are interested in voucherizing the public school system. Instead of investing in our public school system, they want to send Federal resources to private schools. That would be a major step backward. Vouchers undermine the basic goals of public education by allowing funding that is designated for our most at-risk students to be rerouted to private schools. I urge my colleagues to oppose any attempt to use Federal education funds for private school vouchers. I strongly oppose vouchers for several reasons. For one, vouchers divert much-needed resources away from our public schools and reroute them to private and religious schools. Today public schools across our country, and particularly those schools with high concentrations of students in poverty, need more funding, not less. We can't afford to send scarce Federal resources away from our public schools to benefit private schools. Secondly, vouchers would send Federal taxpayer dollars to private schools that are in no way accountable to the public. Proposals to create vouchers do not require private schools to adopt strong academic standards or provide students with disabilities the same services they have in public schools. Unlike public schools, private schools do not need to serve all of our students. There is no guarantee that private schools would make sure students have access to State-licensed teachers, and they would not administer the same assessments as public schools, which would diminish our accountability of Federal tax dollars. I can tell you, as a former school board member, when people in my community were unhappy with how their taxpayer dollars were spent, they would find me in the grocery store, at the school board meeting or call me at home at night. But if Federal tax dollars go to private schools, there is no elected official that a public citizen can call and say: I don't like how you are spending our tax dollars, and I want you to look at this. Many of our colleagues today demand evidence and accountability in other programs. I hope they do it in education as well. Some of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle like to argue that vouchers create options for students and families. Well, that might be true for students of more affluent families, but vouchers don't provide a real choice for the overwhelming majority of students. Vouchers might cover some but usually not all of the tuition of a private school. In some cases a voucher would make just a small dent in the full cost of a private school. That would enable students from more affluent families the ability to afford private schools because they personally have the means to make up the difference. But students from low-income backgrounds would still be priced out of that choice. Vouchers only provide the illusion of choice to students from low- income backgrounds, and it is those low-income students who ultimately lose out when funds are siphoned away from the public schools that they attend. Perhaps the most important reason I oppose private-school vouchers is because they do not improve student achievement. Study after study has shown that vouchers do not pay out for students or for taxpayers. In 2012 researchers compared students enrolled in Milwaukee's voucher program compared with students in Milwaukee's public schools. The researchers found little evidence that the voucher program increased the achievement of participating students. The District of Columbia's voucher program has gone through four congressionally mandated studies from the Department of Education. Each of those studies concluded that the program did not significantly improve reading or math achievement, and that program came at the cost of funding that could have helped improve local public schools. There are a number of reasons to oppose any amendment that redirects Federal funds to private schools. Public schools already have to deal with scarce Federal resources. This would exasperate the problem. Private schools would not be accountable for the Federal taxpayer dollars they get. Vouchers do very little to expand choices for low- income families. Finally, as I said, studies have shown that vouchers do not increase student achievement. An amendment to allow public funds--taxpayer dollars--to flow to private schools would be a step in the wrong direction. I strongly urge our colleagues to oppose any amendment that works to voucherize any of our Federal dollars. I believe that real improvement in student achievement comes when our teachers and school leaders have the resources they need to help our students succeed. We have to work together to strengthen our public school system, not dismantle it. I hope we can continue our bipartisan work together--we have done well--to help ensure all students have access to a quality public education regardless of where they live or how they learn or how much money they make. That should be our mission. I thank the Presiding Officer, and I yield the floor.

Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to call up Hirono amendment No. 2109, Tester amendment No. 2107, Murray amendment No. 2124, and Bennet amendment No. 2115, as provided for under the previous order, and ask that they be reported by number.

Mrs. MURRAY. I yield back all time.

Mrs. MURRAY. I yield back all time.

Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, over the weekend, we all cheered on the women's national soccer team as they beat Japan 5 to 2 in the World Cup. Their teamwork and the skills they displayed on the field were years in the making. Many of the players on the women's national team developed their skills and a love for soccer while attending their public schools growing up. In fact, before midfielder Carli Lloyd shattered records in the World Cup finals on Saturday, she was the star of the Delran High School soccer team in New Jersey. Unfortunately, not all young girls have the same opportunities today as young boys do to participate in school sports. In our Nation's schools, all girls should have equal opportunities to pursue athletics, whether they just want to help their high school team have a winning season or whether they dream of one day playing in the World Cup final. Today, I am offering an amendment to help close the opportunity gap in sports between young men and women. Back in 1972, Congress passed what is known as title IX. That is the law that bans discrimination in education on the basis of gender. This law applies to all educational opportunities that have had a huge impact on opening opportunities for young women to play sports. For the first time, schools were required to provide equal opportunity to girls and boys to play organized sports, and they were required to provide equal benefits and services, like coaches and courts and playing fields. Title IX has truly changed our country for the better. The number of women and girls whose lives it touches is growing every single day. I have seen that firsthand in my own family. When I went to school, the atmosphere was a lot different than it is today. Back then, I could participate in just a very few sports, and it was simply unheard of for women athletes to receive athletic scholarships. Now, 15 years later, it was amazing to watch my own daughter choose to play soccer, learning to be a part of a team and cheering each other on and learning how to be gracious in victory and in defeat. The differences between my daughter's generation and my own could not be more stark. Today, more young women than ever are playing sports, but inequality still exists and girls don't have the same opportunities to play sports as boys. In fact, if you add up all of the missed opportunities across the country, young women have 1.3 million fewer chances today to play sports in high school compared to boys. That is according to the National Federation of High School Associations. So the amendment I am offering that we will be voting on shortly will help ensure that schools simply report information about school sports in elementary, middle, and high school. I thank Senator Mikulski, who has been a champion for title IX, for working with me on this amendment. Under our amendment, schools would report on both access to girls organized sports and the funding for girls sports. For the first time, schools would need to show the public, show all of us, what they spend on travel expenses and equipment and uniforms for both boys and girls sports teams. This information will simply help us shine a light on the persistent inequalities in sports between men and women. Playing sports isn't just good for a single sports season, it has a positive effect on and off the field. According to the National Collegiate Athletic Association, when young women play sports, they are more likely to have higher grades, and they are more likely to graduate from high school than nonathletes. Research also shows that girls who have opportunities to play sports have lower risk of obesity later in life, lower incidence of depression, and more positive body image than nonathletes. Congress can help ensure that girls all over our country have the chance not only to improve their athletic ability but also to develop valuable skills like teamwork and discipline and self-confidence. Those skills lead to success on and off the playing field. I urge our colleagues to vote for this important amendment. Let's give young women and girls equal opportunity in sports. So many girls across the country spent this week dreaming of one day being one of those women champions they saw on television last weekend. Let's make sure they know Congress has their back. I yield the floor.

Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, this amendment would retreat on our fundamental commitment to make sure that every child has access to a quality education, and it would do it by consolidating almost every K- 12 education program we have and turning that funding into a public or private school voucher. It would cut programs for STEM, for literacy, for afterschool--priorities that are important to Members across the aisle, and it would dismantle the important bipartisan work we have done to fix this badly broken No Child Left Behind law in a way that works for parents, teachers, and students. It ignores the research on the impact of concentrated poverty on student achievement and allows States to move Federal resources from our highest needs schools and districts to more affluent ones and to unaccountable private schools. I know my colleague from Tennessee understands this is a nonstarter for me, and I really urge my colleagues to oppose this amendment.

Mrs. MURRAY. Let me say to the Senator from Tennessee that his work on this has been really great. We are working hard on both sides of the aisle to get a bill to the President, and this is part of that process. I concur with him that we are working through this, and our hope is to get up some more amendments tomorrow morning. We should be able to announce that later tonight or tomorrow morning. Again, I thank the chairman of the committee.

Mrs. MURRAY

Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, again, I really want to thank my colleague, the senior Senator from Tennessee, for working with me on this bipartisan bill. Senator Alexander and I are both committed to fixing the current law known as No Child Left Behind. I am glad we are having this very important debate on the Senate Floor. Nearly everyone agrees that No Child Left Behind is badly broken. As I have traveled around my home State of Washington over the past decade, I have heard from so many of my constituents--from teachers in the classroom to moms in the grocery store to tech company CEOs--that we have to fix this law. Our bipartisan bill, the Every Child Achieves Act, is a good step in the right direction. It gives our States more flexibility while also including Federal guardrails to make sure all students do have access to a quality public education. I am looking forward to improving and strengthening this bill throughout the process on the Senate floor and beyond. I am going to continue working on helping our struggling schools get the resources they need, and I will be focused on making sure all our kids, especially our most vulnerable students, are able to learn and grow and thrive in the classroom. This bill could not be more important for students across the country, and it is critical for the future of our Nation. When all students have the chance to learn, we strengthen our future workforce, our country grows stronger, and we empower the next generation of Americans to lead the world. So I am looking forward to getting to work and hopefully moving forward on fixing No Child Left Behind and making sure all of our students can learn regardless of where they live or how they learn or how much money their parents earn. I join with Senator Alexander in encouraging our colleagues to file their amendments so that we can continue making progress on this very important piece of legislation. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mrs. MURRAY

Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senator from New Jersey, Mr. Booker, follow my remarks on the floor.