[Congressional Record Volume 163, Number 19 (Friday, February 3, 2017)]
[Senate]
[Pages S664-S668]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


                           EXECUTIVE CALENDAR

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report the nomination.
  The legislative clerk read the nomination of Elisabeth Prince DeVos, 
of Michigan, to be Secretary of Education.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Tennessee.
  Mr. ALEXANDER. Madam President, with this vote, the Senate will move 
early next week to confirm the nomination of Betsy DeVos to be the U.S. 
Education Secretary. In my judgment, she will be an excellent and 
important Education Secretary for this country.
  The No. 1 job of the U.S. Education Secretary is to help create an 
environment in which our 100,000 public schools succeed, because that 
is where 9 out of 10 of our children go.
  When I was Education Secretary for President George H.W. Bush in the 
early 1990s, I had the privilege of working with a man named David 
Kerns, who had been the chief executive officer of the Xerox 
Corporation. He came in as the Deputy Education Secretary at a time 
when he was not only one of the country's leading businessmen, but he 
was also the leading businessman who tried to help change public 
education. David Kern's belief was that it was very difficult to help 
children by changing public education if you try to do it from within. 
As all of us do, he respected the teachers, the parents, and the 
students who work within the public education system, but over the last 
30 years, as this country has worked to try to improve our public 
schools, much of that energy has come from outside the public school 
establishment. Among those were the Governors of the country.
  In the mid-1980s, all of the Governors met together--in 1985 and 
1986--on one subject for a whole year. The purpose was, how can we help 
improve our public schools? I was chairman of the National Governors 
Association that year, Bill Clinton was the vice chairman, and we did 
that in a bipartisan way. We did that from outside the schools. Since 
that time, many Governors and many business leaders have worked hard in 
support of our public schools, trying to help them have even better 
opportunities for our children. Among those has been Betsy DeVos. The 
Governors I spoke of are Governors who are familiar names in this 
country. I think of Gov. Jeb Bush, Gov. John Engler of Michigan, Gov. 
Mitt Romney, and the work they did in their respective States to make 
their public schools better and to create other opportunities for 
children. All of the three Governors I mentioned--Bush, Romney, and 
Engler--support Betsy DeVos.
  As chairman of the Senate's Education Committee, there are 22 
Governors who have written letters to me supporting Betsy DeVos. They 
see her as someone from outside the system of public education who, as 
they worked for 30 years, can help change and improve it.
  Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the 
Record following my remarks the names of the 22 Governors who support 
her. They come from Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Illinois, 
Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, 
North Dakota, Nebraska, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, Ohio, Oklahoma, 
Tennessee, Texas, and Wisconsin.
  The Governors of all those States support Betsy DeVos. Four of the 
last Education Secretaries support Betsy DeVos. Bill Bennett, Rod 
Paige, Margaret Spellings, and I support her. Joe Lieberman, who served 
in this body and worked on the DC voucher program for many years, 
endorsed her. She has strong support from the Governors who for 30 
years have been working hard to successfully improve our public 
schools.
  Some have said: Well, she has spent her time working on giving 
children choices of schools other than public schools.
  She has done that, and it has always puzzled me as to why anybody 
would criticize that. The idea that a low-income child should have the 
same opportunity or more of the same opportunities as a wealthy family 
has would seem to me to be a very all-American idea. Not only does it 
seem to be, it is an idea that underlies the most successful piece of 
social policy our country has ever enacted, arguably--the GI

[[Page S665]]

bill for veterans in 1944. Think about that. The veterans came home 
from World War II. We gave them a scholarship. It followed them to the 
college of their choice. Ms. DeVos has argued for the same thing for 
children. Why is an idea that has helped to create the greatest 
generation and the greatest colleges of the world so dangerous for 
schools?
  I would argue that she has been among the forefront of the leaders--
like the Governors--for the most successful reform of the last 30 years 
to change and improve public education, and that would be the public 
charter schools. Those began with 12 schools in Minnesota created by 
the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party in the early 1900s. Since then, 
charter schools have been supported by every President--President 
Obama, President Clinton, Presidents Bush. President Obama's most 
recent Education Secretary was a founder of charter schools. Four 
times, this Congress, by big bipartisan majorities, has supported 
charter schools. The last six U.S. Education Secretaries have supported 
charter schools. Charter schools have grown from 12 Democratic-Farmer-
Labor schools to 6,800 today, and 2.7 million children attend them. 
Teachers have more freedom and parents have more choices. They are 
public schools, and Betsy DeVos was in the forefront of helping to 
create that opportunity for public education.
  Finally, she believes what 85 of us voted for in the law that 
President Obama called a ``Christmas miracle'' in December of 2015, and 
that is to reverse the trend from a national school board and restore 
control of our children and our schools to those closest to the 
children. There will be no mandates for common core, no mandates for 
teacher evaluation, no mandates for vouchers, and no mandates for 
anything else from a U.S. Department of Education headed by Betsy 
DeVos. We will be swapping a national school board for what she 
believes in, which is a local school board, which is what 85 of us 
voted for.
  I am pleased to support her.
  Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the 
Record following my remarks an article published by Max Eden on January 
29, 2017, which shows Detroit charter schools--by three major studies--
are better and children perform better than the traditional schools of 
Detroit.
  I look forward to casting my vote for Betsy DeVos for U.S. Education 
Secretary early next week.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:


                   Highlights Among DeVos supporters

       22 State Governors, including:
       Gov. Robert Bentley, Alabama; Doug Ducey, Arizona; Gov. Asa 
     Hutchinson, Arkansas; Gov. Rick Scott, Florida; Gov. Bruce 
     Rauner, Illinois; Gov. Eric Holcomb, Indiana; Gov. Sam 
     Brownback, Kansas; Gov. Matthew Bevin, Kentucky; Gov. Paul 
     LePage, Maine; Gov. Rick Snyder, Michigan; Gov. Phil Bryant, 
     Mississippi.
       Gov. Eric Greitens, Missouri; Gov. Doug Burgum, North 
     Dakota; Gov. Pete Ricketts, Nebraska; Gov. Brian Sandoval, 
     Nevada; Gov. Chris Christie, New Jersey; Gov. Susana 
     Martinez, New Mexico; Gov. John Kasich, Ohio; Gov. Mary 
     Fallin, Oklahoma; Gov. Bill Haslam, Tennessee; Gov. Greg 
     Abbott, Texas; Gov. Scott Walker, Wisconsin.
       Former Governors:
       Jeb Bush; Mitt Romney; John Engler.
       Four Former Education Secretaries:
       William Bennett; Rod Paige; Margaret Spellings; Lamar 
     Alexander.
       Former Senators:
       Joe Lieberman; Bill Frist.
       Democrats including:
       Eva Moskowitz, founder and CEO of Success; Academy Charter 
     Schools; Anthony Williams, former Mayor of Washington, D.C.
                                  ____


Eden: When the New York Times's Reporting on DeVos and Detroit Charters 
                     Looks Like `Alternative Facts'

                             (By Max Eden)

       The campaign against Education Secretary--designate Betsy 
     DeVos has been both predictable and extraordinary. It's no 
     surprise that the education establishment was perturbed by 
     the selection of a school choice advocate, and opposition 
     from interest groups is to be expected.
       But in an era when the president of the United States has 
     declared a ``running war'' on the media, accusing reporters 
     of distorting facts to attack him, the work of one education 
     journalist unfortunately lends some credence to that 
     argument.
       Some critical coverage has been responsible and fair, but 
     DeVos was sadly not ``spinning'' when she told the Senate 
     that there's been a lot of ``false news'' about her record. 
     The New York Times has been most conspicuous in this regard. 
     The editorial angle of its national education correspondent 
     Kate Zernike was clear from her first piece on the nominee, 
     ``Betsy DeVos, Trump's Education Pick, Has Steered Money From 
     Public Schools.''
       Liberal bias at the Times is less than a non-story; if 
     anything, I'd argue a partisan press is healthy in a 
     pluralistic democracy. But when America's ``paper of record'' 
     makes verifiably false claims, they must be checked and 
     corrected. Here are two significant ones.
       In a front-page June article titled ``A Sea of Charter 
     Schools in Detroit Leaves Students Adrift,'' the Times 
     education correspondent asserts that ``half the charters 
     perform only as well, or worse than, Detroit's traditional 
     public schools.''
       That claim was echoed by a Times editorial and would be 
     big, if true. DeVos was nominated based on her school choice 
     advocacy. If that work helped foster charter schools that are 
     worse than the worst-in-the-nation Detroit Public Schools, 
     that would be profoundly troubling. But if Detroit's charters 
     are better (even if not as much better as we'd desire), then 
     it's a different story entirely.
       Fortunately, they are better.
       There are three key studies that compare Detroit's charter 
     and district schools: one from Stanford University, one from 
     the center-right Mackinac Center and one from Excellent 
     Schools Detroit (ESD), a local education nonprofit. As Jason 
     Bedrick, a policy analyst at the Cato Institute's Center for 
     Educational Freedom, and I demonstrated in Education Next, 
     all three show that charters significantly outperform 
     district schools. Perplexed at how the Times reached the 
     opposite conclusion, I reached out to Zernike.
       Some critics assumed that Zernike was twisting data from 
     the Stanford study, the presumptive source of district-to-
     charter comparisons. But Zernike informed me that she chose 
     to use the ESD study after contacting the Stanford study's 
     author and determining that the data was too outdated for her 
     purposes.
       I asked why she chose the ESD data over the Mackinac 
     Center's. Mackinac grades schools using a complex regression 
     taking into account students' socioeconomic background. ESD 
     grades on a combination of raw test scores, test-score growth 
     and a school climate survey, but it doesn't consider 
     socioeconomic status.
       She explained that Mackinac is ``a partisan group that is 
     pro-school choice and anti-DPS. ESD, despite how GLEP [the 
     DeVos-backed Great Lakes Education Project] will characterize 
     it, supported charters and traditional public schools, and 
     the measures seemed broader.''
       When I told her that sounded more like political than 
     methodological reasoning, she countered, ``It's not politics, 
     it's methodology. I think graduation rate was the only thing 
     Mackinac used to compare,'' and added that she thinks the ESD 
     data ``do break down for demographics.'' Wrong and wrong.
       Now, it's possible that she didn't simply default to the 
     politically congenial option without further scrutiny. 
     Perhaps she just failed to properly recall the details 
     several months later. Whatever the case, the ESD data also 
     show charters outperforming district schools.
       So, how did the Times national education correspondent 
     reach the opposite conclusion?
       Now, bear with me, here because it's complicated and it 
     makes no sense.
       First she separated out K-8 district schools and high 
     schools, calculating their respective average scores, 
     weighted by student enrollment. She included high-performing 
     selective-admissions district schools and excluded low-
     performing Detroit public schools that have been taken over 
     by the state. (Neither decision is justifiable in a 
     traditional-to-charter comparison.)
       Then she saw that for both K-8 district schools and high 
     schools, the (inflated) weighted average score was higher 
     than the median charter school score, and concluded that 
     ``half the charters perform only as well, or worse than, 
     Detroit's traditional public schools.''
       On the high school side, the unweighted average score of 
     .33 is significantly lower than the weighted average of .41. 
     It's worth noting that the .41 is above the charter median 
     score and the .33 is below it. So going by the weighted 
     average was the only way to arrive at that result for high 
     schools.
       On the K-8 side, the weighted and unweighted averages are 
     essentially equal. That average is indeed slightly higher 
     than the median charter score, but it's much higher than the 
     district's median score. So on K-8 schools, by her same 
     faulty logic, it would also be accurate to say that ``two 
     thirds of the public schools perform only as well, or worse 
     than, Detroit's traditional public schools.''
       If that sounds silly, it's because comparing an average to 
     a median is statistical nonsense. The ``apples to oranges'' 
     metaphor is apt but insufficient here. Essentially, Zernike 
     took a basket of apples, pulled out the rotten ones, kept the 
     genetically modified ones, made statistically weighted 
     applesauce, and plopped that applesauce in the middle of a 
     row of organic oranges. Then she drew a false conclusion 
     that's become central to the case against Betsy DeVos's 
     nomination for secretary of education.
       Personally, I doubt the mathematical mistakes were 
     conscious or intentional. But what really matters is that the 
     ESD, Mackinac and Stanford studies all show Detroit charters 
     significantly outperforming traditional public schools.

[[Page S666]]

       The second claim also involves the Times's editorial 
     against DeVos, in this case lamenting that she funded charter 
     advocacy efforts, ``winning legislative changes that have 
     ``reduced oversight and accountability.'' The editorial 
     linked to a December article by Zernike covering a 
     legislative debate on Detroit charter regulation wherein 
     ``Ms. DeVos pushed back on any regulation as too much 
     regulation.''
       Whatever the rhetorical merit of that editorial claim, it 
     is flat false. In a Detroit News op-ed, to which the article 
     later links, DeVos called for two additional regulations: A-F 
     school accountability grades and default closure for failing 
     schools, both charter and district. She certainly pushed back 
     on some regulations as too much. But the bill that passed 
     included the additional accountability regulations for which 
     she advocated. In fact, the final legislation boosted 
     Michigan's accountability score on the National Alliance of 
     Charter School Authorizers index.
       Given the fact that the main subject of her article was a 
     net increase in charter accountability, Zernike admits on 
     Twitter that she's ``not sure what the ed board meant by 
     that,'' but notes that ``MI legislation in 2011 (not June 
     bill) did weaken oversight.'' Zernike's December article 
     refers to the 2011 legislation in one passing sentence. Her 
     June article noted that ``the law repealed a longstanding 
     requirement that the State Department of Education issue 
     yearly reports monitoring charter school performance.'' While 
     true, that provision didn't merit mention among the 12 key 
     changes in the official legislative summary (five of which 
     increased charter regulation).
       It's possible that the Times's editorial was referring to 
     that repealed reporting requirement from 2011 when it claimed 
     that DeVos backed ``legislative changes that have reduced 
     oversight and accountability.'' But that seems unlikely, 
     given that the editorial linked to Zernike's December article 
     on the 2016 legislative debate and that piece doesn't even 
     mention the 2011 provision. It seems more likely that the 
     editors honestly confused an increase in accountability that 
     was smaller than some stakeholders wanted with an actual, 
     absolute reduction. And given the reporting they relied on, 
     it would be hard to blame them.
       Education blogger Alexander Russo has skillfully outlined 
     the ``problematic media coverage'' of Betsy DeVos, in which 
     journalists have latched onto hyper-simplified story lines 
     while ignoring complexities and eschewing nuanced criticism.
       Whatever your take on DeVos or the media, everyone loses 
     when the line between fact and falsehood is blurred beyond 
     distinction. At a time when the president's advisers proudly 
     tout ``alternative facts,'' critical, fact-based reporting is 
     more necessary than ever, especially from outlets with the 
     weight and influence of The New York Times. Their readers, 
     and America's schoolchildren, deserve better. Correcting the 
     record would be a good start.

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Washington.
  Mrs. MURRAY. Madam President, I am on the floor today to stand with 
parents, students, teachers, families, and communities across our 
country to make sure they have a voice to strongly oppose Betsy DeVos 
and her plans to privatize public schools and destroy public education 
in America. I urge my colleagues to stand with their constituents and 
join Democrats and Republicans in rejecting this nomination.
  I come to the floor as a former preschool teacher, someone who got my 
start in politics fighting for strong public schools, a former school 
board member, a Senator committed to standing strong for public 
education in America, and a mother and grandmother who cares deeply 
about the future of our students in our schools.
  Like so many people across the country, I am someone who owes 
everything I have to a strong public education I received growing up in 
this country. I believe it is my responsibility to do everything I can 
to make sure the opportunities that were there for me and so many 
others are open to every student in this country, no matter where they 
live or how they learn or how much money their parents have. In 
general, I believe the Federal Government and specifically the 
Department of Education has an important role to play in making that 
happen.
  I take the position of Secretary of Education very seriously. Leading 
this agency in this moment is a critical job. I consider it to be my 
job to do everything I can to make sure the person who fills it is 
truly committed to putting students and families first. As I will 
discuss in detail today and in the coming days, I do not believe Betsy 
DeVos is the right person to do that.
  Before I get into Ms. DeVos's failed record and her lack of 
experience, I wish to make a point about how I approach nominees and 
how that impacts my perspective on this one.
  Many of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle are going to 
spend their time in this debate trying to impugn the motives of 
Democrats and Republicans who are trying to stop this nomination. They 
will try to say that President Trump won the election and he should be 
able to pick anyone he wants to fill this position and that we should 
all sit down and be quiet. I reject that. I believe the Senate has an 
important role to play in this process. It is our constitutional duty 
to take these nominations seriously, and I refuse to stand by and just 
watch.
  President Trump absolutely has the right to nominate people for his 
Cabinet who he thinks will carry out his vision for the country, but 
that does not mean the Senate should be a rubberstamp. To the contrary, 
we owe it to the people we represent to make sure every nominee is not 
only qualified for the position and free of conflicts of interest but 
that he or she will put families and workers first and not millionaires 
and billionaires or big corporations.
  President Trump was the first Presidential candidate in decades to 
not release his tax returns, and he is openly flouting ethics 
conventions regarding his personal and family businesses.
  I believe that in an administration where lines around potential 
conflicts of interest are very likely to be blurred at the top, they 
need to be even clearer at the individual agencies. So I will not 
apologize for demanding that the Senate do its job when it comes to 
doing our due diligence with these nominees. I will not back down from 
asking my questions for my constituents--the ones they would want me to 
ask. I will not stop fighting as hard as I can to oppose a Secretary of 
Education who doesn't stand with them.
  I am extremely disappointed at how this process has gone so far. I 
have great respect for the chairman of our committee, but I have never 
seen anything like it, especially coming out of our Health, Education, 
Labor, and Pensions Committee, where until now we have worked together 
across party lines so well. Right from the start, it was very clear 
that Republicans intended to jam this nominee through the process as 
quickly as possible. Corners were cut, precedents were ignored, debate 
was cut off, and reasonable requests and questions were blocked. Again, 
I have never seen anything like it on this committee, Democratic 
administration or Republican, Democratic majority or Republican. It has 
been truly frustrating and deeply disappointing.
  I believe it is our job in the Senate to scrutinize nominees, but 
Republicans were acting like it was their job to protect Ms. DeVos, to 
shield her from questioning. First, Republicans rushed us into a 
hearing before we had Mrs. DeVos's ethics paperwork in. That might seem 
like a small thing, it may seem like a procedural issue, but it was 
important.
  Every single nominee during the Obama administration had their ethics 
paperwork in before a hearing in our committee. The Republican majority 
leader made having ethics paperwork in before a hearing a core demand 
of his during the Obama administration. The reason for this is simple: 
Senators should be able to ask nominees questions about their finances, 
their potential conflicts of interest, how they plan to avoid them, and 
how they plan to uphold the letter and spirit of our ethics laws. But 
without the Office of Government Ethics financial disclosure and 
without their review, Senators go into a hearing in the dark on a 
nominee's ethics and finances, and that is exactly what we were pushed 
into with Mrs. DeVos.

  Secondly, when we got into that hearing, we were told that Democrats 
would only have 5 minutes each to ask questions--5 minutes to ask about 
Betsy DeVos's finances, her long record of privatization of public 
education, her vision for this Department, and the many, many issues in 
this Department's jurisdiction--5 minutes and, then, cut off.
  Now, this was completely unprecedented and absolutely wrong. Never 
before had it been the case in our committee--not a single time that I 
recall--that a Senator, who had a question for a nominee, was cut off 
and blocked from asking it. Democrats were sitting in the hearing, 
waiting, hoping the chairman would change his mind, but we were shut 
down and we

[[Page S667]]

were silenced, and Mrs. DeVos was protected from answering additional 
questions.
  Third, after we finally got Betsy DeVos's ethics paperwork and had a 
number of questions about it, I requested another hearing where we 
could ask her those questions. That was a reasonable request. It was 
rejected.
  Fourth, I had a number of questions for Betsy DeVos about missing 
information in her paperwork to the committee, and she has simply not 
provided the committee with the required financial disclosures.
  We have a strong tradition in our committee of not moving to vote 
until the ranking member's questions are answered to satisfaction, and 
that tradition was ignored as Betsy DeVos was jammed through.
  Then, finally, after a vote was pushed through the committee as 
quickly as possible, with questions about rules being bent or ignored 
to get that done, this nomination is now being rushed to this floor, 
and Republicans are attempting to jam it through here as well. It is 
pretty clear to me why. The more people learn about Betsy DeVos, the 
more they realize how wrong she is for our students and our schools. 
The more they hear about her background, the more they see her as one 
more way President Trump has broken his promise to ``drain the swamp.'' 
The more that comes out about her failed record, her tangled finances, 
conflicts of interest, and her lack of understanding or experience, the 
more the pressure increases on Republicans to put their allegiance to 
President Trump aside and stand with their constituents.
  So I understand why some Republicans want to rush to get this 
through. I think it is absolutely wrong, and I know people are paying 
attention.
  I want to make one final point on this. The chairman of our 
committee, the senior Senator from Tennessee, has brought up the idea 
of ``fairness'' when it comes to how we should approach this 
nomination--that he believes President Trump's nominees should be 
treated ``fairly.'' But my friend, the senior Senator from Tennessee, 
is defining fairness in an interesting way. He is saying that, if 
Republicans didn't scrutinize President Obama's nominees and if they 
didn't take the time to do their due diligence, then, it would be 
unfair for Democrats to do that for President Trump's.
  Well, I don't agree with that. I define fairness very differently. I 
believe the fair thing to do is what is fair for our constituents, that 
we work for them and should do right by them--not for a party, a 
nominee, or an administration. I believe the ``fair'' thing to do is to 
scrutinize these nominees, ask tough questions, and push for real 
answers, and that we should err on the side of deeper review and more 
robust questioning, rather than on the side of pointing to how 
Democrats and Republicans were treated in the past and ``fairness'' to 
nominees.
  So I think it is clear that this nominee is being rushed through and 
corners are being cut.
  I want to take some time now to talk about why I will be opposing her 
and urging all of our colleagues to do the same. I have three main 
reasons, and they are these: open questions about her tangled finances 
and potential conflicts of interest; strong concerns with her record, 
her lack of experience, and her clear lack of understanding of basic 
education issues; and the belief that her vision for education in 
America is deeply at odds with where parents, students, and families 
across the country want to go.
  First of all, there is her tangled finances and potential conflicts 
of interest. I mentioned this a bit before. I have never seen a nominee 
with such tangled and opaque finances and who is refusing to shine 
anything close to an appropriate level of light on them.
  Mrs. DeVos is a billionaire, and her inherited money is invested, 
along with other members of her family, in potentially hundreds of 
holding companies. Now, these holding companies often invest in other 
holding companies, and it is often very hard to untangle the individual 
companies in which she and her family actually own stakes. That is very 
relevant because we know her family has had significant education 
company holdings in the past, and they would be impacted by the 
decisions she made if confirmed.
  Mrs. DeVos has told us that she will comply with all ethics rules 
should she be confirmed, but we still have questions, and she still has 
not fulfilled the committee requirements. We have questions about areas 
in Mrs. DeVos's ethics paperwork, where it is simply unclear if assets 
she continues to hold have potential conflicts of interest, and we have 
not been given the full answers.
  We also want to know more from her about the family trusts she is 
maintaining positions in, and we have not been given the full answers.
  Finally, as I mentioned before, I have raised a number of questions 
about Mrs. DeVos's failure to provide the required financial disclosure 
to the committee, and I have not been given full answers there either.

  Secondly, I have very strong concerns with Betsy DeVos's record, her 
lack of experience, and her clear lack of understanding of basic 
education issues. I will take these one at a time.
  Nominees for this position have generally been people who were 
committed to students, had a long career dedicated to education, and 
were focused on keeping public education strong for all students and 
all communities.
  Betsy DeVos is very different.
  First of all, she is first and foremost a Republican and conservative 
activist and megadonor. She was chair of the Michigan Republican Party, 
and she and her family have reportedly donated hundreds of millions of 
dollars to Republicans and conservative groups over the years.
  Second of all, Betsy DeVos has spent her career and her fortune 
rigging the system to privatize and defund public education and hurt 
students in communities across our country. She has no experience with 
public schools, except through her work trying to tear them down.
  She has committed herself for decades to an extreme ideological goal: 
to push students out of public schools and weaken public education, no 
matter what. She has spent millions of dollars in political donations, 
organizations, and super PACs to try and influence elections and 
policies to accomplish that goal.
  It is not difficult to pick out where Betsy DeVos has focused. The 
signs are usually pretty easy to see. Where she has succeeded in 
getting her way, too often there are weaker public schools, worse 
outcomes, and fewer true opportunities for students.
  In fact, the only people guaranteed to benefit when Betsy DeVos 
focuses her attention on a community or a State are the TV stations who 
see hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars in money pour into 
attack ads against her political opponents.
  But all people need to do is watch her hearing in our committee, and 
they can learn everything they need to know. This is a hearing that 
people across the country heard about--and for good reason. From local 
newspapers to local news to the ``Daily Show'' to ``The View'' and 
posts that went viral on social media, a whole lot of people heard 
Betsy DeVos herself for the first time in that hearing, and they were 
not impressed, to put it mildly. They watched as Democrats were blocked 
from asking questions in an unprecedented and disappointing attempt to 
protect this nominee. Then, on the questions we were allowed to ask, 
they saw a nominee who was clearly ill-informed and confused and gave a 
number of very concerning responses to serious and reasonable 
questions.
  Let's go through what Betsy DeVos said to us. She refused to rule out 
slashing investments in or privatizing public schools--privatizing 
public schools.
  She was confused that Federal law provides protections for students 
with disabilities.
  She did not understand a basic issue in education policy--the debate 
surrounding whether students should be measured based on their 
proficiency or their growth.
  She argued that guns needed to be allowed in schools across the 
country to ``protect from grizzlies.''
  Even though she was willing to say President Trump's behavior towards 
women should be considered sexual assault, she would not commit to 
actually enforcing Federal laws protecting women and girls in our 
schools.
  Her hearing was such a disaster, and it was so clear how little she 
understood about education issues, that a

[[Page S668]]

number of people and groups who usually stay on the fence--or even 
sometimes stand with Mrs. DeVos on some issues--could not stand with 
her anymore.
  Parents watching across the country saw a nominee who doesn't seem to 
care about or understand the education issues that impact them and 
their kids.
  This takes me to my final point right now on Betsy DeVos. Her vision 
for education in America is one that is deeply at odds with where 
parents and students and families across the country want us to go. At 
a time when education and the opportunity it affords is more important 
than ever, she would take our country in the absolute wrong direction.
  Eli Broad, a philanthropist and a strong charter school advocate, put 
it very well when he said: ``At the risk of stating the obvious, we 
must have a Secretary of Education who believes in public education and 
the need to keep public schools public.''
  He went on to say: ``With Betsy DeVos at the helm of the U.S. 
Department of Education, much of the good work that has been 
accomplished to improve public education for all of America's children 
could be undone.''
  I completely agree. Parents across the country want their government 
and their representatives fighting tooth and nail to improve public 
schools for all students in every community, while Betsy DeVos is 
committed to privatizing public schools and diverting public funds into 
taxpayer-funded vouchers that will leave far too many of our students 
behind.
  I will add that I have many friends here in the Senate representing 
rural States that will be severely impacted by a Secretary of Education 
who implemented a radical agenda like this.
  The bottom line is that strong public education is at the heart of 
true opportunity in America--something we all strive for and work for 
every day. People understand that. They see that Betsy DeVos's vision 
for this job is a direct attack on that core national value.
  I truly believe this is what has motivated so many people around the 
country to stand up and speak out. They saw her disastrous hearing on 
the news and going viral on social media. It is clear that people 
across the country care so deeply about education and are so passionate 
about making sure we have strong public schools that seeing President 
Trump nominate someone like Betsy DeVos to run this Department just 
hits very close to home to a whole lot of people, and it is so deeply 
offensive to them. For parents of students in our public schools, it is 
very hard to see a billionaire--who never went to public school, who 
didn't send her children to public school--put in a position to work 
against your interests.

  For teachers who work so hard every day in our public schools, it is 
hard to see your work denigrated.
  For so many others in communities across the country, something about 
Betsy DeVos has lit a fire underneath them, as well, and they have all 
decided to do something about it. Senate office phone lines have been 
shut down over the past week with so many callers weighing in against 
Betsy DeVos. Every office is receiving tens of thousands of letters 
asking the Senate to reject her. Almost 40,000 have come in to my 
office alone. Millions of people have signed petitions with the same 
message. There have been rallies and protests across the country and 
millions more posting on Facebook, sharing it with their friends, 
tweeting, and doing everything they can to make their voices heard.
  I wish to share just a sample of what I have heard from my 
constituents.
  One teacher from Mukilteo School District, a 26-year veteran of 
Washington State public schools, said she has worked tirelessly at 
title I elementary schools to help children achieve their greatest 
potential. If DeVos is confirmed, this teacher is terrified her school 
will lose its funding.
  Another constituent of mine from Federal Way tells me she has 
grandchildren in Michigan who are at risk because of Mrs. DeVos's 
reckless policies there, and she does not want to see this disaster 
repeated throughout our country.
  The regional superintendent in Wenatchee, a small city in North 
Central Washington, told me that he and his colleagues didn't even know 
where to begin laying out their concerns about Betsy DeVos.
  A fourth grade teacher from Spokane, WA, reached out to tell me she 
watched the confirmation hearing and was shocked at how little Betsy 
DeVos seemed to understand about the issues she faces every single day 
in her classroom.
  Those are just a few examples. There are thousands upon thousands in 
every community, in every State, and it is having an impact. Every 
Member of this body has felt the pressure. Already, two Republicans 
have made it clear that the voices of their constituents have pushed 
them into the ``no'' column, and I know there are other Republicans who 
take seriously what their constituents have to say and who have serious 
concerns about putting partisanship ahead of their States' and their 
constituents' interests.
  I don't like that we are rushing into this without the information we 
need. But if the majority is going to jam this through, we are going to 
do everything we can to have a robust debate over the next few days.
  So I am here to say: I am proud to stand with parents; I am proud to 
stand with students; I am proud to stand with teachers; I am proud to 
stand with those in my home State of Washington and across the country 
who support strong public schools and true education opportunities for 
all; and I am proud to stand up and fight back against Betsy DeVos.
  Madam President, I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. LANKFORD. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.