[Congressional Record Volume 163, Number 20 (Monday, February 6, 2017)]
[Senate]
[Pages S716-S717]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
Quorum Call
Mr. McCONNELL. I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll and
the following Senators entered the Chamber and answered to their names:
[Quorum No. 2 Ex.]
Cantwell
Capito
Cornyn
Donnelly
Fischer
Grassley
Isakson
Kaine
Lankford
McCain
McConnell
Menendez
Murphy
Tillis
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Moran). A quorum is not present.
The clerk will call the names of absent Senators.
The senior assistant legislative clerk resumed the call of the roll
and the following Senators entered the Chamber and answered to their
names:
[Quorum No. 2 Ex.]
Barrasso
Cotton
Gardner
Moran
Murray
Schumer
The PRESIDING OFFICER. A quorum is not present.
The majority leader.
Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, I move to instruct the Sergeant at Arms
to request the attendance of absent Senators, and I ask for the yeas
and nays.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a second?
There appears to be a sufficient second.
The question is on agreeing to the motion.
The clerk will call the roll.
The senior assistant legislative clerk called the roll.
Mr. CORNYN. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the
Senator from Arizona (Mr. Flake), the Senator from Alaska (Ms.
Murkowski), the Senator from Nebraska (Mr. Sasse), and the Senator from
Pennsylvania (Mr. Toomey).
Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from New Mexico (Mr. Udall)
is necessarily absent.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Are there any other Senators in the Chamber
desiring to vote?
The result was announced--yeas 91, nays 4, as follows:
[Rollcall Vote No. 53 Ex.]
YEAS--91
Alexander
Baldwin
Barrasso
Bennet
Blumenthal
Blunt
Booker
Boozman
Brown
Burr
Cantwell
Capito
Cardin
Carper
Casey
Cassidy
Cochran
Coons
Corker
Cornyn
Cortez Masto
Cotton
Crapo
Cruz
Daines
Donnelly
Duckworth
Durbin
Enzi
Ernst
Feinstein
Fischer
Franken
Gardner
Gillibrand
Graham
Grassley
Harris
Hassan
Hatch
Heinrich
Heitkamp
Hirono
Hoeven
Inhofe
Isakson
Johnson
Kaine
Kennedy
King
Klobuchar
Lankford
Leahy
Lee
Manchin
Markey
McCain
McCaskill
McConnell
Menendez
Merkley
Moran
Murphy
Murray
Nelson
Paul
Perdue
Peters
Portman
Reed
Risch
Roberts
Rounds
Sanders
Schatz
Schumer
Scott
Sessions
Shaheen
Shelby
Stabenow
Sullivan
Tester
Thune
Tillis
Van Hollen
Warner
Warren
Whitehouse
Wyden
Young
NAYS--4
Collins
Heller
Rubio
Wicker
NOT VOTING--5
Flake
Murkowski
Sasse
Toomey
Udall
The motion was agreed to.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. A quorum is present.
The Senator from Tennessee.
(The remarks of Mr. ALEXANDER pertaining to the submission of S. Res.
50 are located in today's Record under ``Submitted Resolutions.'')
Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Wisconsin.
Ms. BALDWIN. Mr. President, I rise to urge my colleagues to join me
in opposing the nomination of Betsy DeVos to be Secretary of Education.
Simply put, Betsy DeVos is completely unqualified to serve as Secretary
of Education in this great Nation.
Many others share this view. I have heard from thousands of parents,
teachers, and other citizens of Wisconsin who are concerned about the
future of our education system urging me to oppose Mrs. DeVos and
certainly opposing her vision for America's students. As of today, over
20,000 Wisconsinites have emailed me, and we have had over 7,000 phone
calls opposing the confirmation of Mrs. DeVos, and Senate Democrats are
unified in our opposition to Mrs. DeVos serving in this capacity. Even
two Senate Republicans have announced that they cannot support Betsy
DeVos. If just one more of my Republican colleagues were to announce
their opposition and were to vote no, we could do the right thing and
tell President Trump that he really needs to find a new candidate, a
new candidate for Secretary of Education who is qualified to run that
Department.
While Betsy DeVos has spent decades advocating for a particular
vision for education, she has never actually worked as a teacher or as
an administrator. Her career has involved investing hers and her
family's considerable
[[Page S717]]
wealth and using those resources to advance the privatization of our K-
12 education system. She did not attend a public school either for
grade school, high school, or college, and nor did her children. She
has never worked as a teacher, principal, professor, counselor, or in
any other formal role in our education system.
Her confirmation hearing before the Health, Education, Labor, and
Pensions Committee clearly demonstrated how little she knows about
Federal education law and policy. It was startling to see her ignorance
about critical measures like the Individuals with Disabilities
Education Act or the debate over growth versus proficiency as a measure
of student achievement. Betsy DeVos has demonstrated that she has
neither the knowledge nor the experience in education that would allow
her to be a successful leader of the Department of Education. Mrs.
DeVos has worked to advance a vision of K-12 education that is
fundamentally hostile to our public education system.
My home State of Wisconsin has a long and very proud tradition of
support for public education. Back at the founding of our State, we
wrote the guarantee that every child should receive a free public
education into our very founding document, our State Constitution.
Wisconsin had the first kindergarten in the United States. Wisconsin is
proud of something that we actually call the Wisconsin idea in higher
education; that the walls of the classroom should be the borders of the
State, if not the borders of this Nation or the entire world.
Mrs. DeVos's experience in education, however, has been a decades-
long effort to privatize it. Her record of support for vouchers as well
as charter schools that lack adequate accountability and oversight is
very troubling and could lead to diversion of public dollars in even
greater amounts out of public education.
Regardless of any vision or experience on education, Mrs. DeVos is a
nominee with, let's say, complex and opaque finances. She has a very
opaque record of financial dealings and political giving, including on
matters directly related to the work that the Department does which she
seeks to lead. Given her and her family's investments in companies that
benefit directly from Federal education programs, I remain very
concerned about what we simply still don't know.
I am also troubled by Mrs. DeVos's and her family's long history of
contributing to organizations that have been hostile to the lesbian,
gay, bisexual, and transgender community, even promoting the
discredited idea that sexual orientation or gender identity can be
changed through conversion therapy.
While she told me and several of my colleagues at her hearing that
she believes all students should be treated equally, I really remain
concerned about how this long history of support for these anti-LGBTQ
organizations will influence a Department which, over the last 8 years,
has shown some tremendous leadership in supporting LGBTQ students and
parents in the education system.
The Federal Government's primary role in elementary and secondary
education is to promote equity. I am not convinced that Mrs. DeVos will
be the leader the Department needs to do just that. Congress passed the
Elementary and Secondary Education Act in 1965 as a civil rights
measure. It was designed to ensure that every student, regardless of
ZIP Code or parents' income, has access to a quality public education.
We continued that important tradition in reauthorizing this law,
which is now in the form of a very strongly bipartisan bill, the Every
Student Succeeds Act. The next Secretary of Education will have to
implement that act.
I fear that Mrs. DeVos, as a vocal proponent of State and local
control, will not be the strong voice we need to hold States
accountable for serving all students, particularly those who have been
historically left behind.
When we passed the Every Student Succeeds Act, we made sure there
were strong Federal guardrails to assure that we never forget why there
is a Federal role in education to begin with, for equity and civil
rights and to make sure that every child can succeed. Furthermore, I am
very concerned that Mrs. DeVos would not commit to robustly supporting
the Department's Office for Civil Rights or enforcing the very guidance
that protects transgender students from discrimination.
Betsy DeVos lacks knowledge about and commitment to the Federal laws
that ensure students with disabilities have access to the various
supports that they need to receive and benefit from a quality public
education.
As I noted, she has demonstrated a complete lack of understanding
about our Federal obligations to these students. I have heard from
numerous parents in Wisconsin, parents of students with disabilities
who were appalled by her inadequate answers to questions at our
education panel hearing. She was unprepared to answer questions about
the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, and these parents have
written to express their distress about what her filling the role of
Secretary of Education could mean for their children if she were to be
confirmed.
One Wisconsin mother of three special needs children wrote to me
about how this Federal law provided the legal rights that she needed to
advocate for them, to advocate for the best possible educational
environment for her three sons with special needs.
I heard from another mother, Melissa from Beloit, who detailed how
the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act makes it possible for
her daughter, Rowenna, who has Down Syndrome and autism, to actually
thrive in a public education setting, along with her peers.
Finally, as a strong proponent of making college more accessible and
affordable, I do not believe that Mrs. DeVos has the experience or
vision that will allow her to successfully lead the Department in
supporting higher learning.
There is a student debt crisis in this country, but Mrs. DeVos
doesn't have a plan to address it and has even expressed skepticism
about a Federal role.
While she has acknowledged that there are some bad actors in higher
education, she has also refused to commit to enforcing regulations that
help students who are defrauded by dishonest schools like Corinthian
Colleges. We need a Secretary of Education who is an advocate for those
students, not one who is looking for ways to shirk that responsibility.
Despite the fact that the Department oversees billions of dollars in
grants and loans that allow students to pursue higher education, she
has expressed skepticism about any Federal role in making college more
affordable. She has even refused to oppose cuts to a program that helps
students who commit to a career in public service or to support efforts
to ensure that the value of the Pell grant keeps pace with the cost of
college.
For all of these reasons and many others, Betsy DeVos is not the
right choice for Secretary of Education. I call on my colleagues to
defeat her on the question of confirmation and to afford this new
President the chance to send us a nominee who is prepared to be an
advocate for all students and public education in this country.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Florida is recognized.
Mr. NELSON. Mr. President, I yield the remainder of my postcloture
debate time to Senator Schumer.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator has that right.
The Senator from Florida is recognized.