[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.