[Congressional Record Volume 163, Number 39 (Tuesday, March 7, 2017)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1625-S1633]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
PROVIDING FOR CONGRESSIONAL DISAPPROVAL OF A RULE SUBMITTED BY THE
DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report the joint resolution.
The bill clerk read as follows:
A joint resolution (H.J. Res. 58) providing for
congressional disapproval under chapter 8 of title 5, United
States Code, of the rule submitted by the Department of
Education relating to teacher preparation issues.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Johnson). The Senator from Nebraska.
Mr. SASSE. Mr. President, I rise in support of S.J. Res. 26, a
resolution to disapprove the Obama administration Department of
Education's regulation on teacher preparation issues. This resolution
is simple. It overturns the last administration's overreach into scores
of States and territories, into thousands of college and university
teacher preparation programs, and into millions of American classrooms.
Last night, I drafted a fairly detailed statement on some of the
problems deep inside this regulation, but I have decided to skip past
most of that. Why? Because the problem with this regulation is actually
much more basic than all of the substantive problems in the regulation.
This regulation actually makes the assumption that bureaucrats in
Washington, DC, are competent to micromanage teacher training programs
in America. That is what this regulation ultimately does, and that is
absurd.
[[Page S1626]]
So I would like to ask three questions of folks who plan to vote to
defend this regulation. First, do you really think that bureaucrats in
this city know better how to run teacher training programs than people
who have spent most of their lives inside actual classrooms with actual
future teachers and with students? How many of you have ever run a
teacher training program? Has anyone in this body ever run a teacher
training program? Because I have--almost. I have spent a lot of my life
around these programs. As a kid, with my dad, who was a lifelong public
schoolteacher and coach, and I have been in many of these classrooms
with him when he was getting master's and continuing education
programs; then with my wife who is also a public high school teacher;
and then I was a college president at a university that had multiple
teacher training programs. I know Keith Rohwer, and I know the other
deans of education that have been at Midland University and at many
other colleges and universities across Nebraska. Yet, even though I
have been around a lot of these programs in some detail, I wouldn't
possibly think I am ready to decree all the details inside those
programs from thousands and thousands of miles away.
Question No. 2, has anyone actually read this regulation that folks
are going to say they want to defend on this floor? Because I have been
reading in it. I will not claim I have read it, but I have read in it.
This is the 695 pages of the regulation itself. There is actually a lot
of guidance material as well, but I didn't bring that because I didn't
want to have both of my hands occupied. This is the 695 pages of the
regulation we are talking about today, and it is actually really silly.
If you read inside it, it is filled with enough specificity that if you
tried to explain it to thoughtful, generally educated Americans, I
submit to you that you would blush. There is a level of detail and a
level of specificity in this that we are not possibly competent to
defend at the micro level.
Question No. 3, can the folks who think this is what Washington, DC,
ought to be doing right now--please show me somewhere in this document,
the Senate version of the Constitution--show me somewhere in this
document where we are given the specific authority to micromanage local
programs like this from here. Because, honestly--I mean this sincerely
to my colleagues who plan to vote to defend this rule--I don't see how
you can defend this document and think that this is conceivably our job
from here. We are not competent to do this.
Now, a couple of qualifications are in order. Am I suggesting that
all teacher training programs in America work well? Heavens, no. There
are some that are fairly strong, and there are actually a lot that are
really, really poor and weak, but having a good intention to make them
better is not the same as actually having accomplished something that
will make them better. Good intentions are not enough. For us in this
body to act because we have compulsory governmental powers, we would
need not merely good intentions, we would also need competence and
authority. We have neither of those about teacher training programs.
Everyone in this body agrees that education is darn near the center
of the future of our country. We all want and we need good teachers.
Most of us can remember specific teachers who stood out because of her
or his creative presentation, because of their unexpected humor,
because of their charm and their compassion, because of their tireless
drive, because of their inspired mentorship. None of us in this Chamber
who has the privilege of serving our fellow country men and women
regret or are unaware of the fact that the skills and the guidance and
the abilities that we have are the function of the mentorship and the
pedagogy of life-changing teachers early in our lives. We have
benefited from and we need good, prepared teachers.
If we all agree teachers are critically important to our future, and
since we all agree teacher training programs are important and we also
agree that some of them aren't very good, the question would be, What
would we do about that? What kind of debate should we have about why
much education in America isn't good enough? Does anyone in this body
sincerely believe that the big, pressing problem in American education
is that there aren't enough rules like this coming out of bureaucracies
in Washington, DC?
Because if you believe that, I would humbly suggest that you should
go and meet with some of the ed school faculties back in your State and
ask them if you can read them these 695 pages so you can tell them that
we have the answers. Read it to them, and then please come back and
tell us in this body that they agree with you, that what we really need
is more 700-page regulations from Washington, DC, micromanaging things
as specific and local as teacher preparation programs.
Oh, and one more thing, which is actually kind of big. This
regulation explicitly violates the plain language and the congressional
intent of the Federal education law that was passed in this body last
year. You will all recall that the Elementary and Secondary Education
Act was passed in this Chamber with overwhelming bipartisan support
last year. I think it got 83 votes. The act prohibits the Secretary of
Education from prescribing ``any aspect or parameter of a teacher, a
principal, or other school leader evaluation system within a State or
local education agency'' or ``indicators or specific measures of
teacher, principal, or other school leader effectiveness or quality.''
There is nothing ambiguous about this language.
In addition, the Higher Education Act is clear that the levels of
performance used by a State to assess teacher training programs ``shall
be determined solely by the State.''
This rule overrides State authority over literally tens of thousands
of discipline-specific teacher preparation programs across the Nation,
burdening States with a federally defined and expensive mandate. Under
this regulation, States would be required to create elaborate new data
systems that would link K-12 teacher data to data on evaluations of
teachers and administrators in particular schools and then on to the
data back into the teacher preparation programs. This regulation's goal
would be to measure the success of teacher preparation based largely on
teachers' students' subsequent test scores, and it would all need to be
backlinked in the data. This is data that is not currently gathered.
Rube Goldberg is smiling somewhere because this sounds like a
bureaucrat's dream, a paperwork trail monitoring all the strengths and
weaknesses of some vast machine spitting out layers and layers of new
data over which Washington's experts could then postulate and tinker.
Again, I have no doubt the bureaucrats who wrote these 700 eye-glazing
pages--pages about rules, about data to be gathered that States are not
currently gathering--I have no doubt the people who wrote this mean
well. I also have no doubt the people who are going to defend this rule
as somehow commonsensical--then why is it 700 pages--also mean well,
but those good intentions don't change the fact that what they have
actually done in this rule--what they have actually done--is build a
much larger requirement set of paper trails, demanding further burdens
on our teachers, on our principals, and on the professors who are
teaching teachers, and then require all of them to report back through
new or expanded bureaucracies at the State level, though the States
have not chosen to gather this data, and then pass this data on to a
bureaucracy a couple of blocks from here.
These Rubik's Cubes of rules and data collection are not being done
today, and supposedly we are going to make teacher preparation programs
better by all of the specificity that comes from this rule.
The fact that these regulations will likely cost States millions of
dollars to implement simply adds insult to injury. Let's be honest.
Education is not some vast complex machine that just needs a little bit
more tinkering from Washington-level intervention before it will be at
utopia. It isn't true, and this rule is not an effective way to
actually help the teachers who care so much that they are investing
their lives in our kids.
Nebraska's parents and educators and locally elected school boards
are better equipped and better positioned to tackle the most important
educational challenges. They are better equipped and they are better
intentioned, even than the smartest, the
[[Page S1627]]
nicest, and the most well-meaning experts in Washington, DC. If you
disagree, again, I humbly challenge you to go and try and read this
rule to elementary and secondary school teachers in your State and to
those who are running the programs that train them. Read the 695 pages
to them and then report back to us that they actually share your view
that the really big problem in American education is not enough 700-
page rules from educational bureaucrats from DC.
Good intentions are not enough. Federal intervention and reforms
should never make problems worse, and that is what this rule would do.
I urge my colleagues to reject this rule and to rededicate ourselves
to the duties that really and fundamentally are ours, to the duties the
Federal Government is exclusively and monopolistically empowered to
carry out because it isn't this. We are not competent to displace the
expertise of the district and the State level, and we should not be
trying to regulate teacher training programs from Washington, DC. We
are not competent to do this.
Thank you for your consideration.
I yield the floor.
Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, I come to the floor actually on behalf of
students across the country, and for those who are so passionate about
their education that they want to dedicate themselves to teaching, and
to urge my colleagues to oppose this resolution and support strong and
accountable teacher preparation in America today.
While this rule may not be the rule that any of us would have written
on our own, it is important.
Let me say at the outset that there are many great teacher prep
programs that exist around our country, and they are doing a great job
preparing our teachers to succeed in the classroom, but there are also
teacher preparation programs out there that are struggling and need
support to help make sure they produce great teachers for our schools.
Now, as a former preschool teacher and as a mom, I know how important
it is to have great teachers in our classrooms, and I understand how a
good education, with an amazing teacher, can change a child's life. I
am sure all of our colleagues think back on that one special teacher
they had who shaped their mind and changed their life. They teach us
not only how to read and write and do arithmetic, but good teachers
teach us how to think critically, how to be creative, how to form an
argument. I know I am not alone in saying that I owe much of what I
have to the quality of the public education I received growing up, and
I have spent my career fighting to make sure every child in America has
the same opportunity I did.
Unfortunately, too many teaching students today are forced to take
out huge amounts of student loans to afford continuing their education
so they can realize their dream. They are willing to make this
sacrifice. They don't complain. The very least we can do for those who
want to become teachers is to make sure they are actually getting their
money's worth when they make an investment in themselves.
That is what this rule does. It helps make sure students can make
informed decisions about the quality and preparedness of their
education.
Here are a few of the ways this rule does that--and I am hoping my
colleagues will see that this shouldn't be controversial. This rule
strengthens and streamlines reporting requirements of teacher prep
programs to focus on employment placement and retention of
graduates. It provides information from employers to future teacher
candidates so they can make an informed decision about their education
by choosing a school that improves the likelihood they will find
employment after graduation. It makes sure that prospective teachers
can access this information they need before they take out massive
amounts of student debt.
When teacher programs are struggling, this rule helps States identify
at-risk and low-performing programs so States can provide them the
support they need to adapt or adjust their programs and help their
teaching students succeed.
There is one more reason I would urge my colleagues to oppose this
resolution today. Simply put, it would put more power into the hands of
Secretary DeVos, and many of us don't yet have the trust that she would
use that power to promote the best interests of students in higher
education. Secretary DeVos does not come from a higher education
background. We don't know whether she supports providing information on
teacher placement rates and retention rates before prospective teachers
take out student loans. We have no idea what she would do if this rule
went away, and I believe it would be too risky to find out.
By investing in our teachers, we are investing in our future
generations. Our future teachers have the right to know whether they
are receiving a quality education, and they deserve to know that before
they take out massive amounts of student debt.
It helps to improve teacher prep program accountability and gives
prospective teachers the information they need to make an accurate
decision on which program is most likely to make them a successful
teacher in the classroom.
It ensures that Secretary DeVos does not have more power to implement
unknown policies that could hurt students and reduce the number of
qualified great teachers in our public schools.
Without this rule and the information that it ensures, students will
have a hard time finding a quality teacher prep program that will help
them get a job after they graduate. I think that is simply wrong. We
should be working to make sure teaching students have full access to
information and options. This rule would give them less.
For all the future teachers out there, I urge my fellow Senators to
vote against this CRA because every young adult deserves to know that
the program they enroll in is actually preparing them to be a
successful teacher in the classroom, and every student deserves to have
an amazing teacher in every classroom.
Every Student Succeeds Bill
Finally, Mr. President, I wish to bring up one more thing that is
very important to me--the bipartisan Every Student Succeeds Act--and a
potential serious threat to it. It seems that Republicans are thinking
about bringing to the floor another CRA that would eliminate the rule
that provides States with flexibility and guidelines to create their
State plans. I want to be very clear. I hope Republicans reconsider
that approach.
The Every Student Succeeds Act is a critical part of our bipartisan
education law. It is an important part of the civil rights protections
it offers, as well as the assurances it made that every student would
have an opportunity to succeed, no matter where they live or how they
learn or how much money parents make. Jamming through that resolution
would weaken it, and it would be a major step toward turning our
bipartisan law into another partisan fight.
Rolling back the Every Student Succeeds Act rule less than a month
before States have to submit their plans to the Department of Education
will cause chaos and confusion in the States, and it will hurt our
students, our teachers, and our schools. It will also give Secretary
DeVos greater control over that bipartisan Every Student Succeeds Act
and give her the tools to implement her anti-public education agenda.
Secretary DeVos's lack of experience and expertise, as well as her
damaging track record on school privatization, leaves her unqualified
to implement this bipartisan law that governs public education and
public schools without the important guardrails that rule ensures.
Given her record and her comments, she would almost certainly push for
measures that disregard key civil rights protections in the Every
Student Succeeds Act and could allow unequal, unfair, and unreliable
accountability for schools across the country.
The Every Student Succeeds Act rule is supported by Democrats and
Republicans, by teachers and businesses, and by parents and
communities. We should not go backward.
I urge my colleagues to reconsider moving forward with that
resolution, which I understand they want to bring up later this week,
and work with us to continue building on that bipartisan progress that
we all worked toward for our students.
Mr. President, I yield the floor.
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The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Pennsylvania.
Mr. CASEY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as in
morning business.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Republican Healthcare Bill
Mr. CASEY. Mr. President, I rise today to offer a few comments about
the House Republican bill that was just unveiled yesterday. Those who
have been promoting it or those who have been working on this issue for
a couple of weeks are claiming it is a new healthcare plan or a new
comprehensive healthcare proposal--in essence, by their argument, a
replacement if the Affordable Care Act were repealed. I disagree. I
don't believe in any way it is a plan. It might be a bill, but I think
a better description of it in terms of its impact would be that it is a
scheme, not a plan. It is a scheme that will roll back coverage gains
from the Affordable Care Act, which is better known by a longer name:
the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.
Kaiser--one of the great institutions that track healthcare data and
healthcare policy--told us that there are 156 million Americans with
employer-sponsored coverage. Those Americans didn't have much
protection before the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act with
regard to preexisting conditions or annual lifetime limits--a whole
series of protections for people that were not there before that.
This scheme, as I am calling it, will not only roll back coverage
gains in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, in the process
it will also devastate the Medicaid Program, leaving many of the most
vulnerable Americans behind.
Another impact of this scheme will be to increase costs for middle-
class families while cutting taxes for millionaires or
multimillionaires as well as big corporations. It will raise the cost
of care for older Americans and substantially cut funding for hospitals
in rural communities.
How did we get there, and where are we going based upon the House
Republican proposal? Last night the Republicans released their bill to
``replace'' the Affordable Care Act, and the House Energy and Commerce
Committee and the House Ways and Means Committee will be marking up the
bill tomorrow. I guess it doesn't require much reading to get to a
markup tomorrow.
Usually when you introduce a bill, the bill is reviewed by Members of
Congress. There is some public debate on it. There is some back-and-
forth. And then a period of time later, maybe weeks, there is a markup.
The committee engages in a thorough review of the bill, and the markup
means they make changes. They add amendments or try to alter the bill
in one way or another. That is a serious approach when you do this work
of legislating on a serious issue.
Healthcare is about as serious and difficult an issue as there is. I
think it should be accorded the serious review that the complexity and
the consequence of this issue demand. This is not a serious proposal.
It is a scheme, but it is also not a serious process that the House
seems to be focused on right now. This process means the House will
mark up this bill within I guess about 48 hours of it being unveiled,
maybe less than 48 hours. That means there will not be a single hearing
on the bill or getting the bill scored, which is a fancy Washington
word for having someone tell us what it costs. There will be no
thorough review, no serious review on such a monumental issue called
healthcare and what happens to hundreds of millions of Americans.
At the same time, the markup will proceed with lightning speed, and
there will not be any information on the record about an analysis of
the bill that is thorough and serious, and of course we will not know
how to pay for it and we will not have the score that will tell us how
it will be paid for and what the cost will be.
It is hard to come up with the words, but the impact of this bill
would be a disaster. If you are a millionaire and up, you are doing
quite well under this bill. You are going to get a bonanza from this
bill. You are going to have a great payday. If you are a child or you
happen to be a senior or if you are a woman or if you are an individual
with a disability or a chronic disease, you are out of luck. You are in
big trouble. I would hope that those Americans would have the benefit
of a serious review of a serious issue. If the bill is not serious, I
guess they are going to ram it through. We will see what happens in the
next couple of days.
There is one analysis that should be on the record. There are some
that are hot off the presses. This is a report released today that I am
looking at. It is about 2\1/2\ pages. They know the vote will take
place soon in the committee--two committees, maybe in the House. This
report by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities is moving quickly
to keep up with the fast pace at which the bill is proceeding. I won't
read the whole report, and I won't enter the whole report into the
Record; I am sure people can go online and look at it. Here is the
title of the report: ``House GOP Medicaid Provisions Would Shift $370
billion in costs to states over a decade.'' It is written by Edwin
Park, who has been writing about Medicaid for a long time. Few
Americans know more about Medicaid than Edwin Park and people like him
who study it. I will read the first sentence, which gives you the
basics of it: ``The new House Republican health plan would shift an
estimated $370 billion in Medicaid costs to states over the next ten
years, effectively ending the Affordable Care Act's (ACA) Medicaid
expansion for 11 million people while also harming tens of millions of
additional seniors, people with disabilities, and children and parents
who rely upon Medicaid today.''
That is the opening line of this proposal, which I believe is a
scheme. What does that mean for Medicaid?
One of the basic debates we will have here is what happens to
Medicaid itself, and we will have a lot of debates about other aspects
of the implications for the Affordable Care Act.
Here is what it means. It means that 70 million Americans who rely
upon Medicaid--again, they are children in urban areas, children in
rural areas, children in small towns who get their healthcare from
Medicaid. It is a lot of individuals with disabilities, a lot of
children with disabilities who benefit from Medicaid. It is also, of
course, pregnant women, as well as seniors trying to get into nursing
homes, because we know that a lot of seniors can't get into a nursing
home unless they have the benefits of Medicaid. The idea in the bill on
Medicaid that is objectionable, among other objections I have, is a so-
called per capita cap. This idea limits Federal contributions to a
fixed amount. If the caps are not tied to overall increases in
healthcare spending, the net effect is fewer healthcare dollars over
time so they can afford the tax cuts they want to have as part of this
scheme.
We have heard a lot around here about flexibility, that States want
more flexibility when it comes to Medicaid. I will tell you what they
don't want. They don't want a flexibility argument to be a scheme that
results in cuts to those States, where the Federal Government says:
Here is a block grant that may increase or may not, but good luck,
States, as you balance your budgets.
Of course, Governors and State legislators balance their budgets, and
they have very difficult choices to make--sometimes choices the Federal
Government never makes. That is why some Republican Governors took
advantage of the Medicaid expansion and expanded healthcare to a lot of
people in their States. That is one of the reasons they are worried
about--and some will oppose this idea of so-called per capita caps or
block-granting of Medicaid or the like.
If we have a proposal to cut $370 billion from the House, what does
that mean for some of those groups that I just mentioned earlier? Well,
we know that more than 45 percent of all the births in the United
States of America are paid for by Medicaid, so that is a consequence
for pregnant women and their children. One in five seniors receives
Medicaid assistance by way of the benefit to someone trying to get into
a nursing home. Medicaid also pays for home-based care for seniors and,
of course, long-term care as well. What if you have a disability? Over
one-third of the Nation's adults with disabilities who require
extensive services and support are covered by Medicaid.
We know that in a State like mine--because we had a Republican
Governor
[[Page S1629]]
embrace the Medicaid expansion, and then we had a Democratic Governor
embrace it and really develop it and bring it to where it is today--we
have expansion of Medicaid that resulted in some 700,000--that is not
an exact number, but it is approaching 700,000 Pennsylvanians gaining
coverage through the Medicaid expansion. And 62 percent of Americans
who gained coverage through the Medicaid expansion are working. So we
are talking about a lot of families and a lot of individuals who are
working and getting their healthcare through Medicaid. That opportunity
presented itself because, in the Affordable Care Act, Medicaid was
expanded.
There are lots of numbers we could talk about. I will give maybe two
more. Medicaid is the primary payer for mental health and substance
abuse treatment. Medicaid expansion enabled 180,000 Pennsylvanians to
receive these lifesaving services. If you are a Member of Congress and
you have been going home and talking about the opioid crisis--and to
say it is a crisis is a terrible understatement. It has devastated
small towns and rural areas. It has devastated cities. It has destroyed
families. We know how bad it is. Some of the numbers indicate it is
getting worse, not leveling off. If you say you care about that and you
supported the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act as a Member of
Congress and you supported the funding that was in the 21st Century
Cures Act at the end of the year, and you say you are working toward
help for communities devastated by the opioid crisis, it is OK to say
that, but you can't then say: But I want to support the House
Republican proposal on Medicaid, when Medicaid is the primary payer for
these substance abuse treatment programs.
I mentioned before adults and children with disabilities. Medicaid
covers 60 percent of children with disabilities. We know the range of
that--ranging from autism to Down syndrome, to traumatic brain injury,
and many other disabilities or circumstances that I have not mentioned.
For a lot of people, this is real life. It is not some theory that gets
kicked around Washington, often by people who have good healthcare
coverage as they are talking about cutting healthcare for others. We
have a lot of testimony from what we might want to call the real world.
One of the most compelling pieces of correspondence I received in my
time in the Senate was from a mom about her son. Her name is Pam. She
is from Coatesville, PA. That is in Southeastern Pennsylvania, within
the range of suburban Philadelphia. She wrote to tell me how important
Medicaid is to her family and to tell me about her 5-year-old son
Rowan. She sent me a picture of Rowan with a firefighter's hat on. Of
course, he is fascinated, as we all are, by the heroic work of
firefighters. Her story--I will not go through her whole letter, but
she got news a couple of years ago that many parents get in the course
of the lives of their children. She got news in March of 2015 that her
son Rowan was diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder. The diagnosis
was made by a psychologist who worked for the Intermediate Unit--
meaning the institution that works for the school districts and helps
to provide special education. Rowan continued in the preschool program
and daycare program before and after school, but then Pam goes on to
say:
I was never able to find a daycare suitable for all of
Rowan's needs. In late January of 2016, I applied for
[Medical Assistance].
I will stop there for a moment to explain. Medical Assistance is the
State share of the State end of the Medicare Program. We call it
Medical Assistance. Other States have a different name for it.
Pam said she applied for Medical Assistance:
After Rowan was awarded this assistance we were able to
obtain wrap-around services, which included a Behavioral
Specialist Consultant . . . and a Therapeutic Staff Support
worker.
Pam goes on to say, and I am quoting her again:
Without Medical Assistance, I am confident that I could not
work full time to support our family. . . . [We] would be
bankrupt and my son would go without the therapies he needs.
These are the therapies I just mentioned. Then Pam goes on to say,
urging me as one of her two Senators to focus on her son, focus on her
family when we are casting votes and having debates about policies that
relate to healthcare and Medicaid. Here is what Pam asked me to do as
her Senator:
Please think of Rowan. . . . My 9-month-old Luna, who
smiles and laughs at her brother, she will have to care for
Rowan late in her life after we are gone. We are desperately
in need of Rowan's Medical Assistance and would be devastated
if we lost these benefits.
So said Pam about her son and about the importance of the Medical
Assistance Program, which is known on the national level as Medicaid. I
would hope that those in the House, as they are quickly marking up
legislation that would have a huge impact on families like Pam's and
many more--I would hope they would think of Rowan, think of his little
sister Luna and what her challenges might be years from now when she
would likely have to care for Rowan and answer some of Pam's questions.
There are a lot of questions that we have about policy and numbers
and budget impacts, and they are all appropriate. But some of the most
important questions we have to answer for those who are asking them are
questions that our constituents are asking. And one of those is Pam. We
have to be responsive to her concerns about her son and the challenges
her son faces.
I hope, in the midst of debate, in the midst of very rapid
consideration of a complicated subject on a bill that has been slapped
together--in my judgment, too quickly--that Pam's concerns would be an
uppermost priority in the minds of those who are working on this
legislation.
I yield the floor.
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.
Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order
for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Rubio). Without objection, it is so
ordered
Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I be
allowed to speak for up to 15 minutes as in morning business.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Climate Change
Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, this is my ``Time to Wake Up'' speech
No. 159. In giving these speeches, I have come to realize that some of
my colleagues seem to have a hard time wrapping their heads around the
basic understanding of climate change. Some of President Trump's
Cabinet nominees seem to have the same problem.
They say the scientific community is split on the issue. It is not.
They say the climate has always been changing. Not like this, it
hasn't.
They say we can't trust projections and complex computer models. But
overall, they have actually been right.
And, of course, they have the notorious ``I'm not a scientist''
dodge. Well, if a colleague doesn't understand this, then perhaps he
ought to trust the scientists at NOAA and at NASA, at our National
Labs, and at universities in Rhode Island and across the country--the
scientists whose job it is to understand this.
I must say, in addition to trusting the scientists, I also trust
Rhode Island fishermen who see the changes in their traps and nets and
our shoreline homeowners watching the sea steadily rising toward their
homes. You don't need fancy computer models to see the ocean changes
already taking place; you just need a thermometer to measure rising
temperatures, basically a yardstick to measure sea level rise or a
simple pH kit to measure the acidification of our oceans.
Let's look at ocean acidification. The oceans have absorbed about
one-third of all the excess carbon dioxide produced by humans since the
industrial revolution, around 600 gigatons' worth. When that carbon
dioxide dissolves into the ocean, chemistry happens, and it makes the
oceans more acidic.
Carbon dioxide reacts with water to form carbonic acid. Carbonic acid
isn't stable in ocean water, so it breaks down into bicarbonate ions, a
base, and hydrogen ions, an acid. The increase in acidic hydrogen ions
is the crux of the chemistry of ocean acidification. More hydrogen ions
lower the water's pH,
[[Page S1630]]
and the lower the pH, the higher the acidity.
Regular viewers of my ``Time to Wake Up'' speeches or people who
spent the night up with us while we objected to Administrator Pruitt's
nomination may remember that I demonstrated this in a simple experiment
on the Senate floor just a few weeks ago. I took the glass of water on
my desk, and I used the carbon dioxide in my own breath. Blowing
through an aquarium stone, I was able to show, with the help of a
little pH dye, how easy it is to actually measure the effect of
CO2 on the acidity of water. With just a few breaths into
the water, I was able to visibly make this glass of drinking water more
acidic.
That little experiment is a microcosm of what is happening in our
oceans right now, except, instead of bubbles blown through a straw, it
is a transfer of excess CO2 from the atmosphere into the
surface waters of the ocean all around the globe.
Scientific observations confirm that what the laws of chemistry tell
us should happen is actually happening. Massive carbon pollution
resulting from burning fossil fuels is changing ocean acidity faster
than ever in the past 50 million years.
Now, you start talking in big numbers, and it all goes into a blur--
50 million years, compared to how long the human species has been on
the planet, which is about 200,000 years. So 50 million years is, what,
250 times the length of time that our species has inhabited the Earth.
This chart shows measurements of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere
taken at the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii. That is the redline of
climbing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. And it shows carbon dioxide
in the ocean, which is the green measure, which is also climbing in
tandem with the rise of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Finally, it
shows the pH of ocean water in the sea. Of course, as the chemistry
would tell us, as the carbon dioxide goes up, the pH comes down, and
the acidity rises; the water becomes more acidic.
We measure that surface seawater on the Earth's oceans has, since the
industrial revolution, become roughly 30 percent more acidic. NOAA
predicts that oceans will be 150 percent more acidic than now by the
end of the century. Coastal States, like Rhode Island and Florida, will
feel the hit.
Ocean acidification disrupts life in the sea when those loose
hydrogen ions we talked about latch onto free carbonate ions. Usually
that carbonate is plentiful in ocean water. Shell-forming marine
creatures, like oysters and clams, use this loose carbonate to help
form their shells. But if the carbonate they need is bound up by
hydrogen ions, they can't get enough carbonate to build their shells.
We have even seen acidification scenarios in which shells start to
dissolve in the water. Shellfish hatcheries on the west coast have
already seen devastating losses of larval oysters due to acidic waters.
When ocean pH fell too low, baby oysters couldn't form their shells,
and they quickly died off. Dr. Julia Ekstrom, the lead researcher for
Nature Climate Change's 2015 study on ocean acidification, told PBS
that it has cost the Pacific Northwest oyster industry more than $100
million and jeopardized thousands of jobs. Her research flagged 15
States where the shellfish industry would be hardest hit, from Alaska
to Florida, to my home State of Rhode Island.
Toward the bottom of the oceanic food web is the humble pteropod.
Pteropods are sometimes called sea butterflies because their tiny snail
foot has evolved into an oceanic wing. In 2014 NOAA found that
more than half of pteropods sampled off the west coast were suffering
from severely dissolved shells due to ocean acidification, and it is
worsening.
This is a pteropod shell degrading over time in acidified water.
Of course, we are here in ``Mammon Hall,'' where it feels laughable
to care about anything that can't be monetized. We talk a good game
here in the Senate about God's Earth and God's creation and God's
creatures, but what we really care about is the money. So let's
monetize this.
Who cares about this humble species? Salmon do. As the west coast
loses its pteropods, that collapse reverberates up the food chain, and
the salmon care because many of them feed on the pteropods. The west
coast salmon fishery is a big deal, so salmon fishermen care about
this.
Another foundational marine species, krill, is also affected by ocean
acidification. In the Southern Ocean, nearly all marine animals can
thank krill for their survival. From penguin diets to whale diets,
krill is king.
A 2013 study in Nature Climate Change found ocean acidification
inhibiting the hatching of krill eggs and the normal development of
larvae. The researchers note that unless we cut emissions, collapse of
the krill population in the Southern Ocean portends ``dire consequences
for the entire ecosystem.''
Closer to home, the University of Alaska's Ocean Acidification
Research Center--yes, ocean acidification is serious enough that the
University of Alaska has an Ocean Acidification Research Center, and it
warns that ocean acidification ``has the potential to disrupt [Alaska's
fishing] industry from top to bottom.''
Turning to warmer waters, coral reefs are also highly susceptible to
ocean acidification. A healthy coral reef is one of the most productive
and diverse ecosystems on Earth, home to 25 percent of the world's fish
biodiversity. Those reef-building corals rely on calcium carbonate to
build their skeletons.
Since the Presiding Officer is from Florida, I know how important
coral reefs are to the tourism industry in his State.
Coral depends on a symbiotic relationship with tiny photosynthetic
algae, called zooxanthellae, that live in the surface tissue of the
coral. There is a range of pH, as well as temperature, salinity, and
water clarity, within which this symbiosis between the coral and the
zooxanthellae thrives. Outside that comfort range, the corals get
stressed, and they begin to evict the algae. This is called coral
bleaching because corals shed their colorful algae. Without these
algae, corals soon die.
The effects of acidification on sea life are far-reaching. Studies
have found ocean acidification disrupts everything from the sensory
systems of clownfish--those are little Nemos, for those who have seen
the movie--to phytoplankton populations, to sea urchin reproduction, to
the Dungeness crab, another valuable west coast specialty.
I asked Scott Pruitt, our ethically challenged Administrator of the
Environmental Protection Agency, about ocean acidification. He gave
these answers: ``The oceans are alkaline and are projected to remain
so,'' and two, ``The degree of alkalinity in the ocean is highly
variable and therefore it is difficult to attribute that variability to
any single cause.''
Let's look at those answers.
The first answer is plain and simple nonsense because the harm to
ocean creatures from acidification comes from the dramatic shift in
ocean acidity, not from where along the acid-based spectrum the shift
takes place. The observation he made is irrelevant to the question.
His second answer is no better. It exhibits purposeful ignorance of
the role humans' carbon pollution plays in damaging the ocean, because
the chemical principles at issue here are indisputable. You can
replicate them in a middle school laboratory in any Florida school. As
I showed in my little demonstration, you can replicate them even here
on the Senate floor. Like its carbon cousin, climate change, ocean
acidification doesn't care whether you believe in chemistry. It doesn't
matter to chemistry if you swallow the propaganda pumped out by the
fossil fuel lobby. The principles of science operate notwithstanding.
The chemical interactions take place by law of nature whether you
believe them or not. If you believe in God, then you have to
acknowledge that these laws of nature are God's laws, the basic
operating principles He established in His creation. But, of course,
here at Mammon Hall, it is always about the money.
Any decent EPA Administrator is obliged to trust in real science and
to take action to protect human health and the environment. I am deeply
unconvinced that Administrator Pruitt will live up in any respect to
those obligations, but I would welcome being proven wrong. Likewise, I
similarly challenge my colleagues here in the Senate.
[[Page S1631]]
This Chamber and our Nation will be judged harshly by our
descendants, both for our pigheaded disregard for the basic truths, the
basic operating systems of the world we live in, and for the shameful
reason why we disregard them. Mammon Hall indeed.
Mr. President, it is time for the Senate to wake up before it is too
late.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Ohio.
Republican Healthcare Bill
Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, the House's plan to repeal the Affordable
Care Act is dangerous and irresponsible. Just listen to Governor John
Kasich, Republican Governor of my State, who says we should not be
throwing 500, 600, 700,000 Medicaid beneficiaries--mostly people who
have jobs and work in low-income jobs--we shouldn't throw them off
their insurance. In fact, in Ohio there are 900,000 people--700,000 on
Medicaid, 100,000 on their parents' healthcare plan, and another
100,000 on the exchanges--who would lose their insurance if the House
succeeds and the Senate goes along in changing dramatically or
repealing the Affordable Care Act.
My office is flooded with letters and calls from Ohioans begging us
not to take away their care. Let me share some of those letters.
A woman from Beachwood, OH, in Northeast Ohio wrote to me on January
11 terrified of possible changes to the Medicaid system that helps fund
nursing homes like the one where she lives. She writes:
I strongly believe changes would drastically diminish my
quality of life and many other residents' in the nursing home
setting. My care needs are currently well managed by
qualified and caring staff members. I am a 2-person assist
with dressing, bathing, and getting to the bathroom. I also
require two people with getting dressed every morning.
Medicaid cuts would decrease the number of staff members. .
. . Without adequate staff, I am afraid of extensive wait
periods and frequent bathing accidents. . . . It would be
very difficult to endure, cause embarrassment, while
destroying my dignity in the process.
I am not as strong as I used to be. I have children who
love and care for me and placed me in a safe environment.
Living in the nursing home has allowed me to live a little
better, smile a little longer, and enjoy my days with family
members.
``Please consider,'' she writes, ``the people who will be affected
the most.''
Understand that most Medicaid dollars--dollars that unfortunately
Republicans want to block-grant or capitate in some way, whatever terms
they want to use here, send to the States, shrink those dollars, and
people like this lady from Beachwood will be the losers as a result.
Understand again that most Medicaid dollars--two-thirds of them--go to
nursing home care. ``Please consider the people who will be affected
the most,'' she writes.
Another woman from Mount Vernon, OH, a part of the State where I grew
up in Mansfield, wrote to urge us not to rip coverage away from
individuals who are currently receiving mental health and addiction
services. She writes:
As a constituent concerned about preserving access to
lifesaving mental health and addiction services, I am writing
today to urge and request your support in protecting the
Affordable Care Act and preserving Medicaid expansion.
I work as a substance abuse counselor in Knox County and
work with adolescents and women with co-occurring disorders.
Without the Medicaid expansion, many of our clients would not
be able to get the help they need.
Without ObamaCare, without the Affordable Care Act.
Without the Medicaid expansion, many of our clients would
not be able to get the help they need.
Today in Ohio, 200,000 people are in the midst of opioid addiction
treatment, and 200,000 of them have insurance so they could get that
treatment delivered in the right way and have insurance because of the
Affordable Care Act. This House proposal would just rip it away from
them.
She goes on to write:
Knowing that they can receive help and healthcare often is
one of the motivating factors for our clients to begin to
make change. Their ability to access medications such as
Vivitrol through Medicaid has been a strengthening point in
the recovery process of many. With our teens, I have seen
them be able to change substance use with the resources that
Medicaid provides.
In other words, some of them are breaking their addiction and some of
them are being cured because of the Affordable Care Act, because they
have Medicaid.
Medicaid allows our rural and low-income teens--
And of the 88 counties in Ohio, 70 or so are classified as small town
or rural, like the county I grew up in, Richland County--
many of whom otherwise would not be able to attend treatment
due to transportation barriers--to attend treatment through
public transportation. Working with these clients, you learn
their stories. So many have been through unimaginable trauma,
losses, and emotional/physical pain. Many have never had the
support to help them begin to work through these issues
underlying the substance use.
She is worried. The lady in Mount Vernon, OH, is worried, with very
good reason, that these repeal plans would ``leave millions of
Americans without access to needed mental health and addictions
treatment in our state and communities.''
Most recently, a woman in Butler County--the congressional district
of former Speaker John Boehner and some members of my staff, past and
present--writes:
I am extremely concerned about the cuts President Trump and
the Republican-led Congress propose to make in the Medicaid
program and services for the developmentally disabled.
Her son is 14 years old. He was diagnosed with a specific type of
autism. He is nonverbal, with severe cognitive and physical challenges.
She wrote to my office how Medicaid has been ``a godsend'' for her and
her family. Before her son received a waiver under the Medicaid
Program, her family was spending $100 a month in copays for psychiatric
medications alone. That is in addition to all the extra medical costs
in caring for a severely challenged child. They couldn't afford the
physical therapy he needs, despite having insurance coverage through
her husband's employer. She wrote that Medicaid ``more than anything
else, improved the quality of my son's life, and by extension, the life
of our whole family.''
Understand that health challenges--especially mental health
challenges but health challenges overall--in one member of a family
afflict the whole family. That is something we should remember as this
Congress seems to rush pell-mell into trying to repeal Medicare, trying
to repeal the Affordable Care Act.
These three letters are three of hundreds of thousands that we
received--hundreds of thousands of letters and calls that Members of
the Senate are receiving. I don't understand how, when 20 million
people will lose their insurance, so many Members of Congress, who
themselves have government-financed health insurance--we have health
insurance in this body paid for by taxpayers, most of us. Yet we think
it is appropriate to pass legislation in part giving tax cuts to the
richest Americans and at the same time stripping away Medicare
benefits, taking 22 million people who now have insurance off of that
insurance and proposing minor insurance for some of them but not nearly
all of them. If we are people of God, if we are people who care about
our constituents, how we can do that is just beyond me.
I go back to the quote from one of the people I read about today from
Beachwood. She writes: ``Please consider the people who will be
affected the most.''
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
Mr. President, President Trump declared this week Consumer Protection
Week, but his proclamation has gaping holes. It ignores the many ways
large corporations cheat consumers and the biggest tool Americans have
to fight back.
Not once did the proclamation mention the Consumer Financial
Protection Bureau, which has returned $12 billion to 29 million
consumers. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was created under
Dodd-Frank 8 or 9 years ago. Not once does it talk about the
unscrupulous lenders who targeted Americans with predatory mortgages
before blowing up the economy in 2007 and 2008. Not once does the
President's Consumer Protection Week proclamation mention the millions
of fake accounts opened by Wells Fargo. Not once does it mention the
shady outfits that set up shop outside the gates of our military bases
and the payday
[[Page S1632]]
lenders and other unscrupulous lenders who set up shop outside the
gates of the military bases because they aren't allowed on the military
bases as they try to exploit our service men and women and their
families.
Not only did the President ignore some of the most pressing consumer
protection issues, his administration is attacking the most important
consumer advocate indeed--the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
Last week, President Trump's Department of Justice filed papers in
Federal court signaling that it will argue that the CFPB shouldn't be
independent. The President and White House want the CFPB under their
control so they can weaken it, so they can help Wall Street, so they
can take away some of its power. They think the President should have
the power to fire the head of the agency for any reason.
The whole reason we wrote it to be independent was to protect it from
a President who chose Wall Street over Main Street. It was Presidential
Candidate Trump who sounded pretty good standing up to Wall Street and
helping Main Street. If you look at the nominees, his appointments, and
his actions so far, it has been exactly the opposite. He has been the
president of Wall Street and at the same time exploiting Main Street.
It means that what the President has proposed is that the President can
fire his director for doing his job: stepping on the toes of special
interests.
The CFPB works in part because it has an independent Director. The
current Director of the CFPB, Richard Cordray from Ohio, has protected
consumers, has returned billions to Americans who were cheated and who
were taken advantage of by big companies.
The CFPB has an independent budget. Banks can't kill it by lobbying
it and cutting off its budget. That is the point. People whom he has in
many cases recovered money from because he represents consumers--those
banks, those large Wall Street banks and other financial institutions,
because of the way it is set up, can't lobby Congress to take money
away from it and put it out of business. Special interests have
relentlessly attacked the CFPB since the day we created it.
President Trump ran on the promise of protecting the little guy, but
he hasn't followed through on the promise of protecting ordinary
Americans from some of the wealthiest, most privileged special
interests in this town.
If you are one of the 29 million Americans who received help from
CFPB, you might know how important saving it is, but you might not know
how important it is to especially protecting one group of people, and
that is protecting our veterans and our servicemembers. The CFPB has an
entire office that is dedicated to helping men and women who have
served in uniform--the Office of Servicemember Affairs.
A couple of weeks ago, my Rhode Island Senator friend, Jack Reed, was
in the Armed Services Committee with the senior enlisted advisers of
military services--the Army, Air Force, Navy, Marines. Their job is to
make sure our servicemembers and their families are getting the support
they need. Every one of them had great things to say about the CFPB's
Office of Servicemember Affairs--of the value it provides and the
support it provides to the men and women who sacrifice so much for our
country.
Senator Reed brought up an alarming figure. A recent report estimated
that thousands of servicemembers are forced out of service every year
because of financial hardships--problems with their mortgages, with
payday loans, with credit card debt. One will remember earlier in the
presentation that I talked about how many of these financial groups set
up right outside military bases. That causes a tragedy for these men
and women who want to serve their country, and it causes tragedy for
their families. It costs taxpayers $57,000 every time someone is forced
out of service. Many other servicemembers lose their security
clearances because of financial trouble, which directly affects the
mission readiness that is brought on by shady business practices.
The CFPB is stepping in to protect these heroes who are often taken
advantage of. The CFPB's Office of Servicemember Affairs is led by men
and women who have served in the military and know what kind of help
servicemembers need. They visit 145 military facilities across the
country in order to help servicemembers get their finances straightened
out and to hear about their concerns. They have handled 70,000
complaints from servicemembers and veterans about abusive practices by
financial institutions. They have returned $130 million back to
servicemembers and their families simply by enforcing the law and
protecting those consumers.
The CFPB protects the men and women who protect our country. It
protects all of us. The best way to celebrate Consumer Protection Week
is not through words and proclamations, it is through actions.
We need to combat cyber crimes and identity theft, as the President
mentioned, but we also need to combat all kinds of tricks and traps--
loans with outrageous interest rates, for-profit colleges that promise
far more than they deliver, lenders who discriminate based on race. The
list goes on and on.
I urge my colleagues to join me in working to ensure that the CFPB
remains a strong, active ally in the cause of consumer protection this
week, next week, every week.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Utah.
Silencing of Political Debate
Mr. LEE. Mr. President, I am truly saddened that I must address what
I fear is a growing threat to our Republic--the silencing of political
debate by totalitarian mob violence on college campuses.
I was not in Burlington, VT, last Thursday to witness what happened
at Middlebury College, but I would like to read from accounts that have
been provided by two people who were, in fact, there and who saw these
things unfold. They were the targets of the mob's violence. Their names
are Allison Stanger, professor of political science at Middlebury
College, and Charles Murray, the author of several groundbreaking
books, including the work ``The Bell Curve'' and a scholar at the
American Enterprise Institute. America deserves and needs to hear their
stories.
On Saturday, 2 days after the incident, Professor Stanger wrote on
her Facebook page as follows:
I agreed to participate in the event with Charles Murray
because several of my students asked me to do so. They are
smart and good people--all of them--and this was their big
event of the year.
I, actually, welcomed the opportunity to be involved
because, while my students may know I am a Democrat, all of
my courses are nonpartisan, and this was a chance to
demonstrate publicly my commitment to a free and fair
exchange of views in my classroom.
As the campus uproar about his visit built, I was genuinely
surprised and troubled to learn that some of my faculty
colleagues had rendered judgment on Dr. Murray's work and
character while openly admitting that they had not read
anything he had written. With the best of intentions, they
offered their leadership to enraged students, and we all know
what the results were.
I want you to know what it feels like to look out at a sea
of students yelling obscenities at other members of my
beloved community. . . . I saw some of my faculty colleagues,
who had publicly acknowledged that they had not read anything
Dr. Murray had written, join the effort to shut down the
lecture. All of this was deeply unsettling to me.
What alarmed me most, however, was what I saw in student
eyes from up on that stage. Those who wanted the event to
take place made eye contact with me. Those intent on
disrupting it steadfastly refused to do so. It was clear to
me that they had effectively dehumanized me. They couldn't
look me in the eye because, if they had, they would have seen
another human being. There is a lot to be angry about in
America today, but nothing good ever comes from demonizing
our brothers and sisters.
When the event ended and it was time to leave the building,
I breathed a sigh of relief. We had made it. I was ready for
dinner and conversation with faculty and students in a
tranquil setting. What transpired instead felt like a scene
from [the TV show] ``Homeland'' rather than an evening at an
institution of higher learning. We confronted an angry mob as
we tried to exit the building.
Most of the hatred was focused on Dr. Murray, but when I
took his right arm both to shield him from the attack and to
make sure we stayed together so I could reach the car, too,
that's when the hatred turned on me.
One thug grabbed me by the hair, and another shoved me in a
different direction. I noticed signs with expletives and my
name on them. . . . For those of you who marched in
Washington the day after the inauguration, imagine being in a
crowd like that, only being surrounded by hatred rather than
love. I feared for my life.
[[Page S1633]]
The next day, on Sunday, the American Enterprise Institute's website
published this account from Dr. Charles Murray.
Dr. Murray wrote:
If it hadn't been for Allison and Bill Burger [Middlebury's
Vice President for Communications] keeping hold of me and the
security guards pulling people off me, I would have been
pushed to the ground. That much is sure. What would have
happened after that I don't know, but I do recall thinking
that being on the ground was a really bad idea, and I should
try really hard to avoid that. Unlike Allison, I wasn't
actually hurt at
all. . . .
In the 23 years since ``The Bell Curve'' was published, I
have had considerable experience with campus protests. Until
last Thursday, all of the ones involving me have been as
carefully scripted as kabuki: The college administration
meets with the organizers of the protest, and ground rules
are agreed upon. The protesters have so many minutes to do
such and such. It is agreed that, after the allotted time,
they will leave or desist. These negotiated agreements have
always worked. At least a couple of dozen times, I have been
able to give my lecture to an attentive or, at least, quiet
audience despite an organized protest.
Middlebury tried to negotiate such an agreement with the
protesters, but for the first time in my experience, the
protesters would not accept any time limits. If this becomes
the new normal, the number of colleges willing to let
themselves in for an experience like Middlebury's will plunge
to near zero. Academia is already largely sequestered in an
ideological bubble, but at least it's translucent. That
bubble will become opaque.
Worse yet, the intellectual thugs will take over many
campuses. In the mid-1990s, I could count on students who had
wanted to listen to start yelling at the protesters after a
certain point, ``Sit down and shut up. We want to hear what
he has to say.'' That kind of pushback had an effect. It
reminded the protesters that they were a minority.
I am assured [he continues] by people at Middlebury that
their protesters are a minority as well, but they are a
minority that has intimidated the majority. The people in the
audience who wanted to hear me speak were completely cowed.
That cannot be allowed to stand. A campus where a majority of
students are fearful to speak openly because they know a
minority will jump on them is no longer an intellectually
free campus in any meaningful sense.
I suspect that most of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle
may not necessarily be fans of Dr. Charles Murray. There is nothing
wrong with that, but I am confident they at least would be honest
enough and self-respecting enough not to condemn any scholar's work
without ever having read it, like many of Middlebury's faculty members
apparently did. More importantly, I am confident my Democratic
colleagues would join me in denouncing the violence of the Middlebury
campus protesters who sought to silence Dr. Murray. On countless
occasions, I have heard my Democratic colleagues come to the Senate
floor to condemn violence in all of its forms. Why would this time be
any different?
We do not agree on everything, but I am confident that if Dr. Murray
were invited to testify here on Capitol Hill--perhaps at a committee of
the United States Senate--my Democratic colleagues would eagerly join
in an open and respectful debate that would ensue as a result of that
visit. I am confident they would reject any effort to silence or to do
harm to those with whom they might disagree. In fact, I am confident
that if any outburst like that happened, whoever was chairing that
committee and the ranking personnel associated with that committee
would immediately bring the disruption to a close so an open, honest,
respectful discussion could occur within that meeting.
I know tensions are high in America today, and I know what it is like
to be on the losing side of a bitterly fought Presidential election as
we, as Republicans, found ourselves in just a few years ago in the wake
of the 2012 election cycle and in the wake of the previous Presidential
election cycle before that in 2008, but that does not and cannot give
anyone the license to shout down a fellow American, let alone to
physically assault him just because he holds a different opinion.
Democracy and freedom--the republican form of government--depend on
open, tolerant, and civil political discourse, and sustaining our
democratic freedoms is, perhaps, the sole reason the government
subsidizes institutions of higher education in this country.
It is embarrassing that teachers and students at an elite college
like Middlebury should need reminding, but speech is not violence, and
violence is not speech. Totalitarians who fail to recognize this core
fact of decency and tolerance are goose-stepping into some of the
darkest corners of the human heart.
If there is anything that should unite us in these polarized times,
it is that the kind of violence we saw on Middlebury's campus last week
must not be tolerated. That is why I commend the 44 Middlebury College
professors who have signed a ``Statement of Principles'' on ``Free
Inquiry on Campus.'' I hope more Middlebury professors will join them.
In any event, I hope all Americans will join them in standing up for
free, open, honest, respectful debate.
Thank you, Mr. President.
I yield the floor.
____________________