[Congressional Record Volume 163, Number 75 (Tuesday, May 2, 2017)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2674-S2677]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
National Charter Schools Week
Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I am here today to celebrate the 18th
Annual National Charter Schools Week and thank the students, parents,
and teachers from charter schools across the United States for their
ongoing contributions to education. Senator Bennet of Colorado and I
introduced a resolution marking this event, which the Senate approved
yesterday.
Let me tell you my favorite story about charter schools. It was 24
years ago, 1992. I was in my last month as U.S. Secretary of Education,
and as my last official act, I wrote a letter to every school
superintendent in the country asking them to consider replicating the
early success of the State of Minnesota in creating charter schools.
There were about a dozen of them then, and they were created by the
Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party of Minnesota. That was consistent with
what President George H.W. Bush and I had been encouraging, which was
what we called start-from-scratch schools--schools that gave teachers
more freedom and parents more choices. We thought that could improve
education in the country and might lead to what we call new American
schools.
The first charter schools were created in the State of Minnesota
nearly a quarter of a century ago, led by the Democratic-Farmer-Labor
Party, and there were about a dozen of them. Since then, there has been
broad bipartisan, mainstream support for charter schools.
Let's remember that charter schools are public schools. They are
simply public schools which are freer from government rules, Federal
rules, State rules, and union rules and which give teachers more
freedom to teach the children who are presented to them and parents
more freedom to choose those public schools.
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Some of those who supported the creation of charter schools include
Albert Shanker, the late head of the American Federation of Teachers.
In 1997, President Clinton said: We need 3,000 charter schools by the
year 2002. George W. Bush, in the No Child Left Behind legislation,
supported charter schools. President Obama was a strong supporter of
charter schools while he was in office. His first U.S. Secretary of
Education, Arne Duncan, called himself a ``strong supporter'' of
charter schools. President Obama's second U.S. Education Secretary,
John King, founded a charter school and ran a system of charter
schools. Secretary Betsy DeVos, the current Secretary of Education, has
spent most of her life as a strong supporter of charter schools. In
1994, 1998, 2001, and 2015, the U.S. Congress supported charter schools
by large margins and in a bipartisan manner. Over 44 States and the
District of Columbia have created an environment through their laws for
charter schools.
In 30 years, public charter schools have grown from a dozen in
Minnesota to more than 6,900 today. Today, charter schools are serving
over 3.1 million students. Over 6 percent of all public school students
in America today now attend charter schools, and another 1 million
students are on waiting lists for charter schools. This past year saw
an estimated enrollment increase of over 200,000 students, representing
a 7-percent growth in just one school year.
Over half of the students served by these institutions are eligible
for free or reduced-priced lunches, over half are students of color,
and 17 percent are limited English proficient--all higher percentages
than those served in traditional public schools.
As I said earlier, charter schools are about freedom for teachers,
choices for parents, and more and better opportunities for students.
Charter schools enable people. They enable parents to help their
children get a real opportunity by choosing better schools or at least
schools that fit them better and help them succeed. They enable
students to learn and succeed. They enable teachers to succeed by
giving them the freedom to use their firsthand knowledge. They enable
administrators to succeed by ending bureaucratic mandates and giving
them a chance to use their own good judgment.
In amending the No Child Left Behind Act, which we called the Every
Student Succeeds Act, we made a number of changes to strengthen and
expand the Federal Charter Schools Program, which since 1994 has given
grants to States to start new charter schools.
ESSA, as we call it, made improvements to that program to ensure that
those funds are used as effectively as possible to increase the number
of high-quality charter schools. Specifically, ESSA invests more
Federal funds in the replication and expansion of high-quality charter
schools with a proven record of success, while still giving States the
flexibility to invest in innovative new methods. ESSA continues Federal
support for nonprofit organizations which help charter schools find
suitable facilities, while also encouraging States to assist charter
schools in this task.
Now these hard-working and creative educators who are seeking to open
charter schools have greater flexibility in how they use Federal
startup funds--for example, by allowing them to use the funds for
transportation or facilities improvement, if that is what they decide
is the best use of those funds for their children and their community.
Finally, the Every Student Succeeds Act encourages States to provide
charter schools with the support they need to be successful and to hold
them accountable when they fail to demonstrate positive results.
Charter schools are public schools stripped of many Federal, State,
and union rules and constraints that are placed on traditional public
schools. The money the State would ordinarily spend on the district
school follows each child to the charter school instead.
Across Tennessee, more than 30,000 students now have that same
opportunity to attend one of 107 charter schools, and they are thriving
as a result. A recent study by Stanford University found that on
average, Tennessee students attending charter schools gained the
equivalent of 86 additional days of instruction in reading and 72
additional days of instruction in math each year than did students
attending traditional district schools. In other words, they make
almost a year and a half's worth of progress in a single school year.
More than 80 percent of students attending charter schools in
Tennessee are low income, and more than 94 percent are African American
or Hispanic. In other words, charter schools in Tennessee are making a
difference for those students who have traditionally been least well-
served by our Nation's public schools. That is a worthy event to
celebrate in this 18th annual National Charter Schools Week, to
celebrate how charter schools have grown from a dozen start-from-
scratch schools in the State of Minnesota 25 years ago to more than
6,900 today.
I thank the Presiding Officer.
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. SCHATZ. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for
the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. SCHATZ. Mr. President, Scott Pruitt, Mike Flynn, Betsy DeVos--
there is a pattern here. This administration keeps choosing people who
seem like the wrong fit to run their agency, and now we are about to
add Jay Clayton to the list.
He is different in a lot of ways. I met with him. He is a good
person. He is a sensible person desiring to be a public servant, and he
is a very smart lawyer. But he is not the right candidate to lead the
SEC because it is on the frontlines of making sure that Wall Street
follows the rules. And that is the No. 1 issue here because Mr. Clayton
has too many ties to the industry that he would be in charge of
overseeing.
Wall Street is full of his friends and business contacts, and there
is nothing wrong with that, generally. We need lawyers in the
securities industry. We need honorable people who help companies to do
an IPO, but that doesn't mean that individual is appropriate to be in
charge of the SEC and in charge of reining in Wall Street. That causes
the problem.
I do not question Mr. Clayton's integrity. I have no doubt that he is
a good person. But how can we say that the best person to hold Wall
Street in check is someone with strong ties to the big banks, someone
who has built his career there, who very well may go back to his old
law firm in a few years?
I talked with Mr. Clayton at his confirmation hearing about whether
he would go back to Wall Street after his time at the SEC ended, and he
said he couldn't rule it out. That is just one of several concerns that
I have. If we look at Mr. Clayton's statements about the SEC, it is
clear that he is not the right person to be the cop on the Wall Street
beat.
He has talked about ``monitoring'' the financial sector; that is the
word he used--``monitoring.'' But the United States does not need
someone to ``monitor'' Wall Street. We need someone who will
aggressively enforce the rules, to make sure we don't have a repeat of
2008, when the big banks made so many bad and reckless decisions that
our economy failed.
We have a very short memory in Washington about what happened to our
country less than 10 years ago, but the rest of the country remembers.
There are far too many communities still working to recover from the
great recession.
Now is not the time to walk back the small steps toward progress we
have made in protecting the economy from bad actors on Wall Street. But
I am afraid this is what could happen under this administration,
including if Mr. Clayton should be confirmed.
In his confirmation hearing, he said he wants to lighten the
penalties companies face when they get into trouble with the SEC, and
that is not something I can support. We cannot expect big banks and
investment firms to play by the rules when they know they can pay a
small fine and keep behaving badly as a cost of doing business.
Regulation and enforcement has a cost, but that cost is meant to put
the burden on the actors who are causing the problem
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instead of allowing the burden to fall on the rest of us--to fall on
American families.
The cost is there, one way or the other. The question is, Who should
pay it?
Even if the Senate disagrees on enforcement and regulation, I hope we
can agree that conflicts of interest have gone too far. This
administration has diminished the meaning of public service in the
context of conflicts of interest. Instead of looking out for conflicts
of interest, it has leaned into them. Instead of protecting the country
from corruption, it is putting our country in real danger. And at some
point, it is up to the Senate to be a Senate--to do something. We have
to decide where to draw the line. How long do we let this go on?
I am a ``no'' on Mr. Clayton's nomination. I urge all Senators who
care about ending conflicts of interest and putting a tough cop on the
Wall Street beat to join me and vote no on this nomination.
Mr. President, I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Idaho.
Mr. CRAPO. Mr. President, I rise today in support of Mr. Jay Clayton,
who has been nominated to serve on the U.S. Securities and Exchange
Commission.
On January 4, 2017, then President-elect Trump announced his
intention to nominate Jay Clayton to be the next chairman of the SEC.
He noted that ``Jay Clayton is a highly talented expert on many aspects
of financial and regulatory law, and he will ensure our financial
institutions can thrive and create jobs while playing by the rules.''
This sentiment was proven by Mr. Clayton's testimony and interactions
during his nomination hearing. In fact, he passed out of the Banking
Committee by a vote of 15-to-8, with bipartisan support.
Mr. Clayton is a highly regarded and exceptionally qualified
candidate. As a partner at a prominent law firm, he built a reputation
as a highly skilled financial markets expert, representing clients of
all types and sizes, both domestically and internationally. He has also
invested in a younger generation of lawyers, passing on his knowledge
as an adjunct professor at the University of Pennsylvania.
Throughout the nomination process, Mr. Clayton has proved his
dedication to unbiased and fair conduct.
Mr. Clayton's comments, experience, and actions provide me with
confidence that he will lead the SEC with the highest integrity and
effectiveness.
The SEC has an important three-part mission: to protect investors,
maintain fair, orderly, and efficient markets, and to facilitate
capital formation. At his nomination hearing, Mr. Clayton echoed the
importance of the SEC's mission and how the SEC can do more to ensure
that our markets remain the envy of the world.
Although the United States capital markets remain the most robust in
the world, they have been challenged by competition from abroad. During
his hearing, Mr. Clayton observed that our capital markets have become
less attractive to businesses than they ever have been before. Capital
markets drive innovation and job creation, and access to them is the
lifeblood of our economy.
The JOBS Act helped revitalize primary markets, and both Congress and
the SEC should continue to find ways to help companies go public and
allow investors to share in their successes. Mr. Clayton pledged to do
just that. He committed to working with his fellow Commissioners, with
SEC staff, with Congress, and with the President to support and defend
our capital markets.
Mr. Clayton also repeatedly committed at his nomination hearing that
he would protect investors. He stated that he is ``100 percent
committed to rooting out any fraud and shady practices in our financial
system.''
During the Banking Committee's hearings on Mr. Clayton, some raised
the concern that he previously represented many firms on Wall Street
and that he would continue to look out for their best interests. He
appropriately responded by pledging to the American people that he will
show no favoritism to anyone and maintain a high degree of
transparency.
Given Mr. Clayton's strong qualifications and his pledge to work to
improve capital formation and uphold investor protections, I urge my
colleagues to support his nomination. Congress and the SEC, led by Mr.
Clayton and the American people, can ensure that the U.S. financial
system and markets remain the preferred destination for investors
throughout the world. I urge all of my colleagues to vote yes on the
nomination of Mr. Jay Clayton.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The assistant bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for
the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for up to
5 minutes and delay the vote until 5:25 p.m., until the completion of
my remarks.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I appreciate the Presiding Officer's
forbearance and also the cooperation always of the chairman of the
Banking Committee, Senator Crapo. We had a good hearing today on
reinsurance and on European Union issues on insurance regulation. I
appreciated the work we were able to do there and the work we are doing
on Russian sanctions, which is increasingly important, as we see, as
the clear links between Russia and the American elections are becoming
clearer. The links are becoming clearer and clearer to Senators in both
parties.
I rise in opposition to the nomination of Jay Clayton to the
Securities and Exchange Commission. We have seen this movie before,
where we nominate someone to chair the Securities and Exchange
Commission who starts off almost handcuffed with their hands behind
their back because he has--as did his predecessor--far too many
conflicts of interest, far too many demands for recusal, far too many
cases he has worked on.
We hear of a President who talks about draining the swamp, who wants
regulators and people in Washington who don't have conflicts of
interest and who can look at this in a fairminded, clear-eyed way.
Instead, we see a White House that is full of Goldman Sachs former
officials. In fact, the White House on some days looks like a retreat
of Goldman Sachs executives. That is a long way from clearing the
swamp.
What we are seeing in the case of Mr. Clayton--and we had a good
meeting with him, and I thought his testimony was pretty good--is that
he is smart, he is educated, he knows these issues well, but he is
going to have to recuse himself because of conflicts with UBS, Deutsche
Bank, and Goldman Sachs. He has worked on so many of these cases as a
Wall Street lawyer for so many years that at this Securities and
Exchange Commission--where the President still hasn't appointed a
Democrat, which really he is supposed to do but hasn't seemed to have
gotten around to it--that we are going to see all kinds of
opportunities for mischief, we are going to see all kinds of delays and
tie votes, and we will see an inability for the SEC to operate when
they should.
I oppose the confirmation of Jay Clayton. I think he is capable, but
he will not serve this country well. He will not keep corporations and,
especially, banks honest on all kinds of corporate governance issues.
He will not be as supportive of the investor public because of these
recusals and conflicts that he faces. I think it is a bad idea, again.
I opposed the previous Democratic nominee for this job because she had
far too many recusals and conflicts that she had to do. I think this is
a mistake to do this again.
I ask my colleagues to vote no, to oppose the confirmation of Jay
Clayton to the Securities and Exchange Commission.
I yield back my time.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the question is,
Will the Senate advise and consent to the Clayton nomination?
Mr. BROWN. I ask for the yeas and nays.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?
There appears to be a sufficient second.
The clerk will call the roll.
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The assistant bill clerk called the roll.
Mr. CORNYN. The following Senator is necessarily absent: the Senator
from Georgia (Mr. Isakson).
Mr. SCHUMER. I announce that the Senator from Illinois (Mr. Durbin)
is necessarily absent.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Durbin). Are there any other Senators in
the Chamber desiring to vote?
The result was announced--yeas 61, nays 37, as follows:
[Rollcall Vote No. 118 Ex.]
YEAS--61
Alexander
Barrasso
Bennet
Blunt
Boozman
Burr
Capito
Carper
Cassidy
Cochran
Collins
Corker
Cornyn
Cotton
Crapo
Cruz
Daines
Enzi
Ernst
Fischer
Flake
Gardner
Graham
Grassley
Hatch
Heitkamp
Heller
Hoeven
Inhofe
Johnson
Kennedy
King
Lankford
Lee
Manchin
McCain
McCaskill
McConnell
Moran
Murkowski
Nelson
Paul
Perdue
Portman
Risch
Roberts
Rounds
Rubio
Sasse
Scott
Shaheen
Shelby
Strange
Sullivan
Tester
Thune
Tillis
Toomey
Warner
Wicker
Young
NAYS--37
Baldwin
Blumenthal
Booker
Brown
Cantwell
Cardin
Casey
Coons
Cortez Masto
Donnelly
Duckworth
Feinstein
Franken
Gillibrand
Harris
Hassan
Heinrich
Hirono
Kaine
Klobuchar
Leahy
Markey
Menendez
Merkley
Murphy
Murray
Peters
Reed
Sanders
Schatz
Schumer
Stabenow
Udall
Van Hollen
Warren
Whitehouse
Wyden
NOT VOTING--2
Durbin
Isakson
The nomination was confirmed.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the President will
be immediately notified of the Senate's action.
____________________