[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.

[[Page S2675]]

  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

[[Page S2676]]

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.

[[Page S2677]]

  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.

                          ____________________