Every Child Achieves Act of 2015

Floor Speech

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Mr. SCHUMER. Madam President, I ask that 30 seconds of my time be yielded to the Senator from Ohio.

I oppose this amendment. I thank the Senators from Tennessee, Washington, and North Carolina for making it less onerous. We did come to a compromise. As he said, it starts at $17 billion, but there is still a major fallacy here.

When we change formulas, we have always held harmless the States that would lose money, but we have been able to increase money. In this bill, we don't. We keep it flat. So we are robbing Peter to pay Paul, which will be an awful precedent which will bite every one of us.

Second, my good friend said the money should go to people from poverty, but they also voted against the Merkley amendment, which required the money to go to people in poverty, and now it can go anywhere.

So I respectfully urge my colleagues to oppose this amendment, although it is improved from the original.

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Mr. SCHUMER. Thank you, Madam President.

As we stated, some of us had serious objections to changing the formula, but thankfully the modified amendment follows in a tradition of compromise. And I appreciate my colleagues from Tennessee, Washington, and North Carolina working on it. As a result, we will continue to abide by the ``do no harm'' principle. New York's funding will not be cut, and neither will the funding in any of the other 13 States that would have been cut by the original amendment. We will not punish schools unfairly by using a formula that creates winners and losers. This takes the idea of losing school districts off the table. So, again, I would like to thank my colleagues for working with me to ensure that our students in New York and the 13 other States do not start the next school year at a disadvantage with fewer school resources.

The title I changes we have agreed to reflect our commitment to increasing funding and supporting funding for low- and moderate-income students. I appreciate the commitment my colleagues from Tennessee and Washington have made, and I would like to confirm those here on the floor.

I would ask my dear friend Senator Alexander--I would like you to confirm your commitment to maintain this title I funding proposal which we just passed which is contained in amendment No. 2247, as modified--when the Senate and House convene a conference, that we will not go any lower than this.

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