Continuing Appropriations Act, and Health Extenders Act of

Floor Speech

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Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, I want to thank my colleague from Alabama for his tremendous leadership on this very critical effort because right now we are days away from a very damaging lapse in funding for our HBCUs, our Tribal colleges, and other minority-serving institutions that creates unnecessary and needless uncertainty for students in schools across this country.

Both of my colleagues spoke of music and the need for harmony. Well, it appears to me that the bill the Senator from Alabama is asking us to approve today for the funding for HBCUs is a heck of a lot of harmony. The House has already acted to fix this. They sent this bill to the Senate on a bipartisan basis. All Members of the House support it, and it is paid for in a way even the White House supports. In this day and age, I would take that harmony.

So I am very frustrated about today's opposition to this simple step to protect colleges and universities with such important missions. I can't see a good reason why we haven't sent the President this bill.

I listened to the Senator from Tennessee, and it sounds to me like he wants to write a whole new song. He is interested in a small package of higher education proposals, and he said he wants to see the FUTURE Act as a part of that. But it is pretty clear to me that when you have a good song and you have everybody together moving that, and maybe there is a discordant note somewhere, you just keep moving forward with that song--if we want to stay with the country music theme here.

I believe we should not delay it. Let's move this forward. Let's not threaten the funding for some of our most valued institutions. We should take this up and pass the FUTURE Act right away and then continue our committee discussions about how to reauthorize the Higher Education Act.

Since the start of those discussions, I have been very clear that we need to do this reauthorization in a comprehensive way that really helps students with the many challenges they face. We have so many students today who are struggling with the burdensome costs of getting a degree, who find themselves cheated by bad actors that, by the way, Secretary DeVos is not holding accountable, and they are stuck with mounting debt. They face bullying, harassment, and assault when they should be focused on learning in their classes, or they are faced without pathways to help them get into higher education in the first place.

Today the House is rightly looking at a comprehensive higher education reauthorization to address all these issues of affordability, accountability, campus safety, and acceptability, and that is what the Senate should do as well. Surely the Senate can reach an agreement on those issues but only if we stay at the table and keep working together rather than veering off the course we set. That is what I am very concerned a smaller package would mean.

I believe that we have a real opportunity to reach a comprehensive agreement that helps students in need, and we ought to take it. In the meantime, there is no excuse for playing politics, holding up the FUTURE Act, and exposing students and schools nationwide to uncertainty and to dysfunction.

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