-9999
Floor Speech
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. KAINE. Mr. President, I rise together with my colleagues from Maryland and Hawaii to celebrate 50 years of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. I will not speak long because I have a separate matter that I will take up after this.
My colleagues did a good job, I think, of shining a spotlight on the challenges that exist with the IDEA at 50--the chronic underfunding of this program, the Federal Government not meeting the commitment that it made in 1975 to fund 40 percent of these extra costs for kids with disabilities, the firing of staff recently.
These are serious issues, but I want to spend my time more focused on the celebration of what these 50 years of the IDEA have done.
When it was originally passed 50 years ago this month, the bill was called the Education for All Handicapped Children Act, the EHA. It was renamed the ``IDEA'' in a reauthorization in 1990.
Guess what the vote was in Congress around the passage of this law that was signed by President Ford. In the Senate, the vote to pass this landmark civil rights and education law was 87 to 7, and in the House, the vote was 404 to 7. For a big, landmark civil rights and education law to pass with that kind of a margin is really near miraculous.
The reason that it passed so overwhelmingly was because society realized that we had been treating kids with disabilities in a very, very tragic and unforgiveable way.
Get this: In 1975, more than a million school-age children in this country were essentially locked out of public education because of the fact that they had a disability--either not being educated at all or being educated in institutions often far away from their homes and families, far away from their friends and neighbors, in a way that was not providing them adequate educational support.
So think about that million that has now grown to 7 million--nearly 1 in 7 students in our public school system receives special education services--what the trajectory of their lives was like before the IDEA passed and after the IDEA passed.
Students with a designated disability under the IDEA receive an individualized education plan so that their particular disability can be focused in a meaningful way to enable them to be all they can be. Isn't that what we want for all children? Let all children be all they can be.
It is not often noted, but it should be noted that many students who receive individualized education plans--the IEPs--only require special education services for a couple of years because even a couple of years of speech therapy or other kinds of special services is enough to get that student completely successful without additional services.
I know this from my own family, my own three kids who went through public schools, that sometimes the IEP and the services provided only need to be provided for a short period of time. Students who receive these services early in their educational careers often don't need them for more than a couple of preschool years or early grades, and then they are perfectly successful.
The IDEA works. It works. It works to enable these students who had been consigned to the shadows of life for generations to be able to achieve all that they can.
You know, one of the measures of success of the IDEA at 50 is this: As a mayor, public education was the biggest part of my city budget. As a Governor, it was the biggest part of my State budget. And, man, did I hear a lot of complaints from people about the IDEA. My educator said that Congress isn't funding it well enough. My educator said that the paperwork to do an IEP and then to assess its compliance is way too complicated. But I never had a single person, an educator or anyone else, say we should undo the IDEA.
For all of the challenges about underfunding, for all of the challenges about paperwork, there is uniform recognition in this country that the passage of the IDEA, the 50 years of a commitment by society that every child should be all they can be, is a good thing. Can we make it better? Of course, we can. But that bedrock promise that was made in 1975 is a good thing, and it has worked to enrich the lives now of tens of millions of people, to make them productive adults, just like any of us aspire to be. What a great thing to be able to celebrate.
That is why I join my colleagues today to celebrate what the 50 years have meant to the tens of millions of students who benefited from the IDEA and the commitment that we must do better.
I am very, very troubled by the underfunding and applaud my colleagues for focusing on that, but I am also very troubled by the actions of this administration to shed the staff who are needed to work with States and work with local governments to make sure that services are being appropriately provided.
I remember being on the HELP Committee during President Trump's first term and examining his nominee for Secretary of Education in the first term, Secretary DeVos. She was talking about letting the IDEA just be run by States, with no Federal role.
I remember questioning her at the hearing: Well, what about States that decide not to do it?
Because it is expensive, there would be some States, without Federal oversight, that would just decide they would rather not provide services, not fund services for students with disabilities.
I asked her the question: Do you think a parent of a child with a disability should just have to move to another State that is more compassionate?
No. We have a Federal, national commitment that a child born with a disability, whatever ZIP Code in this country they are born in, should be entitled to receive these basic services.
That promise is being threatened right now by the firings. That promise has always been threatened by the chronic underfunding.
So while I join with my colleagues in committing to continuing to work to improve it, I don't want this moment to be lost without acknowledging the tremendous good that has been done by this most bipartisan law to enrich the lives of tens of millions of children and their families.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. KAINE. Mr. President, in a moment, I am going to ask unanimous consent for the passage of S. Res. 473, and that is a resolution commemorating the seventh anniversary of the murder of Jamal Khashoggi and calling for accountability for his murder.
This resolution is to honor the life and the absolutely gruesome death of the Washington Post journalist and Virginia resident Jamal Khashoggi.
For those who are not aware of Jamal Khashoggi's story, he dedicated his life to uncovering the truth. His work shed light on the repressive nature of the Saudi Arabian Government, and it exposed him to great personal danger. He fled Saudi Arabia in 2017, and his family found a home in Northern Virginia.
The Khashoggi story is now, unfortunately, too well known. On October 2, 2018, Mr. Khashoggi was brutally murdered by the Saudi Government agents at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkiye--murdered within a consulate, a place that is supposed to be a safe haven. His body, by all accounts of the United States and other intelligence, was dismembered by those Saudi agents within the consulate.
Mr. Khashoggi was not killed because he committed a crime. He was killed for speaking the truth as a journalist and shining a spotlight on the repressive nature of the Saudi Arabian Government. He was killed for standing up for the rights of his fellow Saudi Arabians.
Mr. Khashoggi's death is not a mystery. This is not a cold case waiting to be solved. We know exactly who is responsible for this killing.
The U.S. Government's Office of the Director of National Intelligence, as well as other U.S. intelligence Agencies, determined the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, Muhammad bin Salman, or MBS as he is often referred to, approved an official governmental operation in Istanbul to capture or kill Jamal Khashoggi.
As a result of that operation approved by MBS, Mr. Khashoggi was ambushed as he went to the consulate to get some paperwork regarding his marriage. He was strangled, killed and his body was dismembered, and then evidence of that crime was attempted to be destroyed.
Seven years later, there has been no accountability for the person most responsible for the horrifying murder, no real justice for Jamal Khashoggi, no justice for his family, no justice for the many others who have raised their voices in Saudi Arabia and who, for something as simple as tweeting, are being threatened with execution.
Instead, the leader who approved the operation to kill Jamal Khashoggi, the man who is proud to oppress his own people, MBS, is being celebrated today at our White House. MBS was welcomed with a black-tie dinner. He is being offered F-35 fighter jets--one of the crowned jewels of our security apparatus over the open objections of our ally Israel and potentially in violation of the law. He is being offered extremely high-tech computer chips and other valuable U.S. technology. He is being offered a major mutual defense agreement.
It is, frankly, outrageous to me that the President of the United States would assert that American servicemembers should put their lives on the line to defend the oppressive regime in Saudi Arabia.
Yesterday, when President Trump was asked by a reporter from ABC about Jamal Khashoggi, he said ``a lot of people didn't like'' Jamal. He said, about the killing, ``things happen.'' Things like a gruesome strangling in an Embassy and the dismembering of a body of a journalist for the Washington Post with a bone saw--things happen.
And then our President threatened ABC's broadcast license because the reporter had the audacity to ask him a question he didn't like.
I have said it many times, and I am going say it again: Standing with this regime with no accountability for the murder of Jamal Khashoggi is not ``America First.'' It is not consistent with our values as a world- leading democracy.
I was very vocal in my frustration about this matter not only during President Trump's first term but also during President Biden's term. When President Biden visited Saudi Arabia in 2022 and fist-bumped with MBS, I was vocal in my dissatisfaction.
I was vocal in my disappointment over this effort when the Biden administration's State Department sided with MBS in his efforts to gain sovereign immunity in the United States to avoid accountability for this murder. I was frustrated when Biden administration Middle East policy officials left the White House in January of 2025 and in short order, started signing lucrative contracts with the Saudi Government.
And I continue to be appalled as the families of senior Trump administration officials--Kushner family, Witkoff family, and President Donald J. Trump's own children--signed major deals with the Saudi regime in cryptocurrency or real estate development.
Just a few days ago, on November 15, the New York Times reported that the Trump organization was in talks to bring Trump-branded property to one of Saudi Arabia's largest government-owned real estate development.
I have huge questions, as I think many Americans do, about whether the intertwining of cryptocurrency or real estate deals is behind the President's casual reference to ``things happen'' to whitewash and excuse the assassination and dismembering of a Washington Post journalist who lived in my State.
When the Saudi-backed LIV golf tour made overtures about maybe acquiring the PGA in 2023, there was bipartisan outrage about that. But I have heard little outrage from any of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle regarding MBS's visit.
Is the PGA more important, more worth raising concerns about than the transfer of F-35 jets to Saudi Arabia?
Shouldn't we ask: What is the Trump administration's priority? Is it democracy? Is it human rights? Is it national security? Or is it real estate or cryptocurrency deals that benefit family members of those in the administration?
Why is the administration willing to move so far to accommodate this regime, this individual, that our own intelligence Agencies have said is responsible for the murder of a Washington Post journalist who lives in my Commonwealth?
What is the United States getting from offering MBS all of this? Or is the United States getting anything? Is it instead individuals are getting their pockets filled at the expense of our Democratic human rights values?
Standing with Saudi Arabia against the interest of the American people, against our national security, against our human rights proclamations, against the security of our ally Israel, and against the freedom of the press right here at home is unconscionable.
Mr. President, I would like to ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Foreign Relations be discharged from further consideration and the Senate now proceed to S. Res. 473; further, that the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, and that the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Source