Education Jobs Package

Floor Speech

Mr. BENNET. Mr. President, I rise today to urge this body to get our priorities straight. During this trying moment for struggling families all over America, as we work to get our economic ship righted, it is our kids and schools that should be at the top of our list.

And moving forward with a more lasting agenda, this body must make good on our commitment to ensure that we leave more opportunity for our children than we ourselves have had. It starts with our commitment to education.

We have a very American responsibility--to set the table for our kids' futures; to prepare them for the competitive world that awaits them; and to enrich their lives with a better education than the one that was offered to us. This is our central calling.

As I have discussed many times before back in Colorado and here on the Senate floor, we must be willing to make the hard choices necessary to jumpstart our economy and put the country on a path that will return us to fiscal responsibility. This means recognizing how we got into this fiscal mess--by not paying for our priorities, not planning for future emergencies, taking on more than we can afford, and damaging, expensive bailouts.

Yet we cannot fight our way out of this fiscal hole riding on the backs of our kids. It is wrong, and it is a disservice to them.

I support legislation to preserve teacher jobs. And the full Senate must do the same. In so many areas, our children are taking the brunt of our economic downturn. School is one place we have to try to inoculate from economic hardship.

Hundreds of thousands of teachers across the country--including an estimated 3,000 teachers in Colorado--are in jeopardy of losing their jobs if we do not act. Districts have already cut their budgets substantially. The education jobs package would preserve thousands of these middle-class jobs.

I am the first person to say that we cannot simply continue to do the same thing in education and expect a different result. We need to improve the system so it does a better job of supporting our teachers and educating students.

However, we cannot stand by while schools are devastated by layoffs. Allowing this would be a shortsighted blow against our communities.

The education jobs package would keep people working, and ensure that students can continue learning. This will actually spur economic recovery in the short run, preserving thousands of good jobs, and by laying the groundwork for our kids' success, it would foster prosperity in the long run.

Preserving teaching jobs is a commonsense investment. Yet inside the Beltway the livelihood of our teachers has become a political pawn. We have seen people using this money as a negotiating tool. And we have seen people force false choices between jobs and critical education reforms. Let's not play politics with our children's future.

I call on our colleagues to move quickly to pass an education jobs package and keep our teachers in the classroom so our kids have the tools they need to succeed.

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