Providing For Further Consideration Of H.R. 5, Student Success Act, And Providing For Consideration Of H.R. 2647, Resilient Federal Forests Act of 2015

Floor Speech

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Mr. SCALISE. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding.

I rise in support not only of the rule, but of the underlying legislation with reforms that are included not only in the bill, but in the amendments that are coming forward in this rule.

I first want to commend Chairman Kline and his staff for working over the last few months with many members of our Conference that had some real issues they wanted to see addressed in the bill. I want to talk about a few of those, specifically, the Salmon amendment that this rule makes in order that brings forward the ability for parents to opt out of testing in a way that doesn't impact the local school system.

This comes down to a question of whether or not you trust parents to make the right decisions for their children in making real reforms that give parents more control, getting Washington out of those decisions and allowing local innovation to move forward, and allowing parents to make those decisions about what is best for their children. So the Salmon amendment does that. I strongly support it, and I know Chairman Kline supports it as well.

I want to also point out the Rokita-Grothman amendment. This is an amendment, again, that Chairman Kline worked very closely with a number of our members on to bring forward to reduce the timeframe of the authorization. Instead of a 6-year authorization, it would be a 4-year authorization to give an opportunity to let the next administration put their own prints on what they want to see in terms of education reform while allowing these other reforms to move forward. That is an amendment that Chairman Kline supports, as I do, and, hopefully, gets added to the bill.

The third amendment I want to talk about is the Zeldin amendment. This is an amendment that gets the Federal Government out of Common Core, not only financially, but also taking the ability away from the Secretary of the Department to use things like Common Core as a bludgeon when they are determining whether or not to approve waivers. So I think it is very important to get the Federal Government out of those decisions of Common Core, and that is what the Zeldin amendment does.

And then, finally, the Walker amendment, allowing a vote on A-PLUS, is something that I support, and I am glad that that is in the rule as well.

So many good reforms, not only with the amendments, but with the underlying bill, to give parents more control and get the Federal Government out of those decisions, really good legislation to advance conservative causes in letting innovation happen at the local level.

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