Every Child Achieves Act of 2015--Continued

Floor Speech

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Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, one of the amendments that will be offered is an amendment I have submitted regarding a major crisis in this country that we don't talk about enough, and that is the frighteningly high rate of youth unemployment in America.

I am delighted that the Elementary and Secondary Education Act is on the floor for debate today, and I thank Senator Alexander and Senator Murray for their hard and constructive work on this important piece of legislation. In my State of Vermont, we have held town meetings on No Child Left Behind, and the people of Vermont want to leave No Child Left Behind very far behind. They want to get rid of it. They feel it has not been productive for our kids, and I think that sentiment exists all over the country. If we go forward on this legislation, I think we will be taking a very important step forward for the children of America.

When we talk about the needs of our young people, it is not just a dysfunctional child care system we talk about and the need to make sure working families all over this country have good-quality, affordable childcare; it is not simply that college is increasingly unaffordable for millions of working-class families; it is not just that the United States, tragically and embarrassingly, has the highest rate by far of childhood poverty of any major industrialized country on Earth. We talk about the future. We talk about family values. But the truth is that we have significantly ignored the needs of our children, and that is not what a great nation does--not a nation that looks forward to the future.

This country has to come to grips with the reality that we have not just a high rate of youth unemployment but a tragically high rate of youth unemployment in this country. This is an issue we don't discuss. It is literally swept under the rug. We have to bring it out in the open, we have to discuss it, and we have to address this issue.

Last month, the Economic Policy Institute released a new study about the level of youth unemployment in this country. This study took a close look at census data on unemployment among young people between 17 and 20 who are jobless, those who are working part time when they need a full-time job, and those who have given up looking for work altogether. The results of this study should concern everybody in our country and every Member of the Congress.

By the way, I have mentioned these facts in the past. PolitiFact, which seems to check every statement I make, checked it out, and they said these facts are basically accurate.

Here is what the Economic Policy Institute found. From April of 2014 to March of 2015, the average real unemployment rate for young White high school graduates between the ages of 17 and 20 was 33.8 percent. High school graduates, high school dropouts, White, 17 to 20--33.8 percent. The jobless figures for Hispanic kids in the same age group was 36.1 percent. And incredibly, the average real unemployment rate for African-American high school graduates was 51.3 percent. High school graduates or dropouts between the ages of 17 and 20, African American, over 50 percent unemployed or underemployed.

Today in America, over 5.5 million young people have either dropped out of high school or have graduated high school and do not have jobs. It is no great secret--not to any parent, not to any Member of the Senate--that when kids are not in school, when kids have no jobs, that is when kids get into trouble, when they get into drugs, when they get into self-destructive activity.

The result of kids not being in school and kids not having jobs is that tragically, today, we in this country have more people in jail than any other country on Earth, including China--a Communist authoritarian country with a population four times our size. We have more people in jail than China does. Incredibly, over 3 percent of our country's population is under some form of correctional control.

According to the NAACP, from 1980 to 2012, the number of people incarcerated in America quadrupled--quadrupled--from roughly 500,000 to 2.2 million people.

A January 2014 study published in the journal Crime & Delinquency found that almost half of Black males in the United States are arrested by the age of 23. That is an unbelievable statistic and a tragic statistic. If this current trend continues, one in four Black males born today can expect to spend time in prison during his lifetime. What a tragedy this is. We cannot ignore it. We have to deal with this reality.

But this crisis is not just a destruction of human life and of potential, it is also very costly to the taxpayers of our country. In America, we now spend nearly $200 billion on public safety, including $70 billion on correctional facilities each and every year.

It is beyond comprehension that we as a nation have not focused attention on the fact that millions of young people are unable to find work and begin their careers in a productive economy. That is what young people want to do. They want to get out, they want to get a job, they want to earn some money, they want to become independent from their parents, and they want to begin a career ladder, but for millions of these young people, that is not taking place today.

Let me be as clear as I can be. It makes a lot more sense for us to invest in jobs and education rather than in more and more incarceration and more and more jails. The time is long overdue for us to start investing in our young people, to help them get the jobs they need, to help them get the education they need.

This is not only saving human life; it is saving dollars. It is a very expensive proposition to put people into jail. Many people who go to jail come out of jail and go back to jail. They don't get jobs, and they don't pay taxes. Their lives are destroyed. Their families' lives are destroyed. It is high time we understood that. We have to invest in jobs, and we have to invest in education--not more jails, not more incarceration.

I have offered an amendment that will be voted upon, either today or tomorrow, that is pretty simple and pretty straight forward. It says to us that now is the time to keep kids out of jail, to get them jobs, and to get them an education. This amendment would simply provide $5.5 billion in immediate funding to States and cities throughout the country to create 1 million jobs for young Americans between the ages of 16 and 24. This amendment would also provide job opportunities for hundreds of thousands of young adults.

Frankly, this amendment doesn't go far enough, but it is an important start in trying to save the lives of countless numbers of young people who, if we do not address their needs, are going to end up in jail or with destroyed lives.

Specifically, under this amendment the U.S. Department of Labor would provide $4 billion in grants to States and local governments to provide summer and year-round employment opportunities for economically disadvantaged youth, with direct links to academic and occupational learning. This amendment would also make sure that young Americans have access to transportation and childcare services they may need in order to participate in job opportunities all over this country. This amendment would also provide $1.5 billion in competitive grants to local areas to provide work-based job training to low- and moderate-income youth and disadvantaged young adults.

I hope very much we can have bipartisan support for this amendment, because what we are talking about is not just saving countless numbers of lives and not just saving taxpayers a substantial sum of money. It is much more cost effective to invest in kids so they have productive lives rather than seeing them go into jail and into jail and into jail and see their families being destroyed. It is high time we addressed this issue. This amendment is an important first step. I look forward to seeing bipartisan support for it.

I yield the floor.

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