Ensuring Tax Exempt Organizations the Right to Appeal Act--Motion to Proceed--Continued

Floor Speech

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Mr. SCOTT. Mr. President, today is the National Day of Prayer. It is a day where we as a nation have an opportunity simply to get on our knees and ask God for Divine intervention and ask the Lord for help.

Our Nation is, indeed, an amazing nation, a great nation, a nation with a destiny. I think it is important for us to take the time to remind ourselves, as part of the foundation of this very Nation, that there is a foundation of faith.

As I think about that foundation of faith and the need for prayer, it is hard not to remember that the last year has proven to be a difficult time for low-income communities and minority communities throughout this country. It is time for us to have a national conversation about solving some of the problems that we see arising in communities around the Nation. Whether those communities are in Ferguson or Baltimore, Ohio or Oklahoma or in my hometown of North Charleston, SC, finding solutions is critical.

I believe that a part of the puzzle includes body cameras to be worn by our officers. Body cameras are simply not a fantasy but a part of a larger puzzle to provide solutions to communities that are distressed. I know firsthand that the solutions in my Opportunity Agenda work.

As a kid growing up in a single parent household, I drifted in the wrong direction. I struggled in school. I had a difficult time. I was a hopeless kid in a challenging situation. I will state that as I look around the Nation, many of the challenges we see today are kids just like me, growing up in places like where I grew up, looking for hope, looking for leadership.

I believe that embedded in my Opportunity Agenda we have some of the solutions that can help heal and restore as well as direct and instruct these communities into places of hope and opportunity. I believe that too often we see impoverished communities and distressed communities as high-risk communities. I prefer to see them as high-potential communities, communities where greatness breeds and lives. We just need to find an avenue to harness the potential and move forward.

I am hopeful that as we focus on the issues that are embedded in the Opportunity Agenda--issues such as education, and I mean a quality education in every ZIP Code in America and that we should have high-performing schools in those ZIP Codes. That includes school choice, whether it is charter or virtual or home schools or public schools. We need to have a serious and robust conversation about school choice.

Work skills are so important. In so many of these communities the unemployment rate is over 30 percent--a 30-percent unemployment rate. We can challenge those statistics by looking at the work skills and also by looking at apprenticeship programs, where you can earn and learn at the exact same time. We are breathing new hope into these communities. I also think that when we think about the future, we must think about the chance to save the future of so many of these young kids who may be losing hope in our country, who may be losing hope in their communities, and perhaps losing hope in themselves.

We have a chance to make a difference in this next generation.

I thank Senator Grassley, our chairman of the Judiciary Committee, along with Senator Graham, our subcommittee chair, for agreeing to hold a hearing on the use of body cameras in the next few weeks. I believe the hearing on body cameras will produce important information on how we can deal with some of the challenges in some of our distressed communities.

I believe we can find ways to restore hope and create opportunities for every single child in America.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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