Continuing Appropriations Act, and Health Extenders Act of

Floor Speech

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Mr. JONES. Mr. President, I am here once again to urge the Senate to take up the FUTURE Act, to extend funding for our historically Black colleges and universities.

I see my great friend, the Senator from Tennessee, across the way, and I know the Senator, as a music fan and a musician himself, understands the term ``broken record.'' A broken record is that record that is an old album and the vinyl has a little bit of a flaw, and it just gets stuck on the same lyric, the same refrain, and keeps going back to it. That is what I feel like today.

I also know that with just a little pressure on those old vinyl records, just a little bit of pressure, you can go right through that and get to melody. That is what I was hoping to do today, that we could put just enough pressure on the Senate and others to go right through and fund HBCUs. The deadline for that funding ends September 30.

People will say it is not going to turn the lights out in our historically Black colleges and universities, and it is not. I get that. We also know we have to plan. We have to look months in advance. We have to look a year in advance to make sure that funding is there.

This bill--a similar bill has passed the House of Representatives unanimously. In this partisan world we are living in, it passed the House unanimously the other day. It has overwhelming bipartisan support in this body.

This is something our historically Black colleges and universities need today. They don't need to wait. We don't need to put them in the lurch and uncertainty because in today's world in Washington, DC, there is no certainty. We don't know what will happen tomorrow. We don't know what is going to happen next week with the legislation that will come before this body. Nothing is predictable. We don't see the kind of legislation we should be seeing. We don't deliberate and have the kind of deliberations we have seen this body have in the past.

So to say we can put this together as part of a bigger bill and hopefully get this done this year is possible, but it is also just as possible, in today's world, that doesn't get done, that it ends up somewhere buried beneath a whole bunch of other qualified and just as meritorious bills that never see the action of the U.S. Senate or the Congress of the United States.

I would urge--urge that we do the right thing by our historically Black colleges and universities. Let's get this bill passed unanimously and sent to the President of the United States for his signature so all of our historically Black colleges and universities and minority- serving institutions can breathe a sigh of relief.

212, H.R. 2486; that the bill be considered read a third time and passed; and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate.

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