Statements on Introduced Bills and Joint Resolution

Floor Speech

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Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, today, Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina and I have introduced the School Choice Now Act, which does two things: It protects students who have been attending private schools from the heartbreaking loss of scholarships, and it gives families more options for their children's education at a time that school is more important than ever.

I have been working to find ways to help parents pursue the education that best meets their child's needs for a long time, since 1979, when I began to be the Governor of Tennessee.

In 1986, we Governors got together in something called Time for Results. I was chairman of the National Governors Association. The vice chairman was the Arkansas Governor, Bill Clinton, and we devoted the Governors' attention for an entire year to one subject--education.

There were six points. One of those points way back then was to find ways to give parents more choices of schools for their children.

Then, later on, in 1992, when President George H.W. Bush was in office and I was Education Secretary, I helped the President develop something we called the GI Bill for Kids, which was Federal funds for a $1,000 scholarship to work with cities and States, like Milwaukee in Wisconsin, that were trying to give low-income families more choices of good schools for their children.

Then, my last act as Education Secretary was to notice what they call start-from-scratch schools in Minnesota, created by the Democratic- Farmer-Labor Party. There were about a dozen of them, as I remember, and I wrote every school district in the country and asked them to start one of these start-from-scratch schools, which were the forerunners of today's public charter schools. Today, we have 7,500 public charter schools.

Then, in 2004, I tried something I called the Pell Grant for Kids, a $500 scholarship that would follow every middle- and low-income child in America to an accredited program of their choosing.

Some people said: Wait a minute. You can't call the Pell grant a voucher.

I said: That is precisely what the Pell grant is. The Pell grant is a voucher that a college student can take to any accredited college-- public, private, or religious. Why can't we do that for elementary and secondary schools?

In 2005, we had a hurricane named Katrina, creating devastation on the gulf coast, and Senator Ted Kennedy and I and Senator Landrieu and others worked together to provide 1.2 billion Federal dollars in one- time emergency assistance for the 2005-2006 school year so students enrolled in public or nonpublic schools--children who were displaced by the hurricane--could enroll in public or private schools while their families recovered. They got scholarships of up to $6,000.

And, more recently, I suggested a Scholarship for Kids Act. I said: Why don't we give a State like Tennessee, Ohio, or North Dakota, the opportunity to take most of the Federal dollars and turn them into scholarships for the lowest income students in their State? That scholarship would amount to $2,100 if we just took the existing money we had and spent it that way.

So that is the strategy that we followed in this country for many, many years, ever since 1944, with the GI bill for veterans.

We all remember what that was. The veterans came home and a grateful nation gave them a scholarship and said: Take it anywhere you want, to any college or accredited school. Take it to Notre Dame, take it to Yeshiva, take it to a historically Black college, take it to Ohio State, take it to Tennessee, take it to the Presbyterian school.

And they have done that, and the GI bill may be one of the most certainly successful pieces of legislation ever enacted.

Last year, there were over $28 billion in Federal Pell grants and more than $91 billion in Federal loans that followed students to public and private colleges of their choice.

Now, the Federal Government also provides vouchers to help pay for childcare. The Child Care and Development Block Grant was negotiated by John Sununu when he was Chief of Staff for H.W. Bush in 1990, and what that does is basically give money to States, and States then give vouchers, just like Pell grants for college, but they give them to working moms, and they can go pick the childcare center that is best for their child.

The Federal Government, in 2019, provided $8.7 billion and States another $1.2 to provide vouchers to 1.3 million children.

So I think you can see where I am going with this. It is that the idea of giving parents choices of schools is not a new idea. We have done it in colleges since 1944. We do it with childcare. We do it in community colleges. Why not do it for elementary and secondary education? Why not give low-income families more of the same choices of good schools that wealthy families have?

Now, during COVID-19, children in all K-12 schools have been affected by the disease. There are 100,000 public schools across our country serving 50 million students. That are another 35,000 private schools serving 5 million students. Many of those schools, public and private, are choosing not to reopen in person this fall.

Many schools are failing to provide high-quality distance learning. The students who will suffer the most from this are the low-income children--the children from families where both parents work away from home every day or where the only parent works away from home every day, children with no internet, families who can't afford to put a child in a private school if the public school is not open.

These are the parents who have the greatest need and the children who have the greatest need. We should address that need as we think about how to deal with COVID-19.

Just as more families need more options, there are fewer scholarships available to help them choose private schools because there has been less charitable giving as a result of the pandemic.

So for low-income students attending private schools on a scholarship, that can mean a heartbreaking end to their time at school and a transfer to a new school that may not meet their needs at all.

That is why Senator Scott and I and others of us recommend that Congress first provide sufficient funding for all of our schools-- 100,000 public schools and 35,000 private--so they can safely open this fall with as many students physically present as possible.

I have suggested that the cost of this to the taxpayers could be as much as $70 billion. The House of Representatives has appropriated $58 billion.

If Congress were to agree on the higher number, $70 billion, that would be about $1,200 for every one of the 55 million public and private school students in the country

The School Choice Now Act that Senator Scott and I are offering is about the 5.7 million of those 55 million children who attend the 35,000 nonpublic, private, or religious schools. It provides scholarships to students to have the opportunity to return to the private school they attended before the pandemic and gives other students a new opportunity to attend private school by doing two things: One, providing one-time emergency funding for scholarship- granting organizations. These are nonprofits that do the important work of helping students attend private schools in each State. These scholarship-granting organizations will use this one-time funding to provide families with direct educational assistance, including private school tuition as well as homeschooling expenses.

No. 2, this act would provide permanent dollar-for-dollar Federal tax credits for contributions to those scholarship-granting organizations. What this means is that any American taxpayer who makes a charitable donation to one of these nonprofits that provide scholarships to students will receive a credit on their Federal taxes equal to the amount the taxpayer donated. The same goes for private companies that make donations to these organizations.

The School Choice Now Act is not a Federal mandate. States are free to create their own tax credit scholarship programs that work for the unique needs of students in their States. States that don't want to support scholarships to private schools are not required to accept these funds. They can be returned to the Secretary, and the funds will be redistributed to States that want the funds.

This bill is about one of the great principles of what it means to be an American: the principle of equal opportunity. For me, equal opportunity means creating an environment in which the largest number of people can begin at the starting line. When everyone is at the starting line in America, anything is possible. Giving children more opportunity to attend a better school is the real answer to inequality in America

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