Providing for Consideration of H.R. Parents Bill of Rights Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. NEGUSE. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman, my colleague from Pennsylvania, for yielding.

Mr. Speaker, like many of my colleagues here in this Chamber, I am blessed to be a parent. My wife and I are proud parents of a 4-year-old daughter, and we are deeply invested in her education and ensuring that she has the ability to be able to live her dreams. Mr. Speaker, you can imagine my surprise and my disappointment when I learned that the Republicans, our colleagues on the other side of the aisle, would be spending our time today on this bill, the politics over parents act.

It is a surprise because for so many years my colleagues on the other side of the aisle have bemoaned the role of the Federal Government in public education.

They have lectured us about local control time and time again, and yet here they stand with a bill to impose a variety of unfunded mandates on school districts across the country and eroding local control, as my colleague from Ohio (Mr. Landsman) articulated.

I am disappointed because these unfunded mandates are so disconnected from the real concerns and fears that parents in my district back home in Colorado are experiencing every day.

Just yesterday the Denver metro area in Colorado was frozen with fear at the news of another incident of gun violence in one of our schools. At East High School, two teachers were wounded, one of them critically. This came on the heels just 2 weeks ago of the tragic death of a 16- year-old student at East High School as a result of gun violence. Our prayers, our thoughts, and our hearts go out to him, his family, his friends, and all the students and the parents who have been impacted in just the last 14 days as yet another incident of gun violence tears our community apart.

That is what parents in Colorado are concerned about. They are concerned about their students--their children--coming home from school alive. They are concerned about the ability of children to be able to get a quality education and not go hungry, to not be poisoned by lead pipes in some of the dilapidated buildings in rural and urban communities across our country, and about the cost of childcare.

Mr. Speaker, that is what they are concerned about.

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Mr. NEGUSE. Mr. Speaker, that is what parents and families are concerned about back in Colorado.

So, Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to oppose this rule so that we can get on to the business of addressing those concerns I have articulated on behalf of parents and families across our great country.

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