Not smooth sailing . . .

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The Harkin/Enzi bill I shared in my last post not only has detractors in the education community, it is experiencing problems in the committee debating the bill. Though it underwent revisions last weekend it is not being embraced by all senators. Senator Rand Paul used a procedural rule to force a temporary adjournment of the committee’s proceedings. It didn’t cause significant delay because the chair, Senator Harking was going to reconvene the committee and continue discussions this morning. He was, however, not pleased with Senator Paul’s action.


“We had hearings with superintendents, teachers, principals, broad input from across America,” Harkin said. “Does that mean every two years we have to start from scratch every time? The senator from Kentucky had every day since he was sworn in in January to come to me or Senator Enzi and say, ‘Here’s what I’d like to have in the bill.’ Other senators did that. Our doors are open. It was no secret that we were meeting. . . . If the senator filed 74 amendments but is objecting to our meeting to even consider his amendments, can please someone explain the logic of that?”

Senator Paul, who proposed 74 of the 144 amendments to the bill, used the words below to explain his concerns with the bill. I don’t know much about the federal legislation process, but 144 amendments seems like quite a number to process before the bill can even be considered on the Senate floor.

“This process is rotten from the top to the bottom,” said Paul, who was elected last year with support from the tea party. “I would ask that we have a hearing; let’s find out what we think of No Child Left Behind before we rush through a 868-page bill that no one has time to read. This is what’s wrong with Washington.”

This push back to the legislation is another indicator of the unlikelihood of seeing any reauthorization of IDEA emerge from this session. So, once again, the Obama waiver process appears to be the viable options for states as we get closer the 2014 100% at standard deadline. By the way, our state is one that has indicated to the federal education department an interest in seeking a waiver.

Reading deeper into my stack of RSS feeds I found an update at Education Week. It seems that Senator Paul has reached a compromise with Senate leadership.

The markup continued today after Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., initially threw up hurdles, filing 74 amendments and using a rare procedural move to limit the time the committee could debate the bill. He and committee leaders reached an agreement that allowed things to move forward while assuring him of a hearing on the bill Nov. 8, before it goes to the Senate floor.


Sen. Paul eventually agreed to scale his amendments back to just a handful, including one to repeal the No Child Left Behind Act. That amendment failed.

Looking more closely at the Republican motivation for this legislation can be found in the bill’s co-sponsor Senator Enzi.

Sen. Mike Enzi, R-Wyo., was more forceful. In fact, he cited the waiver process as a key reason the committee needed to get going on the bill. GOP lawmakers should "keep in mind that if they are concerned about an unelected, unaccountable bureaucracy becoming a kind of national school board, they should support the legislation rather than allow the secretary's waivers to dictate the strings that come with state and local flexibility," Enzi said.

The question, however, remains the same. Is there enough bipartisan support to push through this legislation by December? Even if the Senate were successful there is still the divide between the house and senate approaches to removing NCLB as the federal education focus.