Bipartisan Call Heard: The House is Coming Back
August 4, 2010 by cmccabe
Filed under Featured News, Jobs, Top Stories, Uncategorized
By Cynthia McCabe
In the tweet heard ’round the education world, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi on Wednesday afternoon answered a bipartisan call from Senate leaders to bring her members back to Washington to save 161,000 educators’ jobs.
Senate Majority leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine), following their monumental vote this morning to move forward on a bill saving 161,000 educators’ jobs, urged their counterparts in the House to cut short their August recess. For President Obama to sign the bill in time for the start of the school year, the Senate must approve a similar version and the House must finalize that vote with its own.
This afternoon, Pelosi announced via Twitter, “I will be calling the House back into session early next week to save teachers’ jobs and help seniors & children.”
Supporters pointed out that the earlier that schools know the $10 billion in aid from H.R. 1586 is on the way and the earlier they can receive it, the better their chances of preventing or calling off layoffs. Also, enacting the education jobs fund now will be less disruptive than waiting until mid-September — when the House was originally scheduled to return from its recess.
(For the history buffs: this will mark the first time since the 20th Amendment was ratified in 1935 giving Congress’s leaders the right to reconvene either house “if the public interest shall require,” that it has been invoked, according to the Congressional Research Service.)
By a vote of 61-38 (with Sen. David Vitter, R-La., not voting) earlier today, senators approved cloture, which moves the legislation containing $10 billion for education jobs funding forward one step. Snowe and fellow Maine Sen. Susan Collins crossed party lines to vote in favor of the motion, on behalf of the nation’s public school children.
Within the hour, Snowe joined Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nevada) in calling for the members of the House to come back to Washington immediately to finalize the funding for education.
Secretary of Education Arne Duncan applauded the day’s events. From politico.com:
“It is a great vote for American children, It showed a lot of courage,” Duncan told POLITICO. “There were a lot of people of who given this up for dead. It shows you have to keep fighting and yes, I hope the House returns to get it done.”
Many parents and students return to schools across this country in the next few weeks and unless the bill is signed into law, they’ll find class sizes of 40, four-day school weeks, no after school programs, and fewer course selections.
Supporters are this week calling 1-866-608-6355, urging their senators to pass the bill including the education jobs funding. (Learn more about how NEA’s 3.2 million members and supporters are mobilizing to speak up for education and kids at EducationVotes.)
Related posts:
