by Al Franken
I have tremendous admiration for Lamar Alexander. Time and again, he’d call a hearing, and the night before, I’d read through the testimony of the next day’s witnesses, only to discover that one after another was planning to say something I knew Lamar didn’t agree with. In other words, he was willing to call witnesses who offered opposing views—and he always listened carefully.*
The bill we passed in 2015 represented the 80 percent (or 64 percent) that Senate Republicans and Democrats finally realized we agreed on. Schools would still have to test every year between third and eighth grade and once in high school. But each state would control its own testing, and that would almost certainly mean fewer high-stakes tests.
Meanwhile, we would invest more in early childhood education, which Democrats liked. But not enough, which Republicans liked. But everyone got to say that we’d done something about early childhood education, which everyone liked, because the impact is so clear.
Inequality in education starts early, and it starts at home. A study by the University of Kansas found that by the time she is three years old, a child who grows up in a home on welfare will hear thirty million fewer words than a child who grows up in the home of a professional family.* Words like “portfolio” and “equestrian.”
We know that kids who have had a quality early childhood education are less likely to be placed in special education, less likely to be left back a grade, more likely to have better health outcomes, less likely to get pregnant in adolescence, more likely to graduate from high school, more likely to go to college, more likely to get a good job, and less likely to go to prison. The return on investment in quality early childhood education can be as high as sixteen dollars for every dollar spent.
If we really wanted to address future deficits, we would be pouring money into training early childhood educators. Didn’t happen here, though.
The law we passed put more funding into after-school programs. More funding into school counselors. More funding for mental health in schools. Although not enough of any of it.
There was also more (but not enough) funding for STEM skills—science, technology, engineering, and math—which are necessary for so many twenty-first-century jobs.
When I think about after-school programs and STEM skills, I don’t just think of the academic literature on school achievement. I think of First Robotics. In First Robotics, high school teams build and program robots to compete against other schools in a complex game, which changes every year—like hitting a target with a Frisbee and climbing a jungle gym. Believe it or not, there are now more high school First Robotics teams in Minnesota than boys’ varsity hockey teams.
When the team from East Duluth finished tenth in the world championships a few years ago, I went up to highlight their achievement at an auto body shop where they were building their new robot. The fabrication co-captain, a sophomore named Anna Karas, introduced me to the programming co-captain, the business co-captain, and the media co-captain. Then Anna did an interview with the three Duluth camera crews that showed up for the event.
“What does it mean to you that three cameras are here today?” one of the producers asked.
“It’s very in line with our media strategy,” Anna answered.
I don’t worry about Anna. With millions of self-replicating tireless robots as her obedient slaves, there is almost no limit to what she can accomplish in the future.
A number of my amendments didn’t make it into the bill. Take, for example, my Student Non-Discrimination Act. SNDA would give LGBT students the same rights that students have on the basis of race, disability, and gender, including the private right of action (the right to sue). There has been an epidemic of bullying of LGBT students across our country. Many LGBT kids have committed suicide. Thirty percent of LGBT students report missing a day of school in the last month because they’re afraid.
For years, I tried and failed to get a Republican cosponsor. One night, I called a good Republican friend of mine.
ME: My amendment gives LGBT kids and their parents a private right of action.
COLLEAGUE: Well, the kids will just act more gay so they can sue.
ME: Oh, no. No. No. That’s not what would happen.
COLLEAGUE: You just watch!
ME [silently]: Oy.
But there’s one amendment that I did get through that I am as proud of as anything I’ve done in the Senate.
It’s not uncommon for foster children to have ten, eleven, twelve sets of foster parents during their childhood. This wreaks havoc on their education. If a child’s new foster parents live in a different school district, the foster child is yanked out of school and sent to one in the new school district. Sometimes the kids fall through the cracks. Kayla VanDyke, an impressive high school senior from Minnesota who had been in seven foster homes, testified to the HELP Committee that she had missed fourth grade entirely.
For foster kids, school is often the one constant in their lives. Maybe they have a teacher they really like. Or an extracurricular activity that means everything to them. Or maybe, maybe they have these things called friends.
My amendment was simple. It allowed foster kids to choose to stay in their school if they wanted to. That meant the school district and local social services would have to find a way to pay for the transportation. At first, almost all of my Republican colleagues were against it. After all, it was a federal mandate, requiring local school districts to spend money. But after six years of talking to my colleagues one-on-one, they had come to see the wisdom of my proposal. The amendment passed overwhelmingly and became part of the new law.
I like to think that somewhere there’s a foster child running cross-country, or developing a passion for history because of a great teacher, or doing homework with a good friend, because of the legislation I worked hard on—legislation that passed with a strong bipartisan majority.
And my fervent hope is that that kid will grow up to run for the Senate as a Democrat and knock off a Republican incumbent.
If we want to help kids, especially kids who don’t have all the advantages that I had, and that my kids had, and that my grandkids are going to have, then one education bill isn’t going to do it.
And just focusing on education itself isn’t enough. For example, kids who grow up poor are far more likely to suffer what are called “adverse childhood experiences”: not just the stress of living in poverty itself, but domestic violence, abuse or neglect, the incarceration of a parent, the death of a sibling—all of which affect brain chemistry and the ability to learn. If we want to improve education, we need to do a better job of helping these kids overcome these traumas—and a better job of addressing economic inequality so that fewer have to deal with trauma in the first place.
Which means we need to create more prosperity, and do it in a way where everybody gets to prosper. Which means we need to invest in our infrastructure, and in research and development, and in innovative technologies, and in our workforce, and, most of all, in our kids.
Which would be a hell of a lot easier if our political system wasn’t broken. And it’s going to be hard to unbreak it as long as Republicans continue to hold a lot of power.
It would be great if, someday soon, we had a Democratic president, and a Democratic House, and a filibuster-proof Democratic majority in the Senate. Or, really, any of those things. And a huge part of what all of us have to do from here on out is to fight back to win back the country, up and down the ballot. We have to organize from the grassroots on up, we have to make our case to the public, and we have to go on offense.
But in the meantime, on Capitol Hill, I still believe that the 64 Percent Rule applies. Just because we’re out of power doesn’t mean we abdicate our responsibility to try to improve people’s lives. That’s what makes us Democrats. It’s what makes us worth electing in the first place.
Of course, now that Donald Trump is president, even 64 percent might be a little optimistic. I figure we’re going to spend some portion of our time tr
ying to stop him from giving Alaska back to the Russians. Let’s say we spend 60 percent of our time on stuff like that instead of making progress.
Doing the math, that means we’re down to, let me see, 64 percent times the remaining 40 percent… Okay, 25.6 percent. But I’m an optimist. So let’s round up: 26 percent.
And, of course, our new secretary of education is a right-wing ideologue who hates public schools. So maybe education isn’t going to be in that 26 percent for a while. But something else will be. I can’t think of anything right now. ISIS? Opioids? Cybersecurity? Sentencing reform? Maybe that Victor Borge stamp from a couple of chapters ago? There’s plenty to choose from.
Chapter 36
My Republican Friends
Okay, maybe 26 percent is a little high. Maybe it’s more like 20 percent. Or 15. Or maybe you’re just a total pessimist and you think it’s closer to 2 percent.
But even if 98 percent of the time we’re at an impasse, there’s progress to be made in that 2 percent.
Remember how my dad’s quilting factory failed because the railroad wouldn’t stop in Albert Lea to pick up his goods to bring to market? That’s an example of something called “captive shipping.” In much of America, railroads enjoy a monopoly and are able to charge farmers and manufacturers exorbitant prices to carry their products. If you don’t pay, the railroad doesn’t stop, and you have to move to St. Louis Park to become a printing salesman.
The Surface Transportation Board (STB) has jurisdiction over railroads. And just as George W. Bush invaded Iraq to avenge his own father, I wanted to make it easier for someone who had been the victim of captive shipping to do something about it. When I first got to the Senate, it cost $20,000 to lodge a complaint with the STB. If you’re a small farmer watching freight trains zip through your community without stopping because you can’t afford to pay monopoly prices to the railroad, you tend not to have $20,000 lying around.
I wanted to put pressure on the STB to lower the fee for lodging a complaint. But as is almost always the case, the odds of success were going to be far higher if I had a Republican partner.
Which is how I ended up working with David Vitter, an extremely conservative Republican with whom I almost never agreed and whose personal conduct I was, um, repulsed by.* Together, David and I got the STB to lower the fee to $350. And then we went back to voting against each other all the time.
I’ve worked with John Boozman from Arkansas on improving health care for veterans. I’ve worked with Deb Fischer from Nebraska on increasing access to rural broadband. I’ve worked with Bill Cassidy from Louisiana on addiction issues. I’m working right now with Thom Tillis from North Carolina on funding housing and wraparound services for people with mental illness.
They’re all extremely conservative Republicans who I’m sure don’t want me to say anything good about them. And make no mistake, I hope they get beat in their next elections.
But they’re there right now! And just as part of my job is standing my ground against all the terrible things they want to do, part of it is looking for opportunities to find common ground, because that’s how stuff gets done.
You see, there are only a hundred of us senators. And none of us can do the job without working with the other ninety-nine.
Mike Mansfield had a saying: “It only takes one senator to make a scene. But it takes more than one to make a difference.”
Okay, he never said that. I made it up. But if he had, it certainly would have made my point. Which is that, sure, a lone senator can hold things up with a filibuster or some other procedural maneuver. But actually passing legislation takes teamwork.
Very often, the only way a bill stands a chance is if you can find a cosponsor in the other party, to make it bipartisan. Sometimes you have a regional issue that requires you to cooperate with colleagues from neighboring states, even if you and said colleagues don’t see eye-to-eye on pretty much anything. For example, there’s a history of flooding in the Red River Valley between Minnesota and North Dakota, so it’s really important that North Dakota Republican John Hoeven and I be able to work together to fight for flood mitigation funding.
That’s why we have all these unwritten rules, like addressing each other as “my esteemed colleague” even when we may in fact esteem each other very little. It’s why you’re not supposed to smirk or roll your eyes when someone else is giving a speech on the floor and you’re presiding. That would be a real jerk move.
And it’s why, as silly as it may sound, it’s important that we try to like each other. That’s right: like each other. Not just the Lamar Alexander types, either. In my view, you’ve got to build friendships with the Jeff Sessions types, too. Like, for example, with Jeff Sessions.
When I first got to the Senate, Jeff was the ranking member of the Judiciary Committee, and I made it a point to go to every hearing, no matter how perfunctory. Often we’d have a nomination hearing for a judge whose confirmation was completely noncontroversial, and it would be just the chairman (Patrick Leahy), Jeff, and me.
I wasn’t just there because I had nothing else to do. I was there to prove that I had come to the Senate to work, not to be a clown. And Jeff took notice. He saw me show up for every hearing. He heard me take the responsibility of questioning nominees seriously. And even though he probably agreed with literally nothing I said, he quickly grew to like the cut of my jib.
A few weeks in, Chairman Leahy had to miss a hearing, so he asked me to fill in. I arrived early, and when Jeff got there he saw me sitting in the chairman’s seat, holding the gavel.
“Well,” exclaimed Jeff in his thick southern drawl. “A meteoric rise!”
“And well deserved,” I replied in my nasal midwestern Jewish twang. Jeff laughed. He’s been an easy laugh for me ever since. Except at his confirmation hearing.
Anyway, the point is, Jeff liked me. And here’s why I like him.
A few years later, the Judiciary Committee was holding a hearing on a Dianne Feinstein bill to protect American citizens apprehended within the United States on terrorism charges from being detained indefinitely without a trial.
One of the witnesses was Steven Bradbury, a lawyer who had written one of the Bush administration memos inventing some flimsy legal rationale for torture, thus contributing to the decline of our reputation on the world stage, inflaming anti-American sentiment in the Middle East, and putting our troops in more danger.
I wasn’t really interested in hearing this guy’s thoughts on due process. And I told him so. “It’s very difficult for me, frankly, to rely on your legal opinion today,” I said, suggesting that someone with his record had no business testifying before the committee.
It was pretty aggressive by Senate committee standards. So aggressive, in fact, that my questioning really offended some of the Republicans on the committee.
But I didn’t know that until Jeff was kind enough to call me and give me a heads-up that I should probably cool it for a little while. It was a nice thing to do. I had had no idea that I was digging myself such a hole with my colleagues by teeing off on this ghoul, and I really appreciated that Jeff was gracious enough to clue me in so I could back off a bit.
When Trump won the election and nominated Jeff to be attorney general, it was time for me to return the favor by setting aside my very real concerns about his record and the Trump administration’s plans for the Department of Justice and just waving his nomination through.
No. Of course not. Being a senator does mean finding a way to make friends with people you’re fighting against with every fiber of your being. But it also means finding a way to fight with every fiber of your being against people you’re friends with.
I rarely voted with Jeff when he was a senator. And that’s fine. Senators disagree. But I knew that as attorney general he would represent a clear and present danger to the civil rights of millions of Americans. And his confirmation hearing would be my opportunity to raise that alarm. Which I did, without apology, calling him out for overst
ating his involvement in civil rights cases and holding his feet to the fire on Donald Trump’s fearmongering about voter fraud (which, of course, is nothing more than a pretext for voter suppression). And then I voted against him.
Jeff Sessions is my friend (or was). Franni is friends with his wife, Mary. When our grandson, Joe, was born, Mary knit him a baby-blue blanket, which became his favorite.
It’s hard to unfairly demonize someone whose wife knit your grandson his favorite blankie. Which is why when my job meant doing everything in my power to deny my friend this important position, I was relieved that there was so much to fairly demonize him for.
For my part, I’ve tried to create more opportunities for us senators to be nice to each other. For example, at any given time we have thirty or so pages working in the Senate. Pages are high school juniors—sixteen-year-old kids—who come to Washington to spend months helping out with day-to-day operations in the Senate chamber. They all live together in a dorm. And if I were the parent of one of them, I realized, I would want to know that senators were keeping an eye out for them and helping them to have a positive experience.
So Franni and I teamed up with Mike and Diana Enzi to start a tradition of throwing pizza parties and ice-cream socials for these kids. Pages are generally not allowed to initiate conversations with senators, so Mike and I give them an opportunity to ask us questions like, “Is being a senator as much fun as being on Saturday Night Live?” or, in Mike’s case, “Is being a senator as much fun as being an accountant?”
Another initiative I spearheaded, over the repeated and grumpy objections of Harry Reid, was our annual Senate Secret Santa. I modeled it after the Secret Santa we had back in elementary school in St. Louis Park. The idea was that every kid would get a gift, but also that every kid would have to learn something about someone they maybe didn’t know and do a nice thing for them. I figured it would be a fun, bipartisan thing for us to do, and because every senator who participated would get a present, no senator would get his or her feelings hurt.
