Ranking Member's Press

 WASHINGTON, D.C., Feb. 12 – A bipartisan group of senators on the Senate education committee, Senators Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.), Richard Burr (R-N.C.), and Michael Bennet (D-Colo.), today announced a report detailing ways Congress and the Department of Education could streamline and reduce federal...

    WASHINGTON, D.C., Feb. 11 – U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) released the following statement this evening on passage by the House Education and the Workforce Committee of a bill by Chairman John Kline (R-Minn.) to fix No Child Left Behind. “Chairman Kline has worked diligently in this Congress and in the last...

*** “I refer to this as the ambush election rule, because it forces a union election before an employer has a chance to figure out what is going on. Even worse, it jeopardizes employees' privacy by requiring employers to turn over employees’ personal information including email addresses, phone numbers, shift hours and locations to...

*** “From smallpox to polio, we have learned in the United States that vaccines save lives.  And yet a troubling number of parents are not vaccinating their children.”  –Lamar Alexander  WASHINGTON, D.C., Feb. 10, 2015 –U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), the chairman of the Senate health committee,...

WASHINGTON, Feb. 9 –  Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-Ohio), Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), Sen. Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.), Rep. John Kline (R-Minn.) and Rep. Phil Roe (R-Tenn.) today took the first step in stopping the National Labor Relations Board from implementing its “ambush...

WASHINGTON, D.C., Feb. 6 –U.S. Senate health committee Chairman Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) and Ranking Member Patty Murray (D-Wash.) today announced a bipartisan initiative focused on examining the security of health information technology and the health industry’s preparedness for cyber threats. Alexander: “Patients,...

   WASHINGTON, Feb. 6 – U.S. Senate education committee Chairman Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) and Ranking Member Patty Murray (D-Wash.) today released the following statement: “We’ve agreed to move forward to develop a bipartisan chairman’s mark to fix No Child Left Behind. Our staffs will begin working today with...

WASHINGTON, D.C., Feb. 5 –U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) today made the following statement on the announcement from Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner Margaret Hamburg that she plans to step down as commissioner at the end of March: "I am grateful to Dr. Hamburg for her leadership of the FDA. We worked together to find...

*** “The pending decision by the National Labor Relations Board would threaten this very American way of life, knocking the ladder out from under hundreds of thousands of Americans…”  –Lamar Alexander  WASHINGTON, D.C., Feb. 5, 2015 – U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), Chairman of the Senate labor...

Hearing scheduled for Tuesday, February 10, at 10 a.m.  WASHINGTON, D.C., Feb. 3, 2015 –U.S. Sens. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) and Patty Murray (D-Wash.), the Chairman and Ranking Member of the Senate health committee, today announced they will be holding a hearing Tuesday, Feb. 10, on vaccinations, in the wake of a multi-state...

Leaders of HELP Committee plan bipartisan working groups, series of hearings  WASHINGTON, Feb. 3 - Senators Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) and Patty Murray (D-Wash.), the Chairman and Ranking Member of the Senate HELP Committee, today announced they are launching a bipartisan initiative to examine the process for getting safe treatments, devices...

WASHINGTON, Feb. 3, 2015 – At a roundtable on fixing No Child Left Behind today, U.S. Senator Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), chairman of the Senate education committee, said the federal government ought to be an enabler and encourager, rather than a mandater, of state and local K-12 innovation. Today’s roundtable marked the 27th hearing in...

WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Mark Kirk (R-Ill.), along with Senators Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Michael Bennet (D-Utah) and today introduced S. 316, The Expanding Opportunities Through Quality Charter Schools Act, which streamlines existing Charter School Programs and provides startup, replication and expansion...

*** “We have a real opportunity to work together and get a result so that cutting-edge medicine begins reaching patients more quickly, while still preserving this nation’s gold standard for safety and quality …The President has recognized this, Chairman Upton in the House is working on this, and I have spoken with Secretary...

WASHINGTON – Republican leaders in the House and Senate today sent a letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Burwell amidst growing concerns about the security and privacy of consumer information shared on HealthCare.gov. This letter follows a September 17, 2014, letter to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services regarding...

Report details challenges to getting cutting-edge treatments, devices and cures to American patients  WASHINGTON, Jan. 29 – Senators Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) and Richard Burr (R-N.C.) today released a report on the challenges to getting safe treatments, devices and cures to patients more quickly and effectively, examining what is...

WASHINGTON - Today, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) and Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee Chairman Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) introduced the American Job Protection Act, a bill to repeal Obamacare’s job-killing employer mandate.  Under the President’s health law, businesses with 50...

*** “If we’re going to have a conversation in this country about enabling high-quality, lower-cost insurance, we should start with the roughly half of Americans who have health insurance through an employer.”  – Lamar Alexander  WASHINGTON, D.C., Jan. 29 –U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), the chairman of...

Bill makes research easier to access and more relevant at state, local levels WASHINGTON, January 28 – Senators Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), and Patty Murray (D-Wash.), the respective Chairman and Ranking Member of the Senate education committee, today announced that the committee passed legislation to improve the quality of education research...

WASHINGTON, D.C., Jan. 28 – Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee Chairman Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) and Ranking Member Patty Murray (D-Wash.) today announced assignments for the committee’s three subcommittees for the 114th Congress after committee members approved the subcommittees and rules in an executive...