Ranking Member's Press

WASHINGTON, D.C., July 17 – Senate health committee Chairman Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), Ranking Member Patty Murray (D-Wash.), with Senate health committee members, Sens. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), and Senate Special Committee on Aging Chairman Susan Collins (R-Maine) commended Senate passage yesterday of the Older...

Thank you, Andrew. It’s great to be here. It’s great to be at AEI, an organization for which I have lots of respect. I also have great respect for our institutions for higher education. As Dr. Kelly said, I was once president of the University of Tennessee. That’s harder than it looks. I remember on my first day on campus a...

WASHINGTON, D.C., July 16 – The Senate today passed by a vote of 81 to 17 the Every Child Achieves Act, the bipartisan agreement by Senate education committee Chairman Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) and Ranking Member Patty Murray (D-Wash.) to fix the No Child Left Behind law, which is seven years overdue. Alexander said: “Last week,...

WASHINGTON, D.C., July 10 – Senate health committee Chairman Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) released the following statement today on House passage of the 21st Century Cures Act:   “The House has worked diligently on its legislation to spur innovation and reform the Food and Drug Administration and National Institutes of...

“Not only is there consensus about the need to fix No Child Left Behind, there’s also remarkable consensus about how to fix it. That consensus is this: Continue the law’s important measurements of academic progress of students but restore to states, school districts, classroom teachers and parents the responsibility for deciding...

WASHINGTON, D.C., July 10 – Senate health committee Chairman Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) today made the following statement on the nomination of Andy Slavitt to head the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services:  “I will be interested in hearing from Mr. Slavitt whether he is ready to work with Congress to make the...

WASHINGTON, D.C., July 9 – Senate education committee Chairman Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) today released the following statement on House passage of legislation to fix No Child Left Behind:  “Newsweek magazine calls No Child Left Behind ‘the education law everyone wants to fix,’ so it’s hard to overstate...

MYTH: The Every Child Achieves Act allows for federal involvement in state standards. FACT: FALSE. The bill explicitly prohibits any federal involvement with State standards. The HELP Committee incorporated language from bills introduced by Sen. Pat Roberts and Sen. David Vitter that prevents the Secretary from reviewing state standards,...

 “This is a real answer to inequality in America: giving more children more opportunity to attend a better school.” – Lamar Alexander WASHINGTON, D.C., July 8 – Senate education committee Chairman Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) today offered an amendment (Click HERE for video) to the bill being debated by the...

WASHINGTON, D.C., July 7 - Senate labor committee Chairman Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) today made the following statement on the National Labor Relations Board’s (NLRB) announcement that it would suspend its call for briefs on whether employees in right-to-work states should be forced to pay union fees, even if they are not a member...

WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Senators Pat Roberts, R-Kan., and Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., today sent a letter to U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack and to U.S. Secretary of Health & Human Services Sylvia Burwell, urging them to base the final 2015 Dietary Guidelines for Americans on “sound scientific evidence and medical...

WASHINGTON, D.C., July 7 – As the United States Senate today began debate on his and Sen. Patty Murray’s (D-Wash.) bipartisan bill to fix No Child Left Behind, Chairman Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) today said the bill reflects the shared belief by both Democrats and Republicans that lawmakers should respect the judgments of those...

           Before the Democratic Leader leaves the floor, in a few moments, the Senator from Washington and I will make our opening statement on our proposed committee legislation to fix No Child Left Behind. Before I do that, I want to say to the Majority Leader first, to express my appreciation for his putting this...

WASHINGTON, D.C., June 30 – Senate labor committee Chairman Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) today made the following statement on the Department of Labor’s proposal to more than double the salary threshold for exemption from overtime pay: “Just imagine how discouraging this rule will be to the working mother who can no longer...

WASHINGTON, D.C., June 25 – Senate health committee Chairman Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) today released the following statement on the Supreme Court’s decision in King v. Burwell:  “It’s unfortunate that the Supreme Court didn’t read the law the way that Congress wrote it. The 36 percent increase in some...

WASHINGTON, D.C., June 25 – U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, today voted for the fiscal year 2016 Labor, Health and Human Services, Education and Related Agencies appropriations legislation, which he said is an example of “the Senate at...

WASHINGTON, D.C., June 24 – Senate education committee Chairman Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) and Ranking Member Patty Murray (D-Wash.), following Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s announcement that the Senate would take up their bipartisan agreement to fix No Child Left Behind on Tuesday, July 7, said they look forward to an...

WASHINGTON, June 23 – Seventeen Republican lawmakers last week called on the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) to make significant changes to the agency’s proposed rule on workplace wellness programs to ensure the agency does not create any further confusion for employers who want to offer these programs to lower their...

 “The Task Force on Government Regulation of Higher Education, which was commissioned by a bipartisan group of senators on this committee, told us in a detailed report that federal rules and regulations on accreditors have turned the process into federal ‘micro-management.’” – Lamar Alexander   WASHINGTON,...

WASHINGTON, D.C., June 10 – Senate health committee Chairman Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) and Ranking Member Patty Murray (D-Wash.) announced today’s hearing would mark the start of a series of bipartisan hearings on possible solutions to achieve the promise of health IT. The senators announced that Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.)...