That is why President Biden and I have delivered an unprecedented $16 billion to our Nation's HBCUs. This historic investment is transformative--from helping to fund cutting-edge research and making long-overdue renovations, to providing mental health resources and ensuring students have access to every opportunity to thrive.
SCOTT: I hope we have about 30 minutes left to have this conversation... I started the School Choice Caucus. We led to the highest level of funding for HBCUs In the history of the country and then we made it permanent. I led on the vast majority of those pieces of legislation, I've worked on police reform where we want to make sure that the best wore the badge, that the officers have the best resources, the best training, and we never questioned their qualified immunity.
Q: On School choice [some say] what you do is end up hurting public schools when you let parents take the money elsewhere. How can public schools improve if you take even more money from them?
SCOTT: Look at Success Academy in NYC where you see the populations are about 87% minority and yet their schools are the top in the state of New York. What we've seen very consistently.
BIDEN: I provide for a $70 billion for HBCUs for them to be able to have the wherewithal to do what other universities can do, because they don't have the kind of foundational support they need. In our administration, the President allowed me to go down and we awarded a cybersecurity laboratory [at 6 HCBUs via the CECOR program]. The federal government spends billions of dollars a year on universities, because they are the best-kept secret and where most of the major inventions come out of. And so that school now will be able to produce young Black women and men who are going to go into a field of the future that's burgeoning, cybersecurity. And that's what is going to help a great deal.
TRUMP: I have done more for the African American community [including] historically Black colleges and universities. I got them funded. They were on a year to year basis. They could have been put out of business. I got them 10-year funding & financing.
BIDEN: I provide for a $70 billion for HBCUs for them to be able to have the wherewithal to do what other universities can do, because they don't have the kind of foundational support they need.
TRUMP: I have done more for the African American community than any president, with the exception of Abraham Lincoln. Criminal justice reform, prison reform, historically Black colleges and universities. I got them funded. They were on a year to year basis. They could have been put out of business. As soon as our country had a little bad year, they would have said, "I'm sorry, we're not going to fund you." I got them 10 year funding and financing. And more than they even asked for. And of course, opportunity zones. But criminal justice reform, everybody said it could not be done. President Obama and Biden never even tried to do it. I have a great relationship because of what I've done with the African-American community. I'm very proud of it.
"No, Joe Biden did not say he attended Delaware State University, the only historically Black university (HBCU) in the state. Biden said he got his "start" at DSU, and what followed was a slew of media reports slamming Biden for claiming to have attended an HBCU. Trump's campaign has even cited the claim as one of the "17 questions Joe Biden must answer" in the first presidential debate.
"In the video, Biden was referring to the support he received from the school when he announced his bid for Senate on the DSU campus in 1972. In the decades since, Biden has maintained close ties with DSU, serving as commencement speaker in 2003. Biden has often referenced to his time as a student at the University of Delaware, where the Biden School of Public Policy bears his name."
If that child has had two black teachers before the end of third grade, they're 32% more likely to go to college. So, when we talk about investing in our public education system, it is at the source of so much. When we fix it, that will fix so many other things. We must invest in the potential of our children and I strongly believe you can judge a society based on how it treats its children. And we are failing on this issue.
"We have got to recognize [that] people aren't starting out on the same base in terms of their ability to succeed," she said. "So we have got to recognize that and give people a lift up."
As she outlined her agenda--highlighting plans for historically black colleges and universities, tax proposals to address poverty and criminal justice reforms--Harris defended President Barack Obama when asked about African Americans who say the former president didn't do enough for the black population.
"None of us can do enough. And we all know that," Harris said. "If you are a parent raising a child, you know we can never do enough. As leaders, we can never do enough. It's important to acknowledge that. But let's also give people credit for what they have accomplished."
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