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Floor Speech
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Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, it is my understanding that the new Secretary of Education Linda McMahon made some money on the professional wrestling business--at least, that is what I was told. If that is true, she clearly is ready to rumble when it comes to cutting money for American schools.
It appears that the formula for greatness, which the President is pushing, includes reducing Federal aid to education and cutting medical research. How can you build a greater nation by reducing investment in schools for kids and closing down laboratories that are developing cures for diseases? For my way of thinking, that is exactly the opposite of what we should be doing as a nation.
Of course, I want to stop waste, fraud, abuse, and inefficiency. We are all signed up for that. But eliminating the Department of Education? Press reports that people in this administration are jubilant with the idea of closing down a whole Federal Agency. What are the impacts of that closure? What about the money that is going to school districts in Illinois and across the Nation? If there is a cutback in Federal funds for our school districts--and that would be part of eliminating the Department of Education--that would put more pressure on local property taxpayers to pay more for the schools or to cut back on the salaries of teachers and increase the number of kids in the classroom.
How can that be good for the future of this country? How could you build greatness by closing down schools or increasing the number of kids in a classroom? Penny-wise, pound foolish. It is ridiculous.
It is not the only area. The National Institutes of Health now--I have talked to the researchers in Illinois and across this Nation--they are at their wits end to figure out what to do. This is the leading medical research Agency in the world. And 99 percent of all the new drugs--you know all the drugs you see on television, 99 percent of all these new drugs started at the National Institutes of Health, a Federally supported Agency of researchers who set the standard for the world in medical research. And now they are facing closure of many of their laboratories because of DOGE and Mr. Musk.
So they want to cut money to schools. They want to cut money to medical research. My way of thinking is that is shortsighted as can be. You can't build a great nation that way. That is not the only research.
I want to tell a story about a young lady whose name is Jeannie Klein-Gordon. Jeannie grew up on a dairy farm in Oregon. During her undergraduate years at Oregon State, she became interested in plant pathology or the study of plant diseases and spent time assisting with research at the USDA Agriculture Research Services.
``I really appreciated the environment there,'' Klein-Gordon said, of working at ARS during her undergrad years. ``Everybody was super nice, very passionate about science and agriculture and helping growers.''
Then it was on to 5 years of doctoral work at the University of Florida before moving to Michigan State University for two shorter postdoctoral stints. From there, she applied for a position as research plant pathologist at the National Center for Agricultural Utilization Research in Peoria, IL, commonly known as the Ag Lab.
Here is what she said:
I spent 11 and a half years [to get] this position, and I got the position of my dreams. This is my dream job.
Jeannie Klein-Gordon moved her family from Michigan to Peoria in December of 2023 and set out to work on research projects. She recently focused on red crown rot, a disease that appeared in Illinois in 2018 and presents a significant threat to the State's multibillion-dollar soybean industry. The team's experiments looked to develop products for farmers to fight the disease.
That all ended on Thursday, February 13. Klein-Gordon's employment was terminated by email at 10:05 p.m. She was 15 months into a standard 3-year probationary period for government scientists, and she wasn't alone. Other Ag Labs across the United States lost their researchers as well.
You know what else--this is not unique to this young lady--they put on the termination notice that these employees were terminated for poor performance when exactly the opposite is true. They were receiving awards for achievements that they had witnessed and been part of in a short period of time. They were probationary employees, but they were on the track to become full-scale senior researchers.
And now they have been terminated, and it has been announced it was done for poor performance. Why would Elon Musk and the DOGE group want to put poor performance on this? So it disqualifies the employee from receiving unemployment insurance. Poor performance, when it is not true, is now going to be part of her resume record.
The good news is, the courts have stepped in and said, once again, that the Trump administration has overstepped in closing these jobs down. You know, this Ag Lab may sound--as I describe the projects, they sound so farfetched you wonder, Would we really miss that? Can't the farmers take care of themselves? Well, the honest answer is they need help in research, good research, and the Ag Lab in Peoria is one of the best. Most people don't know it, but the Ag Lab in Peoria is responsible for one of the dramatic breakthroughs of the 20th century. They helped to develop penicillin during World War II.
Penicillin was known before, but it just wasn't developed to the point where it could be administered when a person needed it. It was the Ag Lab in Peoria that took up that challenge, and as a result of taking it up, penicillin was available for our troops in World War II and saved countless lives.
Is research worth it? I think it is. Whether it is ag research or medical research at the NIH, it is fundamental to our future. And these researchers, they don't make a fortune. This young lady put 11 years- plus into her education so that she would have this opportunity to come to Peoria and the Ag Lab. And as far as DOGE is concerned, she is expendable--just another probationary employee, let her go. And, incidentally, on the way out the door, stamp poor performance on her resume so she has to answer for that for the rest of her applications. Why? To deny her unemployment insurance.
Well, I think that is cruel and I think it is shortsighted and I don't think that it builds greatness.
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