 Until today, we are here to recognize Senator Bernie Sanders with the Nebis 2017 Excellence Award. I have to tell you that the Vermont committee was really quick to make this nomination. Senator Sanders has been a higher education champion throughout his career. He understands that a college degree is a door to opportunity that all students deserve. As a member of the House of Representatives and as Senator, Bernie has been tireless, has been a tireless and outspoken advocate for economically disadvantaged students. During his recent campaign for president, Bernie brought the critical issues of college access and affordability into the national dialogue and he has reintroduced his College for All Act to ask the federal government to make affordable public higher education a national priority. Senator Sanders is a key supporter of the Pell Grant programs. He has lent his voice in opposition to proposed cuts and he has supported innovations like Summer Pell to help students complete their programs more quickly. Annually, he leads the advocacy effort behind funding for the highly regarded TRIO programs for many disadvantaged college students. Senator Sanders was also a key supporter of the POST 9-11 GI Bill, which expanded education benefits for the generation of military veterans who have served our country since 2001. At the Vermont State Colleges, we know we have a partner in Senator Sanders because we serve thousands of Vermonters who benefit directly from his leadership on these issues. And at CCV, this connection is particularly strong. We have 360 military veterans enrolled at CCV this semester, 3,000 students use financial aid and Pell grants to help pay for their tuition, and 4,000 students at CCV are first generation college students. Senator Sanders is helping these Vermonters to have the opportunity to get the education and training they need to join our skilled workforce, bring financial security to their lives and fuel Vermont's economy. On their behalf, I thank and congratulate you Senator Sanders on receiving this year's Excellence Award. I'm aware of this right now, but I do want you to see what you can add to your case and recognition of the work that you've done for Vermont and the nation, and we're all very proud of it. Take this, and Debbie, thank you. I think we're going to close. Okay, if you know I'm not used to these photo opportunities, let me just thank all of you very, very much. We're going to give you one more piece of hardware here, Senator, to say citations. Thank you. Let me thank the New England Board of Higher Education for this very kind award. Let me thank Alice Miller and Kevin Mullen, Jeb, Spaulding and Joyce Judy and Tom Sullivan and Michael Will and Michael Thomas for all of the wonderful work they are doing. Let me thank representatives Joanna Donovan and Kate Webb and David Sharp for what they do as well. Before I get into the thrust of my remarks, which will not be too long, don't panic. What this entire debate is about, and this entire discussion is about, has to do with one word, and that is priorities. Please never forget that we are the wealthiest nation in the history of the world. We are not a poor nation. And the decision that we have got to make, and it's at a time when we have massive, massive, massive inequalities in wealth and income, when the very wealthiest people in this country are becoming much richer, while the middle class is shrinking. Do we think that it is a good idea to give hundreds of billions of dollars in tax to the top one percent, and then proclaim to the world that we just don't have the funding available to have the best educational system in the world, or to prevent young people from graduating college deeply in debt? That is the issue, and it is not more complicated than that. Not a different issue than healthcare. Do we join the rest of the industrialized world and say that healthcare is a right of all people, or do we not? And that's what the struggle that we are engaged in today is about. Hopefully that struggle will not be quite as bloody as that beautiful painting. But it is a fundamental philosophical debate about whether we have a government that represents all of us, low-income families, middle-income families, or whether we have a government and a society which works with the people on top. Thinks that they can escape from that struggle. If you think that I'm going to work tomorrow, I'm going to be a good administrator, but I don't have to worry about those issues, you are mistaken. You are not going to be doing your job well unless you get into that struggle. And the truth of the matter is that the vast majority of the American people, certainly in the state of Vermont, but all over this country, understand that priorities would suggest that we give tax breaks to billionaires and cut education, cut healthcare, cut programs for the elderly or the children or the poor. Those are not the priorities that this country must establish. We are the majority. But in order to win this struggle, there is nobody who can simply avoid this debate. So we need your help, and I hope very much that we can go forward together. The issue that we're talking about today is really not a complicated issue and previous speakers have already dealt with it. In this nation today, should we have hundreds of thousands of bright young people who do well in high school but don't get a higher education because their families lack the income? And as the son of a mother who never graduated, who did graduate high school but never went to college, the son of a father who dropped out of school and polled I think at the age of 15, I believe that the destiny and the future of this country is to make certain that every young boy and girl knows today in the third grade and the fifth grade that if they study hard and they do well in school, yes, they will be able to get a college education. That is what we have got to fight for. The media knows that the world has changed in very fundamental ways over the last 40 or 50 years. 50 years ago in Vermont, in this country, you graduated high school, the likelihood was that you would be able to go out and get a decent job to a significant degree that has changed. And when we talk in my view about public education, it is not good enough to refer to public education as kindergarten, although there are some places that don't even have public kindergartens, but kindergarten through the 12th grade. God did not create public education to be kindergarten through the 12th grade. The world has changed and in many ways a college degree today is equivalent to what a high school degree was 50 years ago. And when we refer to public education, in my view, it must mean making public colleges and universities tuition free. We choose not to go to a public college or university. There should be strong public support for them as well. In America today, and I know this is exactly what everybody up here studies and works on, the median worker with a bachelor's degree will earn almost $1 million more over his or her career than that same worker with just a high school diploma, $1 million more. Further, a worker that earns an associate's degree will make about $360,000 more over their career than a high school graduate. And as you heard, I think Alice was talking about this. We know in this state, we know all over this country that employers have good paying jobs that they cannot fill because workers lack the technological skills or the general education in order to perform those jobs. How absurd is that? Technology is changing the very nature of the jobs we perform and in an increasingly global economy. This demands that we have the best educated workforce in the world. And when anybody gets up there and says, America first, that's fine. I want America to be first in the ability of young people to get the education they need. First, in a good sense. Now all of you know that the truth is that not so many years ago, the United States of America was first in the world in the percentage of college graduates that we had. We had a higher percentage of college graduates than any other country on Earth. Anybody here know what place we're in today? Anyone know? We're in 11th place. Behind countries like Japan, South Korea, Canada, UK, Ireland, Australia and Switzerland. Stop for a moment. Forget about the human beings involved. People not being able to make it to the middle class. Think about the future of this country. You tell me how this economy does well in the future if we don't have the workforce that we need to do the jobs of the future. And the answer is we do not do well. We were once first. Today we are 11th. That has got to change. In May 2014, I held a meeting in my office in Burlington and I invited a group of university students who were graduating that month from area colleges to join in. Many arrived wearing white placards around their necks showing the amount of student debt they had. One side had a precise number, $24,547. Another read $30,000 and I will never forget and I talk about this all over the country because I was shocked on that day but it turns out not to be so unusual. It was a young woman who was now practicing medicine at a primary health community health center in Burlington. She went to medical school. She's now doing exactly what she should be doing. We're in desperate need of primary care physicians. She left school $300,000 in debt. $300,000 in debt. I was in Iowa last year. A young woman graduated dental school and we are in desperate need of more debt. She graduated dental school $400,000 in debt just today, just earlier today. I was talking to a physician and he said that a young physician who he wanted to attract into this community health center couldn't go and do that work because she was $200,000 in debt and had to go someplace else to make more money to pay off that debt. What struck me in the meeting that I had in Burlington and I want you all to think about this was that these were bright young adults who should have been looking forward to building independent lives and careers but instead they were deeply in debt at the age of 23, 24, 25. Imagine going out into the adult world. You went to school, you got an education and you're going out in the world with $30, $40, $50,000 in debt and maybe you can't find a decent paying job. Guy I met in Nevada, never forget this as well. Guy said, Bernie, I am more in debt now. He's 55 years old now, more in debt now than he was when he graduated college and that was 30 years ago and he is worried that his social security checks will be garnished in order to pay off his student debt. He said to a woman in New Hampshire, she says, Bernie, I'm not just paying off my daughter's debt, I'm paying off my debt as well. Imagine a working class, middle class person paying off two student debts. How crazy is that? This year nearly 70% of all students graduating with a bachelor's degree will leave school with some debt and the average amount exceeds $35,000. One in eight graduates will graduate with more than $50,000 in student loans. Whole student debt in our country now exceeds $1.3 trillion. The economic point here is that instead of going out and buying homes, buying cars, buying goods and services, people are now simply paying off their debt. The idea of making public colleges and universities tuition free is not, and I say this to the young people here, a radical idea. It was an idea that existed in this country 50 years ago. You could go to the University of California, one of the great public universities in the world 50 years ago, tuition free. City University of New York, tuition free. State colleges in Vermont, virtually tuition free. How does it happen that with all the explosion of wealth and technology we are moving in exactly the wrong direction? And again, our job has got to be to stand up and not be ashamed, not be embarrassed to say that in a democratic, civilized society education is a right and that our people and our country will not do well unless we have the best educated population in the world. So I think Michael mentioned during my campaign we raised the issue of making public colleges and universities tuition free and I'm happy to say that that idea is generating a lot of interest from coast to coast and I think tomorrow, as a matter of fact Governor Cuomo in New York State will be signing legislation which will make New York the first state where that becomes a reality. In Washington, I have introduced legislation which now has seven sponsors in the Senate and a couple of dozen in the House which makes that point. Now people may say, well, Bernie, that's a great idea you like to do all of these nice three things how are you going to pay for it? And again, we have got to be clear this is the wealthiest country in the history of the world. Some of you may recall not so many years ago when the illegal behavior and greed on Wall Street caused the greatest economic downturn since the Great Depression Wall Street went running to the United States Congress and they got a bailout, a huge bailout. Well, my own view is that right now in order to curb Wall Street speculation and go to the folks who have the money we can make public colleges and universities tuition free through a tax on Wall Street speculation. As many of you know right here in Vermont we have one of the nation's highest high school graduation rates that's 88% that is pretty good and we should be proud of that. But on the other hand we have one of the lowest rates of high school graduates enrolling in college just over half. Nationwide that number is 62%. How does it happen that when we have the highest level of one of the highest levels of kids graduating high school we have one of the lowest levels of young people going to college and we all know that not everybody who starts college ends up completing college. Why is that? That's an issue we have got to work on I'll be meeting I think next week this week actually later this week with folks from around the state to try to figure that one out. Furthermore not only in my view we've got to make public colleges and universities tuition free we must fight for robust funding for the student support and academic enrichment grant program which provides funding for critically important guidance counseling and other important support efforts. My guess is there are many schools in this state and around the country where kids who grew up like I did where your parents didn't go to college they didn't know how to figure out or those kids may get short trip in trying to learn what colleges can work for them and where financial support may be available. We must increase opportunities to have low income and first generation students get experience with college and earn college credit while in high school. While a college for all act provides matching funds for state to expand dual enrollment programs in the coming weeks I will also introduce separate legislation that will build on Vermont status as a leader in dual enrollment and early college program in front of us the good news is that the majority of the American people are behind us. The bad news is there's some very powerful people who will be strongly opposed all of the initiatives that you and I are talking about. What we are talking about is not just the individuals who will be impacted once again we are talking about the future of this country. This country will not survive economically unless we have a well educated workforce and our job is to do everything possible to make sure that happens. Thank you all for the work you are doing.