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Pelosi: Labor-HHS-Education Bill Does Not Meet the Needs of America’s Children, Workers, or Seniors

June 23, 2005

Pelosi: Labor-HHS-Education Bill Does Not Meet the Needs of America’s Children, Workers, or Seniors

Thursday, June 23, 2005

Contact: Brendan Daly/Jennifer Crider, 202-226-7616

Washington, D.C. â€" House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi spoke this afternoon on the House floor in opposition to the Republican Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education appropriations bill, which underfunds investments that are crucial to America’s future. Below are her remarks:

On the Majority's Misguided Priorities:

â€Å"No bill shows how out of touch our budget priorities are, how completely out of touch the Republicans are in terms of meeting the needs of the American people. This bill should be about crucial investments in the future of America and they are grossly underfunded. It does not meet the needs of America’s children, does not meet the needs of America’s workers, and does not meet the needs of America’s seniors.”

â€Å"Mr. Speaker, I rise in reluctant opposition to this bill. I say reluctant because I along with many of my colleagues in the House have a proud tradition of supporting it.

â€Å"Mr. Natcher used to say of this bill, this is the ‘People’s Bill.’ He knew full well that this is the one piece of legislation that addressed the aspirations of the American people that tried to allay the concerns that kept them up at night â€" the economic security of their families, meaning the security of their jobs, the security of their pensions, the health and well being of their families, and the education of their children â€" our investment in America’s future.

â€Å"So it’s sad to see the place that we are at today. And why are we here? We’re here because of the skimpy, in terms of investments into America’s future, and generous, in terms of tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, budget that put us into a place where the allocation for this subcommittee was one that made decisions extremely difficult.

â€Å"There’s no good place to take money from in order to try to improve the situation, or mitigate the damage that has been caused by the cuts. Imagine with the population growing and with inflation, this bill is about $6 billion in cuts over last year, and without even those considerations about $1.6 billion over fiscal year 2005.

â€Å"Economists will tell you, and we all know that one of the best investments we can make for America’s future, for America’s competitiveness, and for the self-fulfillment of the American people and our children, is our investment in education.

â€Å"In fact, economists will tell you that nothing brings more money back to the treasury or grows the economy more than the education of the American people: early childhood education, K-12, higher education, post-graduate, and lifetime learning for our workers. All of that is considered in this bill. All of that is short-changed.

â€Å"One example is No Child Left Behind. President Bush’s figure for this bill cuts No Child Left Behind for the fourth straight year. We are now short changing No Child Left Behind by $40 billion, leaving millions of children behind. How can that be right?

â€Å"And 3 million children in Title I will not get the help with reading and math that they were promised because this bill gives it $9.9 million less than it deserves.

â€Å"Remember these are investments. How are they paid for? They pay for themselves because they return to the treasury more than any tax cut; any kind of tax credit. Educating the American people is a wise investment.

â€Å"The point is that we have given the states a mandate to do a particular job, to reform education, and we have fallen $40 billion short in the money to match the mandate.

â€Å"And in the issue with health care, there are so many examples of where this bill falls short. I’ll just pick one, the National Institutes of Health. Many of us were part of the challenge to double the National Institutes of Health’s funding throughout the 1990s. It seemed like a big task, but we were determined to get it done. We realigned our priorities so that it would happen, we had a cooperative President in the White House, and it has happened.

â€Å"But now, in this bill, it will receive the lowest increase, .05 percent, but that represents a cut in terms of inflation. And what it translates to are over 500 fewer grants that will be able to be made.

â€Å"People look to the National Institutes of Health with almost a reverential approach. They have the power to cure; research is the answer for so many families in America. Every family is just one telephone call away from receiving a diagnosis or learning about an accident, which necessitates research at the National Institutes of Health, and yet we are shortchanging it.

â€Å"In order to be preeminent and excellent in science we must be number one, and we cannot be number one if we must compete with a shortchanged budget for the National Institutes of Health.

â€Å"The list goes on, whether we’re talking about the cut in the bill that trims 84 percent, or $252 million that is taken from the health professions training. This is one place where we can discuss health disparities in our country. By doing this we will reduce the number of minority students that who can enter the health professions, we will reduce the number of medical students who will become primary care physicians, and we will reduce the number of physicians who will be able to attend the health needs of rural America, which is a critical aspect of the life of our country.

â€Å"This bill cuts fiscal year 2006 funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting by $100 million. This bill underfunds Head Start, freezes child care monies, fails to raise Pell grants by as promised, freezes funding for most Ryan White programs to combat AIDS, and cuts the Community Services Block grant in half. The list goes on and on.

â€Å"In the 90’s this Subcommittee rose to the challenge of HIV/AIDS as it was making its assault on our country, with increasing research, care, and prevention programs in the bill. It has risen to the occasion by increasing funding for breast cancer research, prostate cancer research, and the rest. Now what are we doing but effectively giving a cut to the National Institutes of Health?

â€Å"No bill better illustrates how America is great because America is good than this annual appropriations bill, because we met the needs of the American people. We did that before, but not today.

â€Å"No bill shows how out of touch our budget priorities are, how completely out of touch the Majority are in terms of meeting the needs of the American people. This bill should be about crucial investments in the future of America and they are grossly underfunded. It does not meet the needs of America’s children, does not meet the needs of America’s workers, and does not meet the needs of America’s seniors. This bill is not worthy of our support, and should be summarily rejected. I urge my colleagues to vote ‘no’ on this bill.”