Date: 2004-03-24
Speaker: GEORGE MILLER (democrat)
Chamber: H
State: California

I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time. Mr. Chairman. Americans have always known that education is about more than education. They have always understood that education was about their dreams. about their families. that education was about their children and their communities. that it was about the health of our economy and the future of our country. That is why we are so terribly disappointed when we see the broken promises by the President of these United States in this budget and the Republican Budget Committee. when we see that special education is not fully funded. And the gentleman is quite correct. it is not fully funded in our budget because you gave away all the money. You made a conscious decision 2 years ago in the Committee on the Budget not to fully fund education. It is a dead letter. except for the parents and the children who suffer from those disabilities and their families and looking for that educational opportunity. That was a campaign promise of this President. but it is broken in this budget. it was broken in last years budget. and it was broken in the budget before. We argued about it in the committee. we had votes on the Senate floor. we had votes on it here. and the Republicans killed it each and every time we brought it up. Of course. then there was a promise of this President that he was going to raise the Pell Grant. But again he gave away all of the money. so he had to break his promise. He kept his promise to the wealthy. but he could not keep his promise to kids who were struggling to pay for their education. So the Pell Grant is worth less now than it was in 1976. but the cost of a college education is not what it was in 1976. And then. of course. there is the granddaddy of all broken promises. and that is. if we gave him real reforms in elementary and secondary education. real reforms. he promised us in the Oval Office of the White House that he would provide the real money to go along with that. He got the most significant reforms in Federal education policy in 40 years. Those are his words. I agree with him. These are real. These are important. They are starting to make a difference. But we did not get the real resources to go with those real reforms. The President owes us about $9 billion in various parts of this program. $7.2 billion alone in Title I. Yes. we can come up with a budget. but the fact of the matter is. the President had other priorities. He simply chose to give tax cuts. and then after he gave the tax cuts we had a war. we had 9/11. we had another war. we had a recession. It did not bother the President. It did not faze him. He kept his promise to those wealthy people. those people making more than $4- or $500.000 a year. but he could not keep his promise to the school children. He just could not keep that promise. So he chose not to fully fund No Child Left Behind. I do not know what a Presidential promise is worth anymore. Apparently not much to school children. not much to the disabled community. it is not much to young people trying to finance their education. They cannot take that Presidential promise to the bank. They cannot take that Presidential promise to get service for their disabled children. They cannot take that Presidential promise to get supplementary services for their children in school who are having trouble. As No Child Left Behind provides. they will not have that qualified teacher in their classroom as the bill mandates the States to do. No. And they will not have that restructuring of the local education system as the bill mandates because the President did not keep his promise. The tragedy of this is Americans and their families understand the value and importance of education. but this Republican budget does not. It devalues education. Why does it do that? They are forced to do that. because they made a decision about the tax cuts and to loot the country. They looted the Treasury on behalf of the wealthy the first day that they came to office. and there is nothing left in that Treasury for the children of America. for their schools. for their higher education. for their disabilities. What a sad. sad portrait of the country. This portrait was intentionally painted by this Republican administration. this President and their friends at the Republican Budget Committee. It is a tragedy for this Nation. The Republican Budget Resolution provides for only a $2.8 billion Increase over a frozen FY 2004 education funding level. This provides for meager increases in Title I. the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). and Pell grant fundingleaving these programs billions of dollars short of levels promised by the Bush Administration and House Republicans: The Republican Resolution would leave the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) $9.4 billion short of promised levels. This leaves our schools with a nearly $27 billion deficit in NCLB funding compared to what was promised when the law was enacted. The House Republican Budget resolution shortchanges education and job training programs at the time when American children. students and workers need the assistance the most. This years House Republican Budget Resolution comes after yet another paltry budget submission by President Bush. The Bush budget represents the smallest increase in education spending in 9 years. cutting $1.4 billion in critical education programs. including those that improve family literacy. and provide school counselors to elementary school children. The budget resolution also continues the Administrations unprecedented level of proposed cuts to job training and related programstotaling $1.8 billion since he took office. The House Republican Budget Resolution shortchanges Title I funding by $7.2 billion. This Budget will deny nearly 5 million disadvantaged children critical education services. such as extra help to become proficient in reading and math. The Republican Budget Resolution freezes the maximum Pell grant for the third year in a row at $4.050 just as college tuition continues to rise faster than family income. The maximum Pell grant is worth $500 less (in real terms) than the maximum grant in 197576. Not only do the Republicans fail to stop tuition hikes. but they actually make college even more expensive by freezing or cutting student aid and increasing taxes on students. The Republican budget breaks President Bushs campaign promise to provide a $5.100 Pell grant. The House Republican Budget Resolution also calls for a freeze on teacher quality. after school. and technology programs. This means fewer professional development opportunities for teachers. fewer safe learning environments before and after school and less technologically advanced classrooms. The Republican Resolution would leave us over $11 billion short of fully funding special education. This budget calls for yet another $1 billion increase for special education. At this rate of increase Americas children with disabilities will never benefit from full funding of IDEA. The House Republican Budget Resolution would leave no room for any increase in Head Start funding. This means zero dollars to expand the program to serve more children and no added resources to improve program quality. During the Bush Administration. 2.2 million jobs have been lostthe worst job creation record in 70 years. To keep pace with the number of jobs available for working adults when President Bush took office. we would need to create 7.1 million new jobs today. In addition. -there are over 2.8 million workers who would be engaged in the labor force. but they have either dropped out entirely or failed to enter the labor market because of the lack of jobs. Over 760.000 people have exhausted their unemployment benefits between the end of December and the end of February. and two million are projected to lose their benefits by June without an extension of these benefits. To make matters worse. President Bush has proposed to cut nearly $1.8 billion in job training and vocational education funding since he took office. eliminating training opportunities for thousands of workers. Now House Republicans answer these dire economic" conditions by proposing a Budget Resolution without any meaningful help for American workers: The Republican Budget Resolution would freeze job training and vocational education funding. The Budget resolution utilizes its paltry increase for programs other than job training. leaving no room for an increase for these critical initiatives. The Republican Budget Resolution contains no funding for an extension of unemployment benefits. The Bush Administration and Congressional Republicans have failed to extend unemployment benefits despite continued high unemployment and lack of job growth. and despite the fact that $20 billion will be sitting. untapped. in the Unemployment Insurance Trust funds at the end of March. President Bushs budget severely cuts available child care assistance and the Republican budget resolution does nothing to rectify this situation. Despite the importance of quality child care on later academic achievement and despite research demonstrating how child care is the most important work support keeping low income workers employed. the Republican budgets significantly decrease the number of children served by the federal child care assistance program. According to the Presidents own budget documents. his decision to freeze child care funding will lead to more than a 10 percent decrease in child care assistance for low income workers. Despite serving only 15 percent of eligible children to begin with. the Administration chose to cut the number of children served by child care assistance. from 2.5 million in 2003 to 2.2 million by 2009.