Date: 2011-04-07
Speaker: JACKSON LEE (democrat)
Chamber: H
State: Texas

This is wrongheaded and misdirected. I ask you to vote it down and vote with the American people. Madam Speaker. I rise today in opposition to H.R. 1363. the Department of Defense and Further Additional Continuing Appropriations Act of 2011. While I support our men and women in the armed forces and our need to ensure our national security. I cannot with clear conscience support another continuing resolution that does not allow vital programs to be fully funded. We must consider the consequence of passing another continuing resolution. Funding the government for a week at a time cripples agencies. rendering them unable to look to the future and focus on how to best serve the American people in the coming fiscal year. The funding cuts in this particular continuing resolution are harmful to countless Americans and many of my constituents in the 18th Congressional District. We cannot continue to cut services for children. senior citizens. and the underserved. We cannot allow budgets to provide tax cuts to the wealthiest among us. while ignoring the needs of less advantaged citizens. This bill will cut funding that keeps Americans safe and healthy. The Department of Health and Human Services will suffer deep funding cuts under this proposal. Programs such as hospital preparedness grants. which allocated 28 million dollars to hospitals in Texas last year. will see its budget cut by $185 million dollars. money that could be used to prepare communities and hospitals for public health emergencies. The Centers for Disease Controls Immunization and Respiratory Disease Center will lose $156 million dollars. Cuts to this vital program will surely impact the millions of dollars in grant money to purchase and administer vaccines that Houston has received from the Immunization and Respiratory Disease Center. These cuts will certainly harm infants and children of low income families who rely on money appropriated for vaccinations to prevent disease and death. The proposed cut of $390 million from the LIHEAP contingency fund will affect the 500.000 lowincome households in Houston that were receiving heating and energy discounts last year. I urge my colleagues to consider the constituents in their home districts who would be hurt by these cuts. I urge my colleagues to consider the ramifications for the nation by cutting $495 million dollars in FEMA First Responders grants. and the impact that cutting $192 million from the Department of Energys Environmental Clean Up Program will have on future generations. My Republican colleagues who support the passage of this continuing resolution seem more concerned with placing controversial issues like the right to choose in the text of the bill. Instead of placing irrelevant ideological issues into a continuing resolution. we must take this time to pass a responsible budget that reduces spending without cutting programs essential to the well being of the American people. This bill contains many large and dangerous cuts in its one week of CR government funding. including $2 billion in cuts to investments in infrastructure projects that are needed for our nations continued economic growth. The bill makes reprehensible cuts to the most needy in our elementary and secondary education system by rescinding some $186.500.000 from funds already made available for the Department of Educations Education for the Disadvantaged program. The bill shamelessly resorts to the use of highly offensive. inflammatory and controversial policy riders highlighted by the Red Herring issue and attack on women embodied in prohibiting the District of Columbia from using Federal funding and the District of Columbias own funds for abortions even when the life of the mother would be endangered if the fetus were carried to term or where the pregnancy is the result of an act of rape or incest. President Obama found the one week CR and its policy riders so objectionable that he declared his clear intention to veto the bill and issued a call for Congress to work together to produce a responsible appropriations measure to fund the remainder of fiscal year 2011 and avoid a devastating government shutdown. I join the President in his call for a responsible appropriations measure to fund the remainder of fiscal year 2011 and avoid a devastating government shutdown. By using this bill with its attached one week CR. the Republicans are engaging in a high stakes masquerade with dire stakes for the American people and business across the country that rely on having a functioning Federal government. The Republicans mask and hide their shame by putting reprehensible and destructive funding cuts in H.R. 1363 which is supposed to provide for a year of funding for our brave men and women serving in the armed services. Shame on them for doing so and shame on them for bringing this nation perilously close to a government shutdown. Instead of this meager attempt to pass another fake. shortterm CR that does not address the issues facing the American people who are counting on Congress to get this right. we need a Clean CR that does not have outrageous Draconian cuts or hold our Veterans and the men and women serving our country honorably as hostages for the sake of Partisan point scoring. I urge my colleagues to join me in rejecting this bill and calling for a proper CR which responsibly funds the Federal government through fiscal year 2011.