However, in your written statement, Mr. Secretary, you state, and I quote, 'Our request is a responsible budget that emphasizes both fiscal constraint and investment in education reforms that will deliver results.'

I am gravely concerned that the Department of Education has delayed some of the tough choices that are necessary to ensure national economic stability.

I am concerned, and I am sure you are, that the 2012 budget proposal does not request funding for the mathematics and science partnership program.

We cannot starve the future. We cannot starve our children of food and sustenance. We cannot starve them of an education.

That is $1 billion here and $8 billion there, and it is real money?

I am concerned that replacing formula-funded programs with so-called competitive programs will result in the redirection of critical Federal funds from smaller rural States or urban areas because they will not be able to compete for…

In the area of mathematics and science partnerships, the United States continues to fall behind, as we know, other developed countries in reading, math, and science education.

It is unacceptable to all of us.

The unsustainable growth in the costs of the Pell Grant program continues to be an anchor dragging down the entire budget for the Department of Education.

But if you cannot have it all, and you cannot--I wish you could, and I wish that I were here when we owed no money as a Nation, because I think a lot of us could get together and have a lot of good ideas including investment in education…

How are we going to pay for this, because that is going to be the bottom line up here this year and in the future.

If we do not do this, where are the jobs going to come from in the future?