Adam Schiff: “when the House adopted and the President signed the most recent tax cuts, at a time when we are at war and in deficit…”

“when the House adopted and the President signed the most recent tax cuts, at a time when we are at war and in deficit, we knew the other shoe had to drop soon. And it has, Mr. Speaker, with a great thud, in the form of this year's Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act of 2004 (H.R. 2660). The House Leadership has followed the passage of these irresponsible tax cuts with an appropriations bill which underfunds a host of important programs and initiatives while breaking many of the pledges the Leadership made when the House adopted the FY04 Budget Resolution. We cannot extol the virtues of programs like Head Start and organizations like National Institutes of Health while adopting legislation which threatens their very existence. These actions abandon this Congress' responsibility to provide resources necessary to improve schools, protect public health, provide for America's seniors and disabled, expand opportunities to higher education, and seek cures for diseases that threaten the health of all Americans. Mr. Speaker, we are starving our nation's most valuable programs. Last year alone, Head Start provided over 900,000 children with comprehensive early childhood education. But it is estimated that current funding levels leave behind over 40 percent of eligible children.”