Jerry Lewis: “I rise in the strongest of opposition to the gentleman's amendment. We all know the potential impact of across-the-board…”

“I rise in the strongest of opposition to the gentleman's amendment. We all know the potential impact of across-the-board cuts, but this 1.9-percent cut indeed could be devastating to this very delicately developed bill. Let me tell the Members what this amendment would do. For those of us who care about VA medical care, this across-the-board cut would impact those programs by no less than $323 million, a minor little cut in VA medical care that we fought so hard today to increase by $40 million. Under those circumstances, that would mean that thousands of veterans would not be able to receive inpatient medical treatment and thousands would not receive their outpatient care. It also would cut $124 million from EPA, $375 million from our housing programs, $258 million from NASA, and $62 million from the National Science Foundation. Mr. Chairman, I think most around here know that this subcommittee has done very diligent work in an attempt to reduce the rate of growth of government. We made by far the largest contribution to those reductions we are looking toward as we move in the direction of a balanced budget by 2002. We are not in that process, though, interested in destroying these programs and particularly undermining our ability to deliver the services out there to people in communities that we all really care about and really need many of those services.”