On the recordAugust 5, 2010
there can be no doubt of the need for this bill, which includes an extension of enhanced Medicaid funding to States and funding to help keep teachers in the classroom and out of the unemployment line. Failure to enact this extension would place services to those most in need at terrible risk, and it would place many States, including my own, in an untenable budget situation. Failure to enact the continued enhancement of Federal assistance for Medicaid and other health care programs would leave a hole more than $300 million wide in the budget of my State. Other States would face similar shortfalls. Plugging that hole in the current economic environment would almost certainly require service cuts or tax increases above and beyond those suffered already by so many of our States. There is also little doubt of the need for the funding included in this bill to preserve teaching jobs. In the current climate, we should be looking for ways to preserve jobs. But that is especially true when loss of the jobs at stake would harm not only workers and their families, but students depending on these teachers to help them prepare for the future. Failing to approve this funding would damage our nation now and in the future. The excuses our colleagues on the Republican side of the aisle have used to prevent passage of important legislation in recent weeks do not apply here. This measure is fully paid for.
