Nancy Pelosi: “Mr. Chairman, there are many reasons to vote against this Labor-HHS bill, but this education title is just an…”

“Mr. Chairman, there are many reasons to vote against this Labor-HHS bill, but this education title is just an abomination. It cuts $3.7 billion from last year's education budget, a 14-percent decrease, and it is $5.2 billion less than the Clinton administration requests for an investment in our children. The sad thing is to hear our colleagues come to this floor and say we have to cut the education of our children to balance the budget. I ask my colleagues, ``Don't you know by now you're never going to be able to balance the budget unless we invest in our children, unless we give them personal opportunity, unless we give them the earning power, the education to achieve the earning power to contribute to the competitiveness of our country?'' So balancing the budget is tied to investing in our children. Any family can tell us that. Their protestations about balancing the budget ring hollow in light of the fact that they are cutting education for children in order to give a tax cut to the wealthiest Americans. They tried trickle down once. It didn't work then, and it will not work now. Vote ``no'' on this bad bill.”