David Skaggs: “last Thursday the House Appropriations Committee met for 6 or 7 hours to prepare for floor action a bill that will cut…”

“last Thursday the House Appropriations Committee met for 6 or 7 hours to prepare for floor action a bill that will cut some $17 billion from this year's appropriations. It is a lot of money. It can easily pass as merely a statistic in the debate going on in this country these days. But in those $17 billion of cuts there is a story to be told. That amount represents $1 out of every $7 that this country was going to expend this year on programs to help the poor, those living below the poverty line. And that $17 billion represents $1 out of $100 that this Government was going to be spending on everybody else. One-seventh of our budget to help the least advantaged in this country, one one-hundredth of the budget to help the most advantaged in this country. And you might ask, why? Why would we be doing that to programs like Women's, Infants and Children, early childhood nutrition programs, which clearly more than pay for the expenditures in better health, better learning, better productivity over a lifetime, and pay for themselves at a ratio of 4 or 5 to 1? Why would we be cutting prenatal care, absolutely essential to prevent low-birthweight babies and early childhood disease? What is the economy to be accomplished there? Why go after safe schools programs that are critical in our urban neighborhoods, and why cut substantially into the low-income energy assistance program so critical to poor and largely older Americans in the colder parts of this country?”