Kendrick Meek: “This has been an exercise in good bipartisanship of working together to reach a goal that will benefit the people of…”

“This has been an exercise in good bipartisanship of working together to reach a goal that will benefit the people of this country and improve the quality of their lives. The conference report should be voted on positively by every Member of this body. A great deal of work has gone into it, quite a bit of negotiating, and that is what it should be in this body. I am happy to see that the community development block grant program is funded at $5.1 million, $157 million above the President's request, and $257 million more than last year. This is a signal that this committee has looked at low-income and moderate-income people to certainly help them to improve the quality of their lives. EPA also had an increase, $529 million for NSF, and $683 million for NASA. I will not go into all of these details, but the Congress needs to realize I think that this is one of the few times that the committee funded everything. All of the agencies and all of the programs that merited their funding they did fund.”