Tom Harkin: “I always enjoy engaging in good debate with my friend from Tennessee. He is a very thoughtful Senator, a very thoughtful…”

“I always enjoy engaging in good debate with my friend from Tennessee. He is a very thoughtful Senator, a very thoughtful member of our Committee too, and a good friend. Having been a former Secretary of Education, he has a depth and wellspring of knowledge about education, and I respect that greatly. We obviously see things a little bit differently, but that is the nature of the animal here. I say to my friend that without getting into a point-by-point rebuttal, I wish to make it clear the President did put in his budget taking some money out of the prevention fund. I assume my friend knows I was not much in favor of that proposal. Then it was used later on to extend the unemployment insurance and also the payroll tax cut until the end of this year. That money was used for that. I was not very supportive of that. I thought we should have taken the money from elsewhere. At least the President has said that is it, no more. We will take a nick out of that prevention fund but no more. That is why he issued a statement of administration policy saying he would veto this bill if it had any cuts to the Prevention and Public Health Fund. I used the analogy a while ago that the cut the President proposed, which was supported on our side, to extend the payroll tax cuts to the end of the year, I likened that to taking a couple pints of blood--we can take a couple pints of blood and still get our health back and go on.…”