Mark Souder: “pretty much everybody tonight has been upset about something, and often when I come to the floor, I am too. But I wanted…”

“pretty much everybody tonight has been upset about something, and often when I come to the floor, I am too. But I wanted to share some good news, actually some good news inside the Labor-HHS appropriations bill, which is very tight in funding, and it involves the GEAR UP program, which I believe is a very important program, and, in fact, the President has proposed to zero it out and the Committee on Appropriations had put $306 million, the same funding as fiscal year 2005, in this. It is a program that, from the first time we funded it in 1999, had only $120 million in it after we finally got it appropriated; and now it is up to $306 million in spite of a very tight budget. I would like to give just a brief history of this program. The gentleman from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (Mr. Fattah), when I was first elected in the class of 1994, came to me with this proposal of how to reach minority and low-income kids and give them some hope that someday they might be able to get student loans and someday might be able to get scholarships and aid, because it is one thing for a middle class or upper class suburban family where somewhere between prenatal care and child care the parents are already getting their college catalogues out and trying to encourage them to go to college versus many families where they have never had anybody go to college, where they do not really feel there is going to be a chance.…”