Timothy Roemer: “Will Rogers once said, you can be moving on the right track, but if you are not moving fast enough, you are going to get…”

“Will Rogers once said, you can be moving on the right track, but if you are not moving fast enough, you are going to get run over. The budget process right now is such that we have a badly biased budget process that is headed for a train wreck, and that train wreck is going to crash into our children. The education and labor bill that we are going to eventually take up in this body I hope, if we can get to it, is about $12 billion shortfunded, $12 billion. That is not my particular figure, that is the figure of the Republican chairman, the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Porter). Why is that important? Why should we try to handle this budget process now, rather than wait for this train wreck for our children later? That particular subcommittee funds NIH, health care, grants to help with Alzheimer's and Parkinson's and breast cancer. That particular $12 billion underfunded bill funds Head Start, where we only have 36 percent of our eligible children enrolled. That bill funds Pell Grants to get our Nation's high school students into college and help them pay for it. That bill funds TRIO programs for the poorest of the poor for after-school programs and summer school programs.”