Timothy Roemer: “this debate is not about who is for balancing the budget and who is not for balancing the budget. Many of us Democrats…”

“this debate is not about who is for balancing the budget and who is not for balancing the budget. Many of us Democrats are going to make the right choices and vote to cut the B-2 bomber and not to kick children out of the Head Start Program. Now, let us talk about Head Start for a minute. Here is a program that President Reagan talked about how much money do we put in to increase funding on Head Start. President Bush talked about how much money do we put in here to increase our education for low-income children. Now in this Congress we have Republicans talking about how many children are we going to kick out of the program. Here is the chart. We currently have 752,000 children enrolled. After this bill passes, and I hope it does not, 48,000 children are going to be kicked out of this program. Now, the distinguished chairman of the Committee on Appropriations quotes the Washington Post and Washington charts. How does this program work in Michigan City, IN? We have 80 children waiting to get into this program in Michigan City, IN. We have a waiting list of eligible children. Yet you are going to tell us who to kick off. Whoever votes for this bill, my colleagues, you go back to Michigan City, IN, and you point out who gets kicked out of this program.”