John Joseph Moakley: “Mr. Speaker, do my colleagues know where their Committee on Rules was last night around midnight at the witching hour?…”

“Mr. Speaker, do my colleagues know where their Committee on Rules was last night around midnight at the witching hour? When everybody else was nestled all snug in bed, the Committee on Rules was at work, under the cover of darkness, rewriting the rule for the Labor, Health and Human Services appropriations bill, where they once again put children's programs on the chopping block. Mr. Speaker, picking on children is becoming the pattern in the Committee on Rules. Two weeks ago, the Committee on Rules killed an amendment that would have sent American medicine and American food to sick and starving children in North Korea and Sudan. Then my Republican colleagues took money from the Women, Infants' and Children's Nutrition Program, the WIC program, and handed it over to the apple and potato growers. Today, Mr. Speaker, they will put child care block grants at risk, and all to please the Republican conservatives who fear using next year's money to pay this year's bill because they themselves have imposed impossible budget caps. Mr. Speaker, children should not be the scapegoats of Republican budget cuts just because they cannot fight back. And people will find out what my Republican colleagues did even though it was late at night.”