John W. Olver: “I heard this bill described today as a careful consideration of priorities and elimination of useless Federal programs.…”

“I heard this bill described today as a careful consideration of priorities and elimination of useless Federal programs. Well, Mr. Chairman, I do not consider education goals for the year 2000 as useless, nor dropout prevention useless, nor education for homeless children useless, nor a Teacher Corps useless, nor workplace literacy useless, and I deplore the cuts in student financial aid and Head Start for affording 8,000 students and cuts in safe and drug-free schools. And as for priorities, Mr. Chairman, the start-up cost for the B-2 bombers, the 20 new B-2 bombers which are unneeded and were not even asked for by the Pentagon, they would pay for all the costs of all those cuts in all these education programs that we are talking about today. The Republican priorities here are simply wrong. We should kill this turkey. As the gentleman from Wisconsin had said, we should kill this turkey of a bill.”