John Sarbanes: “There are other examples of this. I offered an amendment in the Budget Committee to fully fund the firefighter grant…”

“There are other examples of this. I offered an amendment in the Budget Committee to fully fund the firefighter grant program. That amount is $900 million--not billions as we are talking here but just $900 million. Two years in a row, the Congress has appropriated $750 million. So we have not appropriated the fully authorized amount but we have gotten up fairly close to it at $750 million. The President's budget submitted to the Congress had $500 million. In other words, it cut the program by one-third, $250 million, from the level it had been for 2 successive fiscal years. These are grants that go out to firefighters across the country to try to enhance their professionalism, upgrade their equipment, better prepare them to deal with the threats we confront. One of the things we are very anxious to deal with is that one-third of all the firefighters in the country do not have the equipment, the breathing equipment to protect them in a serious fire, from smoke inhalation. That is one of the things we would like to take care of. Yet the President's budget proposed to the Congress cut the funding for this program by one-third. The President is now running political ads showing firefighters on 9/ 11 moving out of the wreckage, and there is a stretcher with a flag on it. We know what the firefighters did. We know the heroism they have shown.”