On the recordMarch 1, 2011
The CR disproportionately cuts education, especially literacy efforts. David Brooks, not known as a left-wing journalist, writes in the New York Times column today: ``If you look across the country, you see education financing getting sliced often in the most thoughtless and destructive ways. In Washington, the Republicans who designed the cuts for this fiscal year seem to have done no serious policy evaluation.'' Last night, I asked the Rules Committee to make in order an amendment restoring education cuts. The amendment cut $1 billion from the Census in money that wasn't needed, applying most of that to offset education spending, and the remainder went to further reducing the deficit below the levels in the CR before us. The Rules Committee chose not to make that amendment in order, and therefore I oppose the rule. But to talk to the gentleman, I spent 8 years on the staff of the other body, and this is my 35th year in the House of Representatives. Nobody ever gets everything they want: This is a process where the House passes a bill, it goes to the Senate, and then we have a conference committee or the Senate sends the bill back to us. Both sides meet and work out their differences. There is give and take, there is compromise, and that is the way this process works. And I also want to say to the gentleman, and to your side, remember it was the Democratic Congress and the House Senate and Mr. Obama signing the $41 billion cut from the Obama FY11 budget.…
Said by
Norman D. Dicks