Frank Pallone: “let us not kid ourselves. The Republican leadership was not prepared to do anything that was really important or address…”

“let us not kid ourselves. The Republican leadership was not prepared to do anything that was really important or address any of the real issues that the American people cared about in this Congress. Fortunately, we as Democrats were able to push them as part of this budget agreement to address a few things, most importantly to add 100,000 teachers in the elementary school classes, and also to make sure that the Social Security trust fund was not drained, if you will, for tax giveaways. But there is a lot more to be done here and this do-nothing Congress, this Republican leadership leading this do-nothing Congress did not address managed care reform, did not address campaign finance reform, did nothing to deal with the severe problem of teenage smoking, did nothing really to deal with most of the education initiatives that the Democrats have put forward. Most importantly, they refused as part of this budget deal to deal with school modernization. We have classrooms, we have schools throughout the country that need repair, that need to be upgraded to deal with computers. There are a lot of other education initiatives that were not addressed as part of this Congress. I am happy today we just joined with the President, we are happy that they added the 100,000 teachers and that that will be part of this budget deal. We are happy that the Social Security trust fund is still intact, but there is a lot more that needs to be done.”