Louise Slaughter: “I am afraid my good friend, the chairman of the Committee on Rules, did not pay very much attention to what I was…”

“I am afraid my good friend, the chairman of the Committee on Rules, did not pay very much attention to what I was saying. I do not recall at any point saying that we would like to add more money. What we were talking about were the extraordinary cuts that have been taken to programs that people have learned to really rely on. It has always been the basic tenet of this government that we want to make sure that everybody has the opportunity to rise equally, have an opportunity to have good education, have the opportunity to enjoy good health. What we have done in this measure, and I continue to say that the reason the resources are not there are because of the tax cuts, is that we are taking away the rights of many children to go to Head Start, to get a good education that we want them to have; we are taking away their SCHIP program, which provides health insurance for them, and what is very disturbing, too, is that the elderly have already taken hits.”