Political Quotes

“Mr. President, research shows that high-quality early education is critical to the educational development of every child. There, too, we are underfunding the effort. The proposed appropriations act provides no funding for preschool development grants and a cut of $750 million as compared to the President's budget and the Democratic alternative. Now, this is happening--this underfunding of education--within the construct known as the sequester. The sequester was partially alleviated 2 years ago by a budget deal known as Ryan-Murray. That Ryan-Murray agreement led to saying that according to the sequester principle defense spending and nondefense spending would be treated equally. If one is capped, the other is capped. If one is raised, the other is raised. That fundamental understanding led to an improvement over the last 2 years. But that improvement is gone. So at the very moment, we are talking about better education policy, and we are talking about worse education funding. That is simply wrong--wrong for our children, wrong for the next generation and the success of America. So let's embrace that second half of the conversation and through my amendment-- amendment No. 2203--call for an intense negotiation to occur, essentially to restore appropriate funding on the nondefense programs. This is a rational counterpart to the debate over the bill that we have before us right now.…”