John Spratt: “there is one thing we have not spoken about. We have talked about the budget deficit. We did not speak about the trade…”

“there is one thing we have not spoken about. We have talked about the budget deficit. We did not speak about the trade deficit, $666 billion, also an encumbrance we are leaving our children. We did not talk about the jobs deficit. In the last recession, 2.5 million manufacturing jobs, the best of our jobs, were lost, that have not come back. Service jobs have but not manufacturing jobs. One of the solutions to all of this has got to be education. We have got to have a workforce that is educated as never before in American history, adaptable, keen, intelligent, quantitative, and if we look at the budget the President sent us for the first time since 1988, a President of the United States requested less for spending on education than we are currently spending at the present time. He wipes out vocational education, $1.3 billion. Wipes out the drug free schools. Wipes out GEAR UP for underprivileged kids who want to get a college education. Wipes out Even Start. Wipes out educational technology. There are some plusses and puts and takes so that a lot of these do not come out on the bottom line, but when we consider everything, this is the least forthcoming education request at a time when education was never needed as much as it is now. So we have got an education deficit as well. That is why we are out here tonight, to talk about the 20-somethings and the 30-somethings and what they can expect for the future of America.…”