David Obey: “Let me simply say that our Republican friends are running true to form tonight. In the past 2 weeks, they have voted…”

“Let me simply say that our Republican friends are running true to form tonight. In the past 2 weeks, they have voted against funding unemployment insurance for people who have been laid off in the most excruciating recession in 70 years. Now, today, they are refusing to support a proposal which will help us stave off the laying off of well over 100,000 additional teachers around the country--something which, I think, thoughtful people would recognize would injure not just those teachers but their students and the communities in which those students are supposed to learn. There is nothing as expensive as ignorance, and ignorance is fed when you have an inadequate number of quality teachers. Let me devote the rest of my time to something that I consider to be fairly off the point today because it had been suggested to us that the Secretary of Education is somewhat unhappy because of the offsets that we have required in order to pay for this additional funding. Let me put that into perspective. We are trying to provide $15 billion in additional education resources to this administration--$10 billion to stave off the firing of teachers and about $5 billion to fill the shortfall that developed in the Pell program this year because of the economy.”