David Obey: “some simple facts. The President's budget would have us spend as a share of our total national income 48 percent less on…”

“some simple facts. The President's budget would have us spend as a share of our total national income 48 percent less on education, health care, science, job training, et cetera, than this country spent in 1980, and by 2012 he would have us spend 57 percent less than we spent in 1980. That creates a problem because we're going to have 27 million more Americans in the next 10 years. We're going to have 12 million more seniors needing health care. We're going to have 2.7 million more kids in elementary and secondary school. We're going to have 2.2 million more students in college. And, unless we change our ways, we're going to have 11 million more Americans without health insurance. That's why we don't want to go back to last year. We want to move ahead to try to deal with the problems coming at us. We see them; they're there. We ought not to stick our head in the ground like an ostrich. We ought to deal with them, and that's what this bill does.”