David Obey: “Mr. Chairman, just very briefly to respond to the previous two gentlemen, I would say first to the gentleman from…”

“Mr. Chairman, just very briefly to respond to the previous two gentlemen, I would say first to the gentleman from Illinois [Mr. Porter], he suggests that our tax charts are not accurate. Is the gentleman truly suggesting that the middle-class families in this country have done better the last 10 years than the super rich? If he is, I would respectfully suggest somebody is smoking something that is not legal. I do not think anybody else sees it that way. The gentleman says that the Perkins loan is amply funded. All I can tell you is there are going to be 150,000 students who are not going to be able to be helped by the Perkins loan program this year if we do not make a contribution to it. The gentleman says in terms of low-income heating assistance, there is no crisis. Good gravy, 600 people died in Chicago just 2 weeks ago because they were overcome by heat. The low-income heating assistance program is the program that is supposed to help folks like that. No crisis? The gentleman says that because schools are in trouble, we ought to cut back on chapter I. To suggest you ought to cut back on the major program we have to help local school districts educate the toughest to teach kids in their districts, to suggest we ought to cut that back and somehow that is going to improve education performance is, I think, backwards.”