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Mr. BENTSEN. Mr. Chairman, I rise today in strong opposition to H.R. 4577, the Fiscal Year 2001 Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education (Labor-HHS-Education) Appropriations Act, which includes insufficient funding for critical education and health programs. I am very concerned that this bill will not meet the needs of our nation and is $7 billion less than the President's request for next year. I am also disappointed that this bill includes budget gimmicks such as advance funding and other mechanisms in order to fund programs. This is another example of the Republican leadership trying to have it both ways with its budget--say you are for unrealistic cuts in domestic priorities and then find
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I am particularly concerned about the proposed funding for the National Institutes of Health. This bill would provide $18.8 billion, an increase of $1 billion above the Fiscal year 2000 budget, well below Congress' goal of doubling the NIH's budget over five years. Over the past three years, a bipartisan effort has helped to provide 15 percent increases each year for the NIH. We know that the American public strongly supports this investment and we know that this increased funding can be well spent. For instance, only one in three of peer-reviewed grants is currently funded by the NIH. If we do not maintain this 15 percent increase, we will be losing the momentum that we have gained over the past three years. Failing to maintain a sufficient funding stream for NIH is counterproductive. With the President's announcement yesterday of the Executive Order directing the Health Care Financing Administration (HCFA) to begin covering the routine patient costs associated with clinical trials, the Administration and those of us in Congress who have been pushing for this coverage by Medicare had hoped to eliminate the bottleneck in biomedical research from the laboratory to treatment. Unfortunately, the Republicans are not sufficiently committed to providing the necessary resources to biomedical research and finding cures to diseases such as AIDS, cancer, heart disease, and Alzheimer's which plague the nation. As one of the Co-Chairs of the Congressional Biomedical Caucus, I am committed to increasing this inadequate funding level.
Another concern is the funding for the Older Americans' Act. This bill provides $926 million for senior citizen programs such as a popular Meals-on-Wheels program to provide nutritional meals to senior citizens. This funding level is $158 million less that President Clinton's request and will not ensure that senior centers around the nation get the support they need. Throughout my district, thousands of senior citizens on fixed incomes rely greatly on these
nutrition programs.
This bill also fails to properly fund child care grants to the states. The child care and development block grant program helps low-income families to pay for child care services while they work. This bill provides $400 million for the child care program which is $417 million less than the President's request of $817 million. If we want people to move from welfare to work, and we do, we must ensure that they receive sufficient assistance in order to take care of their children in quality, safe child care centers. All of us as parents know the cost of child care is rising. And when we passed the Welfare Reform Act of 1996, my support was not only for limitations on benefits and requirements to work but also ensuring that sufficient child care funds were provided to the states. This bill goes back on that commitment.
This bill signals a retreat on education, which I cannot support, H.R. 4577 provides overall education funding at $2.9 billion below both the Administration's budget and $3 billion below the bipartisan Senate bill. These cuts in education funding would seriously undermine efforts to maximize student achievement, improve teacher quality and ensure accountability in public education for all of our nations' students. The unsatisfactory overall funding level for education neglects the needs of America's schoolchildren and it ignores the public prioritization of education as the preeminent issue of the new century.
For elementary and secondary education programs, the bill provides only a nominal increase--$2.6 billion below the Administration's budget and more than $2.5 billion below the Senate approved appropriation. Factoring in inflation and rising student enrollment, this funding level essential represents a funding freeze at the same time the nation's public schools are experiencing record enrollment growth. While H.R. 4577 increases special education funding by $500 million--which I strongly support--it does so by reducing virtually all other elementary and secondary education programs below current levels.
H.R. 4577 not only eliminates targeted funding to help low-performing students maximize student achievement, it would freeze Title I program funds and effectively deny additional math and reading services to several hundred thousand disadvantaged students. Last fall, the House passed H.R. 2, the Student Results Act, a bipartisan measure that set the Title I funding level for FY2001 at $9.85 billion. H.R. 4577 would cut $2 billion from the amount authorized in H.R. 2. Although the Congressional Research Service has determined that Title I funding would need to be tripled to $24 billion in order to serve fully all of the nations eligible low-income children, H.R. 4577 falls well short of meeting the needs of this important educational tool. At a time when parents and politicians are calling for better results and more accountability, H.R. 4577 would fail to target adequate resources to those students with the greatest need and would leave too many children who urgently need targeted educational assistance out in the cold.
In addition to the freeze in Title I funds, H.R. 4577 is $1.5 billion below the level
Congress recently approved on an overwhelmingly bipartisan basis in H.R. 4055, the IDEA Full Funding Act. On average, it costs more than $14,000 to educate a special education student. Local school districts simply could not afford those expenditures on their own. The Budget Committee's assumption of a $2 billion increase would have significantly advanced the congressional effort to provide 40 percent of the funding for IDEA.
H.R. 4577 also fails to fund the critical need for school modernization and renovation. Under this bill, $1.3 billion in emergency grants and loans proposed by the Administration for essential school construction and modernization would be denied. These funds would leverage $6.7 billion over 5,000 repair projects in the highest-need areas of our nation. This bill denies the desperately needed funds to fix leaky roofs, upgrade plumbing, improve accessibility for disabled students and bring local school buildings into compliance with local safety codes.
This legislation would also jeopardize the class-size reduction program Congress approved just last November. H.R. 4577 would block-grant the $1.75 billion requested for smaller classes, which has already helped school district to hire 29,000 highly qualified new teachers including 2,500 in Texas. Eliminating funds for class-size reduction would jeopardize gains recently attained and would prevent the hiring of an additional 20,000 qualified teachers to serve 2.9 million children.
H.R. 4577 also provides $1 billion less than the Administration's request for teacher quality programs. The House has already approved two ESEA reauthorization bills requiring all teachers to be fully certified and highly qualified. Schools will need additional funds to recruit and train the 2.2 million new teachers needed in the next decade, and to strengthen the skills of current teachers. The bill also reduces the Administration's request for teacher technology training by $65 million, which will deny 100,000 teachers the opportunity to develop the necessary skills to use technology effectively in the classroom.
Federal education funding is critical for the improvement of our nation's schools. The FY2001 Labor-HHS-Education Appropriation bill fails to appropriate the necessary funding for education programs and quality resources, while it intrudes upon the realm of local decision makers. We must protect America's successful public school system by rejecting this inadequate bill.
The Committee erred in its approval of the Northup amendment banning the use of funds for implementation of Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) proposed rules for ergonomics. I bel ieve OSHA has properly identified the need to address Repetitive Strain Injuries (RSIs) which research has found annually forces more than 600,000 workers to lose time from their jobs. These disorders constitute the largest job-related injury and illness problem in the United States today. Employers pay more than $15-$20 billion in workers' compensation costs for these disorders every year, and other expenses associated with RSIs may increase this total to $45-$54 billion a year.
There appears to be broad consensus that a well-designed work space can reduce employee injuries, heightens productivity and save money. Employers benefit from creating office environments and workplaces that are healthful to workers. Clearly, OSHA has a significant role to play to prevent such injuries. But I also believe the OSHA proposed rule has some flaws which should be addressed, first through the rule-making process and only if it is determined that OSHA fails to fully address legitimate concerns should it subsequently be addressed through the legislative process. It is heavy-handed to simply ban any action and pretend ergonomics does n ot exist.
Additionally, H.R. 4577, fails to provide adequate funding for the Title X family planning program. Title X, as a federal domestic family planning program, grants state health departments and regional umbrella agencies funding for voluntary, confidential reproductive health services. This perennially underfunded program has provided basic health care to more than 4.5 million young and low-income women in over 4,600 clinics throughout the nation. Regrettably, Title X is often the only source for basic health care for many uninsured low-income women who fail to qualify for Medicaid. Eighty three percent of women receiving federal family planning services rely solely on clinics funded by Title X for their family planning services. In light of these dramatic statistics, H.R. 4577 fails once again for its meager $239 million funding stream.
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Mr. Chairman, this is a flawed bill which fails in almost every count, but particularly in health research and education. Rather than invest in our nation's potential, this bill tracks a flawed budget resolution which sacrifices our domestic priorities for the benefit of tax cuts, fails to adequately retire national debt and engages in fiscal chicanery. As such, I cannot support the bill as presented.
Mrs. ROUKEMA. Mr. Chairman, I rise today to reluctantly oppose the amendment offered by Representative SCHAFFER. This amendment has a good objective but takes its funding from a valuable program that provides real learning opportunities to so many children and their parents.
Mr. Chairman, I have long called for the federal government to fully fund its commitment to IDEA. During the past four fiscal years, the Republican majority in Congress has increased funding for IDEA by 115 percent, or $2.6 billion, for the federal share in Part B of IDEA. Even with the increase, however, the funding equals only 12.6 percent of the average per pupil expenditure to assist children with disabilities. We must do better.
Indeed, we passed a bill this year H.R. 4055 that calls for the federal government to meet its obligation to special education within ten years. The bill would authorize increases of $2 billion a year over the next 10 years to meet the federal commitment of 40 percent by 2010.
The money to fully fund IDEA must come from somewhere. What this means is that some difficult decisions have to be made.
In this case though, reducing the funding for the Even Start Program is the wrong decision. The Even Start Program provides opportunities for parents lacking a high school diploma or GED and their children to receive instruction in basic skills, support for their children's education, and early childhood education for those participating in the program.
There is a great deal of unmet need in the family literacy field. The appropriation in the bill will help ensure we can help more families break the cycle of illiteracy and poverty and become self-sufficient. While we need additional funding for IDEA, we also need to increase spending for quality literacy programs. In fact, by taking money from literacy programs such as Even Start actually defeats the purpose of the programs. We should be trying to reduce the need for special education by investing in early childhood literacy programs.
The best argument against this amendment is that we know that family literacy works. Parents are the key to their child's academic success. The more parents read to their children and actively participate in their education, the greater the probability that their children will succeed in school. We should not be cutting funding for this important program.
I firmly believe that the amount of federal funding that goes to IDEA must be increased. Having said that, however, we need to be responsible about where we get the money to increase funding for IDEA. Even Start is not the place to take money away.
I urge my colleagues to oppose the Schaffer amendment.
Mr. UNDERWOOD. Mr. Chairman, in a time of unprecedented economic growth and surplus, the majority supported bill shortchanges every American citizen in our country. Republicans have systematically cut funding for a number of important initiatives in the President's budget. And, despite the fact that Americans ranked education--over health care, tax cuts or paying down the national debt--as their highest priority for additional federal funding, this bill falls short of providing $3.5 billion of the President's request for education programs alone.
This bill fails to provide funding for the President's School Repairs initiative of $1.3 billion in loan subsidies and grants to repair up to 5,000 aging and neglected public schools. Natural disasters and inadequate funding to provide maintenance have contributed to the decay of Guam's aging public schools. As a result, thousands of Guam's students are crowded into makeshift classrooms or in temporary buildings. The most dramatic example of this is the temporary closure of an entire elementary school in my District of Guam. Last year, C.L. Taitano Elementary School was shut down for repair because it could no longer meet the local safety codes required to keep its doors open. In the interim repair period, nearly all the students were shifted to temporary buildings--trailers. This interim is expected to last more than a year. Having classrooms housed in trailers is simply unacceptable. Having an entire elementary school in trailers is an abomination. All American students deserve a decent education; Guam is no exception. Guam's schools are in dire need of repairs now.
This bill fails to support our school children and teachers by providing funding needed for the President's Class-Size Reduction initiative to hire 100,000 new teachers by FY 2005. This in effect repeals the bipartisan agreement on class size reduction and jeopardizes the Federal commitment to hire as many as 20,000 new teachers next year.
This bill cuts funding for ESEA Title I grants for local education agencies by more than $400 million from the President's request of $8.4 billion. Title I helps over 11 million disadvantaged school children gain skills in core academic subjects and helps them achieve to high academic standards. This would eliminate services to more than 650,000 low income students. In FY 2000, Guam's schools received $5.3 million in Title I grants. The FY 2001 request for Guam is $5.6 million.
This bill cuts $51 million from the President's request of $650 million for the Safe and Drug Free Schools Program. Fully funding the President's request would enable the expansion of the Safe School/Healthy Students school violence prevention initiative to an additional 40 school districts.
This bill freezes the FY 2001 appropriations for Bilingual Education to FY 2000 levels. At $248 million, this is a decrease of $48 million from the President's request of $296 million.
Approximately 3.4 million students enrolled in schools through the nation have difficulty speaking English. From 1990 to 1997, we saw a 57% increase in limited English proficient (LEP) students. With continued growth in the school enrollments of LEP students, we will have to turn away more than 100 qualified school districts and deny desperately needed services to approximately 143,000 LEP students.
This bill also shortchanges labor and health programs which will put American workers and seniors at risk. Although the national unemployment rate is at its lowest level in 30 years, not all corners of the United States are experiencing the benefits of a robust economy. In Guam, unemployment is at 14%, nearly 3.5 times the national average of 3.9% The unemployment forecast for 2000 is expected to be even higher. We need to safeguard programs that provide training and relief for all American workers.
This bill not only ignores the $275 million requested increase for the second year of the five-year plan to provide universal re-employment services to all America, it cuts $593 million or 30% below the President's request and 19% cut below the FY 2000 level.
Seventy-six million baby boomers will begin reaching retirement age eight years from now. The population of those over age 85, who often need the greatest care, is expected to increase by 33% in the next 10 years. The urgency to prepare for the needs of our aging population is critical.
This bill eliminates $36 million in the HCFA budget for the Nursing Home Initiative. This would safeguard the delivery of quality health care in nursing homes across the nation through state surveying and certification reviews.
This bill eliminates the President's $125 million request for the Community Access Program to address the growing number of those workers without health insurance. Approximately 44.5 million Americans were uninsured in 1998-24.6 million of those uninsured were workers.
We cannot ignore the needs of our diverse community! The education, health, and social well-being of our nation is at stake. This bill neglects to recognize the most fundamental needs of our communities. For all these reasons, I strongly oppose the passage of this bill.
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