Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2006

DEPARTMENTS OF LABOR, HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES, AND EDUCATION, AND RELATED AGENCIES APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2006 -- (House of Representatives - November 17, 2005)

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Mr. WELDON of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I thank the chairman for yielding, and I want to commend the gentleman for his outstanding work on this piece of legislation. The chairman is, I believe, well noted on both sides of the aisle for being a very compassionate and caring person, but as well a responsible adult.

When I travel around my congressional district, yes, it is true there are certain groups that would like to see areas of this bill increased. The things I hear overwhelmingly and most loudly is that these are difficult times. We have had tremendous outlays and expenditures with Hurricane Katrina, the war in Iraq and that we really need to hold the line on spending. And what this bill does, I believe, is unprecedented in my 11 years of being here in the House of Representatives. It actually reduces spending from last year. So this is not Washingtonspeak gimmicks where you take a 7 percent increase and reduce it to a 6.9 percent increase and scream and yell about that being a cut. This is a real reduction in spending, and I think it is quite impressive. It eliminates 21 existing programs and cancels eight new programs.

What Chairman Regula has done is adopted a philosophy which I think everybody in the Congress should adopt, look at programs very seriously and are they getting the job done. And if they are not, they should be eliminated. And contrary to Reagan's statement that the only thing that has eternal life in Washington, D.C. is a Federal program, Chairman Regula has been able to reduce and eliminate 21 existing programs because they were not effective.

Within that context, the bill includes, I think, a number of important increases along the lines of what I believe the American people want to see. They are small in the budget realities we are dealing with now, nonetheless, they are real. The Pell Grant amount was increased so that we could keep the size of the grant the same. Additionally, there are some small increases for special education and title 1. I want to particularly commend the chairman for holding the line on the Weldon language. We have had in this bill for, as I understand it, decades, conscience protections for health care providers that do not want to perform abortions.

But in recent years, very aggressive abortion rights advocates have been putting pressure, using regulatory agencies and State governments and courts on hospitals and other institutions to begin performing abortions when the officials and the workers in those institutions did not want to do that. And what we have done is held the existing language from last year, which, I think, is the right policy for the Congress. It is the right policy for the American people. So I commend all my colleagues to vote for this bill. It is a good piece of legislation. It is the right thing for this country at this time and our history with the challenges that we face today.

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