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Announcement by the Speaker Pro Tempore

Date: Nov. 17, 2005
Location: Washington, DC
Issues: Unemployed and Low-Income Entitlements and the Safety Net Health Insurance Higher Education Agriculture and Food


ANNOUNCEMENT BY THE SPEAKER PRO TEMPORE -- (House of Representatives - November 17, 2005)

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Mr. ETHERIDGE. Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong opposition to this Republican Budget cut package.

First, let me state that I strongly support balancing the federal budget and paying off the national debt. I am tremendously proud that during my first term in the U.S. House, Congress and the White House worked together in a bipartisan manner to balance the federal budget for the first time in a generation and produced record budget surpluses.

Unfortunately, the current Republican Congressional Leadership has produced a budget plan with harmful cuts to essential services that does nothing to reduce the budget deficits or offset the costs of recovery from Hurricane Katrina or the ongoing war in Iraq. At a time when American families are getting squeezed, the budget reconciliation package cuts funding for priorities including Medicaid, student loans, child support and food stamps that assist the working poor and the middle class.

Specifically, this legislation will cut Medicaid by $11.4 million, student loans by $14.3 billion, food stamps by $796 million and child support by $24.1 billion. The bill also breaks the promise of the Farm Bill by cutting $1 billion from agriculture support and $760 million from conservation. Although I am pleased this version of the bill abandons earlier attempts to open the Arctic Wildlife Refuge and coastal areas like the Outer Banks to oil and gas drilling and a few other modest improvements, these changes in no way compensate for the bill's fundamental flaws.

Congress should reject this legislation and go back to the drawing board to produce a responsible federal budget for the American people. I support pay-as-you-go (PAYGO) budget rules to enact budget discipline and restore fairness and equity to the budget process. I want Congress and the President to work together across the partisan divide to balance the budget once again, pay down the national debt and invest in our people and our country's economic competitiveness in the 21st century global marketplace.

I urge my colleagues to join me in voting against these senseless budget cuts.

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