Making Appropriations for the Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education--Conference Report--Resumed

MAKING APPROPRIATIONS FOR THE DEPARTMENTS OF LABOR, HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES, AND EDUCATION--CONFERENCE REPORT--Resumed

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Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, American families are ready for a change. They take a look at the priorities of this Republican Congress and the record of the Republican Party and say: it is time for a new direction for our country.

You need to look no further than the Labor-HHS conference report. It is a low point of a Republican Congress that is disengaged from the real needs of American families. This bill is a crowning achievement of a Republican agenda out of touch with voters.

Republicans are ignoring the problems that matter most to families in Illinois and all across the country health care, education, and jobs.

What we have is a bill that cuts education funding for the first the first time in a decade, slashes health funding by more than $300 million, and eliminates funding for trauma care.

This bill pulls the rug out from under America's working families.

Many working families have children in public schools. I have been in a lot of public schools in Illinois that serve lower income kids. No matter how successful those schools are, I can tell you--they don't have money to spare. This bill actually spends less Federal money on schools and education than any federal budget in the last 10 years.

How can we in good conscience reduce our commitment to education for low-income kids in public schools?

But perhaps one of the more striking failures of the reconferenced version of the Labor-HHS appropriations bill is the utter lack of concern over preparing for the avian flu.

Never mind that this bill eliminates the $7.9 billion added to this bill on the Senate floor to help local hospitals and health departments get ready for what pandemic flu.

This conference report goes so far as to take an additional $120 million out of already underfunded accounts at the CDC-money specifically designated to prepare for pandemic flu.

``We'll take care of that later,'' we were told.

Meanwhile, my understanding is that the Defense appropriations bill includes half of the funding the Senate approved--half of the funding the President requested--to prepare for avian flu.

What is driving these cuts is a tax reconciliation that benefits corporations and the wealthiest among us. Those benefits come at the expense of basic guarantees for working American families--that they can have decent public schools; that they can see a doctor; that they have a chance to getting back into the workforce when they are out; and that if a killer flu pandemic breaks out in this country we will have the capacity, the drugs, and the organization to beat it back.

As a member of the conference committee, I did not sign the conference report and strongly oppose it.

Together, America can do better.

http://thomas.loc.gov/