Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2008

Floor Speech

DEPARTMENTS OF LABOR, HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES, AND EDUCATION, AND RELATED AGENCIES APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2008 -- (House of Representatives - July 19, 2007)

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Mr. HINCHEY. Madam Chairman, this has been a very interesting debate, and one of the aspects of it with which I find myself in agreement is the assertion by my friend on the other side of the aisle that there is a display of differences of opinion and attitudes with regard to the way in which we handle our fiscal responsibilities here, and there is no question about that.

If you look at the last 6 years, while the Republican Party has controlled every aspect of this government, they managed to succeed to almost double the national debt. They now have us in a situation where we owe almost $9 trillion, $8.9 trillion.

They continue to spend, as a result of their initiatives, now, about $11 billion a month on Iraq, the illegal invasion of Iraq which they perpetrated and are interested in carrying out.

What we're trying to do here in this particular bill, and in the context of our budget responsibilities, is to focus attention on the needs of the American people, what we as a Congress ought to be doing in the context of our responsibilities, serving the American people, doing what's right for them, improving the possibility, the prospects of education, making it easier for our children to get the best possible education that they can get, making it easier for people to get the health care that they need, making it easier for people to deal with housing situations and circumstances so that people have proper housing.

In other words, our objectives and our priorities are to improve the quality of life of the American people, while your obvious priorities and objectives are to decrease the quality of life of the American people, which is consistent with your objective in the context of this particular amendment.

You want to reduce the amount of money that is available for education, reduce the amount of money that's available for health care, reduce the amount of money that's available for housing and other things that are essential to the American public, while you keep wasting more and more money in Iraq.

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