mr. speaker , i yield myself 11 minutes . 
mr. speaker , the gentleman from ohio is my friend . 
i have a great deal of respect for him , and i know he tries to do the best job with the tools he is given . 
the problem is that he has been given a totally inadequate set of tools . 
`` this is the budget that you get when you elect a republican white house , a republican house of representatives , and a republican senate. '' i did not say that . 
the former majority leader of the republican caucus said that , the gentleman from texas ( mr. delay ) xz4001040 . 
this is the day when the price of republican tax cuts for the wealthy becomes quite clear , on this bill and on the bill that will follow , the reconciliation bill . 
this is the day when this congress chooses to walk away from its investments : obligations in education , health care , job training and the like . 
this is the bill which shortchanges the social gospel . 
this is the day that we pass legislation that chooses to make the lives of the most privileged among us quite a bit more pleasant because of their tax cuts while at the same time we are making the lives of the poor just a little bit more desperate . 
this is a growing country . 
it has growing problems . 
it has growing opportunities . 
if this bill does not grow with it , then we lose ground ; and we are certainly losing ground under this bill today . 
this is the bill for education , health , social services , worker protection programs . 
this is the guts of the federal effort to try to see to it that , regardless of one 's station in life , people have the greatest possible opportunity to get ahead . 
yet , this bill is $ 1.5 billion on a program-for-program basis , once you cut out the funny accounting , this is a bill which is $ 1.5 billion below last year . 
the department of labor , funding in that department : $ 37 million below the house bill , $ 193 million below the senate bill . 
there are 7.5 million americans out of work . 
yet the bill cuts $ 437 million out of training and employment services . 
that is the lowest level of adult training grants in a decade . 
this bill also cuts the community college initiative , the president 's initiative for community colleges , an effort to train workers for high-skill , high-paying jobs . 
it cuts that effort by $ 125 million and rescinds $ 125 million from funds provided last year , denying the help that the president was talking about giving to 100 , 000 americans . 
state unemployment insurance and employment service offices are cut by $ 245 million , eliminating help for 1.9 million people . 
the international labor affairs bureau will certainly have a hard time protecting american workers from being undercut by child and slave labor abroad after this program has been cut by 20 percent . 
in the health and human services area , this bill cuts health care to the poor and underserved rural areas of the country . 
it eliminates the community access program that helps coordinate services and programs to provide health care to people who do not have it . 
this bill cuts by 69 percent health professions training . 
this bill cuts by 73 percent funding for rural health outreach . 
we have only about 10 percent of physicians in america who practice in rural areas , and yet one-fourth of the u.s. population lives in those areas . 
we have huge shortages of health care providers in urban , underserved areas as well , but training grants for health care professionals are cut by $ 206 million . 
we have the maternal/child health care block grant . 
that program is cut by 20 percent below fiscal 2002 levels , and we have a 24 percent cut in block grants for state health departments . 
and then , all of us are going to run home and brag about how much we have done to prepare the country for public health disasters . 
my friend talked about the national institutes of health . 
we have the smallest increase for nih in 36 years , and under that budget , because funding for nih does not keep pace with inflation , we will actually see 500 fewer research grants coming out of nih than we would have seen 2 years ago . 
we have effectively ended the president 's initiative to expand the number and the capacity of community health centers around the country , $ 238 million less than the president requested . 
for the low-income heating assistance program , our oil companies , one company , $ 10 billion profit the last quarter . 
we expect to see natural gas prices rise 46 percent , home heating oil prices rise 28 percent , and yet we freeze the program that is supposed to provide help to people to pay their bills so they do not have to choose between heating and eating , and we only serve 15 percent of the persons who are eligible to be served under that program . 
education : this is the first cut in education funding in a decade . 
education programs under the no child left behind rubric are cut by $ 784 million below last year . 
that is $ 13 billion below the authorization , and on a cumulative basis , it is some $ 40 billion short of what we promised we would have provided these past years since we passed no child left behind . 
title i is up $ 100 million . 
that is in comparison to a $ 600 million increase that came from that well-known `` liberal '' george w. bush . 
special education , it is up $ 100 million in comparison to the $ 508 million request from the president of the united states . 
because we mandated that local school districts provide service to special education children , we are supposed to be providing 40 percent of the cost . 
this bill actually reduces the federal share of that cost from 18.6 to 18 percent . 
that is going in the wrong direction . 
the comprehensive school reform program , totally wiped out . 
the goodling even start program , named after bill goodling , the former republican chairman of the education committee , cut by 56 percent . 
education technology cut by 45 percent , and that comes on top of a 28 percent cut that was made last year . 
we cut safe and drug-free schools by 20 percent in this bill . 
we freeze afterschool programs for the 4th year in a row . 
that means that there are 14 million kids in this country who want those services who will not get them . 
and i could go on and on . 
on higher education , the college board tells us that the 4-year cost of attending a public university has increased by $ 3 , 100 over the past 5 years . 
the president 's answer was to raise the pell grant maximum by 100 bucks . 
a $ 100 solution to a $ 3 , 100 problem . 
the congress said `` no , that is too much. '' the house cut it to $ 50 . 
this conference report totally eliminates it , totally eliminates it . 
no increase in the maximum grant . 
and then in the reconciliation bill that follows today , they are going to add $ 8 billion more in costs to students who borrow money to go to college . 
and then this bill freezes all other student aid programs , seog , work-study , perkins , trio , gear up . 
it freezes title vi foreign language program . 
the backlog at social security , those caseload backlogs are going to increase . 
this bill provides $ 189 million less than the president asked , $ 80 million less than was in the house bill , $ 130 million less than the senate bill . 
and we do all of this in order to free up necessary room so the republican party can deliver on its $ 100 , 000-plus tax cuts for people who make 1 million bucks . 
this is going in the wrong direction . 
these priorities are wrong . 
this bill is a disgrace . 
the gentleman would have provided a much better bill if he had been given a decent allocation , but he was not . 
so he did not have the tools to do it . 
there is no reason to vote for this bill . 
mr. speaker , i reserve the balance of my time . 
