mr. speaker , i yield myself such time as i may consume , and i would just like to say to my colleagues and friends on the other side of the aisle to take a second look at this bill . 
i know that , in our first iteration , they did not give us any votes , but let me point out to you that if the bill were to fail , we would end up with a cr , a full year 's cr , because you know we are not going home without something in this field . 
these are important programs , over 500 of them . 
what would happen with a cr ? 
well , there would be $ 800 million less for student aid , $ 278 million less for innovation and improvement programs , $ 178 million less for higher education programs , $ 94 million less for title i programs and $ 84 million less for special education programs . 
that would be a disastrous result that i do not think any of us on either side of the aisle would want to happen . 
in addition , if we were to go to a cr , if this bill were to fail , liheap funding would be reduced by $ 298 million , with no contingency for extreme weather . 
community services block grant would be cut $ 317 million . 
national institutes of health would be cut $ 198 million , with 200 fewer research grants . 
mr. speaker , i want to say to all my colleagues that this is not something we want to make as a christmas gift to the american people , a cr on this bill . 
this bill is a good bill . 
it reflects good management of what we had to work with . 
i might say at the outset that there are no earmarks in the bill , none , for anyone , either side or any person . 
absolutely no earmarks , and no earmarks for the senate either . 
but i want to tell you what happened to the earmarked money , because we had $ 1 billion in the bill that originally passed the house back early on . 
of that money , $ 100 million is going to title i to help our schools ; $ 100 million is going to special education state grants to help the programs that help the disadvantaged students . 
mr. speaker , $ 250 million is going to nih for research , and we recognize that the challenge is great in that field to research medical issues . 
there is $ 317 million for community services block grant , and these help people with limited means . 
there is $ 176 million in liheap and $ 66 million for community health centers , and community health centers obviously provide a place for people who do not have a family doctor and have limited means . 
it gives them a place to go . 
so these are good programs . 
these are good uses of the money , and i think we all understand that in this time of tight budgets and tight resources , we have to set priorities . 
in so doing , we set the priorities i just outlined rather than to go into earmarks . 
i want to say at the outset that this program is $ 1.4 billion under 2005 , and there is no increase from the bill we had 2 weeks ago . 
how did we manage to meet these program needs ? 
we did it by managing carefully . 
we looked at the programs and the funds that were available . 
i want to point out to my colleagues on the other side of the aisle that i do not think you want to go home and tell people in the education field that you voted against an increase , let me emphasize , an increase of $ 100 million over last year in title i. i do not think you want to tell the parents and families of children with special needs that you voted against an increase in special education of $ 100 million over last year . 
head start is up $ 6.8 million . 
math and science partnerships , and we hear a lot about that today , these are up over last year . 
we have $ 100 million to develop teacher and principal programs , incentive programs , particularly at the elementary level . 
trio and gear-up , the president 's budget had zero , and we put those back in because we think those are good programs . 
again , they are well funded . 
community health centers i mentioned are up $ 66 million . 
this is an important program . 
it is important in many communities , as is liheap . 
medicare modernization , we are rolling out the new program , and we have $ 980 million in this bill to assist in getting people informed to meet their desires in terms of prescription drugs . 
that would not be in a continuing resolution . 
nih is $ 107 million over the president 's request . 
it is up this year $ 200-some million . 
people think of nih being research at bethesda . 
nih is basically managing 40 , 000 grants going out to colleges , hospitals , medical services all over the country . 
i would guess that almost every member has one or more research grants in his or her district that is funded out of nih . 
that is very important , and we have an increase in that program . 
that is again part of the earmarked money , $ 28.6 billion . 
community services block grant , a program that helps people get geds , is just one example of what is done with the community services . 
there are a whole host of things to help people with limited income and who need additional help . 
in the labor department , we have $ 1.57 billion for job corps and $ 1.48 billion for dislocated workers . 
how did we manage to increase a number of programs while at the same time keeping the total number under last year , $ 1.4 billion ? 
well , one of the ways that we have gotten the necessary funding to do the items that i mentioned in the way of increases was to eliminate 20 programs . 
we went through the whole list of programs , the 500 , and said , does this work ? 
is this a productive program ? 
the bill that left the house had about 48 programs terminated . 
the other body decided to put back some of those , but we still have 20 programs that have been discontinued or will be discontinued because , again , we recognize that we have to manage the resources as carefully as possible to do the important things : education , research at nih , the effort in cdc to deal with the avian flu issue . 
so we tried to manage the funds available as carefully as possible . 
i think the results of that are reflected in the increases i mentioned . 
i might say between this and the bill we had previously , we added $ 90 million for rural health programs , very important programs , obviously ; and we did this by reducing the avian flu number because we are going to deal with that in another bill that will be coming along shortly . 
so all in all , i want to say again this is a very positive bill ; it is a very responsible bill in terms of using the resources that are available . 
it is something that every member can support , every member can go home and say with a measure of confidence and satisfaction , i did something to improve education , i did something to help the special needs programs , the special education program , i did something to expand the community services programs and the community health centers , nih , liheap , things that are extremely important to people . 
this literally is a people 's bill , but it is a people 's bill , too , in the sense that we manage their tax dollars carefully and try to give them as much in the way of service as possible . 
i hope my colleagues on the other side of the aisle will take a second look at what we have tried to do in this bill . 
i recognize , of course , that you get into the tax issues , you get into budget issues , but this is not a tax bill . 
it is not a budget bill . 
this is a bill about taking resources that are available and using them in the best possible way to serve the people . 
we had many hearings in our subcommittee . 
my colleague from wisconsin was very helpful in those hearings to try to find out what is important to people . 
we tried to reflect that in the bill given the fact that we had a limited amount of resources . 
i would love to have more , and i am sure everybody else would , but the facts were we had to work with what we had available . 
i think the bill reflects a responsible use of the resources that were made available . 
i think it is a bill that will serve the american public very well . 
mr. speaker , i reserve the balance of my time . 
