mr. chairman , i thank the gentleman for yielding me this time .  i have a great deal of respect for the chairman of the committee on the budget .  he is a friend of mine .  he has got a tough job , trying to bring forth a budget priority that reflects his caucus 's wishes in that .  but let us set the facts straight here .  the democratic alternative does a lot better when it comes to support of the education programs than our republican counterpart .  we also in our budget proposal reinstitute the pay-as-you-go rules so that if we are proposing a spending increase or a tax cut in one area , we are going to find an offset in the budget to pay for it .  their budget does not do it .  our budget is also out for 10 years that shows that we come to balance by 2012 .  their budget is a 5-year proposal .  and the reason they do not do it at 10 years is because their deficits explode in the second 5 years .  but their budget has also hidden the true and real cuts that are occurring in their education programs , ones that affect real people , real students in real-life conditions and will not help improve the condition of education or access to higher education , which we desperately need in this country .  their budget proposal actually calls for eliminating $ 4.3 billion worth of education programs in the next fiscal year alone .  they completely wipe out vocational education , the federal commitment to that .  they completely wipe out all the federal education technology programs that exist .  they wipe out the safe and drug-free schools grant program .  they also get rid of trio and gear up , targeting low-income students who want to go on to post-secondary education opportunities .  they wipe out even start family literacy programs .  and their proposals also hurt students by raising fees for student loans for higher education , ending students ' ability to consolidate those loans at a lower fixed rate interest , and not only eliminating the perkins loan program , as the gentleman from south carolina ( mr. spratt )  indicated , but also forcing colleges to repay prior federal perkins contributions .  the democratic alternative is better than that .  we restore these funding cuts as well as $ 4.5 billion in the next fiscal year alone .  talk to any administrator , any teacher throughout the country wrestling with implementing the unfunded federal mandate called no child left behind , and they will say what these requirements are doing to their school districts with the lack of funding to back up those requirements .  talk to special education teachers , and they will say how the lack of education commitment at the federal level , only 18.6 percent of the 40 percent cost share that we promised for special education funding is pitting student against student in our public classrooms throughout the country .  we can do a better job .  the democratic alternative does do a better job , while staying true to fiscal discipline and fiscal responsibility by reinstituting the pay-as-you-go rules that worked very well in the 1990s and led us to 4 years of budget surpluses , while also maintaining a crucial investment in education programs .  as a member of the committee on education and the workforce , i am heading to china in a couple of days in order to visit their colleges and universities .  guess what ?  china and india are making a major education investment in the future of their countries .  they are graduating more engineering students than we are today .  they are emphasizing the math and science and engineering programs while we are starting to cut back in these crucial education areas .  do people want a recipe for economic disaster ?  the republican budget and their lack of commitment for education is a sure way of getting us there .  