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Labor HHS Appropriations Bill Bears Brunt Of Republican Budget Cuts

July 19, 2017

WASHINGTON, DC (July 19, 2017) — The following is the text of remarks as prepared for delivery by Rosa L. DeLauro (CT-03), Ranking Member of Labor, Health and Human Services, Education and Related Agencies Appropriations Subcommittee at Committee mark up of the 2018 Appropriations Bill.

Mister Chairman, I am pleased that we are here today, marking up this bill in full committee for the third year in a row! Many members of this Subcommittee have heard me say that I believe the Labor-Health and Human Services-Education bill is called "The People's Bill." I say it for a reason.

The biggest economic challenge of our time is that too many people are in jobs that do not pay them enough to live on. The programs in this bill provide opportunities for hardworking Americans to improve themselves and for our economy to grow. We need a country that works for the middle class and the vulnerable, not just the wealthy and those with the most lobbyists.

Too often, workers lack the skills and experience to access better jobs and earn family-sustaining wages. We need to enact policy that ensures that everyone can benefit from the economic recovery, and that everyone has the skills training they need to get good jobs with high wages. Right now, we grow jobs, but not incomes. We are shrinking, not growing, the middle class.

It used to be that workers with high school degrees were able to secure good paying jobs, in manufacturing and elsewhere that allowed them and their families to prosper. These jobs have not grown over the past 40 years, especially not since the financial crisis, that has shifted where jobs are being created and what skills are needed. Median income today is below where it was before the financial crash. Keep that in your heads as we prioritize where to spend taxpayers' hard earned dollars. We must invest in job training and education. We must put at the center of our effort the 70 percent of Americans for whom a four year college degree is not their course. We should prioritize their aspirations for their families and communities.

The advantage for workers with more than a high school diploma is clear—but we need to shift our thinking so that we do not only focus on degrees, but rather on in-demand skills and credentials that help people get good jobs with decent wages. In many cases, work-based learning and apprenticeship programs are equipping employees with critical skills.

If people are to see better and better lives for their families, we must build a pipeline of skilled workers. That means we need to have a public workforce development system that adapts to businesses' changing needs. The federal government has long played a key role in helping Americans workers learn and grow through workforce development and connecting businesses with talent.

But programs that help grow our economy, educate our students, and protect women and seniors cannot operate if the Labor-HHS bill is starved of funding. I am troubled, Mr. Chairman, to see the Labor-HHS bill once again bearing the brunt of Republican budget cuts. The overall cut to non-defense discretionary spending is $8 billion, and the Labor-HHS bill is cut by more than $5 billion. And this cut is completely unnecessary.

The allocations we approved are approximately $5 billion below the non-defense level allowed under the Budget Control Act. We have the resources available, yet the majority refuses to allocate them to the essential programs funded through our bill. I will also note—that when adjusting for inflation, this bill is approximately $30 billion below the 2010 level.

There are bright spots in this bill. I strongly support increases for NIH research, emergency preparedness, Special Education, and TRIO and GEAR UP. But even those increases show the fundamental insufficiency of the Labor-HHS allocation: the NIH increase is about half the size of the increase for each of the past two years, and Special Education funding continues to fall short of our commitment to students with disabilities. Unfortunately, the modest increases in this bill are far outweighed by decimating cuts to programs that ought to be seeing increases.

I am deeply disappointed that the bill fails to make additional investments in Title I, which reaches 25 million students in more than 80 percent of our school districts. In addition, level funding for Preschool Development Grants and nominal increases for Head Start and Child Care means we will continue to fall behind in providing children and families with high-quality early education opportunities and care.

The bill threatens the very future of the Pell Grant program by slashing $3.3 billion. The bill does nothing to make college more affordable and sets Pell on a dangerous path at a time when 44 million student borrowers have more than $1.3 trillion in student debt.

This bill is fundamentally anti-teacher. It eliminates more than $2 billion for Supporting Effective Instruction grants—or teacher training—which helps reduce class sizes and give teachers evidence-based professional development.

This proposal eliminates nearly a dozen education programs, including the largest reading program for low-income children and youth, Special Olympics, and funding to expand access to the arts in our most under-resourced communities. It imposes harmful cuts to proven education programs like Promise Neighborhoods. If we do not invest in our children, we are denying them the tools for success.

This bill's approach to women's health pushes a dangerous and harmful ideological agenda. It eliminates funding for Title X Family Planning and the Teen Pregnancy Prevention program, and includes new ideological riders that would block funding for Planned Parenthood and effectively block life-saving research using cells from fetal tissue.

The bill cuts access to the Mental Health Block Grant (141 million) and Substance Abuse Prevention (57 million). We speak often about the opioid crisis, but when the opportunity arises to take strong action, we fail to fund these priorities in a meaningful way. The bill also cuts nurse training, tobacco prevention, and completely eliminates the Minority HIV/AIDS Initiative. And it fails to fund a Public Health Emergency Fund.

This bill hurts workers by eliminating the Employment Service, which helped nearly six million unemployed workers, including veterans, find jobs in 2015. This funding goes to our One-Stops to help people looking for jobs get relevant skills—this is a betrayal of job seekers in our economy. The report makes reference to the skills gap—why would we cut off such a useful avenue that helps meet businesses' needs and close that gap?

The bill also eliminates grants expanding the highly-effective Registered Apprenticeship model that connects job seekers with good paying jobs employers are desperate to fill. The bill includes cuts to programs that make our country more competitive, like Job Corps, slashes job training for dislocated workers and eliminates a tool that helps us evaluate if workforce and education programs are effective. Why would we eliminate programs that have for so long been about economic opportunity and a ladder to the middle class?

And of course, there are the riders. Yet again, this bill attempts to block funding for the Affordable Care Act. It also continues to prohibit funding for gun violence prevention, which has had a chilling effect on gun violence research. And finally, this bill prohibits the Department of Labor from ensuring that financial advisers act in the best interests of their clients.

In short, the funding in this bill fails to meet our country's needs, and breaks our promises to women, seniors, students, and our workforce. It is not aligned to a country that puts the middle class and the vulnerable first—it benefits those with the most money and the most lobbyists. Today we will offer a set of amendments to restore those promises. I hope some of our colleagues in the majority will join us in this effort.