[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 41 (Monday, March 6, 1995)]
[House]
[Page H2658]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




     PROGRAM CUTS FOR THE POOR TO FUND TAX CUTS FOR THE WELL-TO-DO?

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 4, 1995, the gentleman from Colorado [Mr. Skaggs] is recognized 
during morning business for 5 minutes.
  Mr. SKAGGS. Mr. Speaker, last Thursday the House Appropriations 
Committee met for 6 or 7 hours to prepare for floor action a bill that 
will cut some $17 billion from this year's appropriations. It is a lot 
of money. It can easily pass as merely a statistic in the debate going 
on in this country these days.
  But in those $17 billion of cuts there is a story to be told. That 
amount represents $1 out of every $7 that this country was going to 
expend this year on programs to help the poor, those living below the 
poverty line. And that $17 billion represents $1 out of $100 that this 
Government was going to be spending on everybody else. One-seventh of 
our budget to help the least advantaged in this country, one one-
hundredth of the budget to help the most advantaged in this country.
  And you might ask, why? Why would we be doing that to programs like 
Women's, Infants and Children, early childhood nutrition programs, 
which clearly more than pay for the expenditures in better health, 
better learning, better productivity over a lifetime, and pay for 
themselves at a ratio of 4 or 5 to 1? Why would we be cutting prenatal 
care, absolutely essential to prevent low-birthweight babies and early 
childhood disease? What is the economy to be accomplished there?
  Why go after safe schools programs that are critical in our urban 
neighborhoods, and why cut substantially into the low-income energy 
assistance program so critical to poor and largely older Americans in 
the colder parts of this country?
  Well, the only answer we can find for taking from the disadvantaged 
disproportionately than from the advantaged is the tax cut that the 
majority wishes this Congress to pass, the benefits of which will also 
accrue largely to the best-off in this society, the top one-fifth, 
which was the only group in this country that enjoyed real increases in 
their standard of living during the eighties and early nineties.
  This is just the beginning. Soon we will have proposals coming to the 
floor that will also cut other critical support programs, whether it is 
child care or food stamps.
  I wanted to get some sense of what this was going to mean to the 
people in my district. I had a meeting this last Saturday morning at 
the Boulder Day Nursery, in Boulder, CO, where mothers, fathers, and 
kids came together to try to explain what this complicated, but 
ultimately critical, interconnected set of programs, from early 
childhood nutrition to day care to prenatal care to AFDC, had meant in 
their lives. People who do not want to be dependent on anybody else, 
who want to get on their feet, who want to be productive citizens, but 
who, for various reasons--husband and father who took a walk, a 
tragedy--had to rely on some of these programs.
  I will be speaking further about what a central role this kind of 
support means, not because these people want to stay on the dole, but 
because they want to make something of themselves, become taxpayers, 
become productive citizens, and need a sense of community from all of 
us to get through some difficult times in their lives.


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