[Congressional Record Volume 153, Number 163 (Thursday, October 25, 2007)]
[Senate]
[Pages S13434-S13435]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                        LABOR-HHS APPROPRIATIONS

  Mr. MENENDEZ. Mr. President, I am in strong support of the fiscal 
year 2008 Labor, Health and Human Services appropriations bill. I thank 
the chairman of the Labor-HHS-Education Appropriations Subcommittee, 
Senator Harkin, and the ranking member, Senator Specter, for their 
leadership in crafting this bill and ensuring some of our Nation's most 
critical priorities are adequately funded. I am proud that we have been 
able to negotiate a bipartisan appropriations bill that passed the 
Senate.
  This bill is one of the most important funding bills that comes 
before us. It fulfills our responsibilities in key priorities, such as 
health care and education. With the passage of this legislation, we 
will be striking a significant departure from the administration's 
damaging trend of shortchanging our children, our schools, our workers, 
and our health. Instead of undermining education, abdicating our 
responsibilities on health care, weakening the rights of our workers, 
this bill will restore a commonsense balance to our values that we 
should expect from the greatest Nation in the world.
  I would like to highlight a few areas in which this bill is 
especially successful and contrast them to the administration's 
misguided priorities.
  While the President's budget zeroed out funding for mentoring 
programs under the Safe and Drug Free Schools Act--a program that is 
critical to keeping our children safe and off the streets--I am proud 
that this bill not only restores that funding, but increases it by more 
than $30 million.
  As someone whose dreams of college could not have been realized 
without Pell grants and other Federal financial aid, I am pleased this 
bill follows through on the promise to increase Pell grants and 
restores funding for Perkins loans. These increases will mean that 
today's young people who come from families that cannot afford college 
on their own can still achieve their dreams. I know the power of this 
assistance. Without these programs, I would not have been the first in 
my family to graduate from college and law school. There are millions 
of students nationwide who are in the shoes I once was. They are 
waiting, hoping that there will be adequate financial aid to help them 
access college. And as tuition continues to increase, as grant aid 
under this president has shrunk, that challenge is getting anything but 
easier. In my home state of New Jersey, where the average tuition rose 
7 percent since last year, 4-year public colleges are the second most 
expensive in the Nation. Our students need more, not less, grant aid if 
they are going to achieve their dreams. This bill sets us in the right 
direction.
  Another program that is vital to students in New Jersey is vocational 
education. The vocational State grants are critical for the 
institutions in our state that are working to develop a workforce that 
is able to compete in today's global economy. New Jersey has some of 
the best vocational and technical education programs in the country. 
And while this President continually speaks about an educated and 
competitive workforce in the science, technology and math fields, he 
does not put his money where his mouth is. His budget would have cut 
vocational funding in half. Our bill restores those cuts.
  This bill also restores cuts to education technology grants, which 
the President called for eliminating. These grants help ensure that our 
children have access to technology in the classroom. New Jersey alone 
would have lost $5 million next year under the President's cuts. In the 
global race to have the most trained, highly skilled, best prepared 
workforce, we are losing ground. The earlier we can introduce our young 
people to technology, to help them gain fluency in areas that involve 
technology, the better off they will be in an evolving and increasing 
technological world.
  I am also pleased this bill increases funding for special education 
by more than $500 million. This funding is critical to ensuring 
children with disabilities have an equal opportunity to receive a good 
public education, just as other children.
  And ensuring all children begin on an equal playing field means 
adequately funding Head Start, which this bill does. This legislation 
provides a $200 million increase for Head Start, which will help 
improve the school readiness of our young children to ensure they can 
get the skills necessary to succeed. Head Start provides child 
development, education, health care, nutrition, and socialization 
skills, all essential services that benefit more than nearly 1 million 
low-income children in this country.
  This bill also helps our young people by expanding opportunities for 
them to learn trade skills. It provides a $15 million increase for 
YouthBuild, which helps young people learn constructing and housing 
skills and prepare for postsecondary training. This legislation also 
provides an increase of almost $82 million for Job Corps to help 
strengthen these centers that provide key job skills to young people.
  In addition, this bill will help veterans transition to civilian life 
by providing a $5 million increase for employment and training 
services.
  In terms of health care, this bill makes significant changes to the 
President's budget proposal and redefines our priorities as a Nation. 
Overall, the bill provides $68.1 billion in discretionary 
appropriations for Health and Human Services Department programs. This 
amount is $5 billion more than last year's level and $5.4 billion more 
that the administration's budget request.
  The bill provides $250 million more for Community Health Centers and 
over $200 million for the National Center of Minority Health and Health 
Disparities to address the health care needs of our Nation's minority 
and underserved communities.
  This bill will also provide almost $29.9 billion in funding for the 
National Institutes of Health, $1.3 billion more that the Bush 
administration's budget request. The Centers for Disease Control would 
also receive $6.4 billion under this bill which is $444 million more 
than the administration's request. It is imperative that we continue to 
invest in our Nation's health and research facilities as their work 
will save and improve the lives of millions of Americans.
  I am proud that this bill also provides $8 million for the initial 
implementation of the Patient Navigator, Outreach, and Chronic Disease 
Prevention Act of 2005, which President Bush signed into law in 2005. I 
sponsored this legislation when I was in the House of Representatives 
in order to improve health outcomes by helping patients, including 
patients in underserved communities, to overcome barriers they face in 
getting early screening and appropriate followup treatment. This 
funding will help get people in to see a doctor before symptoms 
develop, so we can catch diseases such as cancer or diabetes early. 
Then we can get patients in to treatment early, which means

[[Page S13435]]

they'll have a better chance of survival and the health care costs will 
be lower. I know that this funding, and the health provisions in this 
Labor, Health and Human Services appropriations bill, will truly help 
to save lives.
  This legislation is critical and makes a strong commitment to our 
Nation's future. This legislation will bolster our commitment to the 
education, health and well-being of our Nation's workforce.

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