[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 149 (2003), Part 4]
[House]
[Page 4474]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




               CUTTING IMPACT AID FUNDING HURTS CHILDREN

  (Mr. INSLEE asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, the weekend before last, I attended the 
deployment at the 8th Hospital Unit, some proud sailors from Bremerton, 
Washington. We wanted to show our support for our troops and our 
sailors. And that is why I was so chagrined to return home to find out 
that the President wants to cut funding for these sailors' children.
  That is right. The President has proposed cutting $10 million from 
Federal assistance to the Central Kitsap School District. Why would the 
President, at the very time we are deploying our soldiers and our 
sailors to the Mideast, want to cut the educational funding for these 
proud American servicemen's and women's own education? It is flat 
wrong.
  This $10 million hit on the budget of my local school district is 
going to adversely affect the children whose mothers and fathers are 
now flying to the Mideast for service to their country. We will do 
everything we can to stop the President of the United States from 
cutting educational funding at the very time that our people are 
deploying in the Mideast in order to finance the tax cuts for the rich 
that he wants to push through this Congress.
  Mr. Speaker, I hope that we will develop a bipartisan consensus that 
this is a very bad idea to cut the impact aid funding that is going to 
so many heavily service-dependent economies in our region. If we do so, 
it will strike a blow for the men and women and their children who 
ought to have their schools protected at the time we are in the 
Mideast.

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