[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 35, Number 38 (Monday, September 27, 1999)]
[Page 1799]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Statement on Education Appropriations Legislation

September 23, 1999

    The House Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education 
appropriations subcommittee today passed a partisan bill that would 
seriously undermine our efforts to strengthen public education, protect 
workers, and move people from welfare to work.
    This bill is proof that America's highest priority--improving our 
schools--remains the Republican Congress' lowest priority. The bill 
eliminates our effort to hire quality teachers to reduce class size in 
the early grades. It denies hundreds of thousands of young people access 
to after-school programs, fails to improve and expand Head Start, cuts 
the successful America Reads program, cuts educational technology, and 
eliminates the GEAR UP program, which helps young people prepare early 
for success in college. It fails to give public schools the resources to 
succeed, and does nothing to demand accountability for results.
    The bill also terminates the successful School-To-Work program and 
Youth Opportunity Grants, and makes deep cuts in programs that help 
dislocated workers, provide worker protections, and ensure worker 
safety. It undermines America's efforts to move people from welfare to 
work by reneging on our bipartisan commitment to the States on welfare 
reform. It contains a range of unacceptable provisions, which would 
prevent the government from effectively protecting the health and safety 
of the American people.
    The subcommittee bill would also underfund public health priorities, 
including preventive health, mental health and substance abuse, health 
care access for the poor, and our efforts to reduce racial health 
disparities and the spread of AIDS worldwide. It would prevent us from 
continuing to provide important patient protections for American workers 
and improving our Nation's organ distribution system. It also would 
threaten our ability to manage key entitlement programs, such as 
Medicare and Medicaid.
    I warned earlier today that the tax bill sent to me as part of the 
Republican budget plan would lead to major reductions in key national 
investments in education and other programs. The subcommittee's bill 
today is another step in the same misguided direction.
    This bill is unacceptable. Our Nation's children deserve much 
better. I sent the Congress a budget for the programs covered by this 
bill that provided for essential investments in America's needs and was 
fully provided for. If this bill were to come to me in its current form, 
I would veto it. Instead, I urge the House not to pass the 
subcommittee's bill and to work on a bipartisan basis with my 
administration on acceptable legislation.