BACK TO FLOOR SPEECHES
02.14.06

"FY '07 Budget Testimony"

"Mr. Chairman, thank you for the opportunity to testify today about our nation’s budget priorities.

"I actually have little quarrel with what the President said in his State of the Union about what we need to do to compete in an unforgiving world economy. But I am dumbfounded by what came just days later when the President submitted his proposed budget.

"I wondered: Did any of the people who wrote the President’s speech actually talk to any of the folks who prepared the proposed budget? Did the folks who prepared the budget even watch the speech on television? Did they go to the refrigerator just when the President talked about American competitiveness?

"Unfortunately, it was not the first time that I have seen a jarring difference between what the President said in the State of the Union and what was in his budget. I will spare you the hackneyed Yogi Berra quotation about déjà vu.

"But there is another Yogi Berra quotation that fits here: you can observe a lot just by watching.

"Here is what I have observed about this administration from watching the president’s State of the Union address and the proposed budget that comes a week or so later. The President’s rhetoric about helping working Americans hits the mark. The budget completely misses.

"In 2004 and again last year, the President praised the important role of community colleges in job training. In 2004, the President proposed a new $250 million job training program in community colleges. The funding for the new program was a little hard to find in the proposed budget, but Congress that year did appropriate $250 million. Unfortunately, half the appropriation came dollar for dollar from the Federal Dislocated "Worker Assistance Program, a program that already did pretty much what the President said his new program would do.

"Last year, Congress provided no funds for the new community college initiative, but the Federal Dislocated Worker Assistance Program did not get the $125 million back. In fact, programs that train new and dislocated workers have been cut by about $120 million over the last three appropriations cycles.

"In this year’s State of the Union, the President did not mention community colleges at all, to the great relief of all of us who care about community colleges.

"This year the President announced a new American Competitiveness Initiative. Mr. Chairman, I care deeply about our need for science and math education, for research funding, and for energy independence. I was pleased to hear the President lend his voice to those concerns.

"I should have known to worry instead.

"The President’s proposed budget actually cuts science funding. The President would decrease the Federal Science and Technology Budget by almost $600 million. Oceanographic and atmospheric research is cut by almost ten percent. Research into nuclear energy would increase by more than a third, but research into renewable energy and energy efficiency, including the new switchgrass initiative, is increased by only four percent.

"Other programs that are vital to our nation’s competitiveness, programs that have proven results in creating and saving American jobs, would either be eliminated or cut drastically. The proposed budget would cut the Manufacturing Extension Partnership by 56 percent. The National Institute of Standards and Technology of the Department of Commerce (“NIST”) would suffer a 23 percent decrease in funding, including all funding for the Advanced Technology Program, one of the few sources of “patient capital” for the commercialization of new technologies.

"Mr. Chairman, if we want to match action on competitiveness to rhetoric, and I do, here’s where we should start: fully fund the President’s new community college job training program, and restore the $125 taken from the Federal Displaced Worker’s Assistance Program. In general, protect funding for career and technical programs that provide help for the unemployed and for those trying to improve their job skills.

"We need to protect funding for microloans and Business Assistance Programs that help low-income entrepreneurs who do not have access to traditional capital markets, and provide full funding for the Small Business Administration’s small business loan programs, that has accounted for 30 percent of all long-term small business lending.

"We need to increase funding for the Manufacturing Extension Partnership. MEP programs helped North Carolina businesses save $85.6 million in 2002 alone.

"We need to provide full funding for the Advanced Technology Programs, $79 million, and find other ways to help new technologies cross the “valley of death” from the laboratory to the marketplace.

"And we need to make a real commitment to science and math education, to research and innovation.

"Mr. Chairman, after watching four States of the Union and four budgets as a Member of Congress, I offer this observation: If we can’t get the speechwriters and the budget-writers to talk to each other, maybe they can switch jobs. Let the speechwriters write the budget, and let the budget-writers write the speech.

"Mr. Chairman, the speeches are a lot better than the budgets, and the budgets are what really matter."

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