Washington, D.C. - Earlier today, Rep. David Price (D-NC) addressed the FY2011 budget debate on the House floor. He spoke in opposition to a Republican proposal that would fund the government for one week but make $12 billion in damaging cuts to investments in federal law enforcement, homeland security, environmental protection, supplemental nutrition for women infants and children and other programs. In past weeks, Rep. Price has supported two short-term continuing resolutions to allow additional time for budget negotiations. Those resolutions cut spending but avoided real damage to the economic recovery. The text of Rep. Price's remarks is provided below.

Video of Rep. Price's remarks:

Madam Speaker, I rise in opposition to this continuing resolution.

All of us know we are having this debate at a challenging and tense time. We are facing an entirely unnecessary government shutdown, a shutdown that has already been disruptive to critical government functions and to our communities, and which may become radically more so. But we all know – everyone in this Chamber knows – that this could have been avoided. This is a politically generated crisis.

In December, this House had the opportunity to pass an omnibus appropriations bill – 12 subcommittee bills, each written with bipartisan cooperation, with substantial savings relative to the President's budget request – and Republicans in the Senate refused to even consider that omnibus bill.

So, failing that, we asked, what about a year-long continuing resolution with even more savings? Again, Republicans in the Senate said they would filibuster such a bill. What our friends on the other side of the aisle opted for instead was a potential March shutdown that they thought they could use to leverage the tea party agenda. And so here we are.

In recent weeks, I and many others on this side of the aisle have been willing to vote for two short-term continuing resolutions to give the process of negotiation more time. We accepted additional cuts in these short-term measures, cuts that avoided real damage to the recovering economy. Unfortunately, the resolution before us today breaks with that pattern. It attempts to hold the House and the country hostage to an extreme ideological position to which the Republican Conference has, unfortunately, caved in.

This resolution proposes $12 billion in unacceptable and damaging cuts, cuts that would threaten this fragile recovery, destroy jobs, and pull back critical national investments. It takes, for example, $200 million from the Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children. It takes $150 million from federal law enforcement. It takes over $200 million from the Department of Energy's environmental cleanup programs.

In the homeland security area, with which I am most familiar because of the subcommittee I chaired and on which I now serve as ranking member, it would reduce FEMA's state and local grants by 20 percent, below 2010 levels. Both the state homeland security grants program and the Urban Area Security grants program would be cut to historically low levels.

This continuing resolution would decimate the Land and Water Conservation Fund. It would radically cut the Clean Water and Drinking Water Revolving Funds. It cuts school improvement investments by $148 million, including efforts to improve education for retiring veterans. It cuts hundreds of millions from the Centers for Disease Control. It would cut $1.5 billion from a critical national investment – high speed rail. It would cut public housing operating funds drastically.

Madam Speaker, these cuts are economic folly. They have the potential to damage this fragile recovery and to compromise critical national investments. Republicans may be willing to risk a governmental shutdown to appease extremist elements, but we cannot allow our country to be held hostage to their radical agenda. Let us pass a clean continuing resolution and continue the discussions. But do not deliver this ideologically driven body blow to our economy.

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