Jay Inslee: Washington's 1st Congressional District

Issues

Iraq

Cutting Impact Aid Funding Hurts Children
Speech on the Floor of the House of Representatives

February 26, 2003

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.