A r c h i v e d  I n f o r m a t i o n

THE WHITE HOUSE  Office of the Press Secretary ______________________________________________________________________  For Immediate Release                                  November 3, 1999 

President Clinton Vetoes The Labor/HHS/Education Appropriations Bill
November 3, 1999

Today the President will announce that he has vetoed the Labor/HHS/Education appropriations bill for Fiscal Year 2000. He will cite Congress' failure to provide critical investments in education and the across-the-board cuts made by the bill in such critical areas as defense, veterans' programs, education, environmental protection, and law enforcement.

The President will call on the Congress to work in a bipartisan way with the Administration to enact a budget that meets the education, environmental, law enforcement, and foreign policy priorities he has called for throughout the year. He will also urge the Congress to enact a number of other critical measures they have failed to complete, including an increase in the minimum wage, the Jeffords-Kennedy bill, common-sense gun legislation, and the Patients' Bill of Rights.

Congress' Labor/HHS/Education Bill Guts Critical Investments

• Guts Investment in Accountability, Teacher Quality and Class Size Reduction. The bill provides no funding for class size reduction and fails to address teacher training issues. The bill turns these programs into a block grant that could be spent on vouchers and other unspecified activities. By failing to fund class size reduction this bill does not guarantee that the more than 29,000 teachers hired last year can continue teaching in smaller classes and eliminates funding for an additional 8,000 teachers that would be hired under the President's Budget for next year. The bill also fails to invest in proven teacher professional development practices.
  
  
• Guts Investment in Title I Grants. Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act currently provides much-needed academic support to nearly 12 million children in high-poverty communities. The bill provides $189 million less than the President's budget for Title I. As a result, 300,000 fewer children in high poverty communities would receive additional educational services. Title I funding is a key component of efforts to help disadvantaged students reach high standards. The bill also fails to provide language needed to implement the President's plan to set aside 2.5 percent of Title I funds to help states and localities turn around or reconstitute failing schools using Title I resources.
  
  
• Underfunds GEAR UP. GEAR UP is a nation-wide initiative to encourage more young people to have high expectations, stay in school, study hard, and take the right courses to go to college. The bill provides $180 million, $60 million below the President's Budget. Nearly 131,000 fewer low-income students would receive services in FY 2000, compared to the President's request. The President's Budget extends GEAR-UP services to over 570,000 students in FY 2000.
  
  
• Guts Investment in After School. The bill provides only $300 million of the President's $600 million request for After School programs, resulting in nearly 400,000 fewer students being served than would be served under the President's Budget. If the President's proposed matching provision were included, it would serve 800,000 fewer. After-school programs are one of the most effective ways to help students reach high academic standards and end harmful practices such as social promotion.
  
  
• Bill Underfunds Investment in Educational Technology. The bill provides $60 million less than the President's request of $801 million for a variety of innovative educational technology programs. Funds to help all states and thousands of school districts buy hardware and software, train teachers, and link up to the Internet were cut by $25 million. Funding to establish up to 300 Community Technology Centers was slashed from $65 million to $10 million.
  
  
• Threatens Enforcement of Labor Protections. The bill level results in an effective freeze for Department of Labor domestic workplace enforcement programs, resulting in a $51 million reduction below the President's request. For example, OSHA is cut $25 million below the President's budget. As a result of this cut, some 2,200 fewer OSHA compliance inspections would be performed.
  
  
• Cuts the Social Service Block Grant (SSBG). The bill cuts SSBG by $209 million below FY 1999, and by $680 million below the President's request. SSBG serves some of the most vulnerable families in the Nation, with child protection and child welfare services for millions of children.
  
  
• Eliminates the President's Family Caregiver Support Program. The bill does not include funds for the President's $125 million new initiative to support those who care for the over 5 million elderly Americans who have long term care needs.
  
  
• Compromises Quality Healthcare. Inadequate funding for public health would compromise our efforts to vaccinate children, detect infectious diseases, prevent the spread of AIDS, and respond to bioterrorism. The bill fails to fund our efforts to bring more healthcare to the growing ranks of the uninsured. It fails to respond to the aging of America by not funding the family caregiver program and inadequately funding our nursing home quality initiative. It freezes critical programs that provide mental health, substance abuse, and family planning services to vulnerable Americans. Finally, it contains unacceptable health riders, including the delay of a critical regulation that would improve the distribution of organs. The bill cuts public health priorities, including preventive health, mental health and substance abuse, health care access for the poor, and efforts to reduce racial health disparities and the spread of AIDS worldwide. The bill would postpone payments to research universities, public health clinics and other grantees rendering it impossible to administer certain critical programs of the NIH and the CDC. The bill fails to adequately fund the training of children's health specialists.

Legislation Contains Harmful Across-the-Board Cuts in Critical Priority Areas

The Labor/HHS/Education appropriations bill vetoed by the President today contained an across-the-board spending cut which would have resulted in damaging, indiscriminate cuts in priority areas, including defense, veterans' programs, education, law enforcement, and the environment. For example, it would have:

• Forced the loss of as many as 48,000 military personnel;
• Reduced veterans' medical care by $184 million;
• Resulted in over 1.3 million fewer meals being delivered to elderly persons in poor health in the Meals on Wheels program;
• Deprived 71,000 women, infants, and children of food and nutrition assistance under the Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) program;
• Deprived nearly 3,000 children of receiving the full complement of childhood immunizations; and
• Required the FBI, INS, and DEA to cut the number of agents by a total of more than 300.

END