Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2024

Floor Speech

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Ms. McCLELLAN. Mr. Chair, I thank Congresswoman DeLauro for her leadership.

When we invest in our children, we invest in our communities. I agree, and that is why I am so perplexed and frankly outraged by the draconian cuts in this bill, specifically targeting teachers, students, and title I schools that serve vulnerable communities.

These draconian cuts would force 220,000 teachers from the classrooms. In my district, that is nearly 700 title I teachers who would lose their jobs.

I am one of the few mothers of young children in this Congress. I have an eighth grader and a third grader. I see every day that at a time when our schools are still struggling to address learning disruption and a growing achievement gap resulting, in part, from the COVID pandemic and the growing mental health crisis, that this bill compounds that problem by cutting resources to our schools and cutting mental health services that will help to address the crisis that our children and the adults that care for them are facing every day.

For that reason, I urge my colleagues to vote against this extreme Labor-HHS appropriation bill.

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