The following is a statement from Fourth District U.S. Rep. David Price on the GOP leadership’s proposed continuing resolution for the budget. Price is the ranking member of the appropriations subcommittee that overseas funding for the Department of Homeland Security.
If ever there were a wolf in sheep’s clothing, this so-called “continuing resolution†is it: Far from continuing to fund the government through to the end of the fiscal year, the measure would in fact drastically slash the investments Democrats have made in our economic recovery – and undermine our national security in the process.
Compared to most other departments, Homeland Security is pretty well protected in this bill, and the Defense Department actually gets an increase. But the strength and security of our country are about much more than how much we spend on weapons systems or how thoroughly we police the border. They are about the investments we make in our people, in our nation’s ability to recover from the current economic downturn and compete in the global economy.
In this light, this Republican spending plan would weaken our security by undoing the investments we have made in putting Americans back to work and laying the foundations of our future competitiveness. The cuts are disproportionately focused on the small fraction of the budget – domestic discretionary spending – through which we invest in our people and in our economic capacity. For example, the bill will cut $1 billion from the National Institutes of Health, $139 million from the National Science Foundation, $1 billion from the Environmental Protection Agency and $246 million from university-based agriculture research funding.Â
I am especially concerned about the impact of these cuts on the Research Triangle, where federal research funding is a major economic driver. The Triangle’s success over the last 50 years is no accident: Our business community is populated with companies that were “spun off†of federally funded research projects. The Fourth District alone accounts for $799 million of the $1 billion in NIH research conducted in North Carolina. These investments are a powerful way to spur job growth – to say nothing of attacking dread diseases – and without them we have little hope of meeting the president’s call to out-innovate our international competitors.
The best cure for our budget deficit is a recovered economy, not a “continuing resolution†that could more accurately be called “Continuing the Recession.†The notion that economic recovery will be somehow promoted by undoing the very investments that have been critical to our recovery is nothing more than wishful thinking.