joel packer: thank you. thanks for having me. my representative community for education funding is a national coalition of 116 education groups. the budget that the committee reported at today is really going to be devastating for students and children from preschool through higher education. it does that in three major ways. first, in the pot of mrn that's called non-defense discretionary, that's the pot of money that the appropriations committee allocates each year, it is where most education programs are funded along with many other important programs, it starts up by freezing that pot of money at the sequester level for fiscal year 2016 leaving no room for any needed investments. then much worse, in the next nine years, it slashes those funds by $759 billion. it is an average cut of 14%. 14% cut in the department of education would be almost $7 billion, $8 billion that would really be harmful for extra reading help, services for are children with disability college work study. second, it devastates the pell grant program. pel

we're going to hear from joel packer for the committee for education funding.re rights center. let's start with deb weinstein and thank you for your passion and advocacy for hard working americans and people struggling to make ends meet. >> thank you so much. i really appreciate this opportunity and everything that congressman van holland and his colleagues here are standing for. you no he at the coalition on human needs, we watched with great interest this past fall when there was a lot of talk about concern about inequality concern about poverty, and it was voiced by republicans and democrats and we welcome that because there hadn't been a lot on the republican side it seemed like. but i guess that was then. that was talk, and their budget is not exactly action. it is a blueprint for the kind of action that they would like to take, and than action would make inequality worse, would make poverty worse. let me give just one example that representative van holland mentioned. and this, this budget would allow the health to low income working families from the chi