Mr. PAUL. Mr. Speaker, today I am placing in the Congressional Record an amendment I, along with my colleague, Mr. Doolittle of California, are offering to H.R. 3037, the Labor/HHS/Education Appropriations bill, to reduce funding for the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) by $30,000,000, increase funding for the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) by $25,000,000 and apply $5,000,000 toward debt reduction. Our amendment provides an increase in financial support to help local schools cope with the federal IDEA mandates by reducing funding for an out-of-control bureaucracy that is running roughshod over the rights of workers, and even defying the Supreme Court!

The NLRB has repeatedly proven itself incapable of acting as an unbiased arbiter for individual employees. Most recently the NLRB established a new nationwide rule that union officials may force employees to pay for union organizing drives as a condition of employment–directly contradicting several Supreme Court rulings!

It is an outrage that the tax dollars of working men and women are wasted on an agency that flaunts Supreme Court rulings in support of its forced-dues agenda–especially when local schools are struggling with the IDEA mandate that they provide a ‘free and appropriate’ public education to children with disabilities.

Congress must make funding for schools and disabled children a greater priority than funding for a rogue federal agency. Therefore, I hope all my colleagues will support the Paul-Doolittle amendment to H.R. 3037.

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