Pete Mendoza
District 28 U.S. Congressman for Texas Henry Cuellar hosted a virtual meeting April 8 to inform and discuss the appropriation bills passed and funding for the Fiscal Year 2024.
The Fiscal Year is a time in which the government decides how it will budget and plan financially.
Cuellar said his office won several appropriations in the FY 2024 involving higher education, public education, homeland and child care.
“On higher education, we did several things,” Cuellar said. “We added money for Hispanic serving institutions and millions of dollars, hundreds of millions of dollars.”
He said his office was able to increase the Pell Grant and programs like the TRIO Upward Bound program.
Cuellar said public education received an increase in Title I, which makes sure teachers get paid, and increased funding to the IDEA program or the special education program.
He added child care obtained an exponential increase in funding from Texas.
“We increased child care by almost $1 billion especially under the circumstances, that is important because what we have done with that is the child care block grant that we sent to the states in Texas gets hundreds and hundred of millions of dollars,” Cuellar said.
Cuellar said FY 2024 is putting money into Border Patrol and Homeland Security which is the largest amount of money ever received.
He said his agency was able to change the input of money from building the border wall to giving money to Border Patrol agents, technology and infrastructures.
The Congressman included an extra $1 billion was given to the Transportation Security Administration to ensure they have equipment available and give officers a deserved payment.
This is Pete Mendoza for Vaquero Radio.
