Press Releases

Enclosed please find the Children's Defense Fund analysis of the impact of the Bush Administration’s budget proposals on children. Also enclosed are sheets on the proposed dismantlement of Head Start as we know it and on the proposed Medicaid block grant. Both would hurt children profoundly.

The Bush Administration’s budget brings good news to the rich and bad news to the poor. The Administration’s rhetorical mask of compassionate conservatism has been ripped off by one of the most uncompassionate and dangerous assaults on poor children in American history. Promises to Leave No Child Behind are mocked by tax and budget deeds which leave millions of children, but no millionaire, behind.

The irresponsible $1.3 trillion 2001 Bush tax cut will give the top one percent of taxpayers with average incomes over a million dollars $477 billion—52 percent when in full effect—while numerous children’s programs will be eliminated, dismantled, slashed, and frozen. Two hundred thousand children will lose child care over the next five years and 570,000 children after-school programs next year when likely welfare policies will require mothers leaving welfare to work longer hours. Just the proposed Bush stock dividend tax cut alone could provide every unserved child a Head Start and health coverage—investments the Bush budget would dismantle.

The Bush Administration says America believes children and the poor should subsidize tax breaks for the rich with the health care, Head Start, child care, education, after-school programs, jobs and income they urgently need to survive today. And it says that our children and grandchildren should be saddled with a mountain of future debt as deficits escalate from profligate tax cuts for millionaires and huge indiscriminate military budget increases. Specifically, CDF’s enclosed analysis finds that the Bush Administration’s budget:

-- dismantles Head Start, block grants Section 8 housing, foster care, Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) and Medicaid, and uses state flexibility as a guise to weaken crucial protections for poor children;
-- eliminates, cuts, and freezes a range vital children and youth programs;
· plays a shell game with child and youth investments. It gives a little with one hand and takes more with the other hand;
-- lavishes tax breaks on the wealthiest while starving child investments;
-- dangles children’s programs as bait for deficit-ridden states awash in a sea of red ink putting the most vulnerable children at risk of a double budget buzz saw and in competition with people with disabilities and the elderly; and
-- mortgages our children’s and nation’s future to give tax giveaways to millionaires and throws money at a military budget that currently spends $31.4 billion a month and $376.3 billion a year—the highest current dollar level in history.

"I don’t know whether we will be at war with Iraq, what the terrorists will be doing, or how stormy or cold the political, physical and economic weather will be this year," said CDF President Marian Wright Edelman. "I do know that millions of hungry, homeless, poor, and violence ravished children need our powerful and wealthy nation to stop the terrors they face daily in their homes, schools, and communities. And I know they won’t get help unless we demand freezing existing and proposed new tax giveaways to millionaires."

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Background Information:

• Bush Budget Backgrounder (Adobe PDF : 4 pages : 117 KB)
• Head Start Backgrounder (Adobe PDF : 2 pages : 102 KB)
• Medicaid Backgrounder (Adobe PDF : 2 pages : 102 KB)

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The mission of the Children's Defense Fund is to Leave No Child Behind and to ensure every child a Healthy Start, a Head Start, a Fair Start, a Safe Start, and a Moral Start in life and successful passage to adulthood with the help of caring families and communities. CDF provides a strong, effective voice for all the children of America who cannot vote, lobby, or speak for themselves. We pay particular attention to the needs of poor and minority children and those with disabilities. CDF educates the nation about the needs of children and encourages preventive investment before they get sick, into trouble, drop out of school, or suffer family breakdown. CDF began in 1973 and is a private, nonprofit organization supported by foundation and corporate grants and individual donations. We have never taken government funds.