Click Here to Download Free Book"Millions of American children are without health insurance, millions are reported abused and neglected, millions are left unsupervised everyday after school, and millions have parents in a prison system that is crushing families."
To help spark debate about the need for major new federal investments in children and families, the Every Child Matters Education Fund has published a book called Homeland Insecurity… American Children at Risk. The book can be downloaded for free by clicking the image above. Our goal is to make children, youth, and family issues a political priority in the forthcoming presidential election.
On Monday the administration presented its 2008 budget. Like its proposed budgets of previous years, this one not only fails to make long-overdue new investments in proven health and social programs for children and families, it also proposes cuts in many areas.
The opinion piece below on federal budget priorities and children is drawn from an essay which appeared earlier this week in TomPaine.com.
Our Children's Homeland Insecurity
By Michael Petit
February 06, 2007Michael Petit is president of the Every Child Matters Education Fund. He served as commissioner of Maine's Human Services Department and was deputy director of the Child Welfare League of America.
Steady progress was made for decades during the 20th century in health, education and social indicators for children thanks to long-term public support for federal spending on maternal and child health services, hospitals, medical research, higher education for doctors and nurses and other public health measures. Many of these social gains are now stalled or at risk of being reversed thanks to two myths underpinning conservative political ideology dominant since the early 1980's: first, that the federal government can't do anything right, and second, that taxes are akin to outright thievery.
This ill-conceived ideology accounts for the virtual indifference in much of official Washington toward the plight of millions of American children who are without health insurance, are abused and neglected, are left unsupervised every day after school, or whose parents are caught in a criminal justice system that is crushing families.Proven programs and policies that could actually reduce these social ills have come under repeated attack starting in the early 1980's. Since 2001 these earlier attacks have expanded. Cuts in federal taxes and their impact on state revenues forced many cuts in child care programs, child support enforcement, health care assistance, Head Start, and more, ignoring decades of documentation showing that more, not less, federal spending on children was needed. The result is a huge investment gap, one producing much worse outcomes for U.S. children and families than found in other rich democracies.
The children harmed most by anti-tax/anti-government ideology live in the very states which have embraced it most enthusiastically. Nowhere is this more evident than in Texas, a classic low-tax, low-service state. How effective has this ideology been in Texas? Nationally, Texas ranks:
Yet the politicians whose harsh policies produce these outcomes stubbornly insist that more tax breaks and more cuts in programs are good for America's children.
In a counterpoint to compassionate conservatism, a new report by Every Child Matters Education Fund, Homeland Insecurity ... American Children at Risk, draws from official data in 11 child-related statistical measures to rank the well-being of children in the states. It shows that the states with the best outcomes for children generally tax themselves at higher rates and make more investments in programs serving children. In these states, more children are insured and enrolled in after-school programs, and they are more likely to be aided if abused. The states with the worst outcomes generally keep taxes lower but at the expense of children and other vulnerable groups who would benefit from publicly financed health and social programs.
Do we know how to reduce child poverty and the other social ills afflicting millions of children and families? We do. The Great Society initiatives of the mid-1960's, for example, helped knock back child poverty to a record-low 14 percent by 1969.
Conservative ideologues have taken pains to misrepresent the effectiveness of government poverty programs, loudly proclaiming that only the private sector could help the poor while ignoring evidence that the much lower child poverty rates in other countries are the direct result of public, not private, policies. Most telling, government data show that since the latest round of conservative tax and budget dogma was imposed in 2001, household income has dropped, poverty has increased and health coverage has declined.
If we are going to invest in children's programs, we have to pay for them. Earlier generations of Americans understood that progressive taxes are essential to democracy and its commitment to equal opportunity for all children. The current generation of anti-tax conservatives seems determined to prove our ancestors wrong.
Our children deserve much better.
To see the ranking of states on child well-being, or to download a copy of Homeland Insecurity, visit http://www.democracyinaction.org/dia/track.jsp?key=282352813&url_num=7&url=http://www.everychildmatters.org/.
Source: Homeland Insecurity - American Children at Risk
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