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Today, Vote Kids is releasing a scorecard for votes in the first session of the 111th Congress for both the United States Senate and House of Representatives. It scores each senator on 13 key votes, and each member of the House of Representatives on 19 votes on policies and budget items that would impact children and families.

Click here to read the entire report card and see detailed state fact sheets how each member of Congress voted.

According to a new research report from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, facing large budget shortfalls, a small number of states are scaling back tax credits for low-income working families, which not only harms some of the families hardest hit by the recession but also weakens the economy by lowering overall demand.

Millions of low-income working families and individuals are relying on federal and state tax credits, such as Earned Income Tax Credits (EITC), to help them endure the recession. The economic crisis has increased unemployment and reduced work hours and wages. Credits offered by states help to alleviate this hardship and stabilize incomes.

The benefit of such programs also extends to the economy at large. State tax credits for low-income families put money into the hands of people most likely to spend it, and most likely to spend it in their local economy.

Earlier this month, Virginia enacted a cut to its EITC that would take effect in 2010 and would cost an estimated 114,000 low-income working families a total of about $6 million. Strange given how the new governor, Bob McDonnell, regularly touts the favorable tax climate as reasons for businesses coming to Virginia. A spokesperson for the governor Bob McDonnell is promising that the governor will reverse the cut so that families can claim the full credit for the 2010 tax year. So far this is simply talk because to restore this tax cut, the Governor would have to call a special session of the Virginia legislature. The 2010 regular session is over.

The Virginia legislature had to make hundreds of millions of dollars in cuts and tax changes to close their budget deficit this year, presumably why this EITC change was made. The legislature voted to phase out a corporate tax break this year, but Governor McDonnell line-item vetoed that measure. Allowing that phase-out to take effect would have saved the state $30 million, more than enough to sustain the EITC. This is simply misplaced priorities and failure in leadership. Low-income children in Virginia will have to pay the price for this even though none of them voted for Bob McDonnell last fall.

Other states are considering similar measures:

• Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty cut funding for the state Renters’ Credit by $51 million for close to 300,000 low- and moderate-income households. One-quarter of the affected households are seniors and people with severe disabilities.
• In Georgia, the state legislature is considering eliminating the refundability of the state’s low-income tax credit, which provides needed tax relief and wage support for workers earning less than $20,000 per year. The change would take nearly $22 million directly out of the pockets of the 1 million affected taxpayers — mostly workers and seniors.
• New Jersey Governor Chris Christie has proposed reducing the state EITC from 25 percent of the federal credit to 20 percent. Approximately 485,000 families would lose more than $45 million. The governor is also proposing eliminating property tax rebates for seniors, renters, and homeowners with incomes below $75,000.
• In the District of Columbia, Mayor Adrian Fenty proposed reducing the District’s credit to 39 percent from 40 percent of the federal credit. This change would save the District a tiny fraction of its expenditures but take $1 million from some of the 50,000 low-income workers whose wages get a boost from the DC EITC.
• A similar reduction is being pursued in Montgomery County, Maryland, one of the three localities in the country to offer a local EITC (the other two are New York City and San Francisco). County Executive Isiah Leggett has proposed reducing the county’s EITC by one-third or $5.4 million for the 30,500 working families who claim the credit.

It is pure idiocy to raise taxes on those hardest hit by a recession. State refundable tax credits targeted at low-income working families encourage work, stabilize income, and spur consumption. Every state legislator who votes to eliminate them need to be asked why the oppose tax breaks for some, but not for working families who need them the most.

Last year, the Congress passed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. It provided billions of dollars to support education and education reform throughout the country. It kept states from firing teachers and closing schools. It is set to expire at the end of the year, and without additional funding, these educational reform efforts could end. As Education Secretary Duncan recently told Congress, “We are gravely concerned that the kind of state and local budget threats our schools face today will put our hard-earned reforms at risk.”

The recession has driven down state revenues by record proportions. Education makes up the largest single item in state budgets, and spending cuts there have been deep and widespread. Serious state budget shortfalls will likely persist for at least the next two years, reaching an estimated $180 billion in fiscal year 2011 (which in most states will begin July 1) and $120 billion in 2012. This sets the stage for even more severe cuts as states wait for revenues to recover to pre-recession levels. For 2011, governors are proposing cuts that go even deeper than those enacted to date. Congress must continue this educational and Medicaid support or children will have to pay an even greater price for a situation they did nothing to create. The economy didn’t crash because of spending on education, and firing teachers and close schools will not get us out of this recession.

Even though the funding the Recovery Act has provided has saved 284,000 jobs, school districts and other local education employers (such as community colleges) have nevertheless cut 104,500 jobs — and this number is very likely to grow. California school districts have notified nearly 22,000 teachers that they might be terminated, for example, and Illinois’ governor has proposed education cuts that he estimates would mean layoffs for 17,000 teachers. The end of this funding would likely accelerate this job loss. These job losses — as well as teacher furloughs, salary reductions, cancellation of contracts with private-sector vendors, and other budget-cutting measures — also weaken the overall economy by reducing consumer demand. Without additional federal aid, state budget cuts could cost the economy 900,000 public- and private-sector jobs.

In addition, current and additional education cuts undermine reform initiatives that many states are undertaking with the federal government’s encouragement, such as supporting professional development to improve teacher quality, improving interventions for young children to heighten school readiness, and turning around the lowest-achieving schools, to name just a few.

After the jump, we enumerate state education cuts already made:

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In advocating for the health reform bill passed by the Congress last week, the President and the reform’s supports frequently talked about how immediately when the bill is passed, insurance companies would no longer be able to deny coverage, or charge absurdly high rates, to children with pre-existing conditions like diabetes.  However, immediately after the bill passed, the insurance industry claimed that they could just stop writing insurance for sick kids altogether. They claimed that they did not have to guarantee coverage for these children until 2014.

After hearing from Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius who insisted that:

Now is not the time to search for non-existent loopholes that preserve a broken system. I urge you to share this information with your members and to help ensure they cease any attempt to deny coverage to some of the youngest and most vulnerable Americans.

Instead of fighting to deny care to sick children for four more years (after doing so for decades), the insurance industry backed down immediately:

In a letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, the industry’s top lobbyist said insurers will accept new regulations to dispel uncertainty over a much-publicized guarantee that children with medical problems can get coverage starting this year.

Quick resolution of the doubts was a win for Obama — and a sign that the industry has no stomach for another war of words with a president who deftly used double-digit rate hikes by the companies to revive his sweeping health care legislation from near collapse in Congress.

“Health plans recognize the significant hardship that a family faces when they are unable to obtain coverage for a child with a pre-existing condition,” Karen Ignagni, president of America’s Health Insurance Plans, said in a letter to Sebelius. Ignagni said that the industry will “fully comply” with the regulations, expected within weeks.

This will keep happening as the insurance industry fights tooth and nail to avoid complying with this historic bill that does much for children and working families. The key is fighting them at every chance as they have shown that when kids are at harm, the best way to fight back is to shine a light on their practices.

Arizona Senator Jon Kyl has an interesting approach to legislating. 1,100,000 workers are set to lose their unemployment benefits and health coverage through the COBRA program. Senator Harry Reid from Nevada is trying to extend these benefits for the next year and provide Medicaid relief to states like Arizona. Jon Kyl has decided to block this effort in order to preserve a massive tax break for those who inherit millions of dollars:

On Wednesday, a top Republican leader said a deal on the bill would depend on working out the fate of the expired estate tax…Minority Whip Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., said that Republicans will block consideration of the new bill unless they get “a path forward fairly soon” on the estate tax.

Not only are 1.1 million workers scheduled to lose their unemployment insurance in March, 2.7 million are on track to lose them by April, while unemployment is still at 9.7 percent and there are six unemployed workers for every job opening. 6.3 million Americans have been unemployed for six months or longer, which is the most since the government began keeping track in 1948 and “more than double the toll in the next-worst period, in the early 1980s.

Despite all this, Jon Kyl is insisting nothing can move forward to help middle and lower income families in dire economic straits until those wealthy few are protected from having to pay taxes when they inherit millions of dollars. Due to a Bush-era budgeting gimmick, there is no estate tax for those who inherit money in 2010. This tax will be reinstated in 2011 at the level it was when Bill Clinton was president. Kyl’s proposal to slash the estate tax rate and increase its exemption would cost $250 billion over ten years, with 99 percent of the benefit going to the heirs of multi-millionaires. Under 2009 law, only 0.2 percent of estates are subject to the estate tax at all.

The fact that Kyl has vowed to stop the business of the Senate to deal with this non-urgent issue for 99.8% of households is particularly galling given what children in his state are facing. Arizona has been hit particularly hard by the economic downturn and the housing crisis. And the Governor and legislature are proposing policies that will hurt children and families far more than the reimposition of the estate tax. If the budget were enacted, it would:

• Eliminate the state’s children’s health insurance program (KidsCare), which covers 47,000 children
• Repeal Medicaid coverage for 310,000 childless adults and 3,000 adults with serious mental illness
• Make deep cuts to support for early learning by eliminating preschool for 4,328 children and K?3 education support for more than 77,000 students
• Reduce the number of months that low-income families can receive cash assistance through the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program, immediately eliminating assistance for 10,000 families

Last year, Jon Kyl voted against expanding the KidsCare program to 100,000 more children. He voted against the economic stimulus program that provided nearly two billion dollars in Medicaid for children, prevented a billion dollars cut in children’s programs, and invested several hundreds of million dollars in education programs and programs for disabled children in Arizona. He voted against the federal budget that increased funding for Head Start and many other children’s programs, and was just one of votes against expanding afterschool programs.

So while the Governor and legislature are making tough decisions that will hurt the health, safety, and education of Arizona children, Senator Kyl in Washington DC is blocking needed relief so that a few millionaires can avoid paying money on the millions of dollars they inherit. And people wonder why Washington is broken.

This week, the Obama Administration announced its priorities for the re-authorization of the Child Nutrition Act. The need for this is clear:

• A recent USDA report showed that in 2008, an estimated 49.1 million people, including 16.7 million children, lived in households that experienced hunger multiple times throughout the year.
• School-age children are not eating the recommended level of fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and low-fat dairy products according to a 2009 Institute of Medicine report.

The administration is proposing several things to improve child nutrition. They suggest adding an additional $10 billion over ten years starting in 2011. This investment will lead to an improvement in the quality of the School Lunch and School Breakfast Programs, increase the number of kids participating, and ensure that schools have the resources they need to make program changes, including training for school food service workers, upgraded kitchen equipment, and additional funding for meal reimbursements for schools that are enhancing nutrition and quality.

This investment will allow additional fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and low-fat dairy products to be served in school cafeterias and an additional one million students to be served the healthy diets that will allow them to succeed in school.

The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) is also joining with First Lady Michelle Obama in promoting the Let’s Move campaign, which will combat the epidemic of childhood obesity through a comprehensive approach that builds on effective strategies, and mobilizes public and private sector resources. Let’s Move will engage every sector impacting the health of children to achieve the national goal of solving the epidemic of childhood obesity in a generation.

Finally, the administration supports the creation of a new program to reward States that move aggressively to eliminate hunger by 2015. Through this program, USDA will provide competitive grants to Governors to implement creative and innovative approaches to eliminating hunger, letting the states act as laboratories for successful strategies.

Vote Kids strongly supports this initiative and urges Congress to pass this Child Nutrition Re-authorization with full funding to promote these initiatives.

Leo Hindery Jr wrote an excellent column about “America’s Dirty Little Secret: Who’s Really Poor in America?” that contained some amazing and disturbing statistics.

At least 50 million people are ill-fed — up from 37 million just a year ago — including 17 million children. Hunger in America is now at an all-time high, and there are currently entire national geographic regions — the very large 15-state ‘South’ being one of them — where more than half of all public school students are poor and ill-fed.

30% of the nation’s 50 million homeowners own a home whose value is below its mortgage balance, and this number could rise to an almost unbelievable 50% by year-end 2011. It would cost about $745 billion, more than the size of the original 2008 bank bailout, to restore these borrowers to the point where they were breaking even, which there is no obvious political will to find right now.

Despite the truly dismal ‘real unemployment’ figures with which most everyone now agrees — a staggering 30 million workers and 19% of the labor force — very little attention is being paid to the particularly adverse effects the recession is having on people of color, recent immigrants, and out-of school youth. And almost no one is acknowledging the sad reality that even the nation’s 130 million full-time workers have had an average economic loss of 15% just since December 2007 — an average effective work week of 34 hours rather than 40 — which means that the number of unemployed workers, measured economically, is actually as high as 50 million.

The overwhelming problem today for most workers isn’t this recession, as horrible as it is — it’s the fact that for every earned income level except the top 10%, average household income hasn’t changed a bit for 10 years, and that for the bottom 60% of wage earners it hasn’t changed for more than 20 years. Through economic expansions and recessions — and bull and bear markets — alike, 90% of workers in America have been standing still earnings-wise.

And 100 million people, fully one-third of the entire U.S. population, are at or below “200% of the federal poverty line of $21,834 for a family of four”, which is a needs-measure made lame by the fact that no family of four can actually comfortably live on such a low annual income.

Nothing better illustrates the need for a strong response from Washington DC that we are currently not seeing. The Senate passed a small jobs bill yesterday that does little to address these major structural problems in the United States economy. The next steps must be extension of unemployment insurance, COBRA, and robust state aid to prevent devastating cuts in Medicaid, education, and child protection, among many other things. If America is to compete over the next 50 years in this cutthroat global economy, while maintaining its commitment to Social Security and Medicare, these structural problems must be addressed in a way far differently than what is currently being proposed at the federal and state level.

In advance of Thursday’s health care summit, the White House released their version of health care reform that they will be discussing in Washington DC with congressional leadership. In it, the President continues the commitment to the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (S-CHIP) that the Congress expanded last year and President Obama signed into law (after being vetoed twice by President George W. Bush).

Preserving the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP)

The Act preserves the successful CHIP program and requires States to maintain income eligibility levels for CHIP through September 30, 2019 with funding extended through FY2016.

Starting in FY2016, States receive a 23 percentage point increase to their CHIP matching rate to help them cover children under the program.

This represents an improvement over both the House and Senate bills last year. The House bill ended the S-CHIP program after 2013 whereby children in the program and their parents would purchase coverage from a health insurance exchange. The Senate kept the program until 2019 but only funded it through 2015.

Vote Kids hopes that whatever final legislation emerges this week, children need all elected officials to work together to pass a meaningful health reform bill that supports their healthy development. Too much time has been wasted already as millions of children have no coverage and millions more do not have access to quality care. Unless Congress acts, more children will die, more families with go bankrupt, and more states will drop coverage for children as they make painful cuts to balance their budgets.

Utah, like most states, is facing a difficult budget decision that requires difficult decisions about which programs to cut and/or whether to raise revenues to meet the expectation of citizens for quality services. Hawaii recently has decided to close schools on Friday. But Utah Sen. Chris Buttars proposed an even more off the wall idea – that the state should stop paying for 12th grade.

Utah state senator Chris Buttars proposes eliminating the 12th grade. Utah is facing a $700 million deficit and that by cutting an entire grade it will save the state about $60 million. He argues that many students don’t take a strong academic course load in their final year so that year should be optional.

Buttars has since toned down the idea, suggesting instead that senior year become optional for students who complete their required credits early. Of course, he could require that students take a strong course load to get the most out of the educational dollars the state spends. That is the beauty of being a lawmaker, you can make laws that benefit people, instead of looking to grab money for kids so you can avoid tough decisions about raising the revenue it takes for a quality educational system.

It is mystifying why children must lose educational opportunities and health care to solve budget problems they did nothing to create. While this idea of eliminating 12th grade might seem extreme today, it could become commonplace over the next few years if states continue to balance budgets by cutting education first and not being honest about the true costs of government.

About half of the nation’s governors have released their proposed budgets for the upcoming fiscal year. Children will clearly be the victim of many of these cuts as states are choosing to sacrifice their health, education, and safety. They should expect more leadership from the people elected to shape their future, but yet again, politicians are failing them. Many of those proposals will be changed before they are enacted, but they are indicative of the magnitude of the cuts that children in these states are facing:

• Arizona’s governor is proposing deep cuts to a range of programs and services. If enacted, her budget would: eliminate the state’s children’s health insurance program (KidsCare), which covers 47,000 children; make deep cuts to support for early learning by eliminating preschool for 4,328 children and eliminating state support for full-day kindergarten; and reduce the number of months that low-income families can receive cash assistance through the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program, immediately eliminating assistance for 10,000 poor families, among other cuts.
• California’s governor is proposing deep cuts to health care and education beyond those already enacted. Specific cuts include additional deep reductions to Medi-Cal (Medicaid) services, a $1.5 billion reduction in K-12 and community college funding in 2010-11, and elimination of funding to respond to enrollment growth in the state’s public universities.
• Colorado’s governor proposes to eliminate a scheduled increase in K-12 funding that would cover enrollment and cost increases and implement an additional cut of $223 million in school aid. He also proposes delaying payments to Medicaid providers and cutting payment rates.
• Delaware’s governor proposes five days of furlough for teachers.
• Georgia’s governor proposes cuts to education that would reduce K-12 spending by nearly 11 percent from pre-recession levels; state university spending would be reduced by more than 9 percent.
• Maine’s governor is proposing 10 percent cuts in payments to certain Medicaid providers and a further cut in overall K-12 education spending beyond cuts already enacted.
• The Massachusetts budget proposes a $174 million reduction in Medicaid provider rates and eliminates state funding for a program providing housing vouchers to homeless families.
• Mississippi’s governor is proposing to cut state aid to K-12 schools by over 9 percent.
• New York’s governor is proposing a $1.1 billion cut to state education aid; more than $400 million in reduced payments to health care providers and about $100 million in other health-related cuts; $143 million in funding cuts for four-year public colleges and cuts to a financial aid program serving students from low- and moderate-income families.
• South Carolina’s governor is proposing capping total enrollment in the state’s children’s health insurance program.
• Vermont’s Governor recommends a host of spending cuts, primarily focused on human service programs and education, including a 3 percent reduction in Medicaid provider rates, Medicaid premium increases, caps on some Medicaid services like the number of emergency room visits, and an increase of 20 percent in the average number of students per teacher.
• Before leaving office, Virginia’s former governor proposed a budget for the coming biennium that would (in 2011) cap state funding for school support staff and school psychologists.
• Washington’s governor is proposing deep cuts to education and health care. She is proposing: eliminating two education programs, both of which reduce class sizes and one of which provides professional development for teachers; cutting the state work-study program as well as several smaller financial aid programs that help 11,000 students go to college; reduced funding for two- and four-year colleges, likely resulting in administrative cuts, larger class sizes, and elimination of support services such as student advising; and a 20 percent reduction in early interventions and 25 percent reduction in direct client services for HIV and HIV-vulnerable populations.

In 2007 and 2008, President George W. Bush vetoed an expansion of health care to 4,000,000 more children through the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (S-CHIP). The Senate overrode those vetoes, but the House fell a few votes short of the 2/3rds needed. One of the first acts of the Obama Administration and Congress last year was passing this expansion of children’s health care.

As a result, about 2.6 million previously uninsured children gained coverage last year in government health programs, according to a federal study released this week. The gains were due to increased need because of the recession and stepped-up recruitment efforts by some states.

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius on Thursday attributed much of the increase in enrollment in the programs to Congress last February reauthorizing CHIP, which gave states millions of new dollars to expand coverage and financial incentives to make it easier to enroll children.

“Most of these families would not have had the help without” the legislation, Sebelius said at an event at a Washington D.C. child care center.

Nineteen states last year either increased eligibility in Medicaid or CHIP, eliminated monthly premiums or simplified enrollment procedures. Unfortunately, fifteen states scaled back coverage.

But 5 million uninsured children who are eligible for the state-federal coverage programs are not enrolled. To make it easier to get kids signed up for government health coverage, Sebelius has offered to allow states to tap into data on families who already qualify for food stamps.

Children would have not made these gains without the American electorate rejecting politicians opposed to expanding health care for children. John McCain voted against expanding health care for children and would have rejected this expansion. As a result, more children would be uninsured today had he been elected president.

Yesterday, Republican Scott Brown won a special election to replace Ted Kennedy in the US Senate. Senator Kennedy had a decades long record championing the needs of children and families. Rare was the year when he didn’t score 100% in the Children’s Defense Fund scorecard. In his last year, among the few votes he was able to make, he earned a 100% in the Vote Kids scorecard.

Where does Scott Brown stand on children’s issues and the need for greater investment in their health, education, and safety? It is hard to tell. On his campaign website, he only addresses children briefly and with a lack of specifics about the types of bills he would support at the federal level:

I am passionate about improving the quality of our public schools. Accountability and high standards are paramount. I support choice through charter schools, as well as the MCAS exam as a graduation requirement. I have worked to ensure that all children have access to a quality education. I am a strong advocate for the METCO program, which provides lower income students with broader educational opportunities.

He does say he is “opposed to the health care legislation that is under consideration in Congress and will vote against it”. The bill he would vote against provides substantial benefits to children and families.

He campaign against the stimulus passed early last year which provided substantial benefits to children and families.

He says he “has been a fiscal watchdog in the state legislature fighting bigger government, higher taxes and wasteful spending”. We hope that means he would not be opposed to the President’s budget where he proposed substantial increases in programs which benefit children and families. There is plenty of wasteful spending in the federal budget, but there are plenty of good children’s programs which need greater investment, not cuts.

Vote Kids congratulates incoming Senator Brown and hopes he will continue Senator Kennedy’s legacy of championing legislation to prepare every child for success in life through smart, proven federal programs which provide access to the best quality education, health care, and keeps children safe from harm. If he votes against these programs, we will be among the first to point that out.

The Brookings Institute and the Urban Institute released a fact sheet last week showing public spending on children amounts to about 2.2 percent of the gross domestic product (G.D.P.). By comparison, we spend about 5.3 percent of G.D.P. on the elderly.

Compounding this lack of investment, is the dearth of public funds invested in children under 6, the age where research shows that we get the highest returns from education spending.

Parents continue to bear most of the costs of rearing the next generation, while the elderly reap significant benefits — whether they have helped raise children or not. Children grow up to become working-age adults paying the taxes that help finance Social Security and Medicare.

Click here to read more. President Obama will release his budget next month. Vote Kids supports greater federal spending on children’s programs in the federal budget, and a national strategy to get the best possible results for what the federal government spends. This report, and many others, show that the federal government has moved in the wrong direction in recent years in how it addresses the needs of children. We have the opportunity to correct this. Come back here for more information about how the 2011 federal budget addresses the challenges facing children.

A new advertising campaign kicks off today in Nebraska highlighting the importance of health care reform and its benefits for children. The ad from the non-partisan children’s advocacy group Vote Kids is titled “Thanks for Caring” and will air dozens of times on Nebraska television stations over the next several days.

The Vote Kids TV ad features Dr. Amanda McKinney, a Nebraska obstetrician/gynecologist who knows first-hand the deficiencies of our current system of care and coverage. The full text of the ad follows:

Dr. Amanda McKinney:

I’ve spent my career treating families. I know first hand how our health care system has often let kids and their parents down.

A lot of people talk about helping Nebraska families.  Ben Nelson does it.

While Governor, Ben Nelson made sure more kids got health insurance and as a Senator he supports health care reform that will saves lives and saves money.

Thank you Senator Nelson for taking care of our kids and families.  Your vote on health reform was right for Nebraska and our nation.

Disgraceful:

KABUL (AFP) – Children are the biggest victims of the war in Afghanistan, with more than 1,050 people under 18 years old killed last year alone, according to an Afghan human rights watchdog.

Taliban-linked militants caused around 64 percent of all violent child deaths last year, the Afghanistan Rights Monitor (ARM) said in a report.

Children were also press-ganged, sexually exploited, deprived of health and education, and illegally detained by all sides in a war that is dragging into its ninth year since the US-led invasion toppled the Taliban regime.

“At least three children were killed in war-related incidents every day in 2009 and many others suffered in diverse but mostly unreported ways,” ARM director Ajmal Samadi said.

Children died in suicide attacks and roadside bombings — at the crux of the Taliban’s arsenal against US, NATO and Afghan troops fighting the increasingly virulent insurgency as it spreads across the impoverished country.

The Taliban “reportedly caused more harm and intentionally abused more children for illegal purposes than pro-government Afghan and international forces,” the report said.

Click here to read the whole story