Obama’s Promises
During President Barack Obama’s campaign, he made a number of promises to improve the health, education, and safety of America’s children. These included many new and innovative programs as well as funding and improving existing programs that have been cut the past eight years. Throughout this year, Vote Kids will let you know what you can do to help President Obama enact his agenda for America’s children and working families. Today we want to highlight the areas he has promised to make a difference from his campaign website:
Barack Obama’s Plan for Children
Barack Obama is a committed advocate for children. He will make sure that every child has health insurance, expand educational opportunities for low-income children, extend resources for low-income families, support and supplement our struggling foster care system, and protect children from violence and neglect.
Health Care
Health Cover Every Child: Barack Obama is committed to making sure every child has health insurance. Forty-seven million Americans lack health coverage, including nine million children. Obama has a plan to sign legislation providing quality, affordable health care to all Americans by the end of his first term. Obama’s health plan will mandate coverage of children. Click here for more information
Education
Expand Early Childhood Education: Research shows that half of low-income children start school up to two years behind their peers in preschool skills and that these early achievement gaps continue throughout elementary school. Obama has been a champion of early childhood education since his years in the Illinois legislature, where he led the effort to create the Illinois Early Learning Council. Obama has introduced a comprehensive “Zero to Five” plan to provide critical supports to young children and their parents by investing $10 billion per year to create: Early Learning Challenge Grants to stimulate and help fund state “zero to five” efforts; quadruple the number of eligible children for Early Head Start and increase Head Start funding and improve quality for both; work to ensure all children have access to pre-school; provide affordable and high quality child care that will promote child development and ease the burden on working families; and create a Presidential Early Learning Council to increase collaboration and program coordination across federal, state, and local levels. Click here for more information.
Low-Income Families
Expand the Earned Income Tax Credit: In the Illinois State Senate, Obama led the successful effort to create the $100 million Illinois Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC). As president, Obama will reward work by increasing the number of working parents eligible for EITC benefits, increasing the benefit available to parents who support their children through child support payments, increasing the benefit for families with three or more children and reducing the EITC marriage penalty which hurts low-income families. Under the Obama plan, full-time workers making minimum wage would get an EITC benefit up to $555, more than three times greater than the $175 benefit they get today. If the workers are responsibly supporting their children on child support, the Obama plan would give those workers a benefit of $1,110. The Obama plan would also increase the EITC benefit for those families that are most likely to be in poverty – families with three or more children. Click here for more information.
Protecting Women and Children
Prevent Child Abuse and Neglect: There are nearly three million annual reports of child abuse and neglect. The tragedy of child abuse claims thousands of innocent lives each year, while ruining millions more. Moreover, it has been estimated that the direct cost to taxpayers of child protection and foster care is $20 billion, while another $100 billion is spent on issues related to child abuse, including crime, prisons, mental health, special education, medical care, and drug abuse. Obama is committed to preventing child abuse and supports proven and effective means to combat the tragedy of child abuse. Click here for more information.