The Budget Proposed by President Bush and Currently Being Debated in Congress Has Serious Negative Consequences for many of the 77 million Children in America. It Cuts……

Child Abuse and Neglect Treatment and Prevention
The President’s budget proposed a 29% cut in the Social Services Block Grant (SSBG) which provides funding to states to help keep single parents off welfare, prevent or remedy neglect, abuse, or the exploitation of children and adults, provide adoption assistance, and prevent or reduce inappropriate institutionalization. The budget also provides no new funding in 2007, and when accounting for inflation, the budget calls for substantial cuts to Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act (CAPTA) state grants which are used to help improve state Child Protective Services (CPS) systems and are intended to keep children of any age safe from harm.

Special Education
This program provides grants to help pay the additional costs of providing special education and related services to children with disabilities aged 3 through 21. The President’s budget plans to cut funding for these children by as much as 13% or more than $1.7 billion over 5 years when taking inflation into account. In 2007, the President wants to fund the program at $6.26 billion less less than what Congress has authorized which will adversely impact 2,567,036 disabled children.

Head Start
The President’s budget provides no new funding for Head Start, and as a result of inflation, next year 16,976 fewer three and four year olds will not be able to participate and start kindergarten ready to learn, and by 2011, 108,400 fewer young children will be able to participate in Head Start. This comes at a time when Head Start is already massively underfunded. Compared to what Congress has already authorized for Head Start, the President's budget requests nearly $27 billion less than it should and 3.5 million children who could participate in Head Start are prevented from doing so.

K-12 Education
With much fanfare, the President and Congress passed the No Child Left Behind law in 2001 which was supposed to provide states and local communities with substantial resources to improve their schools and make them accountable to the students, parents, and community. However, Washington DC has not lived up to its side of the bargain. For 2007, the President proposed a slight cut in grants to local education agencies from 2006 and these grants are funded at roughly half what Congress authorized. If this budget is adopted by Congress, the nation's children will receive $12.9 billion less than what they were promised and 4,593,783 children will be underserved.

Child Care
The President’s budget call for a billion dollar cut over the next five years in the Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG) which provides funding to states for child care assistance in order to help low-income working families out of poverty and stay off welfare by enabling them to work. America's working families will lose more than a billion dollars in child care support if Congress adopts this budget.

Food and Nutrition
32 million Americans currently experience food insecurity. The Bush budget proposed to cut funding for the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC) by $2.45 billion over 5 years and by 2011, 474,000 women and children will be eliminated from the program.

Afterschool Programs
The No Child Left Behind Act established a multi-year roadmap for slow but steady growth in afterschool funding, reflecting what was then, and remains now, a national consensus that afterschool programs need to be expanded. Unfortunately, this year, the President’s request for funding falls $1.52 billion below the level authorized in the original legislation. As a result, 798,907 fewer children will be able to participate in these programs which have been shown to keep kids safe and healthy, inspire children to learn, help working families, and reduce teen pregnancy, substance abuse, juvenile crime and gang involvement. Leaving millions of youth unsupervised each afternoon is shortsighted and costly, and results in harm that can last a lifetime.

Higher Education
The American economy depends on a highly educated workforce and college tuition expenses have rapidly increased in recent years and working families and children are dependent on Pell Grants to meet these costs. After signing a budget which increases the costs of student loans, the President proposed a budget where the allocation for Pell Grants does not even meet the rate of inflation overall, not to mention the increased costs of higher education. Pell Grants would be funded $7.18 billiob less than what Congress has authorized and 18,873,844 students will be negatively impacted by this shortsighted proposal.

Community Development
The budget proposed once again to cut Community Development Block Grants (CDBG), which helps cities and town ensure affordable housing, provide services and create jobs for working families. The Bush budget would take $818,000,000 in funds away for next year.

When Does this End?

If the “Economy Is Healthy and Vigorous, and Growing Faster than Other Major Industrialized Nations”, When Will the President and Congress Make the Real Investments in Children to Ensure that Every Child Has the Best Possible Health Care and Access to Quality Education instead of Proposing “Restrained Budgets”?

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