Do the right thing for our kids

I agree with President Bush that we need to build a better future for our children and our grandchildren. But when I look at the budget he submitted to Congress, in item after item I find that children are not a priority.

The initiative consolidates and reduces federal funding for a variety of programs. Rather than strengthen Maine communities, it drains $49 million from Maine communities over the next five years.

Overall, the new budget cuts $214 billion from so-called discretionary spending, affecting services offered in every state, to every community, and to a huge number of families across America.

What I am most concerned about today is the effect on our children. For years, we have known that investing in our kids is not only the right thing to do, but smart economics. Baseline studies conducted over many years show that for every $1 the government invests in early childhood programs, taxpayers save $12, thanks to healthier, more productive citizens. When the private return is included, the results of the investment are even better.

So what does the Bush budget do? According to the highly respected, nonpartisan Center of Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP), which is releasing its findings nationally today, the effect on children’s programs in Maine could be devastating.

The budget cuts special education funding to Maine, a program where the federal government has never kept its funding promises, by $36.8 million over the next five years. It cuts elementary and secondary education by $59.2 million. It reduces Children’s and Family Services, which include Head Start and Services for Abused and Neglected Children, by $13.9 million, and removes 500 children from the program.

The list goes on. The Women, Infants and Children (WIC) program, which provides supplemental nutrition to the poorest families, would serve 1,900 fewer people in Maine. Some 3,200 families would no longer qualify for Low Income Heating Assistance (LIHEAP) if these cuts are adopted. An estimated 2,200 families would no longer receive Rental Assistance Vouchers.

These are not fringe programs, but the very basis of the social contract Americans have with their communities and their neighbors. Head Start is one of the most successful federal programs of all time, yet this is not the first time the Bush administration has attempted to cut it back. An ill-advised reorganization proposed and defeated two years ago would have taken some of the most successful elements of the program – its direct assistance to qualified providers – and turned them into diminishing block grants without meaningful accountability.

Yet it is not possible to be precise about what will happen next year, and the year after, which is why the CBPP’s figures are estimates over five years. For the first time since 1989 – before the original Bush administration, the Clinton administration, and the first George W. Bush administration – there are no year-by-year figures. As the CBPP delicately puts it, “The omission of this information breaks sharply with long-standing budget practice.” What we don’t know won’t hurt us, apparently – but I suspect it may very well hurt our children, and continue to hurt for years to come.

Each of these program cuts will sting, but together they paint a bleak picture of a lack of commitment to our children’s needs. We all know what happens when winter temperatures drop and oil prices rise. Families dependent on LIHEAP face impossible choices between keeping their children warm and keeping them fed. In the world’s wealthiest nation, we should not be forcing them to make those choices.

Maine’s children are more vulnerable because, despite our best efforts, our incomes still lag behind the nation’s. We have 109,000 children who live in low-income families, and these families are particularly in need of heating assistance, rental vouchers and supplemental nutrition.

These cuts are to programs that do not have significant growth and are not causing the budget deficit. In addition, they are short-sighted and will increase our costs in the long run. This is especially true in Maine, because the cuts tend to shift costs to the state, and we already have a budget crisis to support our most essential programs for children.

Perhaps the worst is yet to come. The administration’s Medicaid proposals are so complex they have not yet been analyzed, but the expected cutbacks total $45 billion over 10 years, of which Families USA estimates that $324 million will be lost to Maine.

But not all the choices in the budget are that hard. In fiscal 2006 alone, two new tax breaks, involving expanded deductions overwhelmingly benefiting the wealthiest 2 percent of taxpayers, will go on line at a cost of $151 billion over the next 10 years. And this is in addition to what Citizens for Tax Justice calculates is a $2.4 trillion bill for the Bush tax cuts over 10 years.

As Americans, as Mainers and as families, we ask Congress to reject these flawed proposals and to do the right thing for our kids, which also happens to be the smart thing.

Elinor Goldberg is the president and chief executive officer of the Maine Children’s Alliance, a statewide organization that works for improvements in public policy affecting all children in the state.