Chicago Standard Newspapers - Article - letters to editor

9/1/2002 Part of the BlackPressUSA Network <!-- // Begin IMAGE rollovers function newImage(arg) { if (document.images) { rslt = new Image(); rslt.src = arg; return rslt; } } function changeImages() { if (document.images && (preloadFlag == true)) { for (var i=0; i<changeImages.arguments.length; i+=2) { document[changeImages.arguments[i]].src = changeImages.arguments[i+1]; } } } var preloadFlag = false; function preloadImages() { if (document.images) { // name of variable does not matter blank = newImage("Images/Blank.gif"); arrow = newImage("Images/menu/Arrow.gif"); arrow2 = newImage("Images/menu/Arrow2.gif"); arrowClear = newImage("Images/menu/ArrowClear.gif"); preloadFlag = true; } } preloadImages(); // end IMAGE rollovers // --> HOME NEWS EDITORIAL editorial feature cartoons letters LIFESTYLE SPORTS HISTORY ABOUT US NETWORK SITES LETTERS TO EDITOR Children or Tax Cuts--The Nation Must Decide by non-staff writer Chicago Standard Newspapers Originally posted 5/26/2002 The Children's Defense Fund Urges Repeal of Tax Cuts for the Wealthiest One Percent''Follow the money and you will find what we truly care about and stand for as a nation,'' said Marian Wright Edelman, founder and president of the Children's Defense Fund. ''Budgets represent moral and social choices--not just economic ones. It is time to make better choices to protect our children.'' In a new report, The State of Children in America's Union: A 2002 Action Guide to Leave No Child Behind, the Children's Defense Fund (CDF) assesses the state of children in our nation; whether the Bush administration has kept its promises to Leave No Child Behind--CDF's trademarked mission statement; and calls on the President and Congress to increase funding for quality child care to help more families work and 2 million more children get ready for school. ''CDF's proposed $20 billion child care funding increase is a step towards providing child care for all eligible children at a time when the federal Child Care and Development Block Grant, which Congress must reauthorize this year along with the 1996 welfare law, is reaching only one in seven eligible children,'' CDF President Marian Wright Edelman said. The administration's welfare to proposals require poor mothers to work more hours but provide not a single new penny for child care over the next five years. Rather than freezing child care and after-school funding and the number of children in Head Start as the Bush administration budget proposes, the nation should demand that Congress and the administration freeze and repeal the tax breaks for the wealthiest one percent of Americans instead,'' Mrs. Edelman stated. The CDF report follows the money and finds the administration's budget deeds do not match its promises to Leave No Child Behind.* The administration hails Head Start as the nation's ''premier early childhood education program.'' Its 2002 budget would have cut children from Head Start and its 2003 budget will not give even one more child a Head Start.* ''The biggest percentage of our budget should go to our children's education. Education is my top priority,'' President Bush said in February 2001. His 2002 budget then proposed 40 times more money for tax cuts than for education, according to the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities.* In January 2002, with great fanfare, the President signed his ''No Child Left Behind'' (H.R. 1) education reform bill and ''vowed to make educating every child his number one domestic priority...'' The administration's 2003 budget proposed the smallest education increase in the past seven years. * In his inaugural address, President Bush rightly declared ''that deep, persistent poverty is unworthy of our nation's promise.'' His 2002 budget then proposed a $1.6 trillion tax cut that disproportionately benefited the wealthy. It also proposed to double the child tax credit from $500 to $1,000 but only for upper and middle income families leaving 17 million children behind, including a majority of Black and Latino children. In 2003, the administration seeks to accelerate and make permanent the huge tax cuts enacted by Congress for the wealthiest Americans.* The administration says it is important for families to work and its welfare proposals require more hours of work from poor parents. But its budget will result in 114,000 fewer children in working families getting federal child care assistance despite long child care waiting lists in many states.* At the 2002 Republican National Convention, Secretary of State Colin Powell eloquently stated: ''We are obliged to make sure that every child gets a health start in life. With all of our wealth and capacity, we just can't stand by idly.'' The administration's 2002 and 2003 budgets leave millions of uninsured children behind including immigrant children and thousands of children with disabilities whose parents cannot get them needed treatment. ''The Bush administration's budget choices favor powerful corporate interests and the wealthiest taxpayers over children's urgent needs; when the gap between rich and poor--already at its largest recorded point in over 30 years; and repeatedly break promises and fail to seize opportunities to Leave No Child Behind,'' said Mrs. Edelman.The report states that the money spent for tax cuts for the wealthiest one percent of Americans when fully phased in could pay for almost all the provisions of the comprehensive Act to Leave No Child Behind (S.940/H.R. 1990) including quality child care, Head Start, after-school programs, health care, nutrition, protections against child abuse, neglect and homelessness, and lift millions of children in working families from poverty. Yet, in the richest and most powerful democratic nation in the world:* A child is born into poverty every 43 seconds.* A child is born without health insurance every minute--90 percent of the nine million uninsured children live in working families.* Seven million children are home alone without adult supervision often after school when they are at greatest risk of getting into trouble.''These facts are not acts of God. They are our moral and political choices as Americans,'' said Mrs. Edelman. ''It is time for our great nation to truly commit to Leave No Child Behind and to lead rather than lag many other nations of the world is giving our children a healthy and fair start in life.'' Back to Previous Page Email This Story to a Friend SEARCH Click here for anAdvanced Search Contact Us: Copyright 2001 All Rights Reserved :: Legal and Privacy Policy