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President Obama's First budget and what it means for our children |
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If enacted in full, President Obama's first budget would continue and expand
many significant investments in children.
On taxes, the President would:
- Continue to cut taxes for the families of millions of children through an expansion and continuation of the Child Tax Credit.
- Make the $2500 American Opportunity Tax Credit permanent to help kids afford college.
On investments in children, the President proposes:
- Making a down payment on the President’s “Zero to Five” plan
- providing $1.1 billion to double the number of children served by
Early Head Start over two years, an additional $1 billion to expand and
improve Head Start, and an additional $2 billion in funding for the
Child Care and Development Block Grant. The Budget sustains critical
support for young children and their families by building on these
investments.
- Creating the Nurse Home Visitation program, which will provide funds to states to provide home visits by trained nurses to first-time low-income mothers and mothers-to-be.
- Expanding Pell Grants and putting the program on sounder footing.
- Rewarding excellent teachers by making additional
investments in state and local efforts to implement systems that reward
quality performance and help less effective teachers improve or exit
the classroom.
- Increasing health care coverage for children. An
expansion to the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) was
just enacted in law and will provide coverage for an additional four
million children on average in CHIP and Medicaid who are now uninsured.
The budget proposal will implement this law quickly and aggressively to
help families whose children are at risk of losing coverage in this
weak economy.
- Strengthening nutrition assistance. The budget
supports a strong Child Nutrition and WIC reauthorization package that
will ensure that low-income children receive the nutrition assistance
they need and help end childhood hunger by 2015.
- Responding to the needs of low-income Americans.
This includes a temporary increase in the Supplemental Nutrition
Assistance Program (SNAP), formerly Food Stamps, to help strengthen the
food purchasing power of low-income families during these tough
economic times. The budget also provides additional resources for food
banks and community-based food providers.
- Preventing teen pregnancy. The Budget supports State, community-based, and faith-based efforts to reduce teen pregnancy using evidence based models.
- Providing energy assistance to low-income families.
The Budget provides $3.2 billion for the Low-Income Home Energy
Assistance Program (LIHEAP) to help low-income families with their home
heating and cooling expenses. In addition, the Budget includes a new
trigger mechanism to provide automatic increases in energy assistance
whenever there is a spike in energy costs.
- Increasing funding for the Project-Based Rental Assistance Program.
This will preserve approximately 1.3 million affordable rental units
through increased funding for contracts with owners of multifamily
properties. This critical investment will assist low- and very
low-income households in obtaining decent, safe and sanitary housing in
private accommodations.
- Providing greater support for effective charter schools.
- Putting 50,000 more cops on the street. Using COPS
Hiring Grants, this will support the hiring of police nationwide to
help states and communities prevent the growth of crime during the
economic downturn.
- Expanding national service. The Budget makes a
substantial investment in National Service, giving more individuals the
opportunity to make an intensive commitment to giving back to their
communities. The Budget would set AmeriCorps on a path to expand from
its current 75,000 funded slots to 250,000, and would ensure the
availability of service opportunities to achieve demonstrable results.
The budget also will provide additional resources for Learn and Serve
America, which supports programs in schools, higher education
institutions and community-based organizations that engage students,
their teachers, and others in service-learning.
 Every Child Matters is pleased to see that President Obama has included the needs of Families and Children in his first budget, and we will work towards its passage.
Please join us by signing the petition in support of the President's blueprint
and to ask Congressional leadership to build upon the President's budget priorities for children. It
will be delivered to the White House and Congressional leadership as
they are considering this budget. »View and sign the petition here.
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