. Federal Investments in Children Down Three Years in a Row: First Focus, a child advocacy group dedicated to making children and families the priority in federal policy, released “Children’s Budget 2013,” a detailed analysis of the more than 180 federal investments in children. Federal Budget Cuts to Children - At the federal level, it is often said that our nation’s budget is a reflection of our national values and priorities. If so, children are faring quite poorly. According to our analysis in this publication: • Children now receive less than 8 percent of th efederal budget (7.8 percent). • Since a peak in 2010, total spending on children has fallen by $35 billion after adjusting for inflation, a 16 percent drop. Total spending on children has now declined for three years in a row. • Discretionary spending, where Congress makes decisions each year, has been cut by more than $11 billion, a drop of almost 13 percent. • The share of the federal budget invested in children is also down 8 percent from 2010. Some might think this is due to all federal spending being reduced to combat the federal deficit, but the fact that the share of spending has declined shows that children have borne a disproportionate share of the cuts. • It is estimated that this year alone, sequestration will cut a total of $4.2 billion out of funding for children, particularly in the areas of education, early childhood, and children’s housing. Though sequestration is a major reason for the drop in discretionary investments, it’s making an alarming trend that began several years earlier even worse. Head Start programs have had to close weeks early or kick children out. One program in Columbus, Indiana, held a lottery drawing to decide which families would lose their seats.That’s a contest no parent or family wants to win. Making matters worse, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a 302(b) allocation for their discretionary spending priorities that makes sequestration even worse. Compared to pre-sequester levels, the House allocations cut an additional 22 percent in the Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education bill, where most discretionary investments are made for kids. Over the long term, because of sequestration and other poor policy choices, additional budget analysis by the Urban Institute in their report titled Kids’ Share 2012 finds that: • Interest on the national debt will eclipse our investments in children by 2017 and exceed investments in children by 50 percent by 2020. • Defense spending is now triple the federal investment in our nation’s children. • Federal spending on the elderly exceeds that for children by a seven-to-one ratio.When including state and local funding, seniors still receive twice as many public dollars as do children. • The projected level of federal spending on children as a share of GDP will drop by 24 percent in the next decade if federal budget policy does not change. Childrens Budget 2013 - PDF File, Keep Scrolling; firstfocus.net/sites/default/files/ChildrensBudget2013.pdf
Posted on: Wed, 31 Jul 2013 18:02:30 +0000
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