Facts In Action

The Children’s Defense Fund reacted strongly to the Bush Administration’s Fiscal Year 2005 budget in a report declaring that the budget choices are an act of “Robin Hood in Reverse.” Emphasizing that a budget is more than a spending plan, but rather it is a declaration of values and priorities, the CDF report asserts that this budget announces, “America does not have a resources problem, it has a priorities problem.”

First, the budget proposal intends to make permanent the tax cuts passed in 2003. According to the CDF report, for the same $181,700 that the permanent Bush tax cut would eventually give to each individual millionaire on average in one year, the following alternatively could be provided: after-school programs for 208 children, or child care assistance for 49 children of working parents, or Head Start for 22 preschoolers.

President Bush’s proposed budget routinely makes choices that cut or severely underfund programs critical to providing children’s needs. For example, the proposed budget flat funds child care assistance, thus leaving more than 550,000 children still on waiting lists. It freezes Head Start funding, when only 3 out of 5 eligible preschoolers are served, and provides no significant increase in funding for child nutrition programs, even though 22 million children suffer from hunger. The budget proposal also takes from America’s working families. The proposed budget will force 200,000 children from the child care rolls by 2009, as families lose child care assistance. The Center for Law and Social Policy and the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities claim that in fact as many as 447,000 children could lose their child care assistance by 2009.

The budget leaves children behind. This budget proposes the smallest increase for education since fiscal year 1996, leaving many federal child care and education programs such as No Child Left Behind and Title 1 underfunded by billions of dollars. The budget proposes to block grant several funding streams, thus eluding the federal responsibility to children and families. In addition, cuts come at a time when most states are facing significant fiscal deficits and are cutting programs to balance their own budgets. Therefore, states and families are even more dependent on support from the Federal government. Overall, the Bush Administration is an act of Robin Hood in reverse.

Facts in Action, March 2004