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06/08/2005 - Federal Children's Programs At Risk
From: Kullie Mellor, Welfare Specialist, kulliejack@juno.com

This is a message from the Children's Defense Fund and describes the current threat to programs for children.

Stop the House of Representatives from Decimating Services for Children!

As early as Wednesday, June 9, the U.S. House of Representatives is planning to vote on radical budget changes that, if enacted, would impose massive and devastating cuts on services and benefits for children, ranging from health care, to child care, to the Earned Income Tax Credit and the Child Tax Credit.

Please act to stop this assault on low-income children and families by urging your Representative to vote against the disastrous budget reform bill! To contact your Representative call 202-224-3121 or click this link to e-mail a letter to your Representative: http://capwiz.com/cdf/mail/oneclick_compose/?alertid=5967116

Tell your Representative that the budget bill (H.R.3973) would
  • Stack the deck against low-income children and families by making it even easier to pass more massive tax breaks for wealthy individuals and corporations that would be added to the national debt that our children will have to pay off in future years, while simultaneously making it harder to extend tax benefits for our poorest families;
  • Require that any improvements or expansions to critical supports for children including Medicaid, food stamps, welfare, unemployment assistance, child care, school breakfast and lunch, foster care and adoption assistance, student loans, and the Children's Health Insurance Program be paid for by cutting similar programs;
  • Impose caps on domestic discretionary programs like Head Start, education funding, housing assistance, and after school programs that would force more than $100 billion in cuts in services over the next five years including those for children.

Amendments to this bill will also be offered that would make children suffer even more devastating losses while the wealthy will be given favorable opportunities for more tax breaks. One of those amendments would establish a cap on entitlement program costs that would require funding cuts eviscerating those programs. Such entitlement cap amendments would cut services by $1.8 trillion over ten years. If entitlement programs are cut
proportionally:
  • Medicaid would be cut $392 billion;
  • Earned Income Tax Credit and Child Tax Credit would be cut $54 billion;
  • Food Stamps would be cut $43 billion;
  • TANF, child care, and child support enforcement would be cut $37 billion;
  • Child nutrition would be cut $23 billion;
  • Foster Care and Adoption Assistance would be cut $13 billion; and
  • The Children's Health Insurance Program would be cut $8 billion.

These numbers represent real harm to individual children who will suffer from the results of these budget reforms. For example each year on average over the next ten years:
  • 280,000 children lose child care assistance;
  • Nearly all of the 24 million children covered by Medicaid losing coverage if they absorb half the Medicaid cut based on being half the number of enrollees in the program;
  • Families of 115,000 children lose foster care maintenance payments and adoption assistance payments;
  • 567,000 children lose the welfare safety net through TANF;
  • Nearly 1.5 million children lose basic nutrition through food stamps;
  • More than 100,000 disabled children lose the support of Supplemental Security Income (SSI) assistance;
  • 3.9 million children lose the free school lunches and 1.1 million children lose the free school breakfasts that keep them from going hungry;
  • The families of 863,000 children lose unemployment compensation needed to cover basic living expenses;
  • 2.4 million families with children lose the Earned Income Tax Credit; and
  • 3.6 million families with children lose the Child Tax Credit.

Please send a message to your U.S. Representative to urge their votes against unjust budget rules that would devastate children's services while facilitating more tax breaks for wealthy individuals and corporations that will be added to the nation's debt!

Please click here to send a letter to your Representative: http://capwiz.com/cdf/mail/oneclick_compose/?alertid=5967116

To find out who your legislators are or their contact information visit http://www.legis.state.pa.us

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League of Women Voters of Pennsylvania - 226 Forster Street Harrisburg, PA 17102
Citizen Information Center: 800-692-7281 - League Information: 800-JOIN-LWV or (717) 234-1576
Fax: (717) 234-8341 - E-mail: info@palwv.org