[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 45 (Friday, March 10, 1995)]
[House]
[Pages H3033-H3034]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


                   THE SYSTEMATIC ASSAULT ON CHILDREN

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from California [Mr. Miller] is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, earlier this morning in the 1-
minutes, several Members of the Republican Party came down and asked 
why Democrats were saying they are so harsh on children and why this 
would be true when in fact they have not hurt children at all in the 
rescissions and the budget cuts that they have already made and in the 
welfare bills and the nutrition bills that are coming to this House in 
the next couple of weeks.
  The fact is when we analyze the Republicans' welfare bill, the 
Republicans' rescission bill, the Republicans' nutrition and school 
lunch bill, the Republicans' child care bill, and what we see is a 
systematic assault on children, and especially poor children in this 
Nation.
  In the rescission bill that will be coming to the floor of the House 
next week, $25 million has been cut by the Republicans for the Women, 
Infants and Children Program. This means about 100,000 pregnant women 
and newborn infants will not be served this fiscal year.
  These are women and newborn infants who have been medically certified 
to be at high risk of having a pregnancy that is not normal or 
pregnancy that might not be carried to term or the birth of an infant 
that will be low birth weight and run a much, 
[[Page H3034]] much higher risk of needing all kinds of intensive 
medical care at the time of birth.
  These are some of the most expensive babies born in America today. 
And yet for a few dollars a week with the Women, Infants and Children 
Program, we can dramatically reverse these pregnancies and the birth 
weight of the newborn infants and their lives there ever after. Because 
some 40 percent of these low birth weight babies with the complications 
that many of them encounter at that time come back to us in the need of 
special education, of therapies and other programs to help them. But 
this is preventable with the Women, Infants and Children Program. Yet 
at the earliest stages of life, when children are struggling to thrive 
and survive, when women are struggling to provide a normal pregnancy, a 
full-term pregnancy, resulting in a healthy baby, we see $25 million 
taken out of this bipartisan program that has received universal praise 
and success in every study conducted. Whether in the universities, 
whether by government, whether by foundations, all of them praise the 
success in changing the outcome of these pregnancies.
  When you consider in this country that 60 percent of all of the 
pregnancies in this country are unwanted, unintended, and that half of 
those are resolved by abortion, and now we put into the equation the 
likelihood of giving birth to a low birth weight baby with all of these 
complications, we create much more trauma around birth and the 
expectation of the birth of a child than there should be for these 
families. But the Republican budget cuts this program.
  In the new nutrition program, $7 billion cut from what it would take 
to maintain the children currently on the program in the next 5 years. 
In my district, the Mount Diablo School District, that is about half a 
million dollars. Fewer lunches for fewer children or smaller lunches. 
The Richmond School District, the same kind of choices. The State of 
California, $1 billion in nutrition that goes to low-income working 
families and to poor families to feed their children.
  The Food Stamp Program, same families, yet getting another cut, 
trying to provide nutrition for their children. The day care feeding 
program, family day care, where working parents leave their children 
for the hours they are at work, the nutrition program is being cut, 
raising the price of day care $15 a week, maybe $60 a month for people 
who are not working for all that high wages, trying to provide child 
care for their children.
  The fact we see drug-free schools, programs started by Nancy Reagan, 
she was in town this last week testifying about the drug activity, and 
yet that program is being cut.
  Summer youth employment: The greatest determinant of keeping children 
out of problems when they are adolescents and young people is to 
provide them employment, job experience, work experience. Half of the 
money for this program in most communities is put up by the private 
sector. That program is being zeroed out.
  So you can see why the Republicans are so nervous about being anti-
child, because on the facts, on the language of their bills, on the 
numbers of their cuts, and the impact on these programs, children are 
going to be hurt. This is not an abstract notion, ladies and gentlemen; 
these are the facts of the bills that will be coming to the floor this 
next week.

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