[Congressional Record Volume 147, Number 41 (Monday, March 26, 2001)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2890-S2891]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




RESPONSE TO PRESIDENT'S PROPOSAL TO CUT FUNDING FOR CHILDREN'S PROGRAMS

  Mr. DODD. Mr. President, I rise to discuss an issue that came to 
light at the close of business last week in an article that appeared in 
the New York Times by Robert Pear, ``Bush's Budget Would Cut Three 
Programs to Aid Children.'' It goes on to describe child care, child 
abuse programs, early learning programs, and children's hospitals that 
would receive significant cuts in the President's budget proposal when 
that proposal arrives.
  We haven't seen the budget yet. My hope is that maybe the 
administration might reconsider these numbers that we are told are 
accurate. I tried to corroborate this story with several sources, and 
while no one wants to step up and be heard publicly on it, no one has 
also said that the numbers are wrong. I suspect they are correct.
  The President campaigned on the promise to leave no child behind. If 
we heard it once, we heard that campaign slogan dozens and dozens of 
times all across the country. I don't recall seeing the President 
campaigning when he didn't have that banner behind him saying: Leave no 
child behind.
  Those of us who took the President at his word were shocked, to say 
the very least, by the news on Friday that the President intends to cut 
funding for critical children's programs, programs that address basic 
survival needs of these young people and their families.
  Certainly his actions beg the question, when he pledged to leave no 
child behind, which children did he mean? Apparently not abused and 
neglected children, since he would cut funding for child abuse 
prevention and treatment by almost 20 percent.
  Almost 900,000 children are victims of child abuse each year in 
America. Is the President going to ask those children to choose amongst 
themselves which 20 percent of them shouldn't have their abuse 
investigated? Is he going to ask them to decide which 20 percent are 
going to have their abusers brought to justice?
  When the President promised to leave no child behind, he must not 
have meant sick children. The President would cut funding for 
children's hospitals by some unspecified ``large'' amount. I am quoting 
from the story. This funding, which supports the training of doctors 
who care for the most seriously ill children in our country, had

[[Page S2891]]

tremendous bipartisan support when it was first appropriated last year. 
A cut in this program of any size would be a huge step back for 
chronically ill children and their families.
  When the President promised to leave no child behind, he must not 
have meant the thousands of children who are warehoused every year in 
unsafe child care settings. He is proposing to cut child care funding 
by $200 million and to cut all $20 million for the funding of the new 
early learning program sponsored by Senator Stevens of Alaska and 
Senator Kennedy of Massachusetts. If the President's proposed cuts 
prevail, 60,000 families with babies and toddlers will be denied child 
care assistance. At a time when our goal is to give low-income working 
families the support they need to stay off welfare, such a proposal is 
unfathomable in my mind.
  The President justifies these cuts by saying that instead families 
will get tax breaks. Allow me to point out a few reasons why I find 
this justification wrongheaded.
  First, this answer conveniently ignores the fact that 43 percent of 
the tax cut, as we all know, goes to the top 1 percent of the 
wealthiest families in America, not usually the families who have the 
biggest problem finding affordable child care or getting good health 
care when their children are sick.

  Secondly, while tax cuts when done in a fair and responsible way can 
be helpful, they are not the panacea for children's needs. The last 
time I checked, tax cuts didn't prevent child abuse or make child care 
safer or make sick children well. The last time I checked, there were 
proven programs in place, enacted with bipartisan support in this body 
and the other Chamber, that were addressing those very problems. Yet 
these are the very programs the President has decided apparently to 
cut.
  The President described himself as a compassionate conservative. Yet 
every day, with every action over the past 2 months, the evidence seems 
to be mounting that while he is long on conservatism, he seems a little 
short on compassion at this point.
  Next week the Senate will take up the budget resolution, our 
blueprint for spending for next year. It is my fervent hope and my 
intention that these are the kinds of issues we will air and that, with 
the choices I will be asking us to make, we will have a chance to 
restore some of this funding when those proposals come up. If they are 
presently included at the levels that have been suggested, I will be 
offering appropriate language to address them.
  I can't help but notice the presence of my friend from Pennsylvania 
on the floor, who I know is here to address the matter before the 
Senate, the Hollings proposal. I thanked him in his absence, and I 
thank him publicly. It was the Senator from Pennsylvania who last year, 
when the child care funding levels were going to be raised to full 
funding of $2 billion, made that happen.
  He and I have worked on these issues for 20 years together, from the 
days when we first identified the issue and then crafted the 
legislation. In fact, Senator Hatch, who will be coming to the floor 
shortly, was the original cosponsor with me of the child care 
development block grant program.
  When I express my disappointment, I don't do so in a partisan way 
because I have worked closely over the years with Members who 
understand the value of decent child care and the value of children's 
hospitals, the value of early learning, as Senator Stevens of Alaska 
has, as champion of that particular issue.
  My hope is that the administration, in the days remaining before they 
submit the budget to Congress, will listen to some of us who urge them 
to take a second look at these issues before sending us a budget 
proposal that sets the clock back at a time when we need to be doing 
more for families who are struggling to hold their families together to 
make ends meet.
  I didn't mean to raise the name of the Senator from Pennsylvania 
particularly, but I saw him and I wanted to thank him for the 
tremendous work he has done on these issues over the years.
  I ask unanimous consent to print in the Record an editorial entitled 
``The Mask Comes Off,'' by Bob Herbert.
  There being no objection, the editorial was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                [From the New York Times, Mar. 26, 2001]

                           The Mask Comes Off

                            (By Bob Herbert)

       Is this what the electorate wanted?
       Did Americans really want a president who would smile in 
     the faces of poor children even as he was scheming to cut 
     their benefits? Did they want a man who would fight like 
     crazy for enormous tax cuts for the wealthy while cutting 
     funds for programs to help abused and neglected kids?
       Is that who George W. Bush turned out to be?
       An article by The Times's Robert Pear disclosed last week 
     that President Bush will propose cuts in the already modest 
     funding for child care assistance for low-income families. 
     And he will propose cuts in funding for programs designed to 
     investigate and combat child abuse. And he wants cuts in an 
     important new program to train pediatricians and other 
     doctors at children's hospitals across the U.S.
       The cuts are indefensible, unconscionable. If implemented, 
     they will hurt many children.
       The president also plans to cut off all of the money 
     provided by Congress for an ``early learning'' trust fund, 
     which is an effort to improve the quality of child care and 
     education for children under 5.
       What's going on?
       That snickering you hear is the sound of Mr. Bush recalling 
     the great fun he had playing his little joke on the public 
     during the presidential campaign. He presented himself as a 
     different kind of Republican, a friend to the downtrodden, 
     especially children. He hijacked the copyrighted solgagn of 
     the liberal Children's Defense Fund, and then repeated the 
     slogan like a mantra, telling anyone who would listen that 
     his administration would ``leave no child behind.''
       Mr. Bush has only been president two months and already 
     he's leaving the children behind.
       There are many important reasons to try to expand the 
     accessibility of child care. One is that stable child care 
     for low-income families has become a cornerstone of 
     successful efforts to move people from welfare to work.
       Members of Congress had that in mind when they allocated $2 
     billion last year for the Child Care and Development Block 
     Grant. That was an increase of $817 million, enabling states 
     to provide day care to 241,000 additional children.
       Now comes Mr. Bush with a proposal to cut the program by 
     $200 million.
       Is that his idea of compassion?
       The simple truth is that the oversized tax cuts and Mr. 
     Bush's devotion to the ideologues and the well-heeled special 
     interests that backed his campaign are playing havoc with the 
     real-world interests not just of children, but of most 
     ordinary Americans.
       Mr. Bush is presiding over a right-wing juggernaut that has 
     already reneged on his campaign pledge to regulate carbon 
     dioxide emissions (an important step in the fight against 
     global warming); that has repealed a set of workplace safety 
     rules that were designed to protect tens of millions of 
     Americans but were opposed as too onerous by business groups; 
     that has withdrawn new regulations requiring a substantial 
     reduction in the permissible levels of arsenic, a known 
     carcinogen, in drinking water; and that has (to the loud 
     cheers of the most conservative elements in the G.O.P.) ended 
     the American Bar Association's half-century-old advisory role 
     in the selection of federal judges, thus making it easier to 
     appoint judges with extreme right-wing sensibilities.
       The administration of George W. Bush, in the words of the 
     delighted Edwin J. Feulner, president of the conservative 
     Heritage Foundation, is ``more Reaganite than the Reagan 
     administration.''
       Grover Norquist, a leading conservative strategist, said 
     quite frankly, ``There isn't an us and them with this 
     administration. They is us. We is them.''
       Mr. Bush misled the public during his campaign. He eagerly 
     donned the costume of the compassionate conservative and 
     deliberately gave the impression that if elected we would 
     lead a moderate administration that would govern, as much as 
     possible, in a bipartisan manner.
       Last October, in the second presidential debate, Mr. Bush 
     declared, ``I'm really strongly committed to clean water and 
     clean air and cleaning up the new kinds of challenges, like 
     global warming.''
       And he said, as usual, ``No child should be left behind in 
     America.''
       He said all the right things. He just didn't mean them.

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