Washington D.C. – Two new reports released today at a major policy summit reveal that boosts in federal spending on children during 2009 and 2010 were largely due to the stimulus legislation known as the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), and that without that additional one-time spending, the share of spending on children’s programs would have actually declined over the past five years.
The first report, entitled Children’s Budget 2010, goes on to explain that programs benefiting from these significant additional resources will face a difficult budget situation as stimulus funding ends.
“While the short-term picture for children in the budget indicates improvements and an important hiatus from the previous years of decreased spending on children, it is critical to note that projections for long-term spending on kids look quite poor,” said Bruce Lesley, president ofFirst Focus, the bipartisan children’s advocacy group that published the report. “Unless Congress makes children a higher priority, these programs will be forced to scale back to pre-2009 levels.”
The report was released before more than 200 children’s advocates who joined leading U.S. Senators, White House staff, and prominent public opinion experts at the second national First Focus Children’s Budget Summit. The event was organized to draw attention to the overall declining share of the federal budget dedicated to programs that benefit children.
Kids’ Share 2010: Report on Federal Expenditures on Children through 2009, an Urban Institute-Brookings Institution report also released at today’s Children’s Budget Summit, shows that over the longer term, ten-year projections reveal an overall decline in federal spending on children. The report explains that if current law continues unchanged, the federal budget will grow as a whole, but a smaller share of the budget will be directed to children.
In addition, Kids’ Share 2010 reveals that since 1960, the children’s share of the federal budget has diminished by a quarter, while spending on the non-child portions of entitlement programs has more than doubled.
“Federal spending on children increased in 2009 as the federal government tried to meet the increased needs of families hard-hit by the recession,” said Julia Isaacs, co-author of the report and Child and Family Policy Fellow at the Brookings Institution.“However, much of the increase in federal spending substituted for spending cuts in states and localities.”
“Since we first began tracking children’s spending four years ago, it has declined as a percent of domestic outlays,” said Kids’ Share co-author Eugene Steuerle, an Institute Fellow at theUrban Institute. “Despite a temporary boost in dollars as part of the recovery act, funding for children continues to face an uphill battle in the face of other budgetary pressures. Out of the additional $1 trillion in outlays projected between now and 2020, only about 3 percent is expected to support children’s programs. Children have a vital stake in the budget and in budget reform, and it is crucial that we continue to track how they are doing.”
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ABOUT CHILDREN’S BUDGET
Children’s Budget 2010 is the latest edition of the First Focus Children’s Budget series. The book provides an analysis of the over 180 federally funded programs that are aimed at enhancing the well-being of our nation’s children, and how their appropriations levels have changed over the past five years. The book was published by First Focus with the support of the W.K. Kellogg Foundation.
ABOUT KIDS’ SHARE 2010:
Kids’ Share 2010 is the fourth annual examination of the federal spending trends and tax policies that support and affect children and families. This year’s Kids’ Share report finds that less than one-tenth of the federal budget was spent on children in 2009 — $334 billion out of a total of $3.5 trillion in outlays. The report was commissioned by First Focus and produced by the Urban Institute and Brookings Institution with support from the Annie E. Casey Foundation.