WASHINGTON, DC – Today, First Focus, a bipartisan children’s advocacy organization, unveiled a dynamic new website that details the federal investment in every program benefitting children. The interactive new site, www.childrensbudget.org, provides customizable information on the more than 180 federally funded children’s programs.

The website was made possible with the support of the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, and is a follow up to the highly successful First Focus book, Children’s Budget 2008. Released last spring, the book reveals that over the past five years only one penny of every new, real non-defense dollar spent by the federal government goes to children.

“The federal budget is a reflection of our national priorities. Politicians of all political affiliations claim to put kids first. Yet this year, the federal government will spend less than 10% of its budget on programs addressing the needs of American young people,” said Bruce Lesley, President of First Focus. “We have created this website to highlight this startling fact, providing policymakers and advocates with the information they need to improve investments in children’s programs.”

The user-friendly, searchable database makes available information on children’s programs funded by the federal government, from child health and education to child welfare and juvenile justice, and allows users to:

• Search for data on one or more of the 180 federally supported programs that aim to help our nation’s children.

• Discover annual funding information, program overviews, and dynamic graphs that visually display how funding has changed over time.

• Limit your search by funding type, policy area, amount of funding, federal department and agency, and change in funding over time.

• View funding data in the aggregate. Programs are associated with one of eight broad categories, or you may create your own category by grouping individual programs of interest.

• Compare one category of funding to another, or to the entire federal budget, the federal budget without the defense programs, or the total of all programs that benefit children.

Visit the website at: www.childrensbudget.org