Trump Administration likely to accelerate downward trend
U.S. investment in the nation’s children has fallen for the third year in a row, according to a new report, and actions planned by the incoming Trump Administration threaten to accelerate that trend.
Children’s Budget 2024, released by First Focus on Children, shows that the U.S. allocates less than 9% of the federal budget to children, who account for roughly one-quarter of the population. Overall, U.S. investment in children has declined nearly 6% from Fiscal Year 2023, according to the report, largely driven by deep cuts to food assistance and other life-sustaining programs.
In outlines of his agenda, President-elect Donald Trump has focused on cutting costs by scaling back children’s health care, nutrition and other programs that keep children fed, housed and healthy. During the first Trump Administration, federal spending on children fell to its lowest level since First Focus on Children began tracking in 2006.
“President-elect Donald Trump invoked children in his victory speech, saying his Administration will ‘not rest until we have delivered the strong, safe, and prosperous America that our children deserve,’” said First Focus on Children President Bruce Lesley. “But if that is truly their goal, the new Administration must substantially improve its record from the first term where children saw record-low investment, dramatic losses in pediatric health coverage, sizable increases in food insecurity and families experiencing homelessness, and brutal policies that cruelly separated children from their parents as they navigated the immigration or asylum process. Children cannot afford and our nation should not tolerate divestment in children’s needs or a government that subjects them to harm.”
Under President Trump in 2019, the United States — for the first time in history — spent more servicing the national debt than it did on its children. President Trump’s FY 2020 budget proposal sought to slash spending on children to only 6.45% of the federal budget and eliminated 44 separate children’s programs. President Trump’s FY 2021 budget proposed a single-year real cut of $21 billion to children’s programs and elimination of 59 children’s programs and would have cut federal spending on children to just 7.32% of the budget.
On the campaign trail and in proposals by the president-elect and his surrogates, Trump outlined plans to eliminate federal support for public schools by transferring taxpayer dollars to private schools, slash food assistance programs, undermine the cash assistance program Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) which primarily serves children, severely limit or eliminate children’s health care programs, and radically reduce the discretionary spending that fuels more than 80% of all children’s programs.
International spending on children makes up a dramatically smaller share of the federal budget, Children’s Budget 2024 finds, with total spending equaling approximately 1/100th of domestic spending on kids. Spending on international children’s programs accounts for a mere 0.09% of the total federal budget and only 10.16% of spending internationally in FY 2024.
For more analysis of U.S. investment in children, including charts and graphs, visit Children’s Budget 2024.