ALEXANDRIA, VA – Today, as President Bush released his fiscal year 2009 budget, First Focus, a bipartisan children’s advocacy organization, criticized his proposal as once again failing to make children a priority.

Overall, the budget makes cuts totaling $2.8 billion to discretionary programs that impact children, a 3.1 percent decline from last year’s federal budget.

These cuts include:

  • $300 million to discretionary health programs that help kids (5.6% decline from last year’s federal budget);
  • $1.5 billion to education programs that help kids (3% decline);
  • $640 million to child welfare programs (38% decline);
  • $400 million to child safety programs (52% decline)

If president’s budget is enacted, it would mean a 12.3 percent real decline in discretionary spending on children from 2004 levels. In sharp contrast, federal discretionary, non-defense spending grew by 4.5 percent during that same time.

First Focus President Bruce Lesley released the following statement:

“Sadly, 2009 marks another year where the President has failed to make children a priority in his federal budget. From education to health, child safety to child welfare, juvenile justice to tax cuts, the president has cut billions from programs that have direct impacts on America’s children and their families.

The president also underfunds the State Children’s Health Insurance Program by several billion, not even allocating enough resources to maintain services for kids currently enrolled in the program. Moreover, the President’s budget cuts off SCHIP coverage for children in over half the nation’s states.

The president even cuts Medicaid by $17.4 billion over the next five years, with the administration astoundingly estimating that the number of children enrolled in SCHIP and Medicaid will actually decrease in 2009. Considering the bleak economic forecasts that postulate our nation may be headed toward a recession, it is far more likely that the job losses and economic hardships that flow from a lagging economy will increase the number of children enrolled in these low-income programs, not reduce it.

In addition, cuts to over 47 education programs, including a $300 million cut to after school programs, spell trouble for our children and the economy. We need a short term stimulus, but we also need long-term growth. The only way we’ll get that is if people are working. Now is not the time for a proposal from the president to make it harder for 300,000 parents to work because their children don’t have a safe place to go after school.

Hundreds of millions of dollars cut from child safety and child welfare programs are also a cause for concern, including over $200 million cut from juvenile justice programs, and a $500 million cut to a block grant program that helps low-income families lift themselves out of poverty.

At a time when federal discretionary, non-defense spending grew by 4.5 percent from 2004, spending on children declined by 9 percent. These are not insignificant decreases, and they result in real hardships for children and their families, especially in this slowing economic climate, where more children and families will struggle with financial hardship. Making it harder for children and families to get healthcare, earn an education, gain access to mental services, and many others, will not result in those children’s future being very bright.

Ensuring our next generation of America’s leaders is better off that this one is our obligation, and this budget is failing to acknowledge many of the hardships those children are facing now and in the years to come. Time and again, the president has shown that he does not consider spending on our nation’s children a priority. The administration just doesn’t seem to see the importance of investing in our children.”