Bill singles out children for unequal treatment
In response to today’s passage of H.R. 1, First Focus Campaign for Children President Bruce Lesley released the following statement:
“Tomorrow is the Fourth of July. It will mark 249 years since the founding of the United States of America, a nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition of equality. Yet the bill passed today by Congress — which the president plans to sign tomorrow — threatens our liberty by putting our children in unprecedented peril. And it makes abundantly clear that equality is no longer an American value.
H.R. 1 singles out children for the most unequal treatment. It punishes all of our children by creating a costly education voucher scheme that raids public school funding and gives it to wealthy families, most of whom are already sending their kids to private schools.
It punishes our youngest children by eliminating student loans for early education providers. Early education is not “babysitting.” These professionals require specific education and various degrees and credentials. H.R. 1 bans federal student loans for programs where graduates earn less than the median high school graduate salary — a cruel reality for early education providers in nearly every state. Combined with cuts to Medicaid and SNAP — which serve roughly 30% and 43% of all child care providers respectively — this provision will push more and more teachers out of early education, leaving our children even more in need than they are already.
But the bill reserves special scorn for our lowest income children, taking away their health care, their food and their access to the Child Tax Credit.
Analysts estimate that the $1 trillion in cuts to Medicaid, CHIP and the Affordable Care Act will strip coverage from more than one-in-five children covered by these programs. The $200 billion carved from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program threatens hungrier days ahead for the 13 million children served by the program. As an added bonus, H.R.1 also comes after school meals. And the bill’s paltry Child Tax Credit not only caps out at $2,200 per child — which doesn’t even keep pace with inflation since 2017 — it leaves more than 20 million of the nation’s poorest children with just partial credit or no credit at all.
Make no mistake: H.R. 1 drives the largest transfer of wealth in modern American history. From the young to the old, from the poor to the rich, from the future to the short-sighted greed of the present. What a terrible birthday present for America and for American values.”