NAEYC Update

Future Federal Spending on Children at Stake!

ACTION NEEDED: CALL YOUR REPRESENTATIVES AND TELL THEM TO VOTE NO ON BILL H.R. 3973 AND AMENDMENTS THAT WOULD UNDERMINE INVESTMENTS IN CHILDREN AND FAMILIES.

To send an email to your Representative, go to http://capwiz.com/naeyc/home/ or call his/her office at 202-225-3121.

The House will take up H.R. 3973, a bill that would significantly re-write the budget process rules with serious implications for discretionary and mandatory spending over the next 5 years. Several amendments are expected which would put future funding for early childhood education and other programs for children and families at risk.

The bills and potential amendments would:

1. place a very low ceiling on discretionary spending so that programs could be frozen or cut, including Head Start, No Child Left Behind, child care discretionary funding, and other human services;
2. place a ceiling on mandatory funding regardless of increases in the number of eligible recipients or program costs (mandatory funding is a large part of the source of federal dollars to states for the Child Care & Development Block Grant); and
3. and would pay for new refundability for tax credits with further mandatory funding cuts and would not require further corporate or individual tax reduction measures to be paid for elsewhere in the tax code.

NAEYC supports fiscal responsibility, but believes that the investments in children and families should be a priority for a federal budget plan. Balancing the budget should not put children and families at further risk of inadequate early childhood education, good schools, health care, and nutrition.

TIMING: A budget rules bill will be filed today and debate could start as early as Thursday on these dramatic changes to the federal budget rules, making it extremely difficult to increase funding for child care, Head Start, education, nutrition, health, and other important programs for children and working families, especially low income families.

BACKGROUND: WHAT'S AT STAKE

If the bill and amendments pass:

• There could be no increases in child care funding without cutting other mandatory funding programs, like Medicaid or TANF, and vice versa. CCDBG serves only 1 in 7 eligible families under current funding levels.
• The very low ceiling on discretionary funding would have a significant impact on spending for Head Start, No Child Left Behind, health, nutrition, job training, after-school and other human services programs. Depending on which amendments are adopted, some estimate that this could lead to a cut as high as $1 trillion to discretionary funding over the next 10 years. According to the Center for Budget & Policy Priorities, if Head Start funding were frozen, funding in 2014 would be $1.3 billion below the current baseline level, and an estimated 134,000 fewer children would be served by the program at this freeze level than at the inflation-adjusted level.
• There could be no new refundable tax credits or an increase in such credits unless these changes were offset by cuts to other mandatory funding programs. Increases or other changes to corporate tax cuts or individual tax reductions would not need to be paid for with changes elsewhere in the tax code.