wfn.org | Edelman asks church women to support child care block grant

[NewsDesk <NewsDesk@UMCOM.ORG>]

April 29, 2002       News media contact: Linda Bloom7(212) 870-38037New York
10-21-71BP{192}

NOTE: This report is a sidebar to UMNS story #191. A photograph is
available.

PHILADELPHIA (UMNS) - In 1990, United Methodist Women petitioned
then-President George H. Bush to sign the Child Care and Development Block
Grant into law.

More than a decade later, Marian Wright Edelman, founder and president of
the Children's Defense Fund, is asking the organization to do the same with
the current President Bush as the block grant comes up for renewal. 

"You can make a difference again for children in need of quality child care
and for working poor parents trying to get and stay off welfare," she said
April 26 at the 2002 Assembly of United Methodist Women.

This time, Edelman added, Congress needs to allot additional funding of $20
billion over five years, to help 2 million more children get help. Today,
only one in seven eligible children receives federal child care assistance. 

"Currently, the Bush administration's budget proposes to freeze child care
funding at its current level over the next five years, which means 144,000
fewer children will receive federal child care assistance while
simultaneously requiring poor mothers to work longer hours in their new
welfare proposals," she said.

Assembly participants took time during her presentation to write letters to
U.S. senators and representatives, urging reauthorization of the grant and
the $20 billion funding increase.

Edelman offered a wealth of statistics about the struggles of the working
poor, the lack of proper housing, health care, education and child care, the
effects of violence on children and the entrenchment of a poverty that could
be overcome if the nation had the political and social will to do so.

"These are not just numbers," she reminded her audience, "these are children
growing up every day, struggling to survive and thrive."

She advocated a freeze on the tax cut for the top 1 percent of wealthiest
Americans rather than cuts in child care and Head Start programs. "We don't
begrudge anyone their first, fifth or tenth million or billion if they are
earned on a fair playing field and after children's crucial survival needs
are met," she said. "But something is out of kilter when just three of our
wealthiest Americans possess greater wealth than the GNP of the 28
least-developed nations in the world with over 385 million people."

She called upon the nation "to put child welfare ahead of corporate welfare"
and noted that local, state and federal budgets "are not just economic
documents, they are moral documents. They are a values test of what the
United States of America stands for. Follow the money and you will find what
we truly care about."

Noting the billions spent on missile defense systems and other military
items, Edelman said that national security is not just military security,
but family and child security as well as economic security.

"It's time to end expensive child poverty and invest in cost-effective
solutions to ensure our children's future," she declared. She estimated that
lifting every poor family with children above the official poverty line
would cost $34 billion a year, or half the tax cut for the top 1 percent of
wealthiest Americans.

She urged assembly participants to support the Act to Leave No Child Behind
(Senate bill 940 and House bill 1990), introduced by Sen. Christopher Dodd,
D-Conn., and Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., as well as work for
reauthorization of the child care block grant.

Said Edelman: "Let's just keep pestering them (Congress) until ... they can
find $20 billion for child care this year." 

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United Methodist News Service
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