March 4th. Maybe not a day that will live in infamy, but a significant day in our lives and for our future.
Of course, we’re all waiting and wondering whether the pundits will be correct in their predictions about how many more primary lives Hillary will have after the votes are counted tonight in the Texas and Ohio presidential primaries. You know I’ve got my big bowl of popcorn ready for that!
But something else very important is being done today. Parents across the country are participating in a virtual march to protest President Bush’s proposed cut of $300 million dollars from our current federal after-school programs. You know — the ones that allow parents to be able to work full-time jobs (or several part-time jobs) and not have to worry about whether their kids are safe after school officially lets out at 3:30 p.m.??
It seems that instead of providing the federal programs, like Head Start and federally funded after-school child care that millions of parents rely on, Bush wants to turn this into a voucher system and cut the amount of dollars currently allocated.
On the face that might sound like no problem, but innumerable families around the country would have no access to alternative after-school programs because other choices don’t exist in their communities, so the vouchers would be worthless.
Having a coupon to pay for after-school care when there are no available programs? Sounds more like a trick to move money into other parts of the budget to me.
Where would that leave us? Either kids home alone every day until one parent could get off work or millions of parents forced to choose between earning a living and making sure their children are safe at home. That’s no choice — that’s a slap in the face to families across this country. A message from the president that the welfare of this country’s children aren’t exactly a priority in his world.
This move is also shocking in light of the big deal he made when he signed the Head Start for School Readiness Act three months ago, that was supposed to make the program available to more low-income working families.
So what can we do? MomsRising and the National Women’s Law Center both have online letters you can send to your representatives in Washington to let them know that you don’t want the funding cut for our kids. If enough of us send those letters, maybe they’ll start to get the message that we are paying attention and that if they want our future votes, our congressmen need to listen to our voices about what’s important to our families.
If Bush gets his way, 200,000 low-income children and their families would lose child care assistance, and 14,000 children would lose access to Head Start.
Oh, and he’d also get a lot more money to keep the war in Iraq going.
It’s not any more complicated than that.
March 4th, 2008 at 3:49 pm
Just sent my letters via MomsRising.
March 5th, 2008 at 3:50 pm
Just sent a letter.
I’m amazed that both Obama and Clinton aren’t spending more time making the connection between economic shortage/human services failings at home and pointless wars abroad. Especially on issues like children’s programs and veterans care, it seems like it should be an easy connection to make and easy argument to win.