In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

402 Children’s Legislative Issues (Speech to the National Education Association) February 22, 1985 Washington, DC Martin Luther King said, in the middle of the Vietnam War, that a nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death. If we look at the President’sa fiscal 1986 budget, you will see and I feel, that it is a moral travesty . Although more children die each year from poverty than from traffic fatalities and suicide combined, twice more children die from poverty than die from heart disease and cancer combined, [the]President’s new budget for the fifth consecutive year in a row, attempts to cut billions from children. Specifically it seeks to cut 5.2 billion dollars in fiscal ’86 from poor children and families’ programs on top of the ten billion dollars a year in cut-backs made in these programs since 1980. The military will gain 32 billion dollars in fiscal ’86, on top of a 178 billion in increases they have been given since 1980. If President Reagan’s budget priorities succeed, by 1990 every American will be spending 19 percent less on poor children and families, and 86 percent more on defense. Over a five year period, more American children die from poverty, than the total number of American battle deaths in the Vietnam War. Yet President seeks a 239 percent increase by 1990 to make our children more secure from external enemies. Our leaders dream about a new multibillion dollar Star Warsb system to make our defenses impenetrable against enemy missiles. It would be nice if they could dream of a smaller, achievable war against the internal enemy of child poverty, a war that saves a. President Ronald Reagan, 1981–1989. b. The Strategic Defense Initiative, nicknamed “Star Wars,” proposed building an antimissile system in space. Children’s Legislative Issues 403 and enhances rather than takes and threatens human life. [Applause] Every poor American child could be lifted out of poverty in 1986 for less than half of the proposed defense spending increase in that one year alone. We need to tell the American People, and President Reagan and the Congress that American children not only need defense against poverty, but against preventable infant mortality and birth defects. By 1990, 22,000 American babies are going to die, primarily because of low birth weight. We can prevent at least one in eight of these infant deaths and thousands of handicapping conditions simply by providing their mothers prenatal care. For 7 percent, or twenty-five days, of the defense budget increase, again, just next year, every poor mother and baby could be provided Medicaid, and thus prenatal care coverage. Instead, the Reagan budget proposes to cut Medicaid again by six billion dollars over the next three years, although 700,000 children have already lost their Medicaid cards or benefits because of AFDCc cutbacks and eligibility changes. We’re also at the lowest point in over a decade in the number of poor children who participate in Medicaid even though we have had a dramatic increase in the number of children who fall into poverty. Since 1979 we’ve had 3.3 million new children becoming poor. If these new Medicaid cuts take place, an additional ten million children will be at risk of losing some Medicaid benefits or eligibility. I think we should ask, how many four pound babies will it take to balance the Federal budget? In the Reagan decade, we are building 17,000 new nuclear weapons at an estimated cost of 71 billion dollars. The new Reagan budget allows only enough money to stockpile one month of vaccination serum for children. As a result, two million fewer children will be able to be immunized next year over last year if the Reagan budget request prevails. And this is at a time when half of all black preschool children are not fully immunized against DPT and polio. American children need protection, as you know, against growing child abuse. An estimated 1.5 million children were reported abused and neglected in 1983, an increase of 200,000 over the previous year. Yet the Reagan administration is cutting child abuse programs. We were able to get in a new 25 million dollar training fund for child care workers to try to respond to the allegations of child abuse last year, and he is proposing to abolish that 25 million dollar program. c...

Share