TomPaine: Our Children's Homeland Insecurity

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Our Children's Homeland Insecurity
Michael Petit
February 06, 2007



Michael Petit is president of the Every Child Matters Education Fund. He served as commissioner of Maine's Human Services Department and was deputy director of the Child Welfare League of America.

Steady progress was made for decades during the 20th century in health, education and social indicators for children thanks to long-term voter support for federal spending on maternal and child health services, hospitals, medical research, higher education for doctors and nurses and other public health measures. Many of these social gains are now stalled or at risk of being reversed thanks to two myths underpinning the conservative political ideology dominant since the early 1980’s: first, that the federal government can’t do anything right, and second, that taxes are akin to outright thievery.

This ill-conceived ideology accounts for the indifference and near-total silence from conservatives in the administration and Congress about the plight of millions of American children who are without health insurance, are abused and neglected, are left unsupervised every day after school or whose parents are caught in a criminal justice system that is crushing families.

Proven programs and policies that could actually reduce these social ills have come under repeated attack by conservatives ever since the Reagan administration. Reagan’s even more conservative successors, after taking virtual control of the entire federal government in 2001, expanded these attacks directly and indirectly on programs benefiting children. Cuts in federal taxes and reduced state revenues forced many states to cut child care programs, child support enforcement, health care assistance, Head Start and more, ignoring decades of documentation showing that more, not less, federal spending on children was needed. There is now a huge investment gap, producing much worse outcomes for U.S. children and families than found in other rich democracies.

The children harmed most live primarily in the South, where the anti-tax/anti-government ideology has been embraced most enthusiastically. Nowhere is this more evident than in Texas, a classic low-tax, low-service state and home to such conservative ideologues as President and former governor George W. Bush and ex-congressmen Tom DeLay and Dick Armey. Arguably the epicenter of compassionate conservatism, how effective has conservative ideology been in Texas? Nationally, Texas ranks:

1st in the percentage of uninsured children
1st in food insecurity
1st in child abuse deaths
1st in the number of incarcerated adults
2nd in the percentage of the population that goes hungry
2nd in teen pregnancy
5th in the overall poverty rate
6th in crime
47th in income and food stamps benefits for the neediest
50th in the percentage of fully-immunized two-year-olds

..............more at: http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2007/02/06/our_childrens_homeland_insecurity.php