The fifth Continuing Resolution (CR), released by the House of Representatives with a vote expected today, would temporarily extend funding for virtually all federal programs serving children for the current fiscal year that began 129 days ago until March 23.

At that point, the federal government will be through nearly half the entire fiscal year and still not have set a budget for the vast majority of children’s programs.

“Government by short-term patches and brinksmanship shows just how dysfunctional our nation’s federal government has become. This is unacceptable for the millions of children and families across this country that are being harmed by Congress’s failure to act,” said Bruce Lesley, president of the First Focus Campaign for Children. “President Trump and Congress must sit down and resolve this stalemate once and for all and get this country back on track toward solving the problems that face our nation’s next generation.”

The following are the good, bad, and ugly provisions for children that are either included or left out of this fifth CR.

 The Good

• Families First: The CR includes language that strengthens families by providing upfront evidence-based prevention services to children at risk of coming into foster care, including mental health, substance abuse, and in-home parenting programs to keep families together and prevent foster care placements. The language also ensures more foster children are placed with families, ending federal reimbursement when states inappropriately place children in non-family settings.
• Child Welfare Program Extensions: The CR reauthorizes (at current levels) an additional four years for the Promoting Safe and Stable Families and Child Welfare Services programs (including the Court Improvement Program), the Adoption and Legal Guardianship Incentive Payments, and the Regional Partnership Grant program.
• Community Health Centers (CHCs): After expiring 129 days ago, CHC funding is extended for two years in this CR to end the CHC current and immediate financial crisis. However, another expiration of funding would come again in less than 20 months from now. Although two years is an important step, five years of funding is necessary to allow CHCs to preserve their staff, clinics, and health services and establish long-term stability for their work in serving low-income children and families.
• Family to Family (F2F) Information Centers: The CR provides a two-year extension of funding to F2F Centers that serve as a central source for families of children and young adults with disabilities and special health care needs to obtain support, advocacy, and information about health care. The extension also provides for the establishment of F2F Centers in the territories and the tribal communities, although five years of funding would provide much greater stability for these programs.

The Bad

• Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP): Although the last CR provided for a six-year extension of CHIP, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has found that a 10-year extension would save the federal government an additional $5-6 billion. This CR fails to take advantage of this unique opportunity to stabilize and protect CHIP for the long term, eliminate the unnecessary CHIP funding shortfall that was included in the last CR beginning in FY 2024, and billions of dollars in savings that could be used to extend funding for all the other programs with short-term extensions mentioned in this release.
• The Debt Ceiling: The CR fails to address the looming deadline for a vote to increase the debt limit—which will determine if the U.S. government can pay its bills. Gambling with the debt limit reduces business confidence, stresses financial markets, and delays critical payments for programs on which many Americans depend – including food assistance to children, Social Security, Medicare benefits and payments to the military and our veterans. Crisis management of the debt limit is dangerous and irresponsible. Congress should increase the debt ceiling as part of the 5th Continuing Resolution for FY’18 and improve the process in a thoughtful manner eliminating the need to guess when “extraordinary measures” to pay our bills may be exhausted and the government would default on our nation’s debt.

The Ugly

• Funding for Non-Defense Discretionary (NDD) Children’s Programs: The CR harms children by offering sequestration relief for defense spending for the current fiscal year (FY 2018), without doing the same for NDD spending. NDD spending funds a majority of the programs serving children and families, and as a result of unsustainable budget caps, NDD spending on children has seen a real percent cut of 0.78 percent since 2014. Meanwhile, the share of the federal budget going to children is at an all-time low of 7.75 percent. Without sequestration relief for domestic spending, the federal government cannot prioritize the programs that educate, strengthen, and protect children—which are just as imperative for ensuring the future security of our nation as investments in defense spending.
• Maternal, Infant and Early Childhood Home Visiting (MIECHV) Program: The CR does not include funding for the Maternal, Infant and Early Childhood Home Visiting (MIECHV) program, which expired more than four months ago. MIECHV supports effective home visiting services that help children and families improve their health, educational attainment and ability to work to support themselves. Congress needs to renew this important program for five years at no less than its current funding of $400 million annually. In fact, an extension of CHIP for 10 years would more than pay for a simultaneous long-term extension of MIECHV – a win-win for low-income children and families.
• Disaster Relief: This CR omits much-needed disaster relief for emergency supplemental funding to enable Texas, Florida, Puerto Rico, and California to continue their recovery from Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, Maria and the California wildfires. Congress has yet to deliver on funding that it promised nearly two months ago, and as a result, families and children in these regions continue to lack desperately needed resources.
• Medicaid Shortfalls in Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands: This CR fails to address an enormous crisis whereby Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands are rapidly running out of Medicaid funding to provide health coverage to hundreds of thousands of American citizens. Due to the fact that Medicaid provides an inadequate level of block grant funding to the territories, limiting their access to Medicaid funding, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands face a crisis demanding immediate action from Congress for these citizens.
• DREAM/Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA): The CR continues to woefully ignore a much-needed DACA fix for over 800,000 immigrants. Congress has had more than four months to come up with a solution to a problem created by President Trump’s decision to repeal DACA protections for nearly 1 million young people who know only the United States as their home. The President has indicated that he will not change the current March 5 expiration date for DACA recipients. These recipients and their families, including 200,000 U.S. citizen children, are facing a great deal of uncertainty and fear, heightened by each passing day that a deal is not made. Congress must address DACA as soon as possible to end the needless trauma that has been inflicted on these hardworking immigrants and their families.

WASHINGTON---Bruce Lesley, President of the First Focus Campaign for Children, issued the following statement after passage of the Republican tax bill in the House and Senate:

“The only simple thing about this tax bill is that the bulk of its benefits flow to wealthy families and corporations at the expense of working families and children. Corporations will enjoy a steep decrease in their tax rate, which will plummet from 35 percent to 21 percent, permanently.

In 2027, nearly 83% of the tax breaks are projected to go to the top 1% of earners.  On the other hand, hard-working families with children, especially those in poverty, will, at best, see modest—but temporary—tax breaks, with the poorest left out entirely.  Sadly, in the name of a partisan victory and so-called simplification of our tax code, the President and his Congressional Majority have ushered through a tax overhaul in record time with no regard for legislative process or bipartisanship.  The result heavily and shamefully favors the wealthiest.

At the same time that extraordinary measures were used to rush a deficit-ballooning tax bill to the President, an extremely successful and bipartisan Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) expired.  Ironically, this upside-down prioritization stems from claims that the $8 billion CHIP cost requires funding offsets.  This explanation for inaction on CHIP is appalling given that the tax bill will cost more than 100 times that over the next five years.

In addition, this unfair, lopsided and insulting tax bill gambles with our children’s future by relying on unfounded expectations for economic growth.  Congress’ own independent analysts estimate that this tax bill will increase the deficit by $1.45 trillion. Our young people can expect to shoulder this debt burden, experience shrinking social services and ultimately pay for the tax cuts with higher taxes.

Already, the tax bill’s supporters have indicated they will dismantle the social safety net to compensate for this explosion in the deficit. This endangers critical programs that serve families and children, such as Medicaid, temporary assistance for needy families (TANF), child nutrition programs, and housing assistance. Families cannot afford to lose these crucial supports, which are already receiving a declining share of the federal budget.  As of 2017, less than 8 percent of total federal spending goes to children.

Supporters of the tax bill have chosen to reward corporations and the wealthiest over children. The First Focus Campaign for Children finds this behavior intolerable and unconscionable and will continue to fight to ensure these policymakers no longer view our children as an afterthought.”

WASHINGTON—The Children's Budget Coalition, convened by the First Focus Campaign for Children, is dismayed that Congress passed a Fiscal Year (FY) 2018 budget resolution today that does little to protect or increase investments in the vital programs that serve American children and families. As outlined in the 2016 Children’s Budget Book, children continue to receive a decreasing share of the federal budget.

First Focus Campaign for Children President Bruce Lesley said:

“This divestment in kids has a real and devastating impact on crucial resources for housing, education, nutrition, general welfare, and health, to name just a few.

Congress cannot continue to make children and families its last priority in federal budget decisions.

If they’re serious about the health and well-being of our kids—and America’s future—they will ensure that non-defense discretionary (NDD) funding has parity with defense discretionary spending. And they will support mandatory programs that help lift kids and families out of poverty. Today’s FY 18 budget resolution does neither.”

Despite the great need for relief from the 2011 Budget Control Act’s caps on NDD spending, the FY 18 Budget Resolution adheres to those caps—and projects massive cuts in those funds over the next ten years. At the same time, it allows for legislation that would increase defense discretionary spending above its FY 18 cap, abandoning the core sequestration principle of parity between NDD and defense discretionary spending.

Already, the BCA has resulted in an alarming 13 percent decrease in inflation-adjusted NDD spending since 2010.  Should Congress fail to reach a budget agreement to lift the FY 18 NDD budget cap, spending will continue to drop, with devastating consequences to over 130 discretionary programs that directly support children and families.

Although it was encouraging to see that the final FY 18 Budget Resolution abandoned the House’s damaging request for $200 billion in cuts to mandatory spending, its announced savings of $5 trillion over 10 years means that mandatory programs could be on the chopping block in the future. Meanwhile, plans to use reconciliation to generate tax cuts that add up to $1.5 trillion to the deficit over ten years could risk future spending on mandatory programs that support low income children.

SEE ALSO: The Children's Budget Coalition

First Focus Campaign for Children, along with several children's advocacy groups, released a joint statement today on the impact of Congress' failure to pass the Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP) by the September 30th deadline.

Read the statement.

Our organizations represent children, pregnant women, families, children’s health care providers and advocates across the country, and we speak here with one voice to urge the U.S. Senate to keep health coverage for children strong by rejecting the Graham-Cassidy health care repeal bill.

The bill is an assault on the health and futures of our children, pregnant women, and adults and our nation. Yet the Senate is poised to run ahead to vote on the bill without a complete assessment from the Congressional Budget office on the cost of care and numbers of children, pregnant women and others who will lose coverage.

The Graham-Cassidy bill fails children by ending the Medicaid program as we know it, jeopardizing comprehensive, affordable health coverage for the 72 million vulnerable Americans, 37 million of them children, who rely on Medicaid for their health care.

Medicaid covers more than 40 percent of all children with special health care needs,roughly half of all births each year, and provides indispensable care for pregnant women. Medicaid offers comprehensive benefits many private health plans won’t cover, like hearing and vision screenings, and wheelchairs and hearing aids to meet children’s needs as they grow and develop. Medicaid is there for families struggling from the opioid epidemic, covering treatment for parents and services for their children, and from other disasters. Medicaid is there for families living at or near poverty and for children and youth in foster care. But if this bill passes, Medicaid will no longer be there for any of them.

The Graham-Cassidy bill fails children by leaving more families uninsured, or without insurance that meets their basic needs. It would return us to a day when insurance companies can deny essential health services, including mental health, substance abuse treatment, and maternity care, and discriminate against children and adults with pre-existing conditions. This bill’s deep and growing cuts in federal funding for states—estimated to be $4 trillion over the next twenty years—would likely result in tens of millions of adults and children losing coverage.

By focusing on passing the Graham-Cassidy bill next week, Congress is also poised to miss a real deadline, passage of a long-term extension of funding for the bipartisan Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) by September 30, 2017. CHIP works because it is built on the strong foundation of Medicaid, and the two together have helped reduce the number of uninsured children by a remarkable 68 percent in the last 20 years. Just one week ago, a strong bipartisan bill was introduced to extend CHIP funding for five years, but now action to get CHIP over the finish line has stalled. Instead we are struggling to fight back the Graham-Cassidy bill that would dismantle rather than improve coverage for millions of children and pregnant women and also establish an enormous new block grant that threatens CHIP’s unique valuable focus on maternal and child health.

Today, a record 95 percent of children in America have health coverage. Rather than build on this progress, the Graham-Cassidy bill tears it down. Our nation’s children deserve health coverage that is there for them and their families. They certainly deserve better than the Graham-Cassidy bill.

WASHINGTON—The First Focus Campaign for Children is deeply concerned about the devastating impacts the President’s Fiscal Year 2018 (FY 18) budget would have on American children.  As part of the  Children’s Budget Coalition—a group of more than 50 national organizations dedicated to the well-being of children—we believe the $54 billion in cuts to non-defense discretionary programs (NDD) would devastate programs that impact children’s development and well-being, particularly in the areas of health, education, nutrition, housing and general welfare.

John Monsif, VP of Government Relations at the First Focus Campaign for Children, said:

“Congress must prevent this misguided proposal by lifting the budget caps on non-defense discretionary (NDD) appropriations and fully investing in kids. Otherwise, the slashing of funding for children’s programs will have real consequences for real people. Our children will be hungrier, sicker, and crammed into more overcrowded classrooms because of these budget cuts. Our youngest and most vulnerable members of society deserve better.”

The Children’s Budget Coalition urges Congress to take the following actions to protect children and invest in their future:

1. Lift the budget caps for non-defense discretionary (NDD) spending;
2. Maintain parity between non-defense and defense discretionary spending; and
3. Increase allocations in the appropriations bills for programs that benefit children.

Investing in children is urgent given two worrying trends, according to the First Focus 2016 Children’s Budget Book: 1) Children’s programs accounted for a mere 2.1 percent of all new total federal spending over the previous five years, despite overall spending increasing by 7.7 percent; and 2) The share of total federal spending on children decreased 5.1 percent between 2014 and 2016.

We cannot continue down this divestment path – our children are America’s future. Now is the time for lawmakers who talk a good game about kids to step up to the plate and act to protect them and help them thrive.

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The First Focus Campaign for Children is a 501(c)(4) nonprofit organization affiliated with First Focus, a bipartisan children’s advocacy organization. The Campaign for Children advocates directly for legislative change in Congress to ensure children and families are a priority in federal policy and budget decisions.

WASHINGTON--The Children’s Budget Coalition, which includes more than 55 organizations committed to ensuring federal investment in critical programs that help American children--sent letters (House / Senate) today to the chairmen and ranking members of the Senate and House Appropriations Committee and the relevant subcommittee urging them to do four things in Fiscal Year 2018 to protect and improve the lives of children. They include:

1. Reversing the trend of spending less on programs that help kids: As the First Focus 2016 Children’s Budget Book found, children’s programs accounted for a mere 2.1 percent of all new federal spending over the previous five years.
2. Lifting the budget caps for non-defense discretionary (NDD) spending: The president’s FY 18 Budget Blueprint proposes a $54 billion cut to NDD, which could lead to as much as $20 billion in cuts to more than 100 essential programs that support children. Such cuts would have real consequences for real people – especially teachers, young children in low-income families, and students with special needs.
3. Maintaining parity between non-defense and defense discretionary spending; and
4. Increasing 302b allocations in three appropriations bills (Labor-HHS, T-HUD, and CJS). These spending bills include about 200 programs critical to assisting kids and providing them with resources necessary to live long and productive lives.

Bruce Lesley, President of the First Focus Campaign for Children, said:

“We need to arrest the alarming trend of decreased federal spending on children’s programs. More than ever, now is the time to invest more in America’s kids, not less, to ensure the next generation grows up to lead healthy and productive lives.

The place to start is next year’s budget. If the administration and lawmakers are serious about building America’s future, they will make kids a top priority in the FY 18 budgetary process.”

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The First Focus Campaign for Children is a 501(c)(4) nonprofit organization affiliated with First Focus, a bipartisan children’s advocacy organization. The Campaign for Children advocates directly for legislative change in Congress to ensure children and families are a priority in federal policy and budget decisions.

On May 11, 2017, the Children's Budget Coalition submitted a letter to Congress (House / Senate) urging policymakers to consider the needs of America's youngest citizens when writing the 2018 budget.

More than 55 organizations signed on to the letter, which asks Congress to consider four top priorities:

1. Reversing the divestment trends in children’s programs;

2. Lifting the budget caps for non-defense discretionary spending set forth in the Budget Control Act of 2011 (BCA; P.L. 112-25);

3. Maintaining parity between non-defense and defense discretionary spending; and

4. Increasing 302b allocations in the Labor, Health & Human Services and Education (Labor-HHS), Ag
riculture, Transportation and Housing & Urban Development (T-HUD) and Commerce, Justice & Science (CJS) appropriations bills.

Read the press release here, and the letters to the House and the Senate.

WASHINGTON – Following the 217-213 vote in the US House of Representatives to repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and replace it with the American Health Care Act (AHCA), millions of American kids and families will be negatively impacted if the bill becomes law.

Most important for children, the legislation includes fundamental and catastrophic cuts to Medicaid, which 38 million kids currently rely on for health services.

First Focus Campaign for Children President Bruce Lesley said:

“It’s no exaggeration to call today one of the saddest days in our nation’s history when it comes to the health and well-being of American children, as the bill would roll back decades of progress. It violates the Hippocratic Oath, which is to ‘first, do no harm.’

At a time when Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) have helped reduce the rate of uninsured children to the lowest number in American history -- with more than 95 percent of children having some form of health insurance -- the House approved a bill that would undermine this success by slashing $839 billion from the Medicaid program.

The House bill ends the popular, successful 50-year-old Medicaid entitlement as we know it through the imposition of arbitrary caps and threatens access for all Americans to affordable and meaningful health benefits like newborn services, pediatric services, maternity care, emergency care, mental health treatment, and medically necessary rehabilitative and rehabilitation services for children with special needs.

This bill is a direct attack on the 38 million children who rely on Medicaid for their health coverage -- children make up more than 50 percent of the Medicaid population. It is also an attack on states who get shortchanged in the AHCA deal. With a cut of $839 billion and provisions to establish Medicaid per capita caps or block grants, states will have no choice but to ration care for our nation’s sickest and most vulnerable citizens by creating wait lists, cutting eligibility, benefits, services, and payments to providers.

“We are deeply disappointed that lawmakers who talk a good game about protecting children have turned their back on the most vulnerable Americans. We look now to the Senate to take up the mantle for kids and protect the guarantee of Medicaid as the legislative process moves forward.”

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The First Focus Campaign for Children is a 501(c)(4) nonprofit organization affiliated with First Focus, a bipartisan children’s advocacy organization. The Campaign for Children advocates directly for legislative change in Congress to ensure children and families are a priority in federal policy and budget decisions.

This afternoon, Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) announced that the House of Representatives would not put to a vote the American Health Care Act, H.R. 1648, legislation that would have repealed the Affordable Care Act and fundamentally restructured the Medicaid program. This news is a relief for the 37 million children and their families who rely on Medicaid for their health coverage as well as the other vulnerable populations whose care would have been cut if the House bill was approved. In response, First Focus Campaign for Children President Bruce Lesley issued the following statement:

“We applaud those Members of Congress who heeded pleas from constituents across the country and were willing to vote against passage of the AHCA. Their courage in standing up for children among other vulnerable populations of Americans will allow the families of the 37 million children who are insured through Medicaid to sleep easier tonight knowing that their coverage and benefits remain intact.

“At a time when Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) have helped to reduce the rate of uninsured children to the lowest number in American history -- with more than 95 percent of children having some form of health insurance -- the House has chosen wisely not to advance a bill that would undermine this success.

“If Congress is interested in improving the health and well-being of America’s children, instead of draconian cuts that would end the Medicaid entitlement, we urge Members to protect the programs like Medicaid and CHIP, which have been so successful in keeping our children healthy and on a path to becoming productive adults.

“The AHCA was wrong for children, wrong for families, and wrong for America. Instead of dismantling the programs that are working well to protect and improve health care for millions of Americans, Congress should get back to work and start from the beginning, convening stakeholders, holding hearings, and tackling the real issues that are most important to children and families – ensuring access to high quality, affordable care that meets the needs of every family member."

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The First Focus Campaign for Children is a 501(c)(4) nonprofit organization affiliated with First Focus, a bipartisan children’s advocacy organization. The Campaign for Children advocates directly for legislative change in Congress to ensure children and families are a priority in federal policy and budget decisions.