Early Childhood Funding Spared in the FY11 Budget; Looming Fight for FY12 Budget
April 12, 2011
After months of uncertainty, the hard work of early childhood advocates like you has paid off! Congress finally agreed on a FY11 budget that largely spares Head Start, Early Head Start and child care funding. Despite $38 billion dollars in federal spending cuts, the budget will sustain services for Illinois children currently enrolled in these vital programs.
The FY11 budget agreement includes:
- $7.575 billion for Early Head Start and Head Start, maintaining enough of the recent funding increases to sustain services for all currently enrolled children, according to U.S. Department of Health and Human Services projections.
- $2.227 billion for the Child Care and Development Block Grant. This funding should allow states to maintain some recent service expansion and to continue making quality improvements.
- The Early Learning Challenge Fund, which would provide competitive state grants to improve the quality of early learning services.
Despite the good news for FY11, drastic cuts are still a possibility in the FY12 budget. Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), chair of the House Budget Committee, presented an FY12 budget plan last week that cuts overall federal spending by 20% and freezes spending for five years. While many details are unknown, this plan would inevitably include dramatic reductions in Head Start, Early Head Start, and child care dollars.
While many media reports on the Ryan proposal have focused on Medicare system changes and tax cuts for the wealthy, this proposal also would be devastating to the Medicaid and Temporary Aid to Needy Families (TANF) programs, a major source of funding for child care. Cutting these programs for low-income working families would place an added burden on federally funded early childhood programs, by forcing them to assume additional responsibility on behalf of the families they serve—including required services such as health screenings and immunizations.
The Ounce of Prevention Fund will continue to send out alerts as more information becomes available.
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