Children's Budget 2008

First Focus: Making Children and Families the Priority, a research/lobbying organization, has finished a report that looks at the amount the U.S. spends on children.  "Children's Budget 2008" does a couple of helpful things: it breaks down the different programs that focus on children and also highlights the direction (up or down) of spending on such programs.  The report is arranged in a way that its findings are easily understood and I think could make a good background assignment for a class.  There is also an associated powerpoint presentation. 

The key findings of the report include:

• For the past five years, only one penny of every new, non-defense dollar spent by the federal government has gone to children and children’s programs.
• Children’s spending now makes up only ten percent of the entire non-defense budget.
• The overall share of federal, non-defense spending going to children’s programs has dropped by 10 percent over the past five years.
• Real discretionary spending on children has declined by more than 6 percent since 2004, while at the same time all other non-defense discretionary spending has increased by more than 8 percent.
  

-Thanks to Christopher Spina for forwarding the info to me.  E.R. erosser@wcl.american.edu