| EVERY CHILD LEFT BEHIND
Did you file your tax return yet for 2024? Eight out of ten of us will have done so by the time you read this email. But what are you getting for taxes Washington is collecting?
When the tax year started on January 2024, parents of the nation’s more than seven million special education students could rely on the U.S. Department of Education (DOE) to force school districts to deliver the education to which they are entitled. But now, parents can’t rely on the federal government to back them up because the new Administration is dismantling the DOE.
Only last October (which feels like a lifetime ago), the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) put in place new rules and grants to ensure that children in the nine million homes across the country with lead pipes had new pipes delivering clean water to their spigot. With 10,000 Pennsylvania children suffering the lifetime consequences of lead poisoning every year, federal action on this front was long overdue. Since Inauguration Day, though, the grants were rescinded and the President’s allies in Congress are turning up the pressure to strip the EPA of the power to make sure children aren’t drinking water full of lead.
Similarly, just last November, Bucks County Congressman Fitzpatrick (R) said, “PFAS contamination is one of the most serious and far-reaching public health crises of our time… Families in Pennsylvania’s First District and across the nation deserve swift solutions and the unwavering commitment of their government to protect their health, safety, and future.” Fast forward only two months and the new President suspended federal rules to keep these forever chemicals from getting into water systems.
In mid-March, only a month after Robert Kennedy, Jr., was confirmed as Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), he toured a Head Start program. “I had a very inspiring tour…the children are getting the kind of education and socialization they need.” Three weeks later, he laid off the entire federal Head Start program staff, dooming the program because there are no staff to release payments to the thousands of Head Start programs educating three-quarter of a million young children across country.
And only four weeks ago, we could rely on state and local health experts to track infectious diseases as they spread so parents can know if their children are at risk for communicable diseases previously eradicated by widespread vaccination. Cuts to HHS-funded epidemiologists across Pennsylvania mean few are left to track contagions, just as the measles started to spread and threaten children’s lives.
The President is begging Americans to give his plans time because he believes his proposals will make our country stronger. The problem is that kids don’t have time. Every year of childhood happens only once. They don’t get a do-over. That’s why parents are right to outraged by these decisions and justified in their demand that elected officials – who, by the way, are paid by parents’ hard-earned tax dollars – prove to them that the federal taxes they are paying will make the lives of children better now.
Parents, educators, health care professionals, and everyone who gets that childhood matters can push back against the senselessness by holding each member of Congress accountable to either show us REAL evidence that unraveling the EPA, DOE, or HHS is actually beneficial or get the Administration to reverse course before American’s children are left behind.
As taxpayers, we deserve no less than to know we’re getting our money’s worth.
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