| Pan-Methodist bishops take concern for children to Capital Hill BY JORETTA PURDUEUnited Methodist News Service 
Childrens Defense Fund staff have urged a group of Methodist bishops to speak out on several pieces of legislation in Congress that would affect poor children. This is a most dangerous time for poor children in terms of legislation in Congress, said Marian Wright Edelman, founder and president of the Childrens Defense Fund. People are not aware of the systematic, across-the-board war against children. The bishops, representing the Commission on Pan-Methodist Cooperations Children in Poverty initiative, met July 30 with childrens fund officials. The commission comprises representatives from the African Methodist Episcopal, African Methodist Episcopal Zion, Christian Methodist Episcopal and United Methodist churches. Members of the first two denominations were unable to participate in the delegation. Edelman and other childrens fund staff discussed concerns about legislation affecting the Head Start, child tax credit and welfare-to-work programs. The previous week, the House of Representatives passed by one vote a bill that would change the funding and management of Head Start, which helps children from low-income families prepare for elementary school. Shelley Water Boots of the childrens fund noted that the bill originated from a White House request that the whole program be funded by block grants to the states. This, she said, would take away the federal standards. The proposal was scaled down to include no more than eight states as a test, but Boots said as many as half the children in Head Start could be affected, depending on the states chosen. A waiver provision could also increase the number of states beyond eight. Block grants would disrupt the decades-long federal-to-local funding pattern that has been an important part of maintaining standards and accountability, Boots said. It would also make the money vulnerable to other needs in hard-pressed state budgets, she said. Edelman, speaking by phone to the group, accused the Republicans in the House of wanting to end Head Start as we know it by using the block-grant approach. The tax cuts of 2001 and 2003 will drain funds needed for children, Edelman continued. In America, we dont have a money problem; we have a values and priorities problem, she declared. The people who need it the most will be getting nothing, Edelman lamented. Shannon Brigham-Hill, a Childrens Defense Fund lawyer, told the bishops that her agency also favors reauthorizing the current welfare program. She said that problems in a new bill passed by the House include an increase in the number of work hours required of parents, including those with children under age 6, coupled with insufficient money to fund day care even for those children already enrolled. We have seen a rise in extreme poverty, she noted. Extreme poverty means household cash income is less than half the amount of the federal poverty line. For example, that would include a family of three with less than $7,064 income in 2001. She noted that in 2001, despite the previously booming economy, the number of African-American children in extreme poverty was at its highest level in 23 years nearly 1 million. United Methodist Bishop Don Ott coordinated the groups visit to Washington. Others from The United Methodist Church were Bishops Violet Fisher of the New York West Area and George Bashore of Pittsburgh. Bishops Marshall Gilmore of Dallas and Ronald Cunningham of Memphis, Tenn., represented the Christian Methodist Episcopal Church. | 
Login/Register to leave comment