Million Children

WASHINGTON -- Advocates are rolling out slick marketing campaigns and a stream of media events to bolster a children's insurance program that the Bush administration wants to curtail, and one group has enlisted Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley in the push for more federal aid. O'Malley, a Democrat, is to speak here today when the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation introduces a $3 million advertising campaign designed to press Congress to renew and increase spending...

IN EARLY July, President Clinton visited some of the poorest regions of the country and, to bipartisan acclaim, spoke eloquently of our obligations to America's most disadvantaged children. Now, with the U.S. economy performing at its peak, we have an unprecedented opportunity to back up our words with actions.As Congress begins making critical decisions on budget priorities for decades to come, there is no better time than now to demonstrate the depth of our commitment to America's children, especially the poorest among them.

FOR ANY of the year 2000 presidential contenders searching for a school reform proposal guaranteed to improve test scores and educational achievement of America's children, I have just one word: Fathers. An involved father in every home is the best school reform initiative there is.Granted, delivering on this campaign promise won't be easy. Our society is still paying the price for 30 years of cultural denial about the importance of fathers and marriage, fooling ourselves into believing that children don't need fathers for anything but a child-support check and that any family structure is as good as any other.

For all of Maryland's prosperity, life isn't getting better for many of its children, according to an annual survey that once again puts the state in the bottom half of the nation.Babies are born underweight at a higher rate than in most states. Teen-agers are more likely to be arrested for violent crimes. The percentage of children living in poverty, though lower than the national average, is worse than a decade ago.The study, being published today by the Baltimore-based Annie E. Casey Foundation, measures child health, safety and well-being in the 50 states and District of Columbia.

SAN FRANCISCO -- The conservative case for a welcoming policy toward immigrants is that the very act of immigrating is an act of entrepreneurship. Passive, risk-averse people do not immigrate. So immigration leavens a successful, complacency-prone society with a ferment for change from below.It is, therefore, appropriate that the campaign in California to make bilingual education voluntary, which would virtually end it, is being led by a conservative entrepreneur inspired by an insurrection of immigrant parents.

IN 1961, President John F. Kennedy made an audacious promise. Within a decade, he said, Americans would walk on the moon.To accomplish this goal, he brought together thousands of the country's top scientists, engineers and designers to carry out a broad-based program of research, development and experimentation. Eight years later, Neil Armstrong made President Kennedy's promise a reality.In 1996, President Clinton made an equally audacious promise. Every 9-year-old, he pledged, will be a reader.

ATLANTA -- In Thailand, children drown or suffer ruptured eardrums working as deep-sea divers with no protective equipment. In Sri Lanka, more children die from pesticide poisoning than from a combination of childhood diseases, such as whooping cough and malaria.In Asia alone, about a million children are working as prostitutes.These are among the horrifying findings of the International Labor Organization, a United Nations agency. Last month the agency released a report showing that some 250 million children, ages 5 to 14, are employed, with about half working full-time.

With welfare reform at the top of the new Republican-dominated Congress' agenda in 1995, the debate is heating up over what "reform" really means and how to get there. This month, House Republicans will propose setting a five-year limit on welfare benefits. Last week, the Clinton administration blasted the GOP plan, charging it would shove some 5.3 million children -- more than half the 9.7 million children who benefit from Aid to Families With Dependent Children, the nation's main welfare program -- off the rolls.

For many grandparents, one of the joys of having grandchildren is being able to spoil them shamelessly, leaving discipline to the youngsters' parents.This simple pleasure is increasingly lost to many grandparents. A growing number are becoming the sole care-givers of their grandchildren, taking the place of a missing middle generation.To help these second-time parents cope with the physical, emotional and financial strains of raising a new generation of children, a public support group for grandparents -- the Intergenerational Village Project -- is forming in Baltimore.

THE UNITED NATIONS CHILDREN'S FUND, or Unicef, is best-known for its efforts to improve the health and well-being of children. Better nutrition, clean water, health care, more schools -- these are the kinds of projects generally associated with this agency. But this year, in anticipation of its 50th anniversary in 1996, Unicef used its annual State of the World's Children report to move the agency into a new area: the devastating effects of war on children, particularly wars that target civilian populations as part of a military strategy.

From the 1960s to the 1980s, child mortality dropped drastically in the world's poorest regions. Vaccination, sanitation, health education and improved medical care saved millions of children. Most experts expected this success to continue automatically. It hasn't. Over the past two decades, child mortality has flat-lined; in some places, it's risen. Take Chad. There, a child has an astounding 1-in-5 chance of dying before age 5. That hasn't changed in two decades. In the U.S., an infant's risk of dying is less than 1 in 100. "The world started a revolution in child health but didn't finish it," says Johns Hopkins University researcher Jennifer Bryce, a leading child health expert.

When I first met Aichana while doing research in Africa, the heat from the Sahara that was sweeping through Mauritania's capital had made it so difficult to sleep indoors that she had thrown a mattress on the terrace of a friend's home. Aichana's dark skin blended easily into the night. The blue scarf she'd wrapped around her long hair was about the only bright spot coming from the shadows. Everything else about her faded into the blackness of the evening. I'd never met anyone like Aichana.

WASHINGTON -- With the chances looking slim that Congress will be able to override President Bush's veto of the State Children's Health Insurance Program expansion this week, leaders on Capitol Hill and at the White House are bracing for a potentially bruising round of negotiations to keep current recipients covered. The popular program for moderate-income families expires in mid-November, and both sides face pressure to reach a deal that maintains funding. But they remain far apart on the costs of a program that Democrats and some Republicans want to expand by millions of children and tens of billions of dollars.

WASHINGTON -- President Bush indicated yesterday that he would be willing to accept a larger increase for a children's health insurance program than the one he has proposed, but he defended his veto of the expansion of coverage approved by Congress. Bush's veto Wednesday set off an ideological battle about who holds responsibility for extending health care benefits to uninsured children: the government or the private sector. The congressional bill would spend $60 billion over five years to expand health coverage for children of the working poor and middle class, and it would pay for it with higher tobacco taxes.

WASHINGTON -- The House approved sweeping health care legislation yesterday that would expand government benefits for children, the elderly and doctors while boosting tobacco taxes and cutting Medicare payments to private insurance companies. The largely party-line 225-204 vote followed hours of debate and parliamentary stalling tactics by Republicans. Cheers rang out in the House chamber when Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a California Democrat, announced that the bill had passed. The House bill would expand a popular health insurance program mainly for the children of the working poor.

When the bipartisan leadership of the powerful Senate Finance Committee hammers out a deal to renew a popular health care program for poor children, as it did last week, odds are that something at least similar will be enacted. No doubt that's what has President Bush so worried that he's issuing veto threats before the first vote on the State Children's Health Insurance Program legislation has been cast. But with his bromides about federalized medicine - and the absurd suggestion that the working poor could afford private health insurance if only they got better tax treatment - Mr. Bush makes himself look hopelessly out of touch on this issue, even with GOP stalwarts.

WASHINGTON -- Advocates are rolling out slick marketing campaigns and a stream of media events to bolster a children's insurance program that the Bush administration wants to curtail, and one group has enlisted Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley in the push for more federal aid. O'Malley, a Democrat, is to speak here today when the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation introduces a $3 million advertising campaign designed to press Congress to renew and increase spending...

COLUMBIA, Mo. -- With the holidays upon us, thoughts will turn soon to New Year's resolutions. More than 35 million children - nearly half the children in America - play sports each year, so plenty of parents and coaches would do well to resolve to make sports better for boys and girls in 2007. "Making sports better" means no more adults slugging one another at games for children as young as 6. No more "select" teams that cut 8-year-olds. No more adults whose zeal to win has fueled an epidemic of overuse injuries in preteens pushed too hard, too fast.

LONDON - Governments are failing the children of the world, with more than 1 billion living in a state of severe threat from hunger, disease, exploitation or lack of security, the United Nations children's agency said yesterday. In a distressing indictment, UNICEF said that in spite of some pockets of progress this year, "we've failed to deliver on the promise of childhood." "Too many governments are making informed, deliberate choices that actually hurt childhood," UNICEF executive director Carol Bellamy said as she unveiled the agency's annual State of the World's Children report.

FOR ANY of the year 2000 presidential contenders searching for a school reform proposal guaranteed to improve test scores and educational achievement of America's children, I have just one word: Fathers. An involved father in every home is the best school reform initiative there is.Granted, delivering on this campaign promise won't be easy. Our society is still paying the price for 30 years of cultural denial about the importance of fathers and marriage, fooling ourselves into believing that children don't need fathers for anything but a child-support check and that any family structure is as good as any other.