Gov.-elect Arnold Schwarzenegger will be in Washington, D.C.
today to meet with California lawmakers and Republican House and
Senate leaders. “I will be known in Washington not as the
Terminator but as the Collectinator,” he said, according to
The Los Angeles Times, which reports that he actually will probably
not receive much federal money at all.
And why not? Shouldn’t President George W. Bush pony up
some cash for the Collectinator? After all, Schwarzenegger said
last week California has “no greater ally” in
Washington than Bush, as quoted by the San Francisco Chronicle.
There are three reasons why Bush won’t show California the
money: war, war and war. Bush seems to love to go to war, and
war-makers run through money like water. Bush’s deficit
spending over the next 10 years will amount to “an
astonishing $2.7 trillion,” according to Morgan Stanley
reports. There is simply no money for the Collectinator to collect
because it is already allocated to the “War on
Terrorism,” a war on taxes and a “War on Drugs,”
to name a few.
In fact, Bush is on the warpath yet again ““ he has set his
target sights on the most nefarious of all spending items: the Head
Start Program.
Head Start is a federal preschool program that helps poor kids
from birth until age 5. The program has “the overall goal of
increasing the school readiness of young children in low-income
families,” according to the program’s Web site. One of
the best parts about the program is its comprehensive approach.
“A child in Head Start benefits not only from time in the
classroom but also from required parental involvement, healthcare
screenings and follow-ups, nutritious meals and help with special
needs,” reports Jennifer Niesslein in the Oct. 20 issue of
The Nation publication. Since the program’s inception in
1965, Head Start has enjoyed bi-partisan support.
Enter Bush and his little friend HR 2210, a law he supports that
would effectively dismantle Head Start. The House passed HR 2210 in
July by a one-vote margin. It is not through the ringer yet;
Congress will make its final decision on the bill this fall. HR
2210 “would essentially do away with comprehensive
services,” writes Niesslein. The law hands over control of
preschool assistance programs to the states, many of which, like
the U.S. government, are up to their eyeballs in debt. And unlike
the U.S. government, the states can’t deficit spend. HR 2210
is basically a block grant, which are notorious for not getting
money to where it’s supposed to go. In fact, the National
Head Start Association is so scared of and opposed to HR 2210 that
they have set up a new Web site,
www.saveheadstart.org.
Bush is destroying Head Start because he thinks it’s not
generating results. “We want Head Start to set higher
ambitions for the million children it serves,” Bush said,
according to The Nation. “In my line of work, you see a
problem, you address it.”
Just what is this problem? John Boehner, House education
committee chair, articulates Bush’s view in The Nation:
“Head Start’s graduates beginning kindergarten are more
than 25 percentile points below in average skills like recognizing
letters, numbers, shapes and colors.”
This figure is a “statistical sleight of hand,” as
Niesslein points out. “While Head Start grads are not scoring
as well as their more affluent counterparts, they do score higher
than kids who come from the same socioeconomic background but
didn’t participate in Head Start,” she writes.
Put another way, Head Start does exactly what it’s meant
to do.
HR 2210 really makes you wonder about Bush. His missile defense
shield could cost hundreds of billions of dollars, according to a
recent study. His Iraq war and reconstruction will cost $81
billion, minimum. His most recent tax cuts will cost the United
States $674 billion. But when it comes to helping little kids by
maintaining a proven effective program that costs only about $6
billion per year, he decides to declare war on it.
The Collectinator will return from Washington empty-handed while
8.2 million children could have attended Head Start for a year for
the amount we are spending in Iraq, according to costofwar.com. And
that’s assuming Head Start even exists next year.
What is to be done? Write your congressperson. But beware: With
a Republican Congress, Bush may push HR 2210 through. Let’s
just hope that Bush’s war record heretofore is indicative of
his skill at destroying things he doesn’t like. His two most
recent targets, Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein, are still alive
and well. With a little luck, Bush will be just as effective in
killing off the Head Start program.
Raimundo is a fourth-year economics and history student.
E-mail him at araimundo@media.ucla.edu.