Consider what we have: There's the president’s Social Security agenda, which is a substantive plan for a fabricated crisis. Then there's his “Helping America’s Youth” initiative—a fabricated plan for a substantive crisis. No one needs to be convinced that young people in America—especially young people in poor, urban communities—need help. But Helping America's Youth pours money into "character education" and abstinence-only programs, when kids really need health care, safe after-school programs and parents with living-wage jobs.
Rich Benjamin is senior fellow at Demos, a research and advocacy organization based in New York City.
As of late, the White House is dispatching the president, first lady and some top surrogates on a national marketing tour for its compassionate “Helping America’s Youth” initiative.
If passed, President Bush’s 2006 budget—now before Congress—would foment the problems this latest gesture of compassion is meant to soothe.
The “Helping America’s Youth” initiative combines several existing federal programs with several new ones included in the president's budget. Geared for “at-risk youth”—mostly males in poor urban neighborhoods—much of the initiative’s activity would be channeled through the Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, which encourages religious organizations to secure tax dollars for their social service programs.
Bush wants to resurrect the three pillars that presumably fail at-risk youth: family, school and community. What’s inside the goody bag to help America’s young people? A $40 million “fatherhood initiative” to promote responsible male parenting. A $100 million matching-grant program to support “healthy marriages.” Yet another $100 million “for research, demonstration projects, and technical assistance on family formation and healthy marriage activities.” More than $24 million for a Character Education Initiative to encourage school districts “to develop curricula that teach strong values and promote good character.” And $206 million for an “Abstinence Initiative” to develop and fund abstinence-only education programs.
Bush, of course, is not the first Daddy-In-Chief to extend a paternal hand to straighten out our wayward youth. “Helping America’s Youth” smells like a gimmick out of Bill Clinton’s playbook.
During his 1996 re-election campaign, President Clinton vowed repeatedly to “strengthen the American family” and to “put children first.” The campaign’s internally stated strategy was for the president to forgo pursuing any ambitious domestic plans during re-election season, except curbing welfare. At Dick Morris’ suggestion, Clinton’s re-election strategy hinged on a series of bite-sized, poll-tested, executive initiatives: advocating school uniforms, restricting television violence, fighting teen smoking, and combating teen pregnancy. The irony of an unfocused, self-indulgent baby boomer—or “President-as-Teenager”— campaigning on a disciplinary “family values” platform made many observers chuckle.
Clearly, Mr. Bush’s initiative-happy agenda is not designed to gain him votes. “Helping America’s Youth” is more like a reward to Bush’s socially conservative base than a strategy for governing. Should it surprise anyone that Bush recycles his values themes, because he fails to offer much in the way of substantive policy for children and youth? Ask knowledgeable city leaders how $441 million in grants “to promote drug-free local schools” would do anything to reverse the unemployment and urban blight that breed drug dealing, drug abuse and gang violence.
If you compare “Helping America’s Youth” next to Mr. Bush’s proposed budget, you discover a foul hypocrisy towards poor and working-class youth. Mr. Bush’s 2006 spending plan proposes the largest domestic spending cuts—including cuts aimed at the poor—since the Reagan presidency, while bloating the federal deficit over the next five years.
The president’s budget would nix Community Development Block Grants, which help low-income communities provide housing, nourishment, education and employment services to their residents. It would also axe $2 billion from educational programs that help low-income communities, including high school-oriented programs (Upward Bound and Gear Up) and vocational programs. Under this budget, 300,000 children could say good-bye to their subsidized day care. And not only does Bush propose cutting $60 billion from the projected growth of Medicaid, his budget cuts would hamper programs that address epidemics, chronic diseases, preventive health, obesity and other health-related issues that disproportionately afflict low-income urban communities.
In and of themselves, informed budget cuts aren’t bad. But these proposed budget cuts accompany proposed permanent tax cuts that give three-fourths the tax “relief” to one-fifth the country—obviously the wealthiest fifth. The extended cuts, leaders from both parties worry, would disproportionately benefit households earning $200,000 or more. Don Plusquellic, president of the U.S. Conference of Mayors, thinks President Bush’s concern for poor Americans is a sham. “The new proposal will cut programs that help the poorest and the neediest,” he told the press. “It would be more honest if the federal government simply said, ‘We don't care about these poor people.’”
So we have a reverse twin-headed monster. The president’s Social Security agenda is a substantive plan for a fabricated crisis, while “Helping America’s Youth” is a fabricated plan for a substantive crisis.
Symbolic politics can not hide President Bush’s attention and policy deficits on urban matters. The “Helping America’s Youth” initiative belongs to a string of executive initiatives that fake substantive White House commitment to social reform. The Bush administration’s efforts to improve young people’s character may be nice, but are meaningless absent the will and the appropriate resources to confront the poverty surrounding “at-risk” youth.
What about basing school funding on a more centralized, fair system, rather than on local and state property taxes, to decrease the harsh inequity in urban and suburban schools? Why not endow every young American with an asset account at birth for later use towards vocational school or college and to boost his or her footing in an ownership society? “At-risk” youth would benefit more from better educational and asset-building policies than from faith-based welfare.
