Vote Like Our Kids Depend on It - Because they Do
The New York Times just published an analysis of how the Biden administration’s spending priorities were translated into spending bills by Congress. As is usually the case, Congress did not fund a large part of what the President asked for; $4.4B was requested, and $1.4 was approved. What is striking, however, is where Congress decided to hold back on the administration’s funding requests. Although no area of budget requests was fully appropriated (climate, transportation, and infrastructure got about 70% of their requests approved), there were two areas of funding requests that were not funded at all – funding for family support, and education. Included in this unfunded request for family support were efforts to reduce child poverty (extension of the child tax credit and the earned income credit), financial support for families with children in childcare, and paid family leave. Education requests that were entirely ignored included universal Pre-K, and free community college. Although the final spending bills were passed with mostly Democratic votes, the blame for not funding the programs that are critical to kids and their families is shared by both parties with Democrats not including these provisions in their final spending bills.
What does this say about the way we think about kids in America? Over the past three years, we have been working with our colleagues at the FrameWorks Institute on a research project to understand the cultural mindsets that drive our decisions about kids and to develop new narratives that will increase both the salience of kids’ issues, and our collective responsibility for all children. In my last blog, I wrote about the importance of the lack of salience- of prioritizing and centering kid’s issues in our policymaking. While, when asked, most Americans support programs that help kids and their families, they remain ambivalent in centering that support in their actions and decisions. In the lead-up to the midterm elections, there have been multiple polls looking at the issues that are top of mind for voters. The wellbeing of our kids is never mentioned as one of these issues. The unwillingness of our elected officials to enact the policies that we know would benefit kids reflects this lack of salience.
There are two solutions to this chronic and difficult problem. In the short and intermediate term, all of us who care about kids need to vote like our kids depend on it. We need to not only participate in the political process, but also make sure the candidates we each support know that our votes depend on their being accountable to kids and their wellbeing. Everyone who is running in this year’s midterms should let us know how they would take action to ensure that more than 0% of the President’s next budget request for kids would be funded. I have personally spoken to many public officials who have told me that they would be more focused on children’s issues if these issues came up more frequently in their conversations with constituents. Whether or not the candidates you support are elected next week, it is our collective responsibility to make sure that those who are elected know we are watching what they do. Reach out and thank them when they take actions that help kids – and let them know how disappointed you are when they don’t. Elected officials don’t hear from their constituents nearly as frequently as we might think, so these messages mean a lot!
In the longer term, I continue to believe that the work we are doing with FrameWorks has the potential to make these issues more generally salient to the public. As I write this, we are in the final stages of the field research defining new communications strategies and narratives that can help solve the longstanding challenge of the salience of kids’ issues. We have begun the exciting work of exploring ways to best implement our findings and create a set of effective tools that can be used by all who care about kids. These strategies will allow us to change our current cultural mindsets about kids from ones that keep kids’ issues on the sidelines into mindsets that will move kids to the center of our decision making. Our goal is to do this expeditiously, so that when we are getting ready to vote again in 2024, the needs of our children will be closer to the top of the list of issues that voters are thinking about and raising with candidates. In the meantime, let’s go out and vote now like our kids depend on it – because they do.