Fair Access Foster Care Act of 2005

FAIR ACCESS FOSTER CARE ACT OF 2005 -- (House of Representatives - November 08, 2005)

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Mr. DOGGETT. Mr. Speaker, this bill provides very limited administrative flexibility, essentially just legalizing what a handful of States are already doing with foster care. But this tiny finger of flexibility given with one hand is taken away with both hands from the same abused and neglected children in the companion legislation that this same group of Republican leaders has so enthusiastically endorsed in our committee and which it plans to foist off on the American people this week.

So extreme is the Republican demand for tax breaks and more tax breaks and more tax breaks for those at the top of the economic ladder and the multinational corporations that will not pay their fair share of the tax burden that Republicans have demanded that the same abused and neglected children that they say they would help today, would be the ones to pay the tab for these tax cuts.

Those across America who realize that we need to be doing more for children who are physically or sexually abused by a parent, or merely abandoned without food or support by a parent who is caught up in a drug habit, need to know that those kids need more help. They need to know that the companion legislation the Ways and Means Committee has approved for consideration in the full House this week would deny those children almost $600 million of federal support.

Most of this is taken from battered, abused, and neglected children who found a new home with a loving family member. Think about it: a grandparent who realizes their child has gone astray and they take their abused, neglected grandchild back into their family to try to give them a chance.

The only federal court, an appellate court, that has interpreted our existing federal foster care law in the case, Rosales v. Thompson, issued a decision that is so clear that the Bush administration chose not to appeal it to the United States Supreme Court. However, the Bush administration has said it will not apply the court's decision to the law in this country outside a number of Western States. Under the court's ruling, abused, neglected, and battered children who seek the safety and stability of a home with grandparents, or other relatives who are not formally licensed as foster caregivers are eligible to receive, quite wisely, federal foster care assistance.

The Republicans are now saying we should deny funding to these grandparents and other relatives that care. The would tear apart tens of thousands of families and disregard the very purpose of the Adoption and Safe Families Act, a Federal law that directs a preference be given to placements with relatives.

For some reason, after endless speeches proclaiming a concern for ``family values,'' the only families that count are those that are sitting up at the top of the economic ladder, while the families that have taken in an abused and neglected child are left behind. This companion bill is the so-called ``reconciliation'' which really ought to be spelled W-R-E-C-K, ``wreck,'' because it is a wreck for these tens of thousands of loving and caring families. It is speeding through this Congress and speaking volumes about how much ``family values'' really count up here.

To say that the Republicans would literally take food from the mouths of babes to fund tax breaks for the rich might sound like partisan rhetoric, but if you watch this Congress this week, that is exactly what you will see.

This very year, President Bush's Office of Management and Budget rated the federal child support program among the highest and most efficient programs in the Federal Government; and yet, in the same bill in which they plan to take away about $600 million from families caring for abused and neglected children, they plan to deny federal support for child support enforcement, as amazing as that might seem.

There has been a 75 percent increase in child support collections from deadbeat dads since fiscal year 1996, adding up to $21.2 billion, a big figure, but it translates, just like these monies for the foster families, into hundreds of thousands of small amounts that put food on the table and allow kids to have the clothes to go to school.

Apparently, the folks that are running this place, the Administration and the House of Representatives do not know what it is like to be a single mom out there trying to get kids through school or to be a single grandmother having to start a second family to care for a grandchild while trying to keep them out of trouble and struggling to put food on the table. A few hundred dollars a month--whether it is from a deadbeat dad or through this foster care program for abused and neglected families--can make a big difference. That little bit of money makes the difference between a child who has a future and a child who ends up just like the abused and neglected parent that placed them in this horrible situation.

And, in the same bill that is a companion to this, House Republicans go even farther than cutting off support for programs that address deadbeat dads and abused and neglected children, they also cut child care funding to the tune of about $500 billion. Those funds are cut from those who are struggling to get off welfare and will result in 270,000 fewer children of poor working families being able to get access to child care in the next 5 years.

This Republican reduction in our federal investment in children will cost us millions and billions of dollars in the long run, but, most importantly, it will deny too many children in this country the opportunity to achieve their full, God-given potential. It is wrong. And while this minor piece of uncontested legislation ought to be approved today, we need to reject this attempt by extremists in this Congress to place all the burden of their fiscal mismanagement on the most vulnerable people in our society.

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