Population Connection's 2004 "Kid-Friendly Cities Report Card"

POPULATION CONNECTION'S 2004 "KID-FRIENDLY CITIES REPORT CARD" -- (Extensions of Remarks - June 24, 2004)

SPEECH OF
HON. TAMMY BALDWIN
OF WISCONSIN
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
WEDNESDAY, JUNE 23, 2004

Ms. BALDWIN. Mr. Speaker, last week Population Connection released its 2004 Kid-Friendly Cities Report Card. This report rates cities in terms of the quality of life they provide for children by using data in sixteen comprehensive areas including health care, education, and community.

I am proud that Madison, my hometown, ranked third among large cities in America in terms of providing a high quality of life for children. We scored very highly in the education and community categories. The people of Madison deserve to feel proud of the quality of life we provide for the children in our city.

There is much good news for Madison in this report, but there's much more to be done. We must remember that far too many children in our city and, indeed, across America are being left behind. I applaud Population Connection for their efforts in working hard to achieve the day that every city is kid-friendly, the day that every kid can look forward to a future that offers unlimited opportunity. This report from Population Connection shows us the map to get there. And while cities and states can do a lot on their own, many of the problems that young people face are national problems that require national solutions.

The first step is to get serious about reducing teen pregnancy. In Madison, like in much of America, this is one of the most significant challenges we face. We should act to ensure that not one more federal penny is spent on ineffective programs, like "abstinence-only" programs that leave kids simply uninformed at best and woefully ill-equipped for real-life decision-making at worst. Such programs have been shown to have little to no impact on the likelihood that young people will be sexually active, but they do reduce the chance that young people will use contraceptives when they do have sex, leading to unintended pregnancy and exposure to sexually transmitted infections. Let's put our money into more effective, more worthy programs that can be shown to have a real impact on the lives of young people.

Also, we should act to ensure that every woman, every mother, has access to affordable reproductive health care, family planning and effective contraceptives. Too often, contraceptives are excluded from prescription drug coverage in health insurance plans. Federal funding for family planning for low-income Americans has fallen nearly 60 percent in real dollars over the past two decades, leaving fully half the women who need subsidized family planning aid without access to services. Family planning gives mothers the ability to properly space their births. It makes it more likely that they will receive pre-natal care, and it helps to ensure that every pregnancy is planned and every child is wanted. These programs are worthy of increased investment. The return is enormous. In fact, research has shown that every dollar of public money invested in family planning and reproductive health care saves more than four dollars in future costs.

I urge my colleagues in the United States Congress to take the funds that the president has proposed for failed abstinence-only programs and use it to double the funding for the Title X family planning program. This program has a long history of success in providing basic reproductive health care, family planning information and contraceptives to low-income Americans. We must always remember one basic fact: healthy mothers and healthy children go hand in hand.

We should all be grateful to Population Connection for providing us with this information that can help guide the policies we adopt. Now that they've provided the information, we in Congress must act to adopt policies that will bring us quickly to the day that such a report is unnecessary ..... the day when every city gets an "A".