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- NATION, Page 43American NotesTHE BUDGETPoor Children Win One
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- For all the talk of capital-gains tax cuts, millionaire
- surcharges and a shifting rate bubble, some of the biggest
- winners of this fall's budget battle were those most in need:
- the nation's poor children. Topping the list of new benefits for
- low-income working families: some $4 billion over the next
- several years for more and better child-care services, a
- five-year $12.4 billion expansion of the earned-income tax
- credit, and the $5.2 billion creation of a health-insurance tax
- credit.
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- Public health is one of the areas in which Congress has
- promised to be most generous to children. The law provides that
- everyone under 19 and living below the poverty line is to be
- covered under Medicaid by the end of the century. Scholarship
- funding for the National Health Service Corps, which helps bring
- medical services to rural families, is to be revived. Child
- advocates cheered the results. "We've got off on the right track
- for the '90s," said Sara Rosenbaum of the Children's Defense
- Fund. But she cautioned, "The question is whether we're going
- to live up to our commitments." It will take billions of dollars
- and years of effort to clothe, feed and shelter the nation's
- poor children properly.
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