Playing With Our Future: New CBP Report Examines Governor’s Proposed Cuts to Child Care and Development Spending

March 30, 2012

Child care and preschool are essential in helping parents find and retain employment as well as in preparing children for success in school. Such programs are especially important now, particularly for lower-income parents, as California’s families face the toughest job market in decades. A new CBP report, Playing With Our Future: Key Facts About California’s Child Care and Development Programs in the Aftermath of the Great Recession, takes an in-depth look at the economic and policy context of the Governor’s proposed cuts to state spending on child care and preschool. The report shows that:

  • Nearly one out of four California children lives in poverty, and many families – including single mothers and their children – continue to face economic uncertainty in the aftermath of the Great Recession.
  • The Governor’s Proposed 2012-13 Budget would cut funding for both child care and preschool by more than 20 percent, after adjusting for inflation, causing more than 60,000 children to lose access to these programs in the coming fiscal year.
  • Child care and development spending would drop to 1.2 percent of total state spending in 2012-13 under the Governor’s proposal, down from 2.0 percent in 2007-08.
  • State funding for afterschool programs has not been cut in recent years – and would not be reduced under the Governor’s proposal – because it is protected by Proposition 49 of 2002, which prohibits the state from reducing afterschool funding without voter approval.

Read Playing With Our Future here.

– Steven Bliss

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March Madness in California

March 26, 2012

After considerable negotiations, the number of tax measures headed to the November ballot has shrunk by one.  On March 14, Governor Brown and the California Federation of Teachers announced a compromise revenue initiative that will likely go to the voters this fall. The compromise slightly alters the Governor’s original proposal, although it preserves a combination of income and sales tax increases. Furthermore, the compromise initiative is consistent with both the Governor and the California Federation of Teachers’ approach of having the wealthiest Californians pay the majority of the tax revenues. More than three-quarters (78.8 percent ) of revenues raised by the compromise initiative would be paid by the top 1 percent of California taxpayers, a group that has experienced tremendous growth in incomes and takes home, on average, $1.7 million annually. The largely progressive tax increase of the hybrid initiative is aligned with the overall trend in income growth over the past two decades: the inflation-adjusted incomes of the top 1 percent increased by 50 percent between 1987 and 2009, while the incomes of the bottom 80 percent of Californians decreased. By limiting the impact on low-income individuals, who would see an average annual tax increase of only $24, the compromise measure relies primarily on the wealthiest Californians to provide necessary funding for our schools and other core public structures.

– Samar Lichtenstein

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Playing With Our Future: Child Care and Development Spending at Its Lowest Level in Over a Decade

March 13, 2012

State child care and preschool programs provide safe and affordable care that helps low- and moderate-income parents find and retain jobs. These programs are as important as ever as parents work to keep their jobs or return to the workforce in the aftermath of the Great Recession. In light of this, it is especially troubling, as we’ll show in an upcoming CBP report, that total spending for child care and development programs—which include child care, preschool, and afterschool programs—has dropped dramatically since 2007-08 and would fall even further under the Governor’s Proposed 2012-13 Budget. In just four years, child care and development spending in California has dropped from its peak by 22.7 percent, after adjusting for inflation. Under the Governor’s proposal, spending would fall by an additional 18.5 percent in 2012-13, to its lowest level since 1998-99. The CBP’s upcoming report will look at recent trends in state child care and development programs, examine recent spending cuts targeting child care and preschool, and highlight the importance of these programs for California’s working families.

– Sam Sellers

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Ending CalWORKs as We Know It?

February 29, 2012

In the aftermath of the Great Recession, California’s families face the toughest job market in decades. The state’s unemployment rate, currently 11.1 percent, is projected to remain in double digits through 2014. Nearly 1 million Californians have been without work for six months or longer – seven times higher than before the downturn began. Nearly one-quarter of California’s children (23.4 percent) were living in poverty in 2010, up from 17.9 percent in 2007. Moreover, the recession hit single mothers and their families particularly hard, as we show in this chart. The share of California’s single mothers with jobs dropped from a recent peak of 69.2 percent in 2007 to 58.8 percent in 2010. In just three years, the downturn erased all of the employment gains that single mothers made following implementation of welfare reform in the 1990s.

Given this grim landscape, CalWORKs – a key part of the state’s safety net for low-income families with children – is more important than ever for the 1.4 million Californians in the program, more than three out of four of whom are children. While state policymakers have made deep cuts to CalWORKs in recent years to help close budget gaps, the basic foundation – welfare-to-work services and modest cash assistance – remains intact. The Governor, however, proposes to blow apart that foundation with even deeper cuts, including reducing parents’ access to welfare-to-work services and dramatically cutting or eliminating cash assistance for more than 430,000 families – nearly three out of four families currently in the program. These changes would cut spending on CalWORKs by roughly $1 billion in 2012-13, providing more than 9 percent of the Governor’s proposed “solutions” to the state’s budget gap even though CalWORKs accounts for less than 3 percent of the state budget, as we show in a new report released this week.

The Governor’s proposal will receive a full airing in the Legislature this afternoon and tomorrow. Assembly Budget Subcommittee #1 on Health and Human Services will review the CalWORKs proposal today at 1:30 p.m., and the full Senate Budget and Fiscal Review Committee will hear the proposal tomorrow at 9:30 a.m.

– Scott Graves

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One, Two, Three, or More?

February 17, 2012

How do the various personal income tax initiatives potentially headed to the November ballot compare? An updated version of the CBP’s memo comparing the “big three” personal income tax measures is available here. A more detailed look at each of these measures, and a host of others that may or may not be headed to a ballot near you in November, is available on the Legislative Analyst’s website.

– Jean Ross

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