Cuts Would Hurt Children, Group Says

A children’s advocacy group warned Tuesday that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s proposed budget “will have devastating impacts on thousands of children” statewide.

In a report titled “Keep Your Promise to Children,” the Los Angeles County Children’s Planning Council said the governor’s plan to tighten eligibility rules for healthcare and other services would make impoverished children and families even more vulnerable.

Schwarzenegger has proposed nearly $7 billion in spending cuts to health and welfare, education, transportation and other programs as part of his effort to balance the state’s budget. The state is facing an estimated $14-billion budget shortfall.

The Children’s Planning Council criticized the governor’s proposed cuts in CalWORKS, the state’s welfare-to-work program; limits on state-funded child care; reductions in food stamps for poor families; and enrollment caps for Healthy Families, a state insurance program for children.

H.D. Palmer, the governor’s Department of Finance spokesman, said Schwarzenegger hoped to control “unsustainable growth” in the programs, citing a Healthy Families caseload that has more than quadrupled in five years.

“We want to sustain these programs over the long haul so that they will be able to continue to serve the most needy” Californians, Palmer said.