Early Education, Child Care Package Offered by Bradley

Democratic presidential candidate Bill Bradley offered a $2.6-billion annual program Thursday to improve early education for toddlers and child-care availability for working families, a group he said the fast-paced global economy “isn’t worrying about . . . at all.”

“We need to help people be the best parents they can be,” Bradley said in New Hampshire as he delivered his second major policy address in 10 days.

Bradley’s plan--patterned after one in North Carolina--would create a $2-billion-a-year matching-grant fund to help states create partnerships with private companies to offer and expand child care and education programs for preschoolers.

The former New Jersey senator’s proposal also would extend the Family and Medical Leave Act--which guarantees workers up to 12 weeks unpaid family and medical leave--to firms with as few as 25 employees.

Bradley’s latest proposal comes on the heels of a $65-billion plan to provide universal health insurance for children. Both initiatives would be paid for out of the projected budget surplus, campaign aides said.

Today in Iowa, Bradley plans to detail an agriculture aid package that will include more than $1 billion in new spending for farmers, again drawn from the surplus.

Bradley’s policy specifics come amid new signs of his candidacy’s strength--a poll released Thursday showed him for the first time with a clear lead over Vice President Al Gore among likely Democratic primary voters in New Hampshire, 42% to 35%. Bradley had narrowly led in a late September poll, but his edge was within the survey’s margin of error.

For the most part, Bradley has attacked Gore from the left, scoring the Clinton administration for not having been more aggressive in confronting the nation’s social ills in a time of economic plenty. But unlike his sweeping health care program, which goes well beyond what Gore has endorsed, the “work and families” proposal Bradley outlined Thursday is more modest than what the vice president offered earlier this week.

Gore proposed a five-year, $22-billion program to give tax incentives to employers that provide on-site day care, and to give low-income families and those with a stay-at-home parent subsidies and tax credits for child care. Gore has called for a similar expansion of the Family and Medical Leave Act, which now applies only to companies with 50 or more workers.

Bradley’s plan also would establish a $400-million-a-year investment program to help community colleges better train older workers as well as youths about to enter the labor market. And it would offer tax-free stipends of up to $200 a month as an incentive for seniors to tutor and mentor children after school. The campaign estimated the annual cost at $200 million.

Bradley opened his address in Petersborough, N.H., on a highly personal note, recalling how family dinners commenced “precisely at 6:30 every night” while he was growing up in Crystal City, Mo.

“That sounds like a fairy tale, doesn’t it?” Bradley said. “Or maybe like something out of a Norman Rockwell painting or ‘Father Knows Best.’ ”

He said his proposal “is not about big government, but it’s about big ideas--and the courage to commit ourselves to finding a common-sense balance between family and work in America.”

Americans “don’t want new bureaucracies,” he said, “but I think they do want government to understand the enormous pressures and difficulties they face every day trying to work and provide for their families.”

His policy initiative, especially its child-care component, aims to have government help families deal with those challenges, he said.