Bush Forms Panel to Improve Programs for Impoverished Youths

President Bush on Monday created a task force to improve federal services for impoverished youths, programs that in some cases are decades-old but that he said are “fragmented and not as successful as hoped.”

Such programs -- ranging from Head Start and early maternal care to job training -- frequently are targeted at racial and ethnic minorities.

The announcement of the task force follows the resignation Friday by Trent Lott (R-Miss.) as Senate majority leader over remarks that seemed to endorse racial segregation. The Lott controversy generated widespread expectations that Bush and congressional Republicans would respond by proposing more minority-friendly programs.

But a White House official on Monday said the disadvantaged-youths initiative was in the works for 11 months and had nothing to do with the Lott issue.

“You just can’t throw this together overnight,” said one White House aide who requested anonymity. “To somehow suggest that it may be a reaction to any other events in the news is just inaccurate.”

Still, Bush’s directive came just two days after the Children’s Defense Fund, a nonprofit advocacy group, called on the president to invest greater resources in children.

But Bush’s initiative may well lead to funding cuts for some of the programs. In his memo, the president explicitly instructed the task force to consider recommending expansion of successful programs -- and the consolidation or elimination of ones viewed as ineffective.

The president directed the task force to deliver by April 30 its initial assessment of 117 federal programs, lodged within 15 different agencies, that serve low-income families. And he set an Oct. 1 deadline for the task force to recommend an action plan to better serve disadvantaged youths.

“An unacceptably large number of American youth fail each year to develop the academic, social and citizenship skills necessary to succeed in our country,” Bush said in his memo to the 12-member task force, which consists of six Cabinet secretaries and six other high-ranking administration officials.

The president painted a grim picture of the state of impoverished youths in America.

“For example, 60% of fourth-graders from low-income families cannot read at grade level, more than 2.6 million teens use illicit substances each month, and 400,000 teens commit violent crimes each year,” Bush said. “Many of these young people grow up in economic and social environments that place them at a significant disadvantage.”

The Children’s Defense Fund, led by Marian Wright Edelman, has been calling on the Bush administration to spend more on children -- and it has made sure to remind the president that he has all but adopted the group’s registered trademark -- “Leave no child behind.”

Edelman over the weekend sent Bush a “holiday card” urging him to “please do not forget about our most important responsibility of all -- our children” in his planned economic stimulus package due early next year.

“As a country, we must expand and improve after-school programs, support local youth development activities, increase support for job training and youth employment programs and increase prevention efforts to keep children out of the juvenile justice system,” Toby Chaudhuri, a spokeswoman for the Children’s Defense Fund, said Monday.

Bush’s task force is to be chaired by Margaret Spellings, the president’s chief domestic policy advisor.

Its other members include Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft, Agriculture Secretary Ann M. Veneman, Labor Secretary Elaine Chao, Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy G. Thompson, Housing and Urban Development Secretary Mel Martinez and Education Secretary Rod Paige.

The task force’s creation was announced in Washington by White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer. Bush has been at Camp David with his family since Saturday. He is scheduled to stay at the presidential retreat in Maryland’s Catoctin Mountains through Christmas Day, and then depart Thursday for his ranch near Crawford, Texas.