Improving Head Start for School Readiness Act of 2007--Conference Report

Floor Speech

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Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, I wish to add my voice to the others and thank Senator Kennedy and Senator Enzi for their leadership on this issue and for the cooperative, bipartisan relationship we see on that committee, which makes it perhaps the most productive committee in the Senate.

As others have said, this is a very important day forward for the children of our country. Right now, I am thinking about the Head Start workers in Vermont who do such an extraordinary job in reaching out and providing for low-income kids throughout our State, and I know the same is true throughout this country. They are dedicated people, they are underpaid and overworked, but they do it for the love of the children. I very much appreciate all they are doing.

Mr. President, while this is, in fact, an important day forward, it is significant to point out again that this is an authorization bill, not an appropriations bill. We had the disappointment just the other day of the President vetoing the Labor-HHS bill, which includes Head Start. My hope is that in the very near future we are going to have a strong Labor bill, with adequate funding for Head Start, but more significantly--and this is an issue I will talk about until the cows come home--we have to change our national priorities with regard to how we treat the children of this country.

Every Member of Congress, every American should be deeply ashamed and embarrassed that in this great country, we have, by far, the highest rate of childhood poverty in the industrialized world. The figures are that between 18 and 20 percent of our children live in poverty. As other speakers have pointed out, if children at an early age don't get the intellectual and emotional nourishment they need, they are not going to do well in life. It is not an accident that at the same time we have the highest rate of childhood poverty, we also have the highest rate of incarceration of any major nation on Earth. So we don't take adequate care of our children, and, lo and behold, we are shocked when they end up behind bars, and we spend $50,000 to $70,000 for each person who is incarcerated. It makes a lot more sense to me--and I hope my colleagues agree--that we put that money up front to make sure all of our kids get the opportunities they are entitled to as young Americans.

The truth is that while this bill is a significant step forward--and I applaud all those who built it--as Senator Kennedy indicated earlier, only one-half of the eligible children in America today, because of inadequate funding, are able to get into the Head Start Program. So this is an important step forward. I congratulate all who have made this day possible. We have a long way to go to, in fact, keep the faith with the children of America.

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