Children's Budget 2018

"Children's Budget 2018" captures and analyzes historical funding data and spending trends across a wide range of policy areas including child welfare, early childhood, education, health, housing, income support, nutrition, safety and training, tracking federal investments in nearly 200 different programs. To determine the amount of money spent on children, this book relies on Agency reporting and data. For a handful of programs, this book relies on the work of the Urban Institute in "Kids' Share 2017: Report on Federal Expenditures on Children through 2016 and Future Projections" (ED607635). Some highlights of this analysis include: (1) Children receive a smaller piece of the Federal pie today than they did four years ago. The share of total federal spending on children has declined by 1.7 percent since FY 2014 (from 8.20 percent to 8.06 percent); (2) However, the share of total federal spending on children rose 1.1 percent from FY 2017 (when it was 7.97 percent), thanks to important investments following passage of the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2018 (PL 115-123); (3) In FY 2018, the federal government spent 7.7 percent of its budget on the interest on the national debt--nearly as much as the 8.06 percent it spent on children. The Urban Institute estimates federal spending on interest on the debt will surpass all federal investments on children in FY 2020; (4) If enacted, the President's FY 2019 Budget Proposal would eliminate 41 programs serving children and cut numerous others, reducing the share of spending on kids to 6.89 percent; and (5) The Budget Control Act of 2011 (PL 112-25) cap on non-defense discretionary spending will drop $55 billion (from $597 billion to $542 billion) in FY 2020--jeopardizing gains under the Bipartisan Budget Act. [For the 2017 report, see ED607589.]