�| FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: February 4, 2008 |
Administration for Children and Families' Budget Unveiled
Head Start gets boost
WASHINGTON, DC - The Administration for Children and Families (ACF) at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) today announced details of its portion of President Bush’s Fiscal Year 2009 budget request.
The FY 2009 budget request for ACF totals $45.6 billion. It reflects the president’s priority to achieve the best results for Americans by targeting dollars to programs with proven results and funding a new program to create a human services case management system to assist victims of disasters.
“This money will provide a funding increase for Head Start and place a special emphasis on Indian and migrant needs,” said Daniel Schneider, acting assistant secretary of ACF. “At the same time, we are helping to balance the budget by reducing or eliminating funding for certain national programs that are either not performing or whose functions are covered elsewhere.”
The request proposes to increase funding for Head Start by $149 million, the Community-Based Abstinence Education program by $28 million, the Compassion Capital Fund by $22 million and adoption incentive payments by $15 million. The new initiative for human services case management in disasters would receive $10 million under the budget request. The request also increases special needs adoption assistance funding and includes legislative proposals to increase child support collections for families by $1.6 billion over five years.
In an effort to balance the budget by 2012, some reductions have been proposed. The Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program would be reduced by $570 million from its FY 2008 level of $2.57 billion and the Social Services Block Grant program would be reduced by $500 million from its FY 2008 level of $1.7 billion. No funds are requested for the Community Services Block Grant program, funded at $698 million in FY 2008.
The FY 2009 budget will help ACF more efficiently enact its mission to serve the needy and vulnerable while enacting fiscal discipline with taxpayer money.
For more information about the president’s FY 2009 budget request, go to:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/
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Note: All ACF news releases, fact sheets and other materials are available at www.acf.hhs.gov/opa/index.html.