Promoting Strong Families

Every day across America, from the biggest cities to the smallest towns, millions of parents do everything they possibly can to care for their children and prepare them for the future. Every day, they get important support from teachers and clergy and employers. And every day, in spite of all these good efforts, many parents find they just don't have the time or money to give their children the support they deserve.

I believe we can do better by America's families, and today I want to talk about four ways how. First, we need to give parents more choices at work and more time at home through tax breaks and family leave. Second, we should offer high-quality after-school opportunities for every child who needs somewhere to go. Third, we need to make sure we underscore, not undermine, the good values parents teach. And fourth, we have to demand that both parents take responsibility for their children.

For most Americans, September 11 changed everything. Unfortunately, Washington hasn't changed much at all. For people all across our country, September 11 was a sobering reminder of what matters most: family, faith, country. And that concern, concern for the things we love the most, is once again central in our thoughts as we prepare for likely conflict in Iraq.

At a time when Americans are concerned with protecting and strengthening their families more than anything else, our government ought to make that a priority. Unfortunately, when it comes to strengthening families, nothing has changed in the Bush administration. It's still business as usual and politics over people.

Before September 11, this administration's central domestic policy was budget-busting tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans. Today, even as the bill for those tax cuts continues to climb, the cost of war is terribly unclear, the litany of unmet domestic security needs remains ignored, and families are struggling to make ends meet, what is the administration's central domestic policy? Budget-busting tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans.

Thanks to this administration's economic policies, Americans are working harder, making less, and spending less time with their families. Thanks to its security policies, Americans are more frightened, and less secure, than they should be. Thanks to this administration's fondness for special interests, one of the greatest social challenges of our time, how to help people do right by their families, is getting worse because Washington won't do a thing to help.

This president is out of touch with America's families. If you're a parent who is worried because the crime rate in your town is going up again, this president's message is: Start taking self-defense classes, because we're going to gut the initiative that put 100,000 cops on the beat.

If you're a working dad looking for a good after school program for your daughter, this president's message is, make sure that latchkey works, because she's going to need it. We're cutting half a million after school slots this year.

If you're a mom concerned that your teenage son is starting to drink, this president's message is: Lock the liquor cabinet, because we're cutting efforts to reduce underage drinking.

If you're a parent who is afraid you'll never be able to afford college for your three children, this president says: Get ready to take out big loans, because my budget cuts college scholarships and freezes work-study.

This is wrong, and it needs to change. Parents across America who work hard and give their all to their children shouldn't be made to feel like suckers because Washington is watching out for insiders. Americans know what it means to sit around the kitchen table and decide what really matters. They have their priorities straight. It's time for Washington to get its priorities in line with theirs.

We need to set a national goal of doing far better by America's families. That means we should do more, not less, to put good teachers into every classroom. I've offered a plan to do that, and a plan to make sure that students who work hard can get the first year of college free. I call it College for Everyone. A child's education has to begin before kindergarten, and so we need to create many more preschool opportunities for children, too.

We need to make families safer by putting more cops on the street, not less. And as I've explained before, we need to reform our broken probation and parole systems to send a clear message to people leaving prison: if you're responsible your community will support you, but if you break the law, you will face serious consequences.

The best thing we can do for families, of course, is get our economy going again because good jobs are still the best family policy of all. We need tax cuts, but for families who need help, not insiders who demand handouts. I've proposed a real economic shot in the arm now, including a $500 tax rebate for families, and I've offered specific proposals to get back to fiscal discipline, cutting spending and delaying the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest.

We need to take real steps to strengthen American families, and give parents struggling with a host of new challenges the support they need to teach the basic values their parents taught them.

Consider the impact the past 18 months have had on America's families. Parents have to explain to our children about evil that, even as adults, we can hardly understand. We have to try and reassure them not to worry, they'll be all right, when all we do is worry and wonder whether they'll be all right. When we were kids, orange, red and yellow were colors from Kool-Aid or the Crayola box. Now children see them as the colors of fear. These are challenges this country hasn't faced since World War II. They come on top of all the other challenges that families face now that they didn't face back then.

In 1950, there was a parent at home all the time to care for the kids in seven out of 10 families. Today, that's only true in three out of every 10 families. Parents have 22 fewer hours to spend with their children each week than they did 35 years ago. That's more than a month and a half of time every year that parents no longer have to help with homework, talk over dinner, go to a baseball game, or calm a toddler's fears. For mothers and fathers who work full-time and raise kids full-time, there just are not enough hours in the day. Our families are literally starving for time.

Seven-million children leave school and return to an empty home each week. Kids spend two hours watching TV or surfing the Internet for every hour they spend with their parents. And the things kids see when they're alone often undermine the lessons their parents are trying to teach.

Nothing has been more important in my own life than my family. My parents always put my brother, my sister, and me first, and we always had dinner as a family. When I was little and living in Seneca, South Carolina, my grandparents cared for me when our parents were working. For my wife and me, while we have had struggles, the joy of our lives has been our children.

The struggles of America's families don't often make the front pages, but they are real struggles just the same. Tim and Jennifer Johnson live in Morganton, North Carolina. Tim is a park ranger and Jennifer works with children with special needs. Together they make less than $50,000 a year. When their daughter, Emma, was born, they wanted to take some time off to be with her, but there was no way they could afford it. That is a terrible shame for all of us.

Kashya Morrison is a single mom with two kids who works two jobs and studies finance at Montreat College. She commutes over 100 miles every day to get to work in Charlotte. She'd love to see her kids in a good after-school program, but she can't afford it with everything she has going on, and so her grandparents watch her kids, just like mine watched me.

Not too long ago, politicians couldn't say enough about families like the Johnsons and the Morrisons. Some conservatives used talk about "family values" to exclude and demean good people, while some liberals just demanded more money, as though government could raise children. Under Bill Clinton, we saw progress for families: welfare reform, community policing, and the earned income tax credit to make work pay were policies that made sense, and they worked. In the nineties, teen pregnancy, crime, and family poverty dropped for the first time in years.

Today, we need to renew our commitment to smart policies for strong families, and we need to start with bold moves in four areas: by cutting taxes for new parents to give them more flexibility; by supporting high-quality after-school; by promoting good values, and by demanding responsibility from all parents.

First, we need to give parents more choices on the job and more chances to be with their kids. Too many parents still can't take time off when their families need them. Too many women still give up great careers for low pay and no benefits in part-time work. It's a waste. We need an economy that supports loving parents instead of punishing them.

At a time when more parents need time off, this administration actually wants them to have less. They've even taken away each state's option to establish paid leave for their workers through unemployment insurance. For all their efforts to find judges who will protect states' rights, the White House is opposing states' rights to protect families.

It's true that taking choices away from businesses can cost families in the long run, so we need a balanced approach that respects the needs of families and businesses both.

I believe we can give paid leave to millions of families without adding a burden to businesses. Today, I'm proposing a refundable Family Leave Tax Credit that will put $2,500 in the pockets of working families with newborns. That's more money than most Americans take home in a month. The Family Leave Tax Credit will give millions of parents their first chance to take real time off when they have a baby.

This credit offers more than a chance for leave; it will give parents the power to make important decisions about how to help their children best. Parents who work part-time or stay at home can get the credit. Parents can use the credit to pay for childcare or buy clothing and furniture. Parents raise children, not the government, but parents can use a hand sometimes, and this credit gives them one.

Today, many new parents are forced to choose between full-time leave, where they don't get paid a nickel, or a full-time job, where they don't get to see their new baby. That's a shame. A new dad should be able to keep working and be able to see his kid more. Moms should be able to return to work part-time. So new parents should be able to take their leave a half-day at a time, three months full time or six months part time.

We ought to make sure parents can meet with their kid's teachers when they need to. And to offer millions more Americans time off when they need it, we should extend some family leave rights to parents in small businesses.

While we help parents care for their kids, we also should help parents care for ailing parents or spouses. It can be an enormous strain. We should double respite care within the community, so parents caring for loved ones get some relief. And we should create a virtual "one-stop-shop" for care giving, a place where adults can learn about the resources they need. These measures will keep older Americans in their homes, and they'll make life a little easier for parents who are pulled in a thousand directions.

The biggest improvements in America's workplaces won't come from government. They'll come from businesses and working folks agreeing on schedules and benefits that make sense for both. There are some great examples in my home state. The Bank of America offers generous family leave policies. The Mitchell Gold furniture company's childcare center is a national model in educational quality and nutrition. And the SAS Institute runs on a flexible schedule that lets parents leave early for a school play or have lunch with their kids every day.

We need to honor companies like these. CEOs need to understand that family-friendly policies aren't just good for families; they're good for businesses that draw better work from happy and loyal employees. We have a good process for defining and rewarding economic excellence through the Baldridge Award. We need a new award to recognize excellence in family-friendly workplaces.

Second, I believe we need to change the way we think about the school day.

Two hundred years ago, most kids left school by 3:00 p.m. and went home to work on the farm. Today, millions of kids leave at 3:00 p.m. and go home to the Internet or the TV, or else end up on the streets. That isn't good for them, and it isn't good for America. Kids learn a ton when they get extra attention after school from a parent or a mentor, not just a machine. And kids with nothing to do after school are far more likely to get in trouble.

Now, as I speak, the Bush administration is proposing to cut after school opportunities. They say these programs don't work. Well, Mr. President, this is one of the many things you are wrong about. Let me tell you how I know.

My wife and I started what's called the Wade Edwards Learning Lab, or the WELL, just across the street from the high school my kids attended. We started it because we loved the YMCA and other after school programs when our kids were little. I actually coached soccer and basketball for years. But we'd seen how when kids were older they didn't have places to go. The WELL gives teenagers a free after-school computer center, a place to do homework, to study, to relax. Kids who could go lots of places go to the WELL, and kids with very few options go there, too. We get the whole community involved, and we see the whole child grow.

Instead of chopping down after-school efforts, we should make a simple commitment as a country: Parents who need a safe and nourishing place for their children after school are going to have one. You're going to have a good place to send your kids. Not a place where the kids sit around doing nothing, like some of these programs I've seen. But a good place where kids get help in subjects where they're having trouble, do some community service if they haven't already, or play sports if they want.

Creating a network of high-quality after school programs won't happen overnight, and it certainly won't happen if Washington dictates from the top-down. But we can build on models across America, run by the real experts: our schools, our Boys and Girls Clubs, our YMCAs.

This shouldn't be a political issue. In California, a Republican named Arnold Schwarzenegger sponsored an after-school referendum and got it passed. As he said, "Everyone wants our children to do better." He's right.

Our schools and our culture should reinforce the good values parents try to teach their children, not undermine them.

Last year, with Senator Gordon Smith, I introduced a bill to support schools that require community service as a condition of high school graduation. The high school my own kids went to has that kind of requirement, and I've seen the difference it makes. A child who reads to an older American or helps out in a hospital learns things that all the textbooks in the world can't teach. I hope someday that citizenship and service will be as much a part of every child's education as math and science.

If we're going to support our values, we also need to tell the truth about irresponsible industries.

Young people under age 21 drink one-fifth of the beer, wine, and liquor sold in America each year. Compared to 25 years ago, a third more kids under 13 now drink alcohol.

These trends probably have a lot of causes, but one of them is something nobody likes to mention. The alcohol industry spends a small fortune every year on advertising geared to underage drinkers. Young people ages 12 to 20 see far more beer and hard liquor magazine ads than adults. There are 51,000 alcohol ads on TV each year targeted to people under 21. The companies are now investing millions in "malternatives" that taste like the sodas kids already love.

Teen drinking destroys thousands of lives each year, and it is wrong for the alcohol industry to make millions encouraging it.

The government should not have to get involved here. The industry has voluntary guidelines that ban marketing alcohol to youth, but it's clear the guidelines don't work. Recent ads have included one showing beers taped to a computer game controller and another showing a young person hiding a beer behind his back when a police officer came to his apartment.

Tobacco is currently subject to tougher advertising standards than alcohol because of the recent tobacco settlement, though we still need to make sure those standards are strictly enforced. Now it's time for the alcohol industry to set strict standards and live up to those. If they don't do it themselves, then we'll have to do it for them. Teaching good habits to children is hard enough for parents without having to fight back against millions of dollars in advertising designed to encourage bad ones.

We need to help parents find good content on the web, and stop bad content from finding kids. Everyday, children and parents are shocked by the e-mails they get, many of them pornographic and some of them violent. More and more children are first learning about sex not from a parent, or even from a peer, but from some e-mail that is totally inappropriate.

The vast majority of the businesses involved with the web oppose this stuff, but they're fighting a losing battle against it. We don't need to burden free speech, but we do need to stop scam artists and the porn industry from lying about their identities so they can send e-mails to our kids.

Raising a child is the greatest joy and the greatest responsibility most of us will ever have. Everyone who fulfills that responsibility with love and discipline deserves to be honored and supported, and that includes adoptive parents, single parents and gay and lesbian parents. I believe we have to do much more to make sure kids have two ready and responsible parents in their lives. I've got two ideas to help do that.

The first is about dads. Today, the welfare program helps moms find work and requires them to work. Dads don't get the help, and they don't have the requirement. That's nuts. It leaves moms and kids without support, and leaves dads without jobs and without the self-respect that comes from working. It leaves many communities with a growing divide between women who are taking responsibility and men who are not.

Most poor children with single parents receive no child support. While some of the dads are "deadbeats," many of them are "dead broke" because they aren't working.

We have to move toward making the same deal with dads we are already making with moms. That means we should require more fathers to work and pay child support, and we should make sure fathers who refuse work face the full force of the law.

At the same time, we also need to help the fathers find jobs. A few states have shown how to invest in training men for work and creating jobs where none exist. We need much more of that. And we should make sure that the child support paid by fathers is passed through to children, not kept by the states. It's called child support for a reason it should support the child, not the government.

While we hold fathers responsible, we also need to do more to stop children from having children. Even though it's going down, the teen pregnancy rate in America is still one of the worst in the developed world. Half a million teenage births each year is wrong. The children of teenagers are far less likely to graduate from high school and far more likely to end up on welfare. They're far more likely to become teen parents themselves.

Stopping teen pregnancy has to be a national priority. In recent years, we've seen what works and we should support more of it, like community service programs and home-visits to teen girls who have already had kids. We also need to support a national media campaign to send a simple message to our young people: kids should not have kids. Period.

These ideas can make a real difference for American families. But let me be clear: we have to implement them in a fiscally responsible way. Running up a huge deficit is the most anti-family policy of all because it forces our children to pay our bills.

Last fall, I outlined a series of tough choices that can lead us back to fiscal discipline. We need to cut spending, and I've outlined specific measures to do that. We need to close tax loopholes, as I've explained. And we need to stop the portion of the Bush tax cuts for the very wealthiest Americans. Together, these measures will save over $1.6 trillion in the next 20 years. The proposals I've made today cost a small fraction of that amount. And they cost an even smaller fraction of President Bush's new tax cut proposals. If we took the money the president wants to give to people making more than a million dollars a year, we could pay for all of these efforts to strengthen American families. In fact, we could pay for them twice over.

In March of 2003, a year and a half after September 11th, perhaps just days before we go to war, a few precious things should be all too clear: life is fragile, families are joy, and children mean hope. It is time now to recommit this government to strengthening America's future by strengthening America's families. They are the solid rock that this great country was built upon, and they deserve the support of this great country. That is our responsibility, and I intend to do everything in my power to live up to it.

Thank you very much.