Child Poverty

Do you remember the children's game called "Telephone"?

One child leans over and whispers a secret into the ear of his neighbor. Something like, "Johnny has a crush on Susie. Pass it on."

You have to lean in close and really listen. It's a game that seems so innocent and old-fashioned in this age of pulsing videogames and compact disk players and virtual reality. But children still love whispered secrets.

I have been traveling the length and breadth of America for thirty years. And I have been listening to what Americans are saying. It's not a secret that people these days are worried about their children.

Once, such worries were just whispers, and I had to lean in close to hear them. But today, those concerns are loud and clear, and it is impossible not to hear them.

The concerns cut across all colors and all socio-economic groups. I've heard them from wealthy parents in California, from a single mother in New Jersey, from a clergyman in Denver, and from a postman in Chicago. Polls show that a majority of Americans think that getting kids off to the right start should be our number one national priority.

That's not a whisper; it's a shout.

Even at a time of unparalleled prosperity, a time when we should be living in a Golden Age of childhood in America, people are worried about tomorrow. How will my child turn out? In the media these days, children are depicted either as victims or predators. Parents look into their children's eyes and say to themselves, "Which one is mine?"

There are unmistakable reasons that people are worried. The statistics are not a secret, but they are a scandal. There are fourteen million children -- one out of four -- in this country who live in poverty. Two million of them right here in California. These statistics doo not whisper to us; they cry out in shame.

One in seven American children face a multitude of family-related risks that put them in danger. Single parents. Poverty. Lack of health insurance. Welfare. Parents with no high school education. Nearly a third of those children -- 30% -- are African American children. Another 25% of them are Hispanic. In California alone, there are 1.5 million childrren -- more than half of them black or Hispanic -- who are at risk. The face of children's poverty in America today is a mournful mosaic.

These numbers are made even more intolerable by the fact that they come at a time of economic well being. After seven years of the first two-term Democratic administration since Franklin Roosevelt, the percentage of American children living in poverty has barely changed. After seven years of economic growth, there are still as many children living in poverty as there were after twelve years of Republican administrations.

America leads the world in its number of millionaires and billionaires, but we rank 17th in our effort to lift children out of poverty. That's the lowest among industrial nations. We are 18th in rates of infant mortality -- behind countries like Germany, Japan and Great Britain. We are dead last in protecting our children from gun violence.

Pass it on.

There is often something missing when we talk about children these days. So often we talk about children as though they were little autonomous beings off in a corner by themselves. Too often we speak of children without speaking of the people who are most central to their lives, their closest caregivers, their protectors; too often we speak of children without speaking of their parents.

And that is a problem. For you cannot talk about most children without talking about their parents. And you cannot talk about helping children without first helping their parents. You cannot separate one from the other.

Today, despite seven years of prosperity, millions of parents are holding down several jobs just to make ends meet. Two-thirds of our children experience parental care as a hurried effort between too much work and too little sleep. Parents, rich and poor, suffer from "time poverty." Nearly 60% of the nation's mothers with pre-school children are working. Nearly a fifth of our children are being raised by a single parent who lives below the poverty line.

These parents are all of us. A mother who is a corporate vice president who only sees her child for a rushed bedtime story at night. A father who works a day job and a night job and sees his children only when he is exhausted on Sunday. A single mother who works long hours just to afford childcare for her children.

People at the top of the ladder and people at the bottom are united by the same frustrations, the same worries, the same concerns. Technology races on, we move at the speed of light, but our children are becoming a blur. Everywhere I look these days I see decent people who are struggling against odds that test the best and strongest among us.

It's not supposed to be this hard.

That's what Donna Reed, from Memphis, Tennessee, thought as she struggled to raise her two daughters on her own. After her divorce, she moved into a small apartment with her mother. She attended the University of Memphis full-time and worked another a full-time job from three till eleven at night. She taught her daughters to take more responsibility for chores around the house. Her family went to school functions when she couldn't. Everyone pitched in. But years of sacrifice paid off: she recently was proud to learn that her eldest daughter received a $25,000 scholarship to DePauw University. She says she wants to tell single mothers, "It's not an easy job, but it can be done."

And it must be done.

Too often these days, I hear people blaming parents. And, it is true, some parents must be held accountable for the misdeeds of their children. I know there are bad parents out there. But the overwhelming number of parents are struggling to do what is best for their children.

Parents are the child's first and strongest moral compass. We teach as we do. And children learn from our example.

Let's not have any illusions about parenting. It is not only the most important work in the world, it is among the hardest. It is so easy to wound our children, so hard to heal them. So, let us not trash our nation's parents; let us treasure them. Let us not take them to task; let's give them a hand. Let us not limit them; let us liberate them. Let us free them to be the parents they want to be in their hearts -- the parents they know they can be in their hearts.

Let us free them to raise good kids.

Isn't that, after all, what we really want? Isn't that the goal of every parent? To raise good kids -- kids with good hearts and good minds who grow up to be good neighbors and good citizens.

It is parents, not peers, who raise our children. Parents are the primary resource for strengthening our children, for teaching them right from wrong, for inculcating a sense of self-worth and self-control, for engendering respect and responsibility.

I know this first hand.

I was an only child, but my mother had hundreds of children. She was a fourth-grade teacher in Brentwood, Missouri. She taught there for nine years, and she was a beacon for a generation of children. As a young man, I would sometimes answer a knock at the front door and find a gray-haired fellow who would say to me, "I was once your mother's pupil, and I just stopped by to thank her."

Every morning in her classroom, my mother would begin the day with a value lesson, a little homily about courage, or honesty, or responsibility. She believed it was not only her job to teach academics but also ethics. She knew that it was as important to instill a sense of justice as well as to be able to spell it. She tried to show her students that the values they learned from her in class were a kind of treasury of wisdom and strength they could call on for the rest of their lives.

I know, because she taught me, too, and I am still calling on those teachings today.

Politicians like to talk about children. Just throw in a mention of children and you get an applause line. Many politicians put laughing children in their ads because they hope such images will make voters think that they care. What politicians don't pledge to put the interests of children first?

In a way, politicians hide behind children because they so often use them without helping them.

I know, because politicians have been looking at the same grim statistics of child poverty for a long time. The people in this Democratic administration have looked at these same statistics of child poverty for seven long years.

But what have they done? They've tinkered around the margins. Some have even whispered, "Poor children will always be with us." But why do we do so little? Why do we spend so much less on our children compared with almost every other industrialized nation? Why are the interests of children so easily ignored?

Well, for one thing, children can't vote, so their needs are often not represented. Children do not make donations to political action committees, so they can't buy influence. Children do not hire lobbyists, so their concerns are not taken seriously.

Yes, children are special, but they're not a "special interest." And, too often, it is the special interests that get looked after in Washington.

It's the same old story. Big money sets our political agenda. The interests of children are not addressed because they're not part of the big money system. It's as simple as that.

Helping America's children may seem a long way from reforming campaign finance, but, in fact, they're closely intertwined. Because campaign finance distorts the nature of our democracy. It distorts what is important in our democracy. It perverts the ideals that our founders preached. Money warps politics and it makes some people more equal than others. In Washington, children are seen and not heard because it is money that talks the loudest.

The voices of those with the most money are the loudest, and the voices of those with the least money -- the voices of children -- are not heard. Reforming campaign finance will allow the voices of children -- and your voice --- to be heard. Reforming campaign finance will allow leaders to listen to their own inner voice, the voice of what they know is right, rather than the self-interested voices of their big contributors.

Children cannot vote, but you can. And this is not another chore, but a choice. A choice that can make a difference to your life and the lives of your children. Think about which candidate stands with you on the issues that affect your children. Think about which candidate will be your voice in the White House, and the voice of your children. Think about which candidate will listen to your voice and the voices of your children in the White House.

That is what is important to me as a candidate, that is what is important to me as a man, that is what is important to me as a father.

I am not beholden to special interests. But I am dedicated to interests that are special -- the interests of children.

I will be your voice in the White House. I will be the voice of your children.

To help America's children we must tap into four areas of our society: business, the civil sector, the government, and parents themselves.

The private sector must do more. American business must do more. It is, first of all, in their own self-interest -- for today's children are tomorrow's work force. American business is the marvel of the world. Ten years ago, American bussiness was considered second-rate behind the Asian tigers. Look at what American business has accomplished since then. Business now needs to turn its attention and energy toward kids and their parents. I call on not only business, but the unions, the trade associations, and the corporations to do more.

Modern communications -- the internet, e-mail, fax machines -- have irrevocably changed our sense of time and distance. And yet these technologicall marvels have not given parents what they really want and need: time.

Time to be with their children. Time to raise them. Time to watch them grow up.

Business must recognize the importance of parents having the time to be with their children. They must recognize the importance of giving workers the time to contribute to their community. Some are doing it already. Here in California, the Creative Artists agency encourages its employees to help their community by making the time to do community service a perk of their jobs, a fringe benefit. Such benefits are not "fringe" for they benefit not only the company, but the community and the country. This is a model for every company.

The civil sector must do more.

Community groups like the Boys and Girls Clubs of America are extensions of parents.

Children need mentors. And who better for that task than our senior citizens, men and women who can take our children under their wings, men and women with the wisdom and the experience to steer young people in the right direction. One way to encourage this is the following: if a senior citizen is paid by a community institution for working with young people, that money should not be off-set against Social Security. Let us do all that we can to encourage a bond between older and younger Americans.

Government must do more.

I know that no government can love a child like a parent. But the government can be a partner with parents to help them help their children. And it would not be the first time the government has done so. From the Mother's Aid laws in 1913, which provided aid for widows raising their children, to the child labor laws of 1938, which for the first time banned children from holding hazardous jobs, to the creation of Head Start in 1964. These are all big ideas, and we must not shy away from doing them again. We have the resources. We have the ideas. What we lack is the will.

We must end child poverty. We must raise the minimum wage and expand the earned income tax credit so that those earning the minimum wage can support a family. We must improve the level of day care in this country. In thirty-two states you can open a daycare center without even an hour of training. When it comes to childcare in this country, we are still an undeveloped nation. We must try to guarantee the kind of childhood that will allow every boy and every girl to achieve his or her full potential. For if the next generation does not reach its full potential, America can never reach its full potential.

Some have said the era of big government is over. I say that the era of big ideas in government is not over.

And finally, parents themselves must do more.

Go to your school board meetings. Be a voice for the kind of education you want your children to have. Attend your parent-teacher conferences. Volunteer for school trips. Be a coach. (But don't yell at your best player if she misses a jumper from the corner at the buzzer.)

Finally, raise a good kid.

Ultimately, the issue of children in America is an issue of justice. The disadvantages that keep so many of our children down are inconsistent with the ideals of the founders of our republic. Yes, all our children may be created equal, but they don't all have an equal opportunity to pursue and achieve their happiness.

I think of the great coalition of Americans that pursued racial justice in the 1960s. It was that courage and idealism that inspired me to go into public service twenty-five years ago.

I would like to lead a similar coalition today, a great multiracial, multiethnic coalition that brings together business and government, parents and civic groups on behalf of America's children and America's parents.

That is what inspires me to run for president today.

Almost six decades ago, in 1941, the lights of freedom were being snuffed out all across Europe. Franklin Roosevelt saw that the values America held dear were at risk -- that America itself was at risk. In that year, he went before Congress and spoke of the Four Freedoms that were under threeat from without. I've come before you today to speak of the freedoms of childhood that are under threat from within.

As I stand here now, I say we must commit ourselves to fighting for the four essential freedoms of childhood:

Freedom from want.
Freedom from illness.
Freedom from ignorance.
And freedom from fear.

Just as Roosevelt saw that what America held dear was under threat so, now we see that our future is at risk. People know that deep down. That's why, in a recent poll, 75% of Americans said the number one national security threat was not nuclear war, but perils to our children.

Americans have always been a forward-looking people. We trust that where we're going will be even grander than from where we've come.

But I hear some people these days say we need to return to the Norman Rockwell America of yesteryear. Only then will our children grow up in peace and light.

But we cannot return to a remembered past, a past I'm not certain ever really existed.

I grew up in a small town in Missouri on the banks of the Mississippi River. It was a fine town of fine people, but I can never forget that when my Little League team was in a playoffs and we had to travel to Joplin, the team stayed in a third-rate hotel because a better one would not accept our catcher and left fielder who were black.

I don't remember Norman Rockwell painting that.

I want a better future for America's children than the past we think we remember. Childhood is not immutable. It changes as everything else does. You cannot preserve it like a pressed flower in a book.

We do not have segregated hotels today, but we have pornography on the internet and automatic weapons in the hands of children. Help me to change America, to make it a better, safer, more civil place for every child. Help me to give every child a better childhood than the one we remember. That is why I am running for president.

Many years ago the poet Langston Hughes wondered what happened to a dream deferred. I can't say I know the answer to his question. But I do know what happens to a dream denied. Let's not deny the chance to achieve that dream to any American child in the new century.

We must call upon the essential goodness of the American heart. I am calling on the essential goodness of the American heart. It's a goodness I've seen and experienced and come to know first-hand as I've traveled this land for thirty years. Americans always band together when the time is late and the challenge is great. We must all pull together to move the next generation ahead. For if we do not all pull together, we will all be pulled apart.

I believe that America will answer such a call. For it is a call not to special interests, but interests that are special. It is a call to what unites us, not to what divides us. It is a call to our ultimate self-interest. It is a call for a more perfect union, not a less bountiful one. It is a call to what makes this country great -- and that is our generosity, our goodness of heart. It is a call to the better angels of our nature.

And who are the better angels of our nature but our children?