From Public Citizens for Children and Youth (http://www.pccy.org):
Instead, they plan to stash that cash in state bank accounts, where it will help no one.
Nearly a half a million Pennsylvanians remain out of work. Malls and main streets are ghost towns. Yet the state majority party leaders are refusing to spend a penny of the federal funds intended to “build back better.”
Instead, nearly 100% of the legislative calendar in Harrisburg has been devoted to a pitched battle over constraining the power of future governors to take action in the case of a disaster. Regardless of your view of such measures, they are all focused on the rear-view mirror. Of course, we want our lawmakers to embed lessons learned in legislation, yet the most resounding lesson learned from this pandemic is that our communities, state, and country were ill-prepared, resulting in a long-delayed and more painful rebound.
Congress enacted The American Rescue Plan to enable our state and communities to hasten the recovery. In Pennsylvania that simply won’t be possible because the majority party legislators refuse to appropriate any funds before lawmakers leave the Capitol at the end of this month for the summer. It’s a hard to fathom the logic of hoarding the federal funds while Pennsylvania’s children suffer, and our employers and families go deeper in debt.
Perhaps it’s the euphoria of taking off the masks that makes the leaders feel like things are returning to normal so there is no urgency to act. Yet masks or no masks, children are carrying heavy emotional, academic, and developmental burdens caused by the COVID shutdown. The experts at children’s hospitals across the country made it clear that millions of children face the daunting challenge of catching up in school and learning/relearning how to interact with others outside their family. The year of lost learning and development is compounded by the mourning and sadness that haunts children who lost a parent, grandparent, or others close to them to the virus.
Last week the Democratic Congressional Representatives from Pennsylvania sent a surprising letter reminding state lawmakers that the funds are intended to meet the urgent needs of citizens.
“Congress has done its part to get Pennsylvanians the help they need. We urge you to forge a state budget that uses the ARP funds in a way that reflects the goals of the law and that meets the needs of Pennsylvania.”
To withhold available federal resources intended to address the pandemic’s impact on children is simply cruel.
Keep in mind that federal fiscal policy enacted under the Trump and Biden Administrations spurred growth and economic activity in the last twelve months. So much so that state revenues are at least $1.3 billion higher than projected for this fiscal year. Here too, more legislative airtime has been exhausted on ideological bills that foster division rather than to work to find common ground on a final state budget that allocates the federal largesse and nurtures our children and communities with state resources.
The vaccine cured the illness but not its ravaging impact on the lives of children. If Pennsylvania’s lawmakers set aside the political drama, our children can recover. If not, their squabbles doom their future and all of ours.
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