A detailed analysis of the last three budget requests reveals that President Obama has requested on average a nominal increase of 5.2% each year for children’s programs.  2011 saw by far the biggest proposed increase of more than 7%.  This stands in stark contrast to the last requested budget by President Bush, which proposed a 3% decrease.  For ease of comparison, these numbers only include programs on the discretionary side of the budget.  Discretionary programs include things Congress decides to fund each year, like Head Start, while mandatory spending represents long term commitments where Congress has little control over yearly funding levels, like Social Security.

Though this analysis excludes mandatory spending, the President has been a strong advocate for increased funding to many mandatory areas that benefit children.  This includes positive changes during the reauthorization of the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) in 2009 and the Child Nutrition Act of 2010. 

In addition to the commitments made in each budget, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), proposed by President Obama, made a tremendous investment in kids.  Almost one out of every five dollars provided in direct spending, or roughly $120 billion, from ARRA went to benefit children.[i]  ARRA provided much need boosts to education, children’s health, and children’s nutrition, as well as support to vital state run programs that impacted kids.  In 2010 alone, the ARRA support resulted in a 19% increase in the amount of federal money spent on children.

NOTE: Budgets are proposed in the current calendar year for the next fiscal year beginning in October.  For example, President Bush’s FY 2009 budget was proposed in February 2008.

Will the President Continue to Choose Kids?

Next week, President Obama will release his Fiscal Year 2013 Budget.  Analysts and commentators will pour over the numbers looking for signs of the President’s priorities for the year to come.  Over the past three years, it is clear that President Obama has chosen to make investments in kids a top priority.

Even with the President’s positive requests, Congress has authorized far less than what the President has asked for.  As a result of Congress’s decisions in conjunction with the expiration of ARRA, funding for children as a share of federal spending is still far below what is needed.  In 2011, only 8.4% of the federal budget went to children, including what’s left from ARRA.  As more and more of our children face unprecedented challenges, every dollar we invest can make the difference between a child having a balanced meal or going hungry.  As we anxiously await his budget, we call on President Obama to continue to make children a top priority.

Photo credit: Photo by Flickr user Lauren Chagaris

Are you staring down a pile of dirty laundry right now (Full Disclosure: I am. Basically always)? Laundry, like dishes, can feel like one of those endless chores. No matter how often you do it, you just keep generating more of it. The clothing that we wear every day should be as toxic-chemical-free as possible; but with our busy schedules (including those endless chores like laundry), detoxing your clothing can feel like a hassle. Luckily, there are easy, budget-friendly ways to make your laundry safer without adding a lot of extra work to your laundry process.

Cool it: Save money, and energy, by lowering the temperature of your washing machine. According to Savvy Brown, 85% of the energy used to wash clothes goes entirely to heating up the water. Cold water is color-safe, gentler on delicates, and a money saver, since lower temperatures can lower your gas bill too. Surprisingly, cold water can also have a positive effect on your indoor air quality. Alexandra Zissu, author of Planet Home, says “heating water blasts volatile chemicals, including chlorine in municipal water, into your breathing space.”

Buying laundry supplies: Keep these rules in mind when you stock up on laundry supplies:

• Skip the fragrances: Avoid laundry supplies with fragrances, which may be linked to toxic chemicals like phthalates. Washington Toxics Coalition recommends looking beyond products with Fragrance-Free labels, which may still contain fragrances, and choosing products that list all of their ingredients
• What to look for: The Center for Environmental Health recommends choosing “vegetable-based laundry detergent (made from corn, palm kernel, or coconut oil) that is fragrance-free, dye-free, and does not contain optical brighteners.”
• Look it up: Look up products using on-the-go tools like the Good Guide. Learn more about toxic chemicals in popular laundry brands, and cleaning supplies, with this fact sheet from Women’s Voices for the Earth.

DIY laundry supplies: Replace a few standard laundry supplies with easy, DIY versions featuring just a few inexpensive ingredients.

• Bleach: Try this tip from Women’s Voices for the Earth! Substitute bleach with hydrogen peroxide; Soak your dingy white clothes for 30 minutes in the washer with 1/2 cup 20% peroxide.
• Laundry detergent: Baking soda, castille soap, and water are all you’ll need for this DIY detergent recipe.
• Fabric softener: Healthy Child, Healthy World recommends replacing your fabric softener with 1/2 to 3/4 cup of baking soda. 

Easy stain removal: Ditch toxic, commercial stain removers (and save a little money) and try out these easy old-school stain removal tips. This infographic shows you how to remove common stains with ingredients like baking soda, lemon juice, and club soda.

Dry cleaning: But what about those dry-cleanables lingering in your closet? Perchloroethylene, a chemical prominently used in dry cleaning, has been linked to cancer as well as nervous system, kidney, liver and reproductive disorders. If it’s not possible for you to give up dry cleaning, there are some easy solutions. Switch from traditional dry cleaning to wet cleaning, which replaces common toxic solvents with biodegradable soap. Debra Lynn Dadd (The Queen of Green) has an outline of which solvents to look out for, and which ones are safe to use. Healthy Child, Healthy World recommends using these two directories to find local, green dry-cleaners.

If you want to stick with your dry cleaner, try to dry clean less items, less frequently. Go through your dry clean only clothing and determine if any of it could be washed by hand instead of sent to the cleaners. And when you bring dry cleaning home, take it out of the plastic and let it off gas outside or in a well ventilated area.

CHIP is short for the Children’s Health Insurance Program which was reauthorized three years ago this weekend.   To mark the occasion, we at Say Ahhh! hosted a Super Blog-Off between Patriots fans and Giants fans.  But here’s the kicker – they have to compete for kids.   That’s right, we’ve taken HHS Secretary Sebelius’ “Connecting Kids to Coverage Challenge” quite literally and want the teams to compete based on how much they are doing to help uninsured children.

While we won’t likely reach over 110 million people or be able to sell ads for $3.5 million per thirty seconds, our goal is to help reach the 4.3 million uninsured children who are eligible for CHIP or Medicaid coverage but not yet insured?

Photo by Flickr user Wednesday Elf- Mountainside Crochet

Last year, the Pittsburgh Steelers won.  That’s right.  They might have lost the football game but they won in our books by going to great lengths to reach out to uninsured children.  Pittsburgh fans even swaddled newborn babies in “terrible towels” declaring that no baby should leave the hospital without an insurance card or a terrible towel.

This year, when you are kicking back to watch the game, think about what we could achieve if we dedicated just 1/100th of the time and effort that goes into a Super Bowl into ensuring that every child in America’s has health care coverage.
So whether you are a Pat’s fan, a Giant’s fan or wish there were a team from some place west of the Mississippi in the Super Bowl, you can bring home a victory for uninsured kids in your state by supporting efforts to enroll them in Medicaid or CHIP and keeping those programs strong.

Please visit Say’s Ahhh’s Super Blog-Off and vote for the best children’s health outreach team. Health Care for All blogged on behalf of Patriot’s fans and the Community Service Society of New York took the field for the Giants.

Unfortunately, EPA seems to be turning a blind eye to emerging evidence, and is poised to open the floodgates to more pyrethroid products and uses. We need to tell them it’s not a good idea.

Pyrethroids exploded onto the market more than a decade ago, and are now in widespread use on pets, in homes and gardens, and in agricultural fields. But studies exploring our levels of exposure and the long term health effects have only bubbled up in the past few years.

And the findings raise some serious red flags. A 2010 study on exposure levels, for example, found that more than 70% of us have been exposed to the pesticides, with children facing the highest levels.

Children, bees & poisoning incidents

Our colleagues at Beyond Pesticides have been keeping close tabs on the emerging science of pyrethroids, including impacts of low dose exposure on puberty, the prevalence of the chemical in daycare dust, and impacts of the “new” pesticides on bees.

As we reported in GroundTruth last spring, in early February 2011 a careful, solid study on prenatal exposure found that children whose mothers were exposed to higher levels of pyrethroids during pregnancy were three times more likely to have developmental delays.

A few years back, The Center for for Public Integrity reported that the new, supposedly safer pesticides now lead the pack in terms of number of poisoning incidents nationwide, and the number of moderate to serious incidents — more than 6,000 — is significantly higher than any other group of bug killers. Huh. Maybe not so safe after all.

Tell EPA not to ignore the evidence

In early November, EPA issued its evaluation of the “cumulative risk” of pyrethroids and pyrethrins (the naturally derived variety). Astonishingly, they concluded that these pesticides “do not pose risk concerns for children or adults,” and are proposing to green light product expansion.

As our colleagues at Beyond Pesticides note, this finding ignores a wealth of independent data not only on a range of human health effects, but also on the onset of insect resistance.

So not only are the risks higher than originally believed, but now questions about whether the products even work are emerging as bugs evolve to resist them. Sound familiar?

Take Action » EPA is accepting public comments until February 8. Please sign PAN’s petition today, telling EPA that increased use of synthetic pyrethroids is unnecessary and puts children in harm’s way.

A version of this post appeared previously on GroundTruth.

In California, CHIP is known as the Healthy Families Program and provides health coverage for more than 870,000 children. Healthy Families has meant that the Reick boys of Fresno can get the care they need to manage their asthma, and that the Skinner kids of Riverside can stay active in their extra-curricular sports programs. Healthy Families has provided a variety of needed care for the Magana children of Los Angeles, from immunizations and check-ups to the diagnosis and treatment of life-threatening thyroid cancer.

This success of CHIP nationally was in part boosted by federal CHIPRA incentive bonus payments for states that simplified the application process for children’s coverage and made significant progress in increasing the number of insured children. In December 2011, the federal government awarded nearly $300 million in CHIPRA performance bonuses to 23 states.

Unfortunately, for the third year in a row, California failed to qualify for a bonus, losing out on millions of dollars of federal funds that are desperately needed. While California has made efforts to streamline enrollment for children, and launched a new online enrollment tool for Healthy Families (available in English and Spanish at www.healtheapp.net), the state has not made significant enough strides at enrolling uninsured children into health coverage.

The state’s inadequate enrollment gains are made more stark by the fact that two out of every three uninsured children in California, close to 700,000 kids, are currently eligible for Medi-Cal or Healthy Families but not enrolled.

In 2012, California must do better at connecting uninsured children with the quality, comprehensive, affordable health coverage they need to grow healthy and learn well. To that end, the 100% Campaign (a collaborative effort of The Children’s Partnership, Children Now, and Children’s Defense Fund-California) have developed a Healthy Child Checklist to remind parents of some easy ways to ensure their child stays healthy this year, including applying for Medi-Cal or Healthy Families coverage, which families can do at any time of the year, and with www.healtheapp.net, at any hour.

In addition, the Affordable Care Act (ACA) which President Obama signed in March 2010, further strengthens coverage for children by no longer allowing private insurers to deny coverage to children because of a pre-existing condition. Further, the ACA has already benefited children by requiring coverage of preventive services without co-payments, eliminating lifetime or annual limits, and prohibiting insurers from rescinding coverage.

Looking back on how much has changed for children’s coverage in the past three years, there is much to celebrate. More children have health insurance today than at any point in American history. The opportunity to improve children’s health will continue to grow as California moves forward with implementation of important provisions of CHIPRA and the ACA.

To make these opportunities most meaningful and successful for children in California, we need to focus now on enrolling eligible children and creating a “culture of coverage.” If we work together, we can ensure that more California children have the health coverage they need to grow up healthy.

California parents can learn more about children’s health coverage by calling

1-877-KIDS-NOW (1-877-543-7669) or apply for children’s health coverage directly online at www.healtheapp.net or www.benefitscal.org.

Skip the cans: Limit the BPA in your game day snacks by limiting your canned ingredients, or choosing BPA free alternatives. Soak beans overnight and boil them the next day for baked beans or bean dip. If you’re making chili, avoid canned tomatoes or tomato paste and look for boxed or jarred alternatives. You can also replace canned tomatoes with cooked fresh tomatoes. For beverages, Healthy Child, Healthy World recommends choosing beer and soda in glass bottles instead of canned if possible.

Less packaging: Look for ways to reduce the amount of plastic and packaging you purchase for your party. Save money, and avoid packaging, by buying bulk snacks, sweets, and ingredients. Steer clear of overly packaged convenience produce, like prewashed lettuce, premade carrot sticks, or individually wrapped fruits or veggies. These items often carry a higher price tag. Look for loose produce at your supermarket, or use this tool to find a local farmer’s market. Skip plastic tubs or bags by using minimally packaged ingredients to make one of your favorite snack foods at home, like potato chips or salsa.

Smarter produce: Veggies may not seem like a big part of your Superbowl menu. But a lot of traditional game day foods feature a few pieces of produce: cut up veggies for all those dips, chopped onions and peppers to top off a bowl of chili, celery sticks cozied up next to chicken wings. Remember to rub your fruits and veggies for 30 to 60 seconds under warm running water. Wash inedible peels; even though you discard the peel, cutting into the fruit or peeling the fruit can transfer chemicals into the fruits flesh through your knife. For edible peels, peeling non-organic fruits and vegetables is an easy way to avoid the chemicals that are absorbed into the peel.

Rethink disposables: If you can lose the disposable silverware and plates, that’s great. If you can’t, what about losing one of them? Keep your disposable plates, but use regular silverware. Use the restaurant trick of keeping a bowl of hot water by the sink and dump used silverware in the bowl so it’s rinsed and ready for the dishwasher. Or add dishsoap to the water and give your soapy silverware a quick scrub and rinse when the party is over. Try bamboo or unbleached recycled paper products for dishes and napkins. Remember to make recycling obvious by clearly marking your recycling bin.

Lose the shoes: Lower your toxic chemical exposures by asking your guests to leave their shoes at the door. Lead-contaminated soil from the outside creates the majority of lead dust inside our homes. Leaving your shoes at the door can cut your lead dust levels by 60 percent, and also reduce your exposure to pesticides, dust mites, and more. Create a designated space for shoes by the door and make it obvious to your guests by putting up a sign, placing a mat in the space, or putting a few pairs of your own shoes there.

More Non-toxic Tips Tuesdays:

• Take BPA Off of Your Grocery List
• Five Tips for the Non-toxic Chef
• A Green Makeover for Your Cleaning Supplies

Do you have any green Super Bowl party tips or recipes? Leave them in the comments, or visit our Facebook page and share them with the MomsRising community.

Body wash and Soap: A good liquid castile soap can be used as a face wash, body wash, and as a simple hand soap. Check the label when you’re buying liquid castile soap; Women’s Voices for the Earth recommends avoiding sodium lauryl (laureth) sulfate (SLS) and Diethanolamine (DEA). For sensitive skin, you may want to use unscented soap, or dilute it with warm water. If you’re buying other soaps and shower gels, make sure to look them up on the Skin Deep database first.

Shower Curtains: You know that sharp, new shower curtain smell? That’s the smell of chemicals off-gassing. According to Healthy Child, Healthy World, “shower curtains contain a host of other chemicals (Volatile Organic Compounds or VOCs) which are linked to central nervous system, liver and kidney damage.” Next time you’re in the market for a new shower curtain, choose a cloth curtain, or one of the PVC-free shower curtains on this list from CHEJ. If you do purchase a new vinyl curtain, open it outside and let it off-gas outside of your home before you hang it up.

Cleaning supplies: Tub cleaners, sink scrubbers, tile sparklers—according to your local cleaning supply aisle, bathrooms require quite a few specific products. Skip the toxic chemicals in many conventional cleaning supplies by trying these easy DIYs.

• Toilet bowl cleaner: Women’s Voices for the Earth recommends sprinkling your toilet bowl with baking soda, then drizzling distilled white vinegar in the bowl, and letting the mixture soak for at least 30 minutes. Then scrub the bowl with a toilet brush.
• Tub cleaner: Try this recipe from Healthy Child, Healthy World– Mix 1 2/3 cup baking soda, 1/2 cup liquid soap and 1/2 cup water.
• Glass spray: My favorite easy recipe, from Alexandra Zissu: Just mix equal parts water and distilled white vinegar.

Shampoo and Conditioner: Do a little research before your next haircare shopping trip. Look up shampoos, conditioners, and hair products on the Skin Deep database and the Good Guide. Both of these sites offer handy apps, so you can look up products while you shop. Or skip the searching (and save some money) with these easy DIYs.

• Shampoo: This Planet Home recipe is so easy, and uses ingredients you probably already have at home! To whip up a bottle of homemade shampoo, just combine ½ cup of baking soda with three cups of warm water in a bottle.

• Conditioner: Here’s a recipe from the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics. You’ll need: one egg yolk, ½ teaspoon olive oil, and 3/4 cup lukewarm water. Beat the egg yolk until it’s thick and white. Add the oil and mix well. Then add the water into the egg mixture and mix well.  Massage into clean, damp hair. Rinse with plenty of warm water after about 10 minutes.

Reduce bathroom moisture: Damp bathrooms can be breeding grounds for mold. Try these two easy tips from Planet Home to reduce your bathroom moisture:

• Shower with a window or door open, and the exhaust fan on.
• Take colder showers, which not only reduces moisture on the walls, but saves energy!

Vintage kids games are fun; but vintage legislation is not. Sadly, when it comes to protecting our kids from toxic chemicals, there’s a dangerous mega Mad Libs-sized blank space where comprehensive toxic chemicals reform should be. And as we all know, protecting our kids from toxics chemicals is no road trip game. It’s serious business.

Fill in the blank for families! Tell us why you want comprehensive chemicals reform: “I want comprehensive chemicals reform because ______________.”

Okay, so it’s not as funny as a hippo walking into a punch bowl. In fact, your fill-in-the-blank answer may not be funny at all. It might be very serious.

As you’ve likely guessed, this is about more than a Mad Lib game.  We’ll be delivering the answers you submit to leaders as we urge them to fix our broken chemical system.  And the voices and ideas from parents across the nation, combined together, are a powerful force for change.  Every submission makes a difference and adds up.  (So feel free to forward this to friends and family so they can act too).

That’s right, we’re compiling your fill-in-the-blank messages and bringing them straight to the top so Congress can know why families need comprehensive chemicals reform. Click here to add your message!

The time to act is now.  Our current chemicals legislation, the Toxic Substances Control Act, has not been updated since 1976. Back then, we didn’t know as much about how toxic chemicals can migrate from the materials and products in which they’re used – including furniture, plastics, and food cans – into our bodies. Our broken system leaves us exposed to countless toxic chemicals every day, chemicals that put our families at risk for cancer, learning disabilities, infertility, and more. We need comprehensive chemicals reform because we can’t protect our kids and families from toxics without the help of federal legislation.

*Share your experience today with us–and with Congress–by clicking here to fill in this question: “I want comprehensive chemicals reform because ______________.”

All of your feedback will be compiled into a book for Congress. We’ll personally present it to legislators as we educate them about the need for an update of the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA). An update to TSCA would provide vigorous oversight of chemical use to ensure all products are safer, and it would give the federal government enough authority to require that chemicals be tested for safety before they are put into the products we use every day.

Sharing the personal experiences of parents makes a huge difference when we’re talking to legislators of all stripes. In fact, they are our strongest legislative tool. Click here to share what you think with Congress by answering this question: “I want comprehensive chemicals reform, because_________.”

Tell us–and national leaders–today why you want comprehensive chemicals reform. And make sure to pass this along to your friends and families. The more voices we have, the bigger the impact! 

Together we can build a safer and healthier nation for all of our children.

1) A water filter: The Environmental Working Group’s  water filter guide will help you choose the filter that’s right for you and your budget needs. If you’re not in the market for a filter, the Green Guide recommends placing an open container of water in the fridge for a few hours, which helps filter out chlorine, and let water run for a full minute before you use it for cooking or drinking. Make sure you filter your water if you’re boiling water for tea or soup. Use your freshly filtered water to whip up a nontoxic acne treatment by steaming your face over a pot of hot water with chamomile, lavender, or thyme. Flush the drains in your kitchen and bathroom with boiling water. Create a home air freshener by adding cinnamon, herbs, or citrus peels to a small pot of boiling water.

2) White vinegar: White distilled vinegar is more than a kitchen staple: It’s a cleaning life saver. Combine white distilled vinegar with water for an all purpose rinse, or freeze vinegar and water into ice cubes and use them as a garbage disposal cleaner. Check out our guide to DIY non-toxic cleaning supplies for more ideas.

3) Soap: Invest in safer soap! A good liquid castile soap can be used in homemade cleaning supplies, as a face wash, body wash, and as a simple hand soap. Check the label when you’re buying liquid castile soap; Women’s Voices for the Earth recommends avoiding sodium lauryl (laureth) sulfate (SLS) and Diethanolamine (DEA).

4) Baking soda: Mix this common baking supply with water to create an acne-fighting mask. Combine baking soda with vinegar to make a simple toilet bowl cleaner, or add a ½ cup of baking soda to your laundry as a fabric softener replacement.

5) On the go tools: Download free apps to help you make safer, non-toxic choices when it comes to everything from toys to food to sunscreen. Visit Healthy Stuff, the Good Guide, and the Environmental Working Group to find handy on-the-go-tools. If you don’t have a smart phone, there are great printable tools you can slip in your wallet. Download portable versions of EWG’s Shopper’s Guide to Pesticides in Produce, the Toxic Trio guide to non-toxic nail polish from the California Healthy Nail Salon Collaborative, or the Breast Cancer Fund’s series of non-toxic tip cards.

More Non-toxic Tips Tuesdays:

• ECOnomical: Top 5 Thrifty, Non-toxic Tips
• Five Tips for the Non-toxic Chef
• Tips Tuesday: How to Create a Green Wedding Registry

Do you have any tips on non-toxic tools for the new year? Leave them in the comments, or visit our Facebook page and share them with the MomsRising community.

Join us here on the MomsRising blog in the New Year every Tuesday for more non-toxic tips! In the meantime, here’s the full list of our 2011 tips. Enjoy, and have a happy New Year!

The Basics:

• ECOnomical: Top 5 Thrifty Non-toxic Tips
• Tips Tuesday: Top 5 Non-toxic, One-Ingredient-Swaps
• Tips Tuesday: Top 5 Toxic Habits You Should Break
• How to avoid flame retardants: Sing at the sink, listen to bears, and more
• 5 Non-toxic New Years  Resolutions

Beauty:

• Navigating a Sunscreen Wonderland
• Top Six Safer Summer Beauty Tips
• Top 5 Green Beauty Tips for Fall
• Gift Guide: Non-toxic Beauty Gifts and DIY Tips
• Tips Tuesday: Be a savvy, health-conscious, and socially responsible consumer and avoid the Toxic Trio

Home:

• A Green Makeover for Your Cleaning Supplies
• Tips Tuesday: Green Tips for Pets
• Non-toxic Tips for Winter Coughs and Colds

Work:

• Detox Your Workday and Green Your Office

School:

• Detox Your Dorm: Top 5 Non-toxic Tips for Your College Freshman
• Top Five Safer Back to School Shopping Tips

Holidays/Special Occasions:

• Tips Tuesday: How to Make a Green Baby Registry
• Tips Tuesday: How to Create a Green Wedding Registry
• Get Ready for a Green Halloween!
• Tips Tuesday: Green Holiday Travel
• Tips Tuesday: 5 Tips for Non-Toxic Holidays
• 5 Tips for Non-Toxic Toy Shopping
• 5 Green Shipping Tips for Your Holiday Gifts

Food:

• Tips Tuesday: Top 5 Tips for Healthier Fruits and Veggies
• Tips Tuesday: Makeover your lunch box staples
• How to Host a Green End of Summer BBQ
• How to Take BPA Off the Menu
• Take BPA Off of Your Grocery List
• Five Tips for the Non-Toxic Chef
• Tips Tuesday: Nontoxic Thanksgiving Makeovers
• 3 Easy Steps to Toxic Free and Yummy Stocking Stuffers