National

  • Child Poverty

    CDF Opposes the Costly Tax Breaks for Millionaire Business Owners and Corporations in COVID-19 Package

    CDF urges Senators to support repeal of costly tax breaks for millionaire business owners and corporations contained in the CARES Act and to oppose any other tax cuts for the rich and corporations in future COVID-19 relief and recovery bills. Instead, we recommend that your priorities be providing a major infusion of support to maintain state and local public services communities depend on, including public safety, healthcare, schools and sanitation; helping workers stay employed or providing them with robust unemployment benefits; giving more direct aid to families; and adequately funding public health.

  • Child Poverty

    TANF Must Be Strengthened to Fight For Racial Justice and Help Families Afford Their Basic Needs

    The pandemic has magnified our nation’s failure to provide robust assistance for children and families in times of crisis. COVID-19 has also laid bare the systemic economic, social, and racial inequities embedded in our unjust systems. Today, communities of color are bearing the brunt of the fatal impacts of these injustices. People of color are more likely to have lost jobs due to COVID, are dying at more rapid rates compared to their white counterparts, and are more likely to live in poverty. As new research shows that the pandemic could cause child poverty rates to rise by 53 percent, especially for children of color, Congress must act now. Authorizing and expanding a Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) Emergency Fund and making long-term changes to the TANF block grant are more important than ever to make sure children and families can survive this crisis. Families should not have to worry where their next meal will come from or face harsh requirements that were impossible to meet even before this pandemic.

  • Child Poverty

    New Analysis from CDF: TANF Must Be Strengthened to Fight For Racial Justice and Help Families Afford Their Basic Needs

    We as a nation are weathering a tough storm, and low-income children and families, especially families of color, are carrying a disproportionate load of the health and economic burden. As new research shows that this pandemic could cause child poverty rates to rise by 53 percent, especially for children of color, Congress must act now. Here’s where the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program comes in.

    | National

  • Child Poverty

    The Child Care is Essential Act Will Ensure Desperately Needed Relief for Child Care

    CDF will continue to join the call for immediate relief to ensure child care settings and families can weather this crisis – and we are proud to endorse the Child Care is Essential Act which will help get us there. Without this funding, parents will not have the care they need to go back to work, employers will be unable to restart without workers, and our economic recovery will be jeopardized. The child care system needs to be funded like the necessity it is for families, businesses, and our economy.

    | National

  • Child Health

    The Two Deadly Diseases Plaguing Our Nation—and Our Children

    We must do better and stand up for our Black children if we are to achieve our mission to leave no child behind. We must fight for a system that treats Black children and families fairly, equally, and justly. We must commit to ending child poverty and creating a society that values the lives of all children by providing equitable, affordable, and high-quality education, health care, nutrition, and housing to all families. We will not stop fighting until we have dismantled systems of oppression and institutional racism and until our country values the lives of Black children just as much as White children. 

    | National

  • Child Welfare

    CDF Joined Over 400 Organizations Calling for Congress to Support Older Foster Youth Amid COVID-19

    We urge Congress to act immediately to provide crucial supports to older foster youth facing the stress and disruptions resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic. Approximately 18,000 youth exit foster care without a family each year, and, unfortunately, the outcomes for these young people are discouraging even in times of economic prosperity. Data indicate that on average, two in five foster youth who “age out” of care will experience episodes of homelessness and only 50 percent of youth will be employed at age 24. The COVID-19 crisis will only exacerbate these dire outcomes.

  • Child Poverty

    CDF Joins Call for USDA to Extend Waivers to Ensure Safe Access to Food Assistance

    We urge USDA to use its full authority to quickly extend the rest of the nationwide waivers, and state-specific waivers such as area eligibility, until September 30, 2020, or at least August 31, 2020. Extending the waivers is not only in the interest of public health, it also provides consistency for families and eases the administrative burden on state child nutrition agencies and FNS staff. The urgency of extending these waivers now cannot be understated as schools, local government agencies, and private nonprofits are making decisions today about whether or not they will continue to operate these programs this summer.

  • CDF Urges Congress to Take Swift Action In Response to Continued Police Violence Against Black People Across the Country

    Abusive police practices coupled with devastating state-sanctioned violence have exacted systemic brutality and fatality upon Black people since our nation’s founding. For too long, the cycle of police brutality and racism has been met with cosmetic tinkering instead of substantive structural change. We urge Congress to take swift and decisive legislative action in response to ongoing fatal police killings and other violence against Black people across our country. Federal statutory reforms are urgently needed on a range of policing issues, including use of force, police accountability, racial profiling, militarization, data collection, and training.

  • Immigration

    A Choice to Be Separated is No Choice at All

    Parents in three U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) family detention centers were last week presented with this false choice: either separate from their children or agree to be detained together indefinitely during the COVID-19 pandemic. We as a nation cannot allow this administration to exploit COVID-19 as an opportunity to pursue its cruel, anti-immigrant agenda. Don’t look away. Stand with families. 

    | National