After-School Child Care. This legislation would increase by $200 million the funding for federal after-school programs. This is yet another example of a legislative initiative by senators who propose to take money from people who earned it and distribute it to people who neither earned it nor have a moral claim to the funds. Senator Edward Kennedy (D-MA), who could almost fund the entire amendment out of his family’s vast wealth, supported instead a taxpayer expenditure. He suggested that Congress eliminate the one percent rate cut on the lowest income tax bracket: "If we were able to have that amount of money that would be used in the tax cut, why not take $200 million of that $792 billion and put it in after-school programs to service 370,000 children?"
The Senate voted to table the after-school funding increase, an amendment to S. 1650, on September 30, 1999 by a vote of 54-45 (Roll Call 299). We have assigned pluses to the yeas.
