The Quadruple Threat to Children: A Budget That Picks on Our Nation’s Youngest

If the federal budget is a moral document, then the one now advancing through Congress reveals a disturbing truth: the Trump Administration and Congress are willing to sacrifice our children for tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy.

With the reconciliation process underway, four foundational programs that provide health care, food, economic stability, and protection from harm are on the chopping block:

• Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP)

• Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP)

• Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF)

• Social Services Block Grant (SSBG)

Together, these programs account for half of all federal investments in children ages 0–3, and nearly one-third of investments in all children.

Cutting them would represent a seismic rollback in support for America’s most vulnerable population — its children.

As the Children’s Budget Coalition warns:

These proposed cuts are not just numbers and the policy changes are not minor reforms – they represent real harm to children’s health, nutrition, safety, and economic security by targeting four major social safety net programs.

This is a quadruple threat to children.

1. Medicaid and CHIP: Threatening the Health of 37 Million Children

More than 37 million children rely on Medicaid and CHIP for health care coverage, including:

• 41% of all U.S. births

• Nearly half of children with special health care needs

• 99% of children in foster care

• More than 40% of children in rural and underserved communities

• Over 3 million children of veterans

• 1 in 3 children with cancer

And yet, the budget reconciliation package being considered in Congress proposes slashing $880 billion from Medicaid and CHIP, which is only achievable through drastic cuts to coverage and services.

As First Focus Campaign for Children and over 340 groups wrote in opposition to cutting Medicaid and CHIP for children:

Medicaid and CHIP represent far more than mere line items in a budget; they constitute vital investments in the development, long-term health, educational attainment, and future prosperity of children. Cuts to Medicaid and CHIP simply cannot be made without harming children’s health coverage, access to care, and well-being.

These aren’t luxuries — they are the building blocks of healthy development.

The proposed budget cuts threaten to restrict eligibility, impose bureaucratic hurdles, and reduce benefits, putting millions of children at risk of losing coverage.

Consequences include reduced access to routine and preventive care such as services that reduce infant mortality and prevent vaccine-preventable illnesses, barriers to life-saving emergency and hospital care, fewer mental health services amid rising youth suicide and depression rates, limits to vision and dental care, cuts to school-based health services, caps on long-term services and supports for children with disabilities, and delayed diagnoses for chronic conditions, leading to worsened long-term health outcomes.

For some children, this could mean no more speech therapy. For others, it could mean the end of life-saving cancer treatments. That is not an exaggeration — it’s the cost of budget cuts.

And it would disproportionately harm children in rural and underserved communities, where over 40% depend on Medicaid for basic care.

Medicaid is the single largest payer for pediatric mental health services. Cutting it now is not just unwise — it is unconscionable.

We don’t need more studies to know what this will do. We need political will to stop it.

2. SNAP: A Food Lifeline for 15 Million Children

SNAP (aka, food stamps) provides food assistance to 15 million children, and consequently, reduces food insecurity, poverty, and long-term health risks. In 2021 alone, expanded SNAP benefits lifted 1 million children out of poverty.

Despite its clear effectiveness, Congress is considering a $230 billion cut to SNAP over ten years. This will:

• Slash benefit levels, even as food prices rise

• Impose stricter eligibility, denying food assistance to families most in need

• Undermine school performance, as hunger impairs concentration, memory, and emotional regulation

As the Children’s Budget Coalition explains:

Hunger is surging: Food insecurity has returned with a vengeance as SNAP and school meal programs have been reduced.

When a child goes to bed hungry — it’s a moral failure and national disgrace.

And let’s be clear: hunger doesn’t just harm children in the moment. It leaves lifelong scars in the form of long-term health problems, lower educational attainment, and lost economic potential. Cutting SNAP is a policy choice to accept more sick, hungry, and underperforming children in exchange for “savings” that will cost society far more in the long-term.

3. TANF: Cuts Would Undermine the Safety Net for Families in Crisis

TANF provides direct cash assistance, child care subsidies, and job training for low-income families. An estimated 70% of TANF beneficiaries are children.

But this program has been chronically underfunded, as it is funded at the same level as it was nearly 30 years ago – and is now at risk of being hollowed out even further.

According to the Children’s Budget Coalition:

TANF is one of the few federal programs providing direct financial aid to families in crisis... Cuts would result in more children living in extreme poverty, increased homelessness, and long-term economic disadvantages.

States use TANF to:

• Provide funding to support children living in poverty

• Prevent foster care placements by helping relative caregivers

• Provide child care so parents can work

• Offer emergency help to families in crisis

Without it, parents are forced to choose between staying home to care for children or keeping their jobs. Kids miss school, lose housing, and face traumatic instability.

These are not just numbers and statistics. They are children going without shoes, missing meals, and being pulled into state custody because their parents lost their last thread of support.

It also will increase child poverty, which negatively impacts every aspect of the lives of children. Cutting it is not fiscal discipline – it is abandonment of children who desperately need support.

4. SSBG: Elimination Would Dismantle Children’s Supports and Services

The Social Services Block Grant (SSBG) is the primary source of federal funding for:

• Child protective services

• Foster care supports

• Emergency services for families in crisis

• Child abuse prevention and family reunification programs

• Child care

The House budget resolution would potentially eliminate the SSBG entirely, gutting a safety net that serves millions of children annually.

The Children’s Budget Coalition points out:

SSBG is the biggest federal source of funding for child abuse prevention and protection... Cutting TANF and eliminating SSBG would result in nearly 40,000 children and their families losing access to child care.

Without SSBG:

• Caseworkers will be unable to respond to calls of abuse or neglect

• Family preservation programs will vanish

• Emergency shelters for abused children will close their doors

And for those in foster care already — often recovering from trauma – supports will disappear when they are most needed.

When the government turns its back on SSBG, it’s turning its back on children in the most dangerous and vulnerable circumstances imaginable.

A Nation Failing Its Children

Cutting investments in children is shortsighted. Numerous studies find that investments in children yield the highest returns of any public spending, surpassing infrastructure, tax credits, and even defense.

But slashing investments in children is also devastatingly cruel. While it may achieve short-term savings, it threatens children’s lifetime well-being and opportunities for success. Again, children are not budgetary line items – they represent our nation’s future.

As the Children’s Budget Coalition states:

Tragically, our country is failing to meet our children’s basic needs... If we want a thriving nation in the future, we must invest in the children who will shape it.

Together, these four programs made up $191 billion in federal investment in children in FY2024, and 50% of all spending for infants and toddlers. Yet babies and toddlers receive just 1.52% of the federal budget overall.

This is not a question of whether we can afford these programs. It’s whether we can afford not to. As decades of research show, investments in children yield the highest returns—in health, education, earnings, and national productivity.

Instead, we are actively choosing to:

• Reverse historic gains in child poverty

• Deepen hunger and housing instability

• Strip access to care for children with disabilities and trauma

• Eliminate services that prevent child abuse and neglect

Individually, each cut would be harmful. Together, they are catastrophic.

Children don’t live their lives in silos. When a child loses health care coverage, it threatens their education, well-being, and potentially even their lives. When a family loses SNAP, it negatively impacts a child’s health and makes it harder to afford the fundamental needs of children. When TANF disappears, it destabilizes all aspects of a child’s life, as hunger rises, school attendance suffers, child abuse rises, and housing becomes tenuous.

Cutting investments in children rips out the interwoven threads of support that allow children not just to survive, but to thrive.

Budgets Reflect Values

Unfortunately, Congress is sending the message that our children don’t matter. We must write a different story — one where every child has the health care they need, food on their plate, and safety when they’re in danger.

Again, as members of the Children’s Budget Coalition said:

We urge you to choose to prioritize children, their families, and those most in need when making budget and policy decisions.

Let’s hold Congress to that standard. Because children can’t vote. They can’t lobby. But they can suffer. Or they can thrive.

The choice is ours.

As a First Focus on Children issue brief on these proposed cuts concludes:

Children deserve a country where every child has access to health care, nutritious food, and education. A nation where no child grows up in poverty, and where investments in early childhood programs lay the foundation for lifelong success.

This vision is achievable if we choose to prioritize children in our budget and policy decisions. Investing in children today means building a stronger, healthier, and more prosperous America tomorrow.

Instead of asking, “How much does it cost to invest in children?”, we should be asking, “How much will it cost if we don’t?”

Only then will the United States be a country that truly puts its children first.

Call to Action: Stop the Quadruple Threat

We don’t have to accept this. But we will need to act to protect our children and grandchildren.

Here’s what you can do:

📞 Call your members of Congress. Tell them to reject budget cuts to Medicaid, SNAP, TANF, and SSBG.

📢 Share this newsletter with advocates, educators, health providers, and families.

🧾 Tell your story. Humanize the harm. Show how these programs support real people.

🤝 Join efforts like the Children’s Budget Coalition, which represents over 100 organizations fighting to protect kids.