00HOUSE JOINT RESOLUTION NO. 14                                                                                           
01 Requesting passage of federal legislation to aid children and their families.                                           
02 BE IT RESOLVED BY THE LEGISLATURE OF THE STATE OF ALASKA:                                                               
03  WHEREAS the United States has a higher percentage of children in poverty than                                          
04 either western Europe or Canada; in 1989 one out of five American children lived in poverty;                            
05 and                                                                                                                     
06  WHEREAS the United States does not have a national health program that provides                                        
07 medical care to virtually all of its population, unlike 21 other developed nations; and                                 
08  WHEREAS one in four students in the United States will not graduate from high                                          
09 school with his or her peers and another one of those four students will graduate, but will be                          
10 deficient in basic skills and work habits; and                                                                          
11  WHEREAS the Congress has considered legislation, known as KIDSNET and                                                  
12 originally introduced as H.R. 3147 during the 102d Congress, that would address the problems                            
13 of children in poverty by authorizing full funding for the Head Start program, the Childhood                            
14 Immunization program, and the Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) program; and                                           

01  WHEREAS KIDSNET seeks to expand coverage of the Head Start program, the                                                
02 Childhood Immunization program, and the WIC program to include all eligible persons by                                  
03 1996 by exempting these programs from the discretionary spending limits imposed by the                                  
04 Budget Enforcement Act of 1990 (P.L. 101-508) in order to allow the Congress to appropriate                             
05 more funds for these programs without requiring new revenues or offsets; and                                            
06  WHEREAS participants in the Head Start program show significant immediate gains                                        
07 in cognitive ability, self-esteem, achievement motivation, and social behavior and are less                             
08 likely to fail a grade in school or to be assigned to special education than children who are                           
09 never enrolled in the program; and                                                                                      
10  WHEREAS childhood immunization programs have caused significant declines in the                                        
11 incidence of the major diseases of rubella, mumps, polio, diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis, and                           
12 meningitis; and                                                                                                         
13  WHEREAS participation in the WIC program reduces fetal deaths by one-third,                                            
14 reduces by up to 25 percent the number of premature births among high risk and minority                                 
15 mothers, improves the diets of pregnant women and children, brings more women into prenatal                             
16 care earlier, and improves the likelihood that children will have a source of regular medical                           
17 care and be better immunized; and                                                                                       
18  WHEREAS the cost of KIDSNET (up to $9,800,000,000 by 1996) is dwarfed by the                                           
19 long term costs to the nation in welfare payments, poor job performance, remedial education,                            
20 lost economic opportunity due to illness and early death, special education programs, and other                         
21 programs that can be avoided if KIDSNET is implemented;                                                                 
22  BE IT RESOLVED that the Alaska State Legislature respectfully requests the                                             
23 Congress to act expeditiously in passing legislation implementing KIDSNET; and be it                                    
24  FURTHER RESOLVED that the Alaska State Legislature respectfully requests the                                           
25 President of the United States to support KIDSNET and to sign the appropriate legislation into                          
26 law as soon as possible.                                                                                                
27  COPIES of this resolution shall be sent to the Honorable George Bush, President of                                     
28 the United States; the Honorable Dan Quayle, Vice-President of the United States and                                    
29 President of the U.S. Senate; the Honorable Robert C. Byrd, President Pro Tempore of the                                
30 U.S. Senate; the Honorable Thomas S. Foley, Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives;                               
31 and to the Honorable Ted Stevens and the Honorable Frank Murkowski, U.S. Senators, and                                  

01 the Honorable Don Young, U.S. Representative, members of the Alaska delegation in                                       
02 Congress.