Schwarzenegger: Stop Coddling Your Children!

Arnold Schwarzenegger has announced plans to eliminate or drastically cut dozens of health and social programs for low-income working families, potentially pushing more than 1 million California children into deep poverty.

Schwarzenegger plans to eliminate CalWORKs and Healthy Families, two major health and social programs for low- and moderate-income working families. Additionally, Schwarzenegger proposed deep cuts and restrictions in Medi-Cal, the state's public health coverage program for low-income and disabled Californians.

If approved by the legislature, California would be the only state in the country to eliminate basic welfare for low-income families with children.

These incredible actions would result in:

• Nearly 2 million children losing health coverage and basic income support;
• 22 California different counties with 10,000 or more children losing either CalWORKs income support or Healthy Families health coverage;
• Nearly 700,000 California families losing income support and health coverage;
• The loss of more than $5 billion in federal funds, despite California's huge budget deficit;
• The elimination of $850 million in child care funds, resulting in nearly 200,000 children losing child care;
• The elimination of Stage I child care for thousands of families and more than 45,000 children every month
• The elimination of 1 in 4 children from Stage II & Stage III child care;
• A loss of income for more than 18,000 family child care providers who participate in child care subsidy programs.

The California Budget Project (CBP) has a further breakdown of how the elimination of CalWorks will affect each county.

We need to take action to stop this!

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