Promises about Children on Obameter

Will extend aspects of the Bush tax cuts such as child credit expansions and changes to marriage bonuses and penalties.

Expand the earned income tax credit for workers without children and taxpayers with more than three children. Equalize threshholds for married filers and head of household filers.

Expand and make refundable the child and dependent care credit.

"Require that all children have health care coverage. Barack Obama and Joe Biden will expand the number of options for young adults to get coverage by allowing young people up to age 25 to continue coverage through their parents' plans."

"Expand eligibility for the Medicaid and SCHIP programs and ensure that these programs continue to serve their critical safety net function."

"Work with schools to create more healthful environments for children, including assistance with contract policy development for local vendors, grant support for school-based health screening programs and clinical services, increased financial support for physical education, and educational programs for students."

"Barack Obama and Joe Biden will invest $10 billion per year in early intervention educational and developmental programs for children between zero and five. Their plan will help expand Early Head Start to serve more children with disabilities, and will spur states, through programs like Early Learning Challenge Grants, to expand programs for children with disabilities, such as IDEA Part C, and integrate these programs with other early childhood programs."

As part of support for universal infant screening, "support setting a national goal to provide re-screening for all two-year-olds – the age at which some conditions, including autism spectrum disorders, begin to appear. Part of Obama's early childhood intervention plan will be directed at coordinating fragmented community programs to help provide parents with information about screening for disabilities as infants and again as two-year olds."

"Barack Obama and Joe Biden will expand the highly-successful Nurse-Family Partnership to all low-income, first-time mothers. The Nurse-Family Partnership provides home visits by trained registered nurses to low-income expectant mothers and their families. The trained nurses use proven methods to help improve the mental and physical health of the family by providing counseling on substance abuse, creating and achieving personal goals, and effective methods of nurturing children."

"Will provide critical support to young children and their parents. Unlike other early childhood education plans...places key emphasis at early care and education for infants, which is essential for children to be ready to enter kindergarten. Obama and Biden will create Early Learning Challenge Grants to promote state "zero to five" efforts and help states move toward voluntary, universal pre-school."

"Will quadruple Early Head Start, increase Head Start funding and improve quality for both."

"Will provide affordable and high-quality child care to ease the burden on working families."

"Will double funding for the main federal support for afterschool programs, the 21st Century Learning Centers program, to serve one million more children."

"Will provide state game and fish agencies with additional resources and encouragement to reach out to young men and women to educate them about hunting and fishing opportunities, hunter safety, and the basic principles of fish and wildlife management."

As president, "will use the bully pulpit to urge states to treat same-sex couples with full equality in their family and adoption laws."

Will sign into law the Responsible Fatherhood and Healthy Families Act "to remove some of the government penalties on married families, crack down on men avoiding child support payments, ensure that support payments go to families instead of state bureaucracies, fund support services for fathers and their families, and support domestic violence prevention efforts."

"Will give parents the tools and information they need to control what their children see on television and the Internet in ways fully consistent with the First Amendment. To further protect children online...Support tough penalties, increased enforcement resources and forensic tools for law enforcement, and collaboration between law enforcement and the private sector to identify and prosecute people who abuse the Internet to try to exploit children."

"I will create a Presidential Early Learning Council to coordinate this effort (early childhood education) across all levels of government and ensure that we're providing these children and families with the highest-quality programs."

"Obama will launch a Children's First Agenda that provides care, learning and support to families with children from birth up to 5 years old."