This is one area where the federal government can and must play a much more constructive role. Head Start can make a difference by stimulating imagination and laying the foundation for reading, writing, and working with numbers. But today, Head Start is funded to accommodate only four out of ten eligible children, and funding for Early Head Start, a promising program for children under three, covers only 1 percent of eligible toddlers. We must set a national goal of fully funding these and other key investments in children. In the face of these historic challenges, the Republican Party has turned its back.
Democrats fare little better.
There has to be some connection between the convictions we profess and the budgets we propose or the chasm between our words and our actions becomes too wide. If we don't fight hard enough for the things we stand for, at some point we have to recognize that we don't really stand for them. Paul Wellstone, Democrat of Minnesota, is a member of the Senate's Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee. August 5 and from an op-ed commentary he wrote for The Los Angeles Times.