Obama pushes preschool programs in Georgia trip

REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, WASHINGTON - President Barack Obama's ambitious plan to expand preschool programs comes as one of every 13 students already in Head Start classrooms is at risk of being kicked out if lawmakers don't sidestep a budget meltdown.

Obama was set to talk about enlarging early childhood education programs such as Head Start during a stop Thursday in Georgia. Education Secretary Arne Duncan, meanwhile, told senators on Capitol Hill that pending budget cuts could be devastating to current students and could hurt the nation's economy for years to come if students aren't learning now.

"We're trying to do a lot more in terms of early childhood education, not go in the opposite direction," Duncan said. "Doing that to our most vulnerable children is education malpractice, economically foolish and morally indefensible."

Obama's team is warning Congress — and lawmakers' constituents — what is expected to happen if leaders fail to avert $85 billion in automatic budget cuts set to begin March 1. With the cuts looming, the administration has increased its pressure on lawmakers, and Obama's State of the Union address Tuesday made clear he was not looking for compromise as he begins his second term.

"I propose working with states to make high-quality preschool available to every child in America," Obama told Congress and a national television audience.

The White House fleshed out Obama's plan Thursday, proposing a "continuum of high-quality early learning for a child, beginning at birth and continuing to age 5." The government would fund public preschool for any 4-year-old whose family income is 200 percent or less of the federal poverty level — a more generous threshold than the current Head Start program, which generally serves kids from families below 130 percent of the poverty line. All 50 states and the federal government would chip in.

Obama also is proposing letting communities and child care providers compete for grants to serve children 3 and younger, starting from birth. And once a state has established its program for 4-year-olds, it can use funds from the program to offer full-day kindergarten, the plan says.

Still missing from Obama's plan are any details about the cost, a key concern among Republicans. The White House says federal investment in Head Start, an 8 billion USD program that serves almost 1 million kids, will grow. But Obama's aides have stressed that the new programs would not add to the nation's nearly 16.5 trillion USD debt.

"The last budget had over 1.5 trillion USD of mandatory and revenue savings, things like reductions in entitlements, closing loopholes," Jason Furman, a deputy director of the National Economic Council, told reporters Wednesday. He said the new initiatives would be smaller than that.

If the White House wants to move ahead, officials are going to need help from the states to provide political cover and dollars alike. House Speaker John Boehner said Wednesday involving the federal government in early childhood education was "a good way to screw it up." The Republican chairman of the House committee overseeing education policy was cool toward the proposal and was unlikely to approve new spending on it. And even Obama's allies acknowledged there was little Washington could do without governors' help.