TKW Consulting

Casey has become a leading advocate for early education

Two weeks ago, Sen. Hillary Clinton announced that as president she would push for
federal money

Last week, U.S. Sen. Bob Casey Jr. moderated a forum in Scranton on his bill, the Prepare All Kids Act of 2007, to establish federal funding for preschools.Spokesmen for the two Democratic senators say the timing of their events was a coincidence.

By the time either initiative becomes federal law, Mrs. Clinton could be president.

But Mr. Casey, who introduced his bill 10 days before Mrs. Clinton spoke up, has already
started accomplishing his first goal.

He wants the 2008 presidential candidates talking about early childhood education, he said after the forum at the United Way of Lackawanna County.

“A presidential campaign is a tremendous opportunity to highlight this issue,” he said.

With campaign promises serving as a reminder, the freshman Democratic senator’s push for pre-kindergarten funding and increased funding for state Children’s Health Insurance Programs signals that young children are among of his major priorities.

“This is an issue that he really feels passionately about,” said Larry Smar, Mr. Casey’s director of communications.

Children’s issues got little attention during Mr. Casey’s campaign against Republican U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum last year, although Mr. Casey’s plans were on his campaign Web site, and he hosted a conference focused on children.

“He was one of the few candidates who talked about early education at all in the campaign,” said Kelly Swanson, a spokeswoman for Pre K Counts in Pennsylvania, an initiative begun to advocate for preschools.

The attention to CHIP, as the children’s health insurance program is known, is in character for Mr. Casey, whose fondness for it has familial roots. His father, Robert P. Casey Sr., launched Pennsylvania’s version as governor in 1992.

In five months, expanding CHIP has surfaced on Mr. Casey’s agenda more than any other issue.

Financed by state and the federal government, CHIP covers — free — more than 4 million children nationwide, including about 150,000 in Pennsylvania who live in households with incomes twice the federal poverty level, about $41,000 for a family of four.

President Bush is proposing about $5 billion in CHIP funding in the year starting Oct. 1 and almost $5 billion more the year after that, according to an analysis by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a Washington think tank.

Mr. Casey and Sens. Edward Kennedy, D-Massachusetts; Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va.; and Max Baucus, D-Mont., want a five-year, $50 billion appropriation, or about $10 billion a year. That would cover the 6 million children who aren’t covered now, Mr. Smar said.

The four senators sponsored a successful budget amendment in March naming CHIP expansion as the Senate’s top health care priority.

The early childhood initiative is more Mr. Casey’s own...