The Children's Defense Fund (CDF) is a national organization committed to the social welfare of children. Founded in 1973, the nonprofit group uses its annual $9 million budget to lobby legislators and speak out publicly on a broad array of issues on the law, the family, and society. It is an influential shaper of the welfare debate: the CDF has consistently fought for federal welfare programs that directly help poor children, a cause that has enjoyed significant success in Washington, D.C. In the 1980s, its intensive lobbying efforts saved billions of dollars in proposed funding cuts, and in the early 1990s, close ties with the administration of President Bill Clinton increased its influence even further, leading to new federal legislation. Besides its work on Capitol Hill, the organization issues widely cited reports on the health and the economic and social well-being of U.S. children. The organization owes much of its effectiveness to the work of its founder and director, civil rights attorney Marian Wright Edelman.
The first black woman to pass the bar exam in Mississippi, Edelman fought race discrimination in the 1960s. She initially came to national attention by stopping efforts in Mississippi to deny African Americans money from the federal Head Start program. By the end of the 1960s she ran an advocacy group called the Washington Research Project, whose chief focus was antidiscrimination law. The group acquired powerful allies — one staff attorney was Hillary Rodham, who would become First Lady. Edelman lobbied extensively for federal health care and child care, but to little avail. By 1973, she realized that "the country was tired of the concerns of the sixties. When you talked about poor people or black people, you faced a shrinking audience. I got the idea that children might be a very effective way to broaden the base for change." She renamed her organization, made children's issues its primary focus, and began building the corporate sponsorship that has grown to include such major donors as American Express and Coca-Cola.
The CDF has taken a strong stand against cutting federal programs that benefit poor children. Leading its list are the Head Start and Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) nutrition programs. Although viewed as a liberal organization, it blasted presidential administrations from Jimmy Carter's to George Bush's whenever budgets were threatened. It has attacked social spending cuts as "callous" and motivated by "greed," arguing that welfare is properly seen as a children's issue. In a display of its influence during the Reagan era, the CDF convinced Congress to spare approximately $2.5 billion in cuts. In addition to supporting existing programs, the CDF has argued in favor of greater federal support for underprivileged families in the areas of housing, day care, child immunization, so-called family preservation programs, and employment training.
The organization's research and recommendations are often the catalyst for debate. For example, its 1991 study Bright Futures or Broken Dreams: The Status of the Children of the District of Columbia and an Investment Agenda for the 1990s — noting items such as infant mortality, teenage pregnancy and murder, and child abuse — concluded that "across almost every indicator of health, income, and social well-being, the status of children in the District is abysmal." Edelman opened the CDF's first local office in the District of Columbia. She called society's failure to save children's lives unforgivable and blamed it on local and federal governments. Such conclusions sit well with traditional liberals but not with conservatives. Nationally syndicated columnist Mona Charen, for example, attacks the CDF for wanting "a bigger and bigger welfare state, with less and less emphasis on personal responsibility and self control." Even neoliberals such as author Mickey Kaus find the CDF's social analysis outdated and its answers impractical. "Are American taxpayers more likely to open their wallets for someone with an unvarnished analysis of the underclass problem," Kaus wrote in the New Republic, "or someone who tries to overwhelm analysis with emotionalism about children?"
Despite such criticism, the organization's agenda has flourished under the Clinton administration. Partly this has been due to long-established personal and political ties between the Clintons and Edelman: Hillary Rodham Clinton was CDF chairperson from 1986 to 1992, and her successor, Donna E. Shalala, later became President Clinton's secretary of Health and Human Services. The president promoted several of the CDF's positions in his legislative goals: he signed family leave legislation into law and stepped up enforcement of child support payments with the help of the Internal Revenue Service. He also proposed budgets that would fully fund or expand Head Start and WIC, advocated a comprehensive federal immunization program for children, and supported health care reform that would ensure care for children and pregnant women. Although not all these initiatives succeeded in Congress, the effort reflected the growing influence of the CDF on national policy.
See: family law.
