Molly Ivins May 30

AUSTIN — Everyone with the time and money to get to Washington on Saturday is supposed be there to Stand for Children. If all of us who care had the time and money, it would be quite a gathering — probably sink the city back into the tidal muck.

What's pitiful is that such a march is even necessary. Since W.C. Fields croaked, it's been hard to find anyone who will admit to not caring for children. The poll numbers are overwhelming: According to a CNN-Time poll, 73 percent of us would like to see more of our tax dollars spent on children. But we're spending less, courtesy of the Republican revolution. The most vogue political scheme of the day is welfare reform, which in its last form from Newt's Congress would have put another 1 million children into poverty and taken away the already inadequate social safety net they now have.

Of all the statistics about children floating around this week, the most horrifying is that the percentage of children who live in "extreme poverty" (defined as a family income of less than half the official poverty level) has doubled since 1975. It's now 10 percent. And one out of every five children in this country is growing up in plain poverty. According to Time magazine, in 1992, there were 850,000 substantiated cases of child abuse or neglect. Those are the kids who need our help, and those are the kids on whom the country's future depends.

It's not a question of not knowing what to do. All the evidence is that the earlier we put money into helping a child, the bigger the payoff. Starting with prenatal care and well-infant nutrition programs, day care, Head Start and good schools, the more we spend early, the more we save later. Creating the best schools on the planet would cost us less than building the prisons we're going to need if we don't save these children. The issue is perfect for both bleeding hearts and budget-choppers, but we still let the problems grow worse.

The Republican brethren are right when they say the whole answer is not in government programs. Supporting programs that help kids is critical, but it's a bit like saying, "I gave at the office." Getting out and getting involved in Big Brother/Big Sister programs, tutoring, adopt-a-school, recreation, music, arts and crafts programs — there are a zillion places that need volunteers. The first thing you notice when getting involved in helping kids is that what so many of them need more than anything else is simply attention.

They are starved for attention and affection.

However, I believe it is both dumb and wicked to pretend that volunteerism alone can solve any of these problems. According to Catholic Charities, Americans would have to give 50 times more by the year 2000 than we have given before to replace government social services. It's not going to happen.

Of course we need welfare reform. Any idiot could design a better welfare system than the one we have — all it takes is more money. What we need to get people off welfare and into jobs is (A) jobs, (B) job training, (C) universal health insurance, (D) day care and (E) transportation. Where to get the money? We could start with the $12 billion that Congress gave the Pentagon that the Pentagon didn't ask for to build weapons the Pentagon doesn't want, doesn't need and can't use.

While we're hearing a lot of election-year rhetoric about what a disaster the schools are, in fact the schools are getting better — slowly and unevenly, of course. The maddening thing about education is that someone somewhere has already solved whatever problem we're talking about. You can find wonderful examples all over the country of schools that work. The problem is how to replicate success throughout the system. Even setting goals for better schools has sent the right wing into a snit; they think that Goals 2000 is some kind of plot.

We might do well to take a page from business here. When something isn't working in business — say, a division is losing money — the company usually solves it by taking a manager from a successful division and putting that person in charge of the one that doesn't work. Why not get the people responsible for successful schools together and let them design a better system?

And don't let anyone tell you it won't cost more money. For all the endless blather about how much money we spend on our schools and how it hasn't done any good, the fact is that far too many schools are literally falling apart: leaky roofs, broken windows, broken stairs, busted toilets, roaches in the cafeteria, bad lighting, the whole disaster. There are many problems we can solve by putting money into them.

Time magazine has some interesting figures on the relative lobbying power of children compared with that of other groups. Marian Wright Edelman's Children's Defense Fund, the leading lobby for children, has an annual budget of $13 million, which also covers its work with troubled kids in Washington. The equivalent figure for the National Rifle Association is $66 million, and $300 million for the American Association of Retired Persons.

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Molly Ivins is a columnist for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

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