Highlights of Senator Boxer's Record on Children

As a mother and grandmother, Barbara Boxer has a personal perspective on issues related to children. As a United States Senator, she believes that the federal government has a special obligation to see that every child has the opportunity to achieve his or her full potential. That requires a solid education, a healthy environment, and a safe place to grow and learn.

Fighting Crimes against Children: Senator Boxer is the author of the Violence Against Children Act, which provides assistance for local law enforcement in cases of crimes against children, and provides help for the children who are victims. She cosponsored legislation in 2006 to improve the national sex offender registry system. She was a cosponsor of the law – the PROTECT Our Children Act – that increases the ability of law enforcement agencies to investigate and prosecute child predators.

Protecting Children in School: Senator Boxer has introduced legislation to protect children while they are in school. Her bill would improve a grant program to enhance security at school through items such as surveillance cameras and metal detectors. It would also establish an interagency task force to develop school safety guidelines.

Expanding After School Programs: As a young mother, Senator Boxer helped start an after school program at her neighborhood school. As a Senator, she has been the Senate’s foremost advocate and champion of increasing federal support for local after school programs so that children have a safe and enriching place to go at the end of the school day. She wrote the provision that authorizes federal funding for after school programs – the first such law of its kind – and that would have more than doubled the number of after school programs. In 2009, after years of underfunding by the Bush Administration, Boxer authored a successful amendment to the budget to increase funding for after school programs.

Ensuring a Healthy and Safe Environment: Senator Boxer authored the law requiring the EPA to set drinking water standards at a level that would be safe for children and other vulnerable populations, such as pregnant women and the elderly. Prior to the Boxer law, contaminant levels were set according to their effect on healthy adult men. Similarly, she wrote the provision of the Brownfields law to ensure that the program’s standards are set at levels high enough to protect children, who have a lower tolerance for toxins than adults.

Expanding Early Childhood Education: To provide millions of children with access to pre-kindergarten education, Senator Boxer is the author of legislation that would provide incentives to states to include one year of pre-kindergarten education as part of the public school system.

Stopping Pesticide Testing on Children: In 2005, Senator Boxer brought to light a study being funded by the EPA and the pesticide industry that would pay primarily low-income families for allowing their newborns and infants to be exposed to pesticides. She was successful in forcing the EPA to cancel the study. Senator Boxer also wrote the law placing a moratorium on testing pesticides on humans until new regulations were established to outlaw testing on pregnant women, infants, and children and to ensure that all human pesticide tests comply with widely accepted ethical guidelines.

Warning about Pesticide Application in Schools: Senator Boxer has called for requiring schools to give parents advance notice when harmful pesticides are used in schools and for requiring the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to help schools reduce the use of toxic pesticides.

Screening for Lead Poisoning: In 2002, Senator Boxer led the effort in the Senate against the Bush Administration’s proposal to eliminate funding to test poor children for lead poisoning. The Administration backed down and kept the testing in place.

Providing Health Care to Children: Senator Boxer is an ardent supporter of increased access to health care for children. In the 1990s, she cosponsored the law that created the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), providing millions of low-income children access to health care. Recently, she fought to expand SCHIP for almost 700,000 children in California; it finally became law in early 2009.

Promoting Healthy Students: Senator Boxer introduced legislation to establish new nutritional guidelines for school lunches and to include time in the school day for physical activity. She also supports efforts to help schools better manage food allergies among students.

Ensuring Safer Products: In 2008, Senator Boxer wrote the law requiring that the same “choking hazard” warnings printed on toy packages be included on online retail websites and in catalogs. She also wrote the law that requires certain infant products (such as cribs, high chairs, and strollers) to be sold with a postage-paid recall registration card so that consumers can register with the manufacturer to be notified in the event of a safety problem or a product recall. In 2001, Senator Boxer was one of the leaders in criticizing the Bush Administration’s plan to elevate Mary Sheila Gall – who had voted repeatedly against protecting children from potentially dangerous products, including baby bath seats and baby walkers – to head the Consumer Product Safety Commission.

Helping Foster Care Children: In 2007, Senator Boxer introduced legislation to provide federal assistance for foster care services such as food, housing, and other services for foster youth aged 18 to 21. Currently, federal support ends when a child “ages out” of the system at 18. A modified version of the Boxer bill became law in 2008.

Providing Family and Medical Leave: Senator Boxer was an early cosponsor and avid supporter of the Family and Medical Leave Act, which has been used more than 100 million times by Americans to take time off from work to care for a newborn child or an ailing family member. She supports expanding the scope of the law to make more workers eligible for this benefit.

Expanding Child Care: Senator Boxer is a long-time supporter and cosponsor of legislation to increase federal support for child care funding so more parents can afford to send their children to quality child care programs.

Ensuring Children Receive Child Support: Senator Boxer has long advocated increasing the enforcement of child support orders – so that children receive the financial support to which they are entitled. In addition, to ensure that children are not hurt by the non-payment of support, she authored legislation to allow parents who are owed child support to deduct the amount they do not receive from their federal income taxes.

Protecting Children Around the World: As a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Senator Boxer is committed to seeing that children around the world are not exploited. In 2002, she led the fight for U.S. ratification of two United Nations protocols: the Child Soldiers Protocol, which requires nations to take all feasible steps to ensure that children under the age of 18 do not participate in armed hostilities; and the Sale of Children Protocol, which requires nations to crack down on the sale of children into prostitution.