While most Americans have access to the best oral health care in the world low-income children suffer disproportionately from oral disease.

For example lead paint in old houses can be a greater threat to children's health than lead that may be under some industrial site where there are no children.

For most women including women who want to have children contraception is not an option it is a basic health care necessity.

Contraceptives have a proven track record of enhancing the health of women and children preventing unintended pregnancy and reducing the need for abortion.

To do what we are doing in this budget to our children cutting their health care funds decreasing opportunity simply so we can pay for tax cuts and a war in Iraq is beyond belief and we need to reverse it.

There should not be one new dime in tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires as long as millions of children in America are poor hungry uneducated and without health coverage.

I believe that investing in our children's development from the earliest age is the single most important contribution we can make to the health and wellbeing of our citizens their capacity and the future prosperity of our state.

As a single-payer advocate I believe that at the end of the day if a state goes forward and passed an effective single-payer program it will demonstrate that you can provide quality health care to every man woman and child in a more cost-effective way.

When elected officials abandon our environment and ruin our natural resources public health is endangered. I know the importance of providing a clean environment for our children I have attended more than one funeral for a child who has died from an asthma attack.

For the past two years President Obama has promised our children the moon stars rainbows unicorns and universal health care for all. But the White House Santa's cradle-to-grave entitlement mandates are a spectacularly predictable bust.