OYAL OAK, Mich. - As he travels around the country campaigning for president, Texas Governor George W. Bush often entreats his audiences to ''love the children'' and calls for a compassionate society that will ''leave no child behind.''
And yesterday was no different for Bush, as he traveled to Michigan. There, surrounded by young black children, he proposed changes to the nation's foster care system designed to expedite adoptions.
''The most important job in the world is to be a loving parent, a responsible mother or responsible dad,'' Bush said during a stop at the Judson Center, a social service agency that was founded at the turn of the last century as a Baptist children's home.
As a campaign theme, it's hard to find fault with. Unless, of course, you are Al Gore.
On this score, as on others, Gore campaign officials have been trying to undercut Bush by pointing to his record in Texas, where, they say, many children have been left behind. ''Governor Bush has been making a lot of promises since he began running for president,'' said Douglas Hattaway, a Gore spokesman. ''But people will look beyond the rhetoric and see a shameful record of neglect for children's needs in Texas.''
According to a study by the Children's Rights Council, an advocacy group in Washington, Texas was ranked 29th in a 1995 nationwide survey of places to raise a child. Four years later, the state had plummeted to 48th place, based on the number of children in poverty and mothers not receiving prenatal care. In Texas, 25 percent of all children are not covered by health insurance.
Attempting to further undercut Bush's message, Democratic National Committee staff members stood outside the Judson Center and distributed a videotape that they said illustrated the living conditions of the poor in Texas. Detroit Mayor Dennis Archer later held a news conference to condemn Bush's record on poverty and children.
But the Bush campaign insists that the candidate's focus on the needs of children is sincere and that the cause itself should be uncontroversial. Foster care and adoption, Bush aides note, have been longtime causes for the governor: Between 1996 and 1999, the number of children legally available for adoption in Texas more than doubled. And the time children spent waiting for adoption while in foster care has been cut in half over the last decade, aides said. Altogether, adoptions increased 175 percent in the Lone Star State between 1996 and 1999.
Yesterday, Bush also proposed spending $2.3 billion over five years to help keep children in their homes or to terminate parental rights more quickly in order to free children up for adoption.
He would:
Require states to conduct criminal background checks on prospective foster and adoptive parents. Today, states can opt out of the checks and are only allowed to search records from the previous five years. Bush would require complete searches.
Provide $1 billion over five years to increase the adoption tax credit from $5,000 a year to $7,500 a year to help families with expenses linked to adoption.
Give vouchers worth $300 million over five years to thousands of children who ''age out'' of foster care but need help paying for vocational training or education.
Send $1 billion to states over five years for preventive services to keep children in their homes or return them home when possible.
''This is an issue I've taken on as the governor of Texas,'' Bush said. ''We Texans tend to exaggerate, but it's safe to say we're on the cutting edge of this.''
The Gore campaign countered that it was the Democratic administration that instituted the $5,000 tax credit for adoptive parents. And Hattaway, Gore's spokesman, pointed out that nationally there has been a 30 percent increase in the number of adoptions out of foster care. According to a White House commission on adoption, the numbers have risen from 28,000 adoptions in 1996 to 36,000 in 1998.
Hattaway said the Clinton administration provided the first financial incentives for states to increase adoptions from foster care. Last year, the US sent $20 million in bonuses to 35 states that increased their rate of adoption.
Stephen Goldsmith, the former mayor of Indianapolis and domestic policy adviser to Bush, acknowledged some improvements at the federal level, but said the child welfare system remains ''very badly broken'' and ''cumbersome, bureaucratic and insensitive.'' Criticisms by the Gore campaign, he said, were gratuitous.
''Every time we have a policy announcement, they come back to complaining about health statistics in Texas,'' Goldsmith said.
