Newsom wants to give California families with newborns a three-month diaper supply

Socialist believe in cradle to grave government.  The Newsom diaper plan is [art of the take over of the family.

“Families welcoming new babies could soon be coming home from the hospital with free diapers if an initiative within Gov. Gavin Newsom’s budget proposal, unveiled on Friday, passes.

The diaper initiative would set aside up to $7.4 million in this year’s budget and $12.5 million the following year to provide a three-month supply of diapers to families of newborns, regardless of income. The program aims to provide an estimated 40 million diapers this year and 80 million next year.”

Now you know why California has a massive deficit.  It will get worse.

Newsom wants to give California families with newborns a three-month diaper supply

By Molly Burke, SF Chronicle, 1/14/25  https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/article/newsom-california-budget-diapers-20028015.php

A proposal from Gov. Gavin Newsom would set aside up to $7.4 million in this year’s budget and $12.5 million the following year to provide a three-month supply of diapers to families of newborns, regardless of income.

Families welcoming new babies could soon be coming home from the hospital with free diapers if an initiative within Gov. Gavin Newsom’s budget proposal, unveiled on Friday, passes.

The diaper initiative would set aside up to $7.4 million in this year’s budget and $12.5 million the following year to provide a three-month supply of diapers to families of newborns, regardless of income. The program aims to provide an estimated 40 million diapers this year and 80 million next year.

While food insecurity is a widely recognized burden facing low-income families, families with newborns often struggle to afford diapers — which aren’t covered by food stamps and aren’t always distributed at food banks or food pantries. Newsom’s plan is the latest attempt by California lawmakers to address diaper affordability, after female lawmakers began highlighting the issue over the last several years.

The money, if it survives negotiations with the Legislature and is ultimately included in the 2025-26 budget lawmakers must pass by mid-June, would be allocated to the Department of Health Care Access and Information, which would contract “for the provision of a three-month supply of diapers at no cost to California families with newborn babies via hospital systems.”

The initiative is aimed at improving maternal and infant health outcomes, according to the budget summary. Assembly Member Liz Ortega, D-San Leandro, has been pushing for state funding for diapers throughout her legislative career, citing the concerns she’s heard from families struggling to afford the supplies.

“They need to make a choice. Do I pay the rent? Do I pay for food? Or do I buy diapers?” Ortega said. “And often what I heard was some parents are leaving their children in diapers for hours, increasing rashes and increasing their inability to take them to child care because they don’t have extra diapers.”

Senate President Pro Tem Mike McGuire and Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas have both emphasized a desire to focus legislation on financial relief and affordability issues for Californians, especially in the wake of Republican victories at the federal level in November.

Ortega said she was excited to see the inclusion of the funding for expanded free diaper distribution, and said it represents a dramatic shift from last year’s budget negotiations. The East Bay lawmaker said that conversations about diapers in 2024 revolved around a proposed cut to diaper bank funding.

Ortega said that after pushback from the California Legislative Women’s Caucus, the funding still faced a cut, but was less significant than originally proposed.

Ortega has hosted several diaper drives to bring in donations for local diaper banks, but ultimately hopes that she can stop.

“I think ideally families in the state of California would be making enough in their jobs to be able to afford all these things like housing, like food, like diapers,” she said.

Gov. Gavin Newsom discusses a proposal to eliminate the state sales tax on tampons and diapers during a news conference in Sacramento on May 7, 2019.

Rich Pedroncelli/Associated Press

Ortega said that while funding for diapers saw bipartisan support last year, she’s hopeful that rising attention on the issue will help the initiative make its way through to the final state budget.

The National Diaper Bank Network, which coordinates with local centers collecting and distributing free diapers, reported that for several years beginning in 2010, about 1 in 3 families in the country reported “diaper need,” which the network defines as being unable to afford enough diapers to change at healthy intervals.

By 2023, the network reported that diaper need had risen, affecting 47% of U.S. families. The report also said that diaper need “intersects with food insecurity” and forces families to cut back on other expenses, including entertainment, food and utilities.

Ortega said that the focus on diapers in seeking to help struggling families comes from her own experience of becoming a single mother at 21. She said that diapers — and the cost associated — are on the minds of families as soon as a child is born.

Newsom’s plan wouldn’t immediately provide diapers to every newborn born in California. The initiative would aim to roll out diaper distribution for 25% of all newborns in California during the upcoming fiscal year and increase to 50% of all newborns by the next year, according to documents provided by the state Department of Finance.

The proposal pointed to the benefits of some regions’ diaper banks but said that the initiative would fill in “uneven coverage across all counties and regions in the state.”

“No consistent, reliable, low- or no-cost diaper supplier is broadly available for California,” the document says.

In 2017, then-Gov. Jerry Brown signed a law by then-Assembly Member Lorena Gonzalez that subsidized diapers for parents of young kids who participated in the CalWorks Welfare-to-Work and Cal-Learn programs. Two years later, Newsom included language to repeal sales taxes on diapers and menstrual products in a revised budget plan.

California’s diaper banks lost out on additional funding in 2023, after Newsom vetoed a bill to expand the state’s distribution of diapers and baby wipes.

“The current diaper bank effort was established via the Budget Act of 2021, serving twenty counties throughout California and distributing over one-hundred million diapers to over one million low-income households since its inception,” Newsom wrote in a veto message. The governor cited fiscal uncertainty when rejecting the bill.

Reach Molly Burke (she/her): [email protected]; Bluesky: