Sponsors (5)
The bill creates a federally funded, empowered Children's Commission and requires child impact analyses to center children's needs in federal policymaking, trading modest long‑term taxpayer costs and added agency duties for increased coordination, research, and advocacy for child well‑being—while raising governance, hiring, privacy, and oversight tradeoffs.
Children nationwide gain a dedicated, statutorily authorized federal Children's Commission with powers to study, coordinate, and advocate for child well‑being.
Children (birth through under 18) will be consistently covered across the Act and agencies must prepare 'child impact statements' analyzing direct and indirect effects of laws, policies, regulations, and appropriations on children.
Families, caregivers, and policymakers will get regular research, annual reports, and coordinated information-sharing (including disaggregated data) to better expose disparities and guide targeted programs for at‑risk children.
Taxpayers will fund the Commission at an estimated $60 million over eight years (about $7.5M/year), increasing federal spending.
Requiring child impact statements and obliging agencies to furnish information on request will create additional administrative burden and could slow agency rulemaking, budgeting, and staff work.
Waiving competitive hiring/procurement safeguards, exempting certain statutory limits (e.g., §1013), and allowing hiring outside the competitive service reduces standard civil‑service protections and oversight.
Based on analysis of 8 sections of legislative text.
Establishes a federal Children’s Commission with investigatory, research, and advisory powers, and authorizes $7.5M annually for 2027–2034 to support its work.
Official title: Establish an independent Children's Commission and position of Commissioner, and for other purposes.
Introduced June 11, 2026 by Edward John Markey · Last progress June 11, 2026
Creates a federal Children’s Commission to study, monitor, investigate, and advise on the well‑being and views of children — with special attention to marginalized youth — across Federal, State, Tribal, and local governments. The Commission will be a 15‑member body appointed by the Comptroller General, empowered to collect information from agencies, hold hearings, receive complaints, conduct or fund research, publish reports (including child‑friendly summaries), and advocate for children to Congress and agencies. The bill authorizes $7.5 million per year for fiscal years 2027–2034 to support Commission operations, sets member qualifications, ethics and disclosure rules, creates a Children’s Commissioner position with hiring flexibilities, requires the Commission to study the feasibility of child impact statements, and directs periodic reporting to Congress and public engagement with children and stakeholders.