American Notes THE BUDGET

For all the talk of capital-gains tax cuts, millionaire surcharges and a shifting rate bubble, some of the biggest winners of this fall's budget battle were those most in need: the nation's poor children. Topping the list of new benefits for low-income working families: some $4 billion over the next several years for more and better child-care services, a five-year $12.4 billion expansion of the earned-income tax credit, and the $5.2 billion creation of a health-insurance tax credit.

Public health is one of the areas in which Congress has promised to be most generous to children. The law provides that everyone under 19 and living below the poverty line is to be covered under Medicaid by the end of the century. Scholarship funding for the National Health Service Corps, which helps bring medical services to rural families, is to be revived. Child advocates cheered the results. "We've got off on the right track for the '90s," said Sara Rosenbaum of the Children's Defense Fund. But she cautioned, "The question is whether we're going to live up to our commitments." It will take billions of dollars and years of effort to clothe, feed and shelter the nation's poor children properly.