The Downtown Children’s Center in St. Louis. (Photo by Rebecca Rivas/Missouri Independent.)
Washington – Republicans and Democrats in a sub -committee for training and workers in the US training and workers agreed with a hearing on Tuesday that the affordability of childcare was a problem but had proposed various solutions.
While the Republicans impressed a long -standing block grant and demanded the selection and flexibility in the childcare system, the Democrats urged more federal investments, including legal efforts that would limit the costs of childcare.
For only one child, families spend between 8.9% and 16% of the average family income for all -day care, so that is Department for Labor Department Data from 2022.
“Childcare is important to help working parents, and our local economy is growing,” said Rep. Kevin Kiley, chairman of the US House under committee for early childhood, basic and secondary school formation, at the hearing of the committee.
“At the same time, childcare can be extremely expensive – the costs only increase,” said the California Republican, whose body is part of the House Committee for Education and workforce.
Kiley said that the grant for childcare and development block “exists in order to facilitate working families for affordable childcare, and gives them the freedom to remain in the workforce and their economic opportunities to increase a solution to the problem of affordability and access to childcare”.
The grant that is approximately financed 8.75 billion US dollars In fiscal year 2024, states, tribes and territories are going to support access to childcare working with low -income families.
Kiley noticed that “choice” is a program of program that gives parents freedom to make both lifestyle and economic decisions that best meet the needs of their individual family. “
Caitlin Codella Low, Managing Director of Humanpital in the cross -party policy, a Washington thinking factory, DC, found that “the average costs of childcare exceeds 10,000 US dollars per child every year and in most countries are more than public tuition fees in all 50 -person costs.”
“Employers pay the price – childcare challenges lead to higher absenteeism, lower storage and difficulties in recruiting talents,” she added.
Local programs
Todd Barton, the mayor of Crawfordsville, Indiana, raised the efforts of his community to tackle a lack of affordable, high -quality childcare.
Barton said that the workforce and the economic potential of the community had “deeply influenced”.
Some of these efforts include the formation of a childcare task force that has developed into a coalition for early childhood children, a full-day summer program for children of school age and an early learning center that Barton said that the community’s childcare capacity has already increased by more than 30%.
Barton said that “we maintain these working days, we need a strong support from the federal government” and found that “programs such as childcare block grant and the childcare loans provided by employers are essential instruments that we are available”.
Dems explosion cuts
MP Suzanne Bonamici, a rank member of the subcommittee, said: “Without courageous and persistent federal investments, childcare costs will continue to increase and the workforce that offers will continue to fight.”
The Oregon Democrat has blown up the proposed cuts against Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program or Snap as part of the reconciliation package of the congress republican.
Bonamici described Medicaid and Snap as “programs that support children, families, childcare centers and the workforce for childcare”.
She also emphasized the childcare for work families, which the MP of Virginia, Bobby Scott, a rank member of the full committee, and Senator Patty Murray from Washington State. reintroduced in their respective chambers During the previous meeting of the congress.
Bonamici said that the invoice would “limit the cost of childcare with 7% of the income, which would afford it affordable for all parents and would provide historical investments in the childcare workforce, including a higher salary, better advantages and improved training opportunities.”
In the meantime, the Trump administration has carried out comprehensive cuts within the Ministry of Health and Human Services. Administration for children and families.
According to reports, the administration reported at least five Head Start office Regional offices At the beginning of this year.
Ruth Friedman, Senior Fellow at The Century Foundation, a progressive think tank, said: “We already see very bad effects of these closures.”
In addition, she added that “local programs do not receive the support and the answers they need slowly come to them, which is very, very problematic at Head Start, since their budget really works and meet an enormous amount of specialist knowledge about the local needs of these programs.”
Rep. Summer Lee also called for more federal investments in childcare and said: “To be honest, existing programs are not to shorten them.”
“We know that we invest in early childhood education for every dollar, we save much more for services that children do not need when growing up,” said Pennsylvania’s Democrat.
She called for the passage of the Scott Murray calculation as well as for the farewell a measure This would guarantee universal access to childcare.
“For this reason, we have to adopt the legislation of the Democrats such as childcare for every community act and childcare for work families, which I can imagine in the near future with the ranking member Scott.”
