A year after a presidential election in which child care policy took center stage, Democrats have introduced a bill they say would improve access to high-quality child care by lowering costs for working families and investing in professional caregivers.
Led by Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) and Rep. Bobby Scott (D-VA), the Child Care for Working Families Act is co-sponsored by more than half of Senate Democrats. In a press conference, co-sponsors painted the proposal as a fitting first act of the Democrats’ “Better Deal” platform and a bold bid to modernize policies put in place when families were less reliant on paid care to make their lives work.
“If we want parents to work, if we want children to have a better future, if we want strong and stable families, we must ensure that all families have access to quality early learning opportunities,” said Scott. “Quality child care is a national priority.”
According to a fact sheet, the bill would broadly:
- Ensure no family earning 150 percent of state median income or lower would pay more than 7 percent of household income on child care
- Support universal access to high-quality pre-school programs for all 3- and 4-year-olds and increase funding for Head Start so all providers can offer full-day and full-year pre-K
- Improve compensation and training for the child care workforce
Tackling America’s Care Crisis
To put the proposal in the context of America’s child care crisis, Sen. Minority Leader Chuck Schumer cited Care.com’s research on child care costs and affordability. Our most recent Cost of Care survey found nearly one-third of families (32 percent) spend 20 percent or more of their annual household income on child care.
“Child care is a necessity, but it is so expensive that, just like college tuition, it has families up late at night worrying about how are we going to pay for this,” Schumer said, noting most American households with young children do not have a stay-at-home parent. “It forces far too many parents to choose between going to work and paying for child care. … Families should not have to break the bank, sacrifice their careers or forfeit savings for the future so their kids have access to quality learning and care that will put them on the path to success.”
To those points, a few other findings from our 2017 Cost of Care report:
- 20% of parents had fewer children than they would have liked because of the cost of care
- 63% said the cost of care has influenced their career decisions.
- 68% of families say their dependent care tax deduction barely impact their child care costs.
Indeed, child care has become a top household budget item—if not the most expensive item—for many families. It’s on par with housing, transportation and, yes, college tuition, in many cities and states across the nation.
Child care is critical to parents’ ability to go to work. At the same time, earning income is critical to the parents’ ability to pay for care. Sheila Lirio Marcelo, the founder, chairwoman and CEO of Care.com, often describes this as the co-dependency between care and work. To put it another way, care is the work that makes all work possible.
So, when care breaks down, people miss work. They can’t focus. They leave jobs. Our research has found 90% of parents have had to leave work to deal with family care situations. On average they miss 6 or more days per year. This absenteeism adds up to more than a headache — for working parents who depend on their income and the employers who depend on their productivity.
Capping spending at 7 percent of household income — which is the Department of Health and Human Services guideline — would provide major relief to eligible families … majority of whom are spending considerably more than based on our data. We’re written previously on the massive potential ROI of investments in child care.
“There are a lot of things holding working families back, but few are as staggering as the cost of child care,” said Rep. David Cicilline (D-RI). “This problem isn’t going away if left alone. … This act is based on restoring the simple promise that if you work hard and play by the rules, you and your family can get ahead.”
TWO BIG QUESTIONS
By now, you might have a couple of questions about the Child Care for Working Families Act, including:
- How would it work?
- How is this different than the Ivanka Trump-led plan that we all heard about earlier this year?
Here are some basic explanations.
- How Does It Work?
The Democrats’ proposal would increase federal spending on child care, including funding pre-school for low- and moderate-income families. Currently, families must have income less than 85 percent of state median income to qualify for assistance under the Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG); by expanding the income limit to 150 percent of state median income, millions more families qualify.
The investments in child care centers would also create new regulations intended to increase pay for child care workers. Improving training of child care workers is another tenant of the proposal.
Investing in workforce training and compensation for child care workers could have dual outcomes of improving quality of care and increasing the supply of caregivers to match rising demand. A critical portion of brain development occurs during ages 0-4, and access to quality child care and early childhood education has been linked to positive long-term outcomes such as higher educational attainment, higher lifetime earnings and better healthcare outcomes.
And yet, despite its importance to children and families, our systemic de-valuing of care work has shrunken the talent pool as caregiving is not seen as a respected career path. In fact, we’re facing a dramatic caregiver shortage.
A new report by the Center for American Progress found that about half of Americans live in areas CAP and Child Care Aware describe as “child care deserts.” This term describes census tracts with limited or no access to quality child care; often these are areas where the population of children under age 5 outnumbers the slots at licensed child care facilities by a 3-to-1 ratio or greater. Lack of access to quality care doesn’t serve parents, who rely on care to get to work and it doesn’t serve children, who rely on quality care for critical brain development.
“This is the right thing to do for the child, the right thing to do for their parents,” said Sen. Bob Casey (D-PA), one of the bill’s co-sponsors. “It’s the right thing to do to continue to raise wages, build the middle class for the parent but also for the child of the future.”
- How is the Child Care for Working Families Act different than the Trump proposals?
The Democrats’ plan is a fundamentally different approach than what has been favored by Republicans. Where the Child care for Working Families Act would invest additional spending in improving cost, quality and availability of child care for low- and moderate-income families, the Trump proposals have been built around a tax overhaul – specifically, an expanded child care tax credit.
One estimate claimed 24.2 million children would be eligible to receive child care assistance under the Democrats’ bill, up from 1.8 million currently. Murray and her co-sponsors described the bill as the right thing for families and the economy in the near-term and a long-term “smart investment in our children and their future.”
The Democrats plan could cost as much as $60 billion annually, according to estimates. Expansions of federal programs, like CCDBG, would be funded by turning child care into an entitlement program, like Medicare, though it’s unclear where the money would come from.
Throughout the year, First Daughter Ivanka Trump has pushed for child care to be included in Republicans’ tax reform plans. Her most recent pitches, according to reports, have been to double the child care tax credit from $1,000 to at least $2,000 annually.
Previously, Ivanka Trump had met with Republicans around a so-called “$500 billion child care plan” that was thought to be similar to the President’s campaign proposal for a child care tax deduction that would allow individuals who earn less than $250,000 a year (or couples who earn less than $500,000) to deduct the average cost of child care in their state from their income taxes.
Critics of Trump’s tax deduction proposal, including Care.com CEO Sheila Lirio Marcelo, have charged that the largest beneficiaries would be affluent families rather than those who need it the most. “It actually doesn’t help make child care more affordable for the vast majority of working families,” Marcelo said in an interview with Bloomberg.
Back when he was on the campaign trail, President Trump’s proposal also called for the creation of dependent care savings plans and expansion of the earned income tax credit to provide a child care rebate for lower-income families without income tax liability. It’s unclear if those initiatives will remain a part of a new Trump plan.
Plenty of questions remain about the Child Care for Working Families Act – and for child care policy in general.
One question would be whether families who employ nannies or utilize in-home family day care could expect to see any relief from the high cost of care. The average weekly rate for family day care was $200 and for a nanny was $565 in 2016, according to our latest Cost of Care report.
Another question is viability. Vox, for example, described the Child Care for Working Families Act as “dead on arrival in a Republican Congress,” arguing that Republican lawmakers would likely reject the expansion in government spending.
In any event, child care continues to be a part of the national conversation. How and whether it becomes a priority remains to be seen.
