John,

When families can access stable, quality, and affordable child care, parents and other caregivers can successfully participate in the workforce and children can receive nurturing early learning experiences which support their brain development and learning.

About 12.3 million children in the U.S. have working parents, but there’s only about 8.7 million licensed child care slots available -- a potential gap of about 3.6 million children without options for care.¹

Earlier this year, President Biden released a budget proposal that would expand affordable child care for 16 million children, investing $600 billion over a decade, plus a proposal for state-federal partnerships to provide universal free pre-school, including $13.1 billion in funding for Head Start.

Unfortunately, Speaker McCarthy and his slim House majority are going in the opposite direction -- proposing harsh cuts below this year’s already inadequate funding.

Click here to send a message to your members of Congress demanding investments, not cuts, so families nationwide can secure quality, affordable child care.

In the absence of congressional action, President Biden has signed an Executive Order -- with more than 50 directives -- to cabinet-level agencies, telling them to expand access to qualified, affordable care and support services for children, families, and caregivers, and to expand home and community-based care for older people and people with disabilities.²

Having access to stable, quality child care allows parents to work, improves social skills, and bolsters education outcomes. Despite all this, the United States lags far behind other industrial countries when it comes to investments in child care.³

While the administration is doing all it can to support working families through executive action, the president needs Congress to approve expanded funding so that working families with modest incomes can afford quality child care.

Among other things, President Biden’s Executive Order would:

• Direct federal agencies to identify which of their grant programs can offer child care for individuals working on federal jobs and require companies who seek federal contracts with the government to expand child care access for their workers.

• Directs the Office of Personnel Management to review child care subsidy policies and consider setting standards on how and when federal agencies supply child care subsidies to federal employees.

• Direct the Department of Health and Human Services to increase the pay and benefits of Head Start teachers and staff.

We’re grateful to President Biden and Vice President Harris for this bold move. Now it’s up to Congress to fund such improvements for all qualifying families, and to reject proposals to cut domestic programs including child care. Send a direct message to Congress today, demanding historic investments in child care and strong opposition to cuts.

The COVID-19 pandemic not only upended our economy and health care system, but it exposed the structural problems in our child care system as well. Between December 2019 and March 2021, more than 8,000 child care centers and almost 7,000 licensed home-based child care providers closed across 37 states.⁴ Each month from January to October 2022, more than 75% of parents struggled to find care for their children (in March of 2022, alone, that number was 91%).⁵

We need Congress to follow President Biden’s bold leadership and pass sweeping historic investments in child care and early learning. Young people are the future of our society and if we don’t make up for lost ground, societal, racial and income gaps are only going to increase.

Thank you for all you do to support the most vulnerable in our society,

Deborah Weinstein
Executive Director, Coalition on Human Needs

¹ Catalyzing Growth: Using Data to Change Child Care
² FACT SHEET: Biden-⁠Harris Administration Announces Most Sweeping Set of Executive Actions to Improve Care in History
³ Why child care in the U.S. lags behind much of the world
⁴ Demanding Change: Repairing our Child Care System
⁵ OVERDUE: A NEW CHILD CARE SYSTEM THAT SUPPORTS CHILDREN, FAMILIES & PROVIDERS