As a mom and policymaker, I often speak with parents and child care providers in Oregon about the struggles they face.

For families, the outrageous costs of quality child care place an inordinate burden on parents, most often on women. For providers, narrow margins and complexities of the pandemic pushed many to close, driving up demand to unsustainable levels and leaving many parents without adequate care opportunities.

Child care is essential for working families and for the economy, and it's an investment in our future. Providers and parents need solutions for fair compensation for child care workers without pricing potential families out of the market.

How do we build a system that works for both providers and families? Investment.

I advocated for funds from the American Rescue Plan to be allocated for child care — and heard from Oregonians about how much this helped their families.

Together, we secured $39 billion in funding for child care — with more than $400 million of that going to support Oregonians.

I'm proud that this historic investment helped families, educators, and providers. It came at a time of unprecedented need as we faced the COVID-19 pandemic, and it allowed providers to keep operating and more families to access the care they needed. But we can't lose momentum. Much of this funding runs out at the end of September, and we still must do much more to solve the crisis of affordable child care. I'm working to secure additional resources dedicated to reducing costs for families and to increasing wages for the hard-working providers.

Thank you for standing with me and for families nationwide,

Suzanne