Dear Friend,
Welcome to the first installment of our deep-dive policy newsletters! You’ll see these emails from me every couple of weeks focused on just one policy area, in addition to my recap newsletters. This first one is about affordable and accessible child care – because this is the top concern I hear about when I’m back in San Diego.
Too many families – especially in San Diego – can’t find or afford child care that meets their needs. In San Diego, the average annual cost for child care for only one infant in a licensed center can be more than $19,000 – for two kids, it could cost more than $33,000! That’s so far out of reach for most low- and middle-income families, and that’s if you’re lucky enough to find care in the first place. On top of that, providers who care for our kids often aren’t earning enough to provide care for their own families. That’s why I’ve been working hard in Washington, D.C. to change this.
Most recently, I voted to pass the second and final package of six appropriations bills to fund our government – which included a $1 billion increase for the Child Care and Development Block Grant (our country’s primary child care program) and Head Start, which provides no-cost early learning for low-income families. All of this means that more families will be able to find high-quality child care and early learning options. Kids will get the tools they need to thrive and parents will have peace of mind knowing their children are safe so they can go back to work and focus on growing their careers.
While I’m excited about this funding increase, we’re facing really big challenges in our child care sector – so this won’t be enough. That’s why I’ve been working for months to pass my Child Care Stabilization Act – which would restore pandemic-era child care funding passed through the American Rescue Plan. This funding kept our child care sector from completely collapsing during the pandemic, but it’s still sorely needed. This funding would direct federal dollars into our child care sector and help provide care for about 3 million kids across the country, including 80,000 in California alone.
At the end of the day, as important as these bills are, small and temporary fixes to our child care system aren’t cutting it anymore. We need to ensure every family can get the care they need by making BIG changes – and my Child Care for Every Community Act would do just that. My legislation would guarantee universal access to affordable, high-quality child care for every family in America by creating a federally-funded, locally-run network of child care providers. Based on a sliding scale, lower-income families would be fully subsidized, half of families would pay no more than $10 a day for child care, and all families would pay no more than 7% of their income. It would also pay all providers a living wage.
Every family deserves access to affordable, safe, high-quality child care. But if that doesn’t convince you, investing in child care is also good for our economy. We save $6 for every $1 we invest in quality early childhood programs. By every metric, investing in child care is a good thing, and that’s why I won’t stop fighting for it.
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