John,
Even as work in Congress has ground to a halt amidst the Republican shutdown, states are showing how they can act to lower costs for working families.
New Mexico just became the first state in the nation to guarantee universal child care, saving families an average of $12,000 per child per year.[1]
Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham made it clear: “Child care is essential to family stability, workforce participation, and New Mexico’s future prosperity.” She’s right. This is about justice, opportunity, and freedom. Every parent deserves the peace of mind that their child is safe, cared for, and learning.
At its core, universal child care is an economic issue. Affordable care helps parents, especially mothers, stay in the workforce. It reduces poverty, closes gender and racial wage gaps, and strengthens entire communities. Child care workers, mostly women of color, finally get paid fairly for essential labor that has been undervalued for decades.
So why isn’t this the reality everywhere? Because billion-dollar corporations have hoarded wealth while families struggle. CEOs spend billions on stock buybacks and executive bonuses, but fight tooth-and-nail against paying their fair share to fund public goods like child care.
It’s time to demand that governors across the country follow New Mexico’s lead and make corporations finally pay their fair share to fund universal child care. Send a message to your governor today.
Universal child care is infrastructure, just like roads and bridges. It allows parents to work, children to thrive, and economies to grow. Yet, for too long, politicians have handed out tax breaks to billionaires while ignoring families’ crushing child-care costs.
The truth is, we can afford this without cutting a single penny from schools, healthcare, or any other public services―if corporations are finally forced to stop dodging taxes. Corporate tax avoidance and runaway executive pay have gotten so extreme that many of America’s biggest companies now spend more enriching their top executives than they contribute in federal income taxes.[2]
Ensuring affordable, quality child care is available to every family isn’t a radical idea. It’s already working abroad in places like Germany and Canada, where universal child care strengthens families and economies. And now, with New Mexico leading, we have a blueprint here at home that will save parents from having to pay as much as a mortgage just to afford care.
But the idea won’t spread on its own. We need people in every state demanding that governors put families before corporations. Universal child care must be a right, not a privilege.
Join us in telling America’s governors that it’s time to guarantee universal child care funded by taxing corporations.
Together, we can make child care a universal right.
David Kass
Executive Director
Americans for Tax Fairness Action Fund
[1] New Mexico to become the first state to offer universal child care
[2] More for Them, Less for US: Corporations That Pay Their Executives More Than Uncle Sam
