House Dems Revive Bills Aimed at Shoring Up Child Care System

WASHINGTON — House Democrats on Wednesday reintroduced two bills intended to give a massive boost to the nation’s struggling child care facilities and educators while also lowering the crippling cost of care that’s forced many U.S. families into debt, and some even into bankruptcy.

The first of the bills, the Child Care Infrastructure Act, would invest up to $10 billion over five years in early child care and learning facilities.

The lion’s share of the money would be awarded to states as grants for the construction of new child care facilities or the renovation of existing facilities.

Between 10% and $15% of the fund would be used to award grants of up to $10 million to organizations that have “demonstrated experience” in developing or financing early care and learning facilities.

Finally, it would direct the U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services to conduct an audit of early child care and learning facilities across the country to get a better handle on the sector’s needs and a better sense of where federal assistance has fallen short in the past.

The second bill, the Child Care Workforce Development Act, would provide up to $4,000 in annual support to individuals pursuing an associates’s degree or a certificate in early childhood education.

The bill would also authorize HHS to administer a student loan repayment program, repaying up to $6,000 annually for five years for educators working for providers receiving Child Care and Development Block Grant funding.

“If you’re a parent or educator or business owner, you know how broken our child care system is,” said House Democratic Whip Katherine Clark, D-Mass., during a briefing with reporters on Capitol Hill.

“Child care is too expensive and often too hard to find, and our educators in the early child care space are overworked and underpaid,” Clark continued. “Four in 19 parents have been forced to take on debt just to pay for their child care, and a third of all children don’t have access to any formal early child care at all.

“All of this is a drag on the quality of our children’s education, the financial security of working families and the strength of our entire economy — to the tune of $122 billion a year in lost earnings, productivity and tax revenue,” she said.

Clark said each of the provisions in the bills is just plain common sense. She also said it flies in the face of Project 2025, which she and other Democrats dismiss as an extreme playbook for a second Trump term in the White House.

“MAGA Republicans want to make child care even more expensive and even harder to find by eliminating the federal Head Start program, privatizing education spending, and eliminating the federal Department of Education,” she said.

“We’re offering an alternative in which students don’t get the bare minimum, they get the best; an alternative where parents don’t just get by, they get ahead; and a situation where early childhood educators are not taken for granted — they’ll be paid and honored like the essential workers they are,” Clark said.

“What we’re proposing will help ensure that our businesses thrive and the economy soars,” she added.

The bills are co-led by Reps. Suzanne Bonamici, D-Ore., Jimmy Gomez, D-Calif., Jennifer McClellan, D-Va., Brittany Pettersen, D-Colo., and Jill Tokuda, D-Hawaii.

Gomez, one of the founders of the House Dads Caucus and the father of a toddler, said he would do anything for his son, “and I think most parents feel that way.”

“But across the country, child care costs way too much,” he said.

According to Gomez, on average, parents with children spend 25% of their income on child care.

“If you think that’s not a big deal, consider that these same families are also spending about 30% of their incomes on housing,” he said.

The situation, he said, means many families are faced with hard choices, like foregoing saving for their child’s future college education, pulling money out of a 401K, or even having one parent step out of the workforce to stay home with their child.

“Former Treasury Secretary Jack Lew has said there are two things that are consistently bringing down the growth of the nation’s GDP; the cost of housing was one, the cost of child care was the other,” Gomez said.

“If we want to uplift families and tackle and lower costs for families, doing something about the high cost of child care is the best way to do it right now,” he said.

Tokuda, the mother of teenage boys, also came armed with sobering statistics, noting that at present, 51% of Americans live in an area that is a child care desert.

“The percentage rises to 68% in Hawaii, 60% in Washington state, 53% in Massachusetts and 51% in Colorado,” Tokuda said. “Even in Virginia, which does relatively well in this regard, the percentage of people living in a child care desert is 47%, and the numbers are even worse when you consider the actual populations impacted by a lack of child care.

“For families of color, moms of color like myself, and those living in rural America or low income neighborhoods, there is literally just one open seat for 60 eligible children, and external impacts have worsened already dire situations,” she said.

Politics was one of the external threats Tokuda mentioned. Another was natural disasters — “something people don’t often think about, but which are devastating to child care,” she said.

When wildfires destroyed Lahaina, Hawaii, in August 2023, killing 102 people, the community also lost six preschool centers, two infant toddler centers and one family child care home. 

“Those numbers may not seem big to you, but that was a permanent loss of at least 272 seats for families now displaced across our islands, our state and even the continent,” Tokuda said.

“Each of those 272 seats once enabled a family member to work, and gave a child hope for a better beginning that will never come back. That’s the kind of impact we see with disasters across the country,” she said.

“And while we’re talking about external impacts, let us not ignore the very real and significant threat of Project 2025, because if it’s ever enacted, and we see the elimination of Head Start, that would mean that over 833,000 children would be denied access to nurturing learning environments, the greatest equalizer possible when it comes to giving them a chance for a better future,” she continued.

“Without a caring Congress … we face an all but certain future where programs that are already short of staffing and short of seats will be forced to cut back even further,” Tokuda said. “We face a future where our families are increasingly financially strained, can’t put food on the table and educate their child at the same time, and where how much their parents make and where they live determines whether or not they will be ready for kindergarten.

“That’s not the future I want for our children. We can and must do better,” she said.

Mention of Project 2025 inevitably led to a question from a reporter about Republican Vice President nominee Ohio Sen. JD Vance and his recent suggestion that “one of the ways that you might be able to relieve a little bit of pressure on people who are paying so much for daycare is, maybe grandma or grandpa wants to help out a little bit more, or maybe there’s an aunt or uncle that wants to help out a little bit more.”

Clark provided an answer.

“You know, families are doing the most that they can, and what JD Vance fails to recognize are the issues that families care about, the issues that they’re talking about around their kitchen tables, and the issues that keep them up at night,” she said.

“We don’t trust JD Vance to order donuts,” she continued, referencing a disastrous, impromptu campaign stop Vance made to Holt’s Sweet Shop in Valdosta, Georgia, that later became an internet meme. “We certainly don’t trust him to take seriously the need to reduce child care costs.

“He is busy spreading misinformation and lies about what is at stake for this country, looking for ways to divide us, and the American people are looking at the chaos and the extremism that [former President] Donald Trump and JD Vance promote and say, ‘Where do we fit into this picture?’

“This is an issue fundamentally about economic opportunity, coupled with giving our children the very best start. And there is a critical role for the government to play here,” Clark said. “We invest, on average, $500 a year in public dollars into a toddler’s care; other countries, including but not exclusively other wealthy countries, invest, on average, $14,000 a year. There is a gap here, and it is working families around this country who are being asked to fill it.”

Dan can be reached at [email protected] and @DanMcCue