Urging a Strong Funding Commitment to the Child Care and Development Block Grant Act

Floor Speech

Mr. Speaker, I want to express my strong support of this welcome bipartisan reauthorization of the Child Care and Development Block Grant Act--an act first championed by my friend and mentor Senator Chris Dodd. But I also think we need to go further as an institution to support families with the high costs of this critical care.

We all know that, given the realities of today's workforce, quality child care is both a necessity in today's economy, and very expensive. It is often a family's biggest expense, bigger even than their mortgage. Families living in poverty pay almost a third of their income--30 percent--on this care.

The Child Care and Development block grant--CCBDG for short--is the only federal support available to offset the high costs of child care for low-income families. It helps children in working families have access to the quality care they need to learn and thrive in life later on.

But if anything, we are moving in the wrong direction in terms of covering eligible children. In the poorest families in the United States, only one in six eligible children receives child care assistance. And, at a time when nearly one in five working mothers with very young children are working low-wage jobs, our commitment to these families has dwindled.

Since 2006, over 250,000 eligible children have lost access to CCDBG-funded child care. The monthly average of children receiving this aid has fallen to its lowest levels since 1998. And because of budget cuts, many states have seen waiting lists grow and rates for providers plummet. That means less quality care.

I support the new requirements in this reauthorization--They include conforming to state health and safety standards, unannounced on-site monitoring visits, and criminal background checks for providers. But these requirements will cost money. And according to the states, without additional funding, the number of families who receive this aid could be cut by as much as 20 percent.

Mr. Speaker, time and again families all across this nation have told us that we can make a positive difference for them by facilitating access to quality child care.

Countless educational studies have stressed the importance of good care at an early age for children. And countless economic studies have told us that the return on these sorts of investments, in our kids and our future, are amazing.

So I urge all of my colleagues to support this bipartisan reauthorization today. And I also urge them to match this vote with a strong budgetary commitment to CCDBG, and other critical child care investments, in the future.

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