The Downtown Children's Center in St. Louis. (Photo by Rebecca Rivas/Missouri Independent.) 

WASHINGTON — Republicans and Democrats on a U.S. House Education and Workforce subcommittee agreed at a Tuesday hearing that child care affordability was a problem, but proposed different solutions.

While Republicans touted a longstanding block grant and called for choice and flexibility in the child care system, Democrats pushed for more federal investments, including legislative efforts that would cap the cost of child care.

For just one child, families spend between 8.9% and 16% of the median family income on full-day care, according to Department of Labor data from 2022.

“Child care is essential to helping working parents thrive and our local economies grow,” Rep. Kevin Kiley, chair of the U.S. House Subcommittee on Early Childhood, Elementary and Secondary Education, said at the panel’s hearing.

“At the same time, child care can be exceedingly expensive — the cost is only climbing,” said the California Republican, whose panel is part of the House Committee on Education and Workforce.

Kiley said the Child Care and Development Block Grant “exists to help working families access affordable child care, giving them the freedom to remain in the workforce and increase their economic opportunity, one solution to the problem of child care affordability and access.”

The grant, funded at roughly $8.75 billion in fiscal 2024, goes to states, tribes and territories to help low-income working families access child care.

Kiley noted that “choice” is a program pillar, “giving parents the freedom to make both lifestyle and economic decisions that best meet their individual family’s needs.”

Caitlin Codella Low, managing director of human capital at the Bipartisan Policy Center, a Washington, D.C., think tank, noted that annually, “the average cost of child care exceeds $10,000 per child, and it’s more than public college tuition in most states, more than the cost of rent in all 50.”

“Employers are paying the price — child care challenges lead to higher absenteeism, lower retention and difficulty recruiting talent,” she added.

Local programs

Todd Barton, the mayor of Crawfordsville, Indiana, highlighted his community’s efforts in addressing a shortage of affordable, high-quality child care.

Barton said that shortage has “deeply affected” the community’s workforce and economic potential.

Some of those efforts include the formation of a child care task force that evolved into an early childhood coalition, a full-day summer program for school-aged children and an early learning center that Barton said has already increased the community’s child care capacity by more than 30%.

Barton said that “to sustain this scale of work, we need strong federal support,” noting that “programs like the Child Care (and) Development Block Grant and Employer-Provided Child Care Credit are essential tools that we need at our disposal.”

Dems blast cuts

Rep. Suzanne Bonamici, ranking member of the subcommittee, said that “without bold and sustained federal investment, child care costs will continue to rise and the workforce that provides the care will continue to struggle.”

The Oregon Democrat blasted the proposed cuts to Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, as part of congressional Republicans’ reconciliation package.

Bonamici described Medicaid and SNAP as “programs that support children, families, child care centers and the child care workforce.”

She also highlighted the Child Care for Working Families Act, which Virginia’s Rep. Bobby Scott, ranking member of the full committee, and Sen. Patty Murray of Washington state, reintroduced in their respective chambers during the previous session of Congress.

Bonamici said the bill “would cap the cost of child care at 7% of income, making it affordable for all parents and also provide historic investments in the child care workforce, including higher pay, better benefits and improved training opportunities.”

Meanwhile, the Trump administration has made sweeping cuts within the Department of Health and Human Services’ Administration for Children and Families.

The administration reportedly closed down at least five Office of Head Start regional offices earlier this year.

Ruth Friedman, a senior fellow at The Century Foundation, a progressive think tank, said “we are already seeing very bad impacts from those closings.”

She added that “local programs are not getting the support and the answers they need, grants are coming slowly to them, which is very, very problematic in Head Start, because they really work month-to-month with their budget and lost an enormous amount of expertise on the local needs those programs serve.”

Rep. Summer Lee also called for more federal investment in child care, saying “existing programs are, quite frankly, not cutting it.”

“We know that for every dollar we invest in early childhood education, we save substantially more on services that children won’t need as they grow up,” the Pennsylvania Democrat said.

She called for passage of the Scott-Murray bill, as well as a measure that would guarantee universal child care access.

“This is why we need to pass the Democrats’ legislation like the Child Care for Every Community Act and Child Care for Working Families Act, which I’m looking forward to introducing with Ranking Member Scott in the near future.” 

U.S. Rep. Derrick Van Orden tours Gilbertson's Dairy in Dunn County. (Henry Redman | Wisconsin Examiner)

When he was campaigning for Congress in western Wisconsin, Republican U.S. Rep. Derrick Van Orden talked about growing up “in abject rural poverty,” raised by a single mom who relied on food stamps. As a result, he has said, he would never go along with cuts to food assistance. 

“He sat down in my office when he first got elected and promised me he wouldn’t ever vote against SNAP because he grew up on it, supposedly,” Democratic U.S. Rep. Mark Pocan said in a phone interview as he was on his way home to Wisconsin from Washington this week.

But as Henry Redman reported, Van Orden voted for the Republican budget blueprint, which proposes more than $200 billion in cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) in order to make room for tax cuts for the very wealthy.

Still, after that vote, Van Orden issued a public statement warning against reckless cuts to SNAP that place “disproportionate burdens on rural states, where food insecurity is often more widespread,” and saying it is unfair to build a budget “on the backs of some of our most vulnerable populations, including hungry children. Period.”

Van Orden sits on the House Agriculture Committee, which was tasked with drawing up a specific plan to cut $230 billion from food assistance to pay for tax cuts. Van Orden reportedly balked at a cost-sharing plan that shifted 25% of the cost of the program to states, saying it was unfair to Wisconsin.

But then, on Wednesday night, Van Orden voted yes as the committee passed an unprecedented cut in federal funding for SNAP on a 29-25 vote.

Van Orden took credit for the plan, which ties cuts to state error rates in determining eligibility and benefit amounts for food assistance. According to WisPolitics, he declared at a House Ag Committee markup that “states are going to have to accept the fact that if they are not administering this program efficiently, that they’re going to have to pay a portion of the program that is equitable, and it makes sense and it is scaled.” 

But states, including Wisconsin, don’t have money to make up the gap as the federal government, for the first time ever, withdraws hundreds of millions of dollars for nutrition assistance. Instead, they will reduce coverage, kick people off the program and hunger will increase. The ripple effects include a loss of about $30 billion for farmers who supply food for the program, Democrats on the Ag Committee report, and damage to the broader economy, since every $1 in SNAP benefits generates about $1.50 in economic activity. Grocery stores, food manufacturers rural communities will be hit particularly hard. 

Wisconsin will start out with a bill for 5% of the costs of the program in Fiscal Year 2028, according to a bill explanation from the Agriculture Committee. But as error rates vary, that number shifts sharply upward — to 15% when the error rate goes from the current 5% to 6%, to 20% if we exceed an 8% error rate, and so on.  

And there are other cuts in the bill, Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minnesota) points out, including stricter eligibility limits, work requirements that cannot be waived in times of economic hardship and high unemployment, and reductions in benefits that come from eliminating deductions for utility costs. 

More than 900,000 children, adults, and seniors count on Wisconsin’s SNAP program, known as FoodShare, according to an analysis of state health department data by Kids Forward. The same analysis found that covering the costs of just 10% of SNAP benefits would cost Wisconsin $136 million. 

Alaska and Texas have higher error rates than Wisconsin, and so they — and their hungry kids — are stuck with the biggest cuts. Even if you accept that that is somehow just, the people who are going to pay for this bill in all the states, including ours, are, as Van Orden himself put it, “the most vulnerable populations, including hungry children. Period.”

“He says one thing and does another,” Pocan says of Van Orden’s flip-flopping on SNAP. “He’s gone totally Washington.”

That’s too bad for the people left behind in rural Wisconsin, who will take the brunt of these unnecessary cuts.