Joe Biden knows that millions of Americans cannot access the child care that they need. This isn’t right, and Biden has been working to fix it from the start of his presidency.
How?
The American Rescue Plan (2021) helped lower childcare costs for millions of families
Since day one of the Administration, President Biden and Vice President Harris have been committed to addressing the structural challenges within the child care ecosystem, including low wages for workers, high costs for families, and inadequate supply of high-quality care. The President’s American Rescue Plan (ARP) not only helped keep over 225,000 child care providers open, but had a significant impact on the economy. According to the President’s Council of Economic Advisers, that investment alone brought hundreds of thousands of women with young children into the workforce, lowered child care costs per child by $1,250, and increased wages for child care workers by 10%.
This program had an estimated benefit-cost ratio of about 2:1. Not too shabby!
As pandemic recovery programs wound down, in March 2023 Biden made a new move to expand access to child care.
President Joe Biden on Tuesday signed an executive order in the Rose Garden that issues more than 50 directives across nearly every Cabinet-level agency in an effort to expand access to long-term care and child care.
Biden, flanked by child care and family care advocates and providers, called the executive order “the most comprehensive set of actions any administration has taken to date to increase access to high-quality child care and long-term care and support for the caregivers.”
The president said the order “doesn’t require any new spending” and that it will ensure “taxpayers will get the best value for the investments they’ve already made.”
“In the pandemic, we made it even clearer just how hard it is for millions of working- and middle-class families to provide care for their families,” Biden said. “It’s not just how important the care economy is to the entire economy, it’s when people have to leave the labor force or can’t enter it in the first place because of caregiving responsibility, they can’t fully participate in the economy, and that drags down the whole nation’s productivity and growth overall.”
This action was widely praised by advocates for children and education. Typical was the statement of Michelle Kang, CEO of the National Association for the Education of Young Children.
A day when the White House recognizes the valuable and essential work of early childhood educators is a good day. NAEYC is grateful for this Administration’s efforts to find every opportunity to give the child care crisis the attention it so richly deserves and the solutions it requires — and we look forward to continued work with Congress to make the investments it so urgently needs.
A year later, the White House summarized the results of this executive order across different agencies:
These historic actions include steps to lower child care costs for military families; a proposal to increase pay for Head Start teachers; sample employment agreements to ensure domestic care workers and their employers understand their rights and responsibilities; and a final rule that will lower child care costs for over 100,000 families that rely on federal child care assistance.
This past February, Biden and the Small Business Administration announced new steps to support small child care businesses:
In the coming months, SBA will make available new funding opportunities to support small businesses in the child care sector through SBA’s Women Business Center (WBC) program. WBCs are a part of a national network of entrepreneurship centers designed to assist women in starting and growing small businesses. The additional funds will support the expansion of child care delivery systems, increase child care slots, and improve child care access, affordability, and quality.
[Already,] under the Biden-Harris Administration, SBA lending for child care businesses has increased by more than $200 million and is up nearly 10% compared to the same period in the previous Administration.
And that’s not all. Look at what the Biden budget for next fiscal year envisions:
The Fiscal Year 2025 Budget, released earlier this month, proposes major investments to increase accessibility and reduce child care costs, guaranteeing affordable,high-quality child care from birth until kindergarten, with most families paying no more than $10 a day and the lowest-income families paying nothing at all.
Is there still more work to be done? 100%! Lots more work. But Biden has done so much more than many people guessed could be done. He deserves a lot of credit. AND he deserves to be re-elected.
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These posts are written by Goodnewsroundup (Goodie),
edited by Matilda Briggs, supported by 2thanks and WolverineForTJatAW
and reinforced by several other notable Kossacks!
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