Kaine, Britt introduce child care proposal

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Today, U.S. Senator Tim Kaine (D-VA), a member of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee, and Katie Britt (R-AL), introduced the Child Care Availability and Affordability Act and the Child Care Workforce Act—two pieces of legislation that together form a bold bipartisan proposal to make child care more affordable and accessible by strengthening existing tax credits to lower child care costs and increase the supply of child care providers.

“I’ve heard from Virginians in every corner of the Commonwealth about how difficult it is to find affordable child care, and how low wages are driving dedicated child care workers out of a field they love,” said Kaine. “This crisis is holding our families, workers, and economy back, and I’m proud to be introducing a bold bipartisan proposal to tackle it head on.”

“Accessing and affording childcare is a costly challenge all too familiar to families across Alabama and our entire nation. This growing crisis has resulted in more and more parents, especially mothers, being forced to leave the workforce. I’m proud to join Senator Kaine in leading this bipartisan legislation to put parents back in the driver’s seat by empowering and equipping hardworking Americans to determine the best path for their family,” said Britt. “Our common ground solutions will help strengthen America’s labor force participation, fueling local Main Street small businesses and growing the economy.”

The worsening child care crisis is holding families, child care workers, businesses, and our entire economy back. Across the country, too many families cannot find—or afford—the high-quality child care they need so parents can go to work and children can thrive. Over the last three decades, the cost of child care has increased by 220%, forcing families—and mothers, in particular—to make impossible choices. More than half of all families live in child care deserts. Meanwhile, child care workers are struggling to make ends meet on the poverty-level wages they are paid and child care providers are struggling to simply stay afloat. The crisis—which was exacerbated by the pandemic—is costing our economy dearly, to the tune of $122 billion in economic losses each year.

Specifically, the Child Care Availability and Affordability Act would make child care more affordable by:

• Increasing the size of the Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit (CDCTC) and making it refundable, allowing lower income working families with out-of-pocket child care expenses to benefit from the credit for the first time. The proposal substantially expands the maximum CDCTC to $2,500 for families with one child and $4,000 for families with two or more children.
• Strengthening the Dependent Care Assistance Program (DCAP) to allow families to deduct 50% more in expenses (up to $7,500).
• Allowing eligible families to benefit from both the DCAP and the CDCTC when their child care expenses exceed the DCAP threshold. This will have big benefits for middle income families who currently do not access the CDCTC but have particularly high child care costs.
• Radically bolstering the underutilized Employer-Provided Child Care Tax Credit—commonly referred to as 45F—to encourage businesses to provide child care to their employees. The Kaine-Britt plan would increase the maximum credit from $150,000 to $500,000, and the percentage of expenses covered from 25% to 50%. The legislation also includes a larger incentive for small businesses—a maximum credit of $600,000—and allows for joint applications for groups of small businesses who want to pool resources.

Because many child care providers are forced out of the industry by low wages—which makes it even harder for families to find affordable child care—the Child Care Workforce Act would make it easier to access child care, by establishing a competitive grant program for states, localities, Tribes, and Tribal organizations that are interested in adopting or expanding pay supplement programs for child care workers to increase supply and reduce turnover. Within that program:

• Grantees would provide supplements, paid out at least quarterly, directly to both home-based and center-based licensed child care providers licensed by the state.
• There would be a required evaluation of impacts on turnover, quality of child care, availability of affordable childcare, and alleviating the financial burden on child care providers. Model programs exist in Virginia, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Maine, and the District of Columbia, with evaluations demonstrating large effects on the supply of workers, educator turnover, and worker well-being and satisfaction.

The proposal contains two bills because one proposes changes to existing tax credits, which best fits within the Senate Finance Committee’s jurisdiction, and the other authorizes a new pilot program, which fits the jurisdiction of the Senate HELP Committee.

“Inadequate compensation is the most pressing issue in early childhood education— impacting educators, children, families, businesses, and the economy,” said Michelle Kang, CEO of the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC). “NAEYC is pleased to endorse the Child Care Workforce Act, which provides bipartisan support for a federal role in increasing wages for educators working in child care centers and family child care homes. We urge Congress to continue working together towards long-term solutions that increase compensation and supply, and to prioritize sustainable and substantial direct investments in early childhood education and educators.”

“The Bipartisan Kaine-Britt Child Care Proposal is an innovative package that strives to help address the unique challenges facing working parents, employers, and child care providers. By updating our tax code and taking additional measures to increase child care supply, this plan will provide meaningful support to hundreds of thousands of working families across the country,” said First Five Years Fund Executive Director Sarah Rittling. “We are so grateful for the bipartisan leadership of Senators Kaine and Britt for reaching across the aisle to find common sense solutions for working families, and we look forward to working with them to get this package over the finish line.”

“We applaud the bipartisan leadership of Sens. Kaine (D-VA) and Britt (R-AL) in their joint efforts to identify innovative and impactful policy solutions that will increase access to quality child care for America’s working families,” says Michele Stockwell, President of BPC Action. “Choosing where and with whom to leave your child while you are at work is among the most personal choices a parent can make and one that has resulted in parents opting to leave the workforce because of lack of access to quality care.”

Kaine has long been pushing to expand access to child care. Last fall, he introduced the Child Care Stabilization Act to expand vital child care funding to help providers keep their doors open, and serves as a leader of the Child Care for Working Families Act to expand access to child care, raise wages for providers, and lower costs for families by ensuring no family pays more than 7% of their income on child care. He has also introduced bipartisan legislation to develop, administer, and evaluate early childhood education apprenticeships.

The Child Care Availability and Affordability Act is endorsed by A+ Education Partnership, Alabama Arise, Alabama School Readiness Alliance, American Federation of Teachers (AFT), Bipartisan Policy Center Action (BPCA), Business Council of Alabama, Care.com, Chamber of Progress, Chamber RVA, Child Care Aware of America (CCAoA), Child Care Aware of Virginia , Children’s Institute, Early Care & Education Consortium (ECEC), Educare Learning Network, First Five Years Fund (FFYF), Gingerbread Kids Academy, Hampton Roads Chamber, Healthy Kids AL, KinderCare Learning Companies, Manufacture Alabama, Metrix IQ, Mobile Area Education Foundation, National Association of Women Business Owners (NAWBO), National Child Care Association (NCCA), Northern Virginia Chamber of Commerce (NVC), Save the Children, Small Business Majority, Start Early, Third Way, U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Virginia Chamber of Commerce, Virginia Early Childhood Foundation (VECF), VOICES for Alabama’s Children and Voices for Virginia’s Kids. In addition to those groups, the Child Care Workforce Act is endorsed by the National Association for Family Child Care (NAFCC), National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC), and ZERO TO THREE.

Full text of the Child Care Availability and Affordability Act and the Child Care Workforce Act are available here and here, respectively.