SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
center for law and social policy
New Report on Pandemic-Era Funding Shows 'Childcare Crisis Is a Policy Choice'
"Childcare is a public good and needs robust federal investment to maintain progress that was made with relief funds and to avoid further crisis," reads an analysis.
Sep 26, 2024
With the last of the federal childcare funding included in coronavirus pandemic relief set to expire at the end of September, two civil society groups on Thursday released an analysis of the "significant benefits" the funding included for families and early childhood educators across the U.S.—showing that the federal government could, and "must," gain control of the nationwide childcare crisis with robust investments.
Published by the National Women's Law Center (NWLC) and the Center for Law and Social Policy (CLASP), Cliff Notes: Key Takeaways From Pandemic-Era Child Care Relief and the Child Care Funding Cliff analyzes the childcare benefits included in the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) of 2021, which provided $24 billion in childcare stabilization grants and $15 billion in supplemental money for the existing Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG)—the latter of which is set to expire September 30.
The funding helped stabilize 220,000 childcare programs across the country, according to the report, assisting centers to pay staff members, rent, and continue providing services to families. A 2022 survey of childcare programs by the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) showed that the funding also allowed 75% of respondents to pay employees sufficiently, with 53% providing bonuses and 38% increasing baseline wages in a notoriously low-paying industry.
When the childcare stabilization grants expired last September, Thursday's study found, it was felt across the country by families and childcare workers alike. Twenty-nine percent of families faced higher tuition due to rising operating costs for providers, and as employees told NAEYC in another survey in February 2024, staff shortages led to increased burnout among early childhood educators.
"Childcare is a public good and needs robust federal investment to maintain progress that was made with relief funds and to
avoid further crisis," reads a fact sheet accompanying the report by NWLC and CLASP.
The $15 billion in supplemental CCDBG funding set to expire at the end of the month allowed states to make "substantial improvements to their childcare assistance policies," which in turn eliminated waiting lists for childcare assistance, expanded eligibility for assistance, lowered or waived copayments for families, and increased payment rates to providers.
Now, said the groups, "the United States can and must make long-term investments in women, children, and families."
Melissa Boteach, vice president of childcare and income security at NWLC, said Congress must pass "$16 billion in emergency relief, alongside long-term investments, so that families and early educators can have the robust, fully funded childcare system that they need and deserve."
The report emphasizes that the U.S. government "has the resources to fulfill this vision," using as an example tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans that were included in former Republican President Donald Trump's 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.
"The soon-to-expire $15 billion ARPA supplemental CCDBG discretionary funding was a drop in the bucket compared to the amount of revenue lost from decades of tax cuts for the wealthy and large corporations," reads the report. "We can't afford to put off investing in early learning and childcare any longer, and we have an imminent opportunity to raise public dollars to support investments in childcare. In 2025, some provisions of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act are scheduled to expire. If we allow the tax cuts for the wealthiest to expire and make additional progressive changes to the tax code, we could raise trillions of dollars in tax revenue that could support investments in women, children, and families."
Increasing the law's federal corporate tax rate from 21% to 28% would raise $1.35 trillion over 10 years, "which could fully fund President [Joe] Biden's childcare proposal twice over and still have money left over," reads the report.
The report makes clear, said Boteach, "that public investment in childcare works, and that our current childcare crisis is a policy choice."
The report was released as U.S. Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) prepared to introduce a bill that would cap childcare costs for families earning under $250,000 per year at $10 per day, modeled on a Canadian initiative. The proposal includes a grant program that would allocate $780 billion over 10 years to fund childcare providers.
"As a father of young kids, I understand how difficult this is for families," Khanna told Time magazine. "Particularly for those who are away from grandparents or uncles or aunts and are working or middle class. But I also think that it is fundamental to giving people a fair shot at the American dream—that the biggest investment we can make is in young children to have a big economic return."
Unless the federal government makes a "significant and sustained" investment in childcare, said Stephanie Schmidt, director of childcare and early education at CLASP, "the challenges and inequities plaguing the childcare sector will worsen and states will backslide on the progress they achieved using the relief funds to make care more affordable and easier to find."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Midterm Mayhem and the Economy for Working People
Our country continues on a trajectory that corrodes its best spiritual and secular values. This occurs while a tiny number of oligarchs manipulate and deceive working people into voting against their own economic interests.
Nov 18, 2022
The midterm elections are about over. The Democrats will retain power in the Senate and the Republicans won the House.
The United States economy is controlled and facilitated by a group of similarly wealthy oligarchs. Their goal is simple--retain as much economic power as possible.
Both parties in the Senate and House dominate the political economy to the virtual exclusion of any alternate party that may or may not express fealty to our economic model. Both parties are driven by enormous contributions primarily from a small coterie of people in the dominant economic class called "oligarchs."
Oligarchs originated in early Greek society, but became associated with immensely wealthy businessmen in Russia.
The United States economy is controlled and facilitated by a group of similarly wealthy oligarchs. Their goal is simple- retain as much economic power as possible. The numbers show they are succeeding in that endeavor and working people are not.
Our political system pays homage to "democracy." It is reminiscent of a response from Mahatma Gandhi, the anti-colonial, spiritual and political leader of India in the early and mid 1900's. When asked by a journalist what he thought of Western Civilization, Mr. Gandhi is said to have replied, " I think it would be a good idea."
This sentiment is applicable to the political system in the United States.
Election Ennui
The relentless barrage of political advertisements are mercifully over for the time being. It was striking how the usual misrepresentations, oversimplifications, and fabrications of past political campaigns were replaced by a cavalcade of blatant lies. They were euphemistically referred to as "misinformation or "disinformation' by the corporate media.
Then Trump
The introduction of Donald Trump into the political system guaranteed that civility, bi-partisanship and impartiality would be reduced to fondly remembered remnants of the past. It is plausible that when these characteristics were ripped, torn and shredded by Mr. Trump, the veneer of free market policies vanished and the underlying dynamics of economic class conflict were exposed.
Working people may now consider what is actually behind the intense, pathological political divisions in the country.
Scapegoating, replete with group hatred, chronic rancor and personal meanness eventually becomes stale and loses credibility.
Moreover, many peer reviewed studies conclude that human beings choose cooperation when social constructs are created. This contradicts claims made by those in Mr. Trump's universe who promote the exact opposite. It escapes these folks that acceptance of others does not necessarily mean agreement. This is Psych. 101.
Perhaps Mr. Trump unwittingly did the country a favor. He exacerbated divisions in the country into unyielding cartoonish, political demarcations. The hyperbole was so extreme that the always present underlying economic forces, largely ignored by the corporate media, are now more recognizable.
The usual scapegoats-racial and ethnic minorities, immigrants, labor unions, women's healthcare, "Big Government" and the LGBT demographic were presented in scurrilous, irrational and relentless torrents. It is reasonable speculation that the threshold of believability was crossed so often by official MAGA sycophants that it was rejected by many voters. The same ones who at one time might have voted for many of Mr. Trump's candidates, did not this time.
Economic Tree
Healthcare, housing, education, food insecurity, the environment, transportation, and technological assistance are essential branches of our economic tree. However, the most important issue in our country is still the basics in the economy.
Evidence of the failures of our economic model substantiates the view that the overwhelming majority of middle-working class and working-class Americans are increasingly strained. These burdens are not new or unique, but reflect a decades long decline.
Consider the dashboard of the following areas:
Unemployment
The Ludwig Institute for Shared Prosperity (LISEP) is a nonprofit organization that reports economic research to understand the economic travails of middle and low income families.
LISEP tracked the percentage of the labor force that does not work at a full-time job, but wants one or does not earn a living wage calculated at $20,000 a year before taxes.
They reported this November that the percentage of functionally unemployed Americans in September was actually 22.3 percent.
Shadow Government Statistics (SGS) is a nonprofit organization that analyzes data from government and private sector reports.
SGS calculated an unemployment rate that included long-term discouraged workers, who were defined out of existence in 1994 by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). This alteration obviously and dramatically lowered the BLS unemployment rate.
SGS included that demographic and reported this November that the unemployment rate in October was actually 24.5 percent.
Underemployment
The Center for Law and Social Policy (CLASP) is a nonprofit organization committed to advancing policy solutions to improve the lives of Americans with low incomes.
CLASP created a measure of underemployment wider in scope than the BLS. It included part-time workers who wanted more work hours, not just those who wanted a full-time job.
They released a report in August 2020 using this more inclusive measure. It showed an underemployment rate of nine point five percent which was double the rate of the BLS measure.
This number rose again in the spring of 2020, due to the crisis in labor markets precipitated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Moreover, these low-wage job sectors disproportionately employed women and minorities.
EMSI/Burning Glass Technologies (now Lightcast) is a company concerned with market analytics. They collaborated with the Strada Institute for the Future of Work, a company that addresses the nature of work and ecosystems.
They released a report in May 2018; It concluded that four in 10 college graduates who were underemployed in their first job could not advance from that job.
Employees who were initially underemployed were five times more likely to remain so after five years than those who were not underemployed in their first job.
Even after 10 years, three-quarters of employees who were underemployed after five years remained underemployed.
This astonishing report presented compelling evidence that the working middle class is also subject to the consequences of our economic model.
Income
Wages and salaries continue to fall behind the inflation rate caused primarily by corporate gouging of prices as proven in a report released this November by the Groundwork Collaborative.
Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed (ALICE) is a nonprofit organization dedicated to improving the struggles of low income households. These households earn above the Federal Poverty Level, but not enough to afford a basic household budget.
ALICE reported in 2018 that 42 percent of American households could not afford the basic necessities of housing, child care, food, transportation, health care, a smartphone or tax payments.
Wealth
Statista is a company that measures corporate and financial data. According to a report released this November, 68 percent of the total wealth in the United States was owned by the top 10 percent of the population. In comparison, the lowest 50 percent owned only 3.2 percent.
The Congressional Budget Office released a report this September that showed the poorest half of Americans owned only 2 percent of the country's total wealth.
The top 10 percent owned 72 percent and the top 1 percent owned 34 percent.
These numbers when translated into the lives of Americans present an alarming decay of our economic model Hundreds of millions of people are facing a decline in their living standards.
Our Economic Model
Pundits including academics, scholars, journalists, and the clergy search for reasons why Americans are suffering economically. Their remedies chronically fail as every four to seven years an economic crisis occurs.
Our country continues on a trajectory that corrodes its best spiritual and secular values. This occurs while a tiny number of oligarchs manipulate and deceive working people into voting against their own economic interests.
For example, in Massachusetts, a ballot question this narrowly passed as a constitutional amendment. It levied a fair share tax on the meager number of those with million dollar incomes; more importantly, it guaranteed that the revenue would fund education and transportation issues in the state.
An element of the bill stated that homes selling for one million dollars were subject to the tax. The bill contained a $500,000 tax deduction.
In effect, a home would have to be sold for $1.5 million to be subject to the tax. Those familiar with home prices in the 212 communities in the Commonwealth knew that the number of homes reaching that price would be zero to five in most cities and towns. Yet, an inordinately large number of working people voted against the initiative.
It's not difficult to understand why.
Massive amounts of money poured into advertisements representing the economic interests of the state's oligarchs. Shamefully, working people were deceived and manipulated into voting against it.
The multi-headed hydra that has a financial stranglehold on our political system must be legislated out of existence. It must be relegated to the rubbish bin of economic injustice.
This will not be achieved by so-called manufactured "woke" awakenings, but rather by concrete political programs and policies. Otherwise the lives of the working many will continue to be subjugated to the avaricious few.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular