Even putting all of that aside, none of these programs can ever hope to help even the barest fraction of the millions of families who want and need care. According to a recent survey of 500 companies, nearly one-third said they might cut child-care benefits if a recession takes hold. And employer-sponsored benefits are unreliable because people may switch or lose their job-and because employers can simply change their mind. Millions of gig workers who don’t receive benefits will be left out by default. The problem is that these are quarter measures at best. States such as Michigan and Kentucky are piloting programs in which child-care costs can be split among the employer, the employee, and the government. Red states such as Oklahoma and Missouri have proposed-along with other actions, like tax credits for donors to child-care programs- sweetening the incentive pot for employer child-care benefits. Yet in the face of congressional gridlock, Democrats and Republicans alike are turning to employers as a salve.Īt the federal level, the Biden administration is nudging companies to offer employees child-care assistance, embedding such encouragement in the semiconductor CHIPS Act and a recent executive order on care. Democratic Senators Elizabeth Warren and Patty Murray, along with their House counterparts, have each submitted a major child-care bill in recent months. In his public remarks and his proposed budget for the 2024 fiscal year, President Joe Biden is certainly insistent about the need for a permanent answer to child-care funding.

Read: The reason child care is so hard to afford No other country makes it work without a major investment from government.” As Annie Lowrey wrote last year, “The math does not work. The system desperately needs a large infusion of permanent public money so that programs can compensate educators well, parent fees can be slashed, and supply can rise to meet demand. Centers have shut down for want of staff, long waitlists have stretched to the point of absurdity, and the rising cost of care continues to exceed inflation. In fact, the industry is still down more than 50,000 employees from pre-pandemic levels. In other words, child care simultaneously is too expensive for parents and brings in too little revenue for programs to operate sustainably. Child-care providers have very high fixed costs due to the need for low child-to-adult ratios, so they can’t pay their staff well without significantly increasing parent fees (many child-care workers make less than parking attendants).

The instinct to make for any policy port in a storm is understandable, and the American child-care system is stuck in a years-long hurricane. Since Joe Manchin and 50 Republican senators killed the bill, however, many policy makers have started following a tired old playbook: If at first you fail to make something a universal right, try making it an employee benefit. This overhaul would have put child care squarely in the same category as Social Security, Medicare, and other guaranteed supports: It would have, in other words, become a right.

The act also would have capped all but the wealthiest families’ child-care bills at 7 percent of their income.

When the House of Representatives passed the Build Back Better Act in 2021, it included $400 billion in funding, part of which would have paid programs enough to boost providers’ wages, in turn increasing the supply of available slots. For a brief moment, it looked like America could get a real child-care system-one that wasn’t defined by lengthy waitlists, sky-high fees, and crossed-fingers quality.

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