May 09, 2023

Merkley, Wyden Announce Support for Bill to Boost Child Care and Pre-K Access for Families

The Child Care for Working Families Act will ensure families in Oregon and across America can find and afford the child care they need, dramatically expand access to high-quality preschool programs, and increase wages for early childhood workers

Washington, D.C. – Oregon’s U.S. Senators Jeff Merkley and Ron Wyden are cosponsoring the Child Care for Working Families Act, comprehensive legislation to tackle the child care crisis and ensure families across America can find and afford the high-quality child care they need.

“Child care is essential for the success of working families across Oregon, but I hear at nearly every town hall from hardworking families about the burdens of the extremely high costs and lack of high-quality child care options,” said Merkley. “It’s time to lift this enormous burden and ensure Oregon’s middle-class families have access to reliable and affordable child care, it’s a win-win for families & Oregon businesses that need workers.”

“Working parents in every Oregon community – rural, urban and suburban – must be able to count on topnotch child care they can afford,” Wyden said. “This legislation responds with the urgency this crisis demands for families trying to make ends meet, and also provides much-needed investments in pre-K education that’s proven to give children a valuable head start in school.”

Too many families cannot find—or afford—the high-quality child care they need so parents can go to work and children can thrive, and the worsening child care crisis is holding families, child care workers, businesses, and our entire economy back. Over the last three decades, the cost of child care has increased by 220%, forcing families—and mothers, in particular—to make impossible choices, and 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 the American economy dearly, to the tune of $122 billion in economic losses each year, which is why the Child Care for Working Families Act is needed.

The Child Care for Working Families Act would tackle the child care crisis head-on by ensuring families can afford the child care they need, expanding access to more high-quality options, stabilizing the child care sector, and helping ensure child care workers taking care of our children are paid livable wages. The legislation will also dramatically expand access to pre-K, and support full-day, full-year Head Start programs and increased wages for Head Start workers. Under the legislation, the typical family in America will pay no more than $10 a day for child care—with many families paying nothing at all—and no eligible family will pay more than 7% of their income on child care.

This legislation was led by U.S. Senator Patty Murray (D-WA), Chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee and U.S. Representative Robert C. “Bobby” Scott (D-VA-03), Ranking Member of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce. Alongside Merkley and Wyden, the legislation was cosponsored by U.S. Senators Murray, Casey, Kaine, Hirono, Schumer, Sanders, Baldwin, Bennet, Blumenthal, Booker, Brown, Cantwell, Coons, Cortez Masto, Duckworth, Durbin, Feinstein, Fetterman, Gillibrand, Hassan, Heinrich, King, Klobuchar, Luján, Markey, Menendez, Murphy, Padilla, Reed, Rosen, Schatz, Shaheen, Smith, Van Hollen, Welch, and Whitehouse.

The Child Care for Working Families Act will:

  • Make child care affordable for working families. 
    • The typical family earning the state median income will pay about $10 a day for child care. 
    • No working family will pay more than seven percent of their income on child care.
    • Families earning below 85% of state median income will pay nothing at all for child care.
    • If a state does not choose to receive funding under this program, the Secretary can provide funds to localities, such as cities, counties, local governments, districts, or Head Start agencies.
  • Improve the quality and supply of child care for all children and expand families’ child care options by:
    • Addressing child care deserts by providing grants to help open new child care providers in underserved communities.
    • Providing grants to cover start-up and licensing costs to help establish new providers.
    • Increasing child care options for children who receive care during non-traditional hours.
    • Supporting child care for children who are dual-language learners, children who are experiencing homelessness, and children in foster care.
  • Support higher wages for child care workers.
    • Child care workers would be paid a living wage and achieve parity with elementary school teachers who have similar credentials and experience.
    • Child care subsidies would cover the cost of providing high-quality care.
  • Dramatically expand access to high-quality pre-K.
    • States would receive funding to establish and expand a mixed-delivery system of high-quality preschool programs for 3- and 4-year-olds.
    • States must prioritize establishing and expanding universal local preschool programs within and across high-need communities.
    • If a state does not choose to receive funding under this program, the Secretary can provide funds to localities, such as cities, counties, local governments, districts, or Head Start agencies.
  • Better support Head Start programs by providing the funding necessary to offer full-day, full-year programming and increasing wages for Head Start workers.

The legislation is endorsed by: AFL-CIO, AFSCME, AFT, All Our Kin, The Center for American Progress, The Center for Law and Social Policy (CLASP), Child Care Aware of America, Community Change Action, Council for Professional Recognition, Family Value @ Work, MomsRising, National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC), National Association for Family Child Care (NAFCC), National Education Association (NEA), National Women’s Law Center (NWLC), Oxfam, Save the Children, Save the Children Action Network, SEIU, YWCA, Zero to Three.

A fact sheet on the legislation is HERE.

Bill text is HERE.