Editorial: Making quality child care affordable, accessible

By The Herald Editorial Board

Affordable quality child care might get more attention if not for the fact that the issue is of greatest interest to young families during the first few years of childhood, and these are families who — between working jobs and finding care or providing their own — don’t have much time to organize and lobby state and federal lawmakers.

Two similar bills in Congress, however, have returned the issue to wider discussion and are making the case that this is an issue of importance for more than just young families, especially as a still-expanding economy — now in its 100th straight month of adding jobs — is in search of trained and educated workers, particularly here in Washington state.

Child care continues to grow as a barrier to employment for many. Nationwide, its cost has increased by 25 percent in the past decade. In 28, states, including Washington state, it can cost less to pay tuition at a four-year regional state university than it does to pay for child care. A year of tuition at a Washington state public university runs about $9,500, while annual care, per child, costs nearly $5,000 more at $14,200, according to a Fortune report from last October.

At least college students can turn to financial aid and student loans, options not open to parents looking for child care.

For a single parent making the median income in Washington state of $27,523, care for one child can eat up nearly 52 percent of that income.

That cost, when a child care provider can be found, is forcing many families to work fewer hours, turn down promotions that would bring the family more income or quit jobs all together.

In fact, as many as 58,000 parents in Washington state and 1.9 million parents in the U.S. in 2016 quit a job, declined a job offer or significantly changed their hours because of difficulties in securing reliable child care, according to a U.S. Department of Health and Human Services survey.

Two similar pieces of legislation have been proposed that seek to expand options for quality child care as well as make it affordable for all families.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Massachusetts, rolled out her Universal Child Care and Early Learning plan, earlier as part of her platform for her presidential campaign. And earlier this week, Sen. Patty Murray, D-Washington, revived a proposal she introduced last year for her Child Care for Working Families Act. The Senate bill is supported by 33 cosponsors, including Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Washington. A House version, offered by Rep. Bobby Scott, D-Virginia, has 140 cosponsors. Murray’s legislation has the support of Warren, as well as the other Democratic senators who have announced their presidential candidacies. And Murray is offering her support as well to Warren’s proposal.

Both seek to bring down the costs of child care for low- and middle-income families and more than double the number of children who would be eligible for child-care assistance.

Under Murray’s act, no family earning less than 150 percent of a state’s median income would pay more than 7 percent of its income for child care; families above that level would pay on a sliding scale, establishing a new federal-state partnership to provide care for children, birth through 13 years of age.

The bill also would support access to quality preschool programs for all 3- and 4-year-olds, improve training and also compensation for child care workers to assure a living wage; and assist the existing Head Start program to expand its offerings to provide full-day, year-round programs to more.

Among the differences between Murray’s and Warren’s proposals is how they would be funded. Warren has proposed a new tax on wealth that would fund it and other spending priorities. Murray, during a recent meeting with the editorial board, said that once adopted her child care act would by funded as an entitlement program, not subject to the budget struggles over appropriations.

In addition to the creation of about 770,000 family-wage child-care jobs across the nation, the Child Care for Working Families Act would free hundreds of thousands of more parents to enter or remain in a workforce and an economy that needs their participation, jobs that could lift many well above the poverty line.

Most importantly — as everything involving the education of children is rightly and justifiably seen as an investment in our nation’s future — the act would allow better access to affordable, quality child care that would also improve outcomes for children by engaging them in early learning that has repeatedly been shown to improve the likelihood of graduation, continued education and rewarding careers.

More than many in Congress, Murray has a personal understanding of the issue.

“I know what it’s like to worry where to send my own kids for high-quality care,” she said in introducing the bill this week, reminding that she started her political career as “a mom in tennis shoes” and a preschool teacher who successfully fought state budget cuts to keep her kids’ preschool open.

The fight should now continue to assure that families can make employment decisions untethered from child-care concerns and all children have access to quality early learning and care.