While the debate inspired feelings of impending doom and spiraling panic in the vast majority of its viewers, some child care advocates felt we were able to eke out a small win when candidates were asked how they would make child care more affordable for families in their second term.
Child care is a top concern for millions of Americans, with almost 90% of voters agreeing that they want candidates to have a plan to help more parents afford high-quality care. Historically, this concern has not translated into child care policy being taken seriously by mainstream television news outlets – especially in rare high profile events with millions of viewers like presidential debates. Early childhood policy comes up most often when candidates themselves are diligent about bringing it up, unprompted. To his credit, in last week’s presidential debate President Biden clearly made an effort to incorporate care into his responses to more than one question prior to the dedicated question on child care. The substance of those responses? Well, we’ll get to that.
Unfortunately, a question is not a victory when the lack of response leaves viewers despondent that neither candidate could articulate either their record or their vision for the future. Juxtaposed with their comparably vigorous back and forth on golf, the contrast was laughable. Reactions from outside of the child care advocacy world were deeply bothered by Trump dodging the child care question twice, clearly wishing Biden would respond with literally anything relevant and coherent, only to be let down as minutes passed with no clear answers.
President Biden has a strong record on child care. The American Rescue Plan’s $40B investment in child care saved tens of thousands of child care programs from closure, helping programs in a broken market attempt the impossible task of keeping pace with rising wages in other low-wage jobs. It also ensured states had the funds to expand subsidy eligibility to more families as they continued essential work or returned in-person. The newly-strengthened Child Care and Development Block Grant rule will have a tremendous impact on families and child care programs when fully enacted by states, and demonstrate the impressive power our administrative state has to change lives for the better when it is led by compassionate experts.
The problem is, of course, that Biden could not articulate this record at the debate, nor could he put forth a clear, motivating vision for a better future. Rather than uplifting any of his significant accomplishments or his platform for the next four years, he stumbled most when he tried to incorporate economic growth and employer-sponsored child care into his answers.
I want to make it clear that this is not a piece about Biden’s candidacy – this is a piece begging advocates and party insiders with influence to change course on an incredibly popular issue. After that debate, Americans feel like no one has a real plan to address one of the most stressful issues facing women and families.
I am begging you to stop centering the CHIPS Act as a child care accomplishment and path to the future of Biden’s child care policy.
Whose lead are we following?
Inexplicably, President Biden’s administration has spent much of 2024 leaning on Secretary Gina Raimondo and Governor Kathy Hochul for a weak and uninspiring child care message. Raimondo has emerged as the most prominent voice in the administration on child care. It is clear that she is the person behind the administration’s emphasis on CHIPS and economic growth, despising the implication that anyone would care about or attempt to justify funding child care for reasons outside of the economy. She frequently asserts a common refrain: “Anyone who thinks child care is social policy is deeply misguided.” In doing so, she flattens the urgency of the issue for families and communities while downplaying the need to pay child care educators a wage worthy of their work on its own merit. Instead, child care is positioned as only useful as far as it increases shareholder value or contributes to the GDP, as a job that only has value because it is a stepping stone for others to achieve middle class jobs.
Hochul, who keeps hitting record low approval ratings in New York State, has been tapped for multiple high-profile events to speak on child care by the administration and allied advocates around the CHIPS Act child care requirements for the Micron facility being built in Syracuse, NY. As I will explore at length in a future piece, Hochul has positioned herself as a child care governor while undertaking hostile acts like preventing her administration’s own Child Care Availability Task Force recommendations from being released during the budget and single-handedly preventing the creation of a fund to raise the wages of child care educators. These CHIPS Act events (as far as anyone is aware they occurred) tie Democrats to a promise that your access to child care will depend on your job, headlined by a governor who vetoed legislation that would allow families to use child care subsidies outside of the exact hours they are at work. We already have a party that’s determined to tie child care to employment – it’s the Republican party.
Both Hochul and Raimondo seek to align child care policy with big business in an attempt to shift responsibility for this urgent public good from government to employers – Hochul because she doesn’t want to raise the taxes on the rich to fund it, Raimondo presumably because she doesn’t believe Congress can pass the necessary legislation. On-site child care is an important strategy as an option for families, but it is never going to be a motivating message for voters. The big aspirational message cannot be chaining parents to their jobs out of fear that their children will lose stable relationships with the child care providers they love and trust. And the argument that child care is important to economic growth? Well, it’s true, but as a motivating message independent voters do not buy it as much as they do other messages. It simply is not the reason why people care about child care. So why are these the two central messages of Biden’s child care strategy, rather than building on what made his record so impressive in the first place?
What are we offering?
It’s not too late to recalibrate and elevate Democratic messengers who really care about improving our child care system for all of us – like Congresswoman Sara Jacobs, Senator Elizabeth Warren, and Governor J.B. Pritzker. We don’t win points by negotiating against ourselves before the debate even starts. We don’t motivate voters by pitching important incremental victories as the end goal. We inspire by charting a visionary goal to be won, together, through building shared power. I believe the best thing anyone left of center can do for child care is to unify under clear, strong core visionary message:
American families shouldn’t have to quit their jobs or go into debt because they can’t afford child care. That’s why we’re fighting for universal child care for every family that needs it, with good jobs for the child care educators we count on to keep kids safe, happy, and learning.
What does that mean?
No more work requirements.
No more means testing and confusing sliding scales.
No more if you earn a dollar more, you lose the benefits you rely on.
No more offering huge corporations child care on a silver platter as a perk they can leverage in a tight market, undermining support for the urgently needed public good it is.
No more admirably doing our best to piecemeal build a functioning system onto the existing block grant legislation.
No more bifurcated system where white collar jobs are offered child care benefits while working class families struggle to access an inadequate, desperately underfunded subsidy system.
No more shirking responsibility for the poverty wages of child care workers – which happens to be the only viable path to fulfilling the promise of lowering costs and building enough supply for families anyway.
As Trump judges eagerly work to overturn victories for workers that would keep people from being tied to exploitative jobs, Democrats shouldn’t push policies that would do the same. People are not asking for us to replicate employer-sponsored health insurance. The Democratic promise should be that if a majority and presidency are delivered by voters, Democrats will start working to build a thriving, well-funded, supportive child care system for every family that needs it on day one.
Child care is not going to make or break this election, but it is a layup that we’re missing again and again as an opportunity to establish credibility and a positive vision for the future. And that matters. As Anat Shenker-Osorio says, “If you want to change the story, you've got to tell a different story.” People are exhausted and demoralized. We’re up against Project 2025 and a Supreme Court hellbent on taking a wrecking ball to the regulations that keep our babies safe. Establishing a stark contrast shouldn’t be so hard. People need to believe someone is in their corner. They need hope. The CHIPS Act child care requirements aren’t gonna cut it.
What I’m Reading
How Biden’s big mistake on inflation could cost the election - Heather Long, The Washington Post
Care is No Ordinary Good - Elliot Haspel, Early Learning Nation
What’s Next
Tradwife aspirations and deregulation: working hand in hand to undo child care progress