Child Care Crisis in America

Floor Speech

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Mr. COURTNEY. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to spend a few minutes to talk about an October 15 visit to Connecticut by President Biden where he actually put the eyes of the country for a couple of hours on a critical issue that his Build Back Better agenda is focused on fixing, which is, namely, the crisis in child daycare all across the country.

On Friday, my colleagues and I, as well as President Biden, visited the Capitol Child Development Center, where the executive director, Barbara Jo Warner, laid out very clearly the dilemma that she and her colleagues who are in this very struggling sector are faced with today.

Before COVID, her center had 70 slots for children completely full, with a waiting list. Today, they have 20 children in the same daycare center.

Is it because there is no demand? No, that is not the case. There still is a waiting list of families who are trying to get their kids into daycare.

Her problem is that the staffing that she had prior to COVID has severely diminished, and her ability to attract people back into her program is limited by the fact that she is only able to offer $13 an hour as a starting wage for people in a very important job for our country as well as families of the children that they take care of.

So we are in a situation where they are in a place where McDonald's pays more, at $15 an hour, than a daycare center, at $13 an hour.

It is a problem which is, I think, one of the reasons why the jobs recovery has stalled, particularly for families and women heads-of- household who, again, don't have centers with slots available because of the staffing problem that Ms. Warner described to the President and to the world on Friday.

The Build Back Better legislation, he discussed it, finally, in a different kind of context, in terms of the horse race down here and who is up, who is down, which faction is negotiating what. He focused on the content of the Build Back Better legislation, which is addressed to provide a huge infusion of support for our daycare sector.

What that provision will do is cap the amount of out-of-pocket for families who are using child daycare at 7 percent of income. Today, low- and middle-income families spend between 14 and 35 percent of their income on daycare. If we get this through, we are immediately going to provide savings for families with their kids in daycare.

In Connecticut, looking at a family making $87,000 a year, that basically would result in weekly savings of $175 a week, which is definitely a huge boost in terms of working families and middle-class families, which this bill would provide.

Again, I want to emphasize, this is not a Connecticut problem. This is happening all across the country, and the median or the average salary for daycare centers across the country is actually $12 an hour, a little lower than what the President heard about on Friday.

If we are serious about a real job recovery and giving families the opportunity to really go back to work, why don't we listen to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the largest business organization in the country, which recognized during COVID that support for child daycare is essential, in terms of trying to get working-age families back into the workforce.

Again, the openings are there. I could walk through employers in the State of Connecticut. Electric Boat in my district has about 500 job openings right now. They want to get those Gen Z'ers and millennials trained up and ready to go. But if they don't have a place for their children to be cared for safely and adequately, then we are just basically in a cul-de-sac where this economy is going to be held back.

The Build Back Better agenda is not soft infrastructure. It is right at the heart of whether or not we are going to, as a country, fully recover and grow in the wake of this pandemic.

It is something that hopefully every Member, when the time comes for this package, when that daycare provision is included in there, will think about long and hard because this is not a Connecticut-only issue. This affects every State, red and blue; every district, red and blue; every employer, in red and blue areas of the country. If anyone can't support that, then they are not serious about really helping this country recover from the pandemic.

Again, I thank the President for coming out and really focusing like a laser on this issue. I thank Executive Director Barbara Jo Warner for her clear message to the country.

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