Expand and Improve Access to High-Quality Affordable Child Care

Floor Speech

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Mr. McGOVERN. Mr. Speaker, too many people in our country--the richest country in the history of the world--are hungry, and it is a sad reality. Hunger has many faces: children, seniors, veterans, the disabled. One group that experiences hunger and is often overlooked is working families.

Millions of people who work for a living don't earn enough to ensure that their families have enough to eat. They don't earn enough to ensure that their kids have access to quality child care. For millions of working families, every single day is a struggle. We in this Chamber ought to do more to help.

In his State of the Union Address, I was pleased to see the President identify specific ways to support working families: tripling the child care tax credit; increasing the number of slots available and investing in high-quality, affordable child care programs. These are investments that are important to all families but especially working and poor families.

We know that the early years of a child's life are critical to shaping healthy cognitive, social, and emotional development. Ensuring that all of our young children have an opportunity to thrive in a safe, nurturing environment is one of the best economic investments that we can make. It is the right thing to do, and it pays huge dividends later on.

Families at all income levels know how expensive child care is today. In 2013, the cost of full-time care for an infant in a child care center was about $10,000 per year, more than the cost of instate college tuition in many States, and many of the best child care programs cost more than that.

For poor families, the cost of quality child care can be an untenable burden. For these families, it may mean being forced to choose between paying rent, getting medicine, or buying food.

No parent should find themselves in the difficult situation of having to drop their child off at a program that is unsafe or of poor quality just so they can get to their job. Parents shouldn't have to choose between safe child care and keeping their job to pay the bills. For poor families in particular, it is a daily struggle to balance everything and still make ends meet.

Mr. Speaker, last week, the Census Bureau released figures that showed that one in five children in this country received food stamps last year. Let me repeat that. One in five children relied on SNAP. That is 16 million children who relied on SNAP to keep them from going hungry last year, more than at the start of the Great Recession.

We know that our economy is improving slowly, but the gains aren't shared evenly among all Americans. Too many poor and working families are still struggling to make ends meet. We know that despite some of the false rhetoric, the majority of SNAP participants who are expected to work and are able to work, in fact, work.

Families with children have even higher rates of employment than other households on SNAP. More than 60 percent of families with children receiving SNAP have someone in the household working.

Mr. Speaker, these families have a working adult but still make so little that they qualify for SNAP. Without SNAP, these families would not be able to put enough nutritious food on the table for their children and for themselves.

Being poor is hard, and it is expensive. We should do everything we can to support working families. Expanding and investing in child care is an important step toward achieving that goal.

I urge the Republican leadership to support the President's initiatives to expand and improve access to high-quality, affordable child care programs. At the same time, I urge the Republican leadership--I plead with them--to refrain from cutting food and nutrition programs that are essential to a child's healthy development.

It is the right thing to do to support these families, to support food and nutrition programs, to support quality child care programs. It is the right thing to do for all American families. It is especially the right thing to do for our low-income families who have not shared in recent economic improvements and who face tough choices every day.

Families should not be forced to choose between good, safe child care and putting food on the table. That is a false choice; and, quite frankly, in this country, it is shameful that they have to make that choice.

I urge my colleagues to make a renewed commitment to end hunger now. We have the resources, we have the food, we have everything, but we lack the political will.

Hunger is a political condition. We can solve this problem in a bipartisan way if we choose to, if we make it a priority. There are millions and millions of our citizens who are depending on us to do more than we are doing now. I hope that we live up to that challenge. We can and we should do much better.

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