Paid family leave was dropped. Public pre-K and subsidized child care remain, and could substantially lower the cost of raising children.
The policy framework that President Biden released Thursday would not create the robust safety net he envisioned to support Americans from “cradle to grave.” But it would weave a much stronger one than American families have now, especially for parents of young children.
The proposal for child care and universal pre-K would significantly lower the cost of raising children. Now, most parents have little government support for care until their children are old enough to enter public school at age 5. The new proposal would make support near universal, starting in infancy.
Attendance for children ages 0 to 2 at a child care center would be free for families earning less than around $72,000 ($100,000 in higher-earning places like New Jersey and Washington, D.C.). For families earning their state’s median income, tuition would be about $1,000 a year, according to the Center for Law and Social Policy. Families earning above roughly $150,000 a year — who wouldn’t be eligible until 2025 — would pay no more than 7 percent of their income. (These are national averages; the precise cutoffs vary by state and family size.) Preschool would be free for all children no matter the parental income, starting at age 3.
“For all the focus on things that didn’t make it in the bill, the sheer number of families that are going to have their entire calculus of family life change is really significant,” said Elliot Haspel, the author of “Crawling Behind: America’s Child Care Crisis and How to Fix It.” “If it goes through, it’s going to be the first time in history the United States actually has a viable early care and education system.”
Early childhood education and care was the broadest parent policy to survive the negotiations in Congress.
The monthly checks parents have been receiving, which are an expanded version of the child tax credit, also remain in the proposal, but only for one year. Even with the credit reverting to its smaller size, though, it would remain accessible to the poorest families. Those families didn’t qualify before, a major change that kept 3.4 million children out of poverty last month, according to the Center on Poverty and Social Policy at Columbia University.
Another family policy that survived is caregiving support for older adults and people with disabilities. Paid family leave, however, was cut from the latest draft, which would mean the country would remain one of six in the world — and the only rich nation — without any form of it.
The draft of the bill is still just a draft. Lawmakers say they hope to get other family policies, like paid leave, back in, and other ideas may yet be diluted or cut. It’s not clear if Democrats can pass the bill. They need the votes of two centrists who have been requesting changes, Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Senator Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, because it has no Republican support.
The child care package — led by Senator Patty Murray of Washington and Representative Bobby Scott of Virginia — addresses a basic math problem. There are not enough spots in child care centers for those who need them, and child care workers earn less than workers in 98 percent of occupations. Yet care is unaffordable for many families, so providers cannot significantly raise prices. As Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said in September, “Child care is a textbook example of a broken market.”
That dynamic is why most other rich countries subsidize child care, and many European countries effectively start public school at age 3.
The proposal also requires that teachers in child care classrooms be paid a livable wage, equivalent to that of elementary teachers with the same credentials. Now, the median wage for elementary teachers is $34 an hour, compared with $15 for preschool teachers and $12 for child care workers, according to the Center for the Study of Child Care Employment at the University of California, Berkeley. Also as part of the proposal, pre-K lead teachers must have a bachelor’s degree in early childhood education or a related field, though they would be given six years to get the degree, with some exemptions based on professional experience.
“You cannot sustain a work force on poverty-level wages,” said Lea Austin, executive director of the center. “These reforms will be the best demonstration of just how valuable the child care work force is to the public good.”
States would come up with a formula for how much child care should cost, factoring in high-quality care and higher wages. Then, parents would pay their share, similar to a co-pay at a doctor’s office, and the rest of the money would be sent to the providers, financed mostly by the federal government and partly by the states. If parents chose to send their children to more expensive preschools, they would pay the difference.
There is also an option for states to opt out of the programs, though local governments can join even if their state doesn’t.
The subsidies could be used at all licensed child care centers and preschools that also meet new federal requirements for quality, including those in homes, churches and public schools. The proposal includes money for improving the quality of care, starting new centers, expanding supply at existing ones and improving facilities. To start, states would be required to spend a quarter of the federal subsidies on increasing supply, because many parts of the country don’t have enough child care spots, and demand is expected to increase.
Public preschool would be universal, though as the program got started, preschools for low-income children and others who are underserved would be prioritized.
One problem with public pre-K in places like New York City is that it can end up diverting funds from child care providers — it costs more to care for infants and toddlers, so the tuition of preschoolers helps cover their care. The proposal aims to avoid that in part by allowing subsidized pre-K to stay in child care centers that also care for younger children.
The near-universality of care and education for children 0 to 5 was an unexpected victory for proponents. Parents earning 75 percent or less of their state’s median income would pay nothing for child care. The share that families pay, no matter how many children ages 0 to 2 they have, would be calculated based on their income, and would not exceed 7 percent of it for nine in 10 families. The rest, those earning more than 2.5 times the state’s median income, would pay full price.
The cutoff for receiving subsidies for a two-parent, two-child household in New York would be $251,000, and families earning less than $80,000 would pay nothing. For families with two children in West Virginia, where salaries and the cost of living tend to be lower, the cap would be $186,000 for a couple, and child care would be free for those earning less than $59,000.
There is an administrative hurdle for parents to qualify: They would need to prove they’re employed, in search of employment, in school, in medical treatment or on leave.
One major risk to the child care and pre-K proposals is that they are set to expire after six years, in 2028, and they won’t fully go into effect for all eligible families until 2025. Programs like these can also take years to start — in Mr. Manchin’s home state, West Virginia, universal pre-K took a decade to establish.
Proponents hope they become popular enough that they end up being extended. “There are going to be couples having kids that are not going to know any other system,” Mr. Haspel said.
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