Dem Women’s Caucus Meets with White House on Child Care Crisis
WASHINGTON, D.C. —Today, Democratic Women’s Caucus (DWC) Chair Lois Frankel issued the following statement after a meeting with DWC leadership and White House officials on the Biden Administration’s work to address the child care crisis.
Currently, child care costs more than a public college tuition on average—and child care is expected to get more expensive and harder to find after child care funds provided through the American Rescue Plan Act expired on September 30th. Without an infusion of funding, it is estimated that millions of families will lose access to child care and thousands of child care centers will close.
“For months, we have been fighting hard to ensure that child care is at the top of Congress’ agenda—because child care is simply too expensive and too hard to find. We also know the child care crisis will only get worse since critical child care funds expired on September 30th. In our productive meeting today with White House officials, we made clear that we encourage and support the inclusion of child care funding in the Biden Administration’s domestic policy supplemental funding request.
“As we continue to navigate the appropriations process and work to avoid a government shutdown—even amid House Republican chaos—we are thankful to the Biden Administration for making child care a priority and for its continued partnership in this fight.”
The meeting followed a request last month from the DWC to meet with the President on his plan to address the child care crisis.
The Democratic Women’s Caucus has led the charge in urging action on child care, including by hosting a shadow hearing on the looming funding cliff, endorsing a letter to the President requesting funds for child care in any supplemental request, and endorsing the Child Care Stabilization Act—which would provide urgently needed funding to replenish expiring funds. The Democratic Women’s Caucus also led a letter calling on then-Speaker McCarthy to immediately provide additional child care resources.
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