Vital Childcare Funding Ready to Expire at End of Month

The Child Care Stabilization grants, which provided $24 billion to children’s care providers nationwide during the pandemic, expire at the end of this month. Democrats, including Santa Barbara’s Congressmember Salud Carbajal, are demanding this vital funding be extended via the Child Care Stabilization Act, the House version of a bill recently proposed by Senator Patty Murray (D-WA) and Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) that will assure $16 billion for the next five years to these existing children’s care providers.

Since the historic federal funding was granted by Biden in March 2021 into the American Rescue Plan, it has supported 10 million kids nationwide. However, an estimated 3.2 million children will lose their childcare spots if the funding is not renewed. The jobs of 232,000 childcare workers are also in jeopardy, according to the study by the Century Foundation.

If this funding sunsets, it is estimated $10.6 billion in economic activity will be lost as millions of parents, disproportionately women, would have to leave the workforce to counter this loss of children’s care. Sen. Sanders stated on September 13, “If we can afford to spend over $1 trillion on tax breaks for the top one percent and large corporations making record-breaking profits, we can afford to provide working-class families with the childcare they desperately need. This legislation is needed now more than ever.”

Other avenues to protect the children’s care system have been taken with a pending bipartisan agreement by representatives Ro Khanna (D-CA) and Nancy Mace (R-SC). Their initiative in launching the new Congressional Bipartisan Affordable Childcare Caucus will attempt to directly address the price of childcare, which was seen to rise dramatically during the pandemic. 

Why did the vital grant funding not get renewed? According to Time magazine, the White House did not include “childcare funding in its supplemental funding request in August, which would have been a potential vehicle for renewing the grants.” Instead, much of the funding was siphoned toward the Ukrainian War, disaster relief, border security, and migrant aid.

Now time is quickly ticking, as Rep. Carbajal stated, “This funding for childcare has been critical to California providers and the working families that rely on them…. The ripple effects of this expiration would be felt by small businesses, industries, and communities across our nation.” Now the people wait for the political game to decide the outcome for what many believe is a necessary human right.