Child Care and Government

As the demographic realities of working motherhood have become increasingly apparent in recent years, government initiatives--supported and spurred by the labor movement--have gained bipartisan support in the Congress and the White House.

And one of the recent high-profile child care proposals with a good chance of jumping the legislative hurdles of Capitol Hill is the Alliance for Better Child Care (ABC) Bill, which sponsors say should go before Congress for a vote in mid-June.

"Last year when I introduced the ABC bill, it was the first time since Nixon vetoed the Child Care Provision Act that a piece of child care legislation has been introduced in Congress," says Rep. Dale E. Kildee (D-Mich.), co-sponsor of the ABC Bill.

If passed, the ABC Bill will allot $2.5 billion to improving the quality of child care, while making it more affordable to parents, Kildee says. The bill was written by a group of 100 organizations, with the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) at its helm.

Seventy-five percent of the allocated funds would go to low-to-moderate-income families to purchase child care, while the rest would aid in training supervisors and encouraging business involvement. State governments would then match that funding by 20 percent, Kildee says.

In addition to providing money to subsidize child care programs, Kildee says the bill would try to set minimum health and safety standards for the people and centers receiving its funding to protect children from poor conditions or neglect.

But there are those, like President Bush, who oppose the bill, arguing that the legislation would weaken the family by providing child care.

Yet Kildee says, "I totally reject the conservative argument that subsidizing child care would weaken the family. I think child care is very pro-family. The structure of the family has changed in recent years." And as a result, he adds, the government must help support working parents.

According to Kildee, when the bill reaches its final form it will probably include provisions from the Hawkins bill on Head Start programs and the Bush Administration's bill granting tax credits to low-income families to help provide child care.

"We look at the tax credit as complementary to the ABC bill," Kildee says. Alone, it would not be sufficient, particularly for families with infants, he says.

"Tax credit is fine," says Carol Keyes, a member of the National Coalition for Campus Child Care. "But the proposed tax credit only provides families with $19 per week, and that doesn't buy anything," she adds.

Under the plan proposed by Bush, a family must make less than $8000 in order to collect the $1000 tax credit. But supporters of the ABC Bill and other child care measures say that the tax credit alone is not enough.

At that income level, a family has other priorities, such as food and rent, says Susan Wilhelm, the staff director of the House Subcommittee on Human Resources. Thus, children would never benefit from the funding, she says.

"I don't oppose the president's position," Kildee says. "I see it as part of a package." The member of Congress says that his main concern is that the bill allow for minimal health and safety standards.

"We don't want to find 11 or 12 infants being taken care of in a basement by people who don't wash their hands after they change a diaper. We have to have minimal standards," Kildee says.

"We've done this in other federal programs, so this should not be any different," Kildee says. "We don't just put money out on a stump for people to pick up."

Kildee says he is confident the bill will pass, since child care has recently become an issue that enjoys bipartisan support in the White House and Congress. Even under the strict new budget, the budget committee has already set aside $1.4 million for child care.

The present attitude among legislators toward child care contrasts drastically with the tone in Washington during the Reagan Administration, Kildee says.

"A few years ago we were crying in the wilderness," Kildee says. "It's not going to be easy, but we've tackled tougher things in the past down here."