The dependent care FSA limit has been $5000 since 1986 - meaning the limit has not been adjusted for inflation and therefore the real value has decreased over time. That's 37 years with no change. It's time for working parents to be able to pay for childcare with pre-tax earnings.

What do your three goals really mean? Let's take your "affordability" goal and your "fair wages" goal and leave "accessibility" for some other time. To achieve "affordability" clearly you must either lower the cost or raise families' wealth. Since your "fair wages" goal is to RAISE care givers' wages, then you must really raise families' wealth. How shall you do that?

Disability Pride Month every July. Where is your announcement? “At Will” Employment” in MA….discrimination exists…filed with MCAD….Senator Warren’s offices also telephoned during 2023, 2022, 2021. DV/VAWA not enforced in MA Housing.

los niño son como angeles en la tierra

Me gustan los niños soy madre de tres ya son grande casado ahora tengo nietoss ahora me gustaria cuidar a otros niños

Really happy to see policy coming in that will actually support working families. Anything less than childcare, education and housing is just smoke and mirrors. This is the real policy that we need to see!

Mi pasión ha sido enseñar, siempre en los roles que he realizado en mi vida busco la manera de entregar el conocimiento que pueda, madre de 3 y con amor hacia lo más valioso que son nuestros niños, anhelando estar cerca de quienes como padres necesitan guía. 🙏🏻

Fui maestra en mi paiz me encantan los niño soy Cubana

Soy maestra de educación primaria en mi país .. Honduras !!! Me gustaría ayudar al cuidado de niños y prepararme más acá en este país para poder colaborar a los padres de niños infantiles

This seems like a campaign to undermine unlicensed home daycares which will put many caregivers out of work.

Soy docente jubilada venezolana inmigrante; con 37 años de experiencia en mi bella Venezuela bajo la filosofía de la hinorable Institucion Fe y Alegría. Humildemente aspiro poder participar activamente en el proceso educativo de este gran pais ofertando y ofreciendo mis titulos y mi experiencia asi sea como auxiliar docente. No exijo! Estoy a la orden. Agradezco esta ventanita al mundo para expresar mis deseos y ofrecer mis conocimientos. Dios les pague

Hola yo por algunos años cuide niños en mi casa y al tiempo cuidaba mis hijos y al mismo tiempo me ganaba un dinero y así durante la infancia de mis hijos nunca tuve que dejarlos con nadie , y en los pasados 3 o 4 años trabajé en una guardería pero me pagaban muy poquito mientras la dueña se llenaba los bolsillos de dinero por eso opté por dejar el trabajo con ese salario no podía pagar ni mi renta mucho menos tener ahorros

Increíble saber que hay una Guardería en Español, sobre todo porque hay muchos migrantes a los que se nos dificulta el idioma pero tenemos la preparación para poder trabajar en este medio!!!!✨✨✨🙏

These is nice 👍

Soy licenciada en la primera infancia con 18 años de experiencia me gustaría trabajar con niños y seguirme preparándo en mi carrera en éste país

Iam 17 and just moved from Ukraine and Sweden, I have worked with babysitting for over three years))

What is the solution

I agree that this is a serious issue that needs to be solved. But I do not read in this website any proposal to solve it. If there are proposal(s) that I judge logical, I am happy to actively support this.

I have been an early childhood educator for 27 years. I am licensed to care for 7 children in my home. I have an Early Childhood Education degree. I provide all food and a preschool curriculum for the kids 2.5yr and up. A patent with a full time child in my care pays $610/mo. In the larger town 25min North of me, they charge a lot more. I know other states have a higher standard of living than Mi, but I cannot even imagine someone charging $2800+ per month for childcare. I have to stay full to pay my bills, but wow I can't imagine charging that much. This is a crisis. We have so many regulations to follow now, so many childcare are going out of business.

Where is the cost to taxpayer detailed in this entire post. Please stop using emotional marketing appeals for childcare tax for American children, while paying for wars and illegal immigrants. Stop the money flow to external activities and redirect the same government money to actual tax paying citizens. The two faced policies of Democrats are concerning. At least the Republicans are open about their priorities for the ultra rich.

My daughter-in-law works in a Day Care facility. She struggles with low pay and the ability to pay for my grandchild to be in that same day care facility full time. She gets a discount, but still, a majority of her pay goes to the facility. It's hard to be middle class and afford to have a family. It's hypocritical to give the top 5% earners a huge tax cut and yet still have some of their employees be on public assistance - or to cheat the next generation of a quality education. We have the Best Government Money Can Buy.

Sounds like more tax and spend big government Democrat socialism. No details on the cost to taxpayers. More left-wing indoctrination camps, just starting at an earlier age. No thanks.

Why in this entire site is there no mention of what this bill will cost taxpayers. Typical. I'm against more government with more control over our children. The government already has a failing K-12 education system. I'm a no!

Daycare for my 10-month-old is costing us $2800/month, significantly more than our rent, and it's forced us to dip into our savings and halted any consideration of home ownership at this time. Our daycare is wonderful and deserves all that money and more, but it's hard to make it work even when both myself and my wife work decent white-collar jobs. We want a second child at some point but don't see how that could be possible until our first goes to kindergarten. If even we are struggling to afford childcare, then things must be unconscionable for people with even less means. Something needs to change with the way we fund childcare in this country. We can't claim to care about our children if we make it impossible for working families to send their little ones to high-quality daycare.

Currently childcare in CA for my 4 year old and 1.5 year old is $4600/ month and going up to $5000/month. The increases have outpaced our two household incomes (which have gone down over the past two years) and we have to work side jobs just to keep on top of all our bills. Definitely feeling the squeeze! The teachers at our chid development center are incredibly skilled and deserve an income that reflects that.

Children are survival---without care and education they eventually cannot be wise voters.

"We have the power to build a country where parents are empowered to give their kids the best possible start in life." The truth is to give kids the best possible start in life one must parent and raise them responsibly - themselves. Not look to the government to fund an industry supporting kids as a herd and not as individuals.

When we lived in France in 1990-1992, our children, aged 3 and 4, went to a "school" (l'ecole), essentially a daycare. Kids could be dropped off starting at 8 am and picked up no later than 6 pm; however, "classes" (a teacher-directed activities; two teachers per a class of about 20 kids) were held only between 9 am and 3 pm. If necessary, you could drop off your kid at the "school" on Saturday, between 9 am and 3 pm, but there were no classes (and only one teacher); kids only played. The school was free; we only payed some ridiculous amont of money for their lunch. Interestingly, my wife didn't work - not to mention that we were foreigners just temporarily staying in the country. The only thing needed to get our kids into the school was a proof of residence in this particular city, where we rented an apartment. (I must admit, however, that this was a reasonably well-off city of Orsay, South-West of Paris.) In July 1992, we moved to the US, and things changed...

I have been working in advocating for high quality childcare and a living wage for early educators since 1979. There was hope then. But now our country is in just as poor shape regarding childcare as it was then.

There no living wage and no respect for teachers of the youngest children. Period. So yes, the financial component needs to change if you want teachers/caregivers/instructors to be there to shape our future! Parents want to work, then outsource child care to others, and want "the best" for their children. Why is it that those same caregivers are paid so poorly. Pitiful.

I don’t know what a citizen cosponsor is or means. I believe we need to increase the salary of early childhood teachers commensurate with their public school peers.

Would like more detail before commiting to being a co-sponsor.

I would probably be an enthusiastic "citizen co-sponsor," but there is no information here about what that means and what I'd be sponsoring: does this agenda mean pursuing specific funding mechanisms? Ensuring, as another commenter said, protections against the private equity involvement that has caused so much damage to the healthcare and other systems? Please provide information so we can sponsor/vote responsibly!

When my child was born in 1988, I realized excellent child care was hard to find. Since I had been a teacher before, I started a state certified family day care to provide my son and a few other children quality care. That is not something most families can do. When I read about the cost now for child care, I am astounded at the cost and lack of choices.

Agree with the first two comments! More details are definitely needed. BTW, just saw a news report announcing that President Biden's name has been omitted from ballots in Ohio; if true, there is lots of explaining to do--HOW did this happen??

Important topic, but no mention of any plan even in bullet points. Seems like another scheme to raise taxes yet again by whipping up public sentiment. Deplorable.

This should be accompanied by a link to what it means to be a citizen co-sponsor. I am surprised tgat Rep. Clark's team did not think to do this. I support the measure but did not sign up because there is no information on sponsorshop, nor details on measure.

You don't have to have young children to support ALL children. An easy way for the USA to maintain our strength and leadership in so many ways.

I love this idea and gladly support it. However, please build into the program protections against private equity firms financing programs under the guise of public-private sponsorship. These vultures are already sniffing around the childcare business, and if substantial government funding becomes available they will be front and center trying to get theirs. Legal safeguards can avoid this.

Lots of words but nothing about how your bill will accomplish the plan - more taxes from those who’ll use the service? Where will the $$ come from to implement this??

Please pay attention to who foots the bill. When I was on a day care board of directors we took children who were subsidized by the state of MA. We were not paid the going rate so that cost was reflected in the rates we charged the other parents. There was a stigma associated with being subsidized that would not have been there if the program paid market rates.

National level support for child care and early childhood education should be a top priority. The brain is developing rapidly in infancy through the preschool time. Training and compensating experienced educators for infants until school age is essential for our community's future and our economy. We lived abroad in Europe when our kids were born. The cost for childcare was half of what it was when we returned to the US thanks to government-subsidized daycare. In the US, we paid $75,000 for two kids in daycare the first year back so that we could work 9-5 jobs.

I need more information on what is proposed. We still operate as if women are stay at home Moms in this country.

Children are the future and their earliest years are crucial to their future development and success. Affordable high quality childcare is of paramount importance.

Child care is a huge problem that needs to be addressed, I fully agree with that. However, I am wary to become a "citizen co-sponsor" of an agenda without knowing some details about what exactly you are proposing. I couldn't find that very easily on this site.

If you don't care about kids, you don't care about America. USA!

Sounds like more Democrat socialism.

The childcare reform is very much needed in the US. I agree with all the statements of the Affordable ChildCare Agenda. But just like many other commenters mentioned, I would like to read a plan for achieving those goals. Also, let's not forget that middle-aged people in the US frequently need to provide care for their children and aging parents. There also should be a plan for helping the elderly population.

The first 5 years of a child’s life set the stage for mental health, socialization and academic readiness. Many Parents of young kids need financial support to get their children in good quality day care.

This sounds like a great program and one that is desperately needed. I would like to sign on but need to know who will pay for the program and how?

I'm a grandparent. My wife and I help our kids with their daycare needs as issues arise. My daughter-in-law works in a day care facility. They struggle with the low pay and with the cost of their child's daycare - double edged sword. We are a first world country with third world mentality when it comes to social services. We, as a country, need to do better.

My hope is for our country to move rapidly toward providing citizen support across domains: single payer health care, paid parental leave for a year, highly subsidized higher education, and drastically improving k-12 schools in additional to affordable child care. We need our government to support its citizens, not corporations and not billionaires. One can always dream.

I agree that the price of child care in many cases is not only high but astronomical so I am not opposed to some assistance. First however, please tell me how you will pay for the benefit. WE CAN'T HAVE ANY MORE DEFICIT SPENDING.

I run an after school program for children with ASD. And I see daily how parent are struggling to afford desperately needed care. I also see many great educators leave the field because they can’t afford to work there. This is an important bill that need more discussion and more visibility.

I was a daycare worker in 1977-79. I had to work a second half time job to make ends meet, and we still ran out of food money every month in week three — we ate a jar of pb on bread that week. It is hard, critical work. But people left it to become toll collectors because they needed more money. I left to teach in schools — which still barely got us through each month. We learned in the pandemic how essential child care workers and teachers are. For gods sake, give them a living wage!!

this is all good but i do not see some basic info about the program on the web page. how much is this going to cost us and who is paying?? i have managed as a single parent to take care of my kids, am i going to have to pay now for this program with higher taxes?"

I'd like to see more details. Will this allow parents to deduct child care expenses? What if there is a relative like a grandparent who is able to provide child care? Will that be treated the way we are moving towards in family members providing senior/disabled care?

We simply need better infrastructure in this country to support working families. Longer subsidized parental leaves & subsidized childcare options, year round school, better pay for teachers, more funding to make school a place where students and teachers WANT to be rather than a holding pen for children of overworked and underpaid parents. Start with taxing billionaires!

Yes my daughter is a single parent and the child Father is not paying child support so I think the Justice system needs to be more strict on the dead beet fathers

My daughter is continually in stress about retaining and keeping affordable care for her and her husband' s son. When he is sick he must be kept out of school and special, last minute arrangements must be made. Child care and rearing in the US is an unnecessarily stressful endeavor. I think our priorities, as a nation, are screwed up. Actions speak louder than words - I'm thinking of our " family values" folks.

I support the agenda, but what’s the plan or approach to make it a reality?

I have one daughter who is doing well as an adult. As a classroom and youth group volunteer, I have seen a wide range of resources and opportunities in the kids I knew. Especially in the inner city but also in the suburbs, a lot of the children lacked help with schoolwork and with learning how to grow up.

I am a clergy person who provides overight to a childcare center at a church which provides quality early childhood education for ages 6 weeks to preschool as well as a school age program. We serve at least 150 children on a daily basia 10 1/2 hours every weekday. We do this to serve our community as part of our ministry. We are constantly challenged by the balance between being a just employer being able to retain high quality staff while also keeping our tuition for our families as low as possible. We know everytime we want to give a pay raise we pass that onto our families. It is unstainable for both our families and our employees without an outside investment. The investment by our state and federal governments during Covid allowed us to increase wages and invest in our staff without passing those costs onto our families. It made a real impact on the communities, our families and our children. Without that outside investment, we will have to continue to raise rates.

Child care should be publicly funded like K-12. And salaries should be on par with K-12 salaries. All children need access to education and care during these formative years. Parents need care they can rely on to work, at least until kids are 12. The return on investment is huge. In education outcomes and available workforce. It is shocking that Congress has not addressed this crisis. Show some respect to our parents and child care workers. Stop exploiting our labor, because it costs the economy and tax revenue Congress relies on to spend on their pet projects. Pennywise... no Pound Foolish

I am a small business owner in a predominantly female industry (speech pathology). I would love to expand and hire employees in the near future. This is one step in being able to recruit and retain valued employees who may otherwise decide it's more financially responsible to stay home instead of return to work after starting a family.

I was working in my dream industry with one child and knew that as soon as I had a 2nd child, the cost of daycare would take all of my paycheck. I decided to stay home instead of work once I had my 2nd child because of this. My story is not uncommon. There are women that want to work but don’t see the point when their entire paycheck will go to daycare costs.

We had to chose to only have one child because we can barely afford his daycare.

I work in HR and our employees are facing a two year waitlist for daycare. Our city recently completed a study and found that several areas are in a childcare desert. Unfortunately there doesn’t seem to be any plan.

I am a mom of two preschoolers and a child development professor at a community college. I see first-hand the amazing work that early childhood professionals do day in and day out, but I know that they are paid far too little to support their own families. My husband and I both work and are paid well, yet we struggle to make ends meet due to the high cost of child care. Access is another issue for many families. All of these issues need government involvement to be solved. Please do something.

I do not have children, but I work with low income tenants who are experiencing an active threat of eviction. Black women with children are the most at-risk population for being evicted from their homes. These women often have to bring their children to court with them because they do not have access to childcare, or they express that lack of childcare is one of the barriers preventing them from finding more gainful employment. Families and children deserve so much better.

Disagree. If you can’t afford to raise children, don’t have them.

We had joined wait lists of reputable daycares when I was halfway through my pregnancy. By the time it was time to return to work 16 weeks after my child was born, we still didn't have a spot. We had to turn to a nanny for the first 14 months of childcare until we finally got a spot at a daycare 40 minutes from our home. We spent twice our mortgage every month on childcare during that time, three times the equivalent of a year of in-state college tuition.

If affordable childcare and free public pre-k had been available to me 6 years ago, I would have a third child. Instead, my husband and I had to wait to try to conceive again until we could afford childcare, and then Covid hit, and then it was too late for my body. Currently we are paying $115/week just for afterschool care for two elementary-age children. And $500/week per kid for summer camp. In addition to child care for babies, toddlers, and preschoolers, we also need year-round school and before and aftercare included for all kids in public schools.

I worked in a childhood center in a homeless shelter in Houston. Our early childhood teachers were so professional but we had such turnover because it was not sustainable to make $13-$14 an hour. It not only is hard for the teachers (who qualified for many government programs because they were at the poverty line), but it is hard for the kids who lose the teachers they have created connections with!

My husband and I work full time. Our youngest son has a disability. That meant getting child care was just that much tougher. He’s five and a half, and we’ve spent his entire life combining part time daycare with part time private preschool to still only have a part time solution that cost more than our mortgage payment. Childcare has been our biggest bill and forced me to leave teaching to get a job that allowed me to work around his childcare schedule. This system is built on the idea that families have a supplement support that fills in gaps. Or that families have significant money to put towards this. That just doesn’t exist for us. Now that my son is five, I watching friends pay thousands of dollars for whatever camps or programs that will allow them to work like they don’t have kids. It’s untenable.

Had to give up on my dream achieving being a pharmacist because staying home is cheaper than the daycare that I would afford. My kid is suffering delay of speech and being lonely because I cannot afford a daycare higher than my rent.. totally disappointing I wish they would feel for these poor kids who utterly need proper childcare development.

It took us a year to find a full-time spot for our son because we live in a rural community with few resources. And the spot we did find is in the next state over! My legislators aren't listening to me when I say that our community needs federal money to support the care infrastructure because the state simply isn't doing enough.

As a young single mom in '83, I believe I was at the dawn of the child care crisis. In the 60s - 70s, we were latch key kids. After Adam Walsh, life shifted. Ultimately, I worked a 2nd FT job just for daycare, preschool & after school programs, beginning at $800/mo+, plus babysitting. I can't imagine today's expenses.

In the early 1990's I worked for the YMCA as a site director of a before and after school program for $6/ hr. It was a good and necessary job that I liked but after a divorce I knew childcare would never pay a living wage in my lifetime so I went to nursing school. I'm 70 now and retired. I say it's way passed time. Many people would step forward and help guide our nation's children if they were paid appropriately.

I am an early childhood educator, and I love teaching young children, but the reality is I am a highly skilled professional who provides a public good to my community and yet I live hand to mouth on a poverty wage and receive no benefits. I have to keep a second job to make ends meet, and it is exhausting to work so much. I want to stay in this field, but I need to make a wage I can live on, I need to be able to access healthcare, and I need to be able to save for my retirement! I know my work is valuable, and I know I deserve to live a comfortable and dignified life while I teach young children!

We are paying nearly $30k a year for one child at a daycare center. We want to have another child and are worried we may not be able to afford it- I know many families in the same situation. As it is, childcare is about 25% of our income after taxes and the cost has increased twice since we enrolled a year ago. This was the only childcare that had a spot as well, thankfully it is a great center because we had zero alternatives. Care work is such important work- childcare workers deserve fair living wages. We must invest in this absolutely critical infrastructure- it is vitally important for our economy and is especially critical for women who make up the majority of caregivers in our country.

Childcare is a second mortgage. We are grateful to have found placement- our daycare knew I was pregnant before my family did! But we are limiting and spacing the amount of children we would like to have because of the cost of care. I’d prefer to have another child now, but we have to wait until our daughter is in kindergarten. We cannot afford more kids in daycare.

I pay more for child care than my mortgage, utilities, car, health insurance, and retirement COMBINED! And pretty soon, we won't be able to afford it anymore.

52 years ago, I attended a meeting in the basement of a Pittsburgh church with a group of women. Sitting on folding chairs, we discussed problems women commonly faced and what might be done about them. One woman spoke powerfully about the critical need for childcare outside the home. That woman was Eleanor Smeal who later became the President of the National Organization for Women (NOW) and the Feminist Majority Foundation. The issue of childcare, among others, motivated her to become a politically active feminist. At the time, religious organizations and the news media opposed daycare saying it would undermine The Family. Women's place was at home. This ignored economic reality. A half century later, child daycare is now societally acceptable. Unfortunately, affordable, accessible childcare is still not a reality.

I am an infant/Toddler teacher for low income families at the Woburn Council of Social Concern Childcare Center. We are in desperate need of a new playground for our students. We have tire chips on the playground and the infants & toddlers like to put them in their mouth. The structures we have are very old. We would like to replace the tire chips with turf. I appreciate your support and efforts to help families that need quality Childcare. Best Regards, Rosemarie Commendatore

Before making the choice to stay home I was a self contained special education teacher. I loved my job- the connections with students, staff, and families along with the community were impactful but unfortunately we couldn’t justify the cost for two in daycare when my paycheck would be about $200 every other week. At a time when there is a huge teacher shortage and an even larger shortage of specialized special education teachers there are many passionate teachers who cannot afford to work.

We need to invest in real work. We need to professionalize our care giving

We all understand that infrastructure is important when planning for the future. We understand why we have to invest in roads. Accessible child care is the real INFRASTRUCTURE needed to improve our economy