From Moms Rising (https://www.momsrising.org/):
Congress put forward its economic plan and we have feelings. Lots of them. Thanks to the amazing work of MomsRising volunteers mobilizing online and on the ground, we are celebrating the huge wins on healthcare, prescription drugs, and fighting climate change… all paid for by finally starting to make mega businesses pay their fair share in taxes. But for families with young children and perhaps another on the way, we are more than upset that the Inflation Reduction Act did nothing to solve the child care crisis.
Go to https://action.momsrising.org/sign/PostReconciliationChildCare to tell Congress their work is not done and they need to take action now to fix our nation’s childcare crisis.
A historic loss of women in the workplace and an unprecedented global pandemic have apparently not yet been enough to convince Congress that our moms and families desperately need support to stay afloat, let alone thrive. The numbers sadly speak for themselves: Nearly half a million families are estimated to be stranded without reliable child care, [1] exacerbating the nation’s worker shortage as parents continue to stay home. And women, including moms, still haven’t made the employment gains in the labor market that men have in part due to child care shortages. [2]
Indeed, moms have carried the burden of child care on their backs before and during a pandemic often by being forced out of jobs, dropping out of the labor force or shortening their work hours. Our full economic recovery and reduction of labor shortages that are causing inflation will only happen when moms, parents and other caregivers have the childcare they need to fully participate in the workforce.
And the great thing is that the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act has demonstrated that our nation has more than enough resources to build a quality affordable childcare system. For too long moms and other caregivers have been told that our country can’t afford a universal childcare system. But the fact is that by simply closing some of the loopholes that allow mega-corporations to pay little or no taxes, we’ve managed to pay for legislation that provides major improvements to our healthcare system and fights climate change. The good news is —we have the money! All we need to do is continue to close the loopholes that allow mega corporations and billionaires to avoid paying taxes.
We want you to know that we share your frustration about this and that is why we are keeping up the momentum on child care because that’s what we deserve. And THANK YOU, because we have made a huge impact. We’ve already accomplished so much together and have created growing momentum for systemic childcare systems solutions as evidenced by historic investments in child care in COVID relief funding, the U.S. Treasury Department declaring child care a market failure in need of public investment, and unprecedented media attention to the child care crisis.
And YOU have shown up! Our members have testified not once, but multiple times before Congress with their powerful child care stories, and those stories made a difference! Because of this growing momentum, for the first time in decades, child care is widely seen as an issue that is a systemic failure that requires federal solutions – not a personal failing of individual families. Though we aren’t there yet, our messaging and our actions have made a difference to push the paradigm on why child care is so critical for our nation’s families and economies.
That’s why we won’t stop our march forward as we raise our collective voices to say “Hey Congress, what’s the plan for child care?!”
To reiterate, we are still in crisis mode. 16,000 child care centers closed during the pandemic. [3] Our families can’t afford the closing of even more centers, all while lower wages push more early educators out of the field!
We deserve better, we deserve to be heard, our families deserve support, our moms deserve to stop carrying the burden of an entire economy and country on their backs. Know that none of us are in this alone, we are still fighting together, and together we know we can make the impact our country and nation need!
References:
[1] https://www.cnn.com/2022/03/01/economy/child-care-wells-fargo-labor-force/index.html[2] https://nwlc.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/Jan-Jobs-Day.pdf
[3] https://info.childcareaware.org/media/16000-childcare-providers-shut-down-in-the-pandemic.-its-a-really-big-deal
Leave a Reply