Letter to Hon. Nancy Pelosi, Speaker, and Hon. Charles Schumer, Majority Leader - Universal Childcare Provisions

Letter

Dear Speaker Pelosi and Leader Schumer:

We applaud your leadership on, and commitment to, passing President Biden's Build Back
Better initiatives. Last week, the House Committee on Education and Labor passed the necessary
investment in child care that reflects the scale and scope of support that American families need.
Specifically, the Committee's vote to ensure that no family pays more than 7 percent of its
household income on care for young children recognizes the economic benefits of protecting our
economy from the financial instability and workforce reduction caused by unaffordable child
care. We urge you to preserve this provision in the final passage of this bill.

As you know, child care is central to delivering on our promise to Build Back Better and invest
in our nation's children, families, and economic future. We have the opportunity to create a
universally affordable child care program that leaves no family behind. As such, we must give
every American access to child care by maintaining the provision to cap out-of-pocket child care
costs as a percentage of income. Abruptly cutting off eligibility at specific income levels fails to
recognize that the costs of child care disrupt the financial security of nearly all parents with
young children, particularly single mothers who need more care, people living in states with high
costs of child care, and people with more than one young child. It is important to underscore that
more families will be served by the 7 percent formula, as passed by the House Committee on
Education and Labor.

Before the pandemic, the average American family spent almost $10,000 a year per child on
child care. This expense is exacerbated for families living in states with high costs of living. In
more than half of states, child care tuition can exceed the cost of in-state college tuition, and for
many families the costs of child care dwarf even their home mortgage. To make matters worse,
about half of all parents planning to enroll their children in child care say they are planning to
accumulate credit card debt to pay for the expense. This is unacceptable. No parent should go
into debt to provide quality care for their child while working a full-time job.

These numbers are drastically worse for low-income single parents, who spend upwards of 50
percent of their earnings on child care. The Department of Health and Human Services has
determined that, in order to be affordable, child care should not cost a family more than 7 percent
of its household income.

The pandemic has created particular harms for some Americans. Working parents, especially
mothers, have lost their jobs or have been forced to reduce their working hours as the direct
result of school and day care closures. An estimated 1.2 million parents left the workforce
between February and October 2020. Women have lost nearly three million jobs since February
2020, and their return to the workforce has been anemic. In August 2021, women accounted for
just 12 percent of job gains. It would take nine straight years of job growth at that level for
women's participation in the workforce to be restored to pre-pandemic levels.

Given the inherent inequities of the pandemic, the resurgence of COVID-19 cases in July of this
year disproportionately affected women and parents, who are dealing with school and day care
closures along with continued financial hardships and an uncertain future of remote work.

Millions of Americans, particularly women, are continuing to leave the workforce, hesitating to
form small businesses, and forgoing promotions because child care is unaffordable for most
families. Our entire economy continues to suffer as a result. Businesses cannot effectively recruit
because child care accounts for nearly all of an entry-level employee's pay. Women have
stagnated in achieving leadership positions, and women's workforce participation is at a 30-year
low. Jobs during non-traditional hours are dominated by men. These realities are a big problem
for our economy.

The child care crisis is a crisis of productivity. It is an economic quicksand that multiple
generations are mired in: older Americans who provide unpaid child care to grandchildren,
parents who exit the workforce, and kids who fall behind because their families cannot afford
quality care. Including a universal cap on child care costs of 7 percent of annual household
income will allow us to deliver on our promises to the American people by creating a program
designed to target relief to workers who need it, especially in areas with high costs of living.

Thank you for your commitment to helping as many families as possible with this historic
legislation. We look forward to working with you to implement policies that will have a
profound impact on our nation's families.

Sincerely,

Mondaire Jones
Member of Congress
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Mikie Sherrill
Member of Congress
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Katie Porter
Member of Congress
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Jahana Hayes
Member of Congress
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Alma S. Adams, Ph.D.
Member of Congress
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Colin Allred
Member of Congress
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Jake Auchincloss
Member of Congress
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Cindy Axne
Member of Congress
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Karen Bass
Member of Congress
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Earl Blumenauer
Member of Congress
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Julia Brownley
Member of Congress
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Lisa Blunt Rochester
Member of Congress
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Jamaal Bowman
Member of Congress
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Cori Bush
Member of Congress
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Tony Cárdenas
Member of Congress
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André Carson
Member of Congress
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Troy A. Carter, Sr.
Member of Congress
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David Cicilline
Member of Congress
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Yvette D. Clarke
Member of Congress
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Emanuel Cleaver, II
Member of Congress
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J. Luis Correa
Member of Congress
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Angie Craig
Member of Congress
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Jason Crow
Member of Congress
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Henry Cuellar
Member of Congress
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Sharice L. Davids
Member of Congress
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Danny K. Davis
Member of Congress
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Madeleine Dean
Member of Congress
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Peter A. DeFazio
Member of Congress
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Debbie Dingell
Member of Congress
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Lloyd Doggett
Member of Congress
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Adriano Espaillat
Member of Congress
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Ruben Gallego
Member of Congress
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Jesús G. "Chuy" García
Member of Congress
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Jimmy Gomez
Member of Congress
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Vicente Gonzalez
Member of Congress
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Josh Gottheimer
Member of Congress
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Al Green
Member of Congress
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Raul M. Grijalva
Member of Congress
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Steven Horsford
Member of Congress
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Chrissy Houlahan
Member of Congress
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Jared Huffman
Member of Congress
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Sheila Jackson Lee
Member of Congress
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Sara Jacobs
Member of Congress
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Pramila Jayapal
Member of Congress
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Henry C. "Hank" Johnson Jr.
Member of Congress
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Kaiali"i Kahele
Member of Congress
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William R. Keating
Member of Congress
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Ro Khanna
Member of Congress
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Derek Kilmer
Member of Congress
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Andy Kim
Member of Congress
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Ann McLane Kuster
Member of Congress
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Andy Levin
Member of Congress
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Stephen Lynch
Member of Congress
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Tom Malinowski
Member of Congress
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Carolyn B. Maloney
Member of Congress
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Kathy Manning
Member of Congress
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Lucy McBath
Member of Congress
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A. Donald McEachin
Member of Congress
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Jim McGovern
Member of Congress
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Grace Meng
Member of Congress
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Jerrold Nadler
Member of Congress
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Grace F. Napolitano
Member of Congress
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Joe Neguse
Member of Congress
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Marie Newman
Member of Congress
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Donald Norcross
Member of Congress
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Eleanor Holmes Norton
Member of Congress
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Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
Member of Congress
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Ilhan Omar
Member of Congress
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Donald M. Payne, Jr.
Member of Congress
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Chellie Pingree
Member of Congress
_____________________
Mark Pocan
Member of Congress
______________________
Ayanna Pressley
Member of Congress
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David E. Price
Member of Congress
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Jamie Raskin
Member of Congress
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Deborah K. Ross
Member of Congress
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Lucille Roybal-Allard
Member of Congress
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Bobby L. Rush
Member of Congress
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Michael F.Q. San Nicolas
Member of Congress
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John Sarbanes
Member of Congress
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Mary Gay Scanlon
Member of Congress
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Jan Schakowsky
Member of Congress
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Kim Schrier, M.D.
Member of Congress
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David Scott
Member of Congress
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Terri A. Sewell
Member of Congress
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Albio Sires
Member of Congress
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Melanie Stansbury
Member of Congress
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Haley Stevens
Member of Congress
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Marilyn Strickland
Member of Congress
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Eric Swalwell
Member of Congress
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Mark Takano
Member of Congress
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Rashida Tlaib
Member of Congress
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Paul Tonko
Member of Congress
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Norma J. Torres
Member of Congress
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Ritchie Torres
Member of Congress
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Lori Trahan
Member of Congress
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David Trone
Member of Congress
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Lauren Underwood
Member of Congress
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Juan Vargas
Member of Congress
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Nydia M. Velázquez
Member of Congress
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Maxine Waters
Member of Congress
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Bonnie Watson Coleman
Member of Congress
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Peter Welch
Member of Congress
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Susan Wild
Member of Congress
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Nikema Williams
Member of Congress
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Frederica Wilson
Member of Congress
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Lois Frankel
Member of Congress