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Floor Speech
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Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Madam President, I rise today in strong support of Senator Murray's Child Care Stabilization Act.
We know how much of a lifeline this program has been for families, for childcare providers, and our economy since it was established in 2021. Thanks to this program, 220,000 childcare providers stayed afloat. Up to 10 million kids' childcare slots were saved, and the unemployment rate for moms with kids under age 6 empowered moms to return to work at rates we have not seen.
The need for high-quality childcare is one of those issues I hear about all over Minnesota, from the Iron Range up north to our farming towns in Southern Minnesota, from urban areas in the Twin Cities to suburbs across the metro. It doesn't matter how qualified you are or how badly you may want a job, if there is no one to watch your kids, you can't go to work. Too often, people are in this situation because there are simply no childcare options.
I think about Pam and her husband, who live in Cottage Grove, MN. They both work full time and rely on daycare centers to look after their two little kids. They are paying more than $2,800 a month for childcare, meaning Pam's husband's whole paycheck goes toward paying those costs.
Pam told me:
We may soon join the increasing ranks of parents forced to leave the workforce because they have no other option.
Another Minnesotan, Erin, is a new mom, who a year after having her baby still can't find an open childcare spot. She sent email after email to local providers, but all she got in response was an overwhelming number of ``no infant openings.'' Many of these providers told Erin that they wouldn't have openings for years. When she finally found an opening, she could hardly afford it.
Then there is Amelia, who lives in Richfield--a southern suburb in the Twin Cities--and pays over $15,000 a year for each of her two kids. Her family is facing the same dilemma as so many others:
We can't pay our mortgage if I stay home, but we barely take anything home after paying to send our twins to preschool.
Pam, Erin, and Amelia, who live in different parts of our State--and they have way different jobs--and the 51 percent of Americans who also live in childcare deserts deserve better. They deserve high-quality childcare that is in their budgets and that actually has open spots for kids.
The good news? We have been making progress in my State. Here are a few examples.
In Redwood Falls, a brandnew childcare center will provide the area with more than 70 new childcare slots with a combination of funding, private and public.
The town of Morris--a college town near South Dakota--started a program that I visited. They have six childcare pods. They are apartments that could be converted to senior housing if they want, but it allows small providers--who maybe have six to eight kids--to have a place that is safe for the kids. They share a parking lot and the like. That facility in a smaller town serves more than 80 kids.
Just a few weeks ago, I was in new facilities in Perham, MN, at the Children's Corner. Those were two companies--one is food manufacturing, with about 700 employees, the other a healthcare company. They combined and paid for the expansion of the existing private childcare nonprofit facility, doubled the number of childcare slots, and got some promised to their kids out of those companies but a whole lot more for everyone else.
Fiscal year 2023 congressionally directed spending also made it possible for the Hallie Q. Brown-Martin Luther King Service Center in St. Paul to build additional daycare facilities.
We are making huge steps in the right direction, including coming out of our State legislature in the last year, but Congress needs to pick up this momentum to do right by people like Pam and Erin and Amelia and pass the Child Care Stabilization Act.
For far too many parents, the lack of available, affordable childcare is a barrier to finding a job. I thank Senator Murray for this incredibly important legislation. While we work to strengthen our childcare workforce--it has got to be a piece of this in a big way--and build facilities where families need them the most, we need to ensure that our childcare centers have the funding they need to provide affordable, high-quality care.
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