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Floor Speech
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Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Madam President, I am delighted to join my colleagues today from the Finance Committee. Our chairman is here. We did, I think, remarkable work to expand the child tax credit during the COVID epidemic, and it made a truly remarkable difference in children's lives--nearly 50 percent reduction in child poverty. Why would you not want more of that? Yet we let it expire in 2021, and, sure enough, child poverty climbed back up again.
There was a lot of fearmongering, when we did it, that this was going to discourage people from working, that they would sit at home and sop up the tax credit. But the fact of the matter is, if you can't get childcare, you can't get to work. And if you can't get reliable, quality childcare, you can't move up into the kind of job where you don't have to worry about being called away because your childcare just fell apart.
So in Rhode Island at least, we saw families do more work as a result of this, and 174,000 Rhode Island children benefited. Families got $264 million--low-income families--to pay for childcare, get to work, or step up to a better job.
At the same time, we also provided additional funding for childcare providers in that same American rescue plan, and that was another win. And you put the two together, and it really lifted families.
Right now, without Congressional action, 3 million children are projected to lose access to childcare, and 70,000 childcare programs could close.
Bring that to Rhode Island, and it is 21,000 kids in my State who could lose access to childcare, 680 childcare workers could lose their jobs, and 419 different childcare providers could close.
We simply cannot let that happen. It is wrong. It is dumb. It is penny-wise and pound-foolish.
We need to do three simple things: Make childcare a priority, encourage work and earning, and reduce child poverty. We can do those three things by reestablishing the child tax credit and continuing to support childcare providers.
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