[US Budget] House Budget Package Deprives Low-Income Families of Vital Child Care Assistance

From Results

On November 18, House approved its budget reconciliation bill, H.R. 4241, by a narrow margin of 217-215. The bill approved $9.5 billion over five years in cuts to the Medicaid program and deep cuts to child support enforcement spending which the Congressional Budget Office estimates will result in $24 billion dollars in lost child support payments to struggling single mothers. In addition, the budget for the Food Stamp Program was cut by $700 million over five years, a cut the CBO estimates will result in 220,000 people a month losing food stamps.

The House also approved changes to the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF), the federal welfare program, which will impose unrealistic new work requirements on working parents receiving welfare without increasing the amount of funding for child care assistance. The impact of these changes includes:

* The bill increases work participation requirements for single parents with children under 6 from 20 to 40 hours a week, creating an obvious need for more child care.
* The House increases guaranteed child care spending by just $500 million in over five years, only 6 percent of the $8.3 billion over five years that the Congressional Budget Office estimates will be required to meet the new work and child care costs of the House bill.
* The $500 million dollar increase is actually half of what was originally proposed in the House spending bill, before the House Committee for Ways and Means lowered that amount from $1 billion to $500 million. In contrast the Senate approved an increase of $7 billion for child care funding
* Due to the House’s underfunding of child care, the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities estimates that 330,000 children in low-income working families that are not on welfare will lose their child care assistance by 2010.

Child Care Funding Continues to Decline

The failure of the House to properly fund child care is part of the continuing failure of our government to properly fund child care subsidies. We cannot ask parents make the choice between entering the workforce and leaving their children in low-quality or unsafe child care. According to the National Women’s Law Center, some recent child care funding trends include:

*There have been steady and systematic cuts to child care spending. Federal funding for the Child Care Block Development Grant (CCBDG) has steadily declined over the last four years, and the amounts that states are given through the TANF block grant has decreased since 2000.
*Overall federal and state spending on child care assistance, including CCDBG and TANF funds, declined from $12.3 billion in 2003 to $11.9 billion in 2004.
*Thirty states have now made cuts in total child care spending, and twelve states have lowered their income eligibility cutoffs between 2001 and 2005, meaning that fewer and fewer low-income families qualify for help. An additional seven states failed to raise income requirements, ignoring cost-of-living increases.
*Twenty states have waiting lists or frozen enrollment for child care assistance. Even before the recent hurricanes caused tens of thousands to flee to Texas there were 22,000 children on the waiting list for child care assistance. Nationwide over a half million children in thirty-three states are on waiting lists for child care assistance.
*Many states are being forced to increase copayments for families receiving child care assistance, forcing families already tightly-stretched budgets to be stretched even further.

Congress Should Properly Fund Child Care, Reject Budget Cuts

RESULTS feels that the budget reconciliation process is the entirely wrong avenue to deal with TANF’s five-year reauthorization. The rules of budget reconciliation require that any increase in funding for TANF be matched by cuts in other programs, making the child care funding increase needed for states to adequately support tough work requirements improbable. We also strongly believe that only by properly funding child care assistance can welfare-to-work programs be successful. Including welfare reauthorization and de facto child care cuts in this month’s final budget package would be a real step backwards. Congress should not only reject these harmful changes to TANF, and move to keep TANF out budget reconciliation, but should seek to provide adequate funding for child care assistance, so that the hundreds of thousands of children on waiting lists can receive the child care they need and deserve.

More broadly, RESULTS calls on Congress to reject the current budget reconciliation bills that will enact deep cuts to programs that support many of America’s most vulnerable families and children. Final votes on these spending cuts are not expected until the House returns to Washington on December 6 and the Senate December 14.