Bill Clinton: “Well, I think there are two or three things we can do that we're working on now. First is to work in partnerships with…”

“Well, I think there are two or three things we can do that we're working on now. First is to work in partnerships with States to help them to develop high standards for child care but also quality care at affordable prices. And one of the things that we did in my State when I was Governor is to spend a good deal bit of our training money. For example, training people who are on welfare but who were quite intelligent and capable of--for taking care of their own children--to work in child care facilities and moving them from welfare to work in ways that took maximum advantage of money the taxpayers are spending already and lower the cost of child care. And we often put these child care facilities in and around job training facilities to help working mothers and working parents that were going back to school. Sometimes they were going to school and working at the same time. I think we can do that. The second thing we can do is to increase the earned-income tax credit for working Americans, especially middle to lower middle income working Americans, so that they will have more disposable income to pay their child care expenses. The third thing we can do is simply to increase the child care credit itself. We basically have got to make the economics of this work. And I think there are lots of other things that can be done, but they won't affect the population as a whole. The population as a whole needs to be helped by making sure you've got a steady stream of trained quality child care workers and then more income for middle-class people, either through the child care tax credit or through the general earned- income tax credit, which basically says if you work 40 hours a week and you've got kids in the house, you shouldn't be put into poverty because of your other expenses, including child care. The Government ought to reduce your tax burden, if necessary even give you money back, as long as you're working hard and playing by the rules and you need to take care of your kids. Kimba Wood Mr. Bonds. Mr. President, as long as we're on the subject, let me come in the back door on it and ask you the same question that many Americans apparently have felt, and that is, Judge Kimba Wood certainly did everything she could legally to attain child care. Why was she penalized, punished by being eliminated as a candidate for Attorney General if, in fact, she dealt with this rather difficult problem in a perfectly legal way?”