Lynn C. Woolsey: “I am sorry to see this resolution on the floor today because I think that it would have benefited from the Committee on…”

“I am sorry to see this resolution on the floor today because I think that it would have benefited from the Committee on Education and Workforce markup that was scheduled and then canceled. Since other members of the committee and myself had amendments to offer to H.Con.Res. 202, I truly had assumed that the committee would mark up and have it rescheduled. Silly me. I should have known that the majority would not give members of the committee an opportunity to improve the resolution so that it would actually acknowledge the importance of all families. Certainly we should honor families who can choose to have one parent at home with their young child. Certainly we should honor families where parents get up and go to work every day, but cannot afford child care. And we should also honor the people that were covered in my amendment, those who give up or would be forced to give up their sole source of income because of the lack of child care, keeping them from fulfilling their work requirements under the new welfare law. Had there been a committee markup, I would have offered an amendment expressing the sense of Congress that we must increase from age 6 to age 11 when a single parent would be forced to leave a child home if they were unable to find an appropriate child care.”