On the recordJuly 29, 2020
As our Nation continues to respond, recover, and reopen our economy following the outbreak of COVID-19, we can all agree that childcare is necessary in getting Americans back to work. No parent will return to work if they do not have a safe place for their child, which is another reason why schools safely reopening should be a priority of my Democratic colleagues. However, Democrats are pushing a partisan proposal that carelessly overspends taxpayer dollars and further burdens our childcare providers, who already face bureaucratic red tape, with more mandates, like overly extensive application requirements that will cost them more time and money when their time is better spent caring for our children. These mandates will prevent new providers from entering the industry, ultimately increasing costs and limiting the amount of available slots for children. This again is a one-size-fits-all, top-down government program. How much of this money will actually get there to take care of a child? H.R. 7027 appropriates $50 billion, which is higher than the entire annual revenue of the childcare industry--think about that--and twice the amount that the Bipartisan Policy Center estimated the industry would need. Is it going to cost another $25 billion to administrate this thing for all the burdensome red tape that goes along with it?…
