Representative Heather Wilson: “We all care about the quality of child care where our kids are concerned. I used to operate the child care system in New…”

“We all care about the quality of child care where our kids are concerned. I used to operate the child care system in New Mexico as the cabinet Secretary for Children, and one of the things that was clear to me under welfare reform is that we needed adequate support for child care, for women to be able to go back to work. That means increasing the payment rates for child care. It means having child care available at odd hours and on weekends so people can do shift work. We needed to increase funds. And we have, by $2 billion, in this bill, while the number of families depending on welfare and on child care is going down. That is a good thing. Poverty has gone down in America because moms have been able to get jobs and go back to work. Now we have to focus on improving the quality of that child care, because what we are talking about is early education for the youngest American citizens, and a lot of it takes place outside of Head Start, which is the Cadillac of early childhood education in this country.”