Bi-Partisan Support for Child Care
WASHINGTON—The Senate Tuesday overwhelmingly approved an amendment by Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Me., to add $6 billion for child care over the next five years to the proposed reauthorization of the landmark 1996 welfare reform law.
Snowe’s amendment was adopted, 78-20, with 46 Democrats, 31 Republicans, including Sen. Susan Collins, R-Me., and one independent voting for it. New Hampshire’s two Republican senators voted no. It would bring to $11.8 billion the amount the federal government spends on child care under the welfare program, called Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF).
“The quality of affordable child care will make welfare reform worthwhile,” Snowe told reporters after the vote. “I am very pleased we were able to secure a broad bipartisan effort.”
“Something stunning just happened,” said Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn. “We have reached an important milestone in reauthorizing welfare legislation.”
The goal is to “move from welfare to workforce, not temporarily, but permanently if we can,” he said before the vote. “Without this amendment, that goal is unachievable,” he said after the vote.
The added $6 billion would come from user fees on imports and so would not contribute to the federal deficit, Snowe said in a press release.
The House-passed version of the welfare reauthorization bill, which the White House supports, includes $1 billion in child-care funds.
With states running budget deficits and a decline in funds for welfare, many child care programs have been cut, according to the National Women’s Law Center in Washington. Currently, 1,800 children are on waiting lists in Maine. New Hampshire has frozen reimbursement rates for child care for the past four years and eliminated after-school program grants.
“Working-poor families need this help, and these mothers need child care assistance,” Dodd said. “They don’t have anyone else.”
A 2002 Economic Policy Institute study found that former welfare recipients with young children are 60 percent more likely to be employed after two years if they receive child-care assistance.
Senators who co-sponsored Snowe’s amendment agreed that child care is an essential step toward full-time employment for former welfare recipients and low-income households.
“Often a parent’s salary is almost completely offset by the cost of child care, and this burden is particularly heavy on low-income families,” Collins said in a statement. “This funding will ensure that more parents get the support they need to keep their children safe and make a living.”
New Hampshire’s senators cited different reasons for their votes against Snowe’s amendment.
“This welfare reform reauthorization maintains the TANF block grant at $16.5 billion per year – even though caseloads have fallen 58 percent since 1996,” Sen. John Sununu said in a statement. He added that the bill also called for increases in child-care spending of $1 billion over the next five years, and that “given the incredible success of welfare reform, I think this funding is quite sufficient to help millions more Americans make the transition from welfare to independence.”
Sen. Judd Gregg, who chairs the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, said he was prepared to offer his own amendment to double the increase in child-care spending to $2 billion over five years from the $1 billion in the House bill. He express concern that Snowe’s $6 billion was not paid for.
“The real effect of the bill was to go way outside the budget and add a huge new tranche of dollars beyond the budget, which would be fine had it been realistically offset, but it wasn’t realistically offset,” Gregg said on the Senate floor. A press release from his office added that Snowe’s amendment “relied on fees from the U.S. Customs Department, and these fees, as stated by Sen. Gregg, are continuously used to pay for different functions and initiatives.”
