Take Action on National Call-In Day, Thursday, July 25

Call your senators' Washington, D.C. offices directly (Don't know the numbers? Go to http://www.senate.gov) or call the Capitol switchboard at (202) 224-3121 to connect to your senators' offices. Be sure to ask for the staffer who covers children's and welfare issues.

Your message:

I strongly urge you to support substantial additional funding for childcare for welfare families when welfare reauthorization comes to the Senate floor. The goal of welfare-supported childcare should be to provide adequate childcare to as many eligible families as possible. Currently, however, childcare subsidies for poor families are grossly underfunded, with Child Care and Development Block Grants currently funded at about 14% of need, while Head Start is funded at only two-thirds of need.

Please do not allow an increase in mandatory work hours for welfare recipients beyond the current 30 hours a week. Please oppose the Hutchison-Sessions Bill (S. 2648) or any similar amendment that would require welfare recipients to work an added ten hours per week without providing any significant additional childcare funding. It is not only callous but also impractical to insist that low-income parents work longer hours without offering additional childcare assistance.

Background:

Please don't let your senators return home to their families in August without helping the millions of low-income families that desperately require help in paying for childcare expenses. Congress can—and must—increase funding for child care subsidies for Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) recipients because too many parents receiving welfare assistance and working long hours currently don't have access to affordable child care services.

The drive for increased childcare assistance for low-income families is at a crucial point right now. Although the Senate version of welfare reauthorization is a big improvement over George W. Bush's punitive, regressive approach (which basically tells poor parents to work longer hours and get married), it still provides only $5.5 billion in new funds for child care over the next five years—not nearly enough to help all TANF parents. When Assistant Secretary of Health and Human Services Wade Horn, who is responsible for overseeing the TANF program, was told that the current TANF funding for childcare only covered about 12% of need, he responded that he thought the funding was "generous."

During the Senate Finance Committee's mark-up of the Work Opportunity and Responsibility for Kids (WORK) Act, Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.) offered an amendment that would have increased childcare funding to $7 billion. Sens. Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.), Max Baucus (D-Mont.) and Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) spoke in favor of greater childcare funding; but Sens. John Breaux (D-La.), Kent Conrad (D-N.D.), Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) and Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) opposed the amendment although they did say they agreed that more childcare funding is needed. Senator Bingaman withdrew his amendment but may bring it up on the Senate floor. Reportedly, he and Sens. Daschle and John Kerry (D-Mass.) intend to work to obtain more childcare funding.

While the $7 billion proposed by Sen. Bingaman is the best offered to date, it is still far from adequate. A recent estimate developed by economist and childcare policy expert Dr. Barbara Bergmann indicates that providing childcare subsidies for 65% of welfare recipients working 40 hours per week would cost an additional $16.6 billion over the next five years—three times what the Senate bill currently offers. Dr. Bergmann’s estimate illustrates the inadequacy of the proposed TANF child care subsidy amounts discussed thus far.