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The front cover of Monday's New York Times featured a story about child care subsidies. "Cuts to Child Care Subsidy Thwart More Job Seekers", read the headline. I glanced at it in shock. There are never front page stories about child care, although I believe the provision of quality child care is the most important investment we can make as a nation.
Study after study after study indicate that children, particularly low-income children, benefit from attending high quality early childhood programs. For every dollar invested in quality early childhood education, the public reaps as much as $17 in benefits. Plus, by offering safe, reliable places for children to be while parents work, it further helps society as parents contribute to the economy. Not to mention that child care is a multi-billion dollar industry that creates jobs both directly (people who work in the business) and indirectly (local businesses who supply the programs). That we don't prioritize quality child care as a nation is one of our greatest shames.
The article in the Times, however, didn't focus on the benefits early childhood programs bring children and the public. Instead, it looked at how states are reneging their promises to low-income working parents by cutting state child care subsidy programs. Back in 1996, when Bill Clinton ended "welfare as we know it" with the Personal Responsibility and Work Reconciliation Act, child care became almost glamorous. States understood that if they were going to require parents to work, kids needed a place to go. Many states launched creative programs, offering contracted child care slots and vouchers, and helping child care operators expand their facilities to care for more kids. This new access to affordable child care changed the lives of millions of families. It changed mine, too.
In the summer of 1996, I was between my second and third years of college. I applied for a summer internship with my state government. On the application, I check off that I'd be interested in working in the Illinois Department of Public Aid's child care office. The visionary woman who headed the department decided that she wanted to meet the country's first female president (yes, that's what I actually wrote that I aspired to be, which horrifies me), so she hired me. I came in just as she and her team seized on the challenges and opportunities that welfare reform provided.
That summer, I worked on a survey about licensed child care capacity in the state. I also participated in interviews with public assistance recipients. We wanted to know what they were going to do when they were forced to work for their welfare checks. I liked working in their office. I knew that the powers that be were working on reforming the old child care system -- which had separate subsidies for people on welfare and people who were working and poor -- and I thought their plan to integrate the two systems was exciting. I was lucky enough to be able to return the following summer. I had graduated, and planned to attend law school in the fall, so I saw this as my last chance to work on public policy that would make a difference.
Under the old system, families on welfare had immediate access to child care subsidies, but a long waiting list existed for working poor families who needed help paying for child care. In the summer of 1997, Illinois said that anyone who was working and earned less than a set income ceiling would get child care. Overnight, almost 50,000 families on a waiting list got the help they needed. The downside, however, was that in order to serve more people, the state lowered the income ceiling. (The "good" news was that very few families currently receiving help were over that limit. Those families were given an extra year of assistance before they became ineligible.)
The impact that this one piece of legislation had was stunning to me. I had always thought that the only way to do good was through public interest law. Yet here I experienced another way. I decided not to go to law school, but to pursue a career in public policy instead.
