[House Hearing, 117 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
COVID CHILD CARE CHALLENGES:
SUPPORTING FAMILIES AND CAREGIVERS
=======================================================================
HEARING
BEFORE THE
SELECT SUBCOMMITTEE ON THE CORONAVIRUS CRISIS
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND REFORM
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED SEVENTEENTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
MARCH 2, 2022
__________
Serial No. 117-68
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Oversight and Reform
[GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Available on: govinfo.gov,
oversight.house.gov or
docs.house.gov
__________
U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
47-066 PDF WASHINGTON : 2022
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COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND REFORM
CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York, Chairwoman
Eleanor Holmes Norton, District of James Comer, Kentucky, Ranking
Columbia Minority Member
Stephen F. Lynch, Massachusetts Jim Jordan, Ohio
Jim Cooper, Tennessee Virginia Foxx, North Carolina
Gerald E. Connolly, Virginia Jody B. Hice, Georgia
Raja Krishnamoorthi, Illinois Glenn Grothman, Wisconsin
Jamie Raskin, Maryland Michael Cloud, Texas
Ro Khanna, California Bob Gibbs, Ohio
Kweisi Mfume, Maryland Clay Higgins, Louisiana
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, New York Ralph Norman, South Carolina
Rashida Tlaib, Michigan Pete Sessions, Texas
Katie Porter, California Fred Keller, Pennsylvania
Cori Bush, Missouri Andy Biggs, Arizona
Shontel M. Brown, Ohio Andrew Clyde, Georgia
Danny K. Davis, Illinois Nancy Mace, South Carolina
Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Florida Scott Franklin, Florida
Peter Welch, Vermont Jake LaTurner, Kansas
Henry C. ``Hank'' Johnson, Jr., Pat Fallon, Texas
Georgia Yvette Herrell, New Mexico
John P. Sarbanes, Maryland Byron Donalds, Florida
Jackie Speier, California Vacancy
Robin L. Kelly, Illinois
Brenda L. Lawrence, Michigan
Mark DeSaulnier, California
Jimmy Gomez, California
Ayanna Pressley, Massachusetts
Russ Anello, Staff Director
Jennifer Gaspar, Deputy Staff Director and Chief Counsel
Derek Collins, Clerk
Contact Number: 202-225-5051
Mark Marin, Minority Staff Director
Select Subcommittee On The Coronavirus Crisis
James E. Clyburn, South Carolina, Chairman
Maxine Waters, California Steve Scalise, Louisiana, Ranking
Carolyn B. Maloney, New York Minority Member
Nydia M. Velazquez, New York Jim Jordan, Ohio
Bill Foster, Illinois Mark E. Green, Tennessee
Jamie Raskin, Maryland Nicole Malliotakis, New York
Raja Krishnamoorthi, Illinois Mariannette Miller-Meeks, Iowa
C O N T E N T S
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Page
Hearing held on March 2, 2022.................................... 1
Witnesses
Ms. Gina Forbes, Early Childhood Educator Parent Brunswick, Maine
Oral Statement................................................... 6
Dr. Betsey Stevenson, Ph.D., Professor of Public Policy,
Professor of Economics, University of Michigan
Oral Statement................................................... 8
Dr. Lea J.E. Austin, Ed.D., Executive Director, Center for the
Study of Child Care Employment University of California
Oral Statement................................................... 9
Ms. Carrie Lukas (Minority Witness), President, Independent
Women's Forum
Oral Statement................................................... 11
Dr. Lynette M. Fraga, Ph.D., Chief Executive Officer, Child Care
Aware of America
Oral Statement................................................... 13
Written opening statements and the written statements of the
witnesses are available on the U.S. House of Representatives
Document Repository at: docs.house.gov.
Index of Documents
----------
Documents entered into the record during this hearing are listed
below.
* Research Brief, ``COVID-19 means more students not learning
to read''; submitted by Ranking Member Steve Scalise.
* Research Brief, ``Learning during COVID-19: Reading and math
achievement in the 2020-21 school year''; submitted by Ranking
Member Steve Scalise.
* Brief, Snapshot of Test Scores and Pandemic Learning Models -
Virginia; submitted by Ranking Member Steve Scalise.
* Research Report, Pandemic Schooling Mode and Student Test
Scores Evidence from U.S. School Districts; submitted by
Ranking Member Steve Scalise.
* Letter, MomsRising Together, to Chairman Clyburn and Ranking
Member Scalise.
* Memo, Taking the Win Over COVID-19, from Impact Research.
* Letter, from The Bipartisan Policy Center, to Chairman
Clyburn and Ranking Member Scalise.
Documents are available at: docs.house.gov.
COVID CHILD CARE CHALLENGES: SUPPORTING FAMILIES AND CAREGIVERS
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Wednesday, March 2, 2022
House of Representatives
Committee on Oversight and Reform
Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis
Washington, D.C.
The select subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 2:09
p.m., in room 2154, Rayburn House Office Building, and via
Zoom; Hon. James Clyburn (chairman of the subcommittee)
presiding.
Present: Representatives Clyburn, Waters, Maloney, Foster,
Raskin, Krishnamoorthi, Scalise, Jordan, and Miller-Meeks.
Chairman Clyburn. [Presiding] Good afternoon. The committee
will come to order.
Without objection, the chair is authorized to declare a
recess of the committee at any time.
I now recognize myself for an opening statement.
The coronavirus pandemic has put tremendous strain on
America's families and caregivers. Many of us have seen
firsthand in our own families, with our friends, and among our
co-workers the difficult challenges that parents, teachers, and
other caregivers have faced in the last few years. In the first
several months of the pandemic, families and childcare
providers were largely left to face these challenges alone. As
a result, many were forced to drop out of the work force or to
close their businesses. Approximately 60 percent of childcare
providers closed in the spring of 2020. These closures led to
over 375,000 childcare workers losing their jobs. Although many
of those childcare providers were able to reopen, thousands of
providers had closed permanently by 2021, contributing to a
shortage that persists to this day.
These sudden closures forced many parents to make difficult
choices between keeping their jobs and caring for their
children. Without the necessary support, parents with young
children dropped out of the work force in the early days of the
pandemic at alarmingly high rates. Now, nearly two years later,
men with young children have returned to the work force at pre-
pandemic rates, yet the labor participation rate of women with
young children has not fully recovered. In January 2022, the
most recent month for which data are available, more than 1.1
million women left the job or lost a job due to the need to
care for young children. This disparity threatens to exacerbate
longstanding gender-based economic inequality.
Families paid high costs for children even before the
pandemic. With the onset of the pandemic, childcare became even
less affordable to parents with prices rising by more than 5
percent in 2022. At the time that childcare costs for families
were increasing, childcare worker pay remained low. In most
states, the median wage for childcare workers, who are
disproportionately women and minorities, was below the state's
living wage. This combination of low wages and high costs is
unsustainable and puts a great burden on childcare providers
and families while slowing our economic recovery.
Congress has taken decisive action by passing three Federal
pandemic relief packages that each included funding
specifically for childcare. Most significantly, the American
Rescue Plan included a historic $39 billion investment in
childcare. This investment has already had a positive impact on
children providers. Early evidence indicates that these
pandemic relief funds have helped childcare providers stay in
business and raise wages. Forty-six percent of childcare
providers surveyed in the summer of 2021 said the program
likely would have closed without help from pandemic relief
funds. Encouragingly, many recipients of relief funds also
reported that their childcare workers have received increased
compensation.
The American Rescue Plan also gave financial support
directly to parents and families to offset the rising costs of
childcare. It temporarily expanded the child tax credit and
delivered advanced monthly payments of $300 per young child
from July through December 2021. American families have put
these funds to good use. Census Bureau data shows that between
5 and 7 million households used child tax credit advance
payments to help cover childcare expenses. The American Rescue
Plan also expanded the child and dependent care tax credit,
providing additional assistance specifically for care. Although
pandemic-related relief programs have helped families and
providers cope with the immediate effects of the coronavirus,
sustained Federal investment is still needed to aid recovery
and address problems that existed before the pandemic.
The Biden-Harris Administration's Build Back Better agenda
includes comprehensive proposals to improve the quality and
affordability of childcare while delivering the compensation
that childcare workers and educators deserve. Continued
investment in the childcare sector through existing Federal
programs and the extension of the American Rescue Plan
provisions would also support access and affordability.
Extending and expanding the child tax credit with this advanced
monthly payment structure would continue to aid the millions of
households that have used those payments for childcare
expenses. When we support American families and invest in the
professionals who help to care for our Nation's children, we
are making an investment in both our present and our future.
The time is now to invest in childcare providers and families
so that we can build a better, stronger, and more equitable
economy.
I would like to thank our witnesses for being here today. I
look forward to hearing more about what more we can do to give
families and childcare providers the support that they needed
during the pandemic and beyond.
I now recognize the ranking member for his opening
statement.
Mr. Scalise. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am glad we had this
meeting here in the committee room in person. I would also like
to thank all of our witnesses who are here with us today. I
look forward to hearing their testimony.
A hearing on this topic is long overdue. For more than two
years, we have heard about the damage that U.S. COVID policies
have done to our Nation's children as well as working parents.
Parents pleaded with their local school boards to inject actual
science and common sense in these rules. Congressional
Republicans have sent letters, asked for hearings and
briefings, and begged the CDC to explain the science that
justified the harm that their ridiculous policies were causing
to our kids.
Here is what we know. Remote learning hurt children, both
academically and emotionally, and scheduling disruptions at
school and daycare centers created chaos for working families,
hindering them from returning to the work force at a time when
we need more workers. It is clearly one of the largest U.S.
failures in policy that we have seen during this pandemic. Many
Democrat-led states and teachers' union bosses refused to
reopen schools for more than a year in some places, despite
evidence that closures and instability harm America's children.
In the summer of 2020, Republicans repeatedly called on
Governors and school systems to fully reopen schools.
Student learning loss due to remote or hybrid learning is
astronomical. Millions of kids are behind in math and reading.
Amplify, which is the curriculum and assessment provider,
examined its test data for about 400,000 elementary school
students and found that, ``At the middle of the 2021-2022
school year, in every elementary grade, K through 5, the number
of students at risk of not reading is higher than it was at the
same point in the 2019-2020 school year.'' Mr. Chairman, I
would like to submit four different studies into the record
that have been done to detail the data and the detrimental
impact that remote learning has had on America's children.
Thank you.
Mr. Scalise. On top of learning loss, children and
teenagers are now experiencing a mental health crisis of
historic proportions. The American Academy of Pediatrics
declared a national state of emergency in children's mental
health, and the U.S. Surgeon General issued a youth mental
health advisory. Suicide attempts by 12-to 17-year-old girls
rose 51 percent from early 2019 to early 2021. This is having a
devastating impact on our young kids. When kids have been able
to go back to school or to daycare, the CDC has pushed extreme
quarantine policies, especially for kids that can't wear masks.
This means that if one kid in a class gets COVID, the whole
class is shut down for up to 10 days. Can you imagine the
negative impact this is having not only on students, but also
on their parents? Abrupt closures and long quarantines mean
they miss work unexpectedly for many days at a time. These
disruptions are caused by irrational COVID policies, and they
continue to this day in many cases.
According to a survey by The New York Times, in January,
more than half of American children missed at least three days
of school, about 25 percent missed more than a week, while 14
percent of students missed nine or more days. This keeps
parents from returning to the work force, and data shows that
it especially has had a negative impact on women. On top of
that, until last Friday, the CDC said that everyone over the
age of two had to wear a mask, even though worldwide, most
countries don't mask young kids in school due to the harm that
it causes those kids. And the protection masks provide to
children is unknown and might be very small. The CDC said kids
should be masked for the last two years. This is something
Republicans in Congress as well as parents across the country
have been begging the CDC to change since we have come to learn
so much more about COVID and its largely minimal impact on
young kids compared to the well-documented massive damage that
masks and remote learning are having on young children.
Over the last few weeks, we have started to see mask
mandates lifted in most major cities, including New York,
Chicago, and Washington, DC, as well as Los Angeles in
restaurants and other public spaces, yet, unbelievably, the
mask mandates for children in schools and daycare centers
remained. Their plan was to force kids to mask all day in
school or at daycare, in most cases, even while they are
outside, but yet, adults would be allowed to be maskless in
grocery stores, restaurants, bars, and, of course, sporting
events.
I would like to note here that this hypocrisy of some of
these nonsensical political science policies have been ongoing
throughout the entire pandemic. Prominent Democrats have been
caught ignoring their own masking rules while forcing those
same rules on children for the last two years. Liberal elites
have been spotted without masks at hair salons, the Met Gala,
professional football games, fancy restaurants, and many, many
more, while those same hypocritical leaders shamed others who
didn't comply with their nonsensical mandates.
But as we know now, we have had this COVID miracle in the
last few days. Just in time for President Biden's State of the
Union address last night, we saw just days ago Biden's Centers
for Disease Control and Prevention finally update its mask
guidelines. The new guidelines mean that instead of
recommending nearly the entire country mask indoors, now only
28 percent are recommended to do so. So overnight, more than 70
percent of the country, including kids in schools, don't have
to mask anymore.
So we should ask, Mr. Chairman, what changed? Did the
science change? Again, it is not the medical science. It seemed
like Democrats had an epiphany of political science, and what
is that new science? Here we have excerpts from a memo by a
group called Impact Research, which is a well-known Democrat
polling firm that also happens to be where President Biden's
pollster works. Note the memo, by the way, is dated February
24, 2022, just days ago. So this is what it said. This is an
assessment from a poll, not from medical science. ``Two-thirds
of parents and 80 percent of teachers say the pandemic caused
learning loss, and voters are overwhelmingly more worried about
learning loss than kids getting COVID. Six in 10 Americans
describe themselves as worn out by the pandemic. The more
we''--and they are talking about Democrat-elected leaders right
here--``The more we talk about the threat of COVID and
onerously restricting people's lives because of it, the more we
turn them against us and show them we're out of touch with
their daily realities.'' I wish that was medical science that
they were basing decisions on, but it was a poll just days
before the State of the Union that got them to change course.
That is the kind of thing that is infuriating parents.
So Biden's CDC is only loosening its masking requirements
now that Democrats' polling numbers are in the tank and the
midterms are around the corner. During the campaign, Joe Biden
promised repeatedly to ``follow the science,'' but apparently,
the science changes when his polling changes. The American
people see right through these masking political theater
guidelines and will never forget how they played politics with
our children by shuttering their schools and masking their
faces, even as doctors were noting the harm that those mandates
were causing to our children. People have lost faith in the
CDC, and this brazen political stunt is further eroding what
trust was left.
Last night during the State of the Union, President Biden
said, ``Let's stop looking at COVID-19 as a partisan dividing
line.'' By the way, this is from the same President whose
Administration directed the Department of Justice to
investigate parents who were passionately expressing their
First Amendment speech rights in opposition to many of these
same regulations by going to school board meetings. And what
did President Biden's Administration do? They tried to deem
them as domestic terrorists for going to school board meetings
and expressing their views, and that is after last night the
President said stop using COVID-19 as a partisan dividing line.
Well, I think those parents wouldn't be so angry if President
Biden paid them an apology for the things he said about them
and allowed his Administration to continue to call them names
and try to shame them for standing up for the rights of their
kids.
So we are going to continue to push for medical science,
not political science, and let's free up our children from this
experiment that has destroyed millions of lives over these last
two years. With that, Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
Chairman Clyburn. I thank the ranking member for his
statement. I would like to say as a parent of a school board
member, it is not expressing. It is how you express that
determines whether or not you are a terrorist. I would also
like to say that I think it is because of the science and
vaccinations that have begun to work that we had a change in
policy, but that will not fall on deaf ears.
I would like now to introduce our distinguished witnesses.
Gina Forbes is an early childhood educator, former
administrator, and parent based in Brunswick, Maine. Ms. Forbes
has a master's in education and a license in early childhood
education. She brings a wealth of experience to this issue as a
parent, pre-school teacher, and school director. Dr. Betsey
Stevenson is a professor of public policy and economics at
University of Michigan. She is a labor economist who has
published widely about the impact of public policies on
outcomes both in the labor market and for families. Dr.
Stevenson's research focuses on women's labor market
experiences and the economic forces shaping American families.
Dr. Stevenson served as a member of the Council of Economic
Advisors from 2013 to 2015 and served as the chief economist of
the United States Department of Labor from 2010 to 2011.
Dr. Lea J.E. Austin is executive director of the Center for
the Study of Childcare Employment at the University of
California. Dr. Austin leads the Center's research and policy
agenda aimed at improving the status and well-being of early
educators. She has extensive experience in the areas of work
force development, early childhood education, and public
policy. Carrie L. Lukas is the president of Independent Women's
Forum. She previously worked on Capitol Hill as a senior
domestic policy analyst for the House Republican Policy
Committee and at the Cato Institute. Dr. Lynette Fraga is the
CEO of Child Care Aware and a leading voice on children's
policy, practice, and research. Dr. Fraga has 25 years of
experience as an educator, program director, and executive
leader, working on behalf of children and families. Since
beginning her career in early childhood education as a teacher
in infant, toddler, and preschool classrooms, Dr. Fraga has
held positions at the local, state, and national levels within
nonprofit corporations and higher education sectors.
Will the witnesses please rise if you are here and those of
you who cannot be here, and raise your right hands?
Do you swear or affirm that the testimony you are about to
give is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth,
so help you God?
[A chorus of ayes.]
Chairman Clyburn. You may be seated. Let the record show
that the witnesses answered in the affirmative.
Without objection, your written statements will be made a
part of the record.
Ms. Forbes, you are now recognized for five minutes for
your opening statement.
STATEMENT OF GINA FORBES, EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATOR AND PARENT,
BRUNSWICK, MAINE
Ms. Forbes. Thank you. Good afternoon, Chairman Clyburn and
members of the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis. I
am honored and grateful for the opportunity to testify today.
My name is Gina Forbes, and I'm here to share my experience as
a parent and early childhood educator. I currently have a 13-
year-old son and an almost two-year-old daughter, and I've been
working with young children and families for nearly 18 years.
I'll begin today by sharing my experience of being an early
childhood educator and past director of a childcare center and
then share my experience of navigating the challenges of
childcare during the COVID-19 pandemic as a parent.
From 2013 until June 2021, I worked at a program called
Roots & Fruits Preschool in South Portland, Maine. I began as a
teacher and was later hired as director in 2017. Roots & Fruits
was nationally accredited and was of the highest quality
rating. My own son attended at age four, and I watched him
thrive in the program. I was able to witness firsthand how
high-quality early education can set children up for lifelong
success. As director, I became very intimate with the joys and
challenges of running a childcare program. I was, first and
foremost, committed to quality education for the children in
our care. There was always a delicate balancing act of
enrolling enough children to be financially successful while
keeping prices affordable to families, and assuring that there
were not too many children enrolled for our standard of care.
It was important to our organization that we serve a
diverse array of families from a variety of backgrounds,
including income levels. The business structure of our
organization, and in the field in general, was set up so that
the only way to address increased costs, including increasing
staff wages, was to increase tuition rates for families.
Keeping the cost of care accessible to families meant keeping
wages at or below a certain level for staff. This lack of fair
pay, inability to offer health and other benefits, and the high
demands of the job is a recipe for teacher burnout, stress, and
sometimes turnover.
I'm sharing this information about pre-pandemic times
because it has everything to do with the crisis we found
ourselves in when March 2020 came around. In the initial first
wave of COVID-19, we closed our school and remained closed
until mid-June when we had clear guidelines about how to run a
childcare program safely. When we finally had a reopening plan,
it was at reduced enrollment, just over half of our usual
functioning. To run the program, we had to raise tuition for
families, and even this was not going to be enough. We
projected a deficit for the year due to the loss associated
with lower enrollment and the cost of additional safety
materials and procedures.
Thankfully, during the school year, we received a PPP loan
and Federal COVID relief funds that made it possible for us to
run our program. These funds covered costs related to
additional cleaning supplies, PPE, and helped cover the losses
from our closure and lower enrollment. We were also able to
give some additional bonuses to staff in lieu of hazard pay.
Ultimately, these funds helped us significantly, but it was not
enough to keep us open long term. With razor-thin margins and
challenges present long before the pandemic, what we needed to
be truly sustainable was a significant and committed long-term
financial investment from state and Federal funds. We could've
chosen to continue to raise our tuition rates, but this would
put our organization's values of offering care to diverse
families at risk. It was for these reasons that I, along with
our board of directors, decided to close the Roots & Fruits
Program, and in June 2021, I handed over the keys to the
building and closed our doors permanently.
As a parent, the impact of COVID-19 on the childcare sector
has been felt in very challenging ways. Since Roots & Fruits
closed, I have had to find a new childcare arrangements for my
youngest child. We were able to find an amazing childcare
provider who offers local in-home care. However, it is only
part-time, and it is far more expensive than we had budgeted
for or can truly afford. We have inquired about other childcare
possibilities that would better fit our budget. However, every
program we have spoken to have waitlists, and some for years to
come. It is an understatement to say that it is a constant and
persistent stress on me and my family to figure out how to
afford high-quality childcare.
One small respite from this ongoing stress was receiving
the monthly child tax credit payments, which went directly
toward childcare costs. Without them, I'm struggling to figure
out if I can continue to work or if I need to remove myself
from the work force to care for our young child. I can't help
but be reminded that childcare workers are truly the work force
behind the work force.
The issues that I described today are not new but are built
into the childcare system as it has existed for many years. The
pandemic has significantly exacerbated those issues. High-
quality early education and care is the backbone of our
society, and I believe that we need to fund it accordingly. Our
children, families, and educators deserve nothing less.
Thank you for your time, and I look forward to your
questions.
Chairman Clyburn. Thank you very much, Ms. Forbes.
We will now hear from Dr. Stevenson. Dr. Stevenson, you are
recognized for five minutes.
STATEMENT OF BETSEY STEVENSON, PH.D., PROFESSOR OF PUBLIC
POLICY AND PROFESSOR OF ECONOMICS, UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
Ms. Stevenson. Thank you, Chairman Clyburn, Ranking Member
Scalise, and distinguished members of the committee. I
appreciate the invitation to speak to you today.
The U.S. economy and employment has evolved in a way that
makes childcare now central to its functioning. While childcare
is not a woman's issue, the pandemic did have a unique impact
on women, and the evolution of women's role in the economy
helps to explain how we've arrived at this critical juncture.
While I detail the transition more in my written testimony, let
me explain where we're currently at.
Women are now the most educated workers in our labor force,
and at the start of the pandemic, women held the majority of
jobs. In our recovery from the 2008 recession, the rise of
women's labor force participation drove the strong recovery
with two-thirds of the job growth going to jobs held by women.
Families rely on women's earnings, and our economy relies on
the skills and efforts of women.
Women's personal lives have also undergone a profound
shift. The result is that mothers with kids in the home as the
pandemic hit were older with more education and more likely to
be working than mothers with kids in the home during previous
recessions. Stepping out of the labor force for these mothers
was a less viable option, and yet, for some of these mothers,
it was the only option available. Two-thirds of the childcare
centers had closed by April 2020, and the number of childcare
workers dropped 34 percent. Schools around the country turned
to remote learning, and many remained remote or partially
remote for more than a year. The pandemic made it clear that
schools and childcare both serve a dual purpose: educate and
care for children.
Our childcare challenges are ongoing, both because the
pandemic is ongoing and because our childcare infrastructure
was inadequate prior to the pandemic. While childcare
disruptions have occurred across the income spectrum, they have
disproportionately impacted lower-wage workers and single
parents with devastating effects on their employment and
earnings. Childcare-related constraints led to more women than
men losing jobs during the pandemic. However, childcare
disruptions affected work way beyond just job loss. Fifty-nine
percent of parents said that their employment was affected.
They turned down promotions, changed employment, paused
education or training, and fathers made these sacrifices even
more frequently than mothers. These decisions not only mean
lower incomes for families, but they mean lower potential
output for the U.S. economy.
Even in good economic times, finding high-quality,
affordable childcare is challenging for parents. The cost of
childcare, particularly high-quality childcare, prior to the
pandemic made working too expensive for some parents, and yet
the childcare market is still far from recovering due to these
inadequate levels of access and affordability. Research has
found that childcare is particularly sensitive to economic
downturns and recovers much more slowly than the rest of the
economy. Employment and childcare remains more than 10 percent
below pre-pandemic levels even though non-farm employment
remains only 1.9 percent below its February 2020 level. The
American Rescue Plan authorized $39 billion for childcare, much
of which is just now starting to get disbursed. And while this
crucial funding will serve as needed emergency support for a
childcare infrastructure, it does not provide the long-term
structural support childcare needs.
Early childhood educators generate enormous financial
benefits by engaging in developmentally appropriate,
curriculum-based activities that lead to higher lifetime
earnings for the children in their care, and yet childcare
workers are some of the lowest-paid workers in our country.
Children need committed professionals to provide care and
developmentally appropriate skills, but few people have the
luxury of gaining training in early childhood education and
committing to the profession for $12 an hour, particularly if
they can make twice as much by seeking employment now at
Target.
The low pay is one reason that childcare has such a high
turnover of workers compared to other jobs in education,
creating even further instability in the childcare sector. The
pay of childcare providers must and will rise due to market
forces. These market forces will also ultimately raise the cost
of childcare, making childcare and, thus, labor market
participation for parents even more unaffordable. The biggest
economic problem the U.S. currently faces is low labor force
participation. It's likely to contribute to ongoing inflation.
Solving this problem requires investing more in our youngest
citizens and supporting their families with a more reliable,
affordable, and higher-quality childcare sector.
Thank you, and I welcome your questions.
Chairman Clyburn. Thank you, Dr. Stevenson.
We will now hear from Dr. Austin. Dr. Austin, you are
recognized for five minutes.
STATEMENT OF LEA J.E. AUSTIN, ED.D, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, CENTER
FOR THE STUDY OF CHILD CARE EMPLOYMENT, UNIVERSITY OF
CALIFORNIA
Ms. Austin. Hi. Thank you, Chairman Clyburn and members of
the committee, for the opportunity to speak with you today
about the plight of childcare in America.
If nothing else, the pandemic has made visible that stable,
quality childcare is not something that is just nice to have.
It is a necessity, yet it's severely under resourced and a
crumbling component of our Nation's social infrastructure.
Leading up to the pandemic, about half of families who needed
childcare in the U.S. didn't have access to it. Parents, as we
have heard, mostly mothers, were losing about $37 billion in
income each year because they had to reduce work hours or drop
out of the work force entirely because of childcare issues.
Businesses were losing an estimated $12.7 billion a year due to
childcare challenges among employees, and childcare workers
were subsidizing the true cost of services with the poverty-
level wages paid to them.
The pandemic didn't create these circumstances, but it
exacerbated them, and it brought childcare in this country to
the brink of collapse. Unfortunately, it's no wonder. Care and
early education, work that is performed almost exclusively by
women, has long been de-valued. Childcare businesses, most of
which are small and women-owned, operate on very thin margins,
and the slightest drop in enrollment and income was all it took
for many to permanently close. By July 2020, 1 in 5 childcare
providers in California, for example, had already fallen behind
on mortgage or rent payments for their business. Most childcare
programs have to rely on what parents can afford to pay to fund
their programs, and this renders childcare workers, as we've
heard, among the lowest-paid workers in every state with an
average wage of about $12 an hour. And within that, we see
racial pay gaps and pay penalties, especially for those who are
working with the youngest children: our infants and toddlers.
For programs that have managed to stay open, they're having
trouble staffing up. They simply can't compete with businesses,
like retail and food service, which are now paying starting
wages of $15 or more and also offering benefits. It's not
hyperbole to say that conditions are dire for the childcare
work force. Ninety-eight other occupations in this country are
paid more than childcare workers. Poverty rates are double
those of other workers in general and, on average, eight times
higher than that of K-8 teachers. In another study, we found
that a third of childcare workers we surveyed were food
insecure, and fewer than 15 percent would be able to withstand
a $400 emergency. These findings aren't unique to California.
Researchers have identified similar financial stressors in
states, for example, like Nebraska, Louisiana, and Oregon.
To bring attention to their persistently low wages, for
decades, childcare workers have posed this riddle: ``Why did
the childcare worker cross the road? To get to her second
job.'' It wasn't meant to be funny then, and it is certainly no
joke today. My colleague, Dr. Caitlin McLean, met Shania Bell,
a childcare worker who literally crossed the street for a
better-paying job at a hardware store, every day walking past
the job and the children she loved and that she was really good
at for a job that allowed her to actually pay her bills. A
similar scenario is playing out all across the country as
evidenced by the program closures and the childcare jobs
shortages. We have lost, to date, 131,000 childcare jobs since
February 2020.
The Federal pandemic relief programs have provided
important stopgap measures. Many states jumped at the
opportunity to invest in their work force. We know of at least
28 that are specifically using Federal relief funds to
intentionally support wages and the recruitment and retention
of early educators. Critically, relief has helped many hold on,
but it cannot, nor was it designed to, provide long-term fixes.
Our economy relies on workers who are parents, and so many
parents cannot work without reliable childcare, and childcare
cannot work effectively until its own work force is secure.
Dependable, long-term investments that de-couple what parents
can afford from what workers are paid is the key to ensuring
that childcare programs are able to stay open and to recruit
and retain staff who can meet America's childcare needs.
I appreciate the opportunity to appear before the
committee, and I look forward to your questions.
Chairman Clyburn. Thank you, Dr. Austin.
We will now hear from Ms. Lukas. Ms. Lukas, you are
recognized for five minutes.
Ms. Lukas. Oops, sorry.
STATEMENT OF CARRIE LUKAS, PRESIDENT, INDEPENDENT WOMEN'S FORUM
Ms. Lukas. Good afternoon. I am Carrie Lukas, president of
Independent Women's Forum. Independent Women's Forum is a non-
profit organization dedicated to developing and advancing
policies that aren't just well-intended but that actually
enhance people's freedom, opportunity, and well-being. I am
also mother to five kids between the ages of 7 and 16. I am
going to quickly run through what I think of as five key
lessons we learned during COVID-19 about childcare and
supporting families and caregivers.
First and most importantly, we should reject any public
policy changes that would make our childcare and preschool
systems function more like our K through 12 public schools.
Like many working parents during COVID-19, I had to juggle my
job along with managing my kids schooling online. Where I live,
most private schools provided in-person learning service by
fall 2020, but our public schools fought to stay closed for
another seven months. That was long after it made any sense
from a COVID or health perspective, long after our teachers had
been given priority access to vaccines, and long after it was
obvious that it was an utter catastrophe in terms of emotional
health and lost learning for students, particularly for
children from low-income families, those with disabilities, and
those for whom English is a second language.
The failures of our K through 12 schools contrast with the
childcare sector. At the height of the pandemic, according to
HHS, about 60 percent of childcare centers closed. The rest
stayed opened to serve children of critical workers. By the end
of 2020, however, an estimated 73 percent of daycare,
preschool, and childcare programs had reopened. In contrast, at
the end of 2020, only about a third of K through 12 public
schools were providing fully in-person services. Public schools
behaved this way because they do not see parents and students
as their customers. Why would they? Their ability to pay the
bills and keep their jobs depends on pleasing government
officials, not on serving families. Parents should fight to
keep this from becoming the same situation for childcare and
preschools.
The second big takeaway is that policymakers at all levels
of government should seek to eliminate regulations that aren't
directly related to safety and quality so that a greater
diversity of providers, especially smaller-and at-home
providers, enter the marketplace so that parents have more and
better options. As the other witnesses have attested to, COVID
has forced many daycare providers out of business, but, as we
all know, sadly, this was a bad trend that was already ongoing.
The number of at-home daycare providers fell by half between
2005 and 2017. A review of state-based childcare regulations
reveals ludicrous examples of rules that dictate the minutiae
of care: the number of art supplies you have to have, the exact
size of balls per children. This clearly isn't necessary for
kids and just creates headaches and drives up costs for
providers.
Third, policymakers should consider tax relief for those
who have very young children since they often do face large
expenses. However, policymakers should not make that financial
support conditional on childcare arrangements. Incentivizing
the use of paid childcare isn't fair to all the families with
loved ones--parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles--who provide
loving care for children in their lives for free while
foregoing paid employment.
Fourth, government funding for childcare is often sold as a
surefire way to improve life outcomes for children. However,
the evidence simply doesn't bear this out. A recent study in
Tennessee of their state-run pre-K program revealed it had
long-term negative effects on children's achievements and
behavior. Now, that doesn't mean that no study will ever find
benefits associated with preschool, nor does it mean that
daycare and childcare isn't a vital service for millions of
children and families. But it should encourage some more
humility and caution among policymakers and warn us away from
trying to push all children into government-approved childcare
centers since that could do more harm than good.
Finally, the recent proposed Build Back Better Plan would
have made the Federal Government the biggest player in daycare
and preschool programs, and this approach is incredibly
dangerous and should be rejected. Put aside the enormous cost
to taxpayers and potentially for millions of families. These
government regulations will discourage innovation and create a
less diverse childcare sector. In fact, all of the battles that
we see raging about public K through 12 schools over the
content of curriculum, the use of pronouns, sex ed, masking
policies, they will be coming to your local daycare and
preschool if government becomes the primary funder and sets the
rules for what constitutes an approved daycare provider.
We see some of this happening already with Head Start. You
know, right now, everyone's unmasking, but not the poor 2-and
3-year-olds that are in our Head Start Programs, and that seems
a tragedy. Two-year-olds shouldn't be political footballs for
Federal officials, and we need to keep the Federal Government
as far away as possible from deciding what happens in daycare
and preschool.
Thank you.
Chairman Clyburn. Thank you, Ms. Lukas.
Finally, we will hear from Dr. Fraga. Dr. Fraga, you are
recognized for five minutes. Am I pronouncing that name
correct?
Ms. Fraga. ``FRAH-gah'' is correct. Thank you, Mr.
Chairman.
Chairman Clyburn. Thank you.
STATEMENT OF LYNETTE M. FRAGA, PH.D., CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER,
CHILD CARE AWARE OF AMERICA
Ms. Fraga. Chairman Clyburn, Ranking Member Scalise,
members of the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis,
thank you for inviting me to testify here today.
Without question, the pandemic highlighted the growing lack
of access to affordable, quality childcare in the United
States. To be clear, childcare was already in crisis before the
pandemic. The pandemic only made it worse. This longstanding,
exacerbated state of childcare crisis has negatively impacted
child development and family economic security for too long.
Child Care Aware of America is the leading voice on
childcare, and as CEO, I have the good fortune of working with
a network of childcare resource and referral agencies,
childcare programs and educators, and families across the
country. We lead projects that increase the quality and
availability of childcare, conduct research, and advocate for
policies that positively impact the lives of children and
families. Simply put, our work places is at the nexus of nearly
every challenge and stressor facing our Nation's childcare
system today.
Last month, CCAOA released, ``Demanding Change: Repairing
Our Childcare System,'' which outlines how the U.S. childcare
system has changed since the beginning of the COVID-19
pandemic. We found that between December 2019 and March 2021,
nearly 16,000 childcare programs across 37 states have
permanently closed, representing a nine-percent decline in the
total number of licensed childcare providers, both center and
home based. At the same time, childcare continues to be
unaffordable and inaccessible for too many families.
In 2020, the national annual average price of childcare was
between $9,800 and $10,200 if you take into account the annual
average price of all settings and types of care. In many
states, the annual price of center-based childcare for an
infant exceeds the annual cost of in-state tuition at a public
four-year university. Additionally, almost half of parents with
children under age six searching for care in the past two years
said the greatest barriers to access were cost, lack of
available spaces, and location. This is partly due to the
specific impacts of the pandemic. Childcare providers are
experiencing higher operating costs, challenges retaining their
work force, and lower or fluctuating attendance, which directly
impacts their financial viability.
Even before the pandemic, the supply of childcare was
decreasing, and the price of childcare was out of reach for
parents. Insufficient public investment in childcare has left
families and childcare providers to bear the financial burden
of supporting an unsustainably, under-resourced system.
Thankfully, Congress stepped in to help the childcare system
cope with immediate pandemic-driven issues with three relief
packages. States have leveraged these flexible funds to meet
their unique needs, and no two states are spending dollars in
the same way.
Relief funds have helped thousands of childcare programs
remain open during the pandemic, given more families access to
high-quality care in a variety of settings so they could return
to work, and have helped many early childhood educators to be
more fairly compensated. Simply put, COVID relief funds have
been a lifeline for many childcare programs. The March 2021
American Rescue Plan included $39 billion dedicated for
childcare relief, and those funds were divided up into two
pots: $24 billion for Stabilization grants and $15 billion in
discretionary funding. While state disbursement of funds was
initially slow, states have made progress. As of February 2022,
47 states and the District of Columbia launched their
Stabilization Grant applications. Good examples have emerged of
how states, many in partnership with intermediaries like
childcare resource and referral agencies, are ensuring the
Stabilization Grant process is equitable, efficient, and
transparent.
States have also made progress spending their discretionary
funds. The most common policies nationwide have included
increasing subsidy eligibility and eliminating co-pays for
families, increasing compensation and benefits for educators,
and improving provider payment policies. This is welcome news
given the pandemic has added to the challenges of work force
recruitment and retention with workers leaving the field
temporarily or permanently to find higher-paid work and
benefits during a time of health and economic uncertainty. We
are already seeing the impact of these relief funds. In
Maryland, 90 percent of the 5,757 applications for funding
received grants. In New York, 14,866 funding requests have been
approved with over 10,000 payments fully dispersed.
Despite relief funds, the childcare industry is still
facing serious challenges. The positive changes secured by the
short-term addition of relief funding make a strong argument
for why longer-term investments are needed. All the stories you
have heard and will hear today are connected to why we need a
system of childcare that honors its work force, supports its
families, and truly cares for its children.
Thank you again for the opportunity to appear before the
subcommittee today. I look forward to answering your questions.
Chairman Clyburn. Thank you so much, Dr. Fraga.
I am going to yield first to Ms. Waters for five minutes of
questions.
Ms. Waters. Thank you so very much. I heard what you said,
``questions,'' but I want to thank you for your patience and
your tolerance.
[Laughter.]
Ms. Waters. I want to thank you because when I first heard
Mr. Scalise start to talk about this issue, I thought, oh my
God, we are going to have bipartisan support for childcare, and
then he went into this political argument about math. So I
thank you for your tolerance.
Let me get to the question. The pandemic hit many of our
essential workers very hard, and childcare providers were among
those who felt the brunt of the pandemic's impact. More than
370,000 childcare workers lost their jobs, and thousands of
childcare centers closed. And so this is a graphic that shows
the pandemic caused dramatic decline in childcare capacity. It
is dramatic, absolutely. So, Dr. Austin, your center has
published reports showing the impact of the pandemic on
childcare workers and early educators, who are overwhelmingly
women and disproportionately women of color. Like many
essential workers and small business owners, they faced
incredible economic challenges during the pandemic. Dr. Austin,
what financial difficulties did the pandemic bring for
childcare workers and early educators?
Ms. Austin. Thank you for your question. The pandemic
really just pulled the rug out from under our childcare work
force. Again, you know, these are folks who are earning $12 an
hour. As you know, the country closed in the early stages of
the pandemic. Childcare continued to show up, and they
continued to show up without resources for quite some time
until we finally got some relief packages. So we saw that
programs were falling behind on their mortgage. For our home-
based providers, the mortgage is their house. That is where
they live, and so they were taking on debt. People were working
without paying themselves and falling further and further
behind.
And we see, you know, high rates of economic insecurity
being reported. People are food insecure, and the result is we
see that people are walking away. They have been demoralized by
the treatment that they received, that they did stay open. Very
few states initially in that first year offered hazard pay for
childcare workers, and so folks are walking away. There are
saying, you know, we have had enough, and we are going to go
get those jobs at Target and Starbucks where they are paying
$15, $17 an hour and able to offer them benefits. So it really
undermined folks in their own lives.
Ms. Waters. Well, thank you so very much. Is that Dr.
``FRAY-gah'' or ``FRAH-gah?''
Ms. Fraga. Dr. ``FRAH-gah.''
Ms. Waters. ``FRAH-gah.'' You talked about this being a
problem prior to the pandemic, and I reflected on my early
years as a young mother with two children and desperate for
childcare, and the best I could do was get the lady who lived
in the back of me, who was half ill herself and aged, to try
and watch my children while I worked. And so many of us have
been struggling for years when we are young mothers, you know,
before our careers, where we absolutely, you know, realized
that we needed something better. We needed more. And, of
course, I come from the Head Start Program having worked in
Head Start while I could not get childcare for my children. And
so, tell us how bad it is. I know you alluded to this, but
would you again reiterate for Mr. Scalise, in particular, about
how bad it is?
Ms. Fraga. Yes. Thank you for your question, Representative
Waters. It is a challenge, and a trauma, and a tragedy,
frankly, for so many of our early care and education providers
and for our families. This is creating a tremendous amount of
stress. Prior to the pandemic, we were already seeing a
decrease in the early childhood work force. Subsequent to the
pandemic, we are seeing hundreds of thousands of jobs being
lost by the early care and education work force and the stress
that is created that Dr. Austin named--housing insecurity,
financial insecurity, et cetera--that these small business
owner women, and often minority-owned women business owners,
really experiencing a great deal of stress, not only for
families who are unable to access care, but also for those
early care and education providers who are also under a great
deal of stress. And remember, these are the individuals who are
in classrooms and in early learning programs with our Nation's
children, so incredibly important for us to continue to move
forward and supporting our children.
Ms. Waters. Thank you so very much. I hope Mr. Scalise
heard you.
Mr. Scalise. Would the gentlelady yield? I would be happy
to----
Ms. Waters. The gentlelady has no time.
[Laughter.]
Mr. Scalise. That is clear. I will answer your question on
my time.
Chairman Clyburn. It is now your time.
Mr. Scalise. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman.
[Laughter.]
Mr. Scalise. To followup where the gentlelady from
California left off, she was, I guess, criticizing the
politics, and, frankly, I would share with her that same
criticism. The problem is that I was quoting President Biden's
polling firm. There was no science that the CDC fell on to
change the guidance. It was the polling firm from President
Biden that said, literally days before CDC changed the
guidance, ``Two-thirds of parents and 80 percent of teachers
say the pandemic caused learning loss, and voters are
overwhelmingly more worried about the learning loss.'' They
went on to say, ``The more we talk''--``we,'' being the
Democrats--``The more we talk about the threat of COVID and
onerously restrict people's lives because of it, the more we
turn them against us and show them we're out of touch with
their daily realities.'' Then they went on to say, ``And if
Democrats continue to hold a posture that prioritizes COVID
precautions over learning, how to live in a world where COVID
exists but does not dominate, they risk paying dearly for it in
November.'' So President Biden's polling firm just days ago
released this memo warning Democrats that their radical
positions on COVID are hurting their chances of winning in
November, and then the CDC turned around and changed their
rules.
Now, we have been urging them to change the rules for a
long time because their rules were wrong, but they wouldn't do
it because it was hurting kids. They did it because their
pollster told them it was going to hurt their chances of
getting elected in November. And so----
Mr. Foster. Would the gentleman yield for a question?
Mr. Scalise. That is the political science that President
Biden's polling firm laid out. I would be happy to yield.
Mr. Foster. Are you presenting evidence that that affected
their decision rather than the simple fact that the amount of
virus circulation has been dropping like a rock, and when the
virus in circulation drops to a low enough level, you no longer
need masks?
Mr. Scalise. Reclaiming my time. We have seen the
circulation drop in previous months, and yet they didn't change
the guidance from CDC for that. You know, what we do know, and,
again, there is a history within the White House of
manipulating the science and their decisions based on
influencing. Here it is, polling influence. We saw the teachers
union influence their recommendation on schools in the past.
That is well documented, by the way. We have talked about that
in this committee before. So the Biden Administration has a
history. Despite Joe Biden as a candidate saying we are going
to follow the science, he has manipulated the science in the
past about union bosses. Now he is manipulating the science to
bow to his own horrible polling. I would be happy, by the way,
to submit this for the record, Mr. Chairman. This was a memo
February 24, 2022, from President Biden's polling firm where
they made these recommendations that this is based upon.
Mr. Scalise. Now, I would like to get to some questions.
Ms. Lukas, I appreciated your recommendation. Ms. Waters, I am
glad we got to clear that up.
Ms. Lukas, your recommendations I very much appreciate. I
want to talk about the damage we have seen with kids. We have
had many hearings in this committee where we talked about the
damage that kids are experiencing in the classroom from not
learning properly if they are not in the classroom, but also
even the masking guidelines, what it is doing to the psyche of
our young children. Suicides through the roof. Again, looking
at the data, suicide attempts by 12-to 17-year-old girls are at
51 percent from early 2019 to 2021. Can you explain how the
CDC's flawed guidance has actually contributed to the mental
health crisis that we see our young kids facing?
Ms. Lukas. Well, certainly. I mean, it is interesting
because different localities have made different decisions when
it comes to how to handle schools. So there have been some
schools that have been open and providing in-person learning,
and you can see the differences where schools have been closed
the longest. There has been the greatest learning losses and
then these increases in mental health and other issues,
including rising obesity from kids being prevented from sports.
All of these are contributing to problems when we come to
school closures.
With masking, it will be interesting because this is a
tremendous experiment that we have been conducted on young
children. We knew that young children are not very vulnerable
to COVID and that COVID-19 was, you know, mercifully gentle
with kids and the kids' risks are low. We don't yet know all of
the damage that we have done in terms of kids' speech
development. We know that speech development, there are
evidence that there have been declines, but the mental health
impact we will be discovering for years to come just how
damaging this has been to this next generation.
Mr. Scalise. Thanks. And we know from other studies that
kids who don't learn proficiently, especially in reading and
some of the basic skills, if they don't read, for example, by
the third grade, that they are more likely to leave school
without a diploma than proficient readers. So if you look at
these disparities where, again, some school systems followed
the science and stayed open, some bowed to the unions and
closed, do we know what kind of damage this is going to cause
to our kids long term?
Ms. Lukas. Yes. I mean, McKinsey & Company just came out
with a study that showed that there is an estimated net
learning loss because of the learning gaps that have been
created by school closures of about $50,000 of lost potential
income in the future, and this isn't evenly distributed.
Obviously, the places where the in-person learning was denied
for the longest, which tended to be overwhelmingly lower-income
minority communities, that they were disproportionately
affected and will have the longest harm long term.
Mr. Scalise. Well, thanks. And, Mr. Chairman, we will try
to get that study and see if we can get that included in the
record later. Thank you very much.
Chairman Clyburn. Thank you very much. The Chair now
recognizes himself for five minutes.
Dr. Fraga, I want to, you know, ask you questions about $39
billion of support for childcare recovery, including the $24
billion for Stabilization Grant providers. I want to know how
important you think these stabilization grants are.
Ms. Fraga. Thank you for the question, Chairman Clyburn.
Well, every state has actually approached the Stabilization
grants differently. There have been a number of trends that we
have seen across the country that support equity, efficiency,
and transparency in distribution of the Stabilization grants.
To be clear, these grants have been incredibly helpful for
states, for example, in the realm of equity, populations like
infants and toddlers and those programs who are open during
non-traditional hours. In some states, there are additional
tiers of support for those programs. And efficiency, we are
seeing distribution of funding being through direct deposits,
for example, though they are available for checks, simple opt-
out processes in some states, so the ability for there to be
some level of efficiency. And also transparency, which is
incredibly important, a wealth of information on who has
applied for and been approved for the ability to be able to
receive grants.
So these are all ways that these Stabilization grants have
been able to be helpful for programs, and for providers, and
for families so that they can be able to access programs, and
we have really seen a tremendous amount of effort. We are now
at almost all states who have at least applications up online
so that folks can access them, and we are seeing thousands of
these grants being distributed to providers who really need it
in real time.
Chairman Clyburn. Well, thank you for that. I want to go
back. The ranking member talked about the child needing to be
reading by the third grade or what the catastrophic
consequences are. As a former public school teacher, I want to
ask you, are you familiar or are you keeping up with how this
$15 billion is being spent and what kind of programs coming
forward, because I am particularly interested in the fact that
we keep talking about grade school. We aren't talking about
those childcare centers that got closed when kids were 3, 4,
and 5 years old and what would happen then when they finally
get to school because the childcare centers were closed.
Ms. Fraga. Yes.
Chairman Clyburn. These kids weren't getting anything: no
preparation, no Head Start, no nothing, if I might use that
double negative. Can you tell us about that $15 billion?
Ms. Fraga. Of course, yes. So I think one of the initial
and sort of most important things that we need to emphasize is
that it is so critically important for childcare programs to be
affordable, accessible, and of quality. And that is really
where a lot of our intention and what we are seeing happening
in states, is to ensure that accessibility comes by way of
families lowering the eligibility for programs, ensuring that
for programs, that they are getting the supports they need in
order to stay open, the grant funding that they need so that
they can stay open. We need to ensure that as we are thinking
about, and what we are seeing in the trend data right now is
that there are real intentional dollars going to the fact that,
again, to your point, some of these programs have closed either
temporarily or leading to permanent closure. What that impacts
are the inability for parents to be able to access quality
childcare, for these families to be able to return to work, for
children to be able to be nurtured and safe in quality
settings. That is where these dollars are going in order to
support the whole system of care, which is incredibly important
for our children and for our families.
We talk about issues related to mental health and stress.
Those are not only experiences of children in the classrooms or
early childhood programs, but this is impacting parents who
can't get to work, can't get food on the table, can't be able
to pay the bills, and this is affecting children and their
stress levels as well. So it is going to take a whole system
approach in order to really make a difference. We need to look
at robust long-term public investments to make these kinds of
things a reality.
Chairman Clyburn. Well, thank you very much for that. I
could get deeper into this, but I don't want Mr. Jordan to get
too nervous. So the Chair now recognizes Mr. Jordan for five
minutes.
Mr. Jordan. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. On September 29 of
last year, the National School Board Association sent a letter
to the Biden Administration asking them to implement, to use
the Patriot Act against moms and dads showing up at school
board meetings. Five days later, the Attorney General the
United States sends a memorandum to the director at the FBI
doing exactly what the School Boards Association asked the
Biden Administration to do. Namely, he says in the memorandum,
``I'm directing the FBI, working with United States Attorney
General, to convene meetings and to set up an open, dedicated
line of communication for threat reporting,'' to set up a
snitch line on parents. Two weeks later, on October 20, because
of a whistleblower--because of a whistleblower--we find out
that the FBI then sent an email to agents around the country
where they say, apply a threat tag to parents, put this label,
this designation on parents. Here is what the whistleblower
told us. He said, ``I believe this email is evidence that the
FBI is proceeding to collect information on parents who protest
at school board meetings.'' All that happens in 22 days.
The first question I would ask is, I have never seen the
Federal Government move that fast on anything, but all that
happens in 22 days, which made me wonder about it because we
learned that it actually didn't start with the School Board's
letter. We know that the Department of Education and the Biden
Administration went to the School Board, so it didn't come from
the School Board to the government. The government went to the
School Board to say, give us the pretext to do what we want to
do, namely, go after moms and dads.
In his opening statement, Ms. Lukas, the chairman of this
committee said--this is a quote--``Give parents the support
they need.'' I think what the Federal Government needs to do is
quit treating parents as domestic terrorists. Maybe we should
start there. So I think in your opening comments, Ms. Lukas,
you said you had five children. Is that right?
Ms. Lukas. Yes.
Mr. Jordan. And your kids go to school, right?
Ms. Lukas. Public school here----
Mr. Jordan. All public school right here, right across----
Ms. Lukas. Fairfax County.
Mr. Jordan. Right across the river in Fairfax County,
Virginia. You ever show up at school board meetings?
Ms. Lukas. I have.
Mr. Jordan. You been to a few of them?
Ms. Lukas. Just one.
Mr. Jordan. Did you speak out at it?
Ms. Lukas. I certainly did.
Mr. Jordan. Do you think there is a threat tag associated
with your name now at the FBI?
Ms. Lukas. I don't know. You guys would have to tell me who
is listening. It is possible. It certainly is a concern. I know
that that type of concern discourages a lot of parents from
speaking out for just those reasons.
Mr. Jordan. Yes, I think that is the goal, I think, is to
try to intimidate parents from speaking out on COVID policies,
on CRT, or, frankly, anything they care about, speaking out
about their kids' education. I think it is an effort to
intimidate and chill First Amendment free speech. Would you
agree with that?
Ms. Lukas. Very much.
Mr. Jordan. Yes, and what did you speak out about? I am
just curious. When you spoke out at your school board meeting,
what did you speak out about?
Ms. Lukas. About the masking policy. This was after
Governor Youngkin had provided the executive order to give
parents the right to unmask, and my kids were denied that right
and suspended when I tried to exercise that right. And so I
went to tell the school board that I thought it was an
inappropriate and abusive policy.
Mr. Jordan. What kind of response did you get from the
school board?
Ms. Lukas. Nothing. They yawned and kept the school mask
policy on, and it took another act of law and some brave,
finally, bipartisan push back from parents demanding that our
kids be unmasked since everybody else in Virginia essentially
had been unmasked for a long time and there was tremendous
concern about what it was doing to kids.
Mr. Jordan. Well, it seems to me that the science has been
pretty clear on this with kids for a long time, as the ranking
member, Mr. Scalise, pointed out earlier. Why do you think they
continue to do it then?
Ms. Lukas. You know, I do think that it became a bit of a
political symbol and because mostly I think because they think
they can. I do think that public school parents are a captive
audience. It is very expensive to leave a role in a private
school, and so they didn't have to. And I would just add
quickly that, you know, I think that as we talk about the
problems with childcare and the decline in services that
happened during COVID-19, I think we should kind of imagine the
counter factual that if our childcare centers had been run like
our public K through 12 schools, like a build back better plan
had been in place where the government was the primary funder
of schools, just how more pronounced the problems would have
been because all of those schools would have had the same
incentives as our public schools did and would have denied in-
person service for as long as humanly possible, as they
certainly did in Virginia.
Mr. Jordan. Yes, I am just amazed at everything they told
us that was wrong. I mean, I remember Joe Biden telling us when
he ran for the job that he had a plan. I mean, it is obvious he
didn't. He told us that he would never impose a vaccine
mandate. He did, so much so that the Supreme Court had to say
it was unconstitutional. They told us this virus didn't come
from a lab. It was a gain-of-function and didn't involve our
tax dollars. All three of those things look like they were
false. They told us the vaccinated couldn't get it. They told
us the vaccinated couldn't transmit it. They told us that there
was no such thing as natural immunity. So there are eight lies,
eight pieces of misinformation they told us. And then, forever,
they told moms, who know a little bit more about their kids
than the government does, they told them, you have to put a
mask on your kid. I mean, it is just crazy.
So we got a little discussion earlier about the politics.
It was totally about the politics, and anyone with common sense
can see that. And I just want to read one last time what--well,
I guess I won't read it because we are cutting them off even
though everyone else got to go over time.
Chairman Clyburn. Your time----
Mr. Jordan. Mr. Chairman, I yield back. I yield back.
Chairman Clyburn. Well, if you want to yield to me for a
question, I would be glad to go over because I would like to
know whether or not free speech at a school board meeting
allows one to say to a school board member, ``I know your
address.'' ``I just want you to know I know your address.'' Is
that a way to address school board policy?
Mr. Jordan. No.
Chairman Clyburn. Just asking.
Mr. Jordan. No. What I am asking is when moms' and dads'
names get a designation or a label associated with their name
that the FBI keeps, call me crazy, but I think that has the
potential to chill speech. And I would argue that is exactly
what they were trying to do, as evidenced by the fact it was
Secretary Cardenas who went to the School Board Association and
asked them to send a letter that prompted this whole thing,
that within 22 days got the FBI to send an email out that a
whistleblower gave to us--thank goodness for this
whistleblower--where this whistleblower said, this is not how
it is supposed to operate. That is what I know, and now we have
seen the impact it has had on parents across the country. That
is my point. It has been about politics. Again, I would just
read what Mr. Scalise----
Chairman Clyburn. Every terrorist in the country that has
ever been arrested, I think, had children.
Mr. Jordan. Well, I appreciate that profound wisdom.
Chairman Clyburn. With that, the chair yields to Mrs.
Maloney for five minutes.
[No response.]
Chairman Clyburn. Mrs. Maloney?
Mrs. Maloney. OK. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The pandemic has made clear that affordable, quality
childcare plays an essential role in promoting gender equity
and economic opportunity. Ms. Forbes, I understand that you are
a parent of a young child as well as an early childhood
educator. You have dealt with the tradeoffs between furthering
your career and obtaining quality childcare for your child. Can
you discuss how the lack of affordable, available childcare has
impacted your ability to work and develop your own career?
Ms. Forbes. Absolutely. Thank you for your question,
Congresswoman. It has been an ongoing challenge since I even
had my older son in 2008, where just the question of how can I
work for wages that are not much higher or perhaps the same as
what I would pay out for the cost of childcare, and it is just
a no-win situation. So particularly now, raising a young child
in the pandemic with the additional stresses of that, it has
just been an untenable situation of every day figuring out can
I go to work tomorrow. Can I go to work next week? Can I
continue to teach in a field that needs me desperately? We need
every educator to show up to work and be there for other
families, yet I don't know if I am going to be able to pay my
care provider this week or next week. And so, as I mentioned in
my opening statement, the expanded child tax credit was very
helpful for me. It came in and it went right back out the door
to pay for childcare costs, and without that, it is just an
everyday struggle to know what to do next.
Mrs. Maloney. Well, thank you. I think many parents have
had the same experience as you, including myself. A Federal
Reserve analysis showed that the onset of the pandemic caused
many, many parents of young children to drop out of the labor
force with longer-lasting effects for mothers than for fathers.
Mothers of young children, in particular, saw a larger drop in
labor force participation than women without children.
Professor Stevenson, could these pandemic impacts on childcare
availability have long-term ramifications for women's careers
and gender equity in the work force?
Ms. Stevenson. They absolutely can, and one of the things I
highlighted in my testimony is we even need to look beyond the
people who dropped out of work because some people hung onto
some kind of work, but different work than they would be doing
if they had access to better childcare. That kind of
reallocation is continuing to go on and explains why we see a
shortage of workers today, why we see what people are calling
the great resignation or the great reallocation, because people
are trying to figure out what is the spot for them in an
economy in which they have had to make sacrifices due to
childcare and with so few childcare spots available right now
at such a high cost. I think it is going to be a long time for
women and parents to get back.
And I do just want to emphasize that, you know, I do think
we need to realize this is impacting men's careers as well. It
pains me to say it, that maybe people will pay more attention
when I tell you that the fathers are getting hammered here,
too, but the fathers are getting hammered. And overall, the
U.S. economy really depends on parents having stable, reliable
childcare for both mothers' and fathers' sake.
Mrs. Maloney. Thank you. The American Rescue Plan that
President Biden signed into law last year is already helping to
address this crisis. My home state of New York used the
American Rescue Plan funds to support a $2.3 billion investment
in childcare early last year. Dr. Austin, your center published
an analysis showing that New York City is one of the only areas
where childcare employment was regained at a pre-pandemic
level. How is the American Rescue Plan supporting New York's
childcare recovery, and what lessons can be learned from New
York's progress?
Ms. Austin. Thank you for your question. New York City is
very interesting. So when we look at New York returning to pre-
pandemic levels, I think there are a couple things that have
happened there, the combination of relief funds getting into
the community. And another really important point about New
York City is that New York City has a larger share of publicly
contracted childcare programs than we see in many places around
the country. Our research has found that publicly contracted
programs, like state preschool programs and Head Start
programs, which temporarily closed and then did reopen as most
childcare reopened, were more stable, that they were able to
withstand the pandemic better, keep their programs open, pay
the bills, and continue to pay their staff. So I think that is
part of what is going on in New York City, and New York state
as a whole is also beginning to see more recovery again with
those relief dollars providing important relief to keep people
working in those programs.
Just the last thing I want to say there is, I think, one
thing that is important to remember. As we see this return to
pre-pandemic employment, which is important, it doesn't signal
that the communities have totally recovered because, of course,
we had incredible shortages of childcare before the pandemic
hit. But this does show that the pandemic relief dollars and
public contracts are helping programs move forward.
Mrs. Maloney. Well, we definitely have to do more. My time
has expired. I thank the panelists for investing in our
childcare system. I yield back. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Clyburn. Thank you very much, Mrs. Maloney. As we
go to Mrs. Miller-Meeks for questions, I am going to hand the
chair to Dr. Foster so I can go vote.
Mrs. Miller-Meeks. Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. I
recently heard in this room, and I have heard this before,
about the pandemic being politicized. And if the left didn't
politicize the pandemic, can someone help explain to me the
science of Democrat Governors lifting mask mandates for adults,
but not for children in schools, or them posing with children
in schools completely masked, even though they have low levels
of transmission, almost infinitesimally low levels of illness
or death, but yet the lawmaker being unmasked?
[No response.]
Mrs. Miller-Meeks. I didn't think so because there is no
science that would support masking children with adults
unmasked. Having said that, I would like to thank our witnesses
for coming before us and sharing their testimony today.
Mothers disproportionately shouldered the responsibility
for children during remote or hybrid schooling and daycare
disruptions. Many are unable to return to the workplace
because, at any given moment, their child's class, school, or
childcare facility could be shut down over a single positive
COVID test with no illness. In January 2022, the male labor
force participation rate was up to 70 percent while the female
rate was just at 58 percent. This is likely related to the
fact, in early January 2022, that there were nearly 7,500
school closures due to the Omicron surge, even though we knew
that there was little risk of illness. Ms. Lukas, how has the
instability in school and daycare systems contributed to
women's exodus and continued absence from the work force, and
how can we get women who choose to work back to work?
Ms. Lukas. Yes. You know, it is interesting because there
has been a drop-off in both men and women's labor force
participation and with children, but, actually, the labor force
drop-off has been larger among parents of school-age kids, not
in childcare in the 0 through 5, which really is the focus of
this hearing, which, you know, we absolutely need to make it
easier for more childcare centers to open so that people do
have those options, reduce regulations, and the kind of forced
closures and the really expensive, disruptive policies that
have made running a daycare center so difficult. But, again, I
think that when we look at the real problems with labor force
participation, a lot of it is driven not by the lack of
childcare. It is about the total undependability of our public
school system, particularly in Democratic states where the
schools remained closed for more than a year.
Mrs. Miller-Meeks. According to emails obtained by the
Americans for Public Trust, the American Federation of Unions
was provided a pre-release copy of the CDC's updated school
guidelines in February 2021. The pre-released version of the
guidance, written prior to the influence of the AFT, stated
that, ``Schools could provide in-person education regardless of
the community transmission.'' And, in fact, in Iowa, Governor
Reynolds opened schools to in-person learning in the fall of
2020 without significant consequence of illness, or
transmission, or super spreader events. Unfortunately, the CDC
bowed to the pressure of the AFT, forcing thousands of schools
to remain virtual. In fact, the AFT's exact suggested language
appeared in the CDC's final guidance. Ms. Lukas, do you think
it is fair that the teachers union had the ability to edit the
guidance?
Ms. Lukas. No. It is absolutely appalling, and I do think
it is a clarifying moment in seeing one of the problems with
how children have been treated as pawns during this pandemic,
and really, really opened our eyes to the problems that are
inherent in our public school system, which did not prioritize
children, did not prioritize families during this pandemic, and
why we need to change. We should not move in the direction of
moving toward a public-funded and government-controlled daycare
system. Instead, we should be thinking about how to liberalize
and how to give parents more leverage over our public school
systems, so they would be more responsive, care more about
children's mental health and development, and not sacrifice
them as they did during COVID.
Mrs. Miller-Meeks. That is so well said. Democrats,
unfortunately, chose the teachers union over teachers who
wanted to return to school, parents, and, most importantly,
children. Now we are seeing the effects of their harmful
choices. America's children are broken. Do you agree, and
shouldn't the CDC base its guidance off science?
Ms. Lukas. Absolutely, and I do think it is interesting. We
will be learning about this. In years, we will be having
conversations about the lasting damage that has been done due
to school closures, the increased mental health problems not
just for little kids who are forced to mask and are still
masking today in Head Start programs and in many daycare
centers, but that have affected preteens, vulnerable. I know
among my kids, I feel the worst for my middle-aged children. It
is such a hard age, and I think this has made it just
incredibly worse. So we will be seeing this for years to come,
sadly.
Mrs. Miller-Meeks. Yes, and a spiraling level of youth
suicides. Thank you so much. Mr. Chair, I yield back my time.
Mr. Foster. [Presiding.] Thank you, and at this point, I
will yield to myself for five minutes of questioning.
When you see our society coming under stress, our labor
market coming under stress, one of the places that I look to
for lessons are the Greatest Generation because we have been
here before. There was a tremendous labor force shortfall
during World War II, and one of the most fundamental and
successful ways of plugging that labor force shortage was Rosie
the Riveter. But Rosie the Riveter needed daycare, and so in
response to that, the Federal Government stepped up. They
passed something called the Lanham Act, which was the Federal
Government setting up a bunch of federally funded daycare
centers. And as a result of that natural experiment, we learned
a lot about the long-term benefits of providing kids daycare.
And so, Ms. Stevenson, could you say a little bit about this
program and what the lessons learned have been?
Ms. Stevenson. Yes. As you noted, it was popularly known as
the Lanham Act. It was also called the Defense Housing and
Community Facilities and Services Act of 1940 because it was
attached to the defense industry. We were at war, and we needed
to try to figure out how to get women into factories, and so
the issue was, well, their kids are going to need childcare. So
all families, regardless of income, were eligible for what was
really high-quality childcare at a very, very low cost. A ton
of research has been done into what did that do for the kids,
what did that do for the families. And early research showed
that the childcare strengthened family bonds, that the children
enjoyed the childcare, and that the primary goal, increasing
mother's employment, was achieved, and that children's long-
term outcomes were improved. We saw that these children went on
to have higher high school graduation rates, higher education
rates in general, and went on to earn more money as an adult.
So to give you a little bit of math behind it, $100 in
Lanham Act funding increased high school graduation rates by
1.8 percentage points--that is a super cheap way to increase
high school graduation by 1.8 percentage points--college
graduation rates by 1.9 percentage points, and employment for
these kids, when they grew up and were in their late 40's and
early 50's, by .7 percentage points, and increased earnings by
1.8 percent. So these are big, big effects, and I think that
they speak to the broader point, which is we know high-quality
early childhood education can have huge effects on people's
earnings as adults. And so the idea of investing more in
childcare, it is not just about parents and getting parents
into the work force. The Lanham Act did that. It got the moms
into the work force, but it did something even more important,
and that is what I think childcare is really about, which is it
got those kids to earn more as adults.
I am going to end with just giving you one last fact, which
is, a study that was done just around a decade or so ago found
that a high-quality kindergarten teacher can generate $320,000
in value by increasing the earnings of the kids that are in her
classroom. You know, I don't know the estimates for high-
quality preschool or an early childhood educator, but it is
reasonable to say that it would probably be around $100,000 or
more. So there is a lot that these educators do, and yet, you
know, we simply don't have the fundings to pay people
appropriately and to give all kids access.
Mr. Foster. And so the big increase in lifetime earnings
will presumably also be associated with a big increase in the
amount of tax revenue collected from these people. Well, you
don't have to do the math to see that. It is clearly the case
that the Federal taxpayer won with this investment, that it
paid off, and it actually allowed us to lower tax rates over
time because we made this early investment and won from that
investment. Is there any way around that conclusion or is it
clearly true?
Ms. Stevenson. That is clearly true, and when we look at
high-quality early childhood education, what we see is about $1
in spending returns $9 to the taxpayer down the line. You got
to wait for it because when you are investing in a two-year-
old, you might not get it all the way back until they are in
their 50's. So it is a long wait, but these are net present
value numbers, so that means that I am adjusting for that long
wait and still telling you that the taxpayers get it back in
the long run. You know, the research on parents is parents even
know this and that parents would make these investments
themselves if they could afford to, and, you know, in fact,
that is why very high-income parents do make these investments.
Other parents just are unable to make the choice, unable to
afford making those high-quality investments in their kids, but
the taxpayers can do it and they would get the money back.
Mr. Foster. Thank you, and my time has expired. It is one
of the large number of things that the Greatest Generation got
right, and we haven't re-learned yet.
And at this point, I will recognize Representative Raskin
for five minutes.
Mr. Raskin. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I heard the ranking
member announce the apparently breathtaking discovery that
politicians take polls, and some even pay attention to what the
majority believes. I would remind him of a President who
responded neither to the science nor to the polls, and that is
the President whose lethal recklessness in public health and
whose sickening pro-Putin policies for four years, they did
everything they could to obscure and explain away. Donald
Trump's own COVID-19 advisor, Deborah Birx, has said that we
lost unnecessarily hundreds of thousands of people because of
the failures of Donald Trump, who never developed a plan to
combat and defeat COVID-19, but rather trivialized it, denied
it, waved it away, hocked fake miracle cures like
hydroxychloroquine and injecting yourself with bleach, and did
everything he could to prevent us from creating the social
cohesion that we needed to defeat the disease that we finally
have under President Biden.
Here's a poll that Donald Trump and his party should
consult: the vast majority of the American people reject
fascist Vladimir Putin's war of imperial aggression against the
democratic nation of Ukraine. The vast majority of Americans
reject it. The vast majority of the world rejects it. But
Trump, who has been trying to undermine NATO for many years
now, calls his hero, Vladimir Putin, a genius. Mike Pompeo
quickly called him savvy and professed his admiration. Fascist
Trump follower, Nick Fuentes, called for a round of applause
for Russia just a couple days before the invasion at a right-
wing rally in Florida, and the crowd then began to chant
``Putin, Putin, Putin.'' And Marjorie Taylor Greene and Paul
Gosar joined in this pro-Russian circus of extremism.
So now that Joe Biden has finally turned the corner on
COVID, created and forged the social consensus we need to
defeat the disease, turn the corner, and brought the numbers
down, now our colleagues, rather than acknowledge the great
success and the breakthrough that we have under President Biden
and never came close to under Trump when the disease was
spinning out of control, now what do they do? Well, they do
everything they can to distract us from the humiliating record
of Trump on both COVID-19 and Vladimir Putin, two plagues that
he helped to circulate throughout the land and throughout the
world. And I am just shocked to see that they continue to come
back here and summon up all of their counterfeit outrage
against us after it was Donald Trump who spread the plague
across the land just like he continues to help to try to spread
the plague of right-wing authoritarianism around the world.
Will one of our Republican colleagues--one of them--
denounce Donald Trump or dissociate themselves from his remarks
praising Vladimir Putin and calling him a genius and
cheerleading for right-wing authoritarianism on the march
against the free people of Ukraine? I wish one of them would do
that now.
[No response.]
Mr. Raskin. Well, hearing none, then I would like to ask a
question beginning with Ms. Forbes. My question for you is
about the American Rescue Plan's temporary expansion of the
child and dependent care tax credit, which will allow families
to at least offset a substantial portion of their childcare
costs this tax filing season. The expansion allows low-and
middle-income families to get refundable credits of up to
$4,000 for families with one child and up to 8,000 for families
with two or more children. And actually, let me ask Professor
Stevenson first: how might the expanded child and dependent
care tax credit affect parents' ability to participate
effectively in the labor market?
Ms. Stevenson. Thank you. I think that tax credit is just
incredibly important to help offset the cost of going to work.
The bottom line is some parents cannot afford to work. I mean,
that sounds like a crazy sentence to say, ``I can't afford to
work,'' but, actually, you heard Ms. Forbes describe her exact
predicament of not being able to afford to work. And so when we
look at these kind of tax credits that are primarily meant to
offset the cost of childcare so the parents can work, I think
that they are incredibly important. Right now, when childcare
costs more than it has in the past, that tax credit really, I
think, was essential for helping to get parents back into the
labor force. And I will just end by saying women have come back
at a faster pace than men to jobs, so women want to come back
to work. If we can help them when we give them these kind of
tax credits, we are going to succeed in getting them back into
the labor force.
Mr. Raskin. Thank you. I yield back, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Clyburn. [Presiding.] Thank you very much, Mr.
Raskin.
The chair now recognizes Mr. Krishnamoorthi for five
minutes.
Mr. Krishnamoorthi. Thank you so much, Chair Clyburn. Can
the staff put up the diagram for me? Well, they may not be able
to. Oh, there it is.
Ms. Lukas, I have a few questions about a book that you
authored in 2006 called, The Politically Incorrect Guide to
Women, Sex, and Feminism. You wrote that book in 2006, right?
Ms. Lukas. Yep.
Mr. Krishnamoorthi. And as you can see from this rather
provocative cover, there are some bullet points that are very
interesting on this particular page. Let me just start with the
bottom bullet point. It says--and you wrote this, correct--
``Most women want a husband and a strong family, but
independent feminists pine for a sugar daddy in Uncle Sam,''
correct?
Ms. Lukas. Yes. Yes, I did write that.
Mr. Krishnamoorthi. And then you also wrote the following.
You said, ``Why the happiest women spend more time with their
families and less time at work,'' and then in parens you said,
``Because you can't outsource parenting.'' You wrote that,
correct?
Ms. Lukas. Yes, sir.
Mr. Krishnamoorthi. Now, let me just ask Ms. Forbes. You
know, Ms. Forbes, do you consider yourself somebody who is
fulfilled in your job, and that is why you are kind of going to
work and having to get childcare at the same time?
Ms. Forbes. Thank you for your question. I am a very
passionate person about what I do. I love working. I love my
job as an early educator, and I am growing a business as an
early education consultant. And it is very challenging for me
to not have that outlet for my intelligence and my passion and
creativity.
Mr. Krishnamoorthi. Yes. I think, you know, it looks like
Ms. Lukas may not think you are as happy as you could be. In
fact, in the first bullet point, I will just read what you
said. You said, ``Careers can be baby deniers. Women can't
postpone childbearing without serious consequences.'' That is
your first bullet point, right, Ms. Lukas?
Ms. Lukas. Yes, sir. I think there is a lack of----
Mr. Krishnamoorthi. You have spent a career at the
organization that you are at. In fact, in 2006, you were the
vice president there, and today you are the president of that
same organization. You have 15 years there, which is a good,
successful career there, right?
Ms. Lukas. Yes, sir.
Mr. Krishnamoorthi. And you have at least five children.
Isn't that right?
Ms. Lukas. I have five children, yes. Thank you.
Mr. Krishnamoorthi. And it looks like your career did not
prevent you from raising children very successfully.
Congratulations.
Ms. Lukas. Thanks.
Mr. Krishnamoorthi. It looks like for other people,
however, it is very difficult for them to potentially raise
children----
Ms. Lukas. No, sir, there is a lot of----
Mr. Krishnamoorthi [continuing]. Having a fulfilling
career. Let me ask Betsey Stevenson a question here because Ms.
Lukas has been highly, highly critical of institutionalized
daycare. In fact, she considers that to be a very negative
influence on children and their futures, but I am hearing a
totally different story from Betsey Stevenson based on the
actual data. Ms. Stevenson, do you agree with the conclusion
that institutionalized childcare that would be provided by
``Uncle Sam,'' according to Ms. Lukas, would have a negative
impact on children?
Ms. Stevenson. You know, I think that the American public
school system, K through 12, has been an enormous success. And,
in fact, you know, to go back to the idea of what did we learn
from the Greatest Generation, Americans built high schools when
no other country in the world was, and it is actually what
fueled our growth in the last century. I think what will fuel
our growth in this century is actually expanding education down
to our youngest citizens. And the evidence suggests that
center-based care that is curriculum based, that is
developmentally appropriate, does generate massive benefits for
children because the science tells us when children develop.
Mr. Krishnamoorthi. Let me interrupt for one second. Ms.
Lukas also said on page 197 of her book, ``Families who want to
keep a parent home with their children shouldn't have to pay
taxes to support daycare for other people's children.'' How do
you respond to that, Ms. Stevenson?
Ms. Stevenson. Well, first of all, those children are
allowing parents to go to work, and the parents are paying
taxes on that income that they are earning while their kids are
in childcare. That childcare is also allowing those kids to
earn more as adults, and they are going to pay taxes on that.
Actually, the bigger problem is that when people stay home and
provide care for their children, they are providing a valuable
service for their family, and unlike traded services, they are
not actually taxed on those goods that they are creating and
the value that they are providing for their family.
Mr. Krishnamoorthi. Thank you so much. I yield back.
Chairman Clyburn. I thank the gentleman for yielding back.
I think that no other Republicans are going to return to the
hearing. In the interest of time, the Chair is going to yield
for 2.5 minutes for any response that Ms. Lukas would like to
make.
Ms. Lukas. Yes. Thank you so much, Chairman. I really
appreciate that because I do want to correct the record on a
little bit of how my thoughts were characterized, particularly
about working parents and some of the data that was in the book
that I wrote 15 years ago now that I was trying to correct. I
particularly went through and looked at some of the women's
studies programs and some of the information that was being
given and found that there was a tremendous lack of coverage of
things like infertility. And there has been a lot of
information showing that young women tend not to recognize the
amount of difficulty that women often have in trying to get
pregnant after the age of 35, and I think that is something
that women should be aware of. One in three women suffer from
infertility, and, you know, obviously not everyone wants a
child, and you can have a tremendously fulfilling life without
a child. But I hate to think of the heartbreak that many people
experience when they aren't aware of the problems associated
with infertility.
And similarly, I think there have been a lot of women--and
this is looking at polling information--as we talked about,
polling information can be very helpful and that there are a
lot of women who do end up feeling a sense of regret when they
haven't had time to spend at home with their children. I
obviously think that daycare is incredibly important. I have
used daycare at different times during my 16, 17 years as a mom
now, but I do think that parents should have a recognition that
sometimes it is better to stay at home and there is value in
staying at home.
And just the final point I will make is I do think we
should be cautious. You can find studies that show that high-
quality childcare is associated with positive life outcomes,
but there are also a lot that show the opposite. I am sure
everyone, all the scholars here have seen this very recent
program, finding from Tennessee. This was meant to be a high-
quality childcare program, preschool program, and they found
negative effects in third grade and then again in sixth grade,
both in terms of education and in terms of discipline and
mental health. So we need to be cautious. This doesn't mean
that it can't work, but it does mean that we don't know
everything, and we should have a little humility in knowing
that we don't know exactly what a quality daycare is or what a
quality provider is, which is why we need to empower parents
and not just government. Thank you.
Chairman Clyburn. I thank the witness for her statement.
Now, I think the ranking member has informed me that he will
not be returning to this hearing, so the chair recognizes
himself for a closing statement.
I want to thank all of the witnesses for testifying before
the select subcommittee today. We appreciate your insight, your
expertise, and, most importantly, your dedication to the well-
being of children and families. In light of your testimony, I
want to make it clear to America's families and caregivers of
young children that their sacrifice, determination, and hard
work, especially in the face of the challenges presented by the
pandemic, are recognized and valued. We must continue to
dedicate the necessary resources to ensure that childcare is
affordable, caregivers are well paid, and that any parent who
wants to rejoin the labor force is able to access the childcare
necessary to do so. I applaud the Biden-Harris Administration
for its leadership in responding to these challenges and
prioritizing children, families, and caregivers. They
recognize, as I do, that overcoming the challenges discussed
today is essential to both our immediate economic recovery from
the pandemic and this country's long-term prosperity.
With that and without objection, all members will have five
legislative days within which to submit additional written
questions for the witnesses to the chair, which will be
forwarded to the witnesses for their response.
Chairman Clyburn. This hearing is adjourned.
[Whereupon, 3:53 p.m., the select subcommittee was
adjourned.]
[all]