[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                     
          
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------   
                            
                   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

                              ----------                              
                                                                   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

                              ----------                              


                        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.]

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