[House Hearing, 117 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
EXAMINING THE POWERFUL IMPACT
OF INVESTMENTS IN EARLY
CHILDHOOD FOR CHILDREN,
FAMILIES, AND OUR NATION'S ECONOMY
=======================================================================
HEARING
BEFORE THE
COMMITTEE ON THE BUDGET
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED SEVENTEENTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
HEARING HELD IN WASHINGTON, D.C., JULY 20, 2022
__________
Serial No. 117-14
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Printed for the use of the Committee on the Budget
[GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Available on the Internet:
www.govinfo.gov
__________
U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
48-355 WASHINGTON : 2022
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COMMITTEE ON THE BUDGET
JOHN A. YARMUTH, Kentucky, Chairman
HAKEEM S. JEFFRIES, New York JASON SMITH, Missouri,
BRIAN HIGGINS, New York Ranking Member
BRENDAN F. BOYLE, Pennsylvania, TRENT KELLY, Mississippi
Vice Chairman TOM McCLINTOCK, California
LLOYD DOGGETT, Texas GLENN GROTHMAN, Wisconsin
DAVID E. PRICE, North Carolina LLOYD SMUCKER, Pennsylvania
JANICE D. SCHAKOWSKY, Illinois CHRIS JACOBS, New York
DANIEL T. KILDEE, Michigan MICHAEL BURGESS, Texas
JOSEPH D. MORELLE, New York BUDDY CARTER, Georgia
STEVEN HORSFORD, Nevada BEN CLINE, Virginia
BARBARA LEE, California LAUREN BOEBERT, Colorado
JUDY CHU, California BYRON DONALDS, Florida
STACEY E. PLASKETT, Virgin Islands RANDY FEENSTRA, Iowa
JENNIFER WEXTON, Virginia BOB GOOD, Virginia
ROBERT C. ``BOBBY'' SCOTT, Virginia ASHLEY HINSON, Iowa
SHEILA JACKSON LEE, Texas JAY OBERNOLTE, California
JIM COOPER, Tennessee MIKE CAREY, Ohio
ALBIO SIRES, New Jersey
SCOTT H. PETERS, California
SETH MOULTON, Massachusetts
PRAMILA JAYAPAL, Washington
Professional Staff
Diana Meredith, Staff Director
Mark Roman, Minority Staff Director
CONTENTS
Page
Hearing held in Washington, D.C., July 20, 2022.................. 1
Hon. John A. Yarmuth, Chairman, Committee on the Budget...... 1
Prepared statement of.................................... 5
Report submitted for the record.......................... 90
Letters submitted for the record......................... 147
Hon. Jason Smith, Ranking Member, Committee on the Budget.... 8
Prepared statement of.................................... 10
Hilary Hoynes, Professor of Economics and Public Policy and
Haas Distinguished Chair in Economic Disparities University
of California Berkeley..................................... 12
Prepared statement of.................................... 15
Maureen Black, Distinguished Fellow in Early Childhood
Development, RTI International, Professor, Department of
Pediatrics, University of Maryland School of Medicine...... 30
Prepared statement of.................................... 32
Rasheed Malik, Senior Director, Early Childhood Policy Center
for American Progress...................................... 47
Prepared statement of.................................... 49
Hon. Newt Gingrich, Former Speaker of the U.S. House of
Representatives............................................ 55
Prepared statement of.................................... 57
Questions submitted for the record........................... 207
Answers submitted for the record............................. 208
EXAMINING THE POWERFUL IMPACT
OF INVESTMENTS IN EARLY
CHILDHOOD FOR CHILDREN,
FAMILIES, AND OUR NATION'S ECONOMY
----------
WEDNESDAY, JULY 20, 2022
House of Representatives
Committee on the Budget
Washington, DC.
The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:30 a.m., in
Room 210, Cannon Building, Hon. John A. Yarmuth [Chairman of
the Committee] presiding.
Present: Representatives Yarmuth, Higgins, Horsford, Lee,
Chu, Plaskett, Scott, Jackson Lee, Moulton; Smith, Moore,
Grothman, Jacobs, Burgess, Cline, Boebert, Donalds, Feenstra,
Good, and Carey.
Chairman Yarmuth. The hearing will come to order. Good
morning and welcome to the Budget Committee's hearing on
``Examining the Powerful Impact of Investments in Early
Childhood for Children, Families, and our Nation's Economy.''
At the outset I ask unanimous consent that the Chair be
authorized to declare a recess at any time.
Without objection, so ordered.
Before I begin, I would like to welcome the newest Member
of the Budget Committee, representing Utah's First District,
Blake Moore. Blake, I heard you're a father of four, so perhaps
it is fitting that the first hearing on the Budget Committee is
about the investments we should make in our nation's children.
We welcome you and the Committee is happy to have you here.
Now I will start by going over a few housekeeping matters.
The Committee is holding a hybrid hearing. Members may
participate remotely or in person. For individuals
participating remotely, the Chair or staff designated by the
chair may mute a participant's microphone when the participant
is not under recognition for the purpose of eliminating
inadvertent background noise. If you are participating remotely
and are experiencing connectivity issues, please contact staff
immediately so those issues can be resolved.
Members participating in the hearing room are on the remote
platform, are responsible for unmuting themselves when they
seek recognition. We are not permitted to unmute Members unless
they specifically request assistance.
If you are participating remotely and I notice that you
have not unmuted yourself, I will ask if you would like staff
to unmute you. If you indicate approval by nodding, staff will
unmute your microphone. They will not unmute your microphone
under any other conditions.
I would like to remind Members participating remotely in
this proceeding to keep your camera on at all times, even if
you are not under recognition by the chair. Members may not
participate in more than one committee proceeding
simultaneously.
If you are on a remote platform and choose to participate
in a different proceeding, please turn your camera off.
Finally, we have established an email inbox for submitting
documents before and during Committee proceedings, and we have
distributed that email address to your staff.
Now I will introduce our witnesses.
This morning we will be hearing from Dr. Maureen Black, a
distinguished fellow in early childhood development, RTI
International, and a professor in the Department of Pediatrics
at the University of Maryland, School of Medicine.
Mr. Rasheed Malik, the Senior Director for Early Childhood
Policy at the Center for American Progress. And the Honorable
Newt Gingrich, the Former Speaker of the U.S. House of
Representatives.
At this time I would like to recognize Ms. Lee to introduce
our final panel--oh, she is on the phone? Wait a minute. Do you
want Ms. Lee to recognize and introduce her constituent? She is
on the phone.
Well, when she comes back, we will let her introduce Dr.
Hoynes, who is our fourth witness.
Once again, I want to welcome all of our witnesses here
today. Thank you for joining us.
And I will now yield myself five minutes for an opening
statement.
Good morning. I want to welcome our witnesses and thank
them for appearing before our Committee today. One of our
witnesses is a notable veteran of this chamber. Speaker
Gingrich, we are glad to have you back with us.
This hearing is about the importance of investing in our
nation's children. It should be a concern to everyone on this
Committee that while the U.S. is the wealthiest nation in the
world, we are among the stingiest nations when it comes to
funding for our children, and it shows. Despite having the
highest rated education system in the world, U.S. students
consistently score lower in math and science than students from
many other countries. It is no coincidence that just as U.S.
education rankings have decreased by international standards
over the past three decades, so have our federal investments in
children. While the American Rescue Plan and recent
appropriations bills have helped to reverse this troubling
trend, there is much, much more work to be done.
Supporting our youngest Americans is one of the most
concrete ways we can set our nation up for success. We call
these programs investments because they pay off, literally, for
children, for their families, for our society, and for our
economy. For example, participation the Special Supplemental
Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children, more
commonly known as WIC, leads to fewer premature births, fewer
infant deaths, and healthier babies. WIC saves lives, but it
also pays other dividends. For every $1.00 spent on WIC results
in approximately $2.48 in reduced medical costs and
productivity gains.
The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, not
only provides healthy food to 44 million children, it also
gives an important boost to local communities during downturns.
Each SNAP $1.00 generates more than a $1.70 of economic
activity, supporting jobs and local businesses.
Tax policies have also proven successful in reducing
poverty while generating enormous returns for local economies.
The expanded child tax credit, which Democrats enacted last
year as part of the American Rescue Plan, and did so without a
single Republican vote, lifted 3.7 million children out of
poverty in 2021 alone.
Another investment that generates enormous returns for kids
and for our economy is childcare. Study after study has found
that enrollment in high quality programs improves kids' school
readiness, college attendance, and health outcomes and reduces
their likelihood of future criminal activity. Access to
childcare clearly can have long-lasting positive impacts, but
it remains far too expensive for far too many American
families. In fact, the cost of childcare has doubled in the
past 30 years while real wages have remained nearly flat. This
puts many parents in the position of having to stay at home to
care for their children when they would prefer to be working
and building a stronger economic future for their families. As
a result, the lack of affordable childcare leads to economic
losses between $500 million and $3.5 billion in each state
every year.
This is an area where we can make an enormous impact for
American families. We know the problem, we know the solution.
What we are lacking is the bipartisan support needed to get it
done.
This would be a typical problem in a closely divided
Congress, but this is no longer a typical time in the political
history of the United States. Everything changed on June 24
when the Supreme Court ruled in Dobbs v. Jackson. Roe v. Wade
is no longer the law of the land. This is what Republicans have
long sought and fought tooth and nail for, but now what? They
celebrated the Dobbs decision, but they want to cut programs
that help women afford the care needed to have a safe
pregnancy, birth, and post-partum recovery. If given the
chance, Republicans would defund Medicaid, SNAP, TANF, and
other programs that help mothers and children stay healthy and
keep them from going hungry. They have no plan for our
childcare crisis that will now undoubtedly get worse.
Republicans want to cut education funding when schools will
need more. If every life were truly sacred in this country, we
wouldn't be having a hearing about programs to keep mothers and
their children healthy, fed, and cared for, we would be fully
funding them.
The thing is we know these policies work, we know how
critical these investments are for the health of our children,
the health of our society, and the health of our economy. And
now we know we will need them even more. Investing in our
children is the right thing to do, it is the smart thing to do,
and it is the most important investment we can make in the
future of our country.
With that, I would like to yield to the Ranking Member, Mr.
Smith for five minutes for his opening statement.
[The prepared statement of Chairman Yarmuth follows:]
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T8355.001
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T8355.002
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T8355.003
Mr. Smith. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I would also like to welcome our newest Member, Blake
Moore, to the Committee. We are excited to have you.
Democrats and Republicans can both agree a focus on early
childhood development is very important. But I find it very
curious that this Committee, which green lit $2 trillion in
spending last year and sparked the worst inflation in 40 years
is not using its time to examine the country's current
situation. America is on the brink of a recession, which would
do more harm to families than anything else we could be
discussing.
Inflation has risen 13.8 percent since Joe Biden took the
oath of office. That means families are spending more money on
clothes for their kids and food to feed them. Our economy
shrank 1.6 percent first quarter of this year and current
forecasts show that this quarter it shrank again. Twenty-five
percent of Americans are reportedly postponing their retirement
because of financial concerns. The average family will spend
over $5,000 more this year just to make ends meet.
The labor force participation is also down--and we still
have over 11 million job openings--due in part to the
Democrats' decision last year to remove work requirements from
the child tax credit.
The Federal Reserve has raised interest rates at the
fastest rate in 40 years to combat Biden's inflation crisis.
The rate on a 30-year fixed mortgage is now double than what it
was before Joe Biden took the oath of office.
The biggest threat to families right now is not a lack of
government spending. We are in a state of crisis precisely of
reckless government spending. None of this happened by
accident. Washington Democrats, they purposely dumped trillions
into the economy, they paid people not to work, and they
strangled American fossil fuels. And congressional Democrats
are bound and determined to make the economic pain and
suffering even worse. Using reconciliation instructions this
Committee passed last September, Senate Democrats are
reviving--they are reviving a ``Build Back Broke'' agenda that
would spend hundreds of billions more and raise taxes by as
much as $1 trillion. Raising taxes when the economy is in or
headed toward a recession is a horrible idea. Janet Yellen,
Barack Obama, Joe Manchin, and Chuck Schumer have all
previously said as much. And yet, that is what Democrats are
trying to do to this country.
A looming recession brought on by the reckless economic
policies of this Administration and one-party Democrat rule in
Washington would be particularly painful for the parents and
kids this hearing is supposedly focused on.
Looking at the most recent recession from 2007 to 2009, we
lost 9 million jobs, 10 million people fell into poverty,
including 3 million children. We can't just ignore this problem
and hope that it is going to go away.
But turning back to the topic of this hearing, let us look
at what our Democrat colleagues have actually proposed. The
Congressional Budget Office confirmed the childcare subsidies
in their Build Back Broke agenda will actually raise cost for
middle class families. On top of that, the Democrats' plan
specifically excludes faith-based providers that millions of
families rely on for care. Under their plan, federal funding
scales back leaving states on the hook for almost half the cost
within seven years. Their plan would require states and
grantees to have childcare and pre-K programs approved by the
HHS secretary. This is the same Secretary who let teachers
unions edit CDC guidelines to keep schools shut down last year.
Meanwhile, the President's Department of Education is
threatening schools that don't use the right gender pronouns or
let biological men compete in girls' sports.
We should be focused on the things that will directly
affect Americans today--like avoiding tax increases on families
and small businesses and halting inflationary spending that is
making it hard for folks to afford the basic necessities needed
to raise their kids. We need pro-growth policies that put
families on solid ground, and when it comes to childcare and
education, we need to keep the decisionmaking local. Stop
trying to impose a Washington-knows-best approach.
I yield back.
[The prepared statement of Jason Smith follows:]
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T8355.004
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T8355.005
Chairman Yarmuth. I thank the gentleman.
I want to thank the witnesses once again for being here.
The Committee has received your written statements and they
will be made part of the formal hearing record. You each will
have five minutes to give your remarks.
And I would now like to recognize Ms. Lee to introduce our
first witness.
Ms. Lee. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and good
morning.
First of all, let me just thank you for this hearing and
just say how excited I am to welcome one of my constituents
from Berkeley today, Dr. Hilary Hoynes, who is a professor of
economics and public policy and the Haas Distinguished Chair in
Economic Disparities at UC Berkeley, which of course is my alma
mater. I have to just say, go bears. Thank you so much for
being here.
Her research focuses on poverty, inequality, food and
nutrition programs, the impact of government tax and transfer
programs on low-income families. Also, let me just say she
serves on the National Academy of Sciences Committee on
building an agenda to reduce childhood poverty in half in 10
years, and on many more important boards and commissions and
committees.
And of course I want to thank her for being here today, but
also thank her for her expertise on these issues, especially on
reducing child poverty in half in 10 years.
Thank you again, Mr. Chairman, and I yield back.
Chairman Yarmuth. Thank you, Ms. Lee.
I now recognize Dr. Hoynes. You may unmute your microphone
and begin when you are ready. You have five minutes.
STATEMENTS OF HILARY HOYNES, PROFESSOR OF ECONOMICS AND PUBLIC
POLICY AND HAAS DISTINGUISHED CHAIR IN ECONOMIC DISPARITIES
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA BERKELEY; MAUREEN BLACK, DISTINGUISHED
FELLOW IN EARLY CHILDHOOD DEVELOPMENT, RTI INTERNATIONAL,
PROFESSOR, DEPARTMENT OF PEDIATRICS, UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND
SCHOOL OF MEDICINE; RASHEED MALIK, SENIOR DIRECTOR, EARLY
CHILDHOOD POLICY CENTER FOR AMERICAN PROGRESS; HON. NEWT
GINGRICH, FORMER SPEAKER OF THE U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
STATEMENT OF HILARY HOYNES
Dr. Hoynes. Chairman Yarmuth, Ranking Member Smith, and
Members of the Committee, thank you so much for the opportunity
to appear before you today at this hearing on investments in
early childhood.
My name is Hilary Hoynes. I am a professor of economics and
public policy at the University of California Berkeley where I
also hold the Haas Distinguished Chair in Economic Disparities.
My testimony today summarizes evidence that the social
safety net for children generates widespread benefits over the
longer-term, both to children and their families and to
taxpayers and the broader economy.
In 2019, after a robust economic recovery, 9 million
American children remained poor. The risk of child poverty is
not equal across the population. Black and Hispanic children
are more likely to be poor than white children. Children living
with one or no biological parent and children living with less
educated parents have higher poverty rates.
The costs of child poverty extend beyond families to the
broader economy. This occurs because child poverty leads to
lower education levels and worse health and therefore less tax
revenue and more spending in the future. The National Academies
report, ``Roadmap to Reducing Child Poverty'', to which I
contributed, concluded that the cost of child poverty ranged
from $800 billion to $1.1 trillion each year.
The current social safety net, however, does reduce child
poverty. The earned income tax credit, or EITC, and the child
tax credit reduce child poverty by 5.9 percentage points. The
Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, reduces
poverty by 5.2 percentage points. Cash welfare raises few
children out of poverty.
Furthermore, and importantly, recent social science
research documents that safety net spending on children leads
to improvements in economic and health outcomes in adulthood.
My research shows that SNAP improves long run outcomes. Access
to SNAP during pregnancy leads to healthier births. Access to
SNAP during childhood leads to better adult health, increases
in education, earnings, neighborhood quality, and home
ownership, and decreases in poverty, mortality, and
incarceration. Other safety net programs show similar results.
Access to the EITC during pregnancy leads to healthier
births. Access to the EITC during childhood leads to improved
performance in school, increases in education, employment, and
earnings, and for women, less engagement with the criminal
justice system. Access to Medicaid for pregnant women and
children leads to improved health outcomes, better performance
in school, and increases in educational attainment and earnings
in adulthood.
Overall, the research establishes that additional resources
for low-income children generate improvements across a wide
range of adult outcomes.
These findings can be used to quantify the benefits
relative to the cost of these policies. The costs include the
benefit payments themselves and administrative costs, as well
as indirect costs coming from changes in employment that result
from delivering the benefits and the taxes to fund them.
Combining these costs and benefits yield large rates of return
across these programs. For SNAP, providing benefits to children
yields $56 of benefits to families for every $1 of net cost.
For the earned income tax credit, taking into account the long
run benefits, the program fully pays for itself in the long
run. Medicaid for pregnant women and infants fully pays for
itself in the long run. Taking into account the long run
benefits, the 2021 expansion of the child tax credit is
estimated to reduce the net cost to taxpayers to $0.16 for
every $1 of new benefits.
So these results show that spending more now means spending
less later. Higher adult earnings mean higher future tax
revenue. Improved health and reductions in criminal activity
mean lower future government spending.
It is important to point out, however, that costs are easy
to quantify and are incurred early at the time of program
delivery. Benefits on the other hand take time to emerge. This
is particularly problematic because the CBO scores policy
proposals over a 10-year window. This disregards long-term
benefits and can lead to short-term thinking, ignoring the
investment aspect of these programs.
In sum, the social safety net for families with children
represents investments in the human capital of children, not
simply transfers to adults. The returns to these investments,
like that in infrastructure, require spending up front, but
yield important benefits in the future.
Thank you. And I look forward to the conversation.
[The prepared statement of Hilary Hoynes follows:]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Chairman Yarmuth. Thank you, Dr. Hoynes, for that
testimony.
I now recognize Dr. Black for five minutes. Unmute your
microphone and proceed.
STATEMENT OF MAUREEN BLACK
Dr. Black. Chairman Yarmuth, Ranking Member Smith, and
Members of the Committee, thank you for the opportunity to meet
with you today to discuss the powerful impact of investment in
early childhood.
My name is Maureen Black. I am a Distinguished Fellow at
RTI International and a professor in pediatrics at the
University of Maryland in Baltimore. For over 25 years I have
been a licensed child psychologist and I have directed an
interdisciplinary clinic for young children with growth and/or
feeding problems. I have also served on advisory boards for
Maryland WIC, Maryland Hunger Solutions, and Children's Health
Watch, a non-partisan network of healthcare providers committed
to improving children's health.
My testimony addresses the conditions necessary for young
children to thrive, which is foundational to the health,
productivity, and well-being of adults and society, and in
particular, how WIC has contributed to children thriving.
My testimony is based on my clinical experiences, as well
as research that I have conducted or reviewed.
In 2020 WIC served about 6.2 million participants per
month, or almost half of all infants born in the U.S. I have
submitted a complete testimony for the record. I will summarize
six points that highlight WIC's contribution to equity and to
American children thriving.
First, WIC is based on the science of early childhood and
is tightly focused on the most critical period of human
development, the first five years. Basic brain development
during this period is rapid with specific nutritional
requirements, such as breast milk. Adversities during this
period can have long-term negative effects on adult health,
including diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and other
noncommunicable diseases. Interventions during this period
provide the greatest potential for children to thrive. By
ensuring that children have nutritious food and responsive
care-giving, WIC helps children build healthy habits that last
throughout life.
Second, WIC promotes equity with a positive impact on the
health and development of children in low-income families.
Third, as the Chairman has noted, the economic evaluations
find that every $1 spent per WIC participant saves $2.48 in
medical costs.
Fourth, WIC brings resources into communities through
retailers and the WIC farmer's market nutrition program.
Fifth, WIC is dynamic in responding to external stressors,
such as children's excess weight gain, the COVID-19 pandemic,
and the recent infant formula shortage.
Finally, WIC works. Expectant WIC participating mothers
have healthy babies with reductions in pre-term birth and low
birth weight and increases in breast feeding. For children WIC
promotes responsive care-giving and healthy dietary patterns
that are associated with reduction in obesity and benefits in
school performance.
Based on these six points, WIC is a cost-effective public
health program that improves the human condition by ensuring
that infants are born healthy and that young children thrive
and contribute to the large society as they become healthy,
well adjusted, productive adults.
Looking forward, WIC is well positioned to implement system
level changes, including expanding access to WIC's services and
leveraging data sharing with healthcare providers that will
reduce barriers and better serve existing and future WIC
participants.
These innovations will enable WIC to continue to
effectively utilize taxpayer dollars and ensure that all
American children can thrive.
I thank the Committee and the Congress for making these
life changing investments in women, infants, and children of
our nation.
I look forward to answering your questions.
[The prepared statement of Maureen Black follows:]
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Chairman Yarmuth. Thank you, Dr. Black.
I now recognize Mr. Malik for five minutes. Unmute please
and proceed when you are ready.
STATEMENT OF RASHEED MALIK
Mr. Malik. Thank you, Chairman Yarmuth, Ranking Member
Smith, and Members of the Committee. I would like to also thank
you for the opportunity to speak here today.
My name is Rasheed Malik and I am the Senior Director of
Early Childhood Policy at the Center for American Progress.
I would like to start with a quote from Nelson Mandela, who
once said ``Our children are the rock on which our future will
be built, our greatest asset as a nation. They will be leaders
of our country, the creators of our national wealth, those who
care for and protect our people.'' Now, I don't believe that
anyone here would disagree with this statement. In fact, I have
heard countless variations on it from law makers on both side
of the aisle.
A genuine concern for the healthy development and education
of our children is one of our clearest shared values as a
society and it is great to see this reflected by our
representatives in government. But when it comes to making
commitments in the federal budget toward evidence based early
childhood policies, we have fallen short as a nation. The
United States invests a smaller percentage of our GDP in
childcare and early education than almost every other developed
economy in the world.
While the benefits from high quality childcare have been
studied for years by economists and other social scientists,
little public funding has followed. In many places, a year of
childcare costs more than a year of college tuition, and that
is if you can find an opening for your child. Across the
country, waitlists for childcare are longer than ever. And the
global pandemic has worsened the childcare crisis. Let me be
clear, one in ten early educators have still not returned to
the field and turnover is at an all-time high. The numbers just
don't work for childcare businesses. They can't pay their
teachers any less and they can't charge parents any more. This
funding gap is begging for a public investment so that supply
can meet demand. Without it we will continue to have educator
shortages, diminished maternal labor force attachment, and ever
widening inequality of child outcomes.
The silver lining in all this is that these conditions
present us with a historic opportunity to dramatically improve
conditions for children, their families, and early childhood
educators. When we put public dollars behind early childhood
programs, we are investing in long-term cost savers that help
pay for themselves in the form of higher tax revenues and
increased productivity.
Investments in the childcare sector both create jobs and
enable job growth in other sectors of the economy. It is why
now more than ever business leaders are pointing to childcare
as key to hiring and retaining working mothers.
Now, recently Harvard University economist, Nathaniel
Hendren and his colleague, Ben Sprung-Keyser, undertook a
comparative analysis of more than 130 public policy
interventions, all conducted over the last 50 years in the
United States. And the question they sought to answer was
deceptively simple, which policies improve social well-being
the most. By looking at the benefits of each policy toward its
intended audience, as well as the policy's net cost, these
scholars have published a groundbreaking study that answers
that very question. The metric they have developed to compare
various policies is called ``marginal value of public funds.''
It is just the kind of thing that responsible policymakers have
been asking for. And what policies improve social well-being
the most? What is the best use of public funds? Direct
investments in the health and well-being of low-income
children.
According to their math, several of the early childhood
policies they looked at had the highest possible score, meaning
that the policy didn't even have a net cost to the government.
Put another way, on top of the benefits received by the
children that were targeted, these programs literally paid for
themselves through increased tax revenue and reduced transfer
payments.
Now, as Dr. Hoynes has written about extensively, the body
of policy research has historically been focused on short run
benefits. This has discounted and shortchanged children, their
families, and those who care for and educate our youngest
babies and children. The work of educating and caring for young
children has been systematically undervalued for far too long
because of this bias in our analytical framework. This
Committee is taking an important first step today by
acknowledging these historical misconceptions and in the future
I hope that Congress will move away from shortsighted policy
concerns.
President Biden likes to say don't tell me what you value,
show me your budget and I will tell you what you value. And for
a long time in this country, there has been a significant
divergence between our stated values and our public budgets. It
is my hope that this hearing can be a step in the direction of
reconciling that imbalance.
Thank you again for inviting me to this hearing and I look
forward to answering your questions.
[The prepared statement of Rasheed Malik follows:]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Chairman Yarmuth. Thank you, Mr. Malik, for your testimony.
I now have an honor of introducing Former Speaker of the
House, Newt Gingrich. Mr. Gingrich, you have five minutes.
Begin when you are ready.
STATEMENT OF NEWT GINGRICH
Mr. Gingrich. Chairman Yarmuth and Ranking Member Smith and
Members of the Committee, thank you for inviting me to speak
with you. I am honored to return even virtually to the People's
House.
This Committee is dealing with some of the most important
issues facing our country and it has the great opportunity to
begin restoring an America that works for all Americans. Your
topic today, however, raises two questions. One, does more
spending in a period of rampant inflation actually make the
inflation worse and cost more to the American families you are
trying to help. And, two, is government an effective delivery
system.
You know, it is a great irony to have the government, which
has been the largest single abuser of children over the last
two years, suggest that Americans should trust the government
to improve their children's lives and futures. The government
led efforts to isolate and mistreat children in response to
COVID-19 to trap them in schools that don't teach, and to
eliminate the culture of work, productivity, and hope for a
better future, have contributed to widespread psychological and
academic trauma to the children that we have never really seen
before. The government's failure to deal with mental health
issues in a serious way that prioritizes patient and community
welfare has led to a record number of people who are homeless.
The government's failure to stop the illegal drug trade and
explosion of overdoses and deaths and suicides has led to more
American deaths than the last several wars combined. It has
also been the largest single destructive force undermining and
weakening children in American history.
But there are several things your Committee could be doing
to repair some of the damage. As President Ronald Reagan said,
the greatest social program is a job. Work is good for the
family, it is good for income, and it is good for teaching
young people that when they grow up they should expect to work.
Second, we balanced the federal budget for four straight
years through a bipartisan effort. And the fact is that the
Clinton-Gingrich budgets worked, they reduced the inflation
rate, they reduced the tax rate, they created jobs, because we
cared about America's future enough to make tough choices now.
Third, given the current rate of inflation, the idea we
ought to pile more money into the system is an almost suicidal
act of hubris.
Fourth, when we passed welfare reform it was principled,
work-oriented, a system wide overhaul, and it worked. It worked
because people went to work. Because Americans were going to
work, we saw the largest single reduction of childhood poverty
in American history. And the reforms were bipartisan. Perhaps
most importantly, the ideas and work that led to successful
welfare reform didn't come solely out of Washington, DC, we
reached out to Governors and state officials who actually ran
the welfare programs. They told us what needed to be fixed and
what needed to be completely reworked, we didn't tell them.
This of course drove the Washington, DC. staff members crazy,
but it worked. We needed to hear from the people who actually
worked in these programs on a day-to-day basis to understand
how the system needed to change.
The greatest problem Washington has today is its inability
to learn what works and what fails in the real world. This city
has a passion for skipping over reality and focusing on
ideology. And we are seeing it happen today as we grapple with
high inflation and stumble toward a recession. We don't have to
reinvent the world of Jimmy Carter, we know what works. What
works is balancing the budget, what works is having a maximum
number of able-bodied Americans going to work. We should be
connecting all government aid to work, except for the most
severely challenged. Further, given advances in technology and
communication, we should reassess and update what able bodied
means.
What works is cutting out corruption and incompetence.
Consider the $20 billion stolen from the California
unemployment fund. Some estimates suggest that nearly half of
all pandemic aid was stolen. Simply having the committee figure
out how to eliminate the theft would give you more than enough
money for virtually every program you favor.
What works is having strong families who have enough take
home pay to make their own decisions about how their children
are educated and who is taking care of them. Just as we need
education freedom, which Former Secretary Betsy DeVos is
championing, we need childcare freedom.
Let me say in closing, I don't believe a unionized,
bureaucratic, anti-religious, one size fits all government
system is the answer to the future. I think what we need is to
liberate the American people, to increase their take home pay,
to have an economy that is working, to control inflation so
people can afford to do things, and to maximize the range of
choices people have, whether it is relatives taking care of
children, communities taking care of children, religious
organizations taking care of children, or professional
institutions taking care of children. What we don't need is a
government dominated, Washington centered system of once again
trying to impose big government socialism on the whole country,
this time in the name of taking over our children.
Thank you very much for letting me comment.
[The prepared statement of Newt Gingrich follows:]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Chairman Yarmuth. Thank you, Speaker Gingrich, for your
testimony.
We will now begin our question and answer session. As a
reminder, Members may submit written questions to be answered
later in writing. Those questions and responses will be made
part of the formal hearing record. Any Members who wish to
submit questions for the record may do so by sending them
electronically to the email inbox we have established within
seven days of the hearing.
I will defer my questioning to the end, as is my habit, and
I will now recognize the gentleman from New York, Mr. Higgins,
for five minutes.
Mr. Higgins. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you
panelists for being here.
First of all, let me say that, you know, infants had
nothing to do with the rate of inflation in America today.
Every advanced economy shows that with the expansion of its
population economies are stronger and more stable, creating
more opportunities for people.
What is true in America today is that 10,000 kids are born
every single day. That is 3,650,000 kids each year. Sadly,
22,000 infants die from birth to age one in America each year.
America ranks 33--33 out of 36 advanced economies in infant
deaths. Where is the pro-life outrage? Where is the pro-life
outrage? Maternal morality, pregnancy related to death, death
of a woman during pregnancy or within one year of the end of
that pregnancy, the United States is the only industrialized
nation in the word where maternal mortality, maternal deaths,
maternal morbidity is rising, not declining. The United States
has one of the highest maternal mortality rates in the world.
Each year 900 American women die during pregnancy, from the
child being born to one year, attributed to complications from.
Where is the pro-life outrage in the face of these statistics?
States with the strongest anti-abortion laws have the
highest--highest maternal and infant mortality rates. The
strictest abortion law, the highest the mom and infant deaths.
Where is the pro-life outrage?
Louisiana has the highest maternal deaths in America during
pregnancy. Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, Arkansas, Oklahoma,
Indiana, Ohio are among the top ten states with the most
restrictive reproductive policies in America and are among the
highest in terms of infant and maternal morbidity. Where is the
pro-life outrage?
Dr. Black, can you answer the question, where is the pro-
life outrage in the face of these statistics that are
verifiable empirically by reliable sources, as it relates
infant and maternal morbidity in America?
Dr. Black. Thank you, representative, for your question.
What I would say is that we know that programs such as WIC
are very effective in reducing pre-term births, in reducing low
birth weight, and ensuring that mothers and infants are healthy
at delivery, and also in reducing infant mortality. So having
the services that WIC provides--and they provide nutrition
services, which are targeted toward women during pregnancy and
toward infants early in life--enable infants to develop well
and prevent the catastrophes that you have described, which are
clearly an American tragedy.
So what we would like is increased availability of WIC to
ensure that the women and infants who are eligible for WIC, and
those are low-income families throughout our country, to ensure
that those who are eligible have access to services.
The other thing that WIC provides is not just food, but
they also provide counseling. So they provide education. It is
very complicated what are the proper foods during the times of
pregnancy and very, very early in infancy. And so WIC helps
families build healthy habits, the kinds of habits that they
help families build remain with children throughout life. And
so they are habit not only what food to eat, but how to eat,
when to eat, so we don't eat in terms of stress, but we eat to
keep us healthy.
They also provide referrals so that when--related to lead
or iron deficiency, they provide referrals.
So thank you very much.
Mr. Higgins. Thank you, Dr. Black.
I will yield back.
Chairman Yarmuth. The gentleman's time has expired.
Now I will yield 10 minutes to the Ranking Member, Mr.
Smith.
Mr. Smith. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
These questions are for Speaker Gingrich.
Inflation is up 13.8 percent since Biden took office, real
wages are down 5.1 percent, the economy shrank by 1.6 percent
last quarter, and economists are predicting a recession. The
Federal Reserve has raised interest rates at the fastest pace
in 40 years to combat Biden's inflation crisis. The rate on a
30-year mortgage has doubled since Biden became President and
we expect the Fed will raise rates again at the end of this
month.
How is the current economy and Democrats' failure to
address affecting American families?
Mr. Gingrich. You know, thank you, first of all, both for
the invitation to be here and for that very important question.
I think the thing which most surprises me--and as all of
you know I have been around a long time and have been involved
in this process of self-government going back to the 1970's--
and as a Georgian I had watched Jimmy Carter as Governor and
then I worked with him when he was President and I finally
became a Congressman--what amazes me is the inability of some
people, mostly on the left, to learn any lessons of history.
Now, maybe that is because I am a historian. But we know what
causes inflation. Inflation is too much paper money chasing too
few goods and services. We have been down this road before. The
Carter years were a nightmare.
We also know, by the way, what that does to families, what
it does to children. It is one of the most deadly things that
can happen, because when the Federal Reserve tries to stop
inflation using a demand side approach, which is punishing
people by cutting demand, you end up in a recession. So now you
have families who don't have a job, are using up all their
savings--and as one woman said, she couldn't afford to pay for
the gasoline to go to the four or five stores to find the
infant formula. Now, that is sort of a multiple whammy and I
think your point is exactly right. The Budget Committee should
be looking at how to control spending, it should be looking at
how to get--the level of corruption in federal government
spending is so breathtaking that it would fund every single
dream that the left has if they just could rid of the
corruption. And yet there are no serious efforts to do that.
At the same time, you have to set priorities. When we
worked with President Clinton, and it was bipartisan effort, he
and I met I think for 35 days hammering out a real balanced
budget. The only four real balanced budgets in your lifetime.
We understood we had to make tough choices. But here is a
simple formula, you either force the American family to make
tough choices because their politicians don't have the guts to
solve problems, or you make the government have tough choices
to liberate the American family.
I think you are exactly on target. I can't imagine a dumber
moment to increase federal spending than in the middle of an
inflationary crisis.
Mr. Smith. Mr. Speaker, to follow on that, the Build Back
Better bill that sits over in the Senate right now was green
lit by Democrats on this Committee. It spent over $5 trillion
and would have increased taxes by $1.5 trillion and it would
have added $3 trillion to the debt. And while the Democrats
continue to try and bring this bill back from the dead, where
would the country and the economy be right now had Democrats
succeeded in enacting that additional level of $5 trillion in
spending.
Mr. Gingrich. Well, let me go back to this idea that it is
so hard to get some people to learn anything. We were at 1.4
percent inflation at the end of the Trump Administration. We
were at a dramatically lower price of gas, and in fact a lower
price than President Obama had said that was possible, we were
energy independent. These things were not accidents. We were
also locking up criminals and we were controlling the Southern
Border. None of these things were accidents.
So to your point, I have always said that ``build back
poorer'' would be a much more accurate title for that bill,
because what it is going to do is it is going to lower the net
take home pay of individuals.
And, by the way, one of the groups--this is a hearing about
children, but one of the groups that is really being hammered
by inflation are senior citizens. If you are on a fixed income
and you are going to get say a 4 or 5 percent cost of living
increase, but the real cost of living, as you pointed out, has
gone up over 13 percent while Biden was president, you are
losing ground if you are also in the middle of a declining
stock market, you are watching your 401K shrink at the very
time that you need because you can't afford the inflation. In a
lot of cases, people can't afford to buy the necessities.
And I think we really undervalue how big a threat inflation
is to every single working American and every retired American.
And that is one of the things that your Committee should be
really heavily focused on.
Mr. Smith. You know, during your speakership, Congress
enacted welfare reforms that encouraged adults receiving
assistance to seek or find gainful employment. Similarly, the
1997 Taxpayer Relief Act established a child tax credit. In the
American Rescue Plan Act Democrats dismantled the child tax
credit, they removed work requirements, and turned the credit
into a monthly stipend. As a consequence, the labor force
recovered just 1.6 million workers in 2021. After the Democrat
child tax credit plan went away, 1.7 million Americans returned
to the labor force in just the first two months--just the first
two months of 2022.
What does the success of efforts you helped initiate, as
well as the fallout from policies our Democrat colleagues
initiated, tell us about what sort of policies are and are not
successful in helping families? And why when enacting these
sorts of family supports did you tie them to income and work?
Mr. Gingrich. You know, Art Laffer, the great economist who
helped develop supply side economics, always said you get more
of what you pay for and you get less of what you tax. So if you
really want to give people money to do nothing, a lot of people
will learn to do nothing. If you really want to tax people
because they go to work, a lot of people will learn not to go
to work.
Again, these are simple lessons of historical fact. It is a
fact that if you have--and I think you should go through the
entire federal program and every place where somebody gets
money, they should work for it. There is no reason why people
who are able bodied should be indolent and should be handed a
check to do nothing or given food stamps to do nothing. And I
think it is very important to reestablish a work ethic.
When we worked on the welfare reform bill, and again it was
a bipartisan program, President Clinton signed it. And I think
people forget that the Clinton-Gingrich reforms, every single
one of them, was bipartisan. It had to be. He had a Republican
Congress, a Democratic President. And when we worked on it, we
were very close to the Governors, particularly Governor
Thompson in Wisconsin and Governor Engler in Michigan, and
Governor Allen in Virginia. They had been experimenting on
limited approvals with getting people to go back to work. And
what we did was we looked at a firm America Works, which is a
remarkable firm in New York City, actually created by Mario
Cuomo when he was Governor. And America Works had a program of
helping hardcore unemployed learn the basics, how to get up in
the morning, how do you get dressed, how do you get to the bus
stop--all these things that people don't automatically know.
Well, we took the lessons of America Works and we applied it
to--every welfare office in America became an employment office
and people followed the incentives. You would have a shocking
improvement in the economy and a shocking improvement in small
businesses almost overnight by simply requiring that people had
to work to get resources from the federal government--almost
instantaneous turnaround.
Mr. Smith. Mr. Speaker, our Democrat colleagues, they argue
their child tax credit plan cut child poverty in half. Yet
researchers at the University of Chicago and the University of
Notre Dame have determined that child poverty in fact declined
by just 9 percent from its peak but--in October 2021 to
December 2021. Further the average child poverty rate since the
expiration of the monthly child tax credit payments is lower
than the average child poverty rate while the monthly payments
were in place.
So, based on your time and work on welfare reform, what do
you think is the best way for government to address child
poverty?
Mr. Gingrich. Well, I think first of all, to re-bond the
family, to help the mother and father get jobs, to take out all
of the anti-family provisions that are in welfare, and to take
out the anti-work provisions. The key is to find a way for
people to rise so they never go off a cliff of losing so many
government subsidies that it is now worth their while to go to
work. If you do that--I will just close with this, the reason
it matters to get people to go to work is in the long run. You
know, every child can learn that work is legitimate, it is
authentic, and it is a key part of their life if they are going
to rise into a better future.
Mr. Smith. Thank you.
I yield back.
Chairman Yarmuth. The gentleman's time has expired.
I now recognize the gentlewoman from California, Ms. Lee,
for five minutes.
Ms. Lee. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
First of all, let me take a moment of personal privilege
and to say to Speaker Gingrich, I don't know if you remember,
but you swore me in 1998. My predecessor was Ron Dellums and
you and Ron were very close friends, even though he totally
disagreed with you on every issue, including welfare reform.
But it is good to see you and thank you for being here.
A couple of questions I would like to ask yourself and Dr.
Hoynes.
You know, I lived in Great Britain for two years. I lived
in London--well, I lived outside of London but my son was born
in London and what I learned then--and this was in the day--was
that there was much more support for children and families than
in the United States in Great Britain. Even myself as someone
who was not a citizen of Great Britain, I found it more
supportive of myself and my family. So some other countries,
especially in Europe, have more comprehensive policies that
support children from birth through early life.
What do we see in terms of the differences between the
United States and countries with those kinds of systems in
terms of long-term economic outcome? And are there any policies
that--I will use Great Britain for example, but any country in
Europe that are more pro-life than ours?
Dr. Hoynes, maybe I will ask you first and then Speaker
Gingrich.
Dr. Hoynes. Thank you very much, Representative Lee, for
that question.
So if you would look at my testimony that I submitted in
advance of the hearing, you will see some data to kind of
illustrate the point that you make and to show the United
Kingdom compared to the United States and also more broadly
across many dozens of advanced economies. And what you see from
that data is that the United States, as a share of GDP, spends
a very small amount on benefits for families with children. I
think there is one or two countries that spend less than we do
in this comparison of advanced economies.
And what you also see is that we have kind of perpetually a
much higher rate of child poverty. And interestingly, though
not part of your question, this not true across the board in
terms of spending in all categories in the United States. If
you look at spending on elders, for example, the United States
is kind of on par with other industrialized countries. And, in
fact, in some cases spends quite a bit more as a share of GDP,
mostly because of our very high health expenditures.
So we spend less and we get less. We have higher poverty
rates and child poverty rates in particular. And the research
that I summarized shows that that has profound implications on
the trajectory of that generation of children.
And so what we see is greater rates of poverty and greater
rates of inequality more generally in our society because of
spending less, particularly focused on children, and even more
particularly on children before school years is where we are
really an outlier in terms of less investment in the face of
very high rates of return on that investment that we have seen
in many studies.
Ms. Lee. Thank you.
Speaker Gingrich, of course the pro-life policies that I
have experienced in England versus here in the United States.
Mr. Gingrich. Well, look, I think the British coming out of
World War II, did a pretty decent job of organizing entry level
healthcare. And, you know, for example, I favor community
health centers, I favor enabling doctors who are willing to
provide all sorts of services voluntarily. There are a number
of voluntary clinics around the country that do a good job.
What the British couldn't do was manage both that entry level
and then manage the more sophisticated and more difficult so
that, for example, women who have breast cancer have a much
worse future in Britain than they do in the United States.
But I do think there are things you can learn. One of the
challenges is cultural. How do we get everybody--if you make it
available, how do we get people to take advantage of it? And
there was a center in Memphis that was totally free but
couldn't get people to come to it. They didn't fit who they
were and how they operated for what they wanted to do.
So part of this is understanding we have a very deep
challenge in America with cultures of poverty which is now
compounded because they are also become cultures of drug use
and cultures of suicide. I mean I think it is a huge problem
for this country.
Ms. Lee. As well as racism and racial inequities.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And I might have a second question
when we finish.
Thank you.
Chairman Yarmuth. The gentlewoman's time has expired.
I now welcome our newest Member, Mr. Moore, and recognize
him for five minutes.
Mr. Moore. Thank you, chair, and ranking member for the
very warm welcome. I appreciate that. I am thrilled to be here
for my first Budget Committee meeting.
And, as mentioned too, I am the father of four boys, nine
and under. So my wife and I are very much in the thick of early
childhood development.
And I want to give an example to try to put a little bit of
context to what we are talking about today. While I would never
admit to which one is my favorite, especially on the
congressional record, we have put an enormous amount of extra
special attention on Winnie. Winnie is a 6-year old with autism
spectrum disorder. And he just finished his first year of
kindergarten at a traditional kindergarten where he was allowed
to have an aid come in and help. And we have been giving him
gobs and gobs of resources from the very start when we
recognized that there was going to be a developmental delay.
And I come from one of the most conservative states in the
nation. I come from the state with the strongest economy, and I
come from the state that gets criticized for what are they
doing, not spending enough on education and early childhood. We
have been so fortunate to take advantage of many programs that
my state, my very conservative state, does have a part of. And
I laud and I am very appreciative of our state legislature for
always being able to balance where we would--you know, how we
handle this. I look at the success that we have had, and we are
very excited about the future holds for Winnie.
But the point that I am trying to make, and I want to do it
in the most sincere way possible, is that there are times where
we need flexible spending our family finances to be able to go
and address issues that come up. And my siblings, none of them
have this issue, none of them has a child that had these
particular types of needs. They had other issues. We have to
have flexible spending and an opportunity--when you want to
call it disposable income, whatever you want to call it, we
need to be able to have that in our individual families.
So we empower families. I love what Speaker Gingrich said
about empowering families over empowering government. And that
is the part that I am most frustrated with. I voted against the
$1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan because for that exact
reason, is I don't believe that it empowers families and it
empowers us to be able to make decisions.
And as I look at what the outcomes have come in the last 18
months where we have seen record inflation and decreasing real
wages, that will limit the family's ability to address some of
these issues. And, again--and I am admitting that there are
many programs that my very conservative state has put in place
that have helped. And I have been a part of it. But there is a
balance here and we cannot allow our economy to get to a point
where we are having runaway inflation that will limit
individual families being able to go and address this issue.
Speaker Gingrich, you have already talked about how family
finances, federal deficit spending, and everything can be a
problem. There are two other things that I wanted to get a
chance to ask you about. And that is the work requirements in
welfare programs and then the budget process in Congress. And I
just wanted to give the time to you for the next couple of
minutes. Do you have any thoughts--I am a big fan of what you
accomplished when you were--in the 1990's and what you were
able to do in a bipartisan way. I have put together a task
force that provides some of these recommendations. Would you
offer any other ideas to this group on fixing our budget
process and/or addressing how important is the work requirement
into welfare programs?
Mr. Gingrich. Well, first of all, let me thank you for your
very personal testimony, which I found very moving. And I think
it is important that people realize that we are not just
talking about abstract public policy, but we are talking about
real families and real children and real situations. And I
think you helped with that comment.
I will just stay two quick things in the time that we have
available. One, and this will shock some of you, but I actually
agree with the approach of listen, learn, help, and lead. If I
could get any one thing across the Congress--because remember,
every single reform that we passed in 4 years had to be signed
by Bill Clinton. We had to be bipartisan. And every single
reform Bill Clinton was going to get to sign had to be passed
by a Republican Congress. So we had a vested interest in
listening to each other. And I would start there. There is more
than enough ground I think for people to find an opportunity to
be positive in creating in way that is good for America.
Second, I really do believe--and I can't say this too
strongly--you need to look at balancing the federal budget as a
big project, not a series of little projects. The corruption
opportunity is so staggering, there is so much out there. And
that money could all be either going back to the taxpayer as a
tax cut or it could be going to new programs or there could be
some way to divide it. But the fact that the Congress doesn't
take seriously the theft--literally theft of billions and
billions of dollars I think is a major lost opportunity, both
in funding programs that matter and in getting back toward a
balanced budget.
Thank you for your question.
Mr. Moore. Thank you, Chair.
I yield back.
Chairman Yarmuth. The gentleman's time has expired.
I now recognize the gentleman from Virginia, Mr. Scott, for
five minutes.
Mr. Scott. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And appreciate the
opportunity to participate.
I just want to make one quick comment about the problem of
inflation. This is a global problem. They expect--if you look
at the Euro Zone, they have worse inflation than we do. They
expect 11 percent inflation in Great Britain by October. There
is nothing we did here in America to create global inflation.
It exists and we have to deal with it.
What we are doing is a three-prong approach. One, putting
money into people's pockets so that they can pay the higher
prices. We did that with the Rescue Plan with the stimulus
checks, earned income tax credit, the child tax credit, and
others. We are improving the supply chain to get more goods to
the shelves to make sure they are not stuck out in the Long
Beach Harbor. We have made investments to Hampton Roads Harbor.
Hampton Roads ports have gotten funds from the infrastructure
bill. And we are putting more people to work in training them,
childcare, job training to make sure that we can more
productive. We are dealing with inflation.
My fear is that if we do some of the things that are
suggested to squeeze the American economy with much higher
interest rates, we may put us into a recession and still not do
anything about the global inflation.
Dr. Black, you mentioned that WIC was based on science. You
know, you suggest that like there was some other way to make
decisions on WIC. Can you just make a quick comment about why
science is important and not slogans and sound bites?
Dr. Black. Thank you. I appreciate it. Thank you,
representative, I appreciate your question.
Yes, WIC is very clearly based on science. It is based on
the science that we know that during their pregnancy women need
to have healthy food and they need to have their healthcare
looked after. And the benefit of that is not only to the women,
but it is to the infant. And we know that infants who are born
healthy, who are born at term, who are born at an appropriate
birth weight have the best chance to not only live during the
first year of life, but they have the best chance to prosper
and live throughout life. So WIC is----
Mr. Scott. And these benefits are not just healthcare costs
but also education and other measurable outcomes?
Dr. Black. Thank you. Absolutely. They are comprehensive.
So they benefit children's education and actually followed
through you can find benefits that prevent non communicable
diseases, as WIC helps children build healthy habits. So the
healthy habits include dietary habits and, for those who go to
early childcare, they are also physical activity habits. The
habits that we build very early in life stay with us and that
is why WIC is laser focused on those very early years.
Mr. Scott. Thank you.
Mr. Malik, one of the problems with some of these good cost
effective programs is that the costs are paid by one agency,
like a city doing a city jobs program, and the benefits accrue
to other agencies, like a state department of corrections, in
lower costs. Do you have a way of dealing with that?
Mr. Malik. Thank you, Congressman.
I think your bottom point is worth echoing, which is we
know we have a lot of fantastic educational and health benefits
that derive from investments in early childcare and early
education. The thing that it is worth stating for the record
here is that we all benefit from the investments in education,
as we know through our long standing public education system.
And when those services are extended to more families with
babies, toddlers, and preschoolers, they are even compounding
and rippling benefits through the economy in the near-term, in
terms of parents being able to work, go and get further
education, pursue opportunities that they might not have if
they didn't have the stable, reliable childcare.
But there is also of course long-term, long run benefits
for those kids as they are more likely to graduate high school,
go on to college, have less contact with the criminal justice
system.
Mr. Scott. I don't mean to cut you off, but I am trying to
get another comment in quickly about the deficit, because the
Speaker has talked about the importance of the deficit.
The fact is that every Democratic administration since
Kennedy has improved the deficit under their administration.
Every Republican president has left office with a worse deficit
situation. And my recollection on the Clinton-Gingrich budget
was that when the vote was taken, when Marjorie Margolies-
Mezvinsky cast the 218th vote, the Republicans waved bye-bye
Marjorie, did not produce a single Republican vote on that
bill. And, in fact, two years later when the bill--when Speaker
became Speaker, the government was shut down because President
Clinton didn't want to dismantle his budget. And when the
bipartisan vote finally occurred, the deficit had essentially
been eliminated.
So I think we need to talk about the importance of the
deficit and give credit where credit is due.
Thank you.
I yield back.
Chairman Yarmuth. Thank you. I hate to cutoff the other
chairman, but I need to do it. The gentleman's time has
expired.
I now recognize the gentleman from Wisconsin, Mr. Grothman,
for five minutes.
Mr. Grothman. Thank you. I have a lot of comments here.
First of all, the Chairman says that over the last three
decades things have gotten worse. I will point out that at
least in Wisconsin in the last three decades the age at which
children are cared for by the state continually drops. And I am
assuming--I mean half the five year old kindergarten was the
norm 30 years ago, now I think it is like four year old is the
norm. I am sure we have more childcare subsidies as well. So if
the answer is more early childhood, I mean these test scores of
American education would not have been falling for the last
three decades.
Second, I am somewhat stunned that we have three experts
here talking about what we can do to help children in their
early childhood years and they don't address any of their
speaking to the fact that the easiest way to stay out of
poverty is to encourage marriage. Instead they cite the same
old programs, which if anything discourage marriage because
things like the earned income tax credit--you know, if you are
not married, you are going to get more money. I don't think
that is a particularly good thing. I think the best thing to do
would be to change the culture and go back to the pre-Great
Society years when presumably we had better test scores and we
would have better outcome for the children. Lately we have
politicians standing with groups like Black Lives Matter. And I
realize this is a diverse group, but their founders claim to
want to get rid of the traditional nuclear family, you know.
And I think you should, rather than support that type of
thinking, I think you would do a better job of spending some of
your time encouraging people to get involved in a traditional
families.
Third, the Chairman here talks about the poor moms who are
sitting at home and wishing they would go to work. That is not
true. I am looking at the study that you cite and I see group
in things like women who don't have kids at home, many of them
want to work, but despite the overwhelming social pressure to
answer the questions that I wish I was working, the majority of
women with children under age 18 would prefer to be homemakers,
they would prefer to stay at home. And that is before you--and
that is children under age 18. I wonder what would happen if
Gallup included that question for children under age five. I
mean then I bet it would be overwhelmingly that women would
rather be staying at home.
And I will point out that I think whenever you question
Gallup or other things, there is a temptation to act
politically correctly. I am sure if you were a mom and asked
these questions living, let us say, in a hotbed of intolerance,
like Berkeley, California or Madison, Wisconsin, the pressure
must be overwhelming to say I would rather work. But despite
the pressure, the society pressures they would rather be
working, the majority of women still say they would rather be
at home.
Next, if we look at studies on preschool, look at the
famous Brookings Institution study, a liberal group, they could
find no discernible benefit for Head Start. Now, of course,
being a liberal group I think they felt the answer is to spend
more money on Head Start, you know, things to that degree. But
that is interesting, which--and also look at the studies put
out by a conservative group, like Heritage Foundation, that
would indicate that early childhood is not a benefit.
Next thing I would point out is that when you increase
these early childhood programs, sometimes what you do is you
take children away from a family type situation which they are
cared for by the aunt or by the grandparents and again shift
them to strangers. I don't think there is anything wrong with
having children raised by a grandparent or an aunt, or
something like that. But that is inevitably what will happen as
you flood more money into these so called free childcare
programs.
And I guess my final comment, I in general don't quote
communists. But I guess that is it. I will give back my final
45 seconds to my Chairman.
But there are some----
Chairman Yarmuth. The gentleman yields back the balance of
his time. We appreciate that.
I now recognize the gentlewoman from the U.S. Virgin
Islands, Ms. Plaskett, for five minutes.
Ms. Plaskett. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thank you to you
and the Ranking Member for convening this hearing.
I wanted to ask some questions because I do believe that
supporting children and making the appropriate investment
yields outcomes that are economic and financial in nature for
our country, saves us money over a protracted period of time.
In the Virgin Islands, according to Kids Count, which is a
survey that is done, childhood poverty in my district of the
U.S. Virgin Islands is approximately 30 percent, which is
significantly higher than the national average of 16 percent.
I wanted to ask the witnesses that are here, in their
expert opinion and their learned opinion, what policy should
the federal government be pursuing to tackle childhood poverty
in areas with extremely high rates, such as the U.S. Virgin
Islands. Are there mechanisms that the federal government can
use to jump start and eliminate child poverty in those areas to
bring it at least in parity with the rest of the United States?
Anyone?
Dr. Hoynes. I would be happy to take that on. If you will
indulge me a very small personal note. I happen to have a
connection to St. John in the U.S. Virgin Islands. I am
delighted to be able to have this----
Ms. Plaskett. Love City, as we call it.
Dr. Hoynes. Exactly. So it is great to see you,
Representative Plaskett.
Ms. Plaskett. Thank you.
Dr. Hoynes. So the numbers for the U.S. Virgin Islands in
your district, that is very high and much higher than the
national average. And your point that we have demonstrated
evidence that spending more in terms of these programs targeted
at children are going to yield important returns in the long
run that will then transform those poverty rates in the next
generation to be lower, that is the operating premise that
comes out of what is now an extensive body of research.
So if I were to start to say what should we do more of in
order to get that 30 percent down, I think I would turn to what
we saw in 2021. And I would be interested to see what the
projections are for the reductions in child poverty in your
district from the expansion of the child tax credit in 2021.
Because what we saw from that expansion was essentially the
largest reduction in child poverty--the numbers for 2021 are
not out yet, so we are still in the world of doing more
predictions than having the full census data, which will be
released in the fall. But what we know from the available
evidence thus far is that that reduction in poverty is greater
than anything, any single act, any single policy change that we
have engaged in in the United States since we started measuring
poverty in the early 1960's.
And to get back to some of the comments that have been
raised in the earlier conversation, a critical thing about the
child tax credit, it ticks a couple of boxes that have come up.
Representative Moore talked about the importance of flexible
spending. The tax child tax credit provided resources that were
very flexible for families.
No. 2, what we know about--you know, I am an economist, we
study both the benefits of programs and the costs of programs
and we talk about tradeoffs of benefits and costs. And when we
provide assistance to families we need to quantify, we need to
build into the costs, the effects that they might have on
employment and earnings decisions. And the powerful thing about
the 2021 expansion of the child tax credit is it made work
versus no work on parity. If you were working, you got the
child tax credit, if your hours were cut, you still got the
child tax credit, until your earnings were, you know, up to way
beyond the median in the United States, you still got the child
tax credit. That is the power of a safety net.
Ms. Plaskett. Thank you.
Another question I had related to children is with regard
to schools. In July the Virgin Islands board of education
released a report on schools in the Virgin Islands, which found
significant environmental, health, and fire deficiencies.
Indeed, the Virgin Islands fire service even stated that
numerous schools are so unfit for the purpose that they should
be demolished.
Can any of the witnesses speak to the impact of unsafe,
unhealthy, or unfit schools have on childhood education or
child development? And what the protracted outcome of that is
on society?
Dr. Black. Thank you very much for your question.
Children benefit by having an environment that is safe,
that is predictable. Having a school as you described would be
frightening not only to children, but also to their families.
Families look to schools to protect children, to help children
learn, and to ensure their safety. So investing not only in the
structure of schools, but the hygienic aspect of schools, along
with ensuring that the teachers are supported in schools. It is
unhealthy for teachers to be surrounded by an environment that
is not respectful. So I would think that a more comprehensive
approach to education that looked at the environment, that
looked at the security, looked at the safety, looked at the
support teachers, and of course had a curriculum that was
designed for the children, would ensure confidence in the
education system for all involved.
Thank you.
Ms. Plaskett. Thank you.
Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, for the ability to
question the witnesses for this really important discussion on
investing in our future through our children.
Chairman Yarmuth. Thank you.
The gentlewoman's time has expired.
I now recognize the gentleman from Texas, Dr. Burgess, for
five minutes.
Dr. Burgess. I thank the Chair. And, Speaker Gingrich, it
is good to have you in Committee again, even if it is only
virtually. We always appreciate what you have to say. And this
time you did not disappoint. You gave me a new term, ``suicide
by hubris'', and I think that is one that we all ought to
incorporate into our discussion.
You know, I am struck by the fact that it is probably too
late to do anything to save this Congress. I hope it is not too
late to do anything to save this Administration. But Speaker
Gingrich gives us some important food for thought as we
approach the next Congress that if nothing else we shouldn't be
wasting money.
Now, Dr. Hoynes has pointed out the earned income tax
credit is of value. You lower the incidents of low birth weight
infants with the earned income tax credit, you improve test
scores of children, and the increased probability of someone
completing high school. All of those are good things. But then
according to the IRS's own website, 21 to 26 percent of EITC
payments are improper payments. Now, it is not to say fraud,
but improper payments. They even suggest that maybe it is the
complexity of filing for EITC that leads to those improper
payments.
But I guess, Mr. Speaker, my question to you is do you
think in the next Congress the type of oversight from this
Budget Committee to really drill down on where these improper
payments are and why they are occurring--and, look, we could
boost the EITC budget by 25 percent if we just paid for things
that actually mattered.
Mr. Gingrich. Well, Congressman Burgess, first of all,
thank you. It is always good to be here and I appreciate the
question.
Let me go back to what I thought was the very heartfelt
questions of the representative from the Virgin Islands,
because if you have a community of poverty, it is very hard to
help the children get out of poverty since by the time they
become adults they are still trapped in a community of poverty.
And we know there are steps you can take that can dramatically
transform it, but it has to be holistic. It has to approach the
safety issue, it has to approach infrastructure, it has to
approach the kind of incentives needed to create jobs so that a
community of poverty ends up as a community of opportunity.
Now, let me apply that to your question. Now, I am
fascinated that California lost $20 billion in unemployment
allocation, apparently, from the district attorney who I
interviewed for one of my podcasts, largely to criminals in the
California prisons using the California prison computers for
identity theft. Now, north of California, Washington State lost
about $600 million, apparently largely to Nigerians who were
operating out of places like Lagos, using again identity theft.
If you take every requirement that makes the Virgin Islands
a flourishing paradise in the Caribbean, it is probably less
than 10 percent of what was stolen by criminals in California,
let alone across the whole country.
So I would hope that the process of looking at fraud,
theft, which by the way really affects Medicaid and Medicare in
some states, the process of looking at why does the system not
work correctly, I would hope that this would be a major part of
this Committee's assignment next year. And I think you will be
shocked at how much money you can liberate and you can take
away from criminals and return back to the purposes they are
for, either to cut taxes or to pay for necessary programs.
Dr. Burgess. So, Mr. Speaker, when you have the Center for
Health Transformation--one of your scholars there, Jim Frogue,
has written what I consider the basic book that ever Member of
Congress ought to become familiar with, ``Stop Paying the
Crooks'', which dealt with the inappropriate, improper payments
in Medicaid. And I think you are exactly right. And the
oversight functions of, yes, our committees on energy and
commerce, but in particular our Budget Committees. And pay
attention to the Chief Financial Officers' Act that was passed
back in 1990. We need to use those parameters to be able to
stop paying for things that we shouldn't pay for and allow
those dollars to be used for what they were intended, what
Congress passed the laws in the first place.
So I thank the Speaker for participating in our hearing. I
look forward to working with you next year when we actually
have a chance to perhaps positively affect some of these
things.
Chairman Yarmuth. The gentleman's time has expired.
I now recognize the gentlewoman from Texas, Ms. Jackson
Lee, for five minutes.
Ms. Jackson Lee. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for this very
important hearing. And certainly it is a pleasure to be able to
see the Former Speaker, who I had the privilege of working
with. And, as the Speaker knows, we certainly had
disagreements, but it is appropriate to show respect. And to
the other witnesses that are here, thank you for your presence
as well.
We understand that this hearing is important because we are
examining the practical impact of our budgetary actions on
children and families who must always remain a top priority in
everything that the Congress does. The Supreme Court's recent
ruling in Dobbs amplifies the urgency of these issues. The
Court and my colleagues across the aisle who are supposed to be
pro-life must now show Americans and support Americans through
every stage of life.
But let me wake them up. In the year 2020 the United States
census released an official supplemental poverty measure report
showing that 11.6 million American children were living in
poverty. These 11.6 million children constituted roughly 16
percent of American children. There is no real desire among my
friends on the other side of aisle to make real on their
commitment and thought about our children. And so it begs the
question as to whether or not we could even have a serious
discussion.
I want to make sure that we do have a serious discussion
and for that reason I want to pose these questions to our
witnesses that we have here today.
Let me ask Dr. Hoynes about this whole idea of how we can
save children when we embrace family support programs in our
budget, including childcare, school nutrition programs, and how
much investment really turns out into because we are actively
investing, if you will, in a future life for these children.
Dr. Hoynes, can you help us with that?
Dr. Hoynes. Yes. Thank you very much for this important
question.
So what we know, which has now really emerged in a decade
of broad based research and social science, is that providing
more food nutrition programs, both from WIC, as Dr. Black has
talked about, as well as through SNAP, which I have studied
extensively, as well as school meals, that these programs are
extremely important in building a foundation for future
economic and health success among our children.
And in particular the work that I have done on SNAP shows
that the years in particular up to age five, perhaps because
school meals kick in once kids are in kindergarten--we don't
really know for sure--but that those years are particularly
sensitive years for generating a good foundation for children
and a good foundation that yields a broad range of improved
outcomes into adulthood. And these outcomes take some time to
emerge. You now, we have got a little bit of data when the kids
are in school on test scores, but really the data starts to
become much more available once we have completed education,
high school, college going, labor market connections, as well
as kind of health in adulthood.
So that is sort of the basic formula that we see emerging
from the research on food and nutrition programs.
We also find that programs that are a bit less targeted,
not in kind, so the earned income tax credit, as well as some
evidence on the available----
Ms. Jackson Lee. I want to thank you, Doctor. I would like
to pursue that with our other witness, Dr. Black. Thank you so
very much.
We know that there are millions of Americans who face food
insecurity every day. Dr. Black, you deal with nutritious food,
but I also want you to stretch a little bit to give the impact
of the child tax credit that the American Rescue Plan provided
a lifeline during the pandemic when really there was a mountain
of unemployment frustration, depression, what to do with our
children. Can you just quickly respond to the importance of
fighting against food insecurity? Remember the backdrop of
President Reagan, who made ketchup a vegetable. Can you quickly
do that? I know our time is short.
Dr. Black. Yes. Thank you. I appreciate the question. It is
such an important issue.
Food insecurity beats at the heart of American children.
What families do in order to assuage hunger is that they give
children low-cost food that is very low in vitamins and
minerals and very, very unhealthy for children. So these are
food like--without naming a product--things like noodles. So
they fill you up, but they eat away really at your health. I am
part of a group called Children's HealthWatch that studies food
insecurity and strategies to reduce food insecurity throughout
the country. This is a major, major problem in our country that
during the time of early brain development that we really
cannot afford not to invest. The cost of not investing in these
children we will all as a country pay for.
Thank you.
Ms. Jackson Lee. Mr. Chairman, thank you very much. And I
am glad we are on the side of investing in our children.
I yield back, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you so very much.
Chairman Yarmuth. The gentlelady's time has expired.
I now recognize the gentleman from Virginia, Mr. Good, for
five minutes.
Mr. Good. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you, Speaker
Gingrich, for joining us. I would like you to take my whole
five minutes and just tell us everything we are doing wrong in
Congress and everything you would do differently if you were
still the Speaker.
And I am only half kidding, so I will give you a few
moments to expound upon that, but thank you for joining us.
You know, we have spent, as you know better than anybody,
trillions of dollars--trillions of dollars over the last 60
years in the name of the great war on poverty with very little
to show for it in terms of tangible results in making a
difference in the lives of those some would report to desire to
help. And this is coming from someone who--I grew up on food
stamps, I grew up with free school lunch back when you were one
of few in your school. I grew up in an inner city school system
where I was one of the few kids on school lunch. I grew up with
groceries left on my porch from other families who took a
benevolent interest in my family. I grew up without a car and
had to walk everywhere--you know, our family did. I had to work
and pay my own way through school. But what we have done, as
you know, with all the spending is very little to show for it
other than hiring bureaucrats, growing the national debt,
expanding the culture of dependency.
But a shining moment for us, as you well know, was the 1996
welfare reform law that you spearheaded, which replaced the
open ended Aid to Families with Dependent Children with the
Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, or TANF. Can you tell
us about the work on that and the results of that? Can you hear
me, Mr. Speaker?
Mr. Gingrich. First of all, thank you very much for the
opportunity.
Welfare reform began in 1965 when Governor--then candidate
Ronald Reagan running for Governor first came up with the idea
that we ought to return to a work oriented welfare system.
There were various experiments, the efforts to get things done.
It was very, very hard to get it through the Congress, as it
was organized prior to 1994. But there were occasional
opportunities--exemptions offered by mostly HHS, the Health and
Human Services. And people like Tommy Thompson in Wisconsin and
John Engler in Michigan and George Allen in Virginia began to
take advantage of that and they began to notice that if you
emphasized work, to pull your program around work, that you had
all sorts of second and third order effects. At the same time
we went and studied--I personally went to New York and studied
America Works, which was a long-term recovery program sponsored
by Mario Cuomo in the 1980's and which had developed a very
specific program for taking people who were very long-term
welfare recipients and basically taking them by the hand for
six months to a year until they thoroughly understood the work
ethic, thoroughly understood how to go to work, et cetera.
Because there are a lot of complexities that those of us who
grow up in a work oriented family learn from showing up on
time, to dressing correctly, to making sure you are accurate in
giving change. I mean there are all sorts of stuff.
And so the America Works model and we took the lessons
learned at the state level--we actually asked the states to
send us their top welfare people who had been running the
programs, and then we worked with President Clinton and we
gradually hammered out a bill which got--basically got about
half the Democrats. I think it was split like 98 yes and 98 no.
Mr. Good. If only we could do that today.
Mr. Gingrich. Well, I think you can. You know, they didn't
vote because they liked me, they voted because when they went
back home people back home said, yes, that is what I want.
Well, every study we had done--we were on a project called the
American Majority Project, which you can see at
Americanmajorityproject.com, and the work ethic, very, very
high value for the American people. So a program that
reestablished the work ethic would be important. And that has a
psychological impact on the children. I mean if your parents do
nothing all day, if they sit around waiting for the next
government check to come in, if they are totally dependent, you
are learning a set of habits that cripple you for the rest of
your life. And so it is very important, one, to go through the
system and take out everything which is anti-marriage, every
single incentive that encourages people not to get married and
not to stay married. And, two, to take out everything which
discourages work. You make those two changes, in the matter of
a very short time, you will have a much healthier country and
you will have children who are growing up in much healthier
environments.
Mr. Good. Thank you so much. That was the case for me. I
was taught to work hard and the value of work. And you are
right, the work ethic and supporting intact family units. Great
deterrent to poverty.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Chairman Yarmuth. The gentleman's time has expired.
I now recognize the gentleman from Nevada, Mr. Horsford,
for five minutes.
Mr. Horsford. Thank you so much, Mr. Chairman, for holding
this hearing and thank you to our witnesses for appearing
before the Committee.
I am also glad that we are here to emphasize the
overwhelming differences in outcomes that early childhood
interventions can create. And I want to start by saying
Americans are hardworking. I really take offense to the
narrative that some are trying to frame Americans as somehow
not hardworking. This last two years has shown that the
American people are resilient, they don't give up, they
overcome great obstacles, and they are focused on returning to
work.
I represent Nevada's Fourth congressional District, which
was one of the most hard hit sectors with hospitality, tourism,
and my folks are going back to work. But unfortunately
childcare is one of the barriers that many people, particularly
women and families indicate they need more affordable quality
childcare. I haven't heard a whole lot of emphasis around what
we need to have around quality.
So I would like to talk about how these are investments. We
spent a lot of time on how much expenditures are being made.
Childcare is an investment. And, yes, I voted for the American
Rescue Plan because it supported funding for essential support,
including childcare. Now, when the Republicans were in charge
and the former Administration was in charge, they chose to give
tax cuts to the very wealthy. That was their choice. Our choice
was to invest in the American people during a pandemic.
Dr. Hoynes, you made the case better than anyone that we
see benefits not only paid back over the long-term, but they
are paid back to society with significant interest. Child
poverty affects all of us, regardless of our income. Even by
conservative efforts, we are leaving $800 billion a year of
economic activity on the table by allowing children to continue
to languish below the poverty line.
So since you discussed how the expanded child tax credit
more than pays for itself in increased economic activity,
including to the private sector, that is money that is
reinvested back into local small businesses, which we
desperately support, would you be able to explain how some of
the non-direct costs society incurs by not dealing with child
poverty, such as lower potential future earnings or shortened
life expectancy?
Dr. Hoynes. Thank you for that question.
So we know that providing more resources when children are
young translates to a broad set of improvements in adulthood.
And I think the key across the studies, there is one outcome
that shows up in almost every study, and this is human capital,
educational attainment. And educational attainment is like the
turnkey to getting higher earnings in the labor market, which
has of course direct effects on the family, on the child, but
as you point out, pays back returns to the society at large.
Higher earnings mean more tax payments, higher earnings mean
less transfer payments. And so there is very direct effects
that show improvements for the child and the family, but also
important dividends, if you will, that pays back to the society
in the long run.
And I think really the one thing that we see very
consistently is human capital.
Mr. Horsford. Human capital. Investing in the human needs
that all of us have, and childcare is one of those needs.
Now, in 2020 the adult to child ratio in Nevada preschools
was one to 15, which means our teachers have to look after 50
percent more children than what is recommended. This includes
many of our brave service members who are stationed in my
district. This story is far too common. Just ask some of the
local constituents in Tonopah, Nevada, where the situation has
become so dire that they have no remaining licensed childcare
providers. It is one of the reasons that I submitted a
community project funding for a child development center in
that rural community.
Mr. Malik, could you discuss how childcare deserts are
detrimental to child development? And what resources could be
made available to reduce the prevalence of childcare deserts?
Mr. Malik. Yes. Thank you, Congressman.
Childcare deserts are unfortunately ubiquitous throughout
this country. The number once source of revenue for a childcare
business or a childcare provider is parental fees. And that
kind of limits what you can pay your teachers based on what are
safe and appropriate--developmentally appropriate ratios of
teachers to children. It is not safe to have one teacher trying
to watch over ten or 12 toddlers. If you have ever been around
three toddlers, you know that that is, you know, pushing it.
So, you know, what we need are--you know, the result is
lower and little income communities are vastly under supplied
in the types of--the variety of childcare options that we want
to see. We want families to have lots of choices, have lots of,
you know, ways to meet their preferences and to find quality
options.
And, unfortunately, as I said in my opening statement, the
numbers don't work for childcare in America. We need some kind
of public investment for something that many people consider a
public good in the way that we talk about public education.
Mr. Horsford. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I know my time has
expired.
That is the type of investment I am willing to make. I wish
my colleagues would do the same.
Chairman Yarmuth. The gentleman's time has expired.
I now recognize the gentleman from New York, Mr. Jacobs,
for five minutes.
Mr. Jacobs. Thank you very much. And thank you to all the
panelists and to Speaker Gingrich for being here today. This is
a very critical issue for the future of our nation and our
young people.
I served for over seven years on the Buffalo school board,
so kind of a lot of my tone here will be with that experience,
but certainly it highlighted for me the significance of what
you are talking about today. I can't recall exact statistics,
but I do remember, you know, our kindergartners and our pre-K
kids coming in with a significant number of them already
needing remedial help because of the fact that they had poor
language deficiencies and the other basic building blocks that
are required for them to be able to learn to read. And so this
is a very important issue.
Mr. Malik, I just wanted to ask one question. Your
testimony about the--that the U.S. invests a small percentage
of GDP in childcare and early education, is that federal
funding or in total funding?
Mr. Malik. I believe that is combined federal, state, and
local funding.
Mr. Jacobs. OK. Because I know, you know, we are different
than many other places in terms of the majority of our
education funding comes from state and local governments, or
mostly local governments.
And I go back to my Buffalo experience that I really
disinclined to just look at expenditures as a barometer because
the Buffalo public school system spends an awful lot of money
with not very impressive results. We spend right now probably
about $30,000 per student, and that is the public governmental
funding of it. That doesn't touch on any of the additional
outside money in terms of nonprofit charitable work, which we
have an incredible amount.
I remember vividly when I first came on the Buffalo school
board, we had recruited a new superintendent who came from
Ohio. After a couple of weeks he briefed us on his impression
of the school district and he said, you know, you really aren't
running a school district, you are running a jobs program for
adults that happens to educate every once in a while. So I
think it is very, very important on how we spend the money,
that we responsibly spend the money.
And I just wanted to leave time for Speaker Gingrich, if
you could comment a little bit more on what Congressman Good
talked about. We talk about the indicators here, the difference
that certain expenditures, certain programs have on outcomes.
You talk a lot, Mr. Speaker, on incentivizing family formation,
removing the disincentives to family formation. From your
research, could you just talk a little bit about specifically
the impact of not having a two parent household, the impact of
fatherlessness in communities. And if we could work toward
strengthening our families and two parent households, what your
research and experience has shown that that--the difference
that would have on outcomes and alleviating long-term cyclical
poverty.
Mr. Gingrich. Well, thank you for the question.
I must say hearing from someone in the Buffalo area
automatically for me brings back memories of Jack Kemp, who was
probably the greatest Republican advocate of rethinking how we
help the poor and how we get people to be prosperous of anybody
I ever served with. So I am delighted to have that question.
A couple of quick comments. One, if the government would
simply measure outcomes rather than inputs, you would have a
much better sense of what is working and what is not working
and you would have some really troubling problems, because
there are whole programs that don't work. It is not a function
of money, they just don't work. And there I would say I helped
launch A Nation at Risk at 1983, which was the Reagan reform on
education which said if a foreign power did to our children
what we are doing to them, we would consider it an act of war.
And it hasn't improved. You look at the Baltimore school
system. I can't speak to Buffalo, but I spent a lot of time
looking at the Baltimore school system. It is tragic how much
we spend and how little we get done and how the children are
the ones who suffer. So I think that is a key part of this.
I would also say if you look at Marvin Olasky's great book,
``The Tragedy of American Compassion'', and Charles Murray's
book, ``Losing Ground'', you will get the framework of
everything you need to know. You want to make sure somebody
does not end up in poverty, have them complete high school,
have them not get married until they are out of high school,
and have them get a first job. They were almost guaranteed they
will never be in poverty. Notice the changes in culture that it
requires and the fact that we are now talking about personal
responsibility and personal engagement.
So thank you very much for the question.
Mr. Jacobs. Thank you.
Chairman Yarmuth. The gentleman's time has expired.
I now recognize the gentleman from Massachusetts, Mr.
Mouton, for five minutes.
Mr. Moulton. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Eradicating lead in water is one of the most critical ways
that we can improve the health outcomes of our children who,
when even exposed to low levels of lead, can have permanent
damage to their central and peripheral nervous systems,
learning disabilities, shorter stature, impaired hearing, and
impaired formation and function of blood cells. This can cause
lower IQ, decreased ability to pay attention, under performance
in school.
An estimated 3.6 million American homes with at least one
child have significant lead hazards. One in 40 children--one in
40 have lead levels that are considered unsafe. Each lead
exposed child costs an estimated $5,600 in medical and special
education services. And that is just for the times that they
are a child. We are not even talking about the lost
productivity of these poor kids throughout their entire lives.
Democrats worked to pass the bipartisan infrastructure
deal, which included more than about $40 billion to support
safe drinking water, including about $20 billion for safe
drinking water, $15 billion for dedicated funding to replace
lead pipes. Think about that. $15 billion just to replace the
pipes that are still full of lead in our country. $12 billion
to ensure clean water for communities, $1.8 billion to protect
regional waters, $135 million for additional water
improvements.
Now, Speaker Gingrich, you were in the House for 20 years.
House leadership for 10 years, a Speaker of the House for four
years, why didn't you do anything to decrease the amount of
lead children are exposed to in their water.
Mr. Gingrich. I think that is a great question and I think
most of us didn't realize until Flint, Michigan what a disaster
so many of our structure systems have been and how much they
need to be replaced. And I think the information you just laid
out is very powerful and I agree with you. And I think one of
the reasons I am for measuring outcomes rather than inputs, and
one of the reasons I think we need, for example, that blocking
corruption and returning that money to infrastructure, we
clearly have public health infrastructure requirements that are
real.
I think you will also find if you go back that we invested
a lot in trying to improve things. And, in fact, without our
investments the situation would be worse today. But I agree
with your concern and I think lead is one of those things that
is so obvious and so clear that starting with the disaster in
Flint, it is surprising to me we have not been more effective
in identifying every hot spot that needs to be fixed and having
some practical, efficient way--and I want to emphasize,
practical, efficient way of getting it done, not bureaucratic,
not unionized work rules now, whatever triples the cost. But
this is a public health crisis and you are exactly right. And I
thought your statement was very powerful.
Mr. Moulton. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
Chairman Yarmuth. The gentleman yields back.
I now recognize the gentlewoman from Colorado, Ms. Boebert,
for five minutes.
Ms. Boebert. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Let us just come out swinging. Democrats in Congress are a
joke. Leftist policies have led to an invasion at our Southern
Border, massive inflation, historically high gas prices, and so
much more.
I serve on the Natural Resources Committee. We can't even
talk about energy production in the Natural Resources Committee
when we have jurisdiction over this self-imposed crisis from
the Biden regime and, frankly, from the Natural Resources
Committee for not taking up issues on that.
But what do these politicians turn to when they realize
November is looking like a massive red wave? They turn to the
children. Let us ignore our failed policies and talk about
spending more money and let us say it is for children so people
will be OK with it. This is disingenuous and the American
people see right through this.
You want to support American children? How about we reduce
spending and curb inflation so our families can afford new
shoes for when our children go to school? Let us implement
school choice. Teach our children to love America. Teach them
our values that we were founded on instead of squashing those
and lying about them. Let us empower parents instead of calling
them domestic terrorists when they show up and have an opinion
or question about what their child is being taught in our
schools?
But this hearing is about Democrats' desire to spend more
money that we don't have. Frankly, just printing money at this
point. Let us take a look at the track record of how their
spending agenda has worked so far--9.1 percent inflation and
one of my most favorite seemingly prophetic publications, the
Babylon Bee, says that decimal point may be in the wrong place,
it might be actually 91 percent inflation. Energy is at 60.6
percent inflation and fuel is at 98.5 percent inflation. The
average American family with two working parents has lost
$6,800 in annual income since Joe Biden took office. And yet
all leftists on this Committee and throughout Congress want to
do is spend money and pretend to be handcuffed for attention.
Speaker Gingrich, I have a question for you.
Under your leadership, Congress passed welfare reform, the
first balanced budget amendment in a generation, and the first
tax cut in 16 years. Under Pelosi and Joe Biden inflation and
interest rates are up while wages are down. Now, Mr. Speaker,
do you believe that these Democrat policies will make it more
or less likely for our children and families to experience a
recession in the near future?
Mr. Gingrich. Well, look, I think it is pretty clear that--
and it is sort of an irony according to this particular hearing
that the very policies of inflation, extraordinarily high
gasoline and diesel fuel prices, rising cost of food, all of
these policies are going to drive more children into poverty.
The objective fact is that the policies that the Biden-Pelosi-
Schumer team have followed don't work. I just recently wrote a
book called ``Defeating Big Government Socialism'' in which I
outline that these aren't accidents, these are policies. They
believe in high gasoline prices, they believe in high diesel
fuel prices, high heating oil prices, they oppose the American
oil industry and the American gas industry. That is why Biden
won't go to Texas or Oklahoma or your state of Colorado or
western Pennsylvania, but he will go to Saudi Arabia. It is
crazy.
So if you really want to deal with children in poverty, get
the economy growing, stop the inflation, cut taxes, make sure
people have take home pay.
I mean you are exactly right. I thought actually you were
being pretty darn effective just now. This is an impossible
situation for the left to deal with and I can tell you, having
lived through the Carter years and watched Carter's presidency
disintegrate under the combination of a recession and inflation
and energy crisis, you know, Reagan beat Carter by the biggest
electoral vote margin of any incumbent president in modern
history. And in the process we won the Senate for the first
time since 1954.
This year I think the American people are going to walk in
that ballot box and they are going to think, I really want more
of this. And if you really want to care about children, you
have to make sure that children's families have enough money
that they can afford to have a decent life, that they can
afford to do the things necessary. And, frankly, it is
disappointing to have a hearing like this and not confront how
much government itself has been the problem.
But thank you for asking me.
Ms. Boebert. Yes, Mr. Speaker. My time has expired. Thank
you so much.
Chairman Yarmuth. The gentlelady's time has expired.
I now recognize the gentleman from Iowa, Mr. Feenstra, for
five minutes.
Mr. Feenstra. Thank you, Chairman Yarmuth, and Ranking
Member Smith.
It is an interesting time to be here today to talk about
this topic. And I will tell you what, this topic is very
important. When you talk about access to childcare where
parents are struggling right now to find a place to bring their
child, to have parents, as we just talked about, where they
don't have the dollars to pay for childcare.
In Iowa this is real. I mean this is extremely real. And
the problem is that we need workers in Iowa. We desperately
need workers in Iowa, but what is happening is we have a parent
staying at home because they can't afford childcare. So they
have got to make a decision, and the decision is also this,
they are sitting around the kitchen table trying to figure out
how they are going to make ends meet. Pay childcare? How do I
pay for groceries, how do I pay for gas in the car to get from
point A to point B? And then we have the situation that is not
going to end. Inflation. And the family, the parents are
saying, wait a minute, how do I look at a future when groceries
are going up, when the things I need to buy are going up, how I
need to put gas in my vehicle, and there is no end in sight.
And now we have this bill, we have the Democrats continuing to
talk about more spending and more spending. They are going to
only cripple the problem that is occurring.
Now, the solution to inflation is raising interest rates.
We saw that. The Federal Reserve has done that. They increased
75 basis points--what was it now, 5-6 weeks ago. And now they
are talking about it again, right. They are talking about it
again, saying, hey, we have to raise another 75 basis points or
maybe even a full point.
So my question--and I would like to ask Speaker Gingrich
about this--so when you start increasing your interest rate,
that has a direct effect on the family budget. How does that
have a direct effect? Because if they have a car payment, if
they have a house payment and it is a variable interest rate,
all of the sudden they are going to be paying more.
But I want to know from the Speaker, when we have interest
that are going to continue to rise, what happens to our $30
trillion of debt? So we have $30 trillion of debt and we have
interest rates increasing. That means the short-term and long-
term interest rates are--or I should say bond yields are going
to go up, how does that affect the American household? Speaker
Gingrich, if I could ask you that?
Mr. Gingrich. Well, thank you for putting your finger on I
think one of the great hidden threats in Washington and where
the Budget Committee ought to be demanding that the
Congressional Budget Office lay out what this is going to do to
the federal budget.
As the largest debt holder in the world, the U.S.
Government--if we end up in very high interest rates on the
federal debt, it is going to eat up the budget.
Mr. Feenstra. That is right.
Mr. Gingrich. I mean people are not looking at--this is
part of why we were so adamant in the 1990's about balancing
the federal budget, which we did for four straight years with
Bill Clinton on a bipartisan basis. But we had a program, cut
regulations, cut taxes. All the supply side economics that
Ronald Reagan implemented in the 1980's turned out to work. We
went back and got them to work again. And inflation came down,
interest rates came down, jobs grew, children came out of
poverty because their parents were coming out of poverty.
So you put your finger on a huge issue. I don't know the
exact numbers. I have my folks at Gingrich 360 the other week
run a sort of a--but we are not the budget office, we don't
have their data, but I think if we get a significant increase
in interest rates from the Federal Reserve, the effect of that
on the federal budget is going to be staggering. And it may
well mean that the--I am not certain of this, double check me--
but it may well mean with a high enough interest rate that you
are actually going to end up with the def payment being equal
to the defense budget. Now that is insane. If that was
happening to an individual or that was happening to a business,
you would counsel them they need to get their spending under
control and they need to get their debt down.
When you put--I want to commend you. You put your finger on
one of the greatest threats that is about to hit us and I think
we are totally unprepared in Washington for thinking through
the implications of the largest debt holder in the world
suddenly deliberately raising interest rates.
Mr. Feenstra. Thank you, Speaker. You hit it on the head.
That is exactly what I thought. That is how serious and
dangerous this is. And what we are talking about right now, we
have got to help families, we have got to get our inflation
under control, but we also have to understand we have got to
quit spending for our families, for our children.
Thank you.
I yield back.
Chairman Yarmuth. The gentleman's time has expired.
And by the way the Congressional Budget Office does that on
a regular basis. They make that estimate at least every six
months. So that information is pretty widely available.
I am going to yield myself 10 minutes for my questioning.
And I am going to start by saying that it has been
fascinating to listen to my Republican colleagues and to
Speaker Gingrich when talking about the future of children in
this country. And I think we can all stipulate that it would be
great if everybody had a job that was well paying and was--that
they were qualified for and that they enjoyed and that was
convenient to do and that they could afford to work in. It
would be great if every child grew up in a stable family with
two parents, whether they are male and male, male and female,
or female and female. That would be a wonderful thing. And we
can wish that that were the case, but it sadly not the case
throughout this country and probably nothing that we could do
in this body is going to change the fact that there are going
to be millions of children, innocent children who did not
choose the circumstances into which they were born, that will
be suffering with--if we don't act and somebody else doesn't
act, they are going to be suffering and diminishing their
prospects for a future.
And when I look at--I have a three year old grandson, I
have a one month old grandson, they are going to have every
opportunity that they could possibly want. But they aren't
typical. And when you look a generation or two into the future,
the American tax base is going to be composed of a lot of
children who come from very unfortunate circumstances, very
unlucky circumstances. And that is really what we are talking
about today. We are talking about those children, again who
don't choose the circumstances into which they were born, who
are going to need some help from somewhere whose families most
frequently can't provide it, and who represent not just a
challenge for our society and our government, but also a huge
opportunity.
We are not going to convince people to appropriate more
than they are doing now. As a matter of fact, I heard a new
story today that because of the Dobbs decision that the
incidents of sterilization among women is dramatically rising.
Parents are choosing not to have children. So where is that tax
base going to come from? We need to make sure that every child
born in this country or who immigrates to this country has
every opportunity to thrive.
I want to give Mr. Malik an opportunity. I am going to
comment on some other things. But Mr. Grothman talked about
Head Start, a Brookings report on Head Start. And that seems to
be the one report that has been brought up at least for the
last 10 to 15 years to undermine efforts to have universal
early childhood education in the country.
Would you care to comment on that study and generally on
the benefits of early childhood education?
Mr. Malik. Yes. I don't have in front of me the specific
report that Congressman Grothman is referring to. I do know
that there was a Brookings AEI consensus report around pre-K
and early education, including mentions of Head Start, that
found, you know, a wide range of benefits to children, to their
families. It is important to note that Head Start doesn't just,
you know, provide educational services, but it decreases
children's food insecurity, promoted healthier eating habits
and physical activity. There are a variety of family services
that are attached to Head Start that also have tremendous
benefits to the family.
So, you know, there are also inter-generational benefits to
Head Start. There are studies that have found that the children
of Head Start recipients actually do better than those of
similar background but whose parents weren't able to access
Head Start.
Chairman Yarmuth. Thank you.
One of the things--we all come to this job and this role
with different experiences and from different--very different
areas. And on many--the ranking member's district is a lot
different than my district. My district is 30 miles across, it
is totally urban, we have one school system, it has almost
100,000 kids in it. In that school system, more than 50 percent
of those kids are on free or reduced lunch, 50 percent of them
at least change schools at least once during the school year
because they have been shuffled around between family members
or they are homeless and so forth. And one of the things that
was probably one of the most impactful things I have heard once
was I was in a luncheon on a Friday and I was sitting next to
our school superintendent at the time. And they had just--it
had snowed and they just called off school on Friday. She said
you don't know how much it breaks my heart to have to cancel
school on Friday because that is when kids get their blessings
in a backpack. They take home their food and that will be all
they eat all weekend. This is the type of situation for which
WIC and SNAP are critical, don't you think, Dr. Black?
Dr. Black. Yes. Thank you. Thank you. They certainly are
critical.
Chairman Yarmuth. And I could go on at length about the
American Rescue Plan and I have defended it a number of times
before this Committee. My name is on it as the author, even
though I didn't write one word of it. But it came through our
Committee, so it says Mr. Yarmuth on it and I am very proud of
that.
And I think we have to go back to that because there is no
question that there were incredible problems in the
implementation of the American Rescue Plan. But what were we
facing? We were facing a crisis that hit us almost
spontaneously. Nobody saw it coming. All the sudden 20 million
people are out of work, businesses are closing right and left,
the economy basically shut down. We faced unfortunately--blame
it on whoever going back a long time--we were not prepared for
a pandemic. So we are learning as we go along, people were
justifiably critical at the time, but the fact is we didn't
know how bad it was going to be. We shut down everything. We
didn't know that kids were less vulnerable, more vulnerable. We
knew if they caught the disease they would give it to their
colleagues, their colleagues would take it home, and it would
be disastrous.
So when Mr. Gingrich says things like we committed almost
child abuse over the last two years, we did not commit child
abuse. That is an absurd statement. Forgive me, Speaker
Gingrich. We were trying to do the best we could to maintain
the safety and health of our kids and our families. And in my
particular state, comments have been made about unemployment.
And, yes, there is a lot of money who went to people who
probably didn't warrant it. In my state unemployment
applications went from about 200 a week to several thousand a
week. That Department of Unemployment in Kentucky was not
equipped to handle the deluge of unemployment applications that
they were faced with. So, yes, they were trying to get money
out the door. That is what we were all trying to do because we
were facing an economy that was on the verge of collapse. So we
were trying to get money to businesses, we were trying to get
money to state and local governments, we were trying to shore
up a sinking ship.
And, yes, in those circumstances, which were unique, at
least in my lifetime, we were doing the best we could. And
hopefully we have learned lessons about that. And one thing I
will agree with Speaker Gingrich on, and some of my Republican
colleagues, we rarely think about the implementation of the
programs that we put into place. We need to be much better at
that.
And, you know, I stressed with the Administration when we
were trying to do the Build Back Better plan that--and talking
about childcare, that we can't just say we are going to spend
$300 billion on childcare unless we think about how we are
going to build the capacity to do it. In my district, my school
superintendent said if we have universal pre-K for three and
four year olds, something that I am passionately in favor of,
that we would need to hire 400 new teachers and build two new
schools. We are already 200 teachers short in our existing
classrooms. Where are those teachers going to come from? But
meanwhile we would hold out a promise to people who say, oh
god, next month I am going to get affordable childcare, and it
would happen. So we need to be thinking about that much more.
So I think Speaker Gingrich might agree with me on that
point.
But, you know, so much of this returns to what I see as a
total difference in perspective that some people believe that,
in kind of a Darwinian theory, that everybody can pull
themselves up by their bootstraps, and that is not our party.
The Democratic Party believes government can be a force for
good and that in a capitalistic society, where there are
invariably winners and losers that don't necessarily have
anything to do with who works harder or who tries harder. It is
nice to talk about the late 1990's when there was the internet
boom and the economy was sailing, but what that internet boom
did was for the next 20 years made it impossible for a lot of
people to find work, because a lot of jobs disappeared because
of it and continue to disappear. And people are not prepared
for that.
So we can have great discussions about this, but in the
general economic situation. I think what we are talking about
today is how can we best ensure that the children of this
country, the ones who, again, have no decision in, first of
all, being born and, second, how they are living, get the most
support so that they can become productive members of society
and have the kind of life that we want for our own kids and
everybody else.
So with that, I am going to yield back, but I am going to
be--I am going to ask for some things to be submitted into the
record. There has been some discussion today claiming that work
requirements make children better off. In fact, CBO recently
found that work requirements inflict unnecessary suffering and
do little to actually boost employment and children's well-
being. I ask unanimous consent to enter the report from CBO on
work requirements into the record.
Without objection, so ordered.
[Report submitted for the record follows:]
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This hearing has also highlighted the various ways that
more investments in children make them better off across the
course of their lives. I ask unanimous consent to enter a
letter from the Children's Budget Coalition into the record.
Without objection, so ordered.
We received a letter from over 1,000 law enforcement
officers highlighting how important affordable high quality
childcare and pre-K are to crime reduction. I ask unanimous
consent to enter a letter from Council for a Strong America
into the record.
Without objection, so ordered.
And I ask unanimous consent to enter a letter from Child
Care Aware into the record.
Without objection, so ordered.
[Letters submitted for the record follows:]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
So with that, I thank the witnesses again for their
responses. Thank you, Speaker Gingrich, for joining us
remotely.
And without any further business, this hearing is
adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 12:48 p.m., the Committee was adjourned.]
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