[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 137 (Monday, October 5, 1998)]
[House]
[Pages H9355-H9359]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




             FEDERAL EMPLOYEES CHILD CARE AFFORDABILITY ACT

  Mrs. MORELLA. Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the 
bill (H.R. 4280) to provide for greater access to child care services 
for Federal employees, as amended.
  The Clerk read as follows:

                               H.R. 4280

       Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of 
     the United States of America in Congress assembled,

     SECTION 1. CHILD CARE SERVICES FOR FEDERAL EMPLOYEES.

       (a) In General.--An Executive agency which provides or 
     proposes to provide child care services for Federal employees 
     may use appropriated funds (otherwise available to such 
     agency for salaries) to provide child care, in a Federal or 
     leased facility, or through contract, for civilian employees 
     of such agency.
       (b) Affordability.--Amounts so provided with respect to any 
     such facility or contractor shall be applied to improve the 
     affordability of child care for lower income Federal 
     employees using or seeking to use the child care services 
     offered by such facility or contractor.
       (c) Regulations.--The Office of Personnel Management shall, 
     within 180 days after the date of enactment of this Act, 
     issue regulations necessary to carry out this section.
       (d) Definition.--For purposes of this section, the term 
     ``Executive agency'' has the meaning given such term by 
     section 105 of title 5, United States Code, but does not 
     include the General Accounting Office.

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to the rule, the gentlewoman from 
Maryland (Mrs. Morella) and the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Cummings) 
each will control 20 minutes.
  The Chair recognizes the gentlewoman from Maryland (Mrs. Morella).


                             General Leave

  Mrs. MORELLA. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members 
may have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend their 
remarks on the bill, H.R. 4280, as amended.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the 
gentlewoman from Maryland?
  There was no objection.
  Mrs. MORELLA. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. 
I want to thank the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Burton) chairman of the 
Committee on Government Reform and Oversight; the gentleman from 
Florida (Mr. Mica) chairman of the Subcommittee on Civil Service; and I 
also want to thank the gentleman from California (Mr. Waxman) the 
ranking member; and the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Cummings) the 
ranking member of the subcommittee for their assistance in bringing 
this bill to the floor today.
  I would particularly like to thank some staff who have been very 
instrumental in crafting it so we could finally get this bill before 
us, staff on both sides of the aisle. In my office Kathryn Pearson, 
Jeff Davis; also Gary Ewing, Jeff Shea, Siobhan McGill for all their 
help in bringing this bill to the floor, and the staff of the gentleman 
from Maryland (Mr. Cummings) for the work they have done.
  Mr. Speaker, I introduced this bill so that agencies may use their 
salary and expense accounts to help low-income Federal employees pay 
for child care. Balancing work and family has become increasingly 
difficult for families, and Federal employees are no exception. My 
legislation will provide opportunities for Federal agencies to help 
provide quality child care for their employees' children.
  I have worked with the Office of Personnel Management to develop this 
legislation. Several agencies, including the Social Security 
Administration, Department of Justice, and the Department of Defense 
have actually requested such authority from OPM. OPM cannot grant this 
authority. We must legislate this change.
  This legislation does not require any additional appropriations. It 
would be

[[Page H9356]]

up to the individual agencies to determine whether or not to use funds 
from their salary and expense accounts to help provide child care. 
Agencies, not employees, would make payments to child care providers to 
help lower-income Federal employees pay for their child care.
  Such child care benefits are already being provided to military 
employees with a separate line item which is more than my legislation 
would provide. The Department of Defense, one of the agencies seeking 
such authority to help its employees with child care costs, has pointed 
out that they can provide child care benefits to their military 
employees but not the civil servants working side by side.
  One of the greatest challenges families face, we know, is finding 
safe, affordable and high-quality day care. Having raised nine children 
and now watching them struggle with their own child care dilemmas, I am 
well acquainted with the problems associated with finding high-quality 
day care. America's lack of safe, affordable day care is not a new 
problem but its consequences are becoming far more dire, and it does 
require new, innovative solutions. In 1995, 62 percent of women with 
children younger than six and 77 percent of women with children between 
the ages of six and 17 were in the labor force.
  Approximately one-quarter of all Federal workers have children under 
the age of six needing care at some time during the workday. During a 
recent hearing in the subcommittee of the gentleman from California 
(Mr. Horn), testimony revealed that some Federal child care facilities 
charge up to $10,000 or more per child per year. Many Federal employees 
simply cannot afford quality child care. By allowing agencies the 
flexibility to help their workers meet their child care needs, we will 
be encouraging family-friendly workplaces and higher productivity.
  It is clear that we need more child care, we need affordable child 
care, and we need high quality child care. Unless child care becomes a 
priority in the private sector and in the public sector, families, 
including those of Federal employees, just are not going to find it.
  Mr. Speaker, I hope that Congress will pursue a wide range of 
innovative solutions to address families' child care needs in the near 
future. As a Nation, we must and we can do better for our children. 
This legislation is an important first step. However, increasing the 
affordability and the quality of child care go hand in hand. That is 
why I am sorry that important provisions that were offered in a bill by 
the gentleman from New York (Mr. Gilman) to improve the quality of 
Federal child care centers is not still a part of H.R. 4280. I am 
committed to continuing to work with the gentleman from New York to 
enact the provisions in his bill which will ensure that all child care 
centers housed in Federal buildings meet quality standards. These 
provisions require all Federal child care centers to follow and 
maintain State and local regulations for health, fire and safety. They 
would not lower Federal agency standards if they are greater than the 
local or State regulations. They would simply ensure that those that 
are substandard begin to comply.
  I encourage my colleagues to join me in supporting this legislation 
to help Federal employees and agencies meet their child care needs.
  Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
  Mr. CUMMINGS. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
  Mr. Speaker, I take this moment to congratulate the gentlewoman from 
Maryland (Mrs. Morella) for this outstanding piece of legislation. It 
is so very important.
  Three thousand nine hundred ninety-four Federal workers currently 
enroll their children in the 109 child care centers established in 
Federal agencies across the country. The cost of child care is a 
particular burden for low-income families. For the poorest families, 
child care costs on the average represent more than one-quarter of 
family income.
  I support this bipartisan bill because it will help make child care 
more affordable for many Federal workers and their families as well as 
provide their children with developmentally appropriate environments in 
which to spend their days as they grow up to be productive adults.
  As parents move from welfare to work and attend job training and 
preparatory classes, child care becomes of great concern, as is the 
case in my district.
  At the White House Conference on Child Care in October of 1997, 
President Clinton asked Secretary of the Treasury Robert Rubin to 
convene a group of business and labor leaders to look at child care 
problems facing working parents. The group found that when employers 
provide quality and affordable child care, employee morale improves, 
turnover and absenteeism is reduced and productivity is improved. So 
good child care pays for itself.
  Perhaps more importantly, they found a growing body of research that 
substantiates the view that investments in the care of young children 
affects a child's physical and emotional development, and these 
investments can have positive returns for families and society. These 
benefits will last those children until the day they die.
  The Federal Government has taken the first steps in making such an 
investment. All child care facilities designed and renovated after 1992 
reflect state of the art child care designs and are built to promote 
child-oriented, developmentally appropriate, efficient and effective 
environments. As the Nation's largest employer, do we not have an 
obligation to ensure that these facilities are more financially 
accessible for Federal employees?
  H.R. 4280 will do the following: Allow Federal agencies to use 
appropriated funds to pay a portion of the costs incurred by private 
operators of child care centers in Federal facilities; require that 
such payments improve the affordability of care for lower-income 
Federal employees; authorize alternative methods for providing child 
care in Federal facilities; and will require that agencies perform a 
background check and a criminal history of employees of day care 
centers located in Federal facilities.
  During full committee consideration of H.R. 4280, two amendments were 
added to it. The first amendment offered by the gentleman from New York 
(Mr. Gilman) would have required Federal child care centers, including 
the United States Congress, to follow and maintain State and local 
regulations for health, fire and safety. The gentleman from California 
(Mr. Waxman) offered a second degree amendment to the Gilman amendment 
providing that child care facilities be inspected for, and be free of, 
lead hazards. Though I supported both of these amendments, 
jurisdictional concerns have been raised by the Committee on House 
Oversight, and they have been removed to ensure passage of the bill. I 
hope at some point in the future, the Gilman and Waxman provisions will 
be enacted by this body.
  This bill now before us is one of many steps that the Federal 
Government should take to provide accessible, high-quality child care 
to Federal workers. Carl Sandberg said it best when he said, ``The 
birth of a child is God rendering his opinion that the world should go 
on.'' As a cosponsor of this legislation, I urge all of my colleagues 
to support it.
  Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
  Mrs. MORELLA. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from 
Virginia (Mr. Davis) who is a fierce fighter for Federal employees and 
cares very much about the quality of care for their children.
  Mr. DAVIS of Virginia. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for 
yielding time. After that introduction, I ought to stop right there.
  Mr. Speaker, this is a great bill because it offers flexibility as a 
part of the benefit package to the different agencies. They can take 
these dollars that are appropriated, there is no new money involved, 
and can best decide how they can use that in recruiting and in 
retaining good people. Child care is a major concern for families 
across this country. A lot of single parents who work for the Federal 
Government are going to find this immeasurably benefits their 
performance and ability to stay on working and do their job. I remember 
when our day care provider at one point in our lives decided she was 
retiring, that she could not make enough money, and the months of 
scramble trying to find somebody who could fill that niche. There is no 
more

[[Page H9357]]

important decision for a single parent or parents to make than what 
they are going to do for their children while they are working.
  This allows the Federal Government to come in and use existing 
dollars as a part of a benefit package for some of their lower-paid 
employees to allow the flexibility to try to meet those child care 
needs for them.

                              {time}  1445

  It is going to be up to the agencies as to how they best implement 
that, how they can innovate, but I think this is a very, very good 
idea. I know my mother brought up five children, and my father, who 
served two tours in the State prison system, was not around, and she 
would have to work taking care of other people's kids and work at 
night. But keeping that family together was the most important thing in 
her life, and it allowed her to go off and be productive and be 
successful in other things. This will allow that same standard to 
Federal employees.
  We are finding the work force today across the world in an 
information age is the most important asset that any organization has. 
It is no longer the machinery or the equipment; it is the employees and 
their minds and what they bring to bear. This basically allows us to 
recruit and retrain the best and the brightest by allowing them 
flexibility to care for their day care needs, something that is very 
important, something at a governmental level we have been behind the 
private sector in recognizing how important this is to be able to 
recruit and retrain good people. And I am very confident that with the 
passage of this act, as we start meeting and talking to Federal 
agencies, as they start hearing from employees, both single parents and 
working parents about how important child care is, that this will allow 
the flexibility that our agencies need to meet the needs of employees 
that they are trying to recruit or retrain.
  So I am very bullish on this bill. I want to thank everybody 
involved. Keeping families together is important, but keeping and 
recruiting and retraining and being able to retain quality employees is 
also important from a taxpayer perspective, and this legislation does 
this.
  So, Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for having yielded to me, and I 
hope my other colleagues will support this legislation.
  Mr. CUMMINGS. Mr. Speaker, I yield 4\1/2\ minutes to the gentlewoman 
from the District of Columbia (Ms. Norton) who has constantly been at 
the forefront of making sure that our children are uplifted.
  Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for his kindness and 
for yielding this time to me, and I would like to thank the gentlewoman 
from Maryland (Mrs. Morella) and the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. 
Cummings) both for working so closely together on what is clearly a 
ground-breaking piece of legislation, though it affects a smaller 
universe than our country needs.
  One of the reasons I am thrilled with this bill is that the 
bipartisan Congressional Women's Caucus made child care one of its 
seven priorities this year, focused on seven priorities; six of them 
were actual bills; four of the seven, in fact, have been enacted, which 
is not a bad track record; and it has encouraged us as a caucus, now 21 
years old, to focus on specific legislation of the kind that we think 
has a consensus in this body.
  Now, of the three that did not get through, one was child care. All 
were fairly complicated. The ones that were fairly easy did get 
through. Child care was difficult this term, and we knew it. We could 
not get a consensus on one bill, but we got consensus on three 
principles:
  One, that funding would go to lower-income families; two, that there 
would be tax relief for working families and for stay-at-home spouses; 
and three, that there would be quality child care. Any bill that 
incorporated those three principles would have our support.
  As we know, we were unable to get a comprehensive child care bill 
through. That is why I am thrilled that at least that there will be a 
child care bill that passes the 105th Congress. The Federal Employee 
Child Care Affordable Act gives us something to show for child care in 
this session.
  Now, my chief regret is that the Gilman and Waxman provision was not 
incorporated into this bill as it originally was because that would 
have meant that one of our three principles, quality, would have been 
memorialized in an important bill. This provision would have had 
Federal child care centers comply with Federal or State safety and 
health standards, whichever is higher, and all Federal centers would 
have to be free of lead paint. I believe, Mr. Speaker, I can say 
without fear of being contradicted that there is not a Member in this 
body who would disagree with the provisions of the Gilman and Waxman 
bill, but the fact is that a jurisdictional dispute has derailed it, 
and I was pleased to hear the gentlewoman saying she will follow up 
next session to make sure that this provision also is passed.
  This in other ways is a model bill. This is a model bill in the 
flexibility it allows in meeting child care needs. I am inclined to say 
to the gentlewoman from Maryland that in a real sense it is making 
lemons out of lemonade because there is no extra money in this bill, it 
is a no-cost bill that leaves discretion to the agency to decide where 
to use its money, and when we have a lot of employees who look like 
they are not on time or they are not being productive for child care 
reasons, that may be the best use of discretionary funds. This will go 
to lower-income people who cannot afford the child care.
  Mr. Speaker, I can say to my colleagues that when I was a young 
mother with two youngsters, I remember at one point having the need of 
both my mother-in-law and someone who helped me in the house. The 
mother-in-law went to pick up the child from nursery school, and the 
lady in the house stayed with the other child. I still have not figured 
out how low-income mothers do it, particularly single parents.
  Mr. Speaker, with its Federal child care centers the Federal 
Government surely ought to be in the forefront of child care. With this 
bill, it moves in that direction, and this legislation is in the 
progressive tradition of the Federal Government staying ahead of other 
employers in important matters to its own employees.
  Mrs. MORELLA. Mr. Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from 
New York (Mr. Gilman), the Chairman of the Committee on International 
Relations, who has put so much time into child care and high-quality 
child care.
  (Mr. GILMAN asked and was given permission to revise and extend his 
remarks.)
  Mr. GILMAN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from Maryland for 
yielding this time to me.
  Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise today in support of H.R. 4280, the 
Federal Child Care Affordability Act, and I want to thank the 
gentlewoman from Maryland (Mrs. Morella) for her leadership and 
dedication to child care. This bill allows Federal agencies to help 
their employees with the ever-growing cost of child care in our Nation. 
Recent hearings have illustrated that some day care centers charge up 
to $10,000 or more for a single year of child care, and for some 
employees that is an outrageous charge, and they are forced to choose 
more affordable, but not necessarily quality care facilities.
  Miss Morella's language will allow Federal agencies to use already 
appropriated funds, no additional costs, already appropriated funds to 
help these employees pay for child care, something that the Department 
of Defense already does for its employees, and these provisions are 
supported by both conservative and liberal groups alike in addition to 
GSA and the executive branch agencies and nationally recognized 
accreditation groups including the National Council on Private School 
Accreditation and the National Association for the Education of Young 
Children.
  Mr. Speaker, our children are so important, and the care they receive 
during their first few years of development is essential to raising 
intelligent and productive members of our society, and I want to thank 
the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Cummings) and the gentlewoman from the 
District of Columbia (Ms. Norton) for noting the need for our proposed 
amendment, an amendment that has been proposed by both the gentleman 
from California (Mr. Waxman) and myself which provides regulations for 
safety and for qualified personnel, which regrettably

[[Page H9358]]

at the moment is being held up by a jurisdictional question and which 
hopefully can soon be resolved. I think that that is an essential part 
of all of this to make certain that whatever child care facilities we 
utilize, that they are going to be safe and that they are going to be 
staffed by qualified people.
  Accordingly, I urge my colleagues to fully support the Morella 
measure, H.R. 4280.
  Mr. CUMMINGS. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the distinguished 
gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Moran), someone who also has been at the 
forefront of making sure that Federal employees receive equity and 
parity and that our children be lifted up.
  Mr. MORAN of Virginia. Mr. Speaker, I thank the very distinguished 
gentleman representing Baltimore for his leadership with regard to 
Federal employee issues, and particularly with regard to the children 
of Federal employees, and I thank the gentlewoman from Maryland (Mrs. 
Morella) for her initiative on this amendment.
  Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of the Federal Employee Child 
Care Affordability Act to allow Federal agencies the discretion to use 
their salary and expense accounts to provide child care for their 
employees.
  As my colleagues know, between 1975 and 1994, over a 20-year period, 
the number of women in the labor force with children under the age of 6 
increased from 39 percent to 60 percent. Unbelievable, 60 percent of 
women in the labor force have children under the age of 6. More than 
half of children under 1 year of age and more than 12 million children 
under the age of 5 are regularly in the care of someone other than 
their parents.
  A recent study suggests that one-quarter of all Federal employees 
need child care. That means we are talking about hundreds of thousands 
of parents and their children. Access to quality affordable child care 
has become a number one issue for many parents in the United States, 
particularly Federal employees. So, as a responsible employer, the 
Federal Government should be working to improve access to and 
affordability of child care for its employees.
  In Congress we have been working to find ways to encourage private 
businesses to do just that. We are not doing a bad job. There are 1,400 
private employer-provided child care centers throughout the United 
States. By comparison, the Department of Defense has 850 centers for 
its employees and another 230 more for civilian DOD employees. We can 
do much better by allowing all Federal agencies to provide child care 
assistance to all their employees.
  In exchange for being a responsible employer, we also have the added 
bonus of increased productivity by decreasing missed work hours for 
child care crises, and the lure of quality affordable child care is a 
recruitment and retention tool to the most qualified applicants and 
employees of the Federal Government. DOD has been successful in 
providing sliding scale fee care on location to parent employees, but 
other Federal agencies have been strictly prohibited from funding such 
a program even by simply providing an onsite facility with electricity 
or furnishings.
  The Morella amendment would not force agencies to provide care, but 
would allow agencies to use their funds at their own discretion to 
provide care or tuition assistance. Because the amendment does not 
require an additional appropriation, it does not impact the balanced 
budget, and, in addition, any profits to the facility will be used to 
make care more affordable for lower income employees.
  Mr. Speaker, it is a well-thought-out amendment.
  Over the past several years we have made tough choices along with 
great progress in achieving fiscal responsibility in the budget. Along 
with this responsibility we have asked the private sector to do their 
part in being responsible citizens, particularly as employers by 
providing benefits such as child care to their employees. It is time 
for the Federal Government to step up to our responsibility as 
employers by allowing Federal agencies the discretion to provide child 
care to their employees, and I urge my colleagues to take this 
responsibility seriously by supporting the Morella-Cummings-Moran 
amendment. It is the right thing to do.
  Mrs. MORELLA. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
  Mr. Speaker, you can see the extent of the passion and the interest 
in such an important issue as child care for Federal employees.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman 
from California (Mr. Lewis).
  Mr. LEWIS of California. Mr. Speaker, I wanted to mention to my 
colleague that she may be kind of interested to note that I had the 
privilege of being the author of the Child Development Act of 1972 in 
California. Congress has discovered child care 25 years later.
  Mrs. MORELLA. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that a letter sent 
from the gentleman from California (Mr. Thomas) to the gentleman from 
Indiana (Mr. Burton) be included in the record.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Barrett of Nebraska). Is there objection 
to the request of the gentlewoman from Maryland?
  There was no objection.

                              {time}  1500

  Mrs. MORELLA. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
  Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleagues who have spoken today, my 
colleague, the gentleman from Maryland, who is handling this bill who 
is a cosponsor and a very strong advocate who has worked with us, and 
the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Mica), the chairman of the 
subcommittee. I wanted to thank the chairman of the full committee also 
and the ranking member of the full committee and also all of the 
members who have spoken here today and those who are submitting 
statements and are very supportive of this legislation.
  Certainly the gentleman from New York (Mr. Gilman) has demonstrated 
leadership consistently, and I know that his legislation with all of 
our help will ultimately become law. The gentleman from Virginia (Mr. 
Davis) has spoken, the gentlewoman from the District of Columbia (Ms. 
Norton) and, indeed, the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Moran) and the 
gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Cummings).
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
  Mr. CUMMINGS. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
  Mr. Speaker, I, too, would like to thank the gentleman from Indiana 
(Mr. Burton) and the gentleman from California (Mr. Waxman), the 
ranking member, and certainly the gentlewoman from Maryland (Mrs. 
Morella). I want to thank the gentleman from New York (Mr. Gilman) and 
the gentlewoman from the District of Columbia (Ms. Norton) and all of 
those who have taken part in this discussion today.
  I think that when we just see the Members of Congress who have come 
here today to the floor to speak on this issue, it is clear that it is 
again a bipartisan effort, an effort to reach out and touch children, 
children who, in many instances, cannot fend for themselves and cannot 
speak for themselves, but yet and still they are our most important 
resource.
  I think it is that spirit that brings this legislation to the floor 
of the House today. It is that spirit that has garnered a bipartisan 
effort, and it is that very spirit that should allow and make feel good 
every Member of Congress when they vote for it. I certainly urge all of 
us to do so.
  Ms. Jackson-Lee of Texas. Mr. Speaker, thank you for the opportunity 
to speak on this bill today. H.R. 4280 is an extremely important bill 
for our families and for our children. This bill will allow federal 
agencies to use their salary and expense accounts to help federal 
employees pay for child care.
  This bill does not require any additional appropriations, it simply 
requires a commitment on our part, as responsible legislators who care 
about our future, to ensure that our federal government employees 
receive the same benefits, the same benefits, the same access to 
affordable child care that our military emplyees receive. Not only will 
this bill provide employers with the authority to help its employees 
with child care costs, it will also improve the quality of our federal 
child care centers by requiring that these centers follow and maintain 
state and local regulations for health, fire and safety.
  We know that \1/4\ of all federal workers had children under age six 
requiring child care during their parents' work day. Some federal child 
care facilities charge up to $10,000 a year per

[[Page H9359]]

child! We must vote to help many of our federal employees who are 
caught in a serious child care crunch!
  All parents want to provide their children with the best quality care 
they can. I hope you will vote to allow federal agencies and federal 
employees to meet their child care needs.
  Ms. LEE. Mr. Speaker, I rise to speak in support of H.R. 4280, the 
Federal Employee Child Care Affordability Act. I supported a version of 
this bill, the Morella amendment, on June 14, 1998, when it came up as 
an amendment of H.R. 4104, the Treasury-Postal Appropriations Act of 
1999. The amendment was to permit federal agencies to use their salary 
and expense accounts to help federal employees pay for child care. I am 
pleased to support it again.
  The lack of reliable child care was an issue before the passage of 
welfare-to-work reform. Now, it has become more urgent than ever. We 
are realizing the effects that we feared when welfare reform passed in 
August 1996. The welfare reform package drastically lacks the support 
systems necessary to help welfare recipients in transition. In 
California alone, for example, 200,000 children of working poor 
families are already on a waiting list for child care. In addition, the 
parents of nearly 950,000 children who currently receive Temporary 
Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) assistance will be expected to join 
the work force in the next few years. This means that nearly one 
million additional children may be without child care.
  In addition to women going from welfare to work, the overall number 
of working women is increasing. By the year 2006, it is estimated that 
61.4 percent of women will be at work. Between the 1986-96 period, 
slightly more men than women entered the labor force, 52 percent 
compared with 48 percent. Forty-six percent of all workers today are 
women, up from 44 percent in 1986. In the 1996-2006 period, women and 
men are expected to enter the labor force in equal numbers.
  For anyone who has had to find child care or knows of someone who 
needs child care, the story is familiar: there is a severe shortage of 
reliable child care with necessary educational, physical, and nurturing 
standards at an affordable cost.
  Though child care workers are among our poorest paid, Federal child 
care still may cost up to $10,000 a year. I put myself in the position 
of a young woman, head-of-household, whose median salary is $19,752 a 
year. I would have to pay half of my pre-tax salary for child care. How 
do my children and I survive?
  H.R. 4280 is a real winner in that it provides part of the solution. 
H.R. 4280 addresses this continuing crisis in finding adequate child 
care by allowing federal agencies to use their salary and expense 
accounts to help low-income employees pay for child care. This bill has 
an extra bonus in that it will not need additional appropriations. I 
urge my colleagues to support this bill.
  Ms. DeGETTE. Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Maryland, Mr. 
Cummings, and my friend from Maryland, Connie Morella, for moving this 
important legislation to the floor. I am pleased that we are 
considering this so quickly after it was struck down by a point of 
order in the House version of the Treasury-Postal appropriations bill.
  H.R. 4280 is a simple piece of legislation that would permit the 
Office of Personnel Management to redraw its regulations so that all 
federal agencies can use existing funds to subsidize child care costs 
for federal employees. It's a shining example of the old saying, ``a 
little goes a long way.'' Lower-income employees all around the country 
will be able to obtain the necessary assistance to seek out and pay for 
local child care programs.
  H.R. 4280 does not legislate new federal child care programs or 
require additional appropriations.
  At a time when child care costs often exceed $10,000 per child per 
year, and at a time when employers are fast becoming aware that good 
child care means higher productivity on the job, this bill is good 
government.
  In my district, The Denver Federal Center is situated comfortably at 
the foot of the Rocky Mountains, about one-half hour away from downtown 
Denver, Colorado. Roughly 5,500 federal employees are employed at this 
facility, many of whom are raising small children. This bill would make 
a simple but profound change in the lives of these individuals--it 
would make quality child care for their children more affordable.
  Today we should recognize the importance of quality child care to the 
positive development of our children and we should take this 
opportunity to make a straight-forward, administrative change to 
government practice. It's a small, but important change.
  Mr. CUMMINGS. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Barrett of Nebraska). The question is on 
the motion offered by the gentlewoman from Maryland (Mrs. Morella) that 
the House suspend the rules and pass the bill, H.R. 4280, as amended.
  The question was taken; and (two-thirds having voted in favor 
thereof) the rules were suspended and the bill, as amended, was passed.
  A motion to reconsider was laid on the table.

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