[Congressional Record Volume 168, Number 133 (Saturday, August 6, 2022)]
[Senate]
[Page S4061]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                               CHILDCARE

  Mr. KAINE. Madam President, I am so pleased to be on the floor today 
to join with Senator Murray, Senator Schumer, and Senator Blumenthal to 
talk about the critical importance of childcare.
  I will speak in about 40 minutes about a piece of this bill, the 
black lung program, which is really important to the State of Virginia, 
but, like Senator Murray, I share a sadness that childcare is not 
included in this bill because this is what I am hearing from 
Virginians: Even before the pandemic, there was an inadequate supply. 
People working in this field weren't being paid enough. Parents are 
having to pay too much.
  It is a market failure, and we have to fix it. This bill doesn't, and 
so we will need to continue it.
  There has never been anyone in the history of the U.S. Senate who has 
been as passionate an advocate for childcare as the senior Senator from 
Washington, Senator Murray. She sort of swallowed a lead, because she 
is a modest person, when she said: I cared about this from before I got 
here.
  Her colleagues know and Washingtonians know, but all Americans might 
not know, that Senator Murray was an early childhood educator before 
she came to the U.S. Senate. So this is a passion that drove her career 
before she was here, and she hasn't left it behind, not for one second. 
So when she says she is going to stay on this until it gets done, she 
will.
  I am very, very pleased to be a HELP Committee member under her 
leadership and to help her on this, and I have a personal interest in 
this too. I have three children. My middle son, Lin, went to Carleton 
College, Phi Beta Kappa graduate, and he works as a pre-K classroom 
aide in Minneapolis. This is how he has chosen to make a difference in 
the world around him, by working as a classroom aide in a 
prekindergarten program. And I know from my discussions with my son, 
who just turned 30 a couple of weeks ago, how important the work is and 
how poorly paid it is, and how parents struggle even to afford sending 
kids to a childcare program, where the workers don't get paid very 
much.
  So this really is a classic market failure, and I think about Lin as 
I advocate for this. And I also had a chance to think anew, Senator 
Murray, about the importance of a priority.
  A good news story the other day was that the American unemployment 
rate is the lowest that it has ever been in 50 years at 3.5 percent, 
and we all are hearing employers saying: But I can't hire people. I 
can't hire people.
  There are millions of Americans who could be in the workforce, 
filling up these jobs that employers are looking to fill, but are not 
in the workforce because of a lack of affordable childcare. So it is 
important for kids, it is important for families' pocketbooks, and it 
is important for the providers themselves. But our economy does not 
work in the way that it should if we don't have affordable childcare 
options. So I pledge to work together with my chair on this issue until 
we get it done.

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