Tag: affordable child care

Tina Smith’s Fight for Affordable Child Care

DFL Dispatch Header

For the past year, Minnesota Senator Tina Smith alongside Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) has fought to bring economic relief to child care providers. The pandemic has shown us just how crucial affordable, accessible child care is. As schools shut down and students returned home, essential workers still had to report to work; and quality child care was a part of keeping their children cared for and safe.

Even before the pandemic, affordable child care was scarce across Minnesota and the country. As an article from MinnPost explained, “The economics of the industry cause providers to get paid very little while tuition costs for families can be enormous.” In April of 2020, Smith and Warren began their fight for child care bailout. 

In the 2020 fiscal year, the federal government gave $8.7 billion to states, territories and tribes for the Child Care and Development Block Grant. Through Smith and Warren’s dedication, the new stimulus package will give roughly $15 billion more to that program, plus another $24 billion for child care “stabilization funding” and another $1 billion for the Head Start program.

Continue reading “Tina Smith’s Fight for Affordable Child Care”

What happened to making child care affordable?

The following commentary by Rep. Peggy Flanagan was posted on the MinnPost website May 11, 2017:

As you read this, there are 4,997 families in Minnesota on a waiting list to access affordable child care. While they wait, often for years at a time, the very child-care facilities where they want to send their kids are hanging on by a thread as they struggle to keep their doors open.

We have an affordable-child-care crisis on our hands in Minnesota. And this was the year we were supposed to do something about it. Instead, Republicans in the state legislature are not only failing to move forward with a bipartisan plan to expand affordable child-care opportunities; they are actually making the problem even worse. Continue reading “What happened to making child care affordable?”