Casey pushes child care bills
U.S. senator visits program at YMCA
POTTSTOWN >> Charneesha Queen has to be careful about making more money. If she makes too much, the cost of her child care goes up.
“Instead of celebrating a promotion, I find myself asking if I can still afford the cost of care?” she said.
Ashley Faison has an 8-yearold son on the autism spectrum, who has thrived in the YWCA TriCounty Area’s childcare program. She would like him to have a sibling, but she isn’t sure she can afford child care for a second child. “It weighs on me,” she said. Lewis Baker is a full-time student and also works. His wife has two jobs.
“We’re looking to buy a house, but the cost of child care in most
places is cost-prohibitive,” said Baker.
Those were just some of the stories told to U.S. Sen. Bob Casey, who visited Pottstown’s YWCA Wednesday to talk about two bills in Congress that could make some of those obstacles easier to face.
He thanked them and told them their voice is important. “People in Washington can dismiss my arguments, but they cannot dismiss your stories,” he said.
And stories like that are being told all over the nation, said Casey.
“The cost of quality child care has gone up 25 percent in a decade and if you are living below poverty, you are already burdened by disadvantages that others don’t have,” Casey said.
“We know that by age 4, children in poverty are already 18 months behind developmentally. You all know that, but not enough people in Washington, D.C., know that,” he said.
Casey, a Democrat and Pennsylvania’s senior senator, said he is working with Washington state’s senior senator, Democrat Patty Murray, on two bills to ease the burden of child care costs.
Murray’s bill, called The Child Care for Working Families Act, would cap the cost of child care at 7 percent of household income; ensure child care workers are paid “a living wage,” among other things.
In Pennsylvania, said Casey, one-parent families pay as much as 46 percent of their income for child care.
“I have to choose between buying food and paying my co-pay for child care,” said Delvin Wollah, an African immigrant with three children. “I’m only picking up extra hours to catch-up with my bills, but then the cost of child care goes up.”
Casey’s bill is an update to the tax code to make the full Child Care Tax Credit available to working families with income under $120,000. The current phase-out beings at $15,000 of income.
It would increase the maximum credit from $1,050 to $3,000 per child up to $6,000 and would be indexed for inflation.
The bills are moving separately, he said, to increase their chances of success. “The likelihood that both bills passing together is remote, because of how things work now in Washington, D.C.,” said Casey.
“In the old days, we would work together with the other side on legislation before you introduced it, and we need a bi-partisan partner, but the other side isn’t interested at present in grabbing hold of bills like this, they would rather do a scaled-down version,” Casey said.
Murray’s bill “is new policy. It’s a big bold bill, not a nibblearound-the-edges bill and it will be costly, but we’re beyond scaled down approaches,” said Casey.
“We can’t talk about being a strong America, with a strong economy, without investing in our kids and neither side is doing enough,” Casey said.
Pottstown Schools Superintendent Stephen Rodriguez, who was among the 15 people on Wednesday’s panel, said thanks to the school districts’ strong partnership with Montgomery County Community College, I have the privilege of seeing our students almost from birth into adulthood.”
“And if we want to break the school-to-prison pipeline, it’s about investing in parent support,” said Rodriguez. “If the parents aren’t supported, it goes bad pretty quickly.”
Without the benefits of quality early education, “we watch students implode, get involved in special education that costs so much more than it needs to,” he said.
Noting that Pottstown further struggles with Pennsylvania’s public education system which underfunds it by more than $13 million, Rodriguez added, “this Commonwealth is at a crossroads. We face a choice, to better support our children and in 18 or 20 years continue to have a strong economy, or undercut public education and pay a heavy price.”
“Our choices are becoming very stark, fundamental and basic,” Casey agreed.
He said the tax reform bill passed last year was a missed opportunity to help children and low- and middle-income families by not including improvements to the Child Care and Dependent Tax Credit.
“To say is was a missed opportunity, a once-in-30-year opportunity, is an understatement,” said Casey, adding that the reduction in the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 21 percent did not “help workers and wages,” and cost the nation $1.5 trillion in revenue over 10 years — money that could have been used to pay for quality child care and early education.
Montgomery County Commissioners’ Chairwoman Val Arkoosh said investing in early education and child care has a three-fold benefit.
“Firstly, the child benefits from high quality early education,” she said.
“Secondly as everyone knows, a working parent who is worried about their child, will not fully focus on their job, so employers benefit,” said Arkoosh. “And lastly, the workforce benefits.”
She said Montgomery County has more jobs than it does workers.
“We are a net importer of workers, but we have 244 low-income children who are on the wait list for child care aid,” Arkoosh said. “That’s 244 parents who could be at work tomorrow, building the local economy.”