Burr, Senate Republicans Highlight Actual Cost of Democrats’ Disastrous Child Care Plan
CBO estimates Dems’ child care takeover would cost $752 billion over next decade, while experts say middle-class families would pay $13,000 more per year for child care.
Today, Senator Richard Burr (R-NC), Ranking Member of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee, led a press conference with Republican Senators on the disastrous impact Democrats’ reckless tax-and-spending bill would have on child care providers and families.
On Friday, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released an analysis indicating that the Democrats’ reckless tax-and-spending spree would end up costing $4.9 trillion while adding $3 trillion in new debt. Additionally, CBO found if made permanent, Democrats’ child care programs would cost an estimated $752 billion over the next 10 years – twice as much the bill’s stated costs.
WATCH: Senator Burr is joined by Senators Tim Scott (R-SC), Joni Ernst (R-IA), Mitt Romney (R-UT), Susan Collins (R-ME), John Thune (R-SD), Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), Ben Sasse (R-NE), Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV), Mike Braun (R-IN), John Cornyn (R-TX), and Todd Young (R-IN) to discuss the Democrats’ disastrous child care plan.
Senator Burr’s remarks:
“We’re here to talk about the child care and pre-K proposal that’s in the Build Back Better proposal. A proposal that at least on the child care and pre-K had no hearings, had no debate, had no consultation with the states, no consultation with providers, and what we’d like to do is lay out for you what the cost is to the American taxpayer.
“This is a plan that total costs, Democrats say is $1.75 trillion. CBO’s new number scoring the plan is everything extending for the full 10 years is a number of $4.9 trillion.
“In the child care and universal pre-K space, the plan suggests that its $381 billion. The score from CBO, if those plans all exist for 10 years, is $752 billion. And, that’s making an assumption that 34 percent of eligible young children live in states that won’t participate in the child care piece, and 40 percent of eligible preschoolers live in states that won’t participate in a pre-K plan.
“So, to quote a liberal analyst, ‘Excluding kids in Texas, Alabama, Tennessee, Florida, the Carolinas, and other similar states from universal pre-K and child care subsidies is an intentional strategy to keep costs down.’”
“If the CBO had not factored non-participation in their estimates, then the reported costs for the last three years of these programs would have been at least 50 percent higher.
“That’s over and above the $752 billion dollars that CBO projected.
“The progressive Peoples Policy Project estimates that unsubsidized middle-class families will face [inflationary] cost increasing child care by the tune of $13,000 per year. So you take the current child care costs and add $13,000 additional dollars to the cost of child care for one [child] on an annual basis that’s not being subsidized.
“The Democrat plan intentionally shrinks the supply of providers by killing off faith-based providers, small family child care homes, kinship care.
“So, not only do we have a skyrocketing cost of $13,000 in additional cost for child care we are also reducing the supply of child care that exists in the country.
“The preschool program grows over time to require a state to invest 37 percent match all on state taxpayers.
“The Democrats end the funding for their child care and pre-K programs in just six years. You know, in Washington, we may get away with things like this, [but] across the country, parents are looking to plan their lives. They need the predictability of child care and it’s impossible to build in when in fact you put out a plan that says we’re going to subsidize it for six years.
“Listen, we’re all realists, and what I’ve asked my colleagues to do is share with you approaches to bring affordable child care to everybody in America, but also to talk about their experiences in their states, what they’re faced with, and more importantly what parents in their state are faced with. Because ultimately whether it’s the federal taxpayer, or the state taxpayer, or the family that pays $13,000 more per child, this is all parents across the country, and they’re the ones that are facing the rising costs of inflation today. This is putting it on steroids.”
To watch the full press conference, click here. To watch Senator Burr’s opening remarks, click here.
Earlier this month, Senators Burr and Tim Scott (R-SC) led a roundtable discussion with local child care providers to hear firsthand how the Democrats’ ill-constructed child care proposals will devastate existing child care programs.
