Research clearly demonstrates that child care assistance is critical to help low-income working families succeed and to support their efforts to find and afford quality child care settings that foster the well-being and healthy development of their children.
Yet the President's 2007 budget proposal freezes discretionary child care funding for the fifth consecutive year, limiting access to help for low-income families and further charting the course for a decade of indifference.
Last week, Congress passed the 2006 fiscal year budget bill, which increased mandatory funding for child care by just $200 million.
The meager increase in child care funding---intended to help states meet new work requirements in TANF---was more than $11 billion short of the amount the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimated that it would actually cost to both meet the TANF work requirements and continue to serve all low-income families now receiving assistance.5 This cut, coupled with a 1 percent cut to CCDBG discretionary funding, puts the real burden on state governments and working poor families to find affordable child care.
The Administration's budget assumes that spending on child care from all sources will remain steady; yet, states have fewer funds to spend on child care and many have already been forced to make cuts in their child care programs.
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