Grassroots Action Is Shoving States Into Action on Universal Child Care

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Biden completely surrendered an urgently needed program for America: universal child care.

Two pieces of good advice: “Never sign nothin’ by neon,” and “Never negotiate with snakes.” But President Joe Biden violated both rules this year, getting out-negotiated by Senate Republicans (and their tag-along Democrat, Sen. Joe Manchin). As a result, Biden completely surrendered an urgently needed program for America: universal child care.

The U.S. child care system is broken at every level: Availability is scarce, and even if parents can find an opening, the price is forbidding. Yet care providers and teachers are grossly underpaid.

So, we’re doomed by corporate greed and Washington’s indifference, right? Wrong! Grassroots people across the country are demanding and getting real change at the state level.

Last year, for example, voters in New Mexico rallied a decade-long care rebellion to put a landmark initiative on the ballot to guarantee that all children ages 0 to 5 have a constitutional right to quality early childhood education. Moreover, Amendment 1 allocates a steady stream of money from New Mexico’s Land Grant Permanent Fund to make this promise real. The vote initiative passed with 70% of the vote.

Vermont, led by such persistent grassroots groups as Let’s Grow Kids, is providing $130 million a year to establish a solid base for universal child care. Last month, the Republican governor vetoed the funding provision — but a bipartisan legislative majority, prodded by public demand, has now voted to override this veto.

Also, the red state legislature in Tennessee is providing a new and essential child care benefit to low-income parents of infants and toddlers: diapers. And even some in the U.S. Congress are beginning to get the child care message, having formed the first-ever Congressional Dads Caucus to push family-friendly policies.

This is democracy in action: When leaders won’t lead, shove them!

Political Perverts: Pro-Lifers Who’re Anti-Child Care

The political extremists demanding that government control every woman’s personal reproductive decisions claim that they are “pro-life.” But that’s a rhetorical fraud.

Look at their overall policy agenda and you’ll see that they are merely pro-birth. After that, adios, baby… good luck. They consistently join Republican lawmakers to kill public programs that deliver essential real-life needs to babies after they’re born.

Consider child care, a fundamental need in any society. Yet the “leaders” of our rich, sophisticated nation that supposedly treasures family, work and children have created a mingy system that literally is a crying shame, revealing that our society deliberately does NOT care for children.

Here’s reality for you: Ninety-eight percent of American workers are better paid than those we entrust to care for our children. Working at a nail salon, loading boxes at an Amazon warehouse, flipping burgers at McDonald’s are jobs given more pay and respect than most child care jobs!

This is not just a “poor people’s problem,” for the lack of child care availability, affordability and quality is a looming crisis for a majority of American families. Nonetheless, Republicans, enabled by corporate Democrat Manchin, recently killed funding of a program to both raise worker pay and lower the prices families are charged. Such care is “too expensive,” squawked the same lawmakers who routinely dole out billions in welfare to corporate profiteers.

But wait — the GOP has come up with a genius, low-cost solution: Relax safety and educational requirements for child care centers (as Iowa and Montana have already done), allowing 16-year-olds to provide “care” for up to 15 children each! Also, why not automate the system… and do the little nippers really need that orange juice and daily snack?
To support life, not just birth, join up with the First Five Years Fund.

Jim Hightower
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