Exclusive: Biden administration frees up $39 billion to help ailing child care industry
Source: USA Today
White House set to announce a plan to offer $39 billion in funds for child care providers under the president's $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief package.
Courtney Subramanian, USA TODAY
Published 12:12 PM EDT Apr. 15, 2021 Updated 12:17 PM EDT Apr. 15, 2021
WASHINGTON – The Biden administration on Thursday released nearly $40 billion of the administration's $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief package to confront what President Joe Biden has called an “acute, immediate child care crisis,” distributing money to help providers pay their rent and rehire workers made jobless by the pandemic, as well as make child care more affordable for low-income families.
The U.S. child care sector has collapsed under the confines of the coronavirus pandemic, shuttering thousands of day care centers depleted by low enrollment and overwhelmed COVID-19 sanitation costs. Parents, often women, who could no longer afford child care, were forced leave their jobs and shoulder the burden at home. The closures have been especially stark for women of color, who predominantly make up the child care workforce.
"It’s a core part of making our economy work. It’s important to small businesses, to ensuring we don’t have job losses in the short-term and in the long-term child care jobs are good paying jobs,” Carmel Martin, White House deputy domestic policy adviser for upward mobility, told USA TODAY.
"It’s important from the perspective of parents, and their ability to live happy lives, but also go to work without worrying about children and the critical component of child development.”
Read more: https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/news/politics/2021/04/15/covid-19-relief-biden-releases-39-million-aid-child-care-industry/7232315002/
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