MENENDEZ PUSHES FOR CHILD CARE EXPANSION IN BUILD BACK BETTER ACT

Statement

U.S. Senator Bob Menendez (D-N.J.), a senior member of the Senate Banking Committee, today pushed for the expansion of access to affordable child care as the Senate considers the Build Back Better Act that includes key provisions to support working families. During an oversight Committee hearing with Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, Sen. Menendez pointed out the many benefits of expanding access to affordable child care, such as improving labor force participation, especially amongst minority women.

"The evidence is clear that the currently broken child care system is especially harmful to the most vulnerable members of our society such as African American and Latina moms,"said Sen. Menendez. "Congress is on the precipice of significantly expanding access to affordable child care through the Build Back Better Act and I urge my colleagues to strongly support this expansion as we finalize the details of this bill."

Over the past two decades, the cost of child care has more than doubled, while wages have remained mostly stagnant. Currently, low- and middle-income families can spend between 14 and 35 percent of their income on child care.Many parents find that child care expenses consume most of their paycheck, and some decide to leave the workforce all together as a result. Typically, mothers are the ones who make that tradeoff.

During the hearing, Sec. Yellen agreed with Sen. Menendez and indicated the U.S. has fallen behind in being a leader for workforce participation among women and that provisions in the House-passed Build Back Better Act, such as expanded access to child care, would enable women to participate in the U.S. labor market.

"One of the reasons that labor force participation, especially of women in the United States, is now lower than that in many developed countries is because once upon a time we were a leader and now we've fallen behind and a major difference between the United States and other developed countries is our support for child care, paid family leave -- things that enable women to participate in the labor market,"
said Sec. Yellen
.

Source