(WASHINGTON, D.C.) - The Federal Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF) was created to provide childcare for low-income families while parents work or obtain education and training, but the program is so underfunded that it provides subsidies to just 16% of eligible children. Childcare is so costly that a full-time Minimum-Wage Worker in the State of Alabama would need to work 29 weeks, from January to July, and use every penny of their earnings to cover the cost of unsubsidized childcare for one infant. The Trump Administration is proposing a new plan to divert CCDF funds from current recipients and give the resources to married couples with a stay-at-home parent. This will result in low-income Working Families losing CCDF funds, leading to increased childcare costs for everyone and possibly resulting in the closure of some Childcare Providers. 

The Consequences Of Moving Forward With The Trump Plan:

If married couple families are added to the list of eligible families without substantially increasing funding to provide subsidies to all eligible families, as is reportedly proposed, it will do significant harm to families of all types, whether they are married or not and whether they rely on subsidies or not.

With the new strain on available funds, families currently relying on CCDF could lose the subsidies that allow them to provide even a modest living for themselves and their children.

Without subsidized care provided by the CCDF, these families could work full-time for most of the year just to pay for childcare.

In Alabama, for example, a Minimum-Wage Worker working full-time would have to work 29 weeks - the equivalent of working from January to July - and use every cent of those wages to be able to cover unsubsidized childcare for one infant.

In North Carolina and Ohio, these Workers would need to work from January to October. 

These are parents who want to work to support their families but cannot afford unsubsidized childcare.

They also cannot afford not to work.

Reducing the availability of childcare funding for Working Mothers and Fathers will not only hurt families who rely on childcare subsidies, it will hurt all families who rely on childcare.

Siphoning these funds away from Working Families - disproportionately Black single Mothers -will also deprive Childcare Providers of a key source of revenue, potentially leading them to charge other families more for care, be forced to shed Staff, or even close down.

With families in so many communities across the Nation already experiencing a childcare crisis, this would exacerbate the shortage issue. 

To Read This Labor News Report In Its Entirety, Go To: New Trump child care plan would strip resources from low-income working families: A better solution is to fully fund the Child Care and Development Fund instead of redirecting resources away from working families | Economic Policy Institute