US-funded child care aid nearing reality with Biden bill

WASHINGTON (AP) — Women — and some men — in Congress have been fighting for government child care assistance for almost 80 years. With President Joe Biden's $1.85 trillion social services package, they are as close as they have ever been to winning.

And it's not just child care subsidies. Biden's bill making its way through Congress would put the U.S. on course to providing free prekindergarten, paid family leave to care for children or sick loved ones, and an enhanced child tax credit in a massive expansion of federal support to working families.

Taken together, it's Democrats' answer to President Richard Nixon's veto of a 1971 child care bill and the earlier scrapping of World War II-era child care centers, potentially providing families with more government help than ever as many struggle in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“I think COVID really illustrated to people how broken our child care system is in a way that people finally understood,” said Sen. Tammy Duckworth, an Illinois Democrat with two young children.

Biden’s big bill combines a series of long-sought Democratic goals to shore up families that have been tried before only to run into resistance, as they have again today, with Republicans in lockstep against the package.

The child care subsidies would attempt to guarantee that most Americans don’t spend more than 7% of their income on child care.

And while Congress approved the Family and Medical Leave Act nearly 30 years ago to guarantee time off, the U.S. remains among a handful of wealthy countries that do not offer paid time off to care for children or sick loved ones. Biden's bill would change that.

All told, the federal government’s new programs for paid parental leave, child care and an expanded child tax credit “would be pretty major, if not...