Do you want (need) better child care, or more affordable child care? That’s an either/or for American families these days, if even one of those options is available. But Hillary Clinton is offering a plan to do both. Speaking in Kentucky Tuesday, Clinton is laying out an agenda that:
… would seek to boost pay for child-care workers, as a way to improve retention and attract educators with stronger qualifications. Clinton will call this the RAISE initiative, for “Respect And Increased Salaries for Early Childhood Educators,” and it will be based on successful pilot programs now operating in several states.
But by far the most intriguing part of Tuesday’s speech may be a promise that Clinton intends to make. According to the campaign aides, Clinton will say that the federal government should commit to making sure that no family ever pays more than 10 percent of its income on child-care expenses.
Cue the furrowed brows and concern that this country can’t afford to take care of its children and pay its childcare workers a living wage, not even as an investment that will pay off all the way through to the lives of the children it helps, as well as in the short term by taking a major stress off of working families. We have to save that money for wars, don’t you know.
Clinton is also calling for an expansion of a home visiting program that benefits at-risk low-income children.