Vice Presidential Pool Reports of September 15, 2021

VP Print Pool Report 1

Greetings from the Treasury Department.

Vice President Kamala Harris and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen will soon speak on child care following today's release of a Treasury report calling the current child care system "unworkable."

https://home.treasury.gov/system/files/136/The-Economics-of-Childcare-Su...

The event, which will begin shortly, is taking place in the "Cash" room, which is on the other side of an unused cash vault, according to staff. The room has three heavily gilded chandeliers and marble Corinthian column

The VP and Secretary Yellen will be joined by a Maryland parent, Nicholas. Each will speak for about 10 minutes. Bio details on Knight provided by the VP's office are below.

Nicholas Knight
Parent Speaker

Nicholas is a proud husband and dad of three kids. He works providing legal technology expertise to the federal government and is currently working on his bachelor's degree at the University of Maryland, Global Campus.

VP Print Pool Report 2 - additional details from WH

Hit send a second to early on that first report. A White House official has just provided additional background. Also, to clarify, the pool is here waiting for the VP and Sec. Yellen to arrive. The event is now expected to begin at 3:50, per WH official.

Background from a White House official:

During this critical period of negotiations on the Build Back Better Agenda, today at 3:50pm EST Vice President Harris will make her first trip to the Treasury Department since taking office to hold an event with Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen and make the case for the Biden-Harris Administration's proposed investments in childcare that will benefit women, children, and working families.

The Vice President will announce the release of a major, new Treasury Department report on the economics of childcare: https://home.treasury.gov/system/files/136/The-Economics-of-Childcare-Su...

The report lays out the problems facing our childcare sector, including low revenues, thin profit margins, low numbers of providers relative to the number of young children, and low pay for workers. It find that the proposals in the Build Back Better Agenda would address these market failures, help mothers and fathers remain in the labor force, make childcare more affordable for families across the nation, and ensure we can prepare our children for the future.

Immediately after taking office, Vice President Harris called the mass exodus of women leaving the workforce a national emergency – elevating the crisis. The pandemic has hit women workers hard – and the complete breakdown of childcare infrastructure is an important reason why. In fact, as many as half of the mothers with young children who quit their jobs because of the pandemic cited childcare issues as a reason.

Working alongside President Biden, the Vice President has made the case publicly and behind the scenes that we must fix our nation's child care system – to help women and working families. She has convened leaders in Congress and women leaders of advocacy organizations, visited women-led small businessesacross the country to hear how women have been impacted by the pandemic – including how they have been impacted by the child care system, visited child care centers to see firsthand the challenges that parents and workers face, and addressed international institutions on the issue of how to make the world work for women.

Policy Background – Overview of Treasury Childcare Report

Overview of U.S. Childcare Landscape: The value for the childcare services market in the United States was estimated to be $60 billion in 2019. 1 in every 110 workers, and 1 in every 55 female workers, works in early childhood education and care. In the United States, childcare is generally provided in 3 ways:

• Home-based Care: Home-based childcare is provided in someone's home and includes licensed family childcare homes as well as care by friends, family, or neighbors.
• Center-based Care: Private childcare provided outside of a home-based setting includes licensed childcare centers (either non-profit or for-profit), and other unlicensed settings.
• Public Programs: A number of public programs provide funding for childcare or direct childcare services, including the Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF), Head Start, the Social Services Block Grant (SSBG), and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF).

Deficiencies in U.S. Childcare System: The US childcare system highly fragmented and mostly populated by small, single-establishment nonprofit and for-profit firms. There are several shortcomings in the way the market is structured that lead to poor outcomes:

• Low Revenue: Families are stretched very thin, and are typically unable/unwilling to pay much above 10 percent of their income on childcare before they choose to forgo outside care altogether.
• High Costs: Childcare is a labor-intensive industry wherein that wages constitute at least 50-60 percent of expenses. Despite low salaries, labor costs are high because childcare requires a high ratio of adult caregivers to children under care.
• High Turnover: Childcare workers have average annual pay of $24,230, putting them in the second percentile of all occupations. In 41 states more than 15 percent of childcare workers are below the poverty line, and half rely on public assistance. Accordingly, 26-40% of the childcare workforce leaves their job each year.
• Slim Profits: Due to the high costs and low revenue, most for-profit childcare facilities operate on razor-thin margins – typically less than one percent.
• Poor Geographic Availability: Due to the limitations described above, there are many "childcare deserts" nationally where parents are unable to access quality childcare services. Nationwide, over half of Americans live in childcare deserts.

Argument for Public Involvement: A number of structural issues make our privatized childcare model untenable:

• Financial Constraints: Parents experience their highest childcare costs at the points in their careers when they are least able to finance them. The substantial costs of childcare are largest, on average, in the 5 years after the birth of a family's first child, when young families earn the least.
• Positive Spillover: There are a number of positive spillover effects to a robust childcare system that suggest a larger public role is warranted. Researchers have found that children who attend early childhood education and care programs stay in school later in life, commit fewer crimes, and stay healthier.
• Quality Concerns: Because the primary recipients of childcare are young children, parents often have little information about the true quality of their childcare providers. Government can help ensure providers adhere to best practices.
• Discrimination: Because the childcare industry is disproportionately comprised of women of color, childcare workers are highly susceptible to multiple forms of discrimination that the government could protect against.

The Build Back Better Agenda: BBB includes the following childcare provisions:

• Child Care for American Families Program: BBB will cut costs of child care by more than half for most American families. It generally caps the cost of child care for all children under 5 at 7% of a family's income.

• Universal Preschool: The universal preschool program proposed in BBB would increase access to free, high-quality childcare for all 3- and 4-year-olds in the country.
• Child Tax Credit (CTC) and Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit (CDCTC) expansion: ARP expanded the CTC from $2,000 per child to $3,000 per child 6 and above, and $3,600 for children under 6. It also made the CDCTC much more generous—extending the new CDCTC through BBB would enable all families earning up to $125,000 to recover as much as half of their child care expenses for children under age 13, a total of $4,000 for one child or $8,000 for two or more children. Critically, ARP made both the CTC and CDCTC fully refundable, allowing low-income Americans to benefit from the full credit for the first time.
• Childcare workforce: BBB will give providers funding to cover the true cost of quality care, and allocate funding to ensure child care workers earn a living wage that will enable them to provide quality care. The typical child care worker earned only $12.24 per hour in 2020 with few benefits, and 40% are women of color.
• Paid Leave: Currently, millions of people do not have access to paid family or sick leave. BBB proposes establishing a national comprehensive paid family and medical leave program.

VP Print Pool Report 3

The VP has left the White House is en route to Treasury, Kyle Mazza from UNF News helpfully says in an email. Staff told reporters we may start early-- which would actually mean starting on time.

Treasury staffers are seated in the audience-- seated six feet apart and masked. For those of you want to follow along, the WH says you'll be able to find it here:

US Treasury FB
US Treasury YouTube
Secretary Yellen Twitter
US Treasury Twitter
VP Twitter
VP Facebook

VP Print Pool Report 4

The event started at 3:50 p.m. Nicholas Knight took the stage first, followed by Secretary Yellen and Vice President Harris.

Secretary Yellen has tweeted a livestream link for those that need it.

https://twitter.com/SecYellen/status/1438226284249694209?s=20

VP Print Pool Report 5

Knight discussed his family's financial struggles to pay for childcare before introducing VP Harris.

"Daycare was never an option for us," Knight said, noting the high costs and concerns about quality.

Harris thanks Knight for his courage before launching into substance of the speech. She thanks Treasury staffers for working around the clock.

"This work will make a difference in the lives of all of those working families."

Harris calls "mass exodus" of women from the workforce "a national emergency," and says the pandemic has hit women especially hard and that without access to childcare working mothers had to leave their jobs.

VP Print Pool Report 6

Harrs said some estimates are that the GDP would be 5 points higher if women participated in the workforce at the same rate as men. "Even more than the dollars and cents of it all, this I would suggest is about what kind of nation we are," she said.

Harris said childcare is a prerequisite for millions of Americans to work, but said the Treasury report confirms that childcare remains too expensive for too many working families.

"The United States is falling behind on a global scale on this issue," Harris said, contending that U.S. invests less in childcare than other developed nations.

Harris then transitioned to discussion of the Biden administration's domestic agenda currently before Congress. She said every 3 and 4-year-old will have access to high quality pre-school.

VP Print Pool Report 7

Harris discussed her mother's status as a working mother, a breast cancer researcher who was able to do her work because Harris and sister were able to go to a childcare center.

Harris then turned the podium over to Secretary Yellen. Yellen said economic policymaking is data-driven, but we need to see the humanity under the data.

Yellen said 40 years ago on this exact day she returned to work at UC Berkeley as a mother and needed to find childcare for her son.

VP Pool Report 8

The event has concluded. Harris and Yellen did not take questions. They have exited the stage.

Yellen's speech covered both the data in the report and her personal experiences as a working mother.

"Those who provide childcare aren't paid well. And many who need it can't afford it," Yellen said.

She said the Treasury report found that parents often need childcare at the moment they can least afford it. She also said that roughly half of Americans live in childcare deserts. She calls the childcare industry "a textbook example of a broken market."

Yellen said she would not be in this job today if she did not have an excellent babysitter 40 years ago. She said it's time to treat childcare as essential a tool for economic growth as infrastructure or energy.