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Take Action on National Call-In Day, Thursday, July 25

Take action NOW! Please participate in a National Call-In Day on Thursday, 
July 25 to urge your senators to make necessary improvements in childcare 
and welfare reauthorization.

Call your senators' Washington, D.C. offices directly (Don't know the 
numbers? Go to http://www.senate.gov/) or call the Capitol switchboard at 
(202) 224-3121 to connect to your senators' offices. Be sure to ask for the 
staffer who covers children's and welfare issues.

Your message:

I strongly urge you to support substantial additional funding for childcare 
for welfare families when welfare reauthorization comes to the Senate floor. 
The goal of welfare-supported childcare should be to provide adequate 
childcare to as many eligible families as possible. Currently, however, 
childcare subsidies for poor families are grossly underfunded, with Child 
Care and Development Block Grants currently funded at about 14% of need, 
while Head Start is funded at only two-thirds of need.

Please do not allow an increase in mandatory work hours for welfare 
recipients beyond the current 30 hours a week. Please oppose the 
Hutchison-Sessions Bill (S. 2648) or any similar amendment that would 
require welfare recipients to work an added ten hours per week without 
providing any significant additional childcare funding. It is not only 
callous but also impractical to insist that low-income parents work longer 
hours without offering additional childcare assistance.

Background:

Please don't let your senators return home to their families in August 
without helping the millions of low-income families that desperately require 
help in paying for childcare expenses. Congress can -- and must -- increase 
funding for child care subsidies for Temporary Assistance to Needy Families 
(TANF) recipients because too many parents receiving welfare assistance and 
working long hours currently don't have access to affordable child care 
services.

The drive for increased childcare assistance for low-income families is at a 
crucial point right now. Although the Senate version of welfare 
reauthorization is a big improvement over George W. Bush's punitive, 
regressive approach (which basically tells poor parents to work longer hours 
and get married), it still provides only $5.5 billion in new funds for child 
care over the next five years -- not nearly enough to help all TANF parents. 
When Assistant Secretary of Health and Human Services Wade Horn, who is 
responsible for overseeing the TANF program, was told that the current TANF 
funding for childcare only covered about 12% of need, he responded that he 
thought the funding was "generous."

During the Senate Finance Committee's mark-up of the Work Opportunity and 
Responsibility for Kids (WORK) Act, Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.) offered an 
amendment that would have increased childcare funding to $7 billion. Sens. 
Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.), Max Baucus (D-Mont.) and Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) 
spoke in favor of greater childcare funding; but Sens. John Breaux (D-La.), 
Kent Conrad (D-N.D.), Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) and Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) 
opposed the amendment although they did say they agreed that more childcare 
funding is needed. Senator Bingaman withdrew his amendment but may bring it 
up on the Senate floor. Reportedly, he and Sens. Daschle and John Kerry 
(D-Mass.) intend to work to obtain more childcare funding.

While the $7 billion proposed by Sen. Bingaman is the best offered to date, 
it is still far from adequate. A recent estimate developed by economist and 
childcare policy expert Dr. Barbara Bergmann indicates that providing 
childcare subsidies for 65% of welfare recipients working 40 hours per week 
would cost an additional $16.6 billion over the next five years -- three 
times what the Senate bill currently offers. Dr. Bergmann's estimate 
illustrates the inadequacy of the proposed TANF child care subsidy amounts 
discussed thus far.


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