Washington Democrats Want a Blank Check to Take Over American Childcare

U.S. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) delivered the following remarks today on the Senate floor regarding Democrats’ reckless tax and spending spree:

“Since the earliest days of COVID-19, Washington Democrats have admitted they want to use the pandemic as a pretext to permanently transform our country. They hope to use the temporary crisis as a Trojan horse for permanent radical changes.

“One of their massive, ideological goals is a huge series of disruptive changes to American families’ childcare.

“Across our country, the political left is openly arguing that parents should be less involved in their own kids’ educations. That government should have more control over America’s children and their own parents should have less.

“And now, the same Democratic Party’s reckless taxing and spending spree would upend daycare, childcare, and pre-K as American families know it.

“The story is like Democrats’ long march toward socialized medicine: Take an intimate area of American life; pile on a maze of new mandates, regulations, cost increases, and subsidies; and push families out of the driver’s seat so Washington can run their lives.

“Not too long ago, the Democrats’ promise that if you like your health care plan, you can keep it was awarded the ‘lie of the year.’ Now they want a sequel: If you like your childcare, you can keep your childcare.

“Democrats want to sweep the first five years of children’s lives into a new set of top-down, one-size-fits-all, Washington-knows-best regulations.

“Their Big Government scheme would make childcare more expensive, then use taxpayer money to subsidize only some families — those who structure their arrangements in ways that Democrats like.

“Other families would be left to fend for themselves, now in an even more inflated market.

“Their bill would give Democrats and bureaucrats massive new authority they could use to shape curricula and standards nationwide. If providers don’t play along, they could be left out in the cold.

“The Biden Administration wants to insert itself into the most intimate family decisions and tell parents how to care for their toddlers.

“The entire scheme violates the basic principle of family fairness.

“Speaker Pelosi suggested last week that she approves of one kind of family structure — ‘parents earning and children learning.’ She said Democrats want government programs to ‘liberat[e]’ families so that both parents work full-time.

“Well, lots of families like that model, Mr. President. But other families prefer other models. Not everybody defines ‘liberation’ the same way. Yet Washington Democrats want Big Government to bless certain family arrangements and not others.

“Has your family made a different set of sacrifices so a father or mother can parent full-time? Sorry, Democrats want to redistribute money away from your family to other households that may earn more money.

“Has your family built its whole life around a plan for a grandparent to provide in-home care? Too bad — Grandma or Grandpa might have to fill out paperwork and apply for the bureaucrats’ blessing, or that family could be denied help also.

“Democrats could easily end up taxing working-class families with a full-time parent in order to subsidize the arrangements of wealthier two-income households.

“They are steamrolling over family fairness, over families’ choices and options, over the diversity of American families and their aspirations.

“And by the way, Democrats appear to want change the law in ways that could force faith-based providers to put aside sincerely-held religious beliefs.

“Just look at who would be administering all this, Mr. President.

“One key player would be the HHS Secretary, Secretary Becerra — the partisan California lawyer who got famous by suing Catholic nuns for being too Catholic and crisis pregnancy centers for being pro-life. A hardcore culture warrior.

“And this person is going to be the new national czar for early childhood?

“Another key figure would be Secretary Cardona. You may recall that, a few months back, Senate Republicans had to stop our Education Secretary from diverting funding for civics education toward woke propaganda that had been debunked by historians.

“And this is the same Biden Administration whose Attorney General just wrote an entire memo singling out concerned parents who speak up at their local school board meetings.

“Now they want to extend their federal control over babies and toddlers, too.

“Finally, get this, Mr. President. This tangled new entitlement would be so mind-bogglingly expensive that Democrats can’t even put a long-term dollar amount on it.

“The estimate is that all this government meddling will cost $400 billion over just the first several years. After that, nobody knows what the blank check will add up to!

“Taxpayers are supposed to pony up a blank check for the privilege of having less control over family choices?

“I think the American people will take a pass.”