IV 
114TH CONGRESS 
1ST SESSION 
H. RES. 386 
Expressing the sense of the House of Representatives that the availability 
of high-quality child care for working parents should be increased. 
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 
JULY 28, 2015 
Ms. BONAMICI (for herself, Mr. GRIJALVA, Mr. ELLISON, Mr. SCOTT of Vir-
ginia, Ms. MATSUI, Ms. FRANKEL of Florida, Ms. DELAURO, Ms. SCHA-
KOWSKY, Mr. CONYERS, Mr. NADLER, Mr. MCDERMOTT, Mr. GALLEGO, 
Mrs. WATSON COLEMAN, Ms. CLARK of Massachusetts, Mr. POCAN, Mrs. 
LAWRENCE, Mr. TED LIEU of California, Ms. HAHN, Ms. JACKSON LEE, 
Mr. HONDA, Ms. ROYBAL-ALLARD, Ms. NORTON, Ms. BROWN of Florida, 
Ms. LEE, Mr. MCGOVERN, Ms. EDWARDS, Mr. DANNY K. DAVIS of Illi-
nois, and Ms. TITUS) submitted the following resolution; which was re-
ferred to the Committee on Education and the Workforce 
RESOLUTION 
Expressing the sense of the House of Representatives that 
the availability of high-quality child care for working 
parents should be increased. 
Whereas today’s working parents depend on high-quality 
child care so they can work and support their families, 
and over 60 percent of children under 5, and 1⁄2 of grade 
school-aged children are in a regular child care arrange-
ment; 
Whereas United States businesses lose $3,000,000,000 annu-
ally due to employee absenteeism resulting from child 
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•HRES 386 IH 
care challenges, thereby weakening the stable and reliable 
child care system that is essential for today’s economy; 
Whereas child care is difficult to find for millions of families, 
particularly the nearly 9,000,000 parents who work non- 
standard hours, when only 8 percent of child care centers 
provide evening or weekend care; 
Whereas most middle-class families struggle to afford high- 
quality child care, with the median aggregate cost of 
nearly $16,000 per year the for full-time care for an in-
fant and a 4-year-old in a child care center; 
Whereas the average annual cost of center-based child care 
for an infant is over 1⁄2 of the income of a family of 3 
living at the poverty level in 21 States; 
Whereas high-quality child care and early education, espe-
cially for disadvantaged children, helps children thrive in 
school and beyond by decreasing special education place-
ment and reducing grade retention, by decreasing child 
abuse and neglect and juvenile arrests, by increasing high 
school graduation and college attendance, and by increas-
ing employment; 
Whereas the eligibility requirements to receive assistance 
under the Child Care and Development Block Grant Act 
of 1990 (CCDGB), the primary source of Federal fund-
ing support, exclude most American children from Fed-
eral child care assistance; 
Whereas the CCDBG still serves only a fraction of families 
eligible for Federal support, with only 17 percent of eligi-
ble children receiving Federal child care assistance—the 
lowest number since 1997; 
Whereas these issues affect all families, but disproportion-
ately affect women since over 95 percent of the formal 
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•HRES 386 IH 
child care workforce is comprised of women, and women 
also do most of the unpaid child care work in families; 
Whereas increased pay for workers in the child care industry 
improves the quality of child care for young children; 
Whereas to recruit and retain a qualified child care workforce 
for young children, child care staff for young children 
should be paid as much as K–12 staff with equivalent 
education and experience; 
Whereas a full-time living wage of at least $15 per hour is 
needed for all child care workers to meet their families’ 
essential needs, but the average child care center worker 
earns $10.60 per hour and has experienced no increase 
in real earnings since 1997; 
Whereas high-quality child care that works for everyone is es-
sential for a strong economy and future, working families 
also need universal preschool, child nutrition programs 
that promote health and wellness, fair work schedules, 
living wages, paid family and medical leave, paid sick 
days, and credit in the Social Security system for time 
spent caregiving, to support their well-being; and 
Whereas when families are guaranteed high-quality, flexible, 
available, and affordable child care, business productivity 
improves, parents have a greater likelihood of finding and 
keeping employment, and children do better in school and 
in life: Now, therefore, be it 
Resolved, That the House of Representatives supports 
efforts— 
(1) to provide child care assistance to all work-
ing families that need it, including middle class fam-
ilies who struggle to afford the cost of high-quality 
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child care and underpaid families who are too often 
left behind; 
(2) to make child care affordable, with no work-
ing family having to pay more than 10 percent of 
their income for child care and with additional help 
to families most in need; 
(3) to ensure that child care is available so that 
parents in today’s 24-hour economy can access high- 
quality care when and where they need it—during 
weekends, nights, as their job schedules change— 
with options across school, center and home settings; 
(4) to guarantee that all families eligible for 
child care will receive it, by creating a system that 
expands with need; 
(5) to improve the quality of child care by guar-
anteeing child care workers a living wage and wage 
parity with K–12 staff with equivalent education and 
experience, by improving training opportunities, and 
by giving workers a voice on the job to advocate for 
higher workplace standards and standards of care 
for the children they serve; and 
(6) to provide sufficient Federal, State, and 
local investment to ensure resources for both and 
high-quality jobs and affordable child care. 
Æ 
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