Date: 2008-04-14
Speaker: WASSERMAN SCHULTZ (democrat)
Chamber: H

Thank you very much. Mr.- Speaker. to continue on with the highlighting of the Week of the Young Child. there are statistics that are incredibly important. and I will go through some of those this evening. But more important than the statistics and the studies are the stories. And I can tell you. as a mom with young children. who I probably will talk about quite a bit this evening. you dont need studies. you dont need statistics to be able to see the progress that your child makes when they go through a preschool. when they go through a childcare program. And you can see their brain literally working like sponges. absorbing the information and processing it and turning it into useful information. And I can tell you that Ive seen my children. my fourandahalfyearold is still in preK and is just about to enter Kindergarten fiext year. And Ive watched her learn her ABCs. she can count to 100. she knows every color. every shape. And had she not had an opportunity to go to a wonderful preschool program to learn those things. yes. I could have spent time with her and taught her those things. but given that I work fulltime. and when I think about the hundreds of thousands. millions of parents who have to struggle with that choice. and then an administration that callously cuts those programs or flat funds them so that fewer. not more. parents have access to Head Start and child care. its just absolutely unconscionable. I wonder if they have a soul. I wonder if there is anyone in the White House that has a soul and that has a heart. Because surely those kinds of decisions are only made by heartless people. I am so glad to be joined by the gentlewoman from New York. a wonderful Member. Congresswoman YVETTE CLARKE. And I am glad that she has also joined me tonight. Before I turn it over to her. I want to highlight a story of Jennifer from Chicago because. like I said. highlighting the stories as opposed to the studies and the stats is what really shows you the kind of impact that the policy decisions that we make up here when it comes to funding child care programs and Head Start adequately. thats what really matters. I want to talk about Jennifer from Chicago. who was profiled in a news story on Marketplace radio. Jennifer works as a receptionist at a real estate company. She is a single mom working fulltime and going to school parttime. And so many people will hear their own story in Jennifers story. Jennifer was doing all she could to improve her life and the life of her daughter. In fact. even though Jennifer was working fulltime. raising her daughter on her own and going to school parttime. she impressed her boss so much with lher work that she was given a small raise. And then. Jennifer ran into a big problem. With the raise that she got. she could no longer qualify for assistance with the Illinois child care program that she had been using. She literally had such a dramatic shift in what she had to pay for her daughters child care. it went from $2.000 to $9.000 a year just by that small increase in her salary. and that small increase in her salary caused the $9.000 that she then had to pay. that was 40 percent of her salary. just from the small raise that she got. Her only option at that point was to send her 5yearold daughter to live with the girls father a couple of hours away in Indiana. So she had to either give up her job or give up her daughter. But if she gave up her job. she wouldnt be able to care for her daughter. Mr. Speaker. So obviously this is a situation that was not working. So Jennifer. this is just so sad. she had to go back to her boss and actually ask him for a demotion. She had to ask him to cut her pay by about $100 per paycheck so that she could be eligible for the subsidized child care again so that she could get her daughter back. That was the choice that she was faced with. and it was just awful. I cant even imagine. That meant that her income would again qualify for the child care assistance. and then she immediately applied for it. So the transition from paying a copayment to paying the full cost of care is what Illinois Action for Children calls "the cliff." People like Jennifer. they fall off the cliff. And we actually penalize people like Jennifer who work hard to try to get ahead. We tell them no. you cant work your way up. We cant continue to hold these people back. We have got to make sure that we help these people pursue these dreams. advance themselves. be able to improve the quality of their childrens education. improve their own lot in life and their familys lot in life. not give them a choice between giving up their children or pursuing a better opportunity in life. And Ms. CLARKE. the National Womens Law Center says that only one in seven U.S. children are eligible for Federal child care help. only one in seven of those kidsget it. And in the view of the National Womens Law Center. all these programs for Head Start and child care have never been fully funded by the Federal Government. I would be happy to yield to the gentlewoman. Thank you for joining us today.