How Much Child Care Funding Do the House and Senate Finance Bills Provide?

In six separate published letters to newspaper editors, the Administration has claimed that the TANF reauthorization legislation that the House has passed and the legislation the Senate Finance Committee has approved include $3.3 billion in additional child care funding over five years. In fact, both bills commit only $1 billion in new federal funding for child care. The remaining funding is simply an increase in the authorization ceiling, or the maximum amount, that Congress is authorized to appropriate for the program through the annual appropriations process.[5] Increasing this ceiling does not commit the federal government to providing any new child care funding. • The $1 billion in new funding is an increase in mandatory funding and represents a true commitment of new federal resources to child care.[6] If the legislation is enacted, these funds $200 million per year for the next five years will be made available to states. • By contrast, the increase in the discretionary ...  more