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Child Care Centers Need Billions If They’re To Survive Shutdown, DeLauro Says

AURELIE LUYLIER from Pixabay

The nation’s child care industry would benefit from a $50 billion federal emergency fund proposed by U.S. Representative Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut. She says the industry is on the precipice of a major crisis due to the COVID-19 shutdown.

DeLauro says the childcare industry is made up of small businesses that operated on razor thin margins even before the COVID-19 shutdown.

“If providers shut down, the situation becomes all the more dire.”

DeLauro says that’s why as chair of the Health, Human Services and Education Subcommittee of the Appropriations Committee, she’ll introduce a $50 billion emergency funding bill.

“I think that we need to respond to this pandemic and look at how we are providing funding for affordable childcare.”

Congress has already appropriated $3.5 billion for childcare in the CARES Act and another $7 billion is in the HEROES Act now stalled in the U.S. Senate. DeLauro says that’s not enough.

Analysis by the liberal think tank Center for American Progress finds that Connecticut could lose as many as 45,000 licensed child care spaces because most programs cannot survive for more than two months without funding.

Read the latest on WSHU’s coronavirus coverage here.

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As WSHU Public Radio’s award-winning senior political reporter, Ebong Udoma draws on his extensive tenure to delve deep into state politics during a major election year.
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