Advocates call for increases in funding support for child care

MONTPELIER - As small children crawled around the maze of brightly-colored toys at the Family Center of Washington County on Thursday afternoon, Lee Lauber couldn't help but think about the static level of funding she sees from the state each year.

Lauber, the executive director of that child-care facility, said she and other providers are feeling a financial squeeze as costs to manage the centers increase while state and federal subsidies for the programs do not.

Federal child-care subsidy standards direct the state of Vermont to fund organizations such as the Family Center at 75 percent of the highest market rate. But Lauber said the funds she has seen over the last several years are closer to 50 percent.

That makes it difficult to manage a child-care facility that offers sliding payment scales depending on the family's income and also pays a decent wage and benefits to its employees to increase retention in a high-turnover field.

"Every year we lobby the governor for more money," she said. "He says he cares deeply about child care, but we just don't end up seeing that reflected in the budgets." State officials admitted the child-care funding is not up to the standard that the federal government desires. But Kim Keiser, the deputy commissioner of the Vermont Department of Children and Families and the manager of the Child Development Division, said it comes down to what to spend a limited pool of money on each year.

Keiser said the state spends about $35 million annually on child-care subsidies - about 65 percent of which comes from the federal government and the remaining from Vermont's general fund — a number that does not include other grants and funding efforts to support child-care facilities across the state.

"This really comes down to the level of resources we have in this program," Keiser said. "We fund everyone who is eligible."

The debate over child-care subsidies sprang from an early afternoon press conference at the Family Center by U.S. Rep. Peter Welch, Vermont's freshman Democrat in Washington, D.C.

Using a child's playroom as a backdrop, Welch highlighted a new bill he is co-sponsoring called the Middle Class Opportunity Act of 2007. The proposal - which Welch says has broad support in Congress - increases a number of tax credits for middle-income families.

Families are being squeezed financially as they grapple with high heating fuel costs, gasoline over $3 a gallon and wages that don't keep pace with costs, Welch said. Even in households with two wage earners, times are tough, he added.

"Congress has to have a long-term commitment to the middle class," Welch said. "That commitment was lost under the policies of the present administration."

Welch's proposal would double the child tax credit for the first claim year to $2,000 and boost the income eligibility for the dependent-care credit - often used by families caring for children or grandparents - from $43,000 to $75,000.

The bill would also simplify the education tax credit, which allows families to take breaks of $2,500 per child enrolled in post-high school classes. Finally, it keeps in place a protection for 42,000 Vermonters from the Alternative Minimum Tax, a 1970s-era tax on high-income earners that has not kept up the inflation and threatens to hit the middle-class with harsh increases.

These proposed changes, with the exception of the minimum tax protection, would come at the cost of about $7 billion in revenue for the federal government, Welch said, a gap that congressional Democrats will probably look to fill by closing other tax loopholes for corporations and the wealthy.

To sustain these breaks over the long-term, Welch suggested Congress will continue to push for a repeal of some of President Bush's tax cuts, which Democrats say benefit the wealthy over middle and low-income residents.

"The $7 billion we need equals less than two weeks of the Iraq War," Welch said. "And more and more people are beginning to recognize that."

Liz Emmons of Northfield, a mother of a 15-month-old with a second child due in April, stood by Welch at the press conference Thursday. She described the squeeze she and her husband feel, even though both work full-time.

Full text available at The Barre Montpelier Times Argus.