WASHINGTON — Republicans in the Senate are continuing to hammer away at President Biden’s Build Back Better plan up for discussion.
The bill, which has already been passed by the House, would add lots of new spending for a plethora of programs, one of which would be help from providing working parents with affordable access to child care.
That was the topic on which Senate Republicans chose to focus on Wednesday. Many say the bill would in fact lessen the cost of child care, but Sen. Todd Young of Indiana says that would come at the cost of phasing out faith-based child care providers and would in fact increase the cost.
“The worst thing we could do is to put out of business our existing child care providers,” Young said. “Which is precisely what the Build Back Better plan would do. It would impose undue additional costs and requirements on our faith-based providers. Your YMCA’s, your church based providers.”
The proposal would save more than $5,000 in child care costs for two parents with one toddler earning around $100,000 a year. But, Young said that would be offset by the number of options that parents have or child care if faith-based providers are squeezed by the bill.
“This would be highly unpopular with Hoosier families and families across this country,” he said. “If you’re increasing demand at a time your decreasing supply, of course, your prices for care are going to go up.”
Indiana’s other senator, Mike Braun (R), continued to pound on what he believes is the fiscal irresponsibility of the bill.
“The American Rescue Plan sounds great. The Build Back Better plan sounds great,” Braun said. “We’re on a sugar high of government spending. The CBO, just took the real score on when you do something like this, and it’s closer to $3 trillion in additional debt, not $360 billion.
Braun has said all along that future generations will be strained to pay off the nation’s debt, which he says has grown from $18 trillion to $30 trillion in the time that he’s been in Congress.
Democrats have been pushing to try to bring the Build Back Better plan to a vote by Christmas, but that is looking more and more unlikely since they still don’t have the votes to pass it with a simple majority. Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) has been the key roadblock for Democrats since he has concerns about how the bill would impact already rising inflation.
