Affordable, Quality Child Care
The lack of a good, affordable child care system is crushing families, workers, and small businesses. This doesn’t just hurt small business owners and our employees -- it also contributes to inequality when it comes to race, gender, and wealth. Access to stable, quality, affordable child care improves employee morale, reduces absenteeism, and increases business productivity. It creates a more stable workforce, reducing recruiting, training and turnover costs. Political leaders who care about small businesses, our employees, and our communities will support public solutions for affordable, quality child care for all.
Main Street Alliance small business owners support robust public investment in child care policies like the Child Care for Working Families Act, that help small businesses and families to:
- Lower child care costs for working families so that no family pays more than 7 percent of their income.
- Provide flexibility to accommodate the complex work schedules faced by small business owners and their employees by increasing the availability of care options and for nontraditional hours.
- Strengthen high-quality child care programs for infant to school age children, and for children with disabilities, by promoting quality standards and fair compensation and giving child care providers the resources and the support to improve.
- Create well-paying care jobs in the child care industry by increasing compensation for child care providers.
- Support small business child care providers in starting and growing their businesses, particularly in child care deserts, areas with a severe undersupply of licensed child care.
- Ensure that small businesses can also benefit from tax incentives for employer provided child care, through tax credits and subsidies that support small business child care cooperatives, and small business pooling.
- Generate a sustainable public revenue stream for child care investment by closing corporate tax loopholes, and creating a more a progressive income tax structure.
It’s time to give Main Street businesses a fighting chance. Big corporations win and small businesses struggle when lawmakers fail to act. Let’s level the playing field for small businesses, strengthen economic opportunities for our families and communities, and promote greater racial and gender equity by ensuring robust public investment in child care.