U.S. Sen. Patty Murray says the spate of recent firings at the U.S. Administration for Children and Families has intensified the nation’s child care crisis.
About 20% of workers at the Office of Head Start and about 25% of workers at the Office of Child Care, both housed within ACF, have reportedly been fired, part of the wave of federal layoffs engineered by Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency.
“Despite the president’s grand campaign promises to lower families’ costs, Trump and Musk have done absolutely nothing to increase child care openings, nothing to lower child care costs, and nothing whatsoever to address the child care crisis,” Murray said Wednesday in a news conference with early childhood education advocates. “… All they’ve done so far is make the child care crisis worse.”
Many families across Washington and the country struggle to pay for child care. In October, in response to a town hall question from a mom about what he would do to help people afford the high costs of child care, Donald Trump said he would “readjust” taxes “so that it’s fair to everybody, because it’s really not fair to everybody.”
Murray said the administration was firing “left and right, without rhyme or reason, the very workers who help child care providers and Head Start centers keep their doors open and who help ensure the kids in their care are safe.”
Head Start has provided free early education and support services to children from low-income families for 60 years. The program serves about 13,000 children in Washington.
In freezing and creating uncertainty over government funding and in firing federal workers, Murray said, Trump and Musk “are turning their backs on families and making the child care crisis that much worse.”
Washington’s senior senator, who got her start in politics advocating against the closure of her kids’ preschool, said that Trump and Musk “have absolutely zero clue on why child care is so important to families and to our economy.”
The Republican-led Congress could target Medicaid and other social safety net programs for budget cuts, which advocates warned Wednesday could also harm families with young children, including those enrolled in Head Start.
Joel Ryan, executive director of the Washington State Association of Head Start and ECEAP, said on Wednesday’s call that any cuts to Medicaid could directly affect these families.
“If you take health insurance away from low-income families, you’re taking it away from Head Start families,” he said.
Most children in Head Start in Washington are also on Medicaid, Ryan said. In the state, 1,700 Head Start children have chronic conditions.
Matthew Melmed, executive director of Zero to Three, an organization that advocates for babies and toddlers, said that Medicaid covers more than 40% of births in the United States and “is a lifeline for millions of parents and children.” Melmed also spoke at Wednesday’s news conference.
The wave of firings has occurred after Head Start programs across the country, including in Washington, were frozen out of the federal payments system.
“How does freezing funds, firing experts and gutting health care help families?” Melmed said. “It doesn’t.”
Last week, Murray and other Democratic senators sent a letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., asking for more information about the agency’s firings. HHS oversees the Administration for Children and Families.
“The American people deserve to know what is happening to the federal workforce tasked with carrying out HHS’ tremendous responsibilities, and Congress is owed the same,” they wrote.
The uncertainty on the federal level comes as lawmakers in Olympia also contemplate cuts and delaying planned expansions to Washington’s early learning programs amid the state’s budget crunch.
Washington’s state preschool program, the Early Childhood Education and Assistance Program, is similar to Head Start. The free, wraparound program serves children ages 3 to 5, primarily from low-income families.
State lawmakers are considering eliminating an early version of the program, known as Early ECEAP, for children from birth to age 3. State law is scheduled to broaden access to ECEAP by making it an entitlement program and raising income limits for Working Connections, the state program that helps families pay for child care, but lawmakers may push back those expansions.
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