TRANSCRIPT: At A Press Conference On Senate Democrats’ Vision For High-Quality & Affordable Child Care, Leader Schumer Vows A Democratic Majority Will Meet American Families’[...]

Washington, D.C. - Today, Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) spoke at a press conference on Senate Democrats' vision to make child care more affordable, available, and high quality. The child care vision builds on the Senate Democrats' affordability agenda, which has so far also touched on housing, grocery prices, energy, and health care. Below are Senator Schumer's remarks, which can also be viewed here:

Donald Trump sent America into an affordability crisis. People agonize as they sit around the kitchen table. Are they going to pay this bill or not that bill? And one of the, you know, there's food, there's health care, there's buying a home. But there's also child care. And nothing is more important than having good child care for our children and our grandchildren. You're entrusting these beautiful babies to someone you want to feel will take good care of them and help them grow and nurture. And these days, it's harder and harder for parents to afford it.

We have so many single-family, single adult parents, who have kids. Even when you have two parents, most of them work, and the agony that I have heard from my constituents when someone gets sick, when someone can't do anything, "who's going to take care of the kids? What am I going to do?" It's agonizing and it happens every day all the time.

And so, I am proud today that we are turning our vision of reducing costs to child care. Our caucus will make reducing child care costs, providing universal child care, one of the highest priorities when we get the majority back next year. We are going to get this done.

Trump made it worse like everything else, like what he's doing today in other places. He made it worse. He removed the caps on child care costs. He froze $2.4 billion in funding for the five states that didn't vote for him. Are the parents, are the children different in states that vote for him and don't vote for him? They all need child care, and to try to make this a political issue and a divisive issue is so un-American. It's so despicable. But that's his M.O.: divide us, even on something beautiful like child care. Our families deserve better.

When we Democrats were in charge, when I was the Majority Leader, we made a historic $39 billion investment in child care, with the help of two Senators with me and many others, that lowered costs by 10%, [added] 63,000 new child care workers, increasing the supply by 7% of available slots. And when we return to the majority, we're going to build on those achievements. They will, you ain't seen nothing yet. If you thought what we did was good before, you ain't seen nothing yet.

So, we're focused on a day one solution to the child care crisis that meets parents' needs while investing in the beautiful children we see here and tens of millions of more like them around America. We're ready to advance real solutions that help families access and afford child care. This is a wonderful day, but this is just the beginning.

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