U.S. Sen. Katie Britt, R-Ala., recently attended a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing where Secretary of Labor Lori Chavez-DeRemer presented the Department of Labor’s budget request for the 2026 fiscal year. During that hearing, Sen. Britt advocated for child care reform at a national level as a way to achieve one of the secretary’s stated goals: increasing workforce participation in the U.S.
“I want to hone in on one thing that really hasn’t been discussed today that you just brought up, and that is child care. Whether I am at the top of the state or the bottom of the state, or whether I’m out at my largest manufacturer or a small business on Main Street, they say workforce is an issue and they continually either lose people because of reliability or affordability of child care and/or it is more challenging to recruit,” Britt said during the hearing. “When we started digging in on this, we saw that about 59 percent of stay-at-home and/or non-working or part-time parents say they want to reengage in the workforce, but that affordability or accessibility of child care is an impediment to that.”
“Now look, if you want and have the opportunity to stay home, I absolutely want that for you. But if you want to reengage in the workforce and help with President Trump’s vision of building back America, then I want to make sure that we remove those impediments,” Britt added.
Britt asked Secretary Chavez-DeRemer if she was also hearing concerns related to child care from workers and employers across the country, to which the secretary replied, “absolutely.”
Britt then took the opportunity to highlight the Child Care Availability and Affordability Act, a bill which she introduced earlier this year alongside U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Virginia. The legislation specifically looks to expand several tax credits related to child care as a means of increasing accessibility and affordability.
“Between the ages of zero and five, a parent spends about 22 percent of their income on child care. When you look at our economy across the board, it’s $122 billion a year we lose to this reliability issue,” Britt stated. “I have a specific piece of legislation, a bipartisan piece of legislation, the Child Care Availability and Affordability Act, that really puts parents back in the driver’s seat, and also encourages businesses, both large and small, to be a part of the solution. I think it’s critically important that we empower parents, we empower hardworking Americans, and we help create a path for their American Dream and for prosperity.”
Chavez-DeRemer agreed with Britt that more could be done to improve child care access and offered to provide the senator with “whatever technical assistance” may be needed as Britt continues to work on getting the Child Care Availability and Affordability Act passed. Britt also indicated her own willingness to collaborate with the Department of Labor on child care issues.
“We’d love to continue to work with you as we continue to build momentum, we’ve been building it in a bipartisan way,” Britt stated. “I think this is something Americans deserve better from us, and we’re trying to produce that. Last year I actually asked the Federal Reserve chair about these commonsense reforms that I’m talking to you about and said, ‘if we were to do this would this actually help with our labor participation rate?’ and he said ‘absolutely,’ so I’m glad that you agree with that as well.”
Currently, the Child Care Availability and Affordability Act is awaiting consideration by the U.S. Senate Committee on Finance.
