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PAEYC’s parent organization and affiliate, the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC), recently released a statement and video supporting what they feel tax reform needs to achieve.

It would:

• prioritize the elements of the PACE (Promoting Affordable Childcare for Everyone) Act, a bipartisan, bicameral piece of legislation designed to help more families afford child care by taking the important steps of making the Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit (CDCTC) fully refundable, increasing its value, and indexing it to inflation;
• ensure families are treated to the same promise of consistency and certainty as corporations, by making individual tax cuts permanent, not temporary; and
• demonstrate the fiscal responsibility necessary to ensure that not only taxes, but also mandatory and discretionary funding, would all be best positioned to support continued and future investments in our children, families, and educators.

However, these goals do not align with Congress’s recent tax reform proposal. The tax bills that emerged:

• fall short on many solutions for addressing affordability in child care;
• create additional burdens for our current and future workforce in accessing higher education;
• and impede the short- and long-term funding available for foundational and successful federal early childhood education programs like the Child Care and Development Block Grant, Head Start, Medicaid and SNAP, each of which provide critical support for our country’s young children, families and educators.

NAEYC and PAEYC both strongly believe that individuals and policymakers who are geographically, demographically, and ideologically divided on many issues can come together around the importance of investments in early childhood education.

Call your Senators TODAY and ask them to vote NO on the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act by saying:

• As a constituent, I am disappointed by this version of tax reform, which I believe is a missed opportunity to prioritize working families with young children.
• The provisions in this bill do not meet the needs of families who struggle to pay for child care nor of educators who want to pursue higher education. In addition, they threaten the short- and long-term health of important programs that do support families such as Medicaid, SNAP, and the Child Care and Development Block Grant.
• For these reasons, I oppose the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, and hope you will do so as well.