Wisconsin Republicans to Working Families: Child Care Doesn’t Count

MADISON – Today, Assembly Republicans voted against a budget amendment that would have continued funding for Child Care Counts. The Child Care Counts program was created during the pandemic to help child care providers struggling to keep their doors open and allow parents to continue working. With funding for this program set to run out and a child care system on the brink of collapse, Governor Evers’s budget included a $340 million investment to make this program permanent. Republicans cut this historic investment in child care for working families and today refused to consider restoring that cut.

“Wisconsin faces a child care crisis. Working families face impossible decisions about whether to pay tens of thousands of dollars per year or simply stop working altogether – if they can even find care,” said Representative Lisa Subeck (D-Madison). “The Child Care Counts program works to make child care sustainable and affordable and is one of the most important investments we could make in our workforce, our children, and our economy.

Today, Republicans sent a clear message to working families that child care doesn’t count. Not only will they have to answer to the families who lose their child care, but also to employers for whom the workforce crisis is about to get even worse.”