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While a divided Congress won’t deliver big changes to the U.S. child-care system, modest policy tweaks have a chance, said experts on Monday during a panel discussion.
“I don’t really see much happening in the next few years on some of the big topics. There are some of the smaller things that you could see,” said Patrick T. Brown, a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, a conservative think tank.
He sees potential in particular for reforming what’s known as the Employer-Provided Child Care Credit, a program that aims to encourage businesses to spend on child care for their employees but that suffers from low usage. He said it’s a subject that “doesn’t get enough attention.”
“It helps employers compete for workers in a tight labor market, and it’s just a pure credit to employers. You’re not touching some of these other knottier conversations,” Brown said.
“I think something like that probably could move. You’ve seen some conversations around it.”
His remarks came during a panel discussion hosted by the Bipartisan Policy Center that was focused on Republican priorities in a divided government. Washington is facing gridlock after Republicans won control of the House in last fall’s midterm elections, while Democrats kept their grip on the Senate.
The Government Accountability Office, a watchdog agency, and the Bipartisan Policy Center, a think tank, both made recommendations last year on the Employer-Provided Child Care Credit. The BPC said it supported all of the GAO’s recommendations to “improve credit take-up rates, including expanding maximum allowable expenses and credit,” and it called for other changes, such as making the credit fully refundable.
During Monday’s discussion, another expert offered some similar views on child-care policy as Brown.
“You’re not going to see a lot of policy-making in this space in the near future. I think you see a lot of energy as people try to develop policies. I would point to sort of smaller things,” said Ted McCann, a fellow at the BPC who previously was an aide to former GOP House Speaker Paul Ryan.
“If you’re going to see a large shift like the CTC or something like that, the most likely opportunity is going to be during the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act 2025 reauthorization, or whatever they’re going to do for that — to extend it or not,” McCann added, referring to the child tax credit, which was briefly expanded in 2021.
Other experts have said the TCJA provisions that are expiring in 2025 are like a “hurricane we already see on the radar, and it’s slowly approaching.”
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