Sponsors (8)
Official title: To reauthorize the Child Care and Development Block Grant Act of 1990, to improve access to relative caregivers, and for other purposes.
Introduced March 24, 2025 by Riley M. Moore · Last progress March 24, 2025
The bill expands and directs child-care assistance toward certificates and paid relative caregivers (improving access and pay for home-based care and simplifying tax law) but does so by shifting funds away from center-based supports, eliminating the dependent care tax credit (raising costs for many families), and loosening restrictions that raise church–state and oversight concerns.
Parents and eligible families gain clearer access to child care certificates they can use to pay relative caregivers, increasing options for home-based care and easier receipt of assistance.
Relative caregivers (family members) can be paid at no less than 75% of family child care provider rates, increasing compensation for informal caregivers who provide home-based care.
States must periodically review and reduce burdensome licensing rules for relative caregivers (every 5 years), which could expand the pool of eligible family caregivers and improve access.
Millions of families lose the federal dependent care tax credit (elimination of section 21), reducing tax-based help for childcare and increasing out-of-pocket childcare costs—particularly for middle- and lower-income households that relied on the credit.
The bill shifts most direct services toward child care certificates (raising the direct-service funding share from 70% to 90%), which may cut funding for statewide programmatic activities and reduce supports available to center-based providers and systems.
Prohibiting use of grants or contracts and limiting parental choice to certificates can remove enrollment options with grantee/contracted providers, narrowing families' access to regulated center-based care.
Based on analysis of 3 sections of legislative text.
Requires CCDBG assistance to be delivered only by child care certificates and repeals the federal dependent care tax credit, with tax changes effective after enactment.
Revises federal child care law to require that child care assistance under the Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG) be delivered only through child care certificates and narrows some state plan requirements related to provider choices and continuation of assistance for parents who marry. It also repeals the federal dependent care tax credit in the Internal Revenue Code and makes multiple conforming tax-code changes; the tax repeal takes effect for taxable years beginning after enactment.