“I’m so proud that Massachusetts is a leader in child care. State level investments have saved almost 1,000 programs and 18,000 seats across the state from closure. But we can’t expect states to keep plugging the holes of a failing system. And we can’t keep letting early educators and child care providers bear the weight of underinvestment. We can’t let generations of families fall behind because our broken system, and we cannot let our child care system and all of the children, all of the families, all of the workers and providers in it fall off a cliff because there isn’t enough funding for the children in our country to get the care which they need.
“We need to give states the financial freedom to invest, to improve quality, to reduce costs, to expand access. And we need to guarantee that children and families have high-quality child care. We need a national, permanent solution to the child care crisis.â€
— Senator Ed Markey testifying at a session of the United States Senate, November 29, 2023