Wisconsin State Journal. August 28, 2023.
Editorial: Where’s the GOP plan to prevent child care centers from closing?
Sure, go ahead and exempt diapers, baby strollers and other child care products from Wisconsin’s sales tax.
Diapers are definitely a necessity for young families. And Wisconsin already exempts other essential products such as groceries and prescription drugs from its sales tax.
Just don’t think for a second that this Republican proposal somehow addresses the state’s child care crisis. So much more must be done to ensure children have quality care while their parents work. A real and much bigger solution is needed for families and our economy by early spring. That’s when more than $700 million in federal funding to stabilize Wisconsin’s child care industry during the pandemic is expected to run out.
Rep. David Steffen, R-Green Bay, and Sen. Jesse James, R-Altoona, recently proposed exempting baby products — cribs, monitors, safety locks, breast pumps, bottles and more — from Wisconsin’s 5% sales tax. They say it could save parents an estimated $37 million over two years.
The state could certainly afford it. State leaders didn’t come close to spending all of a protected $7 billion surplus when they finalized a two-year state budget this summer. Wisconsin is still expected to have a $4 billion surplus at the end of the current budget on June 30, 2025, according to the nonpartisan Legislative Fiscal Bureau.
Republicans who support Wisconsin’s strict and outdated ban on abortion may see the sales tax exemption on baby products as a way to show support for families with newborns.
Their tax-exemption bill also is being reintroduced just as the governor seeks legislative action to address the looming end to federal subsidies for child care providers.
But saving $5 a month on $100 in diapers, while helpful, isn’t going to make or break a family budget.
What Wisconsin parents really need — especially mothers and fathers with modest incomes — is better access to quality, affordable child care near their homes or jobs.
During the pandemic, the federal government subsidized higher wages for child care workers at thousands of providers across Wisconsin to keep them open. This helped retain staff who worried about exposure to the virus. Children were last to get vaccines.
More than a quarter of early childhood providers in Wisconsin would have closed without the federal grants, according to a survey of 1,200 operators in December. Nearly a third said they could be forced to shut down if economic conditions don’t improve. Nearly two-thirds reported staff shortages, due in part to low pay and burnout.
Child care workers now earn a median wage of just $12.66 an hour, which is higher than before the pandemic, thanks to the federal support. When the federal dollars disappear — potentially during the spring semester of school in early 2024 — falling wages could exacerbate staffing shortages and reduce capacity further. Already, more than half of providers report longer waitlists for parents seeking to enroll their children.
That’s not a pretty picture for Wisconsin’s families. And even before the pandemic, the child care industry was struggling.
Gov. Tony Evers recently called for the Legislature to spend $340 million next year to stabilize the child care system, essentially using state dollars to replace the federal funding that’s going away. Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, dismissed the governor’s plan as “unsustainable.”
Vos has a point. The state can’t backfill every fading federal relief program that was tied to the pandemic. But what’s the Republicans’ alternative solution to the long-standing child care crisis in Wisconsin that COVID-19 starkly revealed? Saving $5 on diapers? The average cost for child care in the state is $12,500 per kid.
That’s more than tuition at UW-Madison.
Struggling parents need help. So do the child care providers who engage children with positive learning and play while their parents are at work. The child care industry is crucial to maintaining Wisconsin’s workforce and keeping our economy strong.
If Republicans want to ease the tax burden on young parents, increasing the child tax credit would do more than narrowly trimming the sales tax. When the federal government increased its child tax credit during the pandemic, distributing half the money in six monthly payments, child poverty in America fell by 30%.
That didn’t just help parents afford child care. It helped some afford to stay home with their toddlers.
But the pressing need now is direct support for child care providers and workers so facilities stay open and staffed. If Republican lawmakers don’t like the Democratic governor’s proposal — and won’t even discuss it in special session, as the governor requested — what’s their counter proposal? Wisconsin is waiting.
