{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://www.mcconnell.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/pressreleases?ID=BD0996EA-37F3-4C4D-BAC8-8563E89935B1", "Washington Democrats Want a Blank Check to Take Over American Childcare", "2021-11-02", "2021", "2021-11", "Republican", "Senate", "KY", "Mitch McConnell", "M000355", "www.mcconnell.senate.gov", "mcconnell", "https://www.mcconnell.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/pressreleases", "scraper", "WASHINGTON, D.C. \u2013 U.S. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) delivered the following remarks today on the Senate floor regarding Democrats\u2019 reckless tax and spending spree:\n\n\u201cSince the earliest days of COVID-19, Washington Democrats have admitted they want to use the pandemic as a pretext to permanently transform our country. They hope to use the temporary crisis as a Trojan horse for permanent radical changes.\n\n\u201cOne of their massive, ideological goals is a huge series of disruptive changes to American families\u2019 childcare.\n\n\u201cAcross our country, the political left is openly arguing that parents should be less involved in their own kids\u2019 educations. That government should have more control over America\u2019s children and their own parents should have less.\n\n\u201cAnd now, the same Democratic Party\u2019s reckless taxing and spending spree would upend daycare, childcare, and pre-K as American families know it.\n\n\u201cThe story is like Democrats\u2019 long march toward socialized medicine: Take an intimate area of American life; pile on a maze of new mandates, regulations, cost increases, and subsidies; and push families out of the driver\u2019s seat so Washington can run their lives.\n\n\u201cNot too long ago, the Democrats\u2019 promise that if you like your health care plan, you can keep it was awarded the \u2018lie of the year.\u2019 Now they want a sequel: If you like your childcare, you can keep your childcare.\n\n\u201cDemocrats want to sweep the first five years of children\u2019s lives into a new set of top-down, one-size-fits-all, Washington-knows-best regulations.\n\n\u201cTheir Big Government scheme would make childcare more expensive, then use taxpayer money to subsidize only some families \u2014 those who structure their arrangements in ways that Democrats like.\n\n\u201cOther families would be left to fend for themselves, now in an even more inflated market.\n\n\u201cTheir bill would give Democrats and bureaucrats massive new authority they could use to shape curricula and standards nationwide. If providers don\u2019t play along, they could be left out in the cold.\n\n\u201cThe Biden Administration wants to insert itself into the most intimate family decisions and tell parents how to care for their toddlers.\n\n\u201cThe entire scheme violates the basic principle of family fairness.\n\n\u201cSpeaker Pelosi suggested last week that she approves of one kind of family structure \u2014 \u2018parents earning and children learning.\u2019 She said Democrats want government programs to \u2018liberat[e]\u2019 families so that both parents work full-time.\n\n\u201cWell, lots of families like that model, Mr. President. But other families prefer other models. Not everybody defines \u2018liberation\u2019 the same way. Yet Washington Democrats want Big Government to bless certain family arrangements and not others.\n\n\u201cHas your family made a different set of sacrifices so a father or mother can parent full-time? Sorry, Democrats want to redistribute money away from your family to other households that may earn more money.\n\n\u201cHas your family built its whole life around a plan for a grandparent to provide in-home care? Too bad \u2014 Grandma or Grandpa might have to fill out paperwork and apply for the bureaucrats\u2019 blessing, or that family could be denied help also.\n\n\u201cDemocrats could easily end up taxing working-class families with a full-time parent in order to subsidize the arrangements of wealthier two-income households.\n\n\u201cThey are steamrolling over family fairness, over families\u2019 choices and options, over the diversity of American families and their aspirations.\n\n\u201cAnd by the way, Democrats appear to want change the law in ways that could force faith-based providers to put aside sincerely-held religious beliefs.\n\n\u201cJust look at who would be administering all this, Mr. President.\n\n\u201cOne key player would be the HHS Secretary, Secretary Becerra \u2014 the partisan California lawyer who got famous by suing Catholic nuns for being too Catholic and crisis pregnancy centers for being pro-life. A hardcore culture warrior.\n\n\u201cAnd this person is going to be the new national czar for early childhood?\n\n\u201cAnother key figure would be Secretary Cardona. You may recall that, a few months back, Senate Republicans had to stop our Education Secretary from diverting funding for civics education toward woke propaganda that had been debunked by historians.\n\n\u201cAnd this is the same Biden Administration whose Attorney General just wrote an entire memo singling out concerned parents who speak up at their local school board meetings.\n\n\u201cNow they want to extend their federal control over babies and toddlers, too.\n\n\u201cFinally, get this, Mr. President. This tangled new entitlement would be so mind-bogglingly expensive that Democrats can\u2019t even put a long-term dollar amount on it.\n\n\u201cThe estimate is that all this government meddling will cost $400 billion over just the first several years. After that, nobody knows what the blank check will add up to!\n\n\u201cTaxpayers are supposed to pony up a blank check for the privilege of having less control over family choices?\n\n\u201cI think the American people will take a pass.\u201d", 1, "2026-03-30T01:40:41Z", "2026-04-06T20:30:49Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://www.mcconnell.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/pressreleases?ID=BD0996EA-37F3-4C4D-BAC8-8563E89935B1"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 2.071486320346594, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}