Universal Childcare for NY-12
Key Points:
•The Lanham Act (Trademark Act of 1946)
•Comprehensive Child Development Bill of 1972
•Biden-Haris American Families Plan (Expanded Investment in Early Head Start; Paid Family Leave)
•Universal Basic Income for Children in Foster Care
•Baby Bonds
•Make The Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit and the Child Tax Credit Expansions Permanent
Go to electmaya.com for more information and to donate.
The Lanham Act (Trademark Act of 1946)
We once had Universal Childcare and corporate America helped kill it.
On June 29, 1943 the U.S. Senate passed an unprecedented piece of legislation. Universal Childcare was a reality in America for the first, and as of this date, the last time. This childcare program aided families and women who wanted to work during wartime but didn’t have suitable childcare. Under The Lanham Act of 1940, the federal government spent $20,000,000 on critical childcare during WWII, $1 Billion in today’s dollars. This universal childcare was “deemed important to the war effort,” and indeed it was. It aided over 7 million women who joined the workforce during WWII.
Nervous that some would see this massive investment in childcare and education as a “threat to the tradition of local and state autonomy” and a threat to the family structure (only 30% of men supported their wives working outside of the home) members of the Senate made sure to label the investment as temporary “emergency funding.”
This type of federal aid didn’t just pose a threat to the tradition of local and state autonomy, it was also viewed as a threat to large corporations and business owners. Legislation like the New Deal frightened corporate America who vehemently objected to the regulations that came with the Federal Works Programs. Corporate America was already fed up with what they saw as their own financial sacrifice during WWI.
President Woodrow Wilson formed the Committee on Public Information (CPI) During WW1. He hired businesses, mostly advertisers, to take a pay cut or volunteer to create influence campaigns to persuade the public to support “The Great War”. The most well known one (outside of Rosie the Riveter during WWII) is the WWI “I Want You” Uncle Sam poster.
After the Great Depression, advertisers had finally regained profitable footing only to worry about revenues possibly plummeting again as America prepared to enter into WWII.
On an evening in November 1941, hundreds of advertising executives traveled to Hot Springs, Virginia for a retreat. Like the rest of the country, they knew America was once again being drawn into a war which meant rationing and regulations. These advertisers viewed this as an existential threat to America’s system of free enterprise.
Marketing guru, James W. Young, an ad exec at J. Walter Thompson Company, laid out a plan that not only circumvented regulations but profited from the idea of them. They would lock arms with corporate America — tying their interests from then on. “Let us ask ourselves whether we, as an industry, do not have a great contribution to make in the effort to regain for business the leadership of our economy. We have within our hands the greatest aggregate means of mass education and persuasion the world has ever seen — namely, the channels of advertising communication. We have power. Why do we not use it?”
The Advertising Council was founded shortly after this meeting in 1941. The purpose of the council, author Kevin Michael Kruse stated, was “to classify it’s projects as acts of public service, but in truth they were acts of public relations to sell the American people on the merits of free enterprise.”
A year later, a collaboration between advertisers, Hollywood, and the US government led to the formation of the “Office of War Information” (OWI) in 1942. Once again these advertisers in conjunction with the government were selling their influence campaigns to garner public support for another war, but this time in the name of “public service.”
Classifying their work as a “public service” benefited advertisers and businesses in three ways. 1) They received generous tax deductions from the government. 2) They purposely shifted the public perception of business. Convincing a majority of the public that business should exist in a “free enterprise” not “over burdened by taxes.” 3) They controlled the image and idea of America.
The American newsreels were often sexist and racist. They made sure to emphasize that women in the workforce were temporary — a stop gap until men white men returned from WWII to take back those jobs.
Erasure of the financial, labor, and artistic contributions Black Americans, Afro-Latinx, particularly Black women and Afro-Latinas, were making at this time was common in newsreels. To highlight the contribution of Black Americans and Afro-Latinas would have meant a narrative shift disrupting the dominant message that white men singularly built America. Often missing from news reporting and the newsreels were the 600,000 African American women in the wartime labor force; the 4,000 African American women in the Women’s Army Corps, and the 400 African American women in the Army Nurse Corps during WWII. These contributions from Black women were largely made possible because of The Lanham Act.
By the war’s end, Universal childcare was over as were many of the jobs women held. Advertisers deployed ads to make women “feel better” about leaving the workforce and going back into the home. Men returning home from war took back their jobs, and the over 550,000 children who had received some care from the Lanham Act programs were now primarily taken care of by a stay at home mother.
We need to recognize the role advertisers and other corporate entities play in promoting and aiding policy that harms us, and we must create policies that taxes them properly, so they’ll recognize their “true public service” is contributing their fair share of taxes.
Comprehensive Child Development Bill of 1972
There is a history of repeated narratives that we must learn to scrutinize because they continuously keep beneficial policies from us.
At the start of the 1970s, conservatives in office as well as conservative business leaders felt their country was changing. There was a flourishing feminist and Civil Rights movement that had started to effect policy; a growing anti-war sentiment against the Vietnam war; and a pro-environmental movement that seemed too “threaten” their businesses with newly imposed regulations. They were also frustrated with activists like Ralph Nader who had planted the seeds of a burgeoning Consumer Advocacy Movement which would hold business leaders accountable for faulty products.
On the evening of August 23, 1971, Lewis F. Powell Jr. wrote a memo that would be one of the most influential blueprints of how the Republican party would operate over the next five decades. Powell was just months away from being confirmed to the United States Supreme Court when he was commissioned by friend Eugene B. Sydnor Jr., the education director of the US Chamber of Commerce, to write a directive to counter what they saw as a growing threat to free enterprise in America. The memo lashed out at a perceived socialist-communist-leftist-ultra-liberal-anti-business sentiment growing in the U.S.
Powell advocated in his 37-page memo a step by step instruction to purge left-wing elements by “constant surveillance” of not only textbooks, but television content, media, literary journals, arts and sciences, law schools, politicians, and universities. The next step would be to infiltrate those institutions and replace liberal ideas with “pro-business-anti-regulation” concepts.
While “The Powell Memo” is largely credited for the proliferation of conservative think tanks and the rise of the conservative movement, there was another speech that clarified a pathway for a right-wing monopoly on American institutions.
Thirty-one years and one month after marketing scion James W. Young gave a rousing speech on how advertising was going to promote conservative interests, William Baroody, president of the American Enterprise Institute, better known as the conservative think tank AEI, stood on the exact same stage in Hot Springs, Virginia to deliver his speech titled,“The Corporate Role in the Decade Ahead.”
Baroody saw the fight conservatives had ahead of them as a war (sound familiar?). Baroody felt the American people had become hostile to business and that there has been an “abdication of the corporate class.” To regain control, Baroody proposed that they needed to market pro-business ideas through public policy.
What was conveniently missing from Baroody’s speech and The Powell Memo was that these large corporations who quietly fought policies like the New Deal also greatly benefited themselves from large subsidies, tax-breaks, and defense contracts from the government.
What Baroody and Powell had outlined was their perceived need to win a war of ideas, and to do that, they would need the majority of the public on their side. Roger Ailes, a media advisor and future founder of FOX News understood this concept intimately. To win the war of ideas, Ailes realized he needed to win the public over one household at a time. He outlined this plan in a memo titled, “A Plan for Putting the GOP on TV News.” Ailes asserted how easily attainable this goal would be, stating: “Today television news is watched more often than people read newspapers, then people listen to the radio, then people read or gather any other form of communication. The reason: people are lazy. With television you just sit — watch — listen. The thinking is done for you.”
Roger Ailes wanted his audience to think that they were ‘the forgotten American’ — the ordinary, hard working man being taken advantage of by Washington bureaucrats. The forgotten American being condescended to by elitists, college professors, and federal judges who were anti-business. The forgotten hard working American underrepresented in a “media were liberal hacks prioritizing student protesters.” Roger Ailes, Lewis F. Powell Jr., and William Baroody, changed the image of the GOP from Privileged Pro-Business White Men to the party of the “Regular Working Joe” fighting against those in power who had forgotten about them.
One of the many pieces of legislation that died because of this burgeoning Right Wing movement was The Comprehensive Child Development Bill of 1972. It would have been the second time in America’s history that we would’ve had Universal Childcare. This iteration of Universal Childcare, was due in large part to the work of Marian Wright Edelman, would have aided women with low income and in poverty by allowing them to work full time while their child was educated, fed, and had access to healthcare. The bill had bipartisan support in the House and Senate passing with a supermajority 63 to 17 vote. When the bill reached President Nixon’s desk, his advisor, Pat Buchanan, convinced him that the bill would be looked at as a piece of communistic legislation taking women out of homes. Home is where Buchanan felt women should stay and take care of their children and husbands. Nixon vetoed a piece of legislation that would have lifted millions of families out of poverty all in the service of the mythologized ‘Regular Working Joe.’
Biden-Haris American Families Plan (Expanded Investment in Early Head Start; Paid Family Leave)
According to a 2019 study by Child Care Aware of America, child care ranks as one of the largest expenses for families. “In 39 states and the District of Columbia, the cost of child care exceeds average mortgage costs” Paying an average of “$22,000 per year for full-time child care in a center for two children.”
The Biden-Harris Administration’s new economic plan could save parents as much at $15,000 a year in childcare.
We haven’t seen anything like Biden’s $4 Trillion Economic plan since Lyndon B. Johnson’s The Great Society brought us Medicare, Medicaid, and other critical social safety nets. Biden has broken down the costs; how he’ll pay for the plan (raising taxes on wealthier Americans); and exactly where the funds are going. President Biden is investing $200 billion towards free universal Pre-K for 3 and 4 year olds. $225 billion will raise the wages of childcare providers to $15 an hour and aid them in keeping their classes small which allows better care for children with disabilities. This economic plan will also invest $225 billion over 10 years “to cover a nationally mandated 12 weeks of paid parental, family and personal illness leave.”
This is a thrilling giant step but these are not permanent investments in Universal Childcare. Two policies I would support that go further than Biden’s current budgetary allocation for childcare are the Child Care for Working Families Act and the Universal Child Care and Early Learning Act.
The Child Care for Working Families Act (CCWFA) was just reintroduced by Senator Patty Murray (D-WA) and Congressman Bobby Scott (D-VA). The CCWFA would make “child care affordable for all families by capping the amount they spend on child care at 7% of their income, with the majority of eligible families paying no more than $45 per week.” The bill also has care options for infants and toddlers, and would invest in childcare providers.
Universal Child Care and Early Learning Act (UCCEL) is being reintroduced by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Rep. Mondaire Jones (D-NY). UCCEL is a $700 billion universal childcare plan that ensures “no family pays more than 7% of income on childcare.” Sen. Warren would like to pay for it through a Super Wealth tax which is estimated to bring in $3 trillion in revenue over 10 years.
Originally introduced by Rep. Deb Haaland in the 116th Congress the Universal Child Care and Early Learning Act, if passed, would truly be the first time we’ve had Universal Child Care in our country. Even with the annual average cost of Childcare in NYC is between $15,600 — $30,000, Rep. Carolyn Maloney did not co-sponsor this legislation.
Since a recent report on ProPublica illustrated the depth of tax avoidance committed by the Super Wealthy, I wholeheartedly support the Super Wealth Tax.
Universal Basic Income for Children in Foster Care
In my conversation with Julia Davis, Director of Youth Justice and Child Welfare for Children’s Defense Fund in New York, she gave me some sobering statistics, “New York has done an enormous amount of work to reduce the number of children in foster care [from 37,000 in 2002 to 15,000 currently]… however, 30% of children in foster care today in New York, are 14 or older.”
One of the biggest concerns is that children who age out of foster care often move straight into poverty or the carceral system.
Davis explains, “…this is a group of kids that we worry a lot about, because they’re much more likely to age out to leave the system without being sort of legally returned to their family and having what we call permanency in the child welfare system. And those children have some of the worst outcomes longer term, much more likely to live in poverty, much more likely to be homeless, much more likely to end up in the juvenile and adult criminal justice system. And so these are kids that we are very worried about. And across the system, we still have enormous racial disparities that, frankly, parallel the criminal justice system. Black, Afro-Latinx, and Latinx youth represent about 75% of all the kids in foster care.”
Children in foster care is a demographic where we could use targeted federal investments. One way we can do that is to provide children in foster care with a Universal Basic Income (UBI). This is being rolled out at the state level in California. State Sen. Dave Cortese (D-San Jose) proposed SB 739 which would invest $1,000 UBI a month for children in Foster Care until age 21. This pilot program would serve 3,000 out of 60,000 children currently in foster care. I would support or sponsor legislation like this at the federal level. New York children in foster care, like all children, deserve the opportunity to have a stable, safe, and secure future.
Baby Bonds
There is a seismic racial wealth gap in America.
According to the Brookings Institute, “At $171,000, the net worth of a typical white family is nearly ten times greater than that of a Black family ($17,150) in 2016.”
As Constance Bannister stated in her article for The Atlantic, “Today’s racial wealth inequality is a product of many decades of government policy, not the differing actions and choices of black and white individuals.” In other words, discriminatory and exclusionary governmental policy has gotten us into this mess, but well-crafted inclusive policy can get us out of it.
US Senator Cory Booker (D-NJ) and Representative Ayanna Pressley (D-MA) reintroduced their American Opportunity Accounts Act, also known as “Baby Bonds,” in February of this year. Baby bonds are investment accounts for infants created by the government. While it would be a Universal program, families in poverty would get a larger “seed” investment and wealthy families would get smaller ones. These accounts would grow and when a child reaches adulthood, they would access this fund to use for school, business, or downpayment on a house.
Senator Booker and Rep. Pressley’s plan would “seed a savings account of $1,000 at birth, with additional deposits of up to $2,000 each year, depending on household income. The funds will sit in an interest-bearing account, which can be accessed by account holders at age 18.”
While Baby Bonds alone will not close the racial wealth gap, it puts us on solid footing towards that path.
I know children and families in the 12th District could really use this type of legislation. As of May 2021, Rep. Carolyn Maloney has not co-sponsored the American Opportunity Accounts Act in the 116th or current 117th Congress.
Make The Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit and the Child Tax Credit Expansions Permanent
In a pandemic year that pushed families with childcare expenses further into poverty and wiped out family savings, the enhanced child and dependent care credit for 2021 was a welcome surprise.
Through the 1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan taxpayers can claim up to $2,000 per child under the age of 17 and up to $3,600 for children under the age of 6. According to the Tax Policy Center, 75% of families with children will get a larger tax credit.
However, at this moment, these child tax credits are temporary. Biden has indicated that he would consider extending this tax credit until 2025 or even make the tax credits permanent. Right now, “a single parent with one child must earn at least $25,000 a year to get the full $2,000 credit.” There should not be a financial threshold placed on a single parent. Changing the single parent penalty, and making the tax credit enhancement permanent would be a lifesaver for so many families. This enhanced child and dependent care credit should be made permanent without any additional cuts to other social safety needs. Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard Neal (D-MA) introduced the Building an Economy for Families Act which would make the Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit and the Child Tax Credit expansions permanent.
I will always support legislation like this that puts money in NYC families’ pocket books and creates safety for children but never at the expense of shrinking social safety nets.
Maya Contreras is a Democratic candidate for Congress to represent #NY12. Voting Rights Advocate. Policy Educator. Public Health is Public Safety. No Policy About You, Without You. NYU Alumni. Big Auntie Energy. Go to electmaya.com for more information and to donate.
