Governor Kelly's letter to Congress on child care affordability is frustratingly tone deaf

Kansas Governor Laura Kelly joined nine other Democrat governors from North Carolina, Colorado, Hawaii, Wisconsin, New Mexico, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Illinois, and Washington to increase federal investment in childcare in Fiscal Year 2024.

“Here in Kansas, we are working to make it possible for every Kansas family to find an affordable option for child care, but we can’t do it alone,” said Governor Kelly. “That’s why I’ve joined my fellow governors in urging Congress to make critical investments to support families and grow our workforce.”

In a letter to Congress from Tuesday, June 13, the ten governors creepily point out that lack of children being raised by random people who aren’t their parents means parents can’t work to have a taxable income for the government.

“Across the country, businesses and employers are ringing the alarm that the shortage of available child care options is hurting our economy. The bottom line is that Americans cannot work without safe, reliable, quality child care for their family. Without sustained investment in child care, businesses will continue to struggle to hire the people they need. Almost half of all working parents say the number of hours they can work has been compromised by lack of child care options, and one fifth say they have had to leave the labor market entirely. Child care is truly ‘the workforce behind the workforce.’”

Not to be “that guy,” but government pushing to keep parents away from their kids so they can work is giving me real communism vibes, and I’m not here for it.

The letter continues with some statistics, first mentioning rural America, claiming 60 percent of rural Americans live in a “child care desert” with rural families spending on average 12 percent of their income on child care.

“Nearly 90,000 fewer people are working in the child care industry today than in February 2020, resulting in a 9.7% national decline in the size of the child care workforce,” the letter goes onto claim.

The letter goes onto blame this on “low pay for child care teachers.” While there may be somewhat of an argument to be made here, it should be pointed out that February 2020 was the last full month before the start of the pandemic where governors like Kelly told certain businesses they weren’t essential enough to stay open. This caused parents to stay home with their kids and some found themselves enjoying working from home where they could spend time with their kids and hence, there became less of a need for child care as fewer parents were in need of a child care provider during and after the pandemic.

Furthermore, the reasoning the governors give for the low pay is truly a farce. The first thing they blame for the low wages is inflation—something the government had the heaviest of hands in creating. Blaming inflation becomes even more ridiculous when they end the letter by giving Congress their deep appreciation for funding to provide support for child care throughout the pandemic—something which helped aid the skyrocketing inflation.

The second thing they blame is the free market, stating, “…competition for workers from other industries has driven wages up to levels that child care programs are unable to meet.”

I find this claim to be interesting for a number of reasons. For one, Governor Kelly has gone on record in support of raising the minimum wage, as this is a major Democrat talking point. Yet, in this letter, she, as well as the other nine Democrat governors, admit that some (smaller) businesses can only pay workers so much and will inevitably go out of business should wages go up. Amazing how that works.

Secondly, as you may remember from earlier, they said in the letter that “businesses will continue to struggle to hire the people they need” without childcare. However, now they’re saying childcare workers are leaving the childcare jobs to go work for other businesses that are willing to pay more. And earlier they state that one-fifth of adults quit the labor market due to lack of childcare, meaning they would be looking after their own children and would not need that childcare again unless they decided to go back to the labor market…. It’s almost as if the free market is trying to fix itself after a crap ton of government intervention and now these Democrat governors are begging to have more government intervention, which, by the way, will only serve to make things worse as it continues to aid in the rise of inflation as reckless government spending always does.