As budget reconciliation negotiations advance, I urge you to support dedicated, standalone child care facility infrastructure grants as a critical element of the budget reconciliation bill. These resources are essential to realizing the full benefits of the Build Back Better agenda’s historic investments in the child care ecosystem.

Our country faces serious child care health, safety, and supply challenges. Many existing child care programs are operating under hazardous conditions, creating serious health and safety obstacles for children and the early care and education (ECE) workforce. ECE providers are constantly challenged with making very difficult decisions about how to best allocate their limited resources to address facilities issues because they operate on razor‐thin profit margins that leave little room to support debt on a property. And with states and localities struggling against limited capacity and funding to devote to child care infrastructure, it is urgent that the federal government prioritize resources to meet this vast and growing need.

Our country cannot Build Back Better without dedicated, standalone resources for child care facilities. President Biden acknowledged the importance of physical spaces by proposing $25 billion to improve early learning facilities in the American Jobs Plan. Investments seeking to increase child care affordability, accessibility, and workforce compensation will have limited success without an adequate supply of physical facilities to operate child care programs.

To ensure the promise of the Build Back Better can be fully realized, standalone investments in child care facility infrastructure grants must be prioritized as an essential element of the package. I urge Congress to look to the example provided by the House Ways and Means Committee, which passed $15 billion for child care facility infrastructure grants as part of its Build Back Better bill (see “Infrastructure Grants to Improve Child Care Safety," located in section 132002 of Subtitle C of the Committee markup). These grants can be used for acquisition, construction and renovation of child care facilities, and are accompanied with critical technical assistance and capacity build support from experienced intermediaries.

Thank you for your attention to this critical issue.