>> From WXXI News.

This is connections.

I'm Evan Dawson.

Our connection this hour was made one year ago this week.

Donald Trump was on the campaign trail and he got a question at an event from Reshma Saujani, the founder of an organization called Girls Who Code.

She wanted a commitment from President Trump that childcare would be a priority in his second administration.

She had explained before her question that childcare is a big problem.

Affordability.

A lot of parents feel like they can't work.

They can't get everything done in their lives.

They need to get done.

And Trump said he could pay for universal childcare, and he would.

With the massive new tariffs he was planning.

He even promised it would be easy.

I want to listen to the full exchange here.

>> If you win in November, can you commit to prioritizing legislation to make childcare affordable?

And if so, what specific piece of legislation will you advance?

>> Look, child care is child care.

It couldn't you know, it's something you have to have it in this country.

You have to have it.

But when you talk about those numbers, compared to the kind of numbers that I'm talking about, by taxing foreign nations at levels that they're not used to, but they'll get used to it very quickly, and it's not going to stop them from doing business with us.

But they'll have a very substantial tax when they send product into our country.

Those numbers are so much bigger than any numbers that we're talking about, including child care, that it's going to take care we're going to have.

I look forward to having no deficits within a fairly short period of time.

We're going to be taking in trillions of dollars.

And as much as child care is talked about as being expensive, it's relatively speaking, not very expensive compared to the kind of numbers we'll be taking in.

>> Donald Trump, in his debate with Kamala Harris, would go on to make the same claim that the coming tariffs would pay for universal child care.

Well, one year later, the tariffs are in place.

We talked yesterday about the effects, including the looming collapse of the American soybean industry.

But universal child care is not a reality, despite the Trump administration saying that tariffs are bringing in record revenues.

The president's prediction that tariffs would eliminate the federal deficit is also not close to reality.

Congressman Joe Morelli reached out to connections recently.

His office did, raising concerns about child care in the era of Trump 2.0.

So this hour, let's talk about what is being done, what has been in recent bills, whether it's so-called one big beautiful bill act or other policy proposals and what is not being done.

And let me welcome back to the program.

Congressman Morelli.

Thank you for making time for us.

>> Nice to be here.

Thanks for having me.

>> Next to the congressman is Brian Lewis, executive director of the Rock the Future Alliance.

Welcome back to the program.

>> Thanks for having me back.

>> And across the table is Willie Williams, the parent of three.

Welcome.

Thanks for being with us, Will.

>> Thank you for having me.

>> Congressman.

Let me just start with you.

When you listen to that clip, the the president then candidate, now president, saying tariffs are going to have record revenues for this country.

We'll be able to balance the budget.

No deficit and universal child care paid for.

I don't think we have those things.

But what do you make of what you heard there?

>> Well, I think honestly, it's that was an example of Donald Trump at his finest, which is talking with virtually no facts at his disposal.

making claims that can never be met.

frankly, talking about things which some of which he has done, which are patently illegal and and likely unconstitutional.

I mean, it's just the way he talks.

He's like a guy who's had too many in a bar stool at the corner bar who's just going to spout off things that have no, relationship to reality.

So here's the thing.

We have instituted tariffs, which, by the way, despite what the president continues to say, this is not a tax on foreign governments or foreign country.

It's a tax on American citizens who have now paid tens of billions of dollars, which, by the way, if this is overturned, as we think it will be, because the president does not have the power to do these tariffs unilaterally without congressional involvement, those dollars are going to be rebated back.

so the federal government won't have them.

But but they pale in comparison to the amount of money we should be investing in children in this country.

He's done nothing to make a life more, more affordable in his big tax bill.

He made permanent massive tax cuts to millionaires and billionaires and did a limited three year tax break.

on child care.

So, you know, this is just standard Donald Trump.

Anybody who takes anything he says seriously is just going to be disappointed.

>> Okay, a couple of things here before we jump into child care.

A little bit more of the weeds there.

we don't have a balanced budget, right.

There's no there's still a deficit.

>> Well, no deficit.

Yeah.

We cut, he cut.

And I didn't support it, but cut.

You know a trillion and a half dollars out of domestic spending for health care and for children and for students.

and gave a $5 trillion tax cut that largely benefits millionaires and billionaires and borrowed will borrow another $3.5 trillion to finance it.

So no, it's not anywhere close to it's more out of balance than it's ever been.

And we've probably added more debt in the last six months to America's ledger sheet than we have in the history of the United States.

>> I also, you know, as we try to learn about things like tariffs, as you mentioned, there's a challenge in court.

Yeah.

and I've been watching and we yesterday we listened to some interviews with soybean farmers from Kentucky, from North Dakota saying, I never want to hear the word tariffs again.

Yeah, 25% of their industry is is 20% of their product goes to China this year.

It's zero.

>> Yeah.

I mean, this is what's fascinating.

I met with a group of local dairy and crop farmers because we do have that Monroe County.

We have a significant agricultural sector.

They have two massive problems.

One is for many of them, particularly if you're in crops, the soybean market in China has been closed off to us entirely because of the trade war.

They don't have a customer any longer to sell to, and they have immigration challenges because of all of that.

Ice has done people are terrified, so they won't go to work and they're having difficulty with with immigration issues and visa issues.

So I think for a lot of farmers, many of whom supported the president, they're stuck in this place of didn't this this wasn't at all anything that we signed up for.

You're making our lives almost unbearable and wait till they find out that the rural hospitals are going to be in crisis once these Medicaid cuts are fully effective, or Snap benefits, which is another, by the way, another way farmers pay they they they sell goods to the federal government and other distributors of food products like Foodlink, et cetera.

So they're going to be squeezed even further.

And I think they realize that and they're looking for help.

>> One other note that, that is timely and kind of pressing here that I think is related to childcare.

It's related to health care.

Six months ago, your Senate colleague Chuck Schumer was adamant that shutting down the government would be a gift to the Trump administration, he said.

And Schumer said he understood why some Democrats wanted to move to shut it down.

But he thought that further.

He basically said it would further concentrate power in the hands of a government that he thought was becoming authoritarian.

So Senator Schumer said six months ago he was going to encourage his colleagues to vote, to not shut down government.

And now, six months later, Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries are going to meet directly with the president.

CBS News reports, quote in a letter to Mr.

Trump this past weekend, Schumer and Jeffries demanded a meeting with the president and said Democrats would not support a dirty spending bill that does not address their healthcare priorities.

End quote.

And Schumer has indicated he could he might greenlight a shutdown if Republicans won't negotiate.

What do you want your party to do this time?

>> Well, first of all, the president agreed to meet with them.

Yeah, that was scheduled for Thursday.

They have since the president since withdrawn.

He won't meet now.

>> I did not hear that.

>> Okay.

That's the latest.

as I understand it, he's he's you know, which indicates I think he has no willingness to talk to Democrats at all.

and look, the last time there was a shutdown, if you remember, Ted Cruz famously tried to take health care away from Americans because he wanted to end the Affordable Care Act, you'll remember.

And finally, he capitulated.

This is, again, Democrats fighting for people to have health insurance and Republicans fighting to take it away.

I don't know why the national Republican Party is so wedded to the idea that taking health care away from people who are literally at the edge economically and who struggle, why they think that's a good idea.

The Affordable Care Act has become incredibly popular and has become a central part of life for a lot of people who couldn't otherwise afford health insurance.

So going after that and going after Medicaid and now another half trillion dollars potentially in cuts to Medicare, I don't know why the Republican Party, which, by the way, has no health care plan whatsoever, this is now 12 years that Donald Trump has been actively engaged in or ten years that he's been actively engaged in national politics.

He keeps saying, I'm going to come up with a plan.

They have none other than to take health care away from people.

And that includes babies and children, which is, you know, part of what we're here to discuss today.

But I don't know how this ends.

But I do think Chuck Schumer, who's a long time friend I disagreed with him back in March.

I had a number of conversations with him about what he was doing.

I think what he has since seen is that there has been no good faith.

So he he voted with Republicans to allow government to continue to be funded.

They have since unilaterally and unconstitutionally impounded money.

done a rescission that we think is illegal.

So they keep taking money back.

Anyway, even after the Congress approves it.

They have no respect for the power of the purse, which is in article one of the Constitution.

I think Schumer recognizes now, at this point that unless I use this moment where I have some leverage, they're going to continue to walk over the needs of American families.

And I'm not going to be a party to it any longer.

>> And so you would support a shutdown at this point.

>> I mean, I support giving health care to Americans who desperately need it.

And I will not vote to continue a government, particularly that continues along the trend lines which they've had, which is helping the wealthiest Americans and taking away from the most vulnerable.

and then whatever the difference between those two things are, I'll just borrow more money and saddle my children and grandchildren with more debt.

So we ought to have health care.

We ought to be thinking about how to repair some of the awful things done in the the big, bad ugly bill.

That's what we prefer to call it.

But in any case, we're in the wrong.

We're going in the wrong direction.

We're putting our values in the wrong place.

And then Republicans who control The White House, control the House, control the Senate, and probably most people would argue, control the Supreme Court.

Still saying the Democrats.

Yeah, we know you don't like any of this, but it's going to be your fault if none of this works.

Like, we don't want this to work.

We want people to have health care.

We don't want Medicaid to be cut.

We don't want Medicare to be cut.

We don't want the Affordable Care Act subsidies to go away.

We're fighting for American families.

And and we're not going to help you in this moment, continue this destructive path.

>> Where do you think, Senator Schumer, is this time?

>> Well, he's certainly by every public indication.

I think he's he's I think realizing that that being for something and not simply you can't there's an old saying you can't negotiate with the hangman.

And I think he's learned that there is no goodwill to be earned with the Trump administration.

They want to do it all their way.

They're not interested in partisanship or they're not interested in bipartisanship.

They're interested in hyper partisanship.

And that's going to continue.

So I think he's feeling at this point, look, I'll use the leverage I have to do right by the American people and we'll see what happens.

>> But for those who want, you know, to study civics and how our government functions or should function, what do you say to people who argue, look, you just pointed out that Republicans have control because they won the elections.

>> Yes, they should do what they need to do.

>> They should do what.

>> They they shouldn't ask Democrats to like it and to agree to it and to participate in it.

So we say, well, if you need us in this moment, you're going to have to talk about shared values.

What are some of the priorities that we have ought to be included?

That's what bipartisanship actually is.

It's now one party saying to the other, you will do everything we say and you'll like it.

What it means is let's talk about those things we all agree upon.

Let's find common ground and let's move forward.

So it's just odd that you would say to someone, you're getting nothing.

Everything has to be done my way.

You have to help me do it and you have to like it.

Well, no, we don't like it.

We're not going to be parties to this.

And therefore, whatever leverage we have in this moment, we're going to utilize on behalf of the people we care about.

>> Here's one place where there's not common ground.

There's plenty.

There's plenty of places like that.

And we're going to talk to Brian and Willie in a second about their perspective on maybe what they need and what communities need.

when it comes to Medicaid and Snap, for example.

>> Yeah.

>> You have them arguing, well, we're not cutting Medicaid and you have them arguing that even though we are cutting Snap by, I don't know, 20%, whatever it is, it's a big, big number.

A historic cut to food assistance.

They're asking the state to fill that in.

And they're claiming that what they are cutting is mostly just an effort to trim waste, fraud and abuse and ask more Americans to work for their benefits.

Now, as we discussed with Foodlink a few weeks ago on this program, the work requirement is not, as Mike Johnson said, you know, to get 25 year olds out of their parents basement.

It's 55 to 64 year old work requirements.

It's asking people to go back to the workforce when they're 63 years old.

and it's not what what they sort of imply.

So there's there's, you know, there's not common ground here.

You and Republicans don't see this the same way.

>> Well, because honestly, they're being completely disingenuous.

And you know how, you know, because when they're going out in their communities around the country to talk about this, they've completely rebranded it.

Nothing they said in the run up to their vote is anything like what they're saying back home now in their communities, because they recognize that when viewed the way it ought to be, which is is basically this.

We need to find money to fund a huge tax cut for the wealthiest Americans.

That's what we, the Republicans, believe.

And so what we're going to do is we're going to say it's waste, fraud and abuse.

When someone who's on Medicaid, by the way, the vast majority of Medicaid recipients in the age group they're targeting already work or go to school more than 20 hours a week, the vast majority.

But we're going to find those that didn't, and we're going to put up extraordinary barriers to make it almost impossible for them to meet those work requirements to for them to be able to meet those educational requirements.

And when they fall off the wagon, so to speak, because they haven't filed proper certification or they haven't done all the new paperwork or they haven't been able to follow through and navigate.

Now, what will be an incredibly complex system, we'll call that waste, fraud and abuse.

And we'll be happy because we'll have some extra cash to give to our billionaire friends.

That's what this is.

In fact, you know how you know this?

No guidance from the Department of Health and Human Services on how to make any of this happen.

No conversation with the state governments here locally.

I've pulled together the mayor and the county executive, our health care systems and foodlink to say, let's get creative and let's be proactive.

Let's figure out how to make sure every single person in this community meets their Medicaid requirements and meets their Snap benefit requirements, so that we don't have any discontinuation of the kinds of benefits that people need.

But this isn't about creating a a better program.

This is about really just doing anything we can to knock people off the rolls so we can scoop up the money and blame them for not working or being lazy.

I mean, Mike Johnson, look, you know, I have a good relationship with Mike on a personal level, but it is the height of disingenuousness to suggest that this is anything in government reform.

It is not the truth and people are going to see it.

And by the way, the communities are going to suffer.

First are rural hospitals are going to close down.

In many cases, people are going to be thrown off the rolls.

People are going to know, not know where to go, except what they will do is they'll show up in emergency rooms at hospitals, because when your kid is sick, whether you have health insurance or not isn't going to matter to you.

All that matters is you're going to get your kid the services he or she needs.

Because we're parents and we love our children, so that's going to make hospitals have this extraordinary burden.

This is their design.

I mean, it's not complicated.

and yes, the states are being asked to do more, but the states are also and first of all, they don't have the ability to fill in federal dollars.

>> and I think the U.S.

government knows that certainly the Trump administration knows that.

And frankly, they've dictated a lot of the terms to the states anyway.

So even if they wanted to do some things, they're not going to be allowed to.

and it's awful.

We were at a place because the Affordable Care Act, because of Medicaid, because of Medicare, we were at the lowest rate of uninsured people in New York State and New York history.

And now that's going to fall away because of the cruelty of the Trump administration.

Anyway.

>> Some of the criticism from the left of this position says, you want to maybe stop the funding of the government over the issues you just described, but that should be superseded by what Ice is doing, what the FCC is doing with speech.

how the president views the prosecution of his enemies, asking attorneys general to try to prosecute Letitia James, among others, that that should be the number one concern that if you're going to vote not to fund the government, it should be the authoritarianism and the policy should be secondary to that.

But that's not what you cite.

What do you say to that?

>> Well, what I would say is all of those things are the list of horribles of the Trump administration.

I mean, what he did over the weekend by directing the attorney general of the United States to prosecute people when his own people have told him, Mr.

President, there's not enough evidence here that I mean that the attacks on free speech, the attacks on the independent judiciary, those are all the list of awful things.

But I think in this moment, when it comes to funding and the narrow question of how we keep the government funded, making sure people have health insurance in the first instance is, is is the priority right now, that's not to say all the other things aren't important.

They are.

it's just you have to sort of pick and choose at each step along the way what it is that in this moment, you're trying to trying to to leverage.

And I think that's that's critical when you lose your health insurance.

Look, I've lived this the hard way with, you know, the illness of my daughter.

When your kids.

What do they say?

You're only as happy as the least happy of your children.

And when they're not, well, health wise, nothing else in the world matters.

I can attest to this.

I've lived the worst day of my life already.

and, you know, I can't imagine being in the circumstances we were in where you have a very sick child and you have no health insurance, and you got to wait in an emergency room for 6 or 7 hours to have that child looked at.

I mean, boy, so, you know, those other things are absolutely important.

And there's enough criticism to go around on almost everything that the president is doing, including the fact that all of this is unforced.

There's no worldwide pandemic, there's no worldwide recession.

This is all things that have started and end with Donald Trump.

He's created this chaos and and created all these problems within just the last seven months.

>> All right.

Last thing on this before we turn to the other guest.

And I just want to say to, to the, to the listeners, we're going to invite the congressman back on a separate day.

People probably want to talk international politics.

There's a million things that we won't get to today.

Yes.

Just because of where the focus is, I think related to the timeliness of the discussion, as you mentioned, you are your party is concerned about this separate set of issues that you view as authoritarian.

Yes.

you might have seen a number of not just advocates, but lawmakers trying to convince Ice to not apprehend not detain two roofers.

Recently in Rochester.

You probably saw the story.

Did you think the the lawmakers behaved appropriately, appropriately on that day?

>> Well, I didn't see the exact thing that happened.

I was in Washington.

But look, any time Ice is engaged in what they're doing, frankly, what they've begun to do under the Ice leadership of Secretary Noem and and Tom Homan, who, frankly, should be under indictment right now is is absolutely disgraceful.

I mean, they're looking at people based on their accents and whether they speak a foreign language, even if they're American citizens, how they look kind of jobs.

I mean, the whole leadership of Ice is completely out of control.

And look, I think people are going to protest this they protest the fact that ice shows up masked without badges, without any identification.

This is a very dangerous place.

Someone is going to get hurt.

Some people are already getting hurt.

Agents might even get hurt.

But certainly bystanders and people who are trying to, you know, aid and abet people who they think are unfairly being prosecuted.

So this is going to spin out of control, which I hate to say this the cynic in me, this is what Donald Trump wants.

He wants to create more chaos in the streets because then it gives him a distraction from an economy that's crumbling, tariffs that are out of control.

His prosecutorial instincts his autocratic instincts.

But he thinks if he says, well, if it's all in the name of public safety, I can get away with anything.

That's what he's done in Washington.

I mean, I've seen like three National Guards members in the last three weeks, so I don't even see them anywhere.

And they're certainly not doing anything.

But.

And that's not to blame the National Guard.

It's to blame the president.

He's all he's not a serious person.

And his administration.

>> In Washington is a lot safer.

Now, you can walk down the street and get a coffee.

>> I mean, it's all a publicity stunt.

I mean, he has no interest in it.

If he did, he wouldn't have pardoned hundreds of violent criminals who attacked the United States Capitol and led to the death of the United States Capitol Police officers on January 6th.

>> Yeah.

>> Brian Lewis, the executive director of the Rock the Future Alliance, first of all, remind listeners what the alliance is all about.

>> Brian.

>> Yeah.

So Rock the future is a community wide coalition that is working to ensure academic success for every child.

We're cross-sector and we're cradle to career.

And I'll explain what that means.

Cross-sector, meaning we engage with our partners at various levels of government.

The congressman is a member of the coalition, but also city government, our state elected officials.

but then we also engage with RCSD as a school sector and the health sector.

And I'm excited to talk about what some of those partnerships are.

Ultimately, we're led by parents like Willie, who are out in front creating solutions, trying to solve some intractable problems that are existing in our community to ultimately make sure that we have academic success for every child.

So we work together across sector to make sure that every child and when we say every, we mean every and we say all, we mean all child is successful in Rochester from cradle to career.

>> What do you see as the role of different levels of government?

Before the program, you talked a little bit about state support, but part of what we're talking about this hour and we're going to talk about child tax credits, we're going to talk about what's been in recent bills or what's not in bills.

What what Joe Morelle wants to see versus what his Republican counterparts are, are doing.

What do you want to see from your federal government?

>> So we want to see investment.

And so if it is true that any federal administration, including the current one, wants to make investments in child care, wants to make investments in things like community schools wants to make investments in things like promise neighborhoods and choice neighborhoods.

You know, these were all investments in programs that we've seen from previous administrations.

If the federal government wants to make investments of this kind, then rock the future in our national partners support this.

You know, there's a lot of data that shows that any investment in early childhood gets a six times return on investment.

And so it's a smart investment to make.

and so the federal government has made these investments before.

And some of the forms that I mentioned.

And, and we're hopeful that the federal government will make investments in the future.

>> Okay.

>> Willie, as a parent of three, how are you doing these days?

>> I'm doing well.

being a parent of three comes with a lot of ups and downs, right?

It gives us the ability to experience life in this, this kind of rotational fashion where we can connect with our kids in certain stages of development.

And so seeing that you're able to kind of apply a few things from your own development and see how that goes, align.

>> What do you need more to, to give your kids the life that you want to be able to give them?

>> I would say from my own personal standpoint, it's important that we have investment into our children on every level possible, right?

So there's a time investment with childcare.

For instance, me and my wife, we had a period of time where we had to decide whether it was financially responsible or even feasible for us both to return to work when we first had our children.

Right.

Childcare costs started to trump the actual earned income and the opportunity cost of working.

So sometimes we look at dollars and cents, but we also have to look at opportunity costs and say, hey, the time that it takes me away from my family, the time that it takes me to have someone else contributing to raising them different value systems, different environments, travel time, those are all opportunity costs that we don't factor in to the financial portion.

Then when you hit the financial portion, it says, man, I may only bring home 3 or $400 after everything's said and done.

And I've spent 80 hours or more in a two week period away from my family.

Right.

So I think the first level is investing in understanding that it's much more complex than just the financial portion.

There's other opportunity costs that families face every day that they have to navigate.

>> So some of what Congressman they're talking about, I feel this tension that maybe exists on the other side of the political spectrum in, in that there's a pro-natal movement that wants to see the birth rate rise.

The concern that I think the birth rate now, the average American woman is having like 1.6 children, the lowest number in decades, maybe one of the lowest numbers.

>> Probably since we've been charting it.

>> I think the 70s, it got down to 1.7, but now it's at 1.6.

Replacement rate is something like two.

2.12.

Okay.

2.2.

Yeah.

So we're below that.

And the Pro-natal movement is concerned about that and wants policy that.

And I'm not saying the Pro-natal movement is only one monolithic thing, but it tends to be a pretty conservative and often argues for policy that will encourage more people to have more children.

At the same time, on the political right, there is an ethos that says if you can't afford children, you ought not be having them, and you ought not be turning to the government to support it.

And I wonder if you feel tension, and maybe that those two arguments there.

>> No.

Look, I am a strong supporter of reproductive rights and choice, and I don't think the government ought to be in any way engaged in telling people what they ought to do in terms of starting a family or not.

Having said that, we also ought to be in a position where we recognize that for those people who choose to have a family or choose to have children, that there ought to be a number of things that we as the large community, meaning the American community, does to support families who choose to do that.

Which is why child care, which is so incredibly expensive, we need to be able to address affordability.

And that's not just tax cuts, but it's partly making sure that we have the resources to pay people who are in that space, but also expand the number of slots available just by making sure we're expanding opportunities.

I think it's it there are a number of things we could do to bring down the cost of, of of making sure that people who choose to have families can do that.

So I think to part of that conservative world that you talk about, I think they should be in accord with us on making sure that families have more resources.

Look, I'm blessed.

I had an idyllic childhood in this sense.

My dad dropped out of high school at 17.

My mom graduated from high school.

No one went to college, but I had people who felt very strongly and the importance of education.

My mom and dad encouraged us and, and and so I'm grateful for that.

I'm grateful also that I had public resources.

I went to public schools from kindergarten through my graduation at Geneseo.

So, you know, it's support for education.

It's giving people requisite resources.

And and then, you know, I had this unconditional love that let me follow my dreams.

I mean, in some ways that the federal government and by the way, we can't do it from Washington.

And I would never suggest that we can provide resources and generally policy, but it's the organization like Brian's and Willie's that at the community level that's going to make the best decisions with the resources we have available.

They'll make the choices about what's best in a particular community and for the children in that community.

So we just need to be focused on that and recognizing that we do have a human capital problem in that the birth rate is low.

we have an oppressive immigration system now which is trying to encourage people not to come to the United States.

I mean, you know, when you add it all up, the math isn't great for us going forward.

>> Do you think more Americans would have more children if policy were different?

>> I think more Americans would have more children if they thought their children weren't going to face a really, really difficult time in their lives where, you know, they had access to job opportunities, if they had safe neighborhoods, if they had a, you know, an environment that was more encouraging.

I think it's a struggle now.

look, I'm past the parenting.

I'm in the Grandparenting years.

but I see that if I, if I was a young family, I don't know, I mean, I'd worry about certainly the cost of raising kids.

And I'm sure a lot of families that would like a second or third child just look at it and say, you know, financially, I don't think we can do this.

Daycare is a huge part of it.

affordable childcare.

I mean, there's just there's so much that makes us.

But I'm sure Brian and Willie can speak to it much more, but I'm sure that's part of the equation here.

>> The way I've been thinking about it lately is having a child now is an 8 to 10 decade bet against societal collapse, strife, nuclear war, climate collapse.

It's that's kind of a dark way to think about it.

But at the same time and it's also coupled with do you feel like you can afford it?

Do you feel like they can have a good life?

Do you feel like they'll be able to get jobs?

I mean, like, well.

>> Think about it.

There's a lot of if there's a sense of dissatisfaction in your life and we know from American from polling and surveys, people have sort of a darker view.

Why would you want to bring a child into.

Right.

We've always lived the American exceptionalism, always assumed that the next generation was going to do better than the one before.

That's no longer necessarily the case.

And I think that probably does play a role in how people view this.

>> I agree.

And by the way, when I was growing up, I felt that way.

I felt like things would get better.

Yeah.

And when you talk to teenagers.

>> They took it as an article of faith.

>> Right?

I agree, yeah.

And you talk to teenagers now and the polling is much flipped on its head.

>> I agree.

>> Yeah.

So you know, when my parents were born, they had, like a 75% chance of being more upwardly mobile than their parents.

By the time I was born in the 1980s, it was a coin flip.

It was 50 over 50, a child born today is less than 40%.

And so, unfortunately, in this nation, we have a downward trend of mobility, of economic mobility, the work.

And I love that the congressman mentioned this, the work that Rock the future is committed to locally is reversing that trend.

It's saying, what is the infrastructure?

What is the civic infrastructure that we can put in place to ensure that every child has the opportunity to succeed and we can begin to reverse that.

Some of the science that we know has been proven to put people on the path to upward mobility is making sure we invest in pre-K and Head Start.

We know that that works.

We know that making sure that they're ready for kindergarten by the time they enter kindergarten classrooms, if they're reading proficiently by third grade, if we know that they're doing math proficiently by eighth grade, this is how you reverse the trend.

Upward mobility.

And so rock the future is organizing a facilitating change tables where we are supporting our partners to make those reverses possible.

We have a whole child outcome team where parents like Willie are leading and making sure that they're developing solutions with our pre-K partners and with our Head Start partners to make sure parents know about enrollment and registration.

You know, we have some award winning and high quality pre-K and Head Start here in Rochester.

And yet every year, hundreds of seats go unfilled, in part because of myths that exist in our community.

And I've been on the show previously to talk about that.

Right.

And so we do myth busting campaigns where parents talk to other parents.

Yes.

Enroll your child in pre-K.

Here's where the sites are.

Here's why it's important.

And then we've seen through that work a 90% increase in enrollment in those slots.

And so this work can work.

And we have solutions that are working.

we are challenged by what's happening at the federal level, for sure.

But we kind of know that this stuff is effective and it should be a bipartisan issue.

Right.

Just like the if you go around Rochester, you see the you know, this was supported by the bipartisan infrastructure bill, the roads that were built in Rochester.

The civic infrastructure should be just as bipartisan, and it should not be as political of an issue.

>> Willie, do you think your kids feel like they're going to have a more comfortable life than your generation?

>> Well, I want to attack that question just kind of on two different levels.

So we looked at kind of the political landscape of things.

And just from a psychological perspective.

Right.

Every psychologist, every social worker looks at Maslow's hierarchy of needs.

Right.

And so we have this birth rate that's declining.

Right.

Maslow's hierarchy needs says people prioritize their priorities based on what they need first, what they feel is more valuable to them.

The first level of that is literally breathing food, water, shelter, clothing, sleep.

If you don't have those things established, you don't necessarily move psychologically to the next level.

The next level is safety and security, which is health, right?

We talked about health care.

That's employment, property, family and social ability.

The third level is love and belonging, which is friendship, family, intimacy and sense of connection.

We're not even going to get to the third level of wanting more family growth, more connection, more intimacy, because we can't get past the first two levels being firmly established in people's lives.

Right?

That's the psychological part that is affecting people not wanting to have children because they see that their needs aren't met on the the physiological level, which is just the basis of food, water, shelter, clothing, right?

Being able to meet your needs.

When I look at my particular children, I'm blessed.

I came from a varied background.

I grew up in poverty.

now I'm in the middle class.

Me and my wife are both successful in our careers and our ventures.

Our children didn't grow up in the the hoods that I came from, right.

They grew up in the suburbs.

They have a whole different understanding of what their growth and development looks like in their community looks like.

And in that I still talk to them about all the realities of what's to come.

And they're young, they're ten and nine years old, but they have to know they see these things in school when they come home with questions about why is this person like this?

Or why is this situation like this?

Or what am I hearing about Donald Trump?

Right?

Kids at nine and ten years old are having these conversations.

And so it's important to understand that you have to set them up to understand the dynamic across the board that everyone has a communal experience, that we all have to play a role in, and we have to look out for each other and not our own interest.

Just because we're okay today doesn't mean that we'll be okay tomorrow, and that your neighbor is okay, and you have to check on that and make sure anything that we do is involving the greater good of all those connected.

>> So that's powerful perspective.

And I think before we get to our only break, then we're going to come back, we'll take some phone calls and we'll take a perspective from listeners on these issues.

Just one other point for Congressman Morelli.

You've heard Vice President Vance say we need a stronger child tax credit.

We should we should encourage more families to have children.

There was a debate post-pandemic about child tax credits that were temporary and sunsetted.

So what happened with child tax credit?

What's going on there?

>> Well, we on our side of the aisle when they were busy doing big tax cuts, we forcefully argued that the child care tax credit and the child tax credits ought to be extended and made permanent.

I mean, during the pandemic, when we made those changes temporary, though they were, we saw child poverty in the United States drop by half.

I mean, that's an enormous reduction in child poverty.

That alone should argue for it.

And the vice president should have been more vocal in his advocacy because we should have made those cuts permanent.

and we should continue to try to help families.

and you could do it at all levels.

It doesn't have to be, you know, you go right up through the middle class.

People in the middle class also need help with child care.

So I think we could have made this universal in in every way, shape and form.

and we're going to continue to argue for it because we think it's important.

>> let's get our only break.

We're very late for that.

We've got Congressman Joe Morelli with us, along with Brian Lewis, executive director of the Rochester Rock the Future Alliance.

Willie Williams is with us, a parent, and we'll come right back to some of your feedback on connections.

I'm Evan Dawson Wednesday on the next connections, do you ever think about the future and think about dystopia apocalyptic scenarios?

Jeff VanderMeer is an American fiction writer whose books include some very dark thoughts about where we might be headed.

One of his books became a movie starring Natalie Portman.

He's visiting the area tomorrow.

We're going to talk about his latest dreams of our future, dystopia or not, that's Wednesday.

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>> This is connections.

I'm Evan Dawson Gale in Rochester on the phone first.

Hi, Gale.

Go ahead.

>> Hi.

I just want to say the other speakers are doing a great job.

and I just want to say that Joe Morelli is complicit in the genocide happening in Gaza at the moment.

And he needs to think about the children dying over there a lot more.

>> All right, Gail, thanks.

I look, I'll say this.

We can talk about a wide range of issues.

I'm not here to insulate or shield anybody.

We can talk about these issues on a different day.

and I'll let the congressman respond to that.

but I'm going to try to keep it focused on federal spending, focused on child care issues, et cetera.

Having said that, Gail got through.

Anything you want to mention there?

>> Yeah, I mean, I look what's happening in Gaza is atrocious and horrific.

and the loss of any life anywhere is is something we're all opposed to.

and I'll continue to push back internally in my conversations with the Israeli government about the way they're conducting themselves.

And I'll continue to support a two state solution.

I know that the prime minister of Israel, who I strongly disagree with, has opposed it.

but the Palestinian people have every right to self-government, self-determination, as do as do the Israelis.

And I'm going to continue to fight for stability in the region.

What's happening is awful.

and frankly, I continue to believe until we have a release of hostages, we're going to have to continue to have these hostilities.

And, but there's a lot of conversation privately going on to really push back against the Israelis in this latest move in Gaza, in Gaza City.

>> The UN inquiry last week said that it is genocide.

Now, do you feel that way yet?

>> I don't I think you know, I disagree and I've seen, you know, a number of new organizations pop up declaring it and look, I think this is messy and it's awful.

And there is there are children dying all over the world.

Every single child that we lose is a tragedy.

I'm going to continue to fight for a better resolution than we have now.

And I frankly think the Israeli government and the prime minister in particular should go.

But I'm going to continue to support Israel, and I'm going to continue to support their right to self-determination and their right to exist.

so and I'll come back and we'll have a longer conversation about it.

>> All right.

This is Jessica in Rochester, next on the phone.

Hey, Jessica, go ahead.

>> Hi, there.

this is not about child care, but it's more in line with the earlier conversation about health care and kind of how I think the whole thing is about to come unglued.

I want to draw attention to the number of people that have started living in the bus shelters.

in College Town, and they're on scooters, they're in wheelchairs, and they're all crammed in there.

And apparently, I mean, this is what I heard is that they were had been allowed to sleep in the emergency room at urmc, but some admin came down and kicked them out.

And now there are people in hospital gowns, in wheelchairs, sleeping there overnight.

>> Okay.

just concern, I guess concern about the current situation.

I don't know that our guest is Brian.

Did you want to jump in?

>> So.

>> Well, I mean, you know, like, health care and people falling through the cracks.

Sure, sure.

Yeah.

you know, the current administration.

>> It's a real concern.

And this is one of our our big concerns locally that with the federal disinvestments, we're seeing this more you know, Willie talked about the Maslow's hierarchy of needs.

Rock.

The future right now has an initiative to try to end child homelessness locally, and to try to do that so that we can improve education outcomes.

there's a lot of data that shows that if we can make sure people have housing stability, they will do better in school.

And while we have a long way to go with that, and it's an uphill battle, especially given what's happening you know, at the federal level of government, we are excited that we've been able to identify that there is a larger number than I think we previously thought of children experiencing housing instability in Rochester.

By our metric, more than 3000 and more than 12% of RCSD and charter students are homeless or experiencing some level of instability.

one win, though, that we've gotten early on from that, and it goes back to the local solutions piece, is we were able to work with the Rochester Housing Authority and several of our local partners, like our Mapi, to help shift a local policy so that the preference for housing vouchers for the first time included Mckinney-vento students and 4000 households were able to to apply for that, 30 received the preference and encouragingly, 25 of those households have already received some housing vouchers and support.

So we can see the needle moving.

And I think part of what we need to do is, yes, continue to pay attention to the trends, but also work on the solutions and invest in the solutions.

>> just briefly on housing, if you're concerned, if children growing up in homelessness is a kind of moral stain on a country there's a lot of talk about what we do about housing, but I think everybody agrees that housing is often too expensive or not accessible.

Kamala Harris said that she wanted to build 3 million new houses.

A new book called abundance.

I think everybody in Washington has been reading it.

I don't know if you picked up abundance yet.

>> Not only I read it, I met with Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson, the two authors.

I'm reading another book called Why Nothing Works, which is fascinating.

About halfway through it, a little more than that.

Now I think we need to do a massive housing.

build in the United States.

>> How how do we get there?

>> Well, look, I mean, part of what they talk about is the challenge that we've put in place in the way that we stopped development from happening.

And I think we just have to be much more creative.

I will say the real estate board here in Rochester Jim and his folks have been very good about let's let's try to do everything.

Let's, let's, you know, talk about affordable housing.

Let's talk about housing for seniors.

Let's let's really work at increasing housing.

I've been working with ESL Foundation who has made a commitment to more money, particularly for black and brown people who have had hard time getting mortgages, building intergenerational wealth.

I think there's a lot that we can do, but it takes a degree of intentionality and that will at least help us in the short term.

get to a place where there's more options and you look at a place like around where I live, so many seniors.

My mom just passed away in October, but she lived in the same house for 60 plus years, and she was all alone at the end in the house where seven of us lived.

She would love to have done something different.

but she doesn't feel that many options available to her.

So, I mean you know, we just sold the house to a young couple grateful for that.

I'm sure they're grateful to have housing stock, but it's so hard in so many places.

And, look, you don't want to displace people and start warehousing them.

That's.

That's not what we want to do.

We want people to stay in the communities that they love and where they've grown up.

But we've got to do a much better job about creative and getting creative and adding housing stock.

>> Is Congressman Joe Morelle an abundance Democrat?

>> Oh yeah, I think I actually love the book.

And I actually told Ezra when I chatted with him, I said, there's few books I read that I think to myself, God, I would have loved to have read that or not read it, written it, written it.

And he laughed.

I heard him repeating that to someone at another event that we're at.

He said.

A congressman told me he wished he had written the book, and I think it's great.

And I look, there's it's harder to do than to say but I think, you know, the great thing about Brian and his organization, which I really appreciate, is we can we can talk about all the things that aren't happening in the world.

We can condemn all the things, and we will continue to.

But you got to look for ways to have solutions, notwithstanding all the challenges in front of you, because otherwise you might as well just curl up in a ball and just say, well, what's the use?

So we got to be creative about how do we address this and how do we find solutions to problems.

And honestly, it's the best part of my job is getting to convene groups, working locally at trying to find solutions to problems.

>> Matthew in Rochester next.

Hey Matthew.

Go ahead.

>> Hey.

Thank you.

you might you might have to help me out in word.

This a little bit better, but I'm a I'm a I'm a white male, early 30s.

I've got a child now.

One year old just started daycare.

we're paying about $300 for three days a week, so about $100 a day, a little over 20 K a year.

and so there's, I guess two parts to this.

There's the national and the local.

And so I make about a little over $100,000 a year, which puts me in this gray area of, you know, we're really struggling financially, especially with the child care and bringing up a child, but we don't find ourselves in a position to really benefit you know, from many programs and obviously programs are geared towards your most vulnerable populations you know, which is the way it should be, but we're kind of I guess we feel like we're kind of in this lost area where, you know, who's really looking out for us.

And on the national level you know, I know it's it's really it's disingenuous from, from Trump, obviously.

Joe Morelle talked about it, but you know what?

I can appreciate if it wasn't disingenuous is the idea of we want to make child care free.

And here's a way we're going to do it without raising taxes.

you know, significant portion of my income is in taxes.

And so a lot of these programs, not that I don't think they're valuable, but I, you know, I'm in a position where I look at them and I say, well, is it going to benefit me?

Probably not.

Is it will it impact my insurance rates?

Will it impact my taxes?

Possibly.

So it puts me in this kind of selfish position where I'm not always, you know, looking at it like you know, what's it going to do for me?

And, you know, that might be a little selfish, but you've also got to, you know, take care of yourself.

>> No, I get it, Matthew, I appreciate it.

First of all, good luck with the one year old.

and, you know, Brian Lewis probably a lot of people are paying 20 K plus, and.

Oh, yeah, and that is daunting for families.

>> Oh, yeah.

And I have a three year old now and we have another child on the way.

So I know exactly how that feels.

And I can identify with that.

I'll say a couple of things.

I'll say.

One is that in addition to our role as conveners we are also looking at the data and holding local systems accountable around this issue.

And so if you go to Rock the future, rock the future.

Org, you can find a cradle to career dashboard that has all of the metrics for how our area is doing when it comes to kindergarten readiness, third grade reading, all those things that we're trying to work on.

You can also find if you go to the whole child section, a early childhood system map, and the early childhood system map will have some really tangible resources for parents, like the one that just called.

If you're looking for a place to enroll for your child, but also it has some analysis of funding streams, and it has some analysis of these larger issues.

last thing I'll say too.

I talked about all these different tables and different groups that we facilitate.

We also launched a policy workgroup, and I'm really excited about that.

we're being more explicit about tackling policy.

And so we've seen some wins in the state government that us and some of our partners, like our Mapi, help contribute to like being able to get universal school meals in the last school budget and increased child tax credit in the state budget that was larger than any other we've seen previously.

We're also looking at other states and other examples.

Part of the you know, positive of being part of a national network is that we are connected to folks all over the country, and we've seen what New Mexico has been able to do, for example, with having universal child care at the state level.

So we're looking at what's happening at the national level.

We're looking at what's happening with across states in different jurisdictions, and we're excited to be building a policy agenda here in Rochester that's led by parents, and that addresses these issues.

And so if you're interested in in joining that effort or joining that work, we encourage you to to link with us.

>> 100 bucks a day, $20,000 a year.

That's tough for a lot of Americans.

>> Oh, it's I mean, essentially 20% of his salary is taken away just to pay for child care.

It you know, we ought to get it.

So it's about 7%.

I think that's where we'd like it to be at.

We'd like to be able to have child care tax credits to help equalize that up to families making 175, $200,000 a year.

But when you think about this, part of the answer to this is to continue to expand the public school experiment went to universal four year olds who now are trying to get to universal three year olds.

If you think about it, we could do literally zero through 12 in the public school system, and it doesn't have to have to be run by the public schools.

You could bring in private, not for profit providers in school settings.

Just connect them into the whole system.

I think.

>> That, by the way, federal government.

>> Look like we all like we fund education.

I mean, you know, funding.

You make decisions based on the things you value and the things that will, will help the national agenda.

And having a well-trained, well-educated workforce and a well trained, well-educated citizenry is in America's interests, whether it's national security, economic security world leadership.

So these are things we ought to be investing in instead of.

I mean, frankly, I find this odd.

You know, we started with talking about Medicaid and work requirements.

We gave billionaires tax credits this year.

We didn't have one little requirement on them.

You don't have to create jobs.

You don't create economic opportunity.

You don't have to reinvest in your communities.

But to Medicaid recipients who can barely, you know, get by.

We said, now you're going to have to work requirements in order for you to get a benefit that you've had for the last 60 years.

But for the billionaires, we'll give you more money and don't worry, we'll share.

You're going to do the right thing with it.

How about investing in the future of America and American families?

And that's where we ought to be putting our money.

In my view.

>> As we wrap here, Willie, how are you?

Your nine and ten year olds?

Are they in daycare?

>> Oh.

>> Go ahead.

>> Not currently.

So just a practical point for the caller.

Matthew.

Many parents like myself in that phase of their child's development depended on early childhood resources to offset some of the cost of daycare.

Right.

So it's important that we put an investment into early childhood education, not just for the social emotional learning and development, but it also gives parents an opportunity to get a little bit of reprieve from the financial burden of lack of childcare.

>> Hey, thanks for your perspective this hour.

Great having you, Willie.

Good luck to you and your family.

Thank you very much, Matthew.

And everybody listening, struggling with childcare.

It's tough solidarity with you Brian Lewis, Rock the future.

Thank you for being with us.

Thank you, Congressman Morelle come back.

We'll talk to you soon.

>> Good.

>> Thank you very much.

And from all of us at connections.

Thanks for watching.

Thanks for listening.

We're back with you tomorrow on member supported public media.

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