access to quality affordable child care is an issue facing countless families here in New Jersey and across the country and while average wealthy Nations spend about fourteen thousand dollars a year in funding for Child Care America spends less than five hundred dollars per child well that is not okay with congresswoman Mikie Sherrill who's joined with more than 100 other members of Congress to support legislation that would change that funding structure she joins me now congresswoman Mikey Cheryl thanks so much for being with us today now you have long advocated for child care more child care here in New Jersey and around the country you say New Jersey is about to fall off a child care Cliff what do you mean by that well unfortunately it's not just New Jersey um we have pushed significant funding into our child care centers uh through the ARP funding we've really had a crisis in child care even before covid too many parents did not have access to Quality and affordable child care but certainly covid really broke the system uh in too many places so with the ARP funding we were able to push money into keeping the industry going with high quality centers that parents could afford but now we're facing what we're calling the child care Cliff because that that extra money is going to run out at the end of September um and I've had recently uh this week A Child Care Roundtable not the first and hearing from our providers about what's coming and their concerns this is something that I think we really need to address and I'm pushing for um some more funding before the end of the year to make sure that we are stabilizing our child care industry you mentioned ARP funding that's the American Rescue plan funding now you tell us about the child care for every Community act that you are now supporting what would it do so this is a piece of legislation I've introduced in the house Senator Warren has it in the Senate um it's all it's largely modeled after what we do in our military on our military bases I sit on house armed services committee she sits on the Senate armed services committee and this model has really been supportive of many families in our military it ensures that nobody pays more than seven percent of their income in child care costs making sure that we are supporting the workforce the infrastructure of the child care centers there's a lot of overhead costs to caring for young children and and the safety codes of the building and the certifications of the workforce as well as then making sure families can afford that child care congresswoman I was surprised to see that you actually put out in a statement that America Falls far behind countries like Romania and Mexico in terms of the federal funding and federal support for child care how much money would be needed their 16 billion in this bill is that actually what's needed so we we really are looking at 16 billion dollars yes to to have uh this sector of the economy ensure that people can get back to work and this is really important because um right now um too many parents aren't able to get back into the workforce because they can't find places to have their children have safe and secure places for their children to be watched as they go back to work and I'll tell you I was just at the chamber the New Jersey Chamber this morning and they were raising that so many of the employers as part of the chamber so many of our small businesses are having Workforce short shortages and as you mentioned I have been advocating for better child care for families for years now because of my own experiences because of the experience of too many families who come to me to talk about this so this is an incredibly important way we get the workforce back and the Chamber was saying that this is something we've got to address for our economy I was just going to say this has huge economic impacts certainly congresswoman Mikie Sherrill thank you so much [Music]