SPECIAL ORDER HOUR ON CHILD CARE

Mr. SCOTT of Virginia. Mr. Speaker, I thank Mrs. Watson Coleman for her leadership on all of these issues, particularly education.

There is a growing bipartisan understanding that in order for our Nation's children, especially those in low-income communities, to fulfill their potential and succeed in college and career, that we must expand access to affordable, high-quality, early learning opportunities.

Decades of research shows that properly nurturing children in early years of life supports enhanced brain development, cognitive functioning, and emotional and physical health. Research has also shown that one investment that leads to better educational outcomes, stronger job earnings, and lower crime rates is quality early learning programs. These programs help prevent and reduce achievement gaps for low-income students and create long-term benefits for our Nation, such as lower crime rates, lower teen pregnancy rates, and higher high school graduation rates.

Yesterday I attended a screening of the documentary ``The Raising of America,'' which explained the challenges working families have in raising children and helping them succeed. Even though there is nearly universal understanding of the importance of high-quality, early-learning opportunities, many families are not able to afford or access these opportunities. As the documentary clearly explained, working families are more productive than ever, but our Nation lacks the Federal policies that these families need in order to better balance their work and family responsibilities.

For example, unpredictable, unstable schedules place an undue burden on working families, impacting their ability to maintain child care. We are among the richest nations in the world. The United States is the only such nation that does not provide paid leave to families to invest time in early development of their children. The United States doesn't even provide universal access to quality, affordable child care. This is simply unacceptable.

The Democrats on the House Committee on Education and the Workforce have been working with our colleagues in the Democratic Caucus on a working families agenda. This agenda supports families by giving them the tools that they need to better balance work and family.

The working families agenda calls for commonsense policies, such as paid sick leave, paid family leave, and access to universal, high-quality child care to help balance work and family responsibilities. In addition, it supports increased wages by calling for an increased minimum wage and legislation to reduce discrimination in the workforce.

But access to high-quality child care is an integral part of the working family's agenda. In the recently passed spending bill, we increased funding for the Child Care and Development Block Grants by $326 million. This increase is a strong, positive step in the right direction, but we must build on this effort.

That is because over 20 States cannot serve all of the eligible families, and some States aren't even accepting eligible participants to sign up on their wait list. Now, we are not talking about whether the child is eligible or not or whether they receive it, but whether a child can even be placed on a wait list to hope for funding.

If we want parents to work and we want children to be able to determine their futures, if we want strong and stable families, we must provide these families with access to high-quality child care and other early-learning opportunities. These efforts are a national priority, and all children deserve the opportunity to reach their full potential.

Again, I want to thank you for your leadership for bringing this issue to a Special Order.