Last week, Senator Mikulski (D-MD), Senator Burr (R-NC), Senator Harkin (D-IA), and Senator Alexander (R-TN) introduced a bill to reauthorize the Child Care and Development Block Grant, the primary federal grant program that provides child care assistance for families and funds child care quality initiative.  Child Care Aware® of America announced its support for the “Child Care Development and Block Grant Act of 2013” introduced today, which would reauthorize the program for the first time in over 17 years.

Mission: Readiness, a nonprofit organization made up more than 350 retired military senior officers who are asking state and federal lawmakers to create policies that will help youth prepare for employment and military service, released a report showing how high-quality early learning programs could lead to 2 million more high school graduates and $150 billion in economic benefits. With 75% of all young Americans ineligible to join the military, largely as a result of not having a high school diploma or being able to score high enough on the military’s entrance exam to be allowed to serve, Mission: Readiness recognizes the economic and national security benefits of high-quality early learning settings.

Each week, nearly 11 million children under age 5 are in some type of child care setting for an average of 35 hours. It’s a statistic that gets mentioned often in conversations about the importance of child care in every community across the United States, and with good reason. Working families understand the need to not only have their children in a child care setting that will keep them safe and out of harm’s way, but also to ensure that in the years where the most critical development occurs that they are in a setting that promotes early learning.

With so many families looking for safe, but affordable child care, one thing is certain; Families need effective and efficient policies that work for working families.

It’s Memorial Day Weekend and a time to celebrate and remember those who died in service to our country – over a million men and women who have died since the Civil War protecting our people and democratic values – not “democratic” as in political party, but the big “D” – Democracy – a government in which power is vested in the people – a representative democracy with free elections to affect nationwide policies.

This past week, the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, Kathleen Sebelius, held a press conference at an early learning center in Washington, D.C.  to announce new rules to promote the health and safety of children in child care.  She said that in the absence of legislation to reauthorize the Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG), the Administration is proposing to revise current regulations to better promote the safety and healthy development of children.

This week, the New Republic ran an article, “The Hell of American Day Care: An Investigation into the barely regulated, unsafe business of looking after our children.” The article reviewed the condition of child care in America today and highlighted the Texas child care program where a fire killed four of seven young children being cared for by Jessica Tata in February 2011.