Childcare is expensive in America. Sometimes it costs more than one parent earns in a single month. 

 

To help working parents, we will create a federally-funded program to provide childcare coupons, payable to private preschools and daycares, covering costs up to $25,000 per year. Our plan will enable parents to remain in the workforce and allow kids to receive quality education in schools with trained professionals. In this way, parents will gain the economic freedom to truly be working parents and children will continue to receive the socialization and education they need in their formative years. 

 

For some families, it simply does not make fiscal sense for both parents to work when the cost of child care may be as much or more than a parent’s income. 

 

Parents shouldn’t have to leave the workforce at unprecedented rates in order to escape childcare costs. There is an insurmountable financial gap between the end of parental leave and the beginning of public kindergarten, which disproportionately affects working mothers. Just in the first half of 2025, over 400,000 women with children under five years of age left the workforce. 

 

While New Jersey has made incredible progress in expanding public preschool options for children over the age of three, only half of the state’s school districts offer a public preschool option. In our congressional district, that figure is even lower, with only a quarter of municipalities offering free pre-K programs.

 

The federal government can do more to support America’s families. 

 

By making childcare affordable through a federally funded coupon program, we will fight to support working parents, put money into the economy, and make the American Dream possible for parents and their children.