Exclusive: employees would be reimbursed for fees paid to childcare facilities under plans initiated by Ilhan Omar
Congressional Democrats are introducing a bill that would provide childcare relief to federal workers affected by the shutdown of the federal government, as it drags on through a second week.
Parents would be reimbursed for fees paid to childcare facilities during the shutdown under plans initiated by Congresswoman Ilhan Omar.
Any federal employee who has been furloughed, or remains working through the shutdown without pay, would be entitled to support under the Federal Worker Childcare Protection Act of 2025.
As a reminder of how daycare works, you pay regardless of whether your kid attends or not. You could pull them from daycare altogether… But your probably not going to find another slot or opening again.
It’s weird how the funding for the ICEstapo and sending National Guard into blue cities is never in question…
Are they really still paying both of those parties? Wtf?
Edit: I’m seeing that they ARE NOT paid during the shutdown. But they are forced to work.
And that has zero chance of passing.
I imagine they know that. But it’s a good headline that “Republicans vote down child care”
Republican voters are only going to hear the “Republicans bravely defend the country from COMMUNISM” spin.
I know… I know. The media landscape in this country is irrevocably fucked.
Yep. It will never pass because it’s socialism, and we can’t have that! /s
There should be a carve out of this for anyone who works for DHS affiliated agencies. Those people should go broke and be financially forced into other lines of work.
…why do they need child care if they are not at work?
I mean, fuck trump, and fuck the entire GOP, and fuck America’s neglect of childcare and the inherently misogynistic implications of everything that entails.
But this is like that old joke about the blind firefighters playing golf…
(A priest, a doctor, and an engineer were waiting one morning for a particularly slow group of golfers. The engineer fumed, “What’s with those guys? We must have been waiting for fifteen minutes.” The doctor chimed in, “I don’t know, but I’ve never seen such inept golf.” The priest said, “Here comes the greenkeeper. Let’s have a word with him.”
The priest said, “Hello George, what’s wrong with the group ahead of us? They’re rather slow, aren’t they?.” The greenkeeper replied, “Oh yes, thats a group of blind firemen. They lost their sight saving our clubhouse from a fire last year so we always let them play for free at any time.”
The group fell silent for a moment. The priest said, “That’s so sad. I think I will say a special prayer for them tonight.,” The doctor said, “Good idea. I’m gonna contact my optomologist colleague and see if there’s anything he can do for them.” The engineer said, “Why can’t they play at night?”)
You still have to pay for daycare even if your kid does not go to keep your spot. And you have to keep your spot otherwise you are mega fucked when you go back to work.
In some areas getting childcare is a 6 months to a year process. My wife had twins and childcare completely destroyed her career. You think getting childcare for one baby is hard, try 2.
Government employees are still going to work even though they’re not getting paid, this bill is to help cover child care expenses that the gov employees are still accruing. And is your comment ai slop? Because your “joke” doesn’t make any sense in the context of the article.
There are many federal employees that are required to come to work even if they’re not getting paid - for example, air traffic control. They still need to pay for childcare even without any money coming in.
At which point the air traffic controllers should simply say “if you’re not paying us, we’re not working”. If they’re so damn important then oopsie, I guess they better be paid.
Every time they have a law like that, or a return to work order during a strike, or whatever else, it means they’re scared that it’s working.
Reagan made sure that’ll never happen.
Ya know, at this point I’d like to see what they could even do if all air traffic controllers walked off. Like, there’s a point where it doesn’t matter what they threaten, they cannot afford to even punish them. Airlines and air shipping would freak the fuck out and the replacements would take forever to train abd would, after something like that, be almost entirely made up of desperate people who(in a way I wouldn’t really blame them, even) would probably not even be that good at their new jobs.
People need to figure out that they have power together. This “that would never work” reflex that people in the US and Canada have is so fucking lame.
I 100% agree with you. They’d probably threaten to arrest them all and then as a last resort, bring in the military to run it, just guessing on that. No idea if the military has the capacity to even meet 10% of the need for ATC.
But yeah, the people need to work together if we ever want change in this country, but if my experiences in life have taught me anything, it’s that when the chips are down, people tend to turn on each other rather than work together. That’s what I’m seeing play out in this country right now.
I just don’t get it. I feel like I’m at such diametric odds with most of the people I encounter on a day to day basis that I don’t see how that ideological gap can be bridged. It’s really gotten bad.
It’s really crazy. I hate being the smartest/among the smartest people in so many of the rooms I’m in because I don’t think I’m smart enough for that to be ok. I don’t think I’m stupid, not at all, but holy shit. I know way too many people who can’t figure out basic shit, who struggle with such simple concepts. I also know a bunch of people I can actually trust and would even but above me, but woof.
But yea, I’m getting so tired of people running on monkey brain like we’re still running around naked in Africa fighting other groups for the chance to eat a gazelle we found. We have smartphones and yet most of us are so stupid that even university education(passing courses and getting a degree) and having facts at our fingertips can’t help us.
A lot of daycares won’t keep your spot if you don’t continue to pay. So it would be a gamble whether or not they have a spot for when you DO go back to work. Since they don’t have their normal income, then it might be hard to keep it up.
Wtf? They are furloughed, they are home with their kids. Unless they are essential, then ok I can see it being good. But where is this support for childcare for the people that are essential and not federal workers? Why are the Dems attacking Mamdani when he said he wanted to provide childcare?
All the essential workers still work, without pay
Many US child care facilities require contracts for 40 hours per week regardless if you send your kids every day. Even if the parents choose to keep their kids home, they’re likely on the hook for payments.
That’s how ours is… And I’m just a normal dude with a toddler.
We pay them if the rascal is there or not.
Makes sense. They are selling you the option to one of the available childcare slots, which is a fixed number. They can’t sell more slots than they can accommodate, on the off chance every slot is used on a given day. To do so would drop the quality of care.
It’s not like they are airlines and can just bump you to the next available.
Its not even about quality of care its state regulations. They can only accept so many kids and need to have so many staff per state regs.
If I pull my kid from daycare, they are just out of daycare. They would be school age by the time I got a new slot.
I think the state regulations exist to assure a minimum safe level quality of care, so we are saying the same thing.
They can’t sell more slots than they can accommodate, on the off chance every slot is used on a given day. To do so would drop the quality of care.
I mean, if airlines can do it…
I very much doubt you will find an example of Ilhan attacking Mamdani or childcare support. This is at least the second time she’s tried to pass this bill, the first was during Trump’s first term. A majority of federal workers are not furloughed during a shutdown, although it’s hard to find numbers on how many of those are working with pay vs. without pay. I’m positive she also spoke out when Republicans and Manchin and Sinema killed the childcare tax credits from the build back better bill that reduced child poverty to record lows, she’s pretty consistently one of the good ones.
It’s also worth pointing out that this is as much a messaging tactic as a real bill. There ain’t no way Republicans are passing this bill, but having this and other bills like it on the table makes them put up or shut up if they try to attack Democrats for holding government workers’ livelihoods hostage over the shutdown. Having it focus on government workers increases the strength of that message, even if broader relief would still be necessary if this passes.
Introducing bills like this, and thus establishing a counter narrative of “this is what the Democrats want for the country, as opposed to what you are getting today from the Republicans”, is miles better than the Schumer strategy to date of doing his level best to agree to all of the Republican demands in order to make living under the Trump presidency as unbearable as possible in the hopes that people will vote Democrat for change despite Schumer putting no daylight between Democratic and Republican positions.
It costs money to take care of children, in case you weren’t aware.
I think it’s that category of essential employees who are working without pay that this would be most intended for.
Because they’re better than the rabble. Obviously they should have free childcare, they deserve it. The rest of us should just shut up and continue to struggle. That is our lot.
Narratives like this support DOGE’s actions. The GS-5 working for your local national park is not your enemy, it’s the multi billionaires that used their influence to kill the child tax credit in 2022 to fund a tax cut for them in 2025 that are the problem here. Ilhan’s bill focuses on government employees because it is a messaging bill in a government shutdown environment and because it keeps the bill simple, the government already has mechanisms for OMB to reimburse government employees for eligible expenses, so this is just directing that infrastructure to add a category to the list of eligible expenses as opposed to creating any new systems or changing the tax code. It’s not even close to a final step, but it helps some workers, and that’s better than the current trend of the government stepping on workers in favor of billionaires
I can cop that. My bad.
I still think it’s too little, and it’s cute that it’s coming when it’s pressing for them. Nevermind all the parents that struggle daily to make ends meet. It’s always when it hurts people personally that they care to take action.
You know that “federal workers” doesn’t just mean politicians right?
Bot or Russian/Israeli?
Yes to both, obviously. Check my post history for proof.
Edit: I’m sick of politicians that want special treatment while not pushing for it for the masses. We have politicians trying to spy on everyone, invading their privacy, while also leaving themselves exempt.
It’s ridiculous.
