The CHIPS Act reinforces the obvious: Child care is a public necessity

Imagine your family moves to a new city. Your seven-year-old, “Magic-Treehouse”–obsessed daughter can’t wait to start second grade — until you learn there aren’t enough spots to accommodate her.  

Your reaction (or at the very least mine) would be: “Are you kidding me?” 

Republican or Democrat, all Americans have come to expect public education — and other public goods like the highways we drive on or the metros we take to work — as givens in this country. Because we all understand that our economy and society would not be able to function without them. 

But isn’t child care just as core to our country’s functioning? 

The Biden administration seems to think so. On Feb. 28, the U.S. Department of Commerce (DOC) announced that any semiconductor manufacturer requesting over $150 million in direct funding under the CHIPS Act will need to submit plans for providing affordable, accessible, reliable and high-quality child care for the workers who build and facilitate their plants. 

The logic behind their bold move is simple: Without child care, many parents — often mothers — cannot work. Without a robust workforce, America’s industries cannot function, weakening our economy and forcing us to become overly dependent on foreign suppliers. This is especially precarious given that semiconductors are essential for everything from smartphones to MRI machines to all major U.S. defense systems and platforms.   

Essentially, with this initiative, the DOC is finally acknowledging what me and my colleagues at the National Women’s Law Center — as well as families across the country — have always known to be true:  

Child care is the backbone of our country’s economy.   

As of February, the U.S. economy lost $122 billion in earnings, productivity and revenue every year because of the infant-toddler child care crisis.  In contrast, expanding access to child care for everyone who needs it could increase the number of prime-age women with young children working full-time, year-round by an estimated 17 percent. Also, the Economic Policy Institute estimates an investment that caps child care expenditures at 10 percent of a family’s income could increase women’s workforce participation enough to boost America’s GDP by about $210 billion.  

However, connecting child care to CHIPS funding — a core industry in our larger economy — has already sparked conservative backlash, with one critic arguing that “not all women want to put their young children into institutional day care.”  

This argument is undeniably true. But luckily, no one is suggesting that any child goes to “institutional day care.” Rather, both the DOC initiative and Biden’s broader proposals on child care focus on providing families with access to a range of high-quality, reliable options, giving them the freedom to choose how to balance working and caregiving. Ironically, it is our current underfunded patchwork of child care that forces families and parents to make impossible choices — aka leave your job or spend half your salary on child care.  

The debate has also begun over how this CHIPS child care initiative should be implemented. At the National Women’s Law Center, an organization that’s been in the child care field for over 50 years, we understand that this policy will only be effective if the DOC consults with local communities, focuses on building the supply of child care in a variety of settings and is responsive to the diverse needs of the workforce. And even if it is implemented perfectly, this initiative is not a replacement for the long-term, robust investments in child care that we need.   

But the Biden administration has never claimed that their CHIPS child care initiative is a silver bullet. In fact, President Biden proposed historic, long-term investments to build a child care and early learning system in his recently released budget. Because his administration understands that you shouldn’t have to work as a semiconductor fabric engineer at a plant in North Phoenix, Ariz., — specifically near Interstate 17 and Loop 303 — to be able to access child care. 

Or to send your daughter to second grade. 

Or to drive down paved roads or take the metro to work. 

I applaud the CHIPS child care initiative, which will provide relief to thousands of parents and help to facilitate the success of the semiconductor industry. But this is one piece of a much larger puzzle. To make a difference for all parents, we need to start understanding and investing in child care for what it really is: a public good that not only American families, but America’s entire economy, cannot function without. 

Melissa Boteach is vice president for income security and child care/early learning at the National Women’s Law Center where she oversees advocacy, policy and public education strategies to ensure all women and families have the income and supports they need to thrive.