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– Child care win. The recently passed “One Big Beautiful Bill” will have far-reaching effects on everything from income taxes to student loans to immigration. One under-covered aspect of the law: it also includes billions of dollars in child care-related tax cuts, a rare win for a pocketbook issue that Washington typically overlooks.
The key to winning the investment, says Reshma Saujani, CEO of advocacy organization Moms First, was getting businesses on board and appealing to voters across the political spectrum. Knowing the tax bill would be the first big opportunity in the second Trump administration to address child care, Saujani says the organization focused on building a strategy that involved over 200 businesses and bipartisan parents advocating for federal relief. Earlier this year, representatives from over 50 employers, including UPS, Toyota, and Mazda, traveled to Capitol Hill to meet with legislators and demand action. In fact, Saujani was “overwhelmed” by the willingness of businesses to help.
“Childcare, as you know, has been seen as a personal problem for women and workers, but not an economic imperative,” Saujani says. “We knew we needed to get businesses to make the case…when we were in those offices, many of the Republicans and the Democrats, quite frankly, noted that this was the first time businesses had ever been in their office to advocate for child care.”
While it’d be easy to give up on the goal during a Republican administration—the party has been resistant to expanding child care and paid leave policies—Saujani and Moms First pushed ahead: Since January, they partnered with a conservative pollster to better understand what messaging would get across in the administration and helped get 25,000 parents to tell Congress that child care should be a priority, in addition to their visits to Congress. The fact that businesses are so eager to help and Republicans expanded the tax breaks shows how salient the issue has become for families of all political stripes.
“We knew we needed to make clear that childcare was the linchpin of affordability. This president and Congress had gotten elected on affordability,” she says.
The strategies worked. The tax breaks included in the bill that Moms First advocated for include:
- The Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit, or CDCTC: Permanently expands this credit for working parents for the first time since 2001.
- Employer-Provided Child Care Credit: Triples the maximum credit to employers to help locate or provide child care for their employees, also last updated in 2001.
- Dependent Care Assistance Plans, or DCAP: Increases the pre-tax amount parents can put in these flexible spending plans to pay for child care expenses, from up to $5,000 annually to up to $7,500. This was last updated in 1986.
The Child Tax Credit was also increased from $2,000 per child to $2,200. While the tax breaks are a win, the bill also includes provisions that experts say will harm families, particularly those who are lower income. After the midterm elections next year, the new law slashes funding for Medicaid, which covers 41% of all births in the U.S. while also providing care for millions of disabled kids. Funding for nutrition benefits, including for families with children, will also be cut. But Saujani says the organization isn’t waiting for the “perfect moment” or perfect piece of legislation, they’re fighting at every opportunity.
“What we realized in this advocacy is that progress isn’t sweeping, it’s incremental,” she says. “We’re in a once-in-a-lifetime generational fight for childcare, and that means that we have to celebrate the wins even when they’re imperfect.”
Alicia Adamczyk
alicia.adamczyk@fortune.com
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This story was originally featured on Fortune.com
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