In the 1990’s, the Clinton administration gutted welfare programs, taking benefits away from millions of people, especially working mothers in our country who needed them to survive. They created the “welfare queen” myth and convinced many people on both sides of the political spectrum that welfare fraud is rampant and that people receiving benefits are lazy freeloaders. While it helped him get re-elected, it also decimated our social safety net in ways that we still haven’t recovered from, despite the Democratic majority in our state legislature.
Today, once again, the country is fixated on “welfare fraud,” now in the form of so-called “child care fraud.” In Washington, a few state legislators are focusing on a largely imaginary problem, using up time and resources that could be devoted to addressing real issues you’re facing at your kitchen table. Most alleged child care subsidy fraud comes down to missing attendance records or overbilled hours, totaling just over $2 million a year in our state. In contrast, corporate tax dodging and loopholes cost us hundreds of millions of dollars that could be used to help regular people afford groceries.
News reports regularly highlight rare cases where providers bill for “ghost children,” or parents misreport their income to receive subsidies. But this supposed crisis takes attention away from where the real losses occur. The problem isn’t what happens in a struggling single mother’s home. It is rooted in our tax laws and corporate practices.
Low-income mothers often have to go through fingerprinting and fraud checks just to get child care vouchers. At the same time, wealthy families can easily deduct thousands of dollars in nanny fees or private preschool tuition on their taxes. The government helps pay for private child care for the wealthy, while the public system for low-income families remains underfunded and mistrusted.
A bigger issue is known as the “motherhood penalty”: millions of women leave the workforce because they can’t afford child care. The economy benefits from their unpaid work, but the costs to these women are huge. Studies show that women lose about $500,000 in wages over their lifetimes due to career breaks, missed promotions, and slower wage growth. This leads to less retirement savings and lower financial security.
The loss of wages, career growth, and Social Security investment takes value away from families and gives it to the market. Corporations benefit from a workforce in which families must handle child care on their own. If a parent leaves a job because child care costs more than their pay, it is not their fault. The system relies on their work but does not support the job of raising children. Parenting is work that benefits our society, and it should be treated as such.
