BACKGROUND PRESS CALL
BY SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIALS
ON THE WHITE HOUSE SUMMIT ON CHILD CARE AND PAID LEAVE
Via Teleconference
December 11, 2019
4:37 P.M. EST
MS. DITTO: Thank you. Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for dialing into today’s background briefing call on the White House Summit on Child Care and Paid Leave for America’s working families. You will be hearing from a number of senior administration officials on this call to give you a full rundown of tomorrow’s summit that will be taking place in the morning at the South Court Auditorium and the White House.
The content of the Q&A will be considered on background, attributable to a senior administration official. And everything will be embargoed until the conclusion of this call [midnight tonight]. However, we will go ahead and start with two notable speakers who will have on-the-record statements that they will make.
The contents of this call will be -- oh, I’m wrong about the embargo. Please note that the contents of this call are embargoed until midnight tonight. Thank you.
First you will hear from Advisor -- in a second, you will from Assistant to the President Joe Grogan and White House Director of the Domestic Policy Council, who will discuss more in depth some of the child care accomplishments the administration has seen over the last three years, and the notable accomplishments the Trump administration has made in supporting the working families agenda.
You will also hear from Secretary Azar of Health and Human Services, who will discuss the CEA report and the rollout of the administration’s child care principles that will be unveiled during tomorrow’s summit.
And due to a number of events today, our speakers will have to depart shortly after their statements. But the Q&A will be answered by our subject-matter experts within the White House and HHS. Before we move on to Q&A, I’ll go ahead and pass this on to Director Grogan.
DIRECTOR GROGAN: Thank you, Jessica. And thank you for today’s call. I’m pleased to share with members of the media information about tomorrow’s summit here at the White House on child care and paid leave.
Tomorrow, we will hear from lawmakers, private sector CEOs, and senior administration officials, and we’ll have some very solid and productive discussions on these important topics and how to move our policies forward for the American -- for American families.
To give you a little background on the administration’s actions thus far: President Trump’s administration has been supporting America’s families from the moment he took office. This President has taken bold steps to make America the best place to work and raise a family. In just three years, we have seen historic successes for America’s workers. This President focused on bringing Americans off the sidelines and into the workforce. 6.7 million jobs have been created under his leadership, and the unemployment is at the lowest level in half a century at 3.5 percent.
With a growing workforce; access to affordable, high-quality child care; and paid family leave, it is becoming even more important to our economy and to working families.
That’s why President Trump signed into law the largest-ever increase for the Child Care and Development Block Grant -- “CCDBG” -- an increase of nearly $2.4 billion. Through block grants to the states, these funds help parents afford child care for their children.
President Trump also signed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act in 2017, through which we doubled the child tax credit from $1,000 to $2,000, and expanded refundability. Almost 40 million families receive this tax credit, and it offers real relief for America’s moms and dads. Policies like these are extremely important to working families like mine.
President Trump has always tackled complicated problems that other administrations have shied away from. He was the first President to include a nationwide, paid family leave program in his budget, further reflecting the administration’s active commitment to the policy. And yet, the President advocated for paid leave in his 2017 Joint Session of Congress Address, and the 2018 and 2019 State of the Union Addresses.
This is a bipartisan issue, and I’m pleased that the National Defense Authorization Act Conference Report that Congress will be voting on includes paid parental leave for federal government employees for the first time. This is an important first step to providing paid parental leave for all Americans -- a top priority for this administration.
And now, we’ll hear from Secretary Azar to provide an update on what we’ll be specifically releasing at the summit.
SECRETARY AZAR: Thank you, Joe, for your work with HHS on this and many other issues. To begin, I’d also like to thank the President and Ivanka Trump for their advocacy for working families, which is epitomized by tomorrow’s summit at the White House.
Supporting working families with access to affordable, high-quality child care is a priority for the Trump administration and for HHS. Child care can be an essential piece of helping Americans attain self-sufficiency and economic independence, which is a key part of HHS's mission.
As all of you know, the economy is roaring. We have more opportunities than ever to use our Human Services programs to connect Americans to self-sufficiency and independence.
We know that the cost and availability of child care has an effect on finding work. A CEA report being released this week suggests that decreasing child care costs through more flexible government support, expanded options, and regulatory reforms could meaningfully increase the number of Americans entering the labor workforce.
Access to child care also creates a virtuous cycle in the labor market by reducing turnover and making it easier for employers to attract employees.
Further, HHS is prioritizing this issue because high-quality child care means healthier future generations. Evidence has shown that high-quality, early-learning environments are important for the cognitive and social development of young children.
As Joe mentioned, President Trump has already delivered results on child care affordability and access. But we believe there is room for bipartisan, commonsense improvements to improve access and affordability even further.
To understand how we can further improve child care and expand access, we've held a series of 10 roundtables around the country to hear about challenges and innovative solutions from the public and private sector and from child care providers of all kinds.
We also issued a formal request for information this fall and received 213 written comments this month from national, state, and local organizations. That work has informed the eight child care principles that the White House is releasing this week -- commonsense, practical reform ideas that I want to describe briefly.
To start, we want to put parents first. Policymakers should directly engage parents in developing policies and strategies for improving access to child care. And we should also be looking at how to ensure parents have the information they need to make child care decisions.
Second, we want to reauthorize and reform the Child Care and Development Block Grant Act, which will expire in fiscal year 2021. This is an opportune time to revisit the authorizing statute, including by addressing the “child care cliff,” which HHS research has found to be one of the steepest implicit marginal tax rates in all federal benefit programs.
We also want to promote flexibility within the statute and reform implementation of the new background checks created in the 2014 reauthorization.
Third, we want to build the supply of child care and increase choices for families. Since 2005, the overall number of licensed child care providers in the U.S. has decreased by 30 percent -- almost entirely attributable to a decline in home-based, licensed family child care providers.
We want to target funding to build the supply of child care for underserved populations and in rural areas by supporting a wide array of child care options, including faith-based and family child care providers.
We also want to help employers invest in child care, including new incentives for businesses of varying sizes.
Fourth, we want to -- we want to promote innovation and modernize the child care business model. For example, through the use of shared services, family child care networks, and innovative public-private financing models.
Fifth, we want to increase the availability of high-quality child care across all settings. Quality child care does not always mean center-based care. It can often be family child care providers.
But many states have quality rating and improvement systems that aren't a good fit for assessing the quality of family child care.
Sixth, we want to ensure commonsense-aligned regulations. We want to address duplication in regulations and ensure regulations aren’t unintentionally driving up costs or pushing different types of providers out of the market.
Seventh, we want to address the child care workforce shortage by looking at both educational requirements and compensation. That means exploring competency and skills-based hiring, rather than relying on higher education credentials and creating multiple pathways to enter and advance in the field, including apprenticeships.
Finally, we believe there is a need for recommendations for a rational financing framework for child care in America, as opposed to the fragmented and complex system for financing child care and early childhood education today.
All of these principles are aimed at one goal: making America the best place in the world to raise and support a family. That will be the topic of all of our discussions at tomorrow's summit. And I look forward to continuing work toward that goal at HHS.
MS. DITTO: All right. Thank you, Secretary. And with that, we will go back to the ground rules. And, as I mentioned, the Q&A will now be handled by our subject-matter experts within the White House and HHS. Those individuals are [senior administration officials].
Again, all answers are on background and attributable to senior administration officials. The content of this call, again, is embargoed until midnight on Thursday. Midnight -- okay, right, midnight. (Laughs.)
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Operator, if you want to go ahead and get started, we can do the Q&A.
Q Hey guys. Thank you so much for doing this call and for taking some questions. I just want to ask, is there any evidence that, you know, the administration has -- are there any statistics that show that, you know, more people are taking paid leave or that this has been successful in increasing the number of people doing this? I mean, are there statistics that you guys are pointing to that support that? And if not, how will you measure success going forward? And how will we be able to evaluate whether this effort has been successful?
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: So, this is [senior administration official]. I know that there's a number of components here who are responsible for the paid leave policy portfolio. Obviously, a lot of that progress is just getting underway with the actual vote underway on NDAA for federal workers. A policy that’s been implemented individually at various companies is difficult to measure.
And so we’ll have to get back to you on that, but certainly that’s part of the dialogue happening tomorrow with the private-sector panel, along with our government officials at the congressional end and gubernatorial level for tomorrow’s summit.
And I would also just say, you know, there’s a number of companies that have come on recently that have been providing paid leave. In fact, when the tax cut bill came about, in December of 2017, we saw a number of companies who started providing that benefit due to the returns that they were getting. Walmart, I think, was one example.
But as we’ve seen a number of companies, sort of, start to embrace more parental paid leave policies -- and a few states have done it -- it’s, sort of, been a haphazard approach across the country. And so that is why the President has, sort of, been calling for a nationwide paid parental leave program in a way in which we can start to measure it and start to ensure that everyone is getting the benefit, especially those who we believe have not received a benefit -- those who are low income, who we really want to target.
And so that’s been our approach and the path we’ve taken and have been pushing for, for the past number of years.
Q Hi. Thank you again for taking the time. Can you just help us understand tomorrow? Tomorrow is more like a listening session. Is there an announcement coming from the administration tomorrow? Or is it, sort of, an "exploring next steps" situation? What’s happening tomorrow?
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: I think it’s a lot of different things. One is, we’re going to be having some really just great conversations. You’ll be hearing from governors talking about the child care initiatives that they have going on in their states. You’ll be hearing from lawmakers talking about the paid leave plans that they’re really interested in pushing. And you’ll also hear from some private sector CEOs who have been doing a lot of child care work in the private sector. And so you’ll be hearing a lot of great ideas from them.
The administration will be releasing a couple things. One will be a CEA report talking about the affordability of child care, which goes along great with a lot of discussions we’ll have tomorrow.
And we’ll also be releasing the administration’s child care reform principles, which we’re viewing as general practical principles that the left and the right should be able to come together on to really try to take practical steps to ensure that America's families are able to afford the care that they need, especially with -- as Joe Grogan pointed out at the beginning of the call, we're seeing more and more Americans join the workforce, and this is becoming an even bigger issue for America's families.
And so we just thought it was great to release this draft of principles that we're hoping, like I said, the left and right can come together and make some -- make a difference.
Q Hi, thanks for doing the call. Again, I just wanted to follow up a little bit on Josh's question. Could we get a little bit more detail about tomorrow? The previous speaker mentioned that there would be some governors, some lawmakers, some private sector CEOs.
Can you say what governors and which states they're coming from? Which lawmakers we'll hear from? Which private sector businesses will be represented tomorrow?
And is this a day-long summit or a half day? And who from the administration will be speaking besides the President and Advisor Ivanka Trump?
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: Sure, Darlene. Thank you. And, as you know, like on a lot of our domestic policy priorities, we've outlined principles to help guide our legislative directives and conversations on the Hill and with states.
So the healthcare -- I mean, the child care principles that will be released tomorrow are new and will be used to invigorate that conversation and keep the momentum going based on the progress that we have made over the last two years in making substantial investments in child care, as well as paid leave.
Now we're -- for the summit itself, it will be from 9:30 to 11:30 tomorrow.
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: 9:00 to 11:30.
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: 9:00 to 11:30, at the South Court Auditorium. There will be a packed room of people from across the country participating in the audience, as well as a number of panels. We will be providing press guidance for this agenda.
And so at the risk of misstating the full agenda, we will provide the press guidance to everyone registered to this call, immediately following or as soon as we can, so that everyone has the details going in for planning purposes tomorrow.
Q Okay.
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: We do have -- we do have a number of -- we have Secretary Azar managing a panel, as well as Ivanka helping to moderate and drive the conversation throughout the morning. She will be delivering remarks. As well as Dr. Laurie Todd-Smith, the Director of the Women's Bureau of the U.S. Department of Labor, will be moderating a panel as well.
So we'll get all of that information to everyone on this call via an e-mail press package tonight.
Q Okay. Thank you.
Q Hi. I know you guys mentioned that -- you highlighted the (inaudible) and the paid family credit and (inaudible). Is there going to be any talk of expanding that, maybe in the CEA report or any other sort of tactical role to (inaudible) this effort?
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: I think all -- all conversations around paid leave are going be -- we're going to be talking about tomorrow. That’s obviously something that we've been following.
You know, the President was the first person -- the first President to ever sign into law any sort of paid leave legislation with the tax cut provision. So we'll be looking at that, looking about extending it, having a conversation about that, among many other proposals that are working their way through Congress.
Q Hi, thanks guys. My question is: Will the administration be officially backing any number of the proposals that are making their way through Congress right now? Thank you.
SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: No, we will not be coming out officially in supporting any one proposal over another. The idea is to have a conversation around proposals that are gaining momentum and that have especially gained recent bipartisanship. We've seen a lot of momentum over the past six months specifically, and so those are the proposals we're looking to highlight. But we will not be coming out and, sort of, supporting one over the other.
MS. DITTO: Okay. Operator, thank you. And thank you, everyone, for joining. As a reminder, this call is on background for the Q&A portion, and the opening remarks by Secretary Azar and Director Grogan are on the record.
If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to myself, Jessica Ditto, or Carolina Hurley in White House Communications Office. Carolina has all of the media logistics guidance and will be coordinating with the President's pool, as well as the expanded opportunities to cover the rest of the summit.
It's also important to note that this will be livestreamed on WhiteHouse.gov and we will be providing a press package with the full agenda and the list of participants.
It's my understanding that we do not have your e-mail addresses for -- at the ready, from those who have logged into the call, so if you would please reach out to us. We will send the press package first thing in the morning as is typical for a presidential event.
But for those of you on this call interested in the agenda and details of the summit, as well as the accomplishments the administration has achieved to date that Director spoke about, we'll be glad to provide that to you via e-mail. Reach out to Carolina, please.
And thank you again for participating on the call, and thank you to our subject-matter experts for being available for these questions.
Have a good evening.
END 4:58 P.M. EST
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