Senate tax reform measures make the child tax credit more generous than the House measures do, and they would expand the numbers of those eligible.

However, child care access must be expanded to include more workers. The emphasis that Ivanka Trump places on expansion is deplorably deficient. Her focus is on access to a tax credit by women who are already beneficiaries of large incomes, ignoring the needs of those hoping to work and enter the middle-class, wage-earning public.

While advocating in Pennsylvania, I knew of this need. Women and children suffer from federal underfunding problems and inadequate policies to ensure quality, safe child care. A Nov. 11 New York Times news article cites an economist at the American Enterprise Institute, Aparna Mathur, on this matter.

Access to child care has been through a wait-listed system, so necessary child care is delayed until a slot opens, risking lost job opportunities. Most importantly, young children may be deprived of good, safe child care necessary in their early years that trained professional day care providers give. Day care providers are, in this age of female employment, a proud profession that America encourages, like the work by parents, often women, needing good, affordable, safe child care environments.

I also deplore deficiencies in House and Senate tax bills that provide disproportionate gains for the rich and corporations and removals of deductions and tax increases for the working middle class. But I urge readers to raise concerns about child care access with their representatives in the U.S. House and Senate, especially Sen. Susan Collins, who spoke with Ivanka Trump recently in Maine on this matter.

Anne Vaughan

Berwick

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