By The Editorial Board
Rockford Register StarPosted Oct. 19, 2015 at 1:09 PM
Updated Oct 19, 2015 at 4:47 PMOn Oct. 13, a group of Rockford-area child care providers banded together to write a letter to Gov. Bruce Rauner to warn him that his "emergency" order to lower subsidies to needy families applying for child care after July 1 is causing damage to the economy and to low-income families.It will also put many day care providers in Illinois out of business.Rauner's draconian rule reduced the subsidy for new applicants for day care assistance to the point of ridiculousness. It effectively eliminates aid for more than 90 percent of those who applied after July 1. People will either quit their jobs or leave their children home.We remind Republican Rauner that day care assistance was a Republican idea designed in 1997 during the welfare-reform era to help parents get off welfare and allow them to get jobs. It has been successful and, until now, bipartisan.As the day care directors wrote to the governor: "Under your emergency rule, the Child Care Assistance Program no longer allows full-time minimum wage earners to access child care. Have you considered the tax revenue being lost as parents are forced to leave the workforce and our staff lose their jobs because of low enrollments in our centers? Does this make any sense to you?"And as guest columnist Anita Rumage, director of Circles of Learning Day Care Center, noted in Sunday's paper, before Rauner's cuts took effect July 1, "a family of three could earn $3,098 a month; now, that same family can make no more than $838 a month to qualify for assistance. A full-time minimum wage job earns $1,320 a month. Although emergency rules expire 150 days after enactment (Nov. 28), Gov. Rauner has started the steps to make cuts to (the Child Care Assistance Program) permanent."Of all the things to cut, child care assistance should not be one of them. It is creating taxpayers, and Illinois desperately needs more of them.Rumage reminded us that parents receiving state child care assistance in the greater Rockford area pay $5 million in taxes, and local child care centers have more than 363 employees who pay $1.4 million in income and social security taxes. And, she said, child care centers buy their supplies from local stores.The House can restore the governor's day care cuts Tuesday by passing the House version of Senate Bill 750, a measure that takes 71 votes, a supermajority, to pass. Democrats have exactly 71 votes in the House.They are not likely to get help from Republicans, who are all afraid of incurring the wrath of Rauner, who is creating his own Republican political organization to elect "friendlies" in 2016. And if you're a Republican, you want to be a "friendly" lest you get surprised by a primary challenger put up by the governor's minions.
Rauner could rescind his emergency order. We hope he does. His "emergency order" is penny foolish and pound foolish
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