December 5, 2007

Bredesen Administration Moves to Make Day Care Less Available, More Expensive

Tennessee's Democrat adminstration, being compassionate and all that, has announced a new policy intended to help welfare recipients with children in day care - but which may, in reality, put day cares out of business or force them to turn away children on welfare. Knoxville's WATE TV news reports:

The state gives a stipend to day care centers for every child whose family is on assistance. Until now, day cares have been able to charge these families the difference between the cost of the day care and the stipend. But now, the state says day cares must absorb the cost or make up the difference elsewhere.

Does this make sense? Of course not. It's bad economics - it drives up the cost of day care and, if it drives some financially marginal day cares out of business, it will lead to fewer day care slots - and as almost any mom who has gone searching for day care can tell you, there's not exactly a surplus of day care slots.

It's also bad social policy. Even families on welfare ought to have to pay some small part of the cost, in order that they bear some of the responsibility for this important part of taking care of their children. Totally free day care simply increases the welfare families' dependence on government and decreases their motivation to get off the government dole - which, in turn, feeds the generational cycle of poverty that includes the high likelihood that their children will eventually grow up to have their own children dependent on government.

Fewer day care slots, higher prices, increased dependence on government, decreased reliance on self. Brought to you by Tennessee's Democrat administration - who are busy right now on plans to take more of your tax dollars to fund an expansion of the state's new state-funded day care system, also known as universal "Pre-K." But I'm sure the latter has nothing to do with the former.