Sheryl Sandberg, Meet Richard Nixon: Why We Don’t Have Universal Childcare

[ProSense]

Sheryl Sandberg, Meet Richard Nixon: Why We Don’t Have Universal Childcare

By John Halpin, Guest Blogger

Without wading too deep into recent debates about whether wealthy CEOs and college professors understand the needs of working class people when it comes to balancing work and family life, it should be noted that we might not even have these conversations today if it weren’t for Richard Nixon’s crass political calculations in 1971...As Robert Self recounts in his excellent book on the politics of the family, All in the Family: The Realignment of American Democracy Since the 1960s, the Comprehensive Child Development Act (CCDA), sponsored by Democratic Senator Walter Mondale and Democratic Rep. John Brademas, passed both houses of Congress in 1971 and awaited President Nixon’s signature. The bill “included a sliding-scale payment system that would have made child care far more affordable for the nation’s poor and middle class alike. It came closer than any previous legislation to recognizing child care as part of women’s economic citizenship.”

Instead of doing the right thing for American families, Nixon listened to Pat Buchanan and other right-wing voices in shooting down the bill. As Self describes:

The internal debates within Nixon’s circle were heavily influenced by anti CCDA diatribes in the conservative press—attacks led by the conservative columnist James Kilpatrick and the conservative newspaper Human Events—as well as the tide of letters arriving at the White House castigating the bill as an assault on traditional motherhood and a discredited form of liberal social engineering.

After a conspicuous delay, Nixon vetoed the bill. Calling it the ‘most radical piece of legislation to emerge from the ninety-second Congress,’ he claimed that it called forth ‘communal approaches to child rearing over the family-centered approach.”

None of this true, of course. Millions of families, of all ideological stripes, depend on child care every day as a basic means for both working and raising a family. And millions more would love to have high-quality care and pre-school for their children but can’t afford it. As Self writes about the aftermath of the defeat of the CCDA, “While women on welfare could qualify for some subsidized child care, and child tax credits were added in subsequent years, on balance, women and families were left to their own devices and to the private market to care for children while parents worked.”

So because of Nixon and his allies, here we are in 2013 with progressives and President Obama having to once again bring up the “radical” idea that working parents should be supported in their efforts to both succeed at work and take care of their children.

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http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2013/03/07/1685081/nixon-universal-pre-school/

Five Bills That Would Have Been Game Changers for Women

by John Light and Theresa Riley

In the wake of last November’s election, many pundits credited Obama’s victory to the record number of single women who turned out and voted for him. Nearly a quarter of all voters were single women and they voted for Obama over Romney by an overwhelming margin of 36 points. Add to that the unprecedented number of women elected to serve in the 213th Congress and many were calling the 2012 election a “historic moment for women.”

Last week, some of that political power made an impact in the halls of Congress. In a surprising turn of events, the House of Representatives renewed the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) and sent it to the president to sign. The law, first enacted in 1994, had been renewed twice without controversy, but during the last Congress, House Republicans objected to a new version, passed by the Senate, that included gay, transgender, immigrant and Native American women in the language of the bill.

<...>

Perhaps the passage of the VAWA signals a change in course — as Anne Hathaway says, a girl can dream — but let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Here’s a look back at five pieces of legislation that would have made life very different for women had things turned out differently. (Thanks to the National Women’s Law Center for their research help.)

The Black Bill: In 1933, during the depths of the recession, then-senator and future Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black proposed a law to increase employment by limiting the work week to 30 hours. <...>

The Comprehensive Child Development Act: Introduced in 1971, the bill would have allocated federal money to fund a national day care system to improve early education nationwide and to decrease the burden on single working parents. It passed the Senate 63 to 17, but President Nixon vetoed it. <...>

The Equal Rights Amendment: <...>

Dropping the Hyde Amendment: <...>

The Paycheck Fairness Act: <...>

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http://billmoyers.com/2013/03/04/five-bills-that-would-have-been-game-changers-for-women/