U.S. Sen. Bob Casey Visits Centre County to Discuss His Big Plan for Helping Kids

U.S. Sen. Bob Casey made a stop in the State College area on Wednesday morning to talk about his sweeping legislative plan aimed at helping American children.

At Step By Step School For Early Learning on Sandy Drive in Ferguson Township, the Pennsylvania Democrat visited the pre-K classroom of teachers Alyssa Cave and Michelle Morales to read to 4- and 5-year-old kids and watch them do a science experiment before meeting with reporters to discuss his “Five Freedoms for America’s Children.”

The plan, with a name that recalls Franklin Roosevelt’s “Four Freedoms” speech, addresses a wide range of issues for children and families, including guaranteed health care, expanded child tax credits, investments in early learning and day care, anti-hunger programs and money for prevention of abuse and neglect.

While bettering life for a large segment of American families, Casey said, the “strategic vision for our children,” would also be an investment in national priorities.

“Whether it’s a high-skilled workforce, whether it’s our ability to outcompete economic competitors like China, as well as other nations, whether it means having a military which is prepared for the challenges they face, whether it’s growing gross domestic product or having economic growth, it seems like no matter where you turn with regards to a national goal or a strategic imperative, you can’t separate it from the investments that we have to make in our children,” Casey said.

He initially introduced a “Five Freedoms” plan in early 2020 prior to COVID-19. Since then he has seen progress on some of its goals through provisions of the American Rescue Plan signed into law in March. But, he said, many issues facing children in low- and middle-income families have been exacerbated by the pandemic and he revised the plan for a new version unveiled in June.

About 90% of the approximately 24,000 children in Centre County would benefit from the plan, he said.

Here’s a look at what Casey is proposing and what he had to say about the plan.

• Freedom to be healthy: Would automatically enroll children in Medicaid at birth and they would remain eligible for the program until age 18. Parents could still opt out for other coverage.

“Every child in America should have the benefit of health insurance,” Casey said. “A parent could opt out and say, ‘I don’t want my child to be enrolled in Medicaid. I want them to be on my employer plan or I want them to be in the Children’s Health Insurance Program because I qualify.’ But at least you would have no room for error, meaning we would not have 4 million American children, as we do now, who don’t have health insurance.”

• Freedom to be economically secure: Savings accounts with deposits of $500 per year for children from families making less than $100,000; permanent expansion of the child tax credit

• Freedom to learn: Increase Head Start funding by $18 billion; expand the child and dependent care tax credit; increase child care block grants to states.

“The only problem with those programs is that you have a huge gap between those who are eligible for Head Start and those who are being served, those who are eligible for assistance for child care and those receiving assistance,” Casey said. “We’ve got to make sure that at least at a minimum the families and the children that are currently eligible are going to be able to be served and that’s just not possible under current funding.”

• Freedom from hunger: Expand direct certification and reimbursement for school lunch programs.

• Freedom to be safe from harm: Add $5 billion in funding over 10 years to state grant programs for child protective services and child abuse prevention programs.

Of course, all of it would come with a hefty price tag, something Casey said would be paid for by “making the tax code a lot fairer to families.” The plan proposes an increase in the corporate tax rate, reducing the tax gap, establishing a 15% corporate minimum tax, returning the top tax marginal rate to its pre-2018 level of 39.6% and returning the estate tax to its pre-2017 level with an $11 million tax exemption.

Casey said that over the last 20 years the top 1% of Americans received $1.2 trillion in tax cuts.

“It’s an insult to America in my judgment, that a small group of Americans have been lavished so much in terms of tax cuts,” he said. “And we got nothing for it, frankly, and it’s about time we turn that around.”

Visiting Step By Step, Casey said, “brings to life” the kind of early learning opportunities for which his plan, in part, is striving.

“This is one of those examples where you can see children learning and engaging in a place that provides that kind of quality,” he said. “If we can keep the quality high, as it is here, and keep affordability consistent, we can have the best workforce in the world. Obviously in a childcare facility, it’s both care and learning. It’s just really helpful to be able to see it literally come alive in the lives of children in a place like this.”

Step By Step owners Rachel and Rob Johnson said they appreciated seeing Casey “shine a spotlight” on on the importance and needs of early childhood education.

“If you don’t have a child if … you don’t need it to get to work, I think that people don’t realize how valuable it is,” Rob Johnson said. “I think the pandemic kind of brought that to light, because a lot of centers shut down or took a year off and parents didn’t have anywhere to go.”

Rachel Johnson added early childhood education facilities could use additional support because it’s difficult to provide employees a good wage while keeping the costs of attendance affordable.

“You can’t have the quality we talked about today without quality staff,” she said.