The key to winning the investment, says Reshma Saujani, CEO of advocacy organization Moms First, was getting businesses on board and appealing to voters across the political spectrum. Knowing the tax bill would be the first big opportunity in the second Trump administration to address childcare, Saujani says the organization focused on building a strategy that involved over 200 businesses and bipartisan parents advocating for federal relief. Earlier this year, representatives from over 50 employers, including UPS, Toyota, and Mazda, traveled to Capitol Hill to meet with legislators and demand action. In fact, Saujani was “overwhelmed” by the willingness of businesses to help.
“Childcare, as you know, has been seen as a personal problem for women and workers, but not an economic imperative,” Saujani says. “We knew we needed to get businesses to make the case…when we were in those offices, many of the Republicans and the Democrats, quite frankly, noted that this was the first time businesses had ever been in their office to advocate for childcare.”
“We knew we needed to make clear that childcare was the linchpin of affordability. This president and Congress had gotten elected on affordability,” she says.
The strategies worked. The tax breaks included in the bill that Moms First advocated for include:
“What we realized in this advocacy is that progress isn’t sweeping, it’s incremental,” she says. “We’re in a once-in-a-lifetime generational fight for childcare, and that means that we have to celebrate the wins even when they’re imperfect.”
