Earlier today, President Biden released his proposed budget for Fiscal Year 2025, offering a clear view of the Administration’s top priorities for the coming year and long-term vision for the country. 

The President’s budget comes out as Congress still is working to wrap up appropriations for Fiscal Year 2024. While once again averting a partial shutdown last week, Congress faces a deadline of March 22 to wrap up the remaining FY24 bills, including Labor-HHS, which includes the majority of domestic funding for key child care and early learning programs. Advocates are continuing to push their leaders in Congress to provide as robust funding as possible for these programs in the wake of the loss of child care stabilization grants and the documented challenges the field is facing, including staff shortages, tuition increases, and program closures.  

While acknowledging the domestic funding caps that artificially constrain much-needed investments in child care and early learning, the President’s budget lays out a clear and bold vision for child care and early learning aligned with building a more equitable system for early childhood educators and the children and families they serve. NAEYC applauds the Administration for laying out this vision and looks forward to working with it and Congress to advance solutions aligned with securing the significant, sustained funding needed to build this high-quality system.  

Child care and early learning highlights in the President’s FY2025 budget include:  
 

• Affordable Child Care for America: $400 billion over 10 years for the creation of a new program to guarantee access to affordable high-quality child care for children from birth to Kindergarten for families with incomes up to $200,000 per year.  
• Universal Preschool: $200 billion over 10 years to fund universal, voluntary preschool for all 4-year-olds while expanding access to 3-year-olds. Importantly, this proposal supports expanding access to high-quality preschool in a diversity of settings, including public schools and community-based child care programs.  
• Discretionary Investments: Within the constraints of budget caps, the budget includes increases to discretionary investments in core child care and early learning programs, including by expanding funding for the Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG) by $500 million to support implementation of the CCDF Final Rule, and expanding funding for Head Start by $544 million as a step toward putting the program on a pathway to achieve pay parity between program staff and elementary school teachers.