NEWS: Casar Secures Child Care Study for Military Families in NDAA

WASHINGTON – Today, Congressman Greg Casar (D-Texas) secured an important provision to strengthen the United States’ commitment to taking care of military families in the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for Fiscal Year 2025. His amendment to require a Government Accountability Office (GAO) study to assess child care programs that exist across the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) passed by voice vote. The amendment is now included in the NDAA, which awaits a final vote from both chambers. 

The GAO has concluded that very little research exists on the DOD’s child care programs. Long waitlists exist for child care for military families, and programs are uneven and too often unavailable across the country. Casar’s study of military child care aims to solve these challenges.

Casar’s amendment will study: 

• How long military families remain on the waitlist for child care programs. 
• On average, what percentage of their income military families spend on child care per child.
• The percentage of military families that require more than one child care program to meet their needs.

 “Child care is one of the top needs for military families,” said Congressman Greg Casar (D-Texas). “Military readiness means more than just stocking up on more and more weapons and gadgets, it means investing in the people of the military. This measure will help us deliver high quality child care for all our military families — in San Antonio and across the U.S.” 

“We hear from hundreds of military families a month that the military child care programs are not working. These families have called, emailed, and begged for access to programs that are advertised to support them only to go months without a response,” said Kayla Corbitt, Founder of Operation Child Care, who’s based near San Antonio. “We consistently see a lack of transparency around military child care programs. The study proposed by Representative Casar is not an attack on programming — it is asking for transparency. The results of this study would place the power of deciding what is best for their children back in the hands of our service members. It would also allow the state and local governments that so desperately want to assist the military community to do so because the information on what hurdles families are facing would be readily available.”

The DOD operates the largest employer-sponsored child care program in the U.S., serving approximately 200,000 children of servicemembers and DOD civilians. A 2021 survey from the Military Family Advisory Network found that 78.3% of military families have found it difficult to get child care during the last two years. 

According to the DOD’s 2020 Report to Congress on Child Development Programs: 

• 9,000 military children are currently stuck on waitlists.
• 135 child care facilities are in “Poor” or “Failing” condition due to deferred maintenance.
• 124 priority Child Development Center projects don’t have funds to move forward.

Resources: 

• Amendment text 
• 2023 GAO study
• Military Family Advisory Network 2021 Survey
• DOD’s 2020 Report to Congress on Child Development Programs

 Casar also introduced the following NDAA amendments, but they were not taken up: 

• Child care funding: Give the DOD the authority to appropriate funds from weapons that the department deems unnecessary to child care programs for military families, at their discretion. Co-sponsored by Representatives Joaquin Castro (TX-20) and Sara Jacobs (CA-51).
• Pakistan military assistance: Limit U.S. military assistance to Pakistan until three conditions are met, including free and fair elections without interference or coercion, an independent judiciary, and reasserted separation of powers. Co-sponsored by Representative Susan Wild (PA-07). 

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Congressman Greg Casar represents Texas’s 35th Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives, which runs down I-35 from East Austin to Hays County to the West Side of San Antonio.  A labor organizer and son of Mexican immigrants, Casar serves as the Whip of the Congressional Progressive Caucus for the 118th Congress. He also serves on the Committee on Oversight and Accountability and the Committee on Agriculture.