Ryin Johnson, who has autism and is non-verbal, is working with speech therapist Anne Marie Carey to try to develop some communication skills before he enters kindergarten in the fall. Child care advocates fear that the just-awarded Medicaid cuts could cause students to miss out on the kind of treatment that directly impacts learning. (Photo: Patrick O’Donnell, The 74)
Since Donald Trump became president again in early 2025, Republicans have made massive cuts to programs like Medicaid and food assistance.
But a lesser-known cut ends child care relief for working families before it can begin. Without it, many middle- and lower-income families would pay significantly more for day care in Ohio than in any other state, study finds recent analysis by the Center for American Progress.
For the hardest-hit group, the loss could exceed $15,000 a year in child care assistance. The analysis shows that’s almost $4,000 more than the next closest state, Vermont.
Hailey Gibbs, co-author of the study, said these are dollars that middle-income families with children cannot afford to lose.
“It shifts more of the cost onto families who are already paying at the top of their budget,” she said in an interview. “This is especially true for Ohioans. Of course, families everywhere are facing an affordability crisis.”
The losses are likely to come since Trump moved in January to repeal the measure put in place in 2024 by the Biden administration. Applies to the Child Care Development Fund.
In Ohio, program assistance is available to families who meet income guidelines. For a family of three, that’s $77,000 a year.
Biden’s rule restricted the percentage of family income devoted to child care to 7%. Researchers estimated that without the cap, some eligible Ohio families would pay as much as 27% of their income for day care.
For a family of three people earning the maximum, it will be $1,700 per month. Under Biden’s limit, that would be $452.
The cap was scheduled to go into effect this year, with states gaining waivers as they worked to achieve it. However, in January, the Trump administration submitted a proposed rule to eliminate this provision.
The regulations have not yet been finalized, but it is expected that this will happen.
Gibbs, deputy director of early childhood policy at the Center for American Progress, said few working families can afford child care.
“The costs of providing child care almost universally exceed a family’s means,” she said.
Providers and educators have long demanded a 7 percent cap on child care co-pays.
“This is a widely accepted threshold for what affordability in child care should look like,” Gibbs said.
When the Trump administration announced it would eliminate the pending cap, Gibbs and her colleagues conducted an analysis to demonstrate the real-world impact. They collected data by checking what the highest subsidy would be for a family of three with a child in kindergarten.
“We wanted to demonstrate the highest possible co-pay amount a family could pay to understand the impact of this regulatory rollback,” Gibbs said. “These are the maximum possible lost savings. Actual dollars will vary, just as actual co-pays will vary based on the age of the child enrolled, the type of care the family chooses, and whether the state provides other funding sources to offset these costs.”
When ranking states, Ohio stood out.
“It was astonishingly high in Ohio,” Gibbs said. “It was 27% of household income. It was 20 percentage points above the threshold of what we consider affordable.”
Money spent on one priority comes at the expense of others.
“The twelve dollars could go toward rent or food, paying off debt, covering utility bills that will almost certainly increase this summer, or things for the kids like clothes, books and enriching experiences,” Gibbs said. “At a time when everything is becoming more and more expensive, removing one of the affordability barriers from child care – which is one of the highest costs for young families – is downright counterproductive.”
This harm goes beyond families losing the aid they could have received. Although children are the future of the American economy, they are far down the list of federal priorities.
Earlier this month, the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania released a study on federal spending across age groups. It found that while the federal government spent $2.7 trillion on people 65 and older last year, just $449 billion – or one-sixth more – for people under 26.
Of course, much of this difference is made up of health care costs. But Gibbs said it’s too steep for many families to have children and it’s cost-effective rapidly aging society age even faster.
“I don’t know if (providing affordable child care) will mean a spike in the birth rate, but the lack of these services is definitely causing the birth rate to drop,” Gibbs said. “We’re seeing fewer births… I think families are now looking at the economic forecast. They’re seeing everything about the cost of living going up. And babies are incredibly expensive… That’s a huge part of the family bill.”
Gibbs was quick to say that the report was not intended to find fault with social service providers in Ohio or any other state. All are struggling to meet enormous needs with restricted resources and need federal assistance, she said.
In Ohio, the Legislature quickly cut taxes and provided public resources to wealthy interests on the promise that they would improve the economy. But Gibbs said supporting families on issues like child care would clearly be pro-growth policy.
“People will go where they can find support services, or they will go without having children,” she said. “We also hear cases of people making family planning decisions based on whether they can afford child care.”
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