Campaigns have spent $5.7 billion on House, Senate and governor races this cycle. Cost of living, taxes, health care, energy and crime all made the top ten issues in the ads. Child care didn't - not for either party. The headline is that this election is about affordability. The tradeoff is that the biggest line in a lot of family budgets isn't in the conversation. Mattie walks through three numbers (7%, 10% and 33%), the 33 weekdays a year school is closed against 16 days of paid leave, what changes Washington has made recently (spoiler: not enough) to make raising kids more affordable in this economy, and Mattie uses her experience winning policy campaigns in Washington to explain why child care keeps losing the fight for airtime in Washington. From Dependent Care FSAs to tax credits, this episode tells you everything you need to know about how little America does to support working parents - and how far we have to go.
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