What the “Small Business Child Care Investment Act” Does and What the Problem Really Is.
Congresswoman Susie Lee’s “Small Business Child Care Investment Act” is being promoted as a way to make childcare more affordable, but it doesn't solve the problem.
Jan 06, 2026
With elections coming up later this year, politicians are ramping up on the issues. Both Susie Lee at the Federal level and Alexis Hill at the State level are highlighting childcare as a campaign platform.
Congresswoman Susie Lee’s “Small Business Child Care Investment Act” is being promoted as a way to make child care more affordable.
What it actually does is much narrower: it allows nonprofit child care providers to access Small Business Administration (SBA) loan programs that are currently reserved for for-profit businesses.
In other words, the bill does not directly lower child care costs. It does not help parents pay for care. It does not reduce regulation. It does not increase household income.
It simply allows child care providers — mainly nonprofit and community-based centers — to borrow federally backed money to expand, renovate, or survive.
That raises a much more important question:
Why does child care now require government-backed debt to exist at all?
Congresswoman Susie Lee posted this on her Facebook on Monday, January 5th. If you’d like to read the many comments flaming Susie Lee, click the image to go to Facebook.
Why Do Childcare Providers Need SBA Loans?
Child care providers need SBA loans today because the business of caring for children has been transformed from a small, local, informal service into a highly regulated, capital-intensive institutional enterprise.
Running even a modest child care operation now requires:
• Commercial real estate or heavily modified residential space
• Compliance with zoning, fire, health, ADA, and safety codes
• Professional credentials and background checks
• Insurance and legal coverage
• Administrative staff and reporting systems
All of that costs money — up front — before a single child ever walks through the door. So providers need loans.
Not because child care is inherently expensive, but because government policy has made it costly to offer.
Alexis Hill, who is running for Nevada Governor, also wants to get in on the childcare issue, saying that “I can ensure that childcare is accessible and affordable”, but she doesn’t say how. You can click the image to see her reel on Facebook.
Childcare Didn’t Get Expensive by Accident
In the 1970s, my mother ran a small preschool in the basement of our house. She had about ten children. Parents trusted her because they knew her. She charged a modest fee that ordinary families could afford. The children learned their letters and numbers, developed social skills, and entered school well prepared.
She didn’t need a license.
She didn’t need a grant.
She didn’t need a subsidy.
She didn’t need a compliance officer.
She didn’t need a federal program.
She needed trust, stable economics, and the freedom to operate at a human scale.
That system worked. Today, it no longer exists.
And not because families suddenly changed — but because the economic and regulatory environment did.
What Actually Changed
We are told childcare is expensive because “the market failed.” That is not true. Childcare is costly because three things happened over the last fifty years:
1. Inflation destroyed the single-income family
In the post-war era, a single middle-class income could support a household. Today, two incomes are often barely enough.
Housing, healthcare, education, insurance, and taxes have all grown far faster than wages. That wasn’t an accident — it was the predictable result of monetary expansion, fiscal deficits, and policies that quietly devalued household purchasing power.
Families didn’t choose to need childcare. They were forced into it.
2. Regulation eliminated small-scale childcare
What my mother did would now be illegal in most places.
Today, to run even a tiny daycare, you need:
• State licensing
• Zoning approval
• Fire and health inspections
• Background checks
• Insurance policies
• ADA compliance
• Credential requirements
• Ongoing reporting and audits
Together, they make it economically impossible for small providers.
So the natural supply of neighborhood childcare disappeared.
What replaced it were institutional centers with overhead, compliance costs, administrators, and legal exposure — all of which get passed on to parents.
Cost rises because supply was crushed.
Not because childcare is inherently expensive.
3. The state replaced the community
Childcare shifted from:
• Informal → formal
• Local → institutional
• Personal trust → bureaucratic credentialing
• Neighbors → contractors and nonprofits
Once that shift happens, politicians step in to “fix” the rising costs — with subsidies, grants, tax credits, and programs.
Which require taxes.
Which further reduces household income.
Which increases dependence on childcare.
Which increases demand for more subsidies.
This is the cycle we’re in.
The government created the problem, then taxes families again to cover the consequences of its own policies.
The Political Shell Game
When politicians talk about “affordable childcare,” they are addressing a downstream symptom, not the upstream cause.
The cause is:
• Families can no longer survive on one income
• Informal economic activity has been regulated out of existence
• Community trust has been replaced by institutional control
• Purchasing power has been steadily eroded
So the solution offered is not to restore family viability or local autonomy, but to expand state or federal involvement and taxation.
Which means:
The same system that broke the model is now demanding more money to fix it. That is not reform. That is dependency management.
This Was Not Inevitable
We did not always live this way.
We did not need massive childcare bureaucracies.
We did not need federal subsidies.
We did not need tax credits and grant programs.
We did not need NGOs and compliance frameworks.
We needed:
• Stable money
• Modest regulation
• Family-supporting wages
• Trust within communities
• Freedom for small enterprises
We traded those for inflation, bureaucracy, institutionalization, and centralized control — and then we wonder why families feel trapped, angry, and economically fragile.
The Hard Truth
Childcare didn’t become expensive because parents failed.
It became expensive because:
• Government monetary policy reduced family purchasing power
• Government regulation destroyed small local providers
• Government taxation reduced household flexibility
• Government then offered partial refunds in the form of programs — with strings attached
And now families are told to be grateful for help managing a problem they didn’t create. That’s not compassion. That’s misdirection.
The Real Question
The real question is not:
“How do we subsidize childcare?”
The real question is:
“Why did the government make it impossible for families and communities to handle this themselves?”
Until we’re willing to answer that and fix it, we’ll keep taxing people to solve problems caused by the very system asking for more power.
And families will keep getting poorer — and more dependent on government.