By Rachel Wilensky

On February 3, 2026, Congress passed an amendment to the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2026, funding all federal programs with the exception of the Department of Homeland Security for a full year. President Trump subsequently signed the bill into law. The law offers small increases for many nondefense discretionary programs, including an additional $85 million for the Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG). This increase was incredibly important, given the challenging fiscal environment states will face due to the cuts made to vital public benefit programs in H.R. 1.

CCDBG is a critical support for families with low incomes who, without access to assistance, would likely be unable to afford their current child care arrangements. However, due to limited federal funding, child care assistance funded through CCDBG and other federal sources only reached 15 percent of eligible children in 2021, the most recent year that data is available.¹ The annual appropriations process is an important opportunity to increase federal investments in programs that respond to greater need and ensure funding keeps up with rising inflation.

As concerns about economic recovery, unemployment, and inflation persist, significant and sustained increases in annual discretionary funding remain a critical support. And, given the fragile nature of the child care sector caused in part by decades of insufficient federal funding, the need for long-term and sustainable increases for child care remains ever present.

Furthermore, recent actions by the administration to freeze or delay funding for child care and threaten programs like Head Start, which are a vital part of the child care and early education ecosystem, make this moment particularly volatile.² Additionally, this $85 million increase for CCDBG does not keep pace with inflation, falling over $160 million short of what’s necessary to ensure there are enough resources to serve all children currently accessing care through CCDBG.³ This comes on top of stagnant funding in fiscal year (FY) 2025. Ultimately, this means that states will not be able to sustain their current costs, which may result in serving fewer children. Moreover, Congress’s massive cuts to food assistance, Medicaid, and other vital programs to pay for harsh immigration policies and offer tax cuts for billionaires and corporations will continue to harm children, families, and child care providers. These are, in many cases, the very same families impacted across numerous programs. As Congress engages in the FY27 appropriations process, it is essential that they protect programs families rely on and fight for investments that align with need, like urgent investments in child care.⁴ The following table provides each state’s estimated distribution of grant year (GY) 2026 annual discretionary funds.⁵

For questions, please contact Rachel Wilensky at rwilensky@clasp.org.

Download the report here. 

1 Nina Chien, “Estimates of Child Care Eligibility & Receipt for Fiscal Year 2021,” Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, September 2024, https://aspe.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/documents/a91fd97aa80b53fa52a52d38cd323509/cy2021-child-care-subsidy-eligibility.pdf.

2 Shira Small, Rachel Wilensky, and Stephanie Schmit, How the First Year of the Trump Administration Undermined Child Care and Early Education, Center for Law and Social Policy, January 2026, https://www.clasp.org/publications/fact-sheet/trump-admin-undermine-child-care-early-ed-programs-25/.

3 CLASP’s estimates are based on the Congressional Budget Office’s The Budget and Economic Outlook 2025-2035, published in January 2025. CLASP takes an average of the inflation rates looking at the change from year to year for both the Consumer Price Index for all urban consumers (CPI-u) and the Employment Cost Index (ECI) to conduct our estimate. These rates can be found in “Table C-1: CBO’s Economic Projections for Calendar Years 2025 to 2035,” Congressional Budget Office, January 2025, https://www.cbo.gov/system/files/2025-01/60870-Outlook-2025.pdf.

4 Fiscal Year (FY) refers to the period from October 1 through September 30 during which states and territories may spend funds awarded in the current and prior years. Grant Year (GY) refers to the year the funds were awarded, although states and territories may liquidate some Child Care Development Fund (CCDF) funding streams in later fiscal years. Note: CCDF refers to the federal funding sources for child care and is used interchangeably with CCDBG in this fact sheet.

5 CCDBG annual discretionary funds are distributed based on three main factors. The first two factors compare the ratio of the number of children in a state to the number of children in the country within the following categories: the number of children under five and the number of children who receive free or reduced priced lunch. The other factor makes a comparison of the three-year national per capita income with the three-year average state per capital income.

6 The state discretionary funding distributions are derived from “GY2024 CCDF Allocations (Based on Appropriations),” U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families, current as of April 10, 2024, https://www.acf.hhs.gov/occ/data/gy-2024-ccdf-allocations-based-appropriations. Actual amounts may differ due to the Health & Human Services Secretary’s authority and discretion in set-aside funding and re-allocation of previous year’s resources.

7 This total includes funding for tribes and territories, as well as research, technical assistance, administration, hotlines, and websites in addition to the state funding outlined in the table. As a result, this total exceeds the sum of the state distribution.

8 Ibid.

9 Ibid.