By Shira Small, Stephanie Schmit, and Rachel Wilensky

As Congress negotiates the fiscal year (FY) 2027 appropriations package, CLASP is calling to double the discretionary funding for the Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG), which provides child care assistance for families with low incomes and increases the quality of child care for all families. Only 15 percent of eligible children had access to child care assistance through CCDBG and other federal sources in 2021, the most recent year with available data. Increasing the total discretionary funding to $17.66 billion would expand subsidy access to more than 870,000 additional children, based on CLASP analysis. This added funding would be crucial to better reach and support families with low incomes, who have never been able to fully utilize the program as the result of decades of insufficient funding.

In addition to limiting access for eligible families not yet accessing the program, years of inadequate and stagnant funding for CCDBG mean that children currently accessing the program are at risk of losing assistance due to increasing costs. Recent actions by the administration to freeze or delay funding for child care, paired with limited increases in funding and the expiration of child care COVID relief resources, have only undermined the child care and early education sector further. These actions include:

• The most recent $85 million increase for CCDBG in FY26 did 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.
• The July 2025 reconciliation package made dramatic cuts to public benefits programs, putting further financial strain on states that were already struggling to meet the demand for eligible families in their states.
• The expiration of COVID relief funds left many states without the funding necessary to continue serving the number of children and child care providers they were able to support during the pandemic.
• The Trump Administration has attempted to freeze states’ child care funding, spread misinformation about fraud in the child care sector, and proposed regulations that would weaken provider compensation and reduce families’ affordability protections.

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. Concerns about economic stability, rising inflation, and attacks from the Trump Administration make sustained increases in annual discretionary funding a necessary support. The table below estimates the total per-state allocation from doubling current CCDBG funding and how many more children would be able to access care with the increased funds.

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