Matthee won’t let Idaho families down

By Emma Stanford
Reader Contributor

By failing to fund child care, state GOP leaders are failing Idaho families — and failing our economy. Healthy families are the backbone of a healthy economy, without question. But the recent and abrupt halt in enrollment for hundreds of impoverished families to the Idaho Child Care Program is not only cruel, but it also just doesn’t make good fiscal sense.

If parents can’t go to work, how will they provide for their children? How will they contribute to the economy? Is the state, in fact, forcing them to rely on welfare? 

ICCP makes safe child care accessible for about 8,000 children in Idaho, allowing parents to hold jobs, keep a roof over their heads and put food on the table. The program provides a child care subsidy for a family of three that earns up to $34,000. It is almost entirely federally funded but requires authorization from the Idaho Legislature to accept and release those funds. And when the Department of Health and Welfare put the program on pause, it had $50 million in unspent federal dollars available to support it. 

Karen Matthee supports freeing up these funds so families can receive the assistance they were promised: It would simply take a routine process by the Legislature to pass a supplemental appropriation in January. 

Unfortunately, this is part of a disturbing pattern. Idaho’s GOP lawmakers have a history of making it harder for families with children to work and get ahead. They rejected a pre-K grant and continue to provide zero funding for early childhood education. And they refused to accept $16.5 million to provide school lunches for economically disadvantaged children during the summer when school isn’t in session.

A lack of child care also takes a toll on local businesses, which are already having a difficult time recruiting and retaining workers due to a shortage of affordable housing and the overall high cost of living in our resort-oriented community. 

Karen Matthee believes the Legislature can help both local businesses and families through programs like the ICCP. Keeping people working and off welfare is good for them and good for the Idaho economy. That is why I am voting for Karen Matthee for House Seat 1A on Nov. 5.

Emma Stanford is a fourth-generation Idahoan and a mother of two young children. She and her family live rurally in the foothills of the Cabinet Mountains, where there is never a dull moment.