uh hello Steve
hello
uh you were going to talk about child care
yeah uh
we well me and my wife we got a five year old and we have
um-hum
uh
kind of like child rearing he we have problems with him every now and then but other than that it's it's pretty he's a pretty good kid
um-hum
um-hum
and we uh really don't really have any problem with finding day care for him because i'm in the service and we just take him to the day care on base
i see how much how much do they charge
they charge about forty five dollars a week
uh-huh that seems relatively low by commercial standards isn't it usually about sixty to a hundred a week
um yeah it's it's pretty pretty expensive on the outside
right um so you've you've been you've been pleased with the service
oh yeah they do a lot of you know lot of stuff in in their day care and stuff
uh-huh
uh how long have you been taking your son there
oh about a year now
uh-huh before that did he go somewhere else or
well before that my wife was kind of stay at home mom now she went back to school so
i see
you say you went back to school
no the wife went back to school
oh i see uh-huh
so he's been there for almost a year now
uh-huh
um gee i think where where does she go to school
she goes to UT uh Arlington
uh-huh okay yeah i had a student who went there at one time
but i think we're getting off the topic so
yeah uh
so um let's see i mean i i was uh reading i read a lot of articles on child care back when it was when there was a debate in Congress over funding of uh child care centers and what should be done
yeah
and i came out uh very much in favor of a tax credit approach where parents would be given a tax credit and they would select whatever services they wanted for their child rather than to have the government subsidize certain providers
yeah
and uh that was i i thought it was important well i mean it is important uh that that people have the opportunity to select the service that they would choose
because a lot of kids are in you know in centers well well not really centers but they're being cared for by neighbors and uh
um-hum
uh that's the sort of they they prefer it that way the parents do because they know the people who are caring for their kids and they don't have to take them very far
plus about a third of the kids are in church run centers and there was a big church state controversy over whether the government could
fund those are not i think they ultimately decided to but they placed a lot of restrictions on it so it wasn't clear that the church child care centers would want to go to the trouble
um yeah
so uh anyway i continue to be an advocate of the um of the tax credit approach now myself i'm not married so i don't have any kids and it's not a problem but uh
still i know a lot of people that do and uh you know i mean you you you really wouldn't wouldn't um uh well i'm on
gee i'm on the benefits committee at the university here and uh child care is a topic of conversation we the university started up a center this year but it's about two miles away from campus and i'm not sure it's going to be real convenient for people to take their kids over there
yeah well well when i was stationed in Lubbock Texas uh they had a child care center right on base uh right at the school i mean
uh-huh
uh-huh
and that helped out my wife because she just went part time there and you know take a couple of classes a week but
uh-huh
right uh-huh
and uh i think it's a good deal deal but um like you were saying it's about two miles from the school and that's
yeah it's just a lot of time
it's not going to be very good i think they should talk about putting one right on the campus itself
yeah well they say they claim that it's a better environment for kids than to be in with all the students
well they kind of have this i think in a different building you know on right on the
uh edge of the campus and everything where they really didn't get in
uh-huh
yeah
yeah i am sure that a lot of it had to do with how cheap it was to acquire the building if they would've built a new building then it would've i'm i'm sure it would have cost a lot more than if they uh if they put it down where they did where real estate's probably cheaper
in
oh yeah um i think they used one of the existing buildings they already had
um-hum
so you know it it worked out pretty good
so so so what do you think about the about the child about the tax credit versus the subsidy approach which seems seems most appealing to you
uh
well i haven't really thought about it like that
because well you know we pay
yeah
i think
well the
excuse me we pay for any you know the child care but we don't pay as much as they do off base
that's right yeah
uh i think the government should subsidize some of it you know
to give the parents you know some break on on the money portion of it
well i mean they they yeah the issue the issue is whether they can take it off of their taxes or whether the government decides which centers are qualified the other problem
