Good afternoon Chairman Mendelson and staff and members of the Committee of the Whole. My name is Joanna Blotner, and I serve as the Government Affairs Director of DC Action where, with the more than 200 coalition partners we convene, we are working to break down structural barriers that stand in the way of all kids reaching their full potential.
Right now, the biggest structural barrier that will prevent kids from reaching their full potential is the Mayor’s proposed Fiscal Year 2027 budget. This is a budget that is balanced on the backs of parents with young children, on the very kids visiting the chamber this morning, on medically vulnerable workers, youth experiencing homelessness, early educators, and low-income families – who are predominantly Black and brown families – and who are already stretched to their breaking point. If enacted as proposed, the consequences of the Mayor’s budget cuts will be immediate and severe. The clearest example is early childhood education.
The proposed budget dismantles the District’s nationally recognized child care system by eliminating the Pay Equity Fund and deeply underfunding the child care subsidy program. These two programs are inseparable. You cannot have affordable child care without educators. And you cannot retain educators after slashing their pay by ten, fifteen, or twenty-five thousand dollars overnight. At last week’s OSSE hearing (and today), providers, parents, and educators told us exactly what will happen: educators will leave, classrooms will close, programs will shut down, and parents will lose care. This is not hyperbole. This is fact.
District leaders cannot claim to support economic growth while destroying the very infrastructure that allows parents to work with the peace of mind that their children are in safe, stable, and educationally-enriching environments.
The Council must fully restore Pay Equity Fund salaries at $82.2 million ($94.2 million for the full Pay Equity Fund with HealthCare4ChildCare) and add $63.1 million to the subsidy program to prevent an FY27 waitlist and reimbursement cuts. The Council must also ensure the revised FY26 budget has sufficient subsidy funding to serve all currently enrolled children through September; even with a waitlist in place, we are concerned the executive has underbudgeted for the program. A waitlist for affordable child care is not simply a bureaucratic inconvenience — it is a denial of opportunity. It means children denied early learning and strong foundations. It means parents forced out of the workforce. It means child care operators pushed to insolvency. And the District will be paying for the costly consequences of a collapsed early learning system for years to come. The same shortsightedness appears throughout this budget.
At a time when youth homelessness remains too high, the Mayor proposes cutting housing and wraparound services for young people with the highest needs. Our youth are facing acute mental health challenges, fleeing violence, surviving trafficking, or navigating profound family instability. Cutting extended transitional (ETH/PSH) and transitional housing will not make young people – or any person or family experiencing homelessness – disappear. It simply pushes them deeper into crisis and makes future interventions more expensive and more difficult. The Council must reverse the $1.5 million cut to PSH for youth and the nearly $1 million cut to the broader youth homelessness system.
This budget also shortsightedly eliminates two-generational programs like New Heights and HealthySteps — programs that help lower income parents and parenting students stay healthy, stay in school, and raise thriving children. We regularly hear how transformative these programs are for families and cutting them sends a devastating message about whose futures this city values. DC Action calls on the Council to restore $1.35 million for Healthy Steps (DC Health) and $304,000 for New Heights (DCPS).
The elimination of paid medical and family caregiving benefits sends another devastating message to working families – and to their employers; it says: “We Don’t Care.” We don’t care that you are fighting breast cancer, we don’t care that your parent is dying, we don’t care that raising a family in this city is just too expensive, and we don’t care that employers are being cheated out of benefits they paid for. The District’s paid leave program has saved DC Action $41,694-$106,243 in the past 4 years, depending on how you calculate savings, precisely because our employees could care: for themselves, for ailing loved ones, and for their new babies. DC workers deserve better than a city that abandons families facing serious medical and caregiving emergencies and that is why the Council must use the $95 million generated by the paid leave tax to fully fund paid leave benefits – all of them.
We cannot continue governing as though children and families are line items to cut whenever revenue projections tighten. But let’s be clear: the resources exist to fund a budget that cares. We join our partners testifying with the Fair Budget and Just Recovery DC Coalitions in reminding this Council that it has both the power and the responsibility to raise revenue through progressive taxation, to end ineffective giveaways, leverage reserves, identify inefficiencies, and ask the wealthiest residents and corporations to contribute their fair share toward a budget that helps all kids and communities reach their full potential — because a city that refuses to care for children, youth, and families is a city actively undermining its own future.
Thank you and I would be delighted to answer your questions!