Various Republicans have recently highlighted one of the critiques I made of the Democratic childcare proposal (Mitch McConnell and Tim Scott, among others). The critique is that the proposal’s wage, quality, and credential mandates, combined with its hard subsidy cliffs, will result in individuals with incomes above the subsidy cliff paying substantially more for childcare than they currently pay.

When Republicans bring up this point, they like to cite my October 20 piece, which showed that increasing childcare worker wages to elementary school worker wages would cause the cost of unsubsidized infant care to go up from around $15,900 to around $29,000, an increase of around $13,000. These numbers closely mirror similar figures produced by the Center for American Progress (CAP), with the lower figure being CAP’s “base quality” infant care cost and the higher one being CAP’s “high-quality” infant care cost.

More significantly, my estimate is very similar to one produced by the District of Columbia’s Office of the State Superintendent of Education (OSSE). The DC OSSE report uses a much more sophisticated cost model than the one used by me or CAP and includes direct data from DC childcare providers. Despite these differences in method, it reaches a nearly identical conclusion that wage rules like those in the Build Back Better childcare plan will increase the unsubsidized prices of center-based infant and toddler care by around $12,000. These days, when people ask me about this issue, I tell them to read the DC OSSE report, because it is much better than anything I have produced on the topic.