WASHINGTON, D.C. — The Campaign for a Family Friendly Economy plans to spend $50 million to support Democratic candidates in congressional races. The campaign will support Democratic candidates in Senate races in North Carolina, Georgia, Michigan, Maine and Ohio, and in House races in Iowa and Pennsylvania.

The campaign plans to dispatch volunteers to talk with voters about caregiving. The campaign ties the costs of caregiving to the nation's affordability debate.

"When child care can cost more than your rent or a mortgage, or you have to sacrifice a paycheck in order to be able to take care of a loved one, that can motivate how people vote," said Sondra Goldschein, Executive Director of the Campaign for a Family Friendly Economy and its political action committee. "Each election cycle, we see candidates recognizing that more and more," said Sondra Goldschein.

The Campaign for a Family Friendly Economy was created a decade ago. Child care costs exceed what families pay for housing, and waiting lists for federal child care subsidies are growing. Federal child care subsidies support working families in poverty.

The "sandwich generation" consists of middle-aged people who care simultaneously for their own children and their parents. The cost of child care continues to rise.

Before 2020, many political candidates rarely spoke about child care. During the COVID-19 pandemic, preschools and child care centers remained open to allow parents in frontline jobs, such as health care workers, to return to work.

Congress passed $39 billion in aid for child care in 2021. The 2021 child care aid allowed states to support additional families and subsidized wages for child care workers.

In late 2021, President Joe Biden proposed establishing nationwide universal prekindergarten and expanding child care subsidies so that no family would pay more than 7% of household income for care. Congress narrowly declined to pass the proposal for universal prekindergarten and expanded child care subsidies in 2021.

The One Big Beautiful Bill, passed last year, expanded eligibility for a child care tax credit to an estimated 4 million more families. The One Big Beautiful Bill increased child care aid for military families and increased tax credits for employers who provide child care to their workers.

Republicans have begun to support child care as an issue crucial to workforce growth, though Republican proposals for child care are less expansive than Democratic proposals. Several political candidates in the current election cycle have centered their campaigns around child care affordability. During his 2024 campaign, Donald Trump said that increasing foreign tariffs would address the expense of child care. The plan to use increased foreign tariffs to address child care expenses has not been implemented.