Assembly Democrats Push For Increased Funding For Child Care, Welfare

Democrats in the California State Assembly will push to add funding for early childhood care programs in next year’s budget, and pay for it by delaying spending proposed by Governor Jerry Brown.

Speaker Anthony Rendon says the Assembly budget proposal will include an extra $600 million for child care and preschool programs.

“As a state we eliminated in excess of a billion dollars in early childhood education and restored less than a quarter of that,” Rendon said. “So what you see here is a significant investment.”

Read: Politifact California previously examined a similar claim by Rendon.

Assembly Democrats are also proposing $650 million more for affordable housing.

Ending a rule that prevents families who have another child from receiving higher welfare payments would cost another $200 million.

Lawmakers would keep the budget roughly in line with that proposed by Governor Brown by cutting a priority of the governor's. Brown proposed $1.5 billion next year to repair old state buildings.The Assembly would instead fund that over four years.

Both Brown and state lawmakers will also have to prepare for reduced income from cap-and-trade funds, after the most recent quarterly state auction sold few credits for the first time.

In a statement, Assembly Republicans say the state should save more for the next recession and focus on fixing problems with current programs, instead of increasing spending with new, permanent funding.