From New York Times, I'm Michael Bavaro. This is Adali.

Today, as Congress debates a historic plan to make child care more affordable, my colleague,

Jason DeParle, traveled to a small city in the American South to understand how big

the problem is and whether people think that the government can solve it.

It's Tuesday, October 12th.

Jason, we have talked a lot on the show about these two giant infrastructure bills that

congressional Democrats are trying to pass right now. The first one, funding traditional

infrastructure, bridges, roads, and the second one, funding a sweeping expansion of the social

safety net. I know that you have been focused on the second bill and what it has to say

about child care. How does that bill approach the question of child care?

It starts with the assumption that the child care system in the United States is just fundamentally

broken. I think the Democrats think it's broken in two sides. On the parent side, it's

just unaffordable for many families. They're paying some of them as much as or even more

than their mortgage. On the other side of things, the daycare center side of things, they're

just not able to hire enough people to keep those centers open. I think there's also a

philosophical shift that the Democrats have in mind. Historically, child care has been

seen as something in the private realm, a family responsibility. Children are cared for

purely at their parents' responsibility until they're old enough to go to school. The

Democrats are trying to shift the lens on it to having it be more of a service in which

everyone has a stake and that society has an interest in an obligation to provide. The

Democrats are trying to shift perception of this from a purely private responsibility

to a broader public responsibility. They're willing to spend big money to do it. The cost

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