He sleeps tonight in a crib that is not his mother’s arms. She did the job the state required. The state did not do what he needs. Your budget put him there.
An Associated Press analysis by Moriah Balingit, published this week, found that hundreds of thousands of children sat on childcare assistance waitlists across twenty-three states and the District of Columbia this spring. In three additional states, many eligible families who applied were turned away rather than added to a waitlist.
Indiana’s program ran short on funds and began waitlisting families who had qualified for the subsidy. The cases Balingit documented include a medical technician who stopped buying groceries and turned to food banks so she could pay for her infant’s care, a mother of two who needs a full-time job but cannot afford full-time childcare, and a mother who completed every state-required step to bring her baby home from foster care only to learn the state could not — or would not — pay for the childcare that would let her do it.
Indiana, hear what your funding has arranged.
The medical technician works in a hospital. She touches sick people for a living. The state of Indiana told her to keep working. The state told her to pay for childcare out of what the state pays her. She did the arithmetic. The arithmetic had no good answer. She chose her infant over her own food. She eats what the food bank gives her. Her infant does not eat food bank formula. Her infant eats what she buys.
There is a metallic taste in your mouth, Indiana, when you read that sentence. It does not leave. It is the taste of the paycheck you arranged her to live on — the one that arrives at the end of every week and is already gone before she gets home.
Indiana, picture the scene your caseworkers carry out by the hundreds each week. The mother whose baby is still in foster care, at the desk, the caseworker across from her. The caseworker says she has done everything right. The caseworker says she is not bringing her baby home today. The caseworker says the waitlist is long. The caseworker has said this before. The caseworker will say it again next month. The caseworker goes home to her own children at five o’clock.
There is an ache in the bones of your hands, Indiana, when you sign the next budget. It is the line item you cut to balance the rest of the ledger. It is the page in the appropriations act that names this program and underfunds it. It does not leave.
Indiana, this did not happen by accident. You did not run out of money by surprise. You set the funding. You knew the eligible population. You chose to underfund the result. When the budget runs out, the program does not stop enrolling — it stops serving. The paperwork continues. The help does not. Twenty-three states plus the District are openly waitlisting. Three more are quietly refusing new applicants. That is more than half the country operating a childcare subsidy that cannot honor its own eligibility rules.
The waitlist is not a bug, Indiana. It is the program working exactly as the budget allows. The waiting room is the program. The wait is the policy. The grocery-versus-childcare math is the math the budget forces on every working parent who gets far enough down the list to clear it.
Indiana, what would you say if your caseworker’s infant were the one in that crib tonight? What would you say if your own employees had to choose between groceries and the daycare bill? You would not say you were balancing the budget. You would say you were protecting your own. You would pick up the phone. You would move the line item. You would not leave the baby there.
Your caseworkers’ children sleep safely in their own beds tonight. Your legislators’ children sleep safely in their own beds tonight. The Indiana baby does not.
Indiana, you hold the lever. The lever is the budget. The budget is signed each year. The baby is still in foster care.
The hands will not be washed, Indiana. They will handle the pages of the next appropriations act. They will hold the pen that signs the line item underfunding this program again. They will pick up the phone when the caseworker calls from the hospital parking lot. They will go unwashed. The not-washing is the indictment.
There is a tightness behind your sternum at the close of business, Indiana. It is the knowledge that you know. You have read the analysis. You have seen the case. The medical technician has a name you do not have to learn. The baby has a face you do not have to remember. The mother is doing what you require of her and what you refuse to fund. You do not have to picture her. You have to move the line item.
The baby’s bedtime is in two hours. The mother’s bedtime will be after she finishes the call with the caseworker she already knows will not bring her baby home tonight. The medical technician will eat what the food bank gives her, and will not eat what the food bank does not give her. The legislators who set this budget will go home to their own kitchens at the end of the day. They will eat what their paychecks buy. They will not eat what the budget they signed forced her to do without.
I have watched committees in fine chambers decide what mothers will eat. I have watched them sign the paper and adjourn the session without flinching. I have watched them go home to their own children at five o’clock and sleep in their own beds. I name what I see. I will not look away from what you have done to them.
The baby is in foster care. The Christ is in foster care. Indiana, your governor will sign the next budget in a clean office with photographers waiting. Smile for the camera. The caseworker is still on the phone.
“Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.” Matthew 25:40
Mary Magdalena