With the House and Senate still at loggerheads over how to pay for it, a push by Democrats to inject a historic infusion of cash into Vermont’s ailing child care system is at risk of collapsing.
Lawmakers have been negotiating behind the scenes for weeks over how to finance S.56, a bill that would pump about $120 million a year into the state’s child care subsidy program. But House and Senate negotiators appear no closer to a deal as Friday, their planned adjournment date, creeps ever closer.
“We have hit an impasse on funding,” Senate President Pro Tempore Phil Baruth, D/P-Chittenden Central, conceded Tuesday evening.
As passed by the Senate, S.56 would have been financed by a payroll tax and by eliminating the child tax credit. Leaders in the House, meanwhile, have long said that they favored raising personal and corporate income taxes instead, and preserving the child tax credit. And on Tuesday morning, the House’s tax-writing Ways and Means Committee advanced a proposal that made clear the chamber’s position had not changed.
After a chaotic back-and-forth, senators responded Tuesday afternoon by tacking a slightly revised child care bill onto a workers compensation bill, H.217. That newly-amended legislation maintains the Senate’s position that child care be paid for using a payroll tax, although it keeps the child tax credit in place, a key House priority.
Baruth declined to characterize the Senate’s latest maneuver as its last best offer. But he also wouldn’t rule out closing out the 2023 legislative session without a child care bill in hand if House lawmakers didn’t ultimately agree to a payroll tax.
“I mean, that’s a possibility,” he said. “And it keeps me up at night.”
House Speaker Jill Krowinski, D-Burlington, meanwhile, said Tuesday evening that there remains more support in her chamber for an income and corporate tax financing mechanism.
“That’s the package that you’re going to see on the bill on the floor on Thursday,” she said.
But Krowinski also expressed optimism that the two chambers might ultimately land on some compromise — although she was vague on what form that might take.
“I think it’s too early to say exactly what the middle ground could look like,” she said. “I want to keep the door open to let them keep talking about what the different options are.”
