Andy Beshear wants Washington to act fast on childcare

Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, who is weighing a presidential run, told Vox that he believes Congress “should take action to make sure that every state provides pre-K for 4-year-olds.” | KC McGinnis/Bloomberg via Getty Images

The midterms are racing to their conclusion, but the presidential contest is right around the corner. As the next primaries begin to take shape, how Democratic hopefuls intend to address childcare is already shaping up to be a major question. 

Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, who is weighing a run for president, is one of the potential contenders with hands-on experience around this issue. Facing Republican opposition in the state legislature, he recently redirected federal funds to launch a pre-K pilot program, standing up 3,000 new seats since May. And he believes national Democrats should be making a push to expand access to preschool as well.

We wanted to better understand not only how Beshear is thinking about early childhood initiatives, but also his approach to spending on new federal programs more broadly, and what he’s learned from past efforts to expand access to families that failed. On Tuesday, we spoke with Beshear remotely about his work in the state — and his message to Democrats outside of it. Our conversation has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.

Since 1991, Kentucky has supported voluntary preschool, yet today still only about a quarter of 4-year-olds can attend the state-funded program. Why has it been so hard to make preschool available to every family who wants it?

Well, it shouldn’t be hard. You know, pre-K is an opportunity for every child to get off to a good start. And right now in Kentucky, because of the history you just mentioned, over half of our Kentucky children show up not ready for kindergarten. So before they’ve ever walked into a public school they are already behind. 

So why has it been hard to make that happen?

Well, so at least in my tenure, somehow pre-K has become political. You know, 4-year-olds aren’t registered to vote. They’re not Democrats or Republicans. But I’ve pushed every year to get this in the budget. We can easily fund it given that I’ve produced a surplus every year I’ve been governor, yet our Republican leadership simply will not let it happen.

So, as you mentioned, there have been attempts at expanding this before. What have you learned from those earlier attempts, and what are you doing differently now?

So it’s interesting you bring that up. The same leadership that will not pass pre-K funding in our current budget cycle voted for it under the last Republican governor, but won’t vote for it under me. The last Republican governor vetoed it, and they expressed their displeasure. So the only thing that’s changed here is the party of the person in charge. And what I hear is our Republican leadership saying they don’t want to give me a win, but they’re willing to hand a loss to all of these 4-year olds.

But for me as governor, I don’t get to accept excuses. So what I’ve done is I’ve taken flexible workforce training funds called WIOA funds, which you can use for a lot of different things. They’re used in a number of states for pre-K. And we have launched five pilot programs in different parts of the Commonwealth that are already a stunning success. 

The smallest county in Kentucky is called Robertson County and has zero childcare. You have to drive 40 minutes one way or an hour another way just for any form of child care. It’s one of the places we started this and just to see the parents and the impact that it has on them — most of those parents don’t share my political party — but this is a great opportunity for them that they’re embracing. 

It sounds like it’s gotten pretty polarized in your state. When you talk with Republican lawmakers privately, what do they tell you about why they won’t support expanded preschool?

Well, many rank-and-file Republicans in our state legislature want pre-K, and a number of them helped us to push for it this time. But leadership that’s been here for far too long and gotten far too partisan is simply blocking it at this point. What we need is for it to get to a vote, because this is the top polling education issue among Republicans. Again, because it’s not political.

If we had ballot measures and we put this on there, it would pass 80-plus percent because everyone wants that opportunity for their children. My hope is now that we have started these pilot programs, including one in Franklin County, which is where the seat of government is, that they can go and see how good this program is and not allow the next set of 4-year-olds or the next set of 4-year-olds or the next set of 4-year-olds to miss out on it. But I’m gonna do everything I can with the funding that I can find to provide as much of this opportunity as possible.

So there’s a lot of speculation about whether you might run for president. Without asking you to make any announcements here, I wanted to ask how you’re thinking about these issues nationally. You recently called yourself a more “practical” candidate when explaining your concerns about Medicare-for-all. When you look at something like childcare or pre-K from a federal perspective, what does being practical mean?

I think it means that there is a role for the federal government, and I’m supporting a number of congressional candidates right now and talking to all of them about pre-K. When people talk about the different sides of the Democratic Party — which I think is an overblown story, but still — like when Elizabeth Warren and I get together, we try to find some different things that we both agree on that we could work together on, and pre-K is one of those areas, so is housing.

“I do believe that Congress should take action to make sure that every state provides pre-K for 4-year-olds.”

I do believe that Congress should take action to make sure that every state provides pre-K for 4-year-olds. That’d be something that would be good for the United States that could actually bring Democrats and Republicans together and lift up people in all 50 states. And wouldn’t that be nice? To do something that is the right thing, that is the smart thing, and to do it in a nonpartisan way.

I know you mentioned pre-K for 4-year-olds. What do you think parents should be able to count on from the government before their kids turn four?

I believe that there is a role for government in childcare, and we’re working on it right now in Kentucky. We launched our first childcare center for state employees, and we’re learning a lot from it. Now I admit that the child care challenge is complex. You know, we have private childcare, we have public childcare, we have nonprofit childcare, and making sure we can get in and understand the real cost drivers of that.

What we would do as a state, or what the federal government could do, is develop an effective understanding of all those different parts and pieces. But just pre-K could put 70,000 more people into our workforce in Kentucky, so think about what better childcare could do to the workforce in our country. And it’s something that we could afford because we would see more dollars coming back in terms of tax revenue from that many more people in the workforce than we would ever pay out in child care.

Representative Ro Khanna recently proposed a federal program that would cover childcare costs for nearly all families with kids under age six, including care by relatives and neighbors, and offer a thousand dollar a month to parents who stay home with children under three. Would you support that kind of program?

Yeah, I haven’t seen the details of it. I think that that would present some real challenges with our current system as it is. What I would see is getting into the complexities of each of the forms of child care and how we can augment it, how we can build out on the system that we have right now, but also to address those child care deserts that I’m not sure this plan would fix. I mean, we’ve got counties that have no options — public, private or nonprofit. 

And so I agree that it’s a challenge. I think it’s going to take us being both surgical on the micro and adopting policies on the macro. And I believe it probably won’t all happen at once, even though that sounds great. It’s how do we make improvement after improvement after improvement and expand and expand more as we understand the underlying mechanics better.

When I talk to people about why childcare and universal pre-K fell out of Joe Biden’s Build Back Better agenda, some say that Democrats tried to do too much and that they needed to narrow their agenda and prioritize specific issues more. Others, like Senator Elizabeth Warren, say that Democrats didn’t fight hard enough for child care, for universal pre-K.

What lessons do you take from the last federal child care push?

The federal government has to act with more urgency. We get in a lot of these debates about whether a plan is perfect or if a plan’s only 80 percent perfect. Listen, take the 80 percent and start working it. Provide the American people with some help which they need.

Now, the Biden administration could have had an imperfect plan. But if they’d implemented that imperfect plan, there would be more childcare options right now. And I admit as a governor, I’m practical. You know, getting stuff done is incredibly important. I want to provide relief to all families, but if I can provide relief to a lot of families, let’s start there and then let’s get bigger.

Just to clarify that, what would you have done differently? What would it look like if you had been part of the conversation?

“If it were me, I would push for universal pre-K for 4-year-olds immediately. That is the immediate relief that takes 25 percent of that burden off of working parents.”

If it were me, I would push for universal pre-K for 4-year-olds immediately. That is the immediate relief that takes 25 percent of that burden off of working parents and then I’d work on a bill that addresses childcare, that makes sure that we have all the stakeholders at the table.

Something that I hear in DC while reporting on childcare is that Democrats in Congress are working to make big new plans for 2027 and 2028. But we know they’d also face real pressure to restore things like the billions cut in Medicaid funding.

As you think about the future, where does childcare or universal pre-K fall on your list of priorities?

It’s high on the list of priorities because my priorities are the American people, their well-being, and the ability to chase that American dream. Right? That American dream is about having a job where you can support your family, being able to see a doctor when you’re sick, driving safe roads and bridges, getting your kids the best education possible, and feeling safe in your community. And so pre-K and childcare falls right there. I believe that.

When Democrats retake Congress or when they retake the presidency, we have got to be laser focused on people’s lives and how hard they are right now, but also do it in a smart way that increases the size of our workforce when there are people that want to go back to work, but simply can’t afford to because of the cost of childcare or a lack of those education options.

You recently praised Bill Clinton for running a budget surplus. Do you think that bringing down the deficit should be a priority for the next Democratic president?

Yes, and and I believe that you can and should run a surplus in that job. Now I think what you do is you grow the economy and that helps you pay for those services, but you’ve got to be careful about new spending. That doesn’t mean that you don’t engage in it because there are some things that you could spend on, I believe, like childcare and pre-K that would result in more federal revenue coming in that would allow you to run that surplus. But over time, we’ve got to start addressing the national debt.

Did the Biden administration’s experience with inflation change your thinking about how much the federal government should spend?

Well, I believe the Biden administration was attempting to get us out of the recession that was Covid. Now you saw a huge recession in Covid, and they put these policies in place that shot us out of that recession faster than anyone ever thought was possible, but it probably overshot that target. I think we should have been communicating to the American people about how we had gotten our economy back on track in record time, but it had gone a little too far, and that we were going to make it through. That could have even been a patriotic call because I believe it was a patriotic time. You know, defeating a pandemic that came to kill as many of us as possible.

You’ve talked in this conversation and elsewhere about being pragmatic, acting with urgency, not being overly ideological. A lot of Democrats today make the case now that the pragmatic thing to do is to go big on new programs, push for universal childcare, push for universal health care, abandon these half measures and incremental steps.

I’d love to hear you talk about that. Is that your instinct? 

Well, I’d have to see a program that would actually work. You know, it’s great to talk about a massive program, but then you’ve got to get down in the details, and will it deliver on day one? Or will it crash a system that is imperfect but is delivering to a degree and could deliver more? I’m not against the big idea, but what I’m against is throwing something out there that in the practical real world can’t work.

What role do you see for employers in building out our childcare and early education systems? 

I think that employers have a big role to play. And I see families where an employer has childcare, excited to go to work, knowing their kid is in the building or or close by, the convenience that that provides. They can go down and have lunch with their kids, which is something that I’ve missed out on in my work life. so I think it is critical. 

What we’ve seen in Kentucky is our large employers, we can work with them on it and we can get it done, but it’s midsized employers that we have to rise to that challenge. You know, places that only have a couple hundred employees, or maybe even 12 or 15, how we can band together for those businesses to be able to provide it. And I believe the federal government should be working directly with those companies, because we’ve got to make the economics work. The federal government, in coordination with those employers, could get this right, create a lot more slots, and help people get back to work.