FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE - OCTOBER 16, 2025
Contact: Paul Karr, 201-600-6244, [email protected]
Statement from Trina Scordo, MSW, Executive Director of NJ Communities United, on Governor’s Dismissal of Childcare Cuts as “Loose Change”
Trenton, NJ – “Tuesday night, responding to a question about his administration’s disastrous $30 million cut to the Child Care Assistance Program (CCAP), Governor Murphy did not offer a solution. Instead, he made it clear that he does not understand the vital role childcare subsidies fulfill in the daily life of working-class families in New Jersey. In particular, he made it clear that he is oblivious that gutting CCAP adversely impacts women, mostly Black women, Women of Color and Latinas.”
In reviewing the budget, the Governor believed that a $30 million program could not possibly play a significant role in the State of New Jersey. In fact, CCAP is a financial support that keeps parents in the workforce and stabilizes community-based childcare for all families – including those who do not receive childcare subsidies. For providers who care for children with subsidies, losing that income makes it difficult to operate and threatens the care they provide for non-subsidized children. Calling the $30 million ‘loose change under the sofa pillows’ reveals a profound disconnect between the Governor and the families who have lost their childcare and will lose childcare.
In the face of federal policies that are increasing costs for working class people, Governor Murphy pointed to his investments in childcare. As his administration ends, the Governor undermines the very communities in which the State invested. The investments he refers to were won because early childcare workers and families organized to make those demands, through collective bargaining, and community action. It would have behooved the Governor to speak with those same workers and families, the people most impacted, before gutting CCAP. Further regarding investments in childcare, New Jersey should follow the path of New Mexico and consider treating early childcare as infrastructure and raise revenue for childcare by taxing the most profitable industries in the State. Those industries rely on workers who need childcare to participate in the workforce.
Cutting childcare creates economic instability. It forces parents—disproportionately women and mothers, those who do most of the care work in our society—to leave their jobs, and it devastates in-home family childcare providers and non-profit community-based childcare centers. Cutting CCAP is financially and morally irresponsible.
If the Governor is so concerned with the legacy that he is leaving his successor, he should consider that working class mothers will be forced to leave the workforce and early childcare educators will lose work. If The Governor is worried about the financial stability of the State, he must immediately use his executive authority to restore this $30 million on an emergency basis.”
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