Lena Bilik
@lbilik.bsky.social
🌱 Senior Program Manager @ Roosevelt Institute / Roosevelt Forward 🌱 Care economy, gender & economics, worker power 🌱 Opinions my own
Weakening Head Start would also take one of the few reliable options low-income families have and make our tenuous, patchwork system of care even more fragile for all families. More from us ⬇️
Who’s Minding the Kids These Days? An Analysis of Children’s Care Arrangements
Former DOL Chief Economist Sarah Jane Glynn analyzes the complex patchwork of childcare arrangements in the US, revealing how the "broken" care infrastructure fails working parents and our economy.
rooseveltinstitute.org
Stripping Head Start requirements for class sizes, health screenings, home visits, early learning, disability access, and program hours is not just “deregulation.” It weakens one of the few comprehensive sources of care available to low-income families.
Trump Administration Plans to Upend Head Start by Deregulating It
The White House tried but failed to block funding for preschool for poor children. Instead, it will seek to strip away standards on health, literacy — and brushing teeth.
nytimes.com
Care is economic infrastructure, but too often the people giving and receiving it are left out of the policy choices that dictate who bears the costs. That's why today's Day to Have Your Say centers those experiences through 1 Million Care Conversations. careconversations.com
Over 4 million people have lost SNAP benefits (10% of the pre-HR 1 rolls) over the last year mainly due to paperwork associated with expanded work requirements and state anti-fraud/anti-mistaken payment requirements.
Carl Quintanilla@carlquintanilla.bsky.social · 2w agoPage One. @nytimes.com
I love how HR1 (the big beautiful bill) is structured like a series of sequential time bombs set to detonate in 2026, 2027, 2028 and beyond. Next up are the Medicaid work requirements which will add millions more to the uninsured. Then the provider tax changes that will collapse our HCBS system.
Wrote this a year ago but still relevant as more of the damage spreads from this disastrous budget agreement: rooseveltinstitute.org/blog/us-poli...
US Policies Already Fail Our Children. The GOP’s Budget Bill Will Make Things Worse. - Roosevelt Institute
It’s hard to imagine US public policy getting worse for children when we already fall so behind other countries. But the Republican reconciliation bill that passed on July 3 will truly make things wor...
rooseveltinstitute.org
Leah Greenberg ❌👑@leahgreenberg.bsky.social · 2w agoRemember the SNAP cuts in the so-called “Big Beautiful Bill?” Children account for nearly half of the 2.4 million people who are no longer receiving SNAP in at least 19 states. The true number of kids impacted nationwide is unknown. This is horrifying. No child should go hungry.
The latest in my series of interviews with state and local childcare experts - check it out. Those of us that think about childcare solutions at the national scale have so much to learn from these folks!
Roosevelt Institute@rooseveltinstitute.org · 3w agoVermont has quietly become one of the country’s strongest examples of ambitious childcare policy. @lbilik.bsky.social spoke with Sarah Kenney about the decade of organizing behind Act 76, why affordability and supply must grow together, and why passing a law is only the beginning.
Check out the first installment of a series of interviews I'll be doing with state and local childcare experts -- Local implementors all over the country are proving that it is 100% possible to expand public childcare. We can learn a lot from them.
Suzanne Kahn@suzmkahn.bsky.social · last mo.New interview from @lbilik.bsky.social brings both inspirational vision and technical advice from Kristin Spanos: rooseveltinstitute.org/blog/applyin... "Everything that currently exists is a social construction, which tells me reimagining new and improved ways programming is also possible."
Required reading from @jessicacalarco.com --
Jess Calarco@jessicacalarco.com · last mo."Current policies incentivize all of us to push care downstream. This cascade is fundamentally unsustainable, as it concentrates care in the hands of those already overburdened." My latest for @rooseveltinstitute.org on neoliberalism's trickle-down of care: rooseveltinstitute.org/publications...
New 📰: Every society needs care. The question is who gets stuck doing it. @jessicacalarco.com's new paper argues that America's default answer has been: whoever has the least power to refuse. 🧵 rooseveltinstitute.org/publications...
People are tired of an economy that demands more work, more sacrifice, and more stress while giving less back in return to anyone who isn’t a billionaire, corporation, or political insider. Read The #GoodLife Agenda ⬇️
The Good Life Agenda
The Good Life Agenda shows what our economy and democracy could look like if all of us had access to the building blocks of economic security and prosperity, and how we can get there.
rooseveltinstitute.org
"But well before the rules formally go into effect Jan. 1, they’re costing already-strapped states millions or tens of millions to implement." Oh hey i's the thing policy wonks (including me) said would happen. I expect at least some states to apply for and receive extensions. It's a heavy lift!
Alice Miranda Ollstein@alicemiranda.bsky.social · 2mo agoNEW: The Trump admin is counting on Medicaid work requirements to save the government billions of dollars. But well before the rules formally go into effect Jan. 1, they’re costing already-strapped states millions or tens of millions to implement. www.politico.com/news/2026/05...
Humbled to speak with and lift up the thoughts of Tashieanna Smith, a family childcare provider who participated in the Day Without Childcare strike this month. Listening to family childcare providers can clearly show us the cracks in our broken childcare system, and can point us towards solutions.
A Day Without Childcare: Tashieanna Smith on Organizing for a Universal System
"Here’s the struggle: We’re not making enough money."
substack.com
This Thursday we and @epi.org are hosting a must-attend webinar on the future of the minimum wage, featuring new research on why the federal wage floor must be raised and why arguments against it don’t hold up to the evidence. You won’t want to miss it. Sign up here: us06web.zoom.us/webinar/regi...
It continues to make zero sense to put our health/the health of our loved ones into the hands of employers. The collective care we need will never come from companies driven by profit, and, as this article notes, the whims of misogynistic authoritarians. We need national paid family leave YESTERDAY.
Why Two Big Companies Just Cut Paid Family Leave
nytimes.com
This is one reason I find the idea that the safety net for the elderly comes at the cost of the safety net for everyone else to be crazy. In the absence of sufficient income support and LTSS options, family steps in. And it is usually women who pay the price. marketrealist.com/retirement/m...
Millennial Daughters Caring for Boomer Parents Are Sacrificing in More Ways Than One
The work and financial responsibility tied to caring for aging parents is more often than not pushed to women. Many Millenial daughters are losing their own futures.
marketrealist.com
Most of my time over the past 4+ years in child care policy was spent failing to get across that you can't "just talk like a normal person" if your policy is neoliberal gobbledygook
Appreciate this take from @ehaspel.bsky.social re: intro'd Child Care Modernization Act. We can't get sidetracked by childcare proposals that tinker around the edges of a broken system. It's time policymakers prioritize what we rly need: bold proposals for universal childcare that meet the moment.
Now Is Not the Time for the Child Care Modernization Act
Advancing legislation six months before the midterms is an unnecessary risk -- let's see what the 120th Congress brings
familyfrontier.substack.com
⬇️ This Roosevelt guy might be on to something.
Larry Glickman@larryglickman.bsky.social · 3mo agoFDR’s Fireside chat on March 9, 1937 explaining his proposal to expand the Supreme Court stands up surprisingly well. “We have reached the point as a nation where we must take action to save the Constitution from the Court and the Court from itself.”/1
A labor of love, w/ too many people to thank for their partnership & brilliance. New analysis: 👉 46% of kids < 6 still live in a licensed child care desert 👉 70% of kids in remote rural areas affected 👉 ~50% rural low-income families lack Head Start access www.americanprogress.org/article/amer...
America's Licensed Child Care Deserts
Eight years after our initial report, CAP’s 2026 analyses of U.S. licensed child care supply reveal that just fewer than half of the nation’s young children still live in child care deserts.
americanprogress.org
The latest ghoulish news from this admin: they want to decrease the # of adults to children in Headstart. This when the childcare crisis is named over&over as a major economic burden for families right now. Deregulation is NOT a solution to the childcare crisis: it will only make things worse. A 🧵:
Trump’s Top Child Care Official Wants a ‘Bonfire of Regulations’
nytimes.com
Would LOVE if we could all stop talking about public policies to encourage higher birth rates, and instead push for public policies that ensure children are happy, safe, valued members of society!
Gillian Branstetter@gbbranstetter.bsky.social · 4mo agoWhy I don't trust anyone a little too obsessed about falling fertility rates
Important new brief from @rooseveltinstitute.org out today from Jessica Forden on the impact of the US’s lack of a public long-term care system on low- and middle-income families. The need for long term care is simply a part of life, and a perfect example of something that should be a public good.
Roosevelt Institute@rooseveltinstitute.org · 4mo agoNEW 🗞️: While headlines claim millennials will be the wealthiest generation ever, a silent crisis is draining that inheritance before it ever reaches them: the skyrocketing cost of long-term care. 🧵 rooseveltinstitute.org/publications...
The U.S.’s privatized, patchwork childcare system isn’t inevitable. It’s the result of political choices, rooted in austerity and fiscal conservatism, dating back to the 1970s. More from our Fellow @jessicacalarco.com ⬇️
Jess Calarco@jessicacalarco.com · 4mo ago"Put simply, 'child care or war' is a false choice. The U.S. has the money to pay for child care, even if we are also funding a costly, unpopular and arguably unconstitutional war. That money is just stuck in the wrong hands." My latest for @ms.now : www.ms.now/opinion/trum...
This as states wrestle with abandoning optional HCBS and the rural hospital system nears implosion. Both due to HR 1. (not "big pharma," Mr. Platner)
"Among young American men, the strongest predictor of support for the tradwife lifestyle was not gallantry but hostility towards women" Apparently this is not what researchers "expected". Which makes one wonder: had these researchers thought about it for 30 seconds? www.thetimes.com/life-style/s...
Tradwife movement ‘attracts men who are hostile to women’
The strongest predictor of support for women staying at home and deferring to their husband is not, as researchers expected, chivalry but ‘hostile sexism’
thetimes.com
Thrilled to have this paper out in the world. We can't restore democracy without restoring faith in its ability to deliver for people. Public options are part of the toolkit we need to do that.
Roosevelt Institute@rooseveltinstitute.org · 4mo agoOur democracy is at a crossroads, and the old policy playbook—tax credits, privatization, vouchers—is failing us. It’s like using a hammer to drive a screw. To build a #GoodLife for all Americans, we need more than market-focused fixes. We need public goods and services. 🧵
I'm so heartened & fired up that this piece from @mayor.nyc.gov & @warren.senate.gov on childcare is so aligned w/ @rooseveltinstitute.org 's research on how to build a public childcare system; from childcare as public infrastructure, to investing in childcare workers. tinyurl.com/4v3h2kk3
Building a Vision for Universal Public Childcare: Principles for a Childcare System That Works for Workers and Families - Roosevelt Institute
In a new analysis, Lena Bilik and coauthors argue that the US needs bold, transformative public investments to create a universal early childhood care and education (ECE) system that can meet the need...
tinyurl.com
Roosevelt Institute@rooseveltinstitute.org · 5mo agoChildcare is a major strain on working families, making universal childcare one of the highest-return investments governments can make. @mayor.nyc.gov + @warren.senate.gov make that case in @usatoday.com: ~$20K back per child, higher workforce participation, and returns up to $13 per $1 invested.
