Welcome to this quick break-in special segment of Nevada Week.

I'm Kipp Ortenburger, and I am sitting in a different chair today because as I mentioned on the last episode, I am leaving Nevada Week to take on some behind-the-scenes duties here at Vegas PBS.

But more importantly, I am so extremely honored to share this moment with your new host of Nevada Week, Amber Renee Dixon.

Now, you can view both my last show and a Nevada Week In Person episode where I got the chance to interview Amber Renee by visiting vegaspbs.org/nevadaweek.

So without further ado, it is my pleasure to introduce you to your new host of Nevada Week, Amber Renee Dixon.

Amber Renee, welcome.

-Thank you so much.

I feel very lucky to be in this seat, very honored, and I am committed to continuing the great work that you have been doing here at Nevada Week, and with your blessing, I'm ready to get this show started.

-I appreciate that, and you definitely have my blessing.

You clearly have the station's blessing, I would say too, and the work that you're going to do on this show, I'm assured viewership is going to have your blessing as well in the future.

Best of luck to you, Amber Renee.

-Thank you, Kipp.

Lawmakers returned to Washington this week with a packed agenda.

On the Democrats' to-do list is getting the President's domestic spending plan passed.

This week on Nevada Week, we look at what's in the Build Back Better bill.

♪♪♪ Support for Nevada Week is provided by Senator William H. Hernstadt and additional supporting sponsors.

Welcome to Nevada Week; I'm Amber Renee Dixon.

For months Congress has wrangled over President Joe Biden's domestic spending package known as Build Back Better.

It covers a slew of programs designed to address everything from climate change to child poverty.

Now, after losing a battle over the filibuster and voting rights legislation, Democrats on Capitol Hill are turning their attention back to Build Back Better.

I recently spoke with Nevada Congresswoman Dina Titus about that bill as well as the infrastructure bill that did get passed.

Congresswoman Dina Titus, thank you so much for joining us.

-It's a pleasure; thank you for having me.

-I want to start out with the infrastructure bill that congratulations, you were a part of getting passed, $1.2 trillion; $8.3 billion is being allocated to western water infrastructure, and at a time when the water levels at Lake Mead are at a historic low, how dire do you consider the drought to be we are currently in, and how will this infrastructure bill help that?

(Rep. Dina Titus) Well, we were very glad to get that passed and it was bipartisan, and it came out of the Senate even though they have a hard time getting anything done, and it brings a lot of funding to Nevada.

Infrastructure is the key to our success because we have to bring everything in.

Nothing is really made here, except maybe dreams come true, and at the top of the list of that infrastructure is water.

All you have to do, as you mentioned, is go out to the lake and see that bathtub ring of how it's going down, down.

In fact, it was declared an emergency this year for the first time.

What this money will be used for water conservation, and it's a project that's mostly going to help Nevada and California do recycling and get some water put back into the river and back into the lake.

So it is definitely a drought.

It's not going away.

We've had a lot of snow, but it's going to take a lot more.

-And speaking of the ability to recycle water, you recently said in the Nevada Current that Las Vegas has one of the best stewardship programs of water, meaning that this city knows how to use its water in a smart manner.

How though will this bill help future growth, because this city and area continue to get bigger and bigger.

-You're so right about that.

We're one of the fastest growing areas in the country.

We're also one of the driest areas and one of the hottest areas.

You put those three things together, and it is a challenge.

We don't want to stop growth, but we want to have sustainable growth, and you have to keep in mind, water is what sustains that.

So we over the years have bought it, borrowed it, stolen it, gotten it wherever we can, and that always has to be part of the equation.

-And so does it help in looking ahead to future growth, this bill?

-Absolutely.

It will help with building facilities for recycling, it will help with conservation efforts.

A lot of it is saving water, you know, that's where we have done a good job, taking out lawns, putting in plumbing that uses less water.

The hotels, you think oh, all those tourists use a lot of water, but they really don't.

They've been good stewards of the water, so we're pleased with that.

-I mentioned $1 trillion is this infrastructure bill, the national debt is $29 trillion.

The pandemic certainly didn't help the amount of debt with the federal aid being given out to help people hurt by COVID.

But after all that spending and now this spending with the infrastructure bill, how do you justify it as being financially responsible for this country?

-Well, a number of Nobel Prize-winning economists have said this is a good investment, not an expenditure, because when you invest in infrastructure, that helps you to compete globally.

It helps us to bring in people and products, and it creates jobs for people building that infrastructure.

A lot of the union building trades in this valley were very supportive of that bill because it'll put their people to work.

-And I imagine it would not have passed the Senate had it not been deemed financially responsible.

As you mentioned it was bipartisan, and that brings me back to Build Back Better.

That's nearly $2 trillion, and it is vast.

It is ambitious, covering everything from affordable childcare to immigration reform to climate change.

It did pass in the House but as is, it is not expected to pass in the Senate.

The President recently said he thinks perhaps it has a better chance of getting passed in chunks and then later clarified, one big chunk.

So what do you think of this strategy, and of all the components in that bill, what is most important to you to get passed?

-Well, you know, it started at about 6 trillion and got compromised down to 3, now it's compromised down to a little less than 2.

I would like to see it pass as one big chunk.

You know, we had two parts: Physical infrastructure, which we got passed, and this is human infrastructure and I think the two go together.

I'm not opposed to doing it brick by brick.

If you break it up and take some of the more popular programs that are harder for Republicans to vote against, then maybe that's how you get a piece at a time.

Start with extending the Child Tax Credit which brought a lot of children out of poverty, or daycare assistance.

You know, how many young families need help with daycare, which takes such a chunk out of their monthly income?

That may be something, or Medicare expansion.

I'd like to see it cover vision, hearing and dental, but at least in this bill it covers hearing, so that's a start.

-So those would be your priorities.

Of all those, what do you think has the best chance of getting passed that will appease Republicans?

-Well, those are all pretty standard, popular programs.

The ones that I really am pushing for that will be harder are immigration reform, which we couldn't get in the first bill, and also environmental concerns.

You know, talking about saving the planet, it is an existential issue, and if we don't do something about climate change now, it may be too late.

So those two will be harder, I believe.

-Build Back Better recently took a backseat to voting rights, and in order for that to get passed in the Senate, it was proposed that changes be made to the Senate's ability to filibuster.

So in the House, you do not use a filibuster but I wonder, what do you think about abolishing the filibuster in the Senate?

-Well, I've called for abolishing it because it's been misused as a way just to stop legislation.

It takes 60 votes to override the filibuster, and we're supposed to be majority rule and that would be 51 votes.

So if you don't have 60, you just can't get anything done, and that's what's happening in the Senate right now.

There are two Democrats though-- and remember it's tied 50-50 so it's hard enough and the Vice President breaks the tie-- but there are two Democrats who are opposed to changing the filibuster, so it's 52-48.

The President's called for it, a number of members of the House have called for it, some Senators have said we need to do it, but that's easier said than done.

-You're talking about Manchin and Sinema.

-Right.

-How do you go about reaching out to them, or do you?

-Well, everybody has offered lots of things to both of them.

You know, do you need a bridge?

Do you need a road?

What do you want?

Manchin is easier to predict because he's a conservative Democrat, West Virginia is conservative.

The problem there is the people in West Virginia are very poor.

This is Appalachia.

They need these programs as much as anybody, so it's kind of hard to figure out why he won't get on board.

Sinema, she's just erratic.

Nobody knows what she wants.

People have joked she's just trying to get on The View by getting a lot of attention.

So it's harder to offer her anything because nobody knows what it is she wants.

-So then the strategy is kind of leave her alone, perhaps?

-They were negotiating with her in the beginning.

The President had them over, talked to them, did everything possible, and they just dug in.

So right now the hope is maybe if you do break the bill into pieces, you can get them to come on board for some of those pieces.

-Speaking of the President, in the Washington Post, you recently said that if you were to give his administration a grade on its first year, it would be incomplete, and that was you saying also I was a political science professor for some time.

We talked about Build Back Better and voting rights, those are incomplete areas.

Am I missing anything?

-Well, immigration is certainly incomplete, and the COVID is incomplete.

We have vaccinated so many people since the President came on board.

We're now doing increased testing, hospitals are still going up, but deaths are going down.

So we've got to get through COVID.

That would be something I would say is incomplete.

-And you recently co-sponsored legislation to require the federal government to provide universal free testing.

Before I let you go though, I want to talk about redistricting.

We are heading into the midterms.

You laugh, and thanks to redistricting, you are going to have less Democrats in your district.

Those Democrats are going to become part of districts three and four, which some consider to be swing districts.

What do you anticipate the impact to be on your bid for reelection?

-Well, this is going to be a tough race.

It's now down to a margin of 3%.

All three of the districts are going to be swing districts now.

If they had taken my Democrats and made them safer in the other districts that'd be one thing, but now we're all three swing districts.

I now have Boulder City and I have Anthem, so those are real Republican districts.

I've been declared as one of the swing seats by the national party.

I'm what you call frontline.

But we've had tough fights before, and I think if people know my record, and I'm pretty well known here in the district, they won't just vote a strict party line.

And also remember we have a number of non-partisans, so those are people we're going to have to talk to about what we have accomplished.

And just to mention one thing we've accomplished, Nevada had the highest unemployment of anyplace in the country, led by Las Vegas, that was 33%.

Now it's down to about 6%.

So there are some things to brag about.

-You've got some talking points.

Congresswoman Dina Titus, thank you so much for joining us.

-Thank you for having me.

Ask me again.

-More now on the expanded Child Tax Credit you heard Titus talk about.

For many families, the American Rescue Plan increased that credit from $2,000 per child to $3,000 per child, and 3,600 per child under six, and instead of parents receiving that credit in a lump sum after filing taxes, they got half of it in monthly payments of $250 to $300.

That was from July to December of last year.

Congress did not extend the credit into this year, and now parents like Valerie Thomason are feeling the pinch.

-Oh, there you go.

That's cool.

Valerie Thomason of Las Vegas says she's raising her four-year-old son Messiah as a single mom.

(Valerie Thomason) As a single parent, all the bills go on me.

So even if I'm doing somewhat okay, any little rise in the price of anything is a huge burden to take on.

In the past year, she says her rent rose as did her grocery bills due to higher food prices and that the expanded Child Tax Care Credit eased the burden.

It was only 300 a month, and I say "only" because I know some people won't see that as a lot but for me it was a big difference.

January was the first time in six months that Thomason says she did not receive the $300 payment.

The first month we'll probably be okay.

I think the next month after and then the one after that is where it starts to really feel this-- I start to feel squeezed, you know.

Right now because of coronavirus, Thomason, a community organizer, says she's working full time from home.

It allows her to watch Messiah and save on childcare expenses.

Eventually we will have to go back to work in person, but my expenses are completely accounted for.

Thomason considers herself part of what she calls the "gray area" between poverty and middle class.

She's struggling yet says she's making too much money to qualify for government assistance, like childcare subsidies.

It's like it almost forces you to choose, and a lot of women do choose to actually quit working and go into poverty because it would be better for them to get that assistance than to try in that area.

Some Democrats in favor of extending the credit say it's projected to reduce child poverty by more than 40% and in December alone, it kept about 3.7 million children out of poverty.

Some Republicans, even Democratic Senator Joe Manchin, call the credit too costly and claim it discourages parents from working.

However, Thomason says she wants to work and has no plans of quitting.

Because I feel like I'm going somewhere, you know, with my career.

But if I can't find childcare, I might be forced to do that.

-Making childcare more affordable is one of the main pillars in the Build Back Better bill.

Under the plan, $270 billion would go toward that goal, and joining us now to talk about the state of childcare in Nevada is Denise Tanata, early childhood systems director for Children's Cabinet, a Nevada nonprofit, and Amanda Haboush-Deloye, interim executive director for the Nevada Institute for Children's Research and Policy at UNLV.

Ladies, thank you for joining us today.

This is an issue, affordable childcare, that impacts a lot of parents across the country but in Nevada in particular, according to the Center for American Progress, 72% of Nevadans live in areas that are considered childcare deserts.

Denise, what does that mean, and in your experience, is 72% an accurate number?

(Denise Tanata) Yes, 72% is an accurate number.

Childcare deserts are defined by census tracts, so it's really looking at the population of children within those census tracts and then looking at the availability of childcare slots.

So if you have three times more children than you have available slots, you live in a childcare desert.

It's definitely an issue in our state, that we don't have the capacity to take care of the number of kids that we need.

-A lot of parents looking for childcare, and they don't have the access to it because there simply are not enough childcares.

The pandemic I imagine impacted the number of childcare centers licensed.

What do you know about that?

And the pandemic overall, how did it impact this issue?

(Amanda Haboush-Deloye) We had many centers that unfortunately were forced to close down permanently due to the pandemic because they weren't able to maintain their staff on payroll and because even when kids started coming back, you know, some parents weren't comfortable sending their kids back during the pandemic as well as they weren't allowed to have as many children in care at the time.

So when you have lower enrollment and you don't have that extra-- or all of the capacity, the money for that coming in, they're not able to support all their staff or all of the center functionings that they normally would if they were at full capacity.

So those restrictions also made it very hard for many of the centers to continue operating and therefore it put parents in some very difficult positions when there was-- you know, they further had to reduce care because those centers had to close.

-They already didn't have access to enough childcare centers as a childcare desert and the pandemic made that worse.

Staffing, I imagine that was an issue too as these childcare centers that did stay open are trying to get staff back.

-Staffing continues to be an issue, like we had a lot of people that had to leave the sector during the pandemic because of closings and people, you know, working from home, not sending their kids in.

So now as we're starting to rebuild, we're really seeing our childcare centers are struggling with finding employees.

They're competing with other, you know, businesses that are able to increase wages to attract people, benefits that our childcare centers just don't have the resources to provide.

-What is the state of childcare centers, what they are able to pay their employees?

I mean, is it an attractive number, and what are some of the risks associated with being in childcare?

-Yes.

I mean, I would love to say that it's higher, but we're averaging about $10, $11 an hour for childcare workers in our state.

They have to go through background checks, they have continuing education requirements, and they're dealing with staff shortages themselves, so not having all the assistance they need.

So it can be a really stressful position.

I will say we have a lot of really dedicated childcare workforce that are really dedicated to doing the work and supporting the kids, but we need more.

We need to bring more in, and part of that is increasing wages for our childcare workers and providing benefits.

A lot of our childcare workers don't have benefits.

A lot of our childcare workers themselves qualify for public assistance programs.

-That's a solution for trying to attract more people.

What is a solution for getting more childcare centers in general?

-So I think we need bigger investments from our state, and some of the federal increases in the federal investment will, you know, definitely help as well.

But a lot of people think childcare is very expensive.

The parents feel it, but when we look at, you know, what childcare does for our kids in the long term, that it's their first five years of development are what's going to shape the rest of their future.

So that's where we should be putting our investments, so we should make sure that every child, regardless of their parents' ability to pay, has access to that quality care.

And that's the key too is that we want our childcare providers in those centers to be able to offer quality care for the employees that work there, to have a background in child development so they can best offer resources to those children, and the childcare workers want that too but they can't afford to go to school and increase their personal development when their wages don't also increase because then they're going into debt without any real career ladder to go up.

It could take many years for them to become, you know, an assistant director or a director where you start to see some of those increases, and they still don't get paid what they should.

So I think we need to look at it a little bit different.

We've got public K-12.

We feel like that's an investment we're paying, which is still underfunded, and we still need to put more investment in.

But then in the early years, we're expecting the parents to fully cover that cost and that's why they feel it and they shouldn't.

The parents and the children shouldn't have to sacrifice that quality based on that cost.

-Ideally, they would have access to quality care, but I think one of the biggest concerns is can I even afford to send my child to daycare?

Why are childcare centers-- why is it so expensive?

-I think part of it is the staffing, right?

There's licensing ratio requirements of having a certain number of teachers for the number of kids in the classroom, but when you start to add it all up, they have to pay their rent or mortgage for their facility.

They have to keep the lights on.

They have to keep food in the fridge.

They have licensing fees.

You know, so there's a lot of expenses I think that are in the background that a lot of people don't realize that are there.

Childcare is not a huge profit business.

People are not making millions off of providing childcare.

They're doing it because they care about kids, and they want to do that and I think, you know, our childcare providers would love to lower the costs and make it more affordable for families, but they also have to keep their businesses open, feed their own families and take care of them.

So I think a lot of what we're doing right now, even with ARP funds for childcare, is focusing on how we can help build the infrastructure, automate business processes for childcare centers, reduce some of that burden on them so they can build stronger businesses.

-Okay.

So the American Rescue Plan is helping.

You're still hoping for Build Back Better, which will likely not pass if it stays as is.

But if you were to pick one or two components of it for childcare, what would you pick?

-Looking at the entire Build Back Better plan, I would definitely pick the childcare and pre-K components.

I think there's a lot of things in Build Back Better that we need to do.

-Just specifically with childcare, what do you think it addresses best?

-Specifically with childcare, I would say number one, increasing the number of families who qualify for childcare subsidies, increasing the childcare subsidy rates so that families aren't having to pay so much of an overage because under our current subsidy program, we don't pay the full cost of high-quality care.

Within that, built in that, I think is looking at the teacher wages, making sure that we're increasing those so we're attracting more people to the field so they have a livable wage, have the benefits and supports that they need.

I think some of the things that are not in there that we need to include are some of the infrastructure pieces.

You know, in your segment with Congresswoman Titus, you mentioned the infrastructure bill which originally had funding in it for childcare facilities.

That was taken out.

You know, there's some options under Build Back Better, but they're limited.

-Subsidies, what is the reality of subsidies?

How many people are eligible for them in Nevada and then how many actually get them for childcare?

-So we have about 6%.

-We're actually serving about 6% of eligible kids.

-I see.

That's a terrible number.

-It's a terrible number, absolutely terrible.

I mean, on par with the rest of the country, and when we're looking at just federal resources, some other states have implemented some state funding sources to increase those numbers.

But yes, 6% of eligible kids.

-Last question, what do you say to opponents of this that it's too radical, Build Back Better, or too expensive and maybe the federal government shouldn't even be involved in childcare.

-It's an investment that we've needed for a very long time.

I think the pandemic has highlighted that.

I think traditionally we've looked at childcare is, you know, babysitting.

It's something that we don't necessarily need, and I think there's two pieces.

One, we're focused on economic recovery.

How do we get more people back in the workforce and, in particular, how do we get more women back in the workforce?

I think women have been disproportionately impacted by the pandemic and being able to return back to work.

So we need it for that, and we need it for child development.

If we want to make sure that our kids are entering school ready to learn, to do better in school, to take care of us in the future, we need to invest.

-Good contributing members of our society.

Ladies, thank you so much for your time today.

And thank you as always for joining us this week on Nevada Week.

For any of the resources discussed here, please visit our website at vegaspbs.org/nevadaweek.

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